Lord Zee
BBeast
DracoLunaris
Frettzo
Cyclone
Vec
Torack
The ap-Cantar
But the words and declarations of treacherous Mewar did not shake the hearts of the ap-Cantar. For a time Miksuin continued scouting and noted the ever greater concentration of people in Mewar's camps. After discussing this state of affairs with Furrayn, it was agreed that such a great gathering would require a great amount of food for sustenance. Their strategy would lie in denying them that food. And so Miksuin stood before his amassed troops and declared that soon the ap-Cantar would march against Mewar and destroy him utterly. He would stand trial for his crimes and for sowing discord in the land when the GREAT Cantar himself had decreed peace and harmony and brotherhood between them all. He declared that all of Tilaticantar would march forth and rip apart the rebel and those who chose to side with him. Such were the words of Miksuin.
And when night returned the warriors split up into thirty groups of three and so began the hunt. When Mewar's hunters left the camp to find food, Miksuin's men ambushed them - some they killed and some they imprisoned and sent back in disgrace and humiliation to Mewar's camp, that they may know in their hearts the superiority of the ap-Cantar. And when the riverfolk ventured forth and attempted to begin farming the land, Miksuin's men would strike, destroying what they attempted to plant and warding them off. And when Mewar's warriors began attempting to protect these farmers, Miksuin's men laid low and did not strike - until they looked through the defences and saw an opening; the blow was swift and mighty then! Even on the river did Miksuin's men lie in wait, sending burning rafts at the fishing boats to scare them away, or passing by on their own boats and pelting the fishermen with little stones.
This continued for two days, but on the third Miksuin discovered to his peril that Mewar had laid a trap. A small party ventured out by the evening sun as if to forage for food in secret, but when the scouts reported this and Miksuin gathered his men to prepare an ambush, it was his own men who were surprised. Waiting for the attackers were no less than twenty warriors, and those foragers that had been the bait revealed themselves to be warriors too as they dropped their sacks to the ground and drew clubs from within. Of the ten that Miksuin had sent to ambush the enemy, only four returned that night. The other six came in the next morning, each one a head shorter.
Emboldened by his success, Mewar began to send out parties that were larger yet; thirty, forty men each, patrolling the hills and riverside groves where they suspected Miksuin to make his headquarters. Their numbers rendered them slow and easily evaded, and some of Miksuin's skirmishers would occasionally erupt from cover to pepper the advancing warbands with javelins; the Mewari would retaliate with their slings and then take up chase (to no avail), but both sides were so wary of one another that such skirmishes rarely resulted in doing anything more than setting the other on edge.
Miksuin continued his ferocious raiding campaign unrelentingly. By now his men had become accustomed to the lay of the land and their training was beginning to show itself. Operating in small groups they continued to disrupt Mewar's food supplies, and even began striking against people journeying south to join Mewar, telling them to go back home and, if they refused, sending them to GREAT Cantar as slaves in the afterlife. It seemed that Miksuin had settled into the long game - how would Mewar keep his people fed? It was only a matter of time. And with even greater fury did the intensity of the Mewari patrols increase; as time went on, a few trios of the ap-Cantar raiders were caught by the enemy, and their grisly remains were left in the open for their brethren to stumble upon. Yet as the days turned to weeks, the Mewari began sallying out with increasing frequency and there began to be signs of desperation. Bands of warriors accompanied foraging parties as they tried to keep food stores up, and Miksuin's spies heard that Mewar planned to contact the settlements upriver to arrange for some guarded convoys of food and other supplies to be delivered. Meanwhile, those large patrolling warbands were growing somewhat bolder and more brazen in hunting for Miksuin's camp; doubtless they were hoping to stumble upon the enemy's camp and raid it for supplies.
But in all of that, Mewar seemed to have no clear goal beyond waiting in vain for the ap-Cantar to march upon his position for a decisive battle. Since Miksuin and Furrayn knew better than to give him the fight that he wanted and needed, it seemed as though the Mewari had no path to victory. Through attrition of their foodstores and morale, they would slowly crumble. Mewar's hubris continued for some time; he would give rousing speeches with increasing furore and deliver promises of vengeance for the fallen. But then two days passed without Miksuin's spies reporting any speech. Perhaps the upstart was beginning to see the hopelessness and futility of his fight!
But despite this promising development, morale amongst Miksuin's men was low and plummeting by the day. They had lost over thirty of the original ninety warriors - some bodies had been sent back to Tilaticantar to be delivered into the service of GREAT Cantar, but the bodies of others were lost. With Mewar's speeches halted and with his people's desperation clear, Miksuin ordered his men to deliver a message to the people of the camp - and it was thus:
Your desperation and weakness are clear to us, who are made mighty. You cannot muster the strength to reach for the bounty sprawled all about you. It is now as it was in bygone times - you are weak and humiliated, we are mighty and take what we will and deny you all. But that is not the way it is meant to be - Hiwcantar, the great and glorious and endlessly wise, has received visions from the GREAT Cantar. And he wills that you are our brothers - though you have, some of you in error and some of you out of a hatred that knows no end - have struck out against us most unjustly when we have offered you food and shelter and safety and strength. But though you are wayward, yet GREAT Cantar declares you our brothers, and we know well that you have it in you to be strong - if only you could put your petty hatreds aside. Hear it from us now, for this is the kindness of the strong when he is in ascendance, the wisdom of the mighty in victory, the grace of those who lead the way: we leave you now and shall taunt and pain you no more. You shall hunt and you shall farm and you shall eat. And you shall know that we are merciful, and that we are your brothers. And when you have eaten and known the goodness of this land to you when you are as one with us, you will come to us and accept us willingly. This is the word, so throw it not back at us and let there be no need for our return to this miserable state. Eat and drink, for now you are free.
And with that message, Miksuin took his remaining fifty-four warriors and began the slow journey to Furrayn and Tilaticantar. And the men were merry and the going was leisurely, for the war had come to an end by their will and command. Only for the good will and bravery that the messenger showed in delivering that message to their hands was he spared and allowed to return to his fellows and march homeward by their side; in the distance, the wary eyes of Mewari scouts watched the ap-Cantar leave, and soon after the foragers began to once more spill outward and harvest the land's bounty. But the warriors did not return to their homes upstream as the ap-Cantar might have hoped, and nor did Mewar make any appearance, for he had already been on the move with a hundred of his best warriors.
In claiming often, and loudly, his intent to resist the ap-Cantar incursions and fend them off when he came, Mewar knew that eventually the ap-Cantar would learn of his words and witness his actions, and eventually they would come to believe that they knew his nature and his plans. In reality it had been his plan all along to draw out the ap-Cantar; he chose this position a few days' travel upriver to lure the ap-Cantar on a campaign far from their homes in Tilaticantar, and he raised a great army not because he intended to meet the entirety of the ap-Cantar upon the field and test his strength against theirs, but because he had wanted a distraction. So it was that even as Miksuin and his men spent the last few days of their campaign witnessing the decline of their enemy's morale and inexplicable disappearance of Mewar, the young chieftain had already left his camp in the dead of night and traveled into the desert wastes to the south. There he had begun to make his way east in secret, toward Tilaticantar, bypassing Miksuin and his scouts. The warriors that he had left to defend the camp had tried to send word to him that the ap-Cantar had proclaimed the war finished and began returning to their lands in peace, but it was too late. By then Mewar and his warriors had already begun their assault.
The sun had barely began to impose itself upon the world when the cry of the ap-Cantar sentries rose. A horde of Mewari warriors had emerged all of a sudden - well-hidden in the long-grass along the Tala's banks - and now charged like a torrential wave at Furrayn's encampment only a mile from Tilaticantar. The ap-Cantar warriors shook themselves from the embrace of sleep and, without entirely being awake, reached for their spears and shields. But it was too little too late.
Mewar's endless horde streamed into the camp even as stones rained from the heavens. Individual warriors raised their shields and attempted to fight the good fight, but that was not the way they had trained to fight. Perhaps if they had met Mewar's forces on the field, perhaps if they had been in the formation so tirelessly drilled into them, they would have had a chance. But this was not their day. Furrayn, his spear raised, could be seen signalling and shouting for his men to fall back and regroup in formation, but the Mewaris were too many and too swift. Already they had surrounded the camp and Furrayn's forces were fighting on all fronts. Completely encircled as they were, those who remained finally managed to get into some semblance of a formation. Wicker shields raised and spears at the ready, the ap-Cantar wall faced the Mewari flood. From within the mass of the Mewari, there rang out a familiar voice, "Slings!"
The Mewari infantry backed a short distance from the shieldwall that had rallied about their general, and then they drew their slings and began to hurl an unending hail of stones upon Furrayn's men. Were it not for their wicker shields they would have been broken apart, struck down, and scattered within the first few volleys, but as it was they were merely suppressed. The stones came from the front and the sides, aimed high so as to fall upon their heads and low so as to strike their torsos and knees, so even with their shields the ap-Cantar were battered and pushed back. But after what might have been only a minute (though it certainly felt like much longer to they who suffered), the Mewari reached into the pouches of stones that they carried, only to find that they had no more ammunition to maintain the barrage. The damage had already been done, though. The voice of Mewar rang out once more, "Charge them now! Drive them into the river!" Then with a roar, Mewar himself threw his sling into a pocket, took up his spear from where he had laid it by his feet, and led the assault.
Even before the last stone had landed, Furrayn's men were backing away, closer and closer towards the river. When the stones stopped and Mewar ordered the charge, Furrayn too ordered a charge - 'To the river!' There was a moment of confusion before his men turned their backs to the enemy and charged towards the river. Furrayn led them and, coming to the bank of the quick-moving, deep Tala, dropped his spear and shield into it and leapt. The tide immediately swept him and he swam with it. Behind him his men also leapt in and were swept by the river. On the banks ap-Cantar warriors fought the horde as they swiftly retreated into the river. They would eventually get to Tilaticantar, Furrayn had reasoned, and there they would be saved and be able to mount a real defence. No doubt Hiwcantar had already heard the sounds of battle and would be preparing with the few warriors he yet had with him.
It was not long before Tilaticantar grew close enough for those who were strong swimmers to scramble out of the river and rush towards the town. Others - mainly those who were not riverfolk - needed help from fishermen to get out. Spears were also grabbed and thrown onto the riverbank where it was possible, though many of the shields - destroyed as they were - were left to flow into the sea. Wet though they were, the sun was already fully in view and warmed their wet bodies. Furrayn spoke with Hiwcantar hurriedly, and within minutes his warriors - reduced now to some forty-five men - were soon at the ready. Even from here Mewar's forces could be seen, and they were quickly approaching. And then Hiwcantar spoke.
'You can see him, who was our brother. You can see him there. He comes to slay us all - those who have been his brethren an age and those who became his brethren but yesterweek. This is the flame that sears our people into one nation. So pick up your staves and your sticks, pick up your clubs and slings, bring too your fishing nets. We who are the denizens of Tilaticantar, the chosen town of GREAT Cantar, shall fight as one in defence of the good place!' And so Hiwcantar assembled the old and the young, men be they or women, and they found whatever could be used as a weapon and stood at the ready.
Not long after Hiwicantar and his people's hasty preparations had been complete, Mewar and his host were at the town's outskirts. He had realized Furrayn's intention to fall back to Tilaticantar and regain his strength, so the young chieftain had forbidden his warriors from celebrating their victory too soon. He had immediately regrouped his host, and while they wasted no time looting their fallen enemies, they took a few minutes to gather more slinging stones from the river's shore. After that, they had advanced upon the settlement at a mild jog so as to avoid exhausting themselves before the second fight began. As they came to the edge of the town, they fanned out and began to prod at its defenses, using their slings to fire shots here and there down the small dirt streets and between the adobe homes.
A shadow was spied there, a spectre seen here, but to all extents and purposes the place seemed deserted. All was quiet. Mewar expected a trap, for if it had been Hiwicantar's intent to flee, they would have surely seen a trail of refugees leaving the settlement, or at least signs of it. No, they were all here. But Mewar knew how to lure them out. He had lived in this place once, not so long ago, so he knew his way about the place. Continuing to skirt around the settlement in the morning sun, he led his soldiers towards the ap-Cantar's storehouses. But all they found there were the burned remains that Mewar had left behind when he betrayed and abandoned the ap-Cantar. He had expected them to have rebuilt it anew and made a great deal of all their supposed might and invulnerability, but there the charred remnants remained as a scar upon the ap-Cantar. The town was quiet still. Quiet as death on a bright summer morn. It seemed to stare at Mewar, its silence seemed to bore into him, challenging, daring and, ultimately, contemptuous.
He smashed the silence with a mighty roar. "Is this Cantar's way? To prey upon the weak, and then cower in fear when one is met by a readied foe? I will take your head, Hiwicantar! I will have it, for all the evils that you have wrought upon me in the past! My heart and my mind remember your crimes, and no amount of professed brotherhood shall be enough to stay my spearhand. All that would stand with you are my enemies!" Then a figure appeared. He walked calmly from the darkness of an alley. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Spear in one hand and a fishing net in the other.
'You are no brother of ours, Mewar!' Came the giant's voice. 'The sands, the plains, the trees know me well; the spear, the shield, the fighting men. You proclaim yourself a warrior and leader, yet you only seem to know craftiness and scheming. You strike the turned back of your brothers, and you strike the honourable foe when he grants you peace and gives his back. There is no honour in the likes of you, Mewar. If you would prove your honour and your strength, then come face me now!'
"Peace? Ha, peace! They call it peace when they send the snake Miksuin and his bands to attack our fishers and our farmers and then flee from our warriors. They call it peace when he raids us for weeks without end. I grow tired of your mockery; if your warriors would not face me then and they would not just now, why should I owe you a battle man to man? Slings, ready!" The words had hardly escaped Mewar's mouth before the first of his warriors had put stones into the folds of their slings and begun swinging them overhead. Perhaps three moments later, the first stones arced towards the beast of a man. Fuldondar stood unwavering before the hail, his spear planted in the ground and the net in hand. The stones pierced his proud body, but he neither bent nor fell before the onslaught. Bloodied in more places than could be counted, he stood staring and defiant still. Aye, he stood though he was dead.
There emerged then another man, smaller in stature than Fuldondar. 'This is a war of your making, Mewar. You have betrayed, and you have severed the knot of union and let it fall away and splinter. You have sown discord between all the people when GREAT Cantar him-'
"I'll suffer that name no longer!" Mewar screamed then, with all the unbound fury of a boy who was orphaned by the progeny of the man who carried that name. "He made this war, He who is the incarnation of the demons that dwell in what you call the Yellow Scourge; nay, he who is and was the Yellow Scourge. In his time he led your people to torment my ancestors, and in your day you did the same; I remember seeing my own kindred thrown into the river by ap-Cantar hands and left to drown. Cantar has taught me how to hate, and from that hatred I have learned to kill. We will wipe his bloodline from the face of the earth!"
There was nothing more to be said. Mewar suddenly charged with a speed and rage that not even his own men had expected, and then he was suddenly ten yards ahead of them as he threw himself toward the enemy with reckless abandon. The small man took a few steps back before turning swiftly and sprinting into the safety of the town. Like a guardian did the dead Fuldondar stand, his eyes staring ahead, unafraid in the face of Mewar's ignoble and treacherous act. The town remained silent and still even as Mewar and his warriors rushed in, streaming into the narrow alleys. Then there emerged the denizens of Tilaticantar on the rooftops, and they began to rain death upon the heads of Mewar and his warriors. Stones, javelins, clubs, they hurled them at the foe who had come slaying. Some had sharpened bamboo sticks which were long enough to stab at the warriors below again and again. Mewar leaped to the ground and rolled as if animated by some ungodly force, dodging the first line of projectiles. Most of the solders behind him were not so fortunate; some tried to retaliate with their slings, but it was a losing proposition. Most ran towards the nearest adobe huts in search of cover.
From the doorways of the nearest abodes emerged some of Furrayn's veterans, ragged but still deadly, with spears and orders to prevent the enemy from entering the homes so as to seek cover from the slaughter outside. One of those ap-Cantar warriors had found a spare shield, and with it and a spear he managed to push back and skewer two of the Mewari. In a wild frenzy, Mewar approached the man. He predicted the thrust of his enemy's spear and twisted to the side of it, then drove his own spear through that warrior's foot. He kicked the howling man over, and even as the struggling warrior tried using his shield to push off Mewar, the youth drew his club and brought it down upon the man's head again and again until he stopped struggling. Then Mewar went further into the shadow of the hut, and there was suddenly an icy pain through his chest. He tried to twist around, but his body wouldn't obey. He craned his neck back to look at the wall besides the doorway and the corpse of the man he'd just slain, and there in the shadows he saw a girl of perhaps seven. She was holding the haft of the spear that went through his back. He stared at her for a few moments longer; she looked just like his niece, the one that they had thrown into the river. And then with that stupid look of disbelief still upon his face, Mewar fell and was no more.
Tara stared wide-eyed at the dead man before hefting the spear and huddling up in the darkness. She eyed the corpses without blinking, and her hands shook ever so slightly. She sat like that for long, until the sound of screaming and shouting died down. And when silence reigned she remained still and waited. Eventually a head appeared, looking in, and there were shouts and cries. And then the chief appeared and inspected the scene, and he looked upon the little girl with his severe eyes. And he smiled and brought the girl to him, and he lifted her on his shoulder and she was paraded through the town. And the people raised their arms before her and ululated. And her brow was wetted with the waters of the Tala and the chief declared her his own daughter, his own flesh and blood, and his own heir.
It was some days later before Miksuin and his men returned, and when they learned of Mewar's treachery they were taken up in a great rage and pledged to destroy utterly the people of Mewar. But Hiwcantar bid them be calm, and he brought to them the body of Mewar and bid them travel with it up the Tala and show it to his people that they may know the price of treachery. 'And impress upon them our might and our strength, and let it be known that forgiveness will only be granted to them who embrace our protection. As for those who choose to be of the rejectors, never shall we trust them and never shall they know peace, and they shall be cursed, and their lot shall be death and suffering forever and aye. Let it be known - it is to live with us as brothers, in peace and security and honour, or it is the way of treachery and cowardliness and death; the way of Mewar. They have flouted the peace we granted, and now they are to choose: to live in peace, or to rest in it.' And Miksuin did sally up the Tala, and he went to deliver the steely message. He knew that the Mewari would have already heard news of the defeat, for some among Mewar's host had escaped the trap and fled back to the desert, slowly making their way back to their camp and evading Miksuin's returning force a second time. Still, he had no fear; the Mewari were broken now, a beast without teeth, for their leader was dead and they bore his rotting body to prove it.
