Tales from the Redcloaks of Asbravn
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Tales from the Redcloaks of Asbravn.
Aftermath…
He wriggled further into the bottom corner of the trench, pulling his helmet further over his ears. But it was no use. He could still hear the pathetic screams of the dying man. The young man considering sleep wrapped his newly-made red-cloak about him and tried to keep warm in the two inches of water they were sat in.
They knew that until reinforcements arrived there were scores and scores of bandits in the nearby treeline just waiting for someone to raise their head, so until the morning there would be no redcloaks in the saddle.
He was somewhere out in the darkness, lost, alone. He cried to his God, and for his mother.
The only answer he got was from the unsympathetic redcloaks. They had listened to him crying for the last 6 hours.We knew he was going to die. He knew he was going to die.
He just wouldn’t do it quietly. Now he was just an irritation to the men.
We all silently willed him to die. Darkness cloaked the battlefield; the fighting for the moment was over. We didn’t need reminding of the previous day’s events.The silence became deafening. It had been longer than usual and no cries from the dying bandit.
He tried to relax and go to sleep. Though none came.
One ear was trying to concentrate on the sounds of the rumbling thunder in the distance, one for the weakened enemy’s cries.
Then it started to rain.
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Map of Asbravn from D&D Gamer
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The Song of the Unknown Cavalryman
(Son to the Father…)
_Do not call me, father.
Do not seek me.
Do not call me.
Do not wish me back.We’re on a route un-chartered –
Fire and blood erase our track.On we fly on wings of thunder - never more to sheath our swords.
All of us in battle fallen – never to be brought back by words.Will there be a rendezvous?
I know not.
I only know we still must fight.
We are sand grains in infinity – never to meet.
Never more to see light.(Father to son…)
Farewell then my son –
Farewell then my conscience.
Farewell my youth, my solace, my one and only.Let this farewell be the end of a story of solitude,
Past which now is more learned.
In which you remained buried –
Forever from light, from air: with your death pains untold.Untold and unsoothed –
Never to be resurrected.
Forever and ever an 18 year old.Farewell then –
No wagons ever come from those regions,
explorers or traders.
No cavalry rides there.Farewell then my son,
For no miracles happen, as in this world
Dreams do not come true.Farewell –
I will dream of you still as a baby –
Treading the earth with little strong toes.
In the ground where so many already lie buried –As this song to my son then has come to its close._
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Here Kitty Kitty…
We'd been in the house, in the large hamlet we just recaptured from the bandits for a couple of days now. Will was about the only one in the detachment that went out of doors. The rest of us decided to stay where we were, in the relative safety within the four walls. Nobody knew what Will did on his little trips out, that was his business. Perhaps he had become slightly mad from spending too long out of doors without a home in sight. As the old captain used to say "you never ask a man with a shovel in the middle of the night, where he's going.”
Besides, it was supposed to be all over now. However quite honestly, there were a lot of traps still out there. We had done quite well up to now. Everybody was in one piece, well, their bodies were at least. Who knew what went on inside anybody's head any more.
The house we were staying in, belonged to an old farming couple. I really don't think they were all that pleased, about us living there. But we were the conquering heroes after all, so they couldn't exactly tell us to bugger off. Which is, I'm quite sure , what they really wanted to do. The old girl said she was worried about her housecat having something to eat, the poor little thing, and that was the only reason, that they had come back . That, and the fact we had managed to demolish a couple of houses and set fire to some of them during the last final attacks. They wanted to see it was still standing.
Well, we had tried to feed it a couple of times. Opened a few sacks of dried bandit beef. We'd tasted it first of course, but the cavalrymen wouldn’t touch it, and had given everyone who'd eaten it some serious problems in the outhouses. Secretly we hoped it would give the cat the same condition , but it wouldn't eat any of it. In fact, when the old woman saw what we were trying to give her cat, she mentioned that they had been quite short of food themselves. So we loaded up her and the old man, with all we had. Quite happy with all the free food we'd given, the cat was temporarily forgotten about.
They hadn't been gone all that long, when Will returned, from one of his little trips out. After we'd told Will about the old couple's visit and the attempts to feed their cat, he'd started to laugh. Willie didn't like the cat, and the cat knew it. In fact, when it saw Willie, it would head for the hills, literally. Just behind the house was a ridge that ran along the back of the fields. The cat practically lived up there, except for when Will left the house, then it would sneak back down. What we didn't know at that time was the ridge was where Will had first seen the cat.
When Will had managed to stop laughing, he explained why the cat wouldn’t eat beef, and why it took off every time Willie appeared. Number two detachment of the redcloaks, had cleared the ridge behind the house, and apparently, there were still a few bodies up there that hadn't been recovered yet. Will had caught the cat on the ridge beside a body, preening itself. The body's bluey grey face, staring angrily up at the sky. The eye sockets dark red holes. Will had found several more bodies in similar states. It wasn't until Will’s third trip up the ridge, that he'd actually caught the cat in the act of tearing the eyes from one of the bodies and eating it.
Luckily for the cat, we left the house the next day and moved into the inn in the village. Two horsemen from the new captains’ personal guard, who'd shared the house with us, later mentioned they'd woken up in the middle of the night, to find the cat on their chest staring at their faces
