A small contingent of light cavalry from Andamoor served as guards for the largely Trogen camp, as well as providing additional scouting upon the ground.
The presence of the Andamoorans was not frivolous. They were extremely mobile, proficient horsemen who could range far from the camp to keep up a constant, flowing perimeter at the ground level. Any approaching enemy forces could be harassed and delayed by ground and air alike, while the evacuation of the camp took place.
As much as humans annoyed him, Dragol had to grudgingly admit that the Andamoorans’ endurance, and the swiftness of their steeds, complimented the nature of the camp very well. Most importantly, they enabled the Trogens to remain fully focused upon the tasks that they had been charged with by Avanor. Under the demands shouldered by Dragol and the other chieftains, none of their kind could have been spared to the duties performed by the Andamoorans without it being a detriment to their own efforts.
There were nearly seventy-five Harraks being quartered within the camp, serving almost one hundred veteran Trogen riders. It was a strong sky force in its own right, capable of engagements with modest contingents of Saxans on the ground or in the air. Yet instead of actively searching out the enemy to engage them, the Trogen force was now largely relegated to gathering and providing vital information regarding the lands that the invasion force was moving through.
There was a constant stream of activity within the encampment, as squads and patrols landed and took off, attending to their range of assigned scouting tasks.
As there had not been enough Trogens available to spare even a few for the more basic needs of the camp itself, the Andamoorans had been reluctantly delegated to tending to the Trogen steeds, as well as their own.
As was now routine, a few Andamooran attendants hustled over when Dragol and the others landed. They nervously waited for the Trogens to dismount, so that they could guide their large sky steeds off for food, water, and rest.
Snarling with anger, Dragol forcibly shoved back one of the Andamoorans who lingered too close to him as he got off of his Harrak. The man’s dark eyes glittered in fear and resentment, while he trembled in the presence of the outwardly maddened Trogen.
“Away from me, weakling!” thundered Dragol in a growling voice.
The man most likely did not understand a single word that Dragol had said. Only a few Andamoorans understood a smattering of Trogen words, and even fewer Trogens possessed a handful of words from the tongue used by the Andamoorans, spoken by those who followed the ways of the Prophet in the Sun Lands. Nevertheless, Dragol communicated his intention clearly enough, as the Andamooran scrambled to get away from him.
Dragol spat at the ground in disgust with the behavior, for no Trogen thus treated would have failed to defend their personal honor. He could not fathom the weakness that the humans continued to show, wondering what business the Unifier had in putting the Andamoorans to serve alongside the Trogens.
The only reason that he had ever been able to glean was that the Andamoorans and the Trogens did not adhere to the faith of the Western Church. Dragol had already noticed that this fact alone incited almost instant tension whenever Andamoorans were brought together with the other human factions involved in the invasion, such as those from Ehrengard and Avanor.
Perhaps the Unifier wished to isolate the Andamoorans a little, reasoning that the temptation towards conflict would be much reduced if they were placed alongside a non-human race. The Andamoorans could perhaps find it slightly more palatable that the Trogens were non-believers in their faith, given the Trogens’ fundamentally different nature. There had been no religious wars between Trogens and Andamoorans, but there certainly had been many among the humans of different faiths.
Whatever the true reasons were, Dragol still despised the arrangement.
Compounding his detestation, he had heard it said that that the Andamoorans had great warriors among them. Word had also spread among the Trogens that the particular Andamoorans within the scouting camp avoided armor as an outwardly visible sign of their courage.
Dragol was highly inclined to challenge any that would make such an assertion, as his experience so far had shown him little to substantiate either of the claims. The unarmored Andamoorans always sniveled and cowered in the face of a Trogen provocation or insult, even though Dragol could easily sense their strong dislike of the Trogens. Confronted, the supposedly courageous men of Andamoor wilted fast.
If the oppressive, westerly Elves dwelling near his homeland had such constitutions, the plight of Dragol’s kind would have been lifted a long time ago. The thought of those sufferances, in his present, blackened mood, brought a deep rumble to his throat.
Other Andamoorans, and even a few Trogens, gave Dragol a wide berth as he stormed off into the camp, striding quickly towards his tent. There was no mistaking the aura of absolute wrath that pulsed around the huge Trogen, and nobody within the vicinity wished to voluntarily incur it.
Dragol slowly removed his iron helm, the lining inside the segmented construction thoroughly soaked. His long locks of hair were matted with sweat, and he welcomed the soothing, cool air that enveloped him, caressing his heated crown with the removal of the helm.
The pleasant physical feeling did little to calm his frayed emotions, but at the least it would not add to his agitated state. He could have grimly accepted the day’s losses if his warriors had been overcome in hand to hand fighting, pitted in open battle against skilled warriors.
The thought of his warriors being slaughtered by primal animals, and a hidden archer that they had not been able to fight back against, was tormenting his every moment. His face a mask of barely suppressed rage, he stalked morosely past several tents, before drawing the attention of one particular Trogen.
“Dragol! You have returned at last!” called a voice to his right.
Dragol was about to lash out at the interruption of the other, when the more sensible part of him recognized the voice. He held back the heated expletive that he was about to loose, as he turned his head towards Goras and came to an abrupt stop. The Trogen warrior, like him, had just returned from a sky patrol.
Dragol eyed his comrade as he approached, letting his ire recede.
Goras was highly imposing in mass, even when considered among their commonly sizeable race. A little shorter than Dragol, the other Trogen was visibly broader of shoulder, and much thicker of chest. The Trogen’s abundant hair sprouting from atop his high forehead, and along the forward half of his head, was pulled back and tied into a ponytail that kept his face completely cleared. The rest of his hair fell freely down the Trogen’s shoulders and back.
His unobstructed face gave even more prominence to a large, straight scar, which ran almost vertically down the right side of the warrior’s face, from just below the Trogen’s eye to the base of his muzzle. It was a mark of profound honor, incurred in single combat with an Elven warrior that Goras had finally hewn down with his longblade.
Goras was clad in a newer style of cuirass being used by some of the higher-ranking Trogen warriors. The leather armor was fashioned in a style of interlaced, rectangular pieces. The pieces were arrayed in patterned rows, arranged opposite of the way that the elements in a cuirass of scale armor lay. It was a more eastern style, echoing the methods used in lands such as Theonia.
Dragol found the new style intriguing. Goras had taken a quick liking to it, saying that it was much more well-suited to movement than were the thick hide jerkins that were natively constructed and worn in the Trogen homelands. Dragol contemplated trying out such a cuirass in the near future.