{"id":1408,"date":"2011-12-30T00:07:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2011-12-30T00:07:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:07:30","slug":"christmas-present-snippet-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1408","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Present: Snippet #6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Episode 6 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Vardan’s troops let them come closer…closer.\u00a0 Then three ravens flew from a tree with loud cries, and the Pargunese looked upward.\u00a0 Vardan signaled, and her five archers took five of the Pargunese crossbowmen, two from one side, three from the other.\u00a0 The other crossbowmen bent to span their bows, but too late–five more arrows and they were all down, wounded at least.\u00a0 The pikes, five ahead and five behind, drew quickly into a circle, pikes out, but were too few, and on uneven ground.\u00a0 The Halverics stepped forward, swords drawn.\u00a0 The Pargunese yelled–for help?\u00a0 Curses?–and again the Halveric archers drew, shot, drew, and shot again.\u00a0 At that range, the Pargunese armor–whatever it was under their winter cloaks–did not protect them, and they fell, dead or wounded, the pikes clattering to the ground.<\/p>\n

Vardan watched as her troops finished them, collected the weapons and stripped the corpses.\u00a0 Twenty warm woolen cloaks, heavy knitted tunics, woolen trousers, boots, gloves, helmets…her own people would not go cold now. And they had ornaments–earrings, neck-rings, arm-rings, all in designs Vardan had not seen except on a ship-captain in Immerdzan.\u00a0 Her people glanced back.\u00a0 “Go ahead,” she said.\u00a0 “They owe us.”<\/p>\n

The Pargunese had carried packs–hard rounds of bread, dried fish, dried meat, unfamiliar hard orange cheeses, and small stone jars of something that stank like rotting fish. Besides pikes they had short swords with a different shape of blade from the Halveric swords, and some had small axes strapped to their backs under the packs.<\/p>\n

“Take it all back to the ranger shelter,” Vardan said.\u00a0 “We can leave something for the rangers, after all.”<\/p>\n

By the time they had done that, and hauled the Pargunese corpses farther away, it had begun snowing again and daylight was almost gone.\u00a0 That second night in the ranger shelter felt very different; meeting and killing the Pargunese meant that being where they were had a purpose.\u00a0 The next morning, snow flurries made Vardan decide to stay where they were, as they sorted through everything they’d taken from the Pargunese.\u00a0 Everyone had a warm cloak; they repacked the ones borrowed from the rangers.\u00a0 The Pargunese food seemed wholesome enough, except for the stinking goo in the stone jars.\u00a0 She made sure the ornaments were shared out fairly–they’d all earned the loot–and for herself took an arm-ring and a neck-ring.\u00a0 Though it was against Halveric rules to wear anything but the oath-ring on duty, Vardan decided this was a special case.<\/p>\n

Around midday, the sentry on the sunsetting side brought in a hand of Halverics from farther upstream.\u00a0 Vardan recognized them as part of those who had been stationed at Riverwash.<\/p>\n

“It’s gone, Sergeant,” their leader said.\u00a0 “Some kind of magical fire.\u00a0 The captain had sent two tensquads of us out to back up the Royal Archers downstream, where the first landings were.\u00a0 We was coming back, when we saw it glaring in the sky, and then it went hurtling past–we saw Riverwash burn.”<\/p>\n

“Two tensquads of you–where are the others?”<\/p>\n

“Not far behind us–three are wounded.\u00a0 We were trailing some Pargunese.\u00a0 Found some nekkid bodies–”<\/p>\n

“We killed them yesterday.”\u00a0 Two tensquads plus her own made nearly four–enough to do something with.\u00a0 “One of you go back–tell them to hurry up here–there’s a big force of Pargunese sunrising of us, headed for Chaya.\u00a0 Rangers are harrying them–we can help.”<\/p>\n

In the afternoon the snow stopped, though wind continued to moan in the trees.\u00a0 A line of hard blue showed to the north.\u00a0 With the other Halverics there, the little shelter was far too small, but Vardan felt much happier.\u00a0 After two meals and a rest, with starshine lighting the snow, Vardan decided it was time to go.\u00a0 The wounded swore they could keep up; she sensed their need to be with their comrades.\u00a0 Her sixteen used the Pargunese packs; all of them took as much food as they could stuff into them, and long before the turn of night they were on their way, scouts out ahead, behind, to either side.\u00a0 More than three tensquads felt like much more than a little less than two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Episode 6 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}