Chronicles

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
Yes you ought to put this in the civ 3 stories section too for posterity, and while your at it get your apolyton story writers guild feather

Ive been working on him and Shogun. (Shogun for the appropriate pictures)

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

-

[Golden Bear]

Micha's Story I

The road from Kurra to Inanna’s Throne is packed and dusty. For mile after weary mile families and merchants plod away from their lost homes at Kurra. Some push or pull carts with all their worldly possessions, some lead or drive animals and the fortunate few have servants or employees to tend trains of mules and oxen. Most scuff along without speaking, staring only at the dirt in front of them. They walk and then they stop. Then the line starts moving again, bunching and spreading like a huge caterpillar. Along the route are horsemen and care givers ready to supply aid and water – and to keep the column from spreading across the countryside and stopping.

Towards the back and eastern end of this mass a small cloud of horsemen cover the retreat and watch for stragglers. The people on the road were the last to pass through Kurra on their way to safety. They spend as much time looking over their shoulders in fear as in watching their path ahead. For behind them are riders keeping pace with their movement. Every campaign, every army, brings along men such as these in their wake. At best they can be called “scouts” and at worst… at worst they are living nightmares to the civilians they catch and rob and butcher.

Micha rides as a leader of a troop of horse watching the tail end of the evacuation of Kurra. He had had the job of firing the last of the structures in Kurra and then staying to make certain that everything had burned to the ground. For a day, he and his men had ridden patrol around the burning settlement, keeping everyone away – looters, people looking to retrieve one last thing they had left behind and even outriders from the Horde.

During the long night while they watched Kurra immolate itself they had the chance to meet and talk to their enemies. As with soldiers everywhere they were surprised to find how much they had in common with the people that they would kill in battle when asked. Horde riders and Babylonian horsemen dismounted and shared their camps and their meals. They talked and joked in the rough manner of young strong men.

“Pony boy, you know they say that your mighty Khan has equipment that a chipmunk would laugh at!,” followed by guffaws.

“And we hear that your Lord of Lords is so dumb that he forgot the formula for ice!” More laughter.

And so it went on. Give and take and a momentary unknown truce.

During this night, Micha had a difficult time getting a trader to leave Kurra and go into the heart of Babylon. The poor man was from Lostboies and frantic to escape the drama in Babylon.

“Oh, I should never have made this trip, young sir! Leave me be and I can make my way back safely. My mules and I have the experience of traveling and we can always sneak through any trouble. Please leave me to go back to my family!!”

“Now, Master Ghoulsen, you know I can’t let you do that. We’re just keeping you safe – later you can return after it all quiets down. Just come along nicely now…”

“I don’t even want my trade goods anymore – we can travel twice as fast without the loads. If I had only been able to sell them in time.”

“Hmm. Don’t want the goods?,” Micha started thoughtfully, “I could take them off your hands and let you go. That way when they catch you and kill you they won’t get any value from it.”

Ghoulsen looked sharply at the young soldier. “Nay, you won’t get this for free. I know it has value.” He put on a pensive look. “But, if you let me be, I’ll sell you the lot for cost… plus my expenses of course.”

Micha thought that he had the man over a barrel. He was young and his future lay ahead of him – and he wanted to be rich! An easy deal like this would be a good start. The two bargained. “What are the Goods?” “They are potions and medicines – Lostboies alchemy is known throughout the land.” “Oh, I’m sure that it will be difficult to sell.” “Not so…” and thus it went.

In the end, Micha got a pile of bags and Ghoulsen sneaked away south into the night with his mules and some more portable wealth. Both laughed at the way they had gotten the best of the deal.

In the morning Micha commandeered some horses and put the baggage on them. His troop mocked his foolishness but helped to watch the goods as they began their exit from Kurra.

Now Micha was plodding on his horse, watching old people, children, wives and husbands attempting to move as quickly as they could to stay ahead of the pillagers behind them. At night they would pull the refugees into huddled camps for safety. Also mixed in with the fleeing souls were caregivers – people who brought food and blankets with them for helping the dispossessed who might suffer more.

Micha saw some people pull of the road and stop walking. A small girl leading a young dog stood crying while a young lady – hmm, attractive he noticed – bent over to talk. He trotted up to make certain that they would keep moving. He noticed that the woman had reddish-blond hair tied back in a twist. Green eyes and a nose with a little upturn framed a mouth that smiled easily but was, maybe, a little wide. She was smiling now and giving the girl some candy and a drink of water.

“No, no, little one, your family is just up the road somewhere! We’ll all meet tonight or tomorrow or maybe when we get to the square in Inanna’s throne. And what is his name?,” she added when the dog, an Alsatian barely larger than a puppy, jumped at her leg.

Micha leaned down and cleared his throat, “I’m sorry folks, but we have to keep moving. We’ve got to get distance between us and the town before dark comes.”

The woman straightened up and glared at him. “Oh show some sense, soldier. These are people, not the mules you’re used to escorting.”

“Mules? We escort mules?” Micha could feel color coming into his cheeks. “Why, that’s not fair…”

“Go on back and play soldier some more with your friends. I’ll keep this little lady on the road – so you won’t have to yell at her anymore and scare her to death.”

“Yell? Who’s yelling,” Micha’s voice started to get loud.

He looked down at the wide-eyed girl who, if the truth were to be told, looked more impressed than scared. “We’re the good guys, right?” He winked at her and she smiled and turned her head a little, embarrassed.

“Just go away and do whatever it is that you do that you think is oh-so-important.” The woman didn’t like the way the conversation was turning. “Let’s go follow your family, little miss, or this man on his big horse won’t leave us alone.”

With that, she took the girl’s hand and led her back onto the road. Micha watched them walk away. The woman didn’t look back but the little girl sneaked a peek back and made a little wave, with her thumb and fingers sort of pinching.

“Hey, what’s your name?” he called after them.

“I’m Lisa!,” the little girl squeaked.

“And I’m Micha! Who is your friend?”

“She’s Sharro. And we like your horsie!”

And they were gone into the pack of travelers. Ah, what could have been!

“Very smooth there, chief,” came a rumble from over his right shoulder.

Micha felt his face start to redden again as he turned his mount to see one of his troop parked there grinning. “I KNOW that you have work to do Lasheer. Digging latrines tonight is one of the things that comes to mind right away.”

Lasheer just grinned a big toothy grin at him, showing a gap where a tooth had been knocked out in some far ago fight. He knew their captain and knew that he never had the heart to administer punishment. “Ahhyeah, I just came back to let you know that those bad boys behind us have formed up into a little band. We thought that you might want to do something about them.”

Indeed Micha did. A few hundred yards away on the flank of the column there were twenty or so rough looking men on horses and ponies. They leaned on their saddles and watched the flow of people. Micha called together ten of his men and sent another ten to the other side of the road in case there was some kind of attempt to cut up the column being put together. As soon as his men were together and formed up he trotted them out towards the threat.

Those men were a mixture of Horde riders and brigands that were outcasts from their own countries or from countries that had ceased to be. They watched the small group of riders approach. Some fondled their weapons. A few brought bows to hand.

“We’ll give it to them, men!,” and Micha kicked his horse into a gallop. His troopers followed suit and they rode straight in a solid line ten abreast. Some of the opposing group started to turn their horses but one stocky man with a bad looking scar across his face drew a short sword.

“They ain’t nothing, guys, Babs fight like women and run like pigs. Let’s finish them!”

They started to amble down the hill towards Micha and his band, who, as they drew near, gave a loud shout and couched their spears.

The last hundred feet closed between them as a blink. When faced with the screaming men in a solid line, many of the pillagers turned and tried to gallop. Micha lined up on the ugly scarred man. This same man saw him coming and spurred his own horse. Micha ducked low to make a small target and the other man did the same. At the last second the man shouldered Micha’s spear out of the way and swung down HARD with his sword. A touch of Micha’s feet caused his trained horse to bounce away but the man had been expecting that and leaned as he swung. With a grunt the sword flicked down and caught the leather tunic on Micha’s right shoulder.

With another touch of his heels, Micha’s horse veered sharply right and its shoulder slammed into the rump of the scarred man’s mount. Micha’s horse bit at it as they hit. The other horse reared and made a kick. It was all the man could do to stay mounted – which he did by stretching his arms around the horse’s neck.

In that moment, Micha, with the smoothness of practice and experience, changed his hold on the spear so that he could stab. He let his arm jab out. The point took the man in the left side as Micha rode up behind him. He yanked back on the spear as the man gave a solid grunt. He had hoped to pull him off the horse as he did so but the man had a solid hold on the horse’s neck.

“Curse you then!!” the man screamed and kicked his horse hard. The horse took off like a shot while Micha was readying another stab. He would have given chase but he heard a voice as if from a distance, “Captain, sar, they’ve gone now.”

Micha slowed down and felt his heart keeping beating like a creek over rocks after a rain squall. He looked around and noted a pair of bodies on the ground and the rest of the brigands scattered about and fleeing as fast as they could.

His own men were gathering around him. “Everybody OK? Healthy? Let’s get back to the road then.”

He parked his spear in the leather socket that dangled from his saddle and felt a twinge.

The men were ahead of him as he reached for his shoulder and felt it come away wet. That sword hadn’t missed him after all. Now it began to really throb.

Lasheer rode close, carrying a wad of clean white linen. “Here, let me stop that for ya.” He shoved the cloth through the cut in the tunic that the sword had made and looked at Micha critically. “It’s just a scratch. This’ll keep ya ‘til we make it to camp tonight.”

They all rode back to their screening duties, creeping along the road with the fleeing populace. “Well, at least it’s not raining,” Micha thought.

And then unbidden, came the image of the green eyes and the turned up nose and a mouth just a little too wide – or just wide enough to show the white teeth of her smile.” Micha smiled also.

[OPD]

Ask Ming, from what I gather this is his new favourite forum..... The best way to get him to top stuff is send him a pm with a link to said thread and the reasons why it should be topped. Casual threats about bodily harm should it not be topped are best avoided.

Also ask to have this thread topped too

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141396

[Shogun Gunner]

Great stuff as usual GB! Enjoyable!

[Micha]

Not only I´m getting rich, but there´s also a love story coming along! Great stuff, GB, great stuff!

Psst, here´s the gold I promised. Next time I´m expecting a promotion...

[Golden Bear]

Micha's Story II

Micha’s concern increases as night approaches. Not only does he need to escort the last people on the trail of refugees but his troop sweeps in all the stragglers, all the slowest travelers and everybody who has fallen by the wayside. A squad of spearmen travel with them to help with this task and there are some aid givers, but far too few. His part of the retreat has fallen back from the long column of people and formed into a motley and slow moving group. He has his men ride along beside them and urge them to keep moving, to pick up the pace. But they keep falling back.

In the meantime more and more clusters of following horsemen have shown up. They mostly keep their distance but Micha’s riders need to break them up and drive them off two or more three times during the day.

As the afternoon grew longer the footsore walkers wanted to break and camp for the night. Micha drove them on, hoping that he could catch up with the next forward camp for the night. They made up some ground but it finally became clear that they would be by themselves. Micha sent a messenger forward with the news and sent some others to look for a suitable campsite. They chose a spot just across a small bridge, where the road wound around a low and broad rise in the ground.

People stopped and set up for the night. It did not take long for fires to get started and meals to get organized for cooking. After setting up pickets and scheduling rotation for the night, Micha dismounted with a silent groan and stretched his legs by walking around. Lisa, the little girl, smiled when she saw him and waved again. Sharro gave him a harried look while she was trying to put together a meal and a campsite for Lisa and a cluster of other children that she had accumulated. He left them alone and kept walking. He saw a family of three little girls with their parents gathered around a cooking fire. The mother was chopping up vegetables and throwing them into an open ceramic pot that rested among the flames. The girls watched her with serious eyes. The father busied himself by putting up a shelter of canvas staked down on one edge and held up by poles on the other.

Further on there were people who had just dropped where they stopped. Some sat still and just stared at the ground in front of them.

Micha found the horses that carried the trade goods that he had bought. His troopers had unloaded the bags and piled them on the ground. Micha squatted down and started poking through them. It was then that he realized that he didn’t know what it was that he had. Ghoulsen had been so eager to leave and Micha had been so distracted that they had not shared that information. What is this bag of white powder for instance? Is it a medicine or is it cosmetics? He opens a larger sack and sniffs it. Bleck! It smells foul – like something rotting. Probably not cosmetics then. Hopefully it is some valuable medicinal. There are bags of herbs and dried plants. He finds probably twenty different items neatly wrapped or stored in jars.

As he stands up to stare at his “fortune,” Lasheer walks up with a grin. “What did you bring us, Trader Micha? Gems? Ivory? Trinkets for the market?” Micha just stares at him and picks up the heavy bag of yellow powder.

“Know anything about stuff like this?”

Lasheer puts on a serious look, although the corner of his mouth tugs up a little, and looks closely into the bag. “Hmm. Maybe.” He wets the tip of his finger and puts a tiny but on his tongue and then quickly spits. “Aye, it’s a powder that the doctors put into their potions. I don’t know its name but I’ve seen them grind it together for doses.”

Eagerly, Micha asks, “Doctors? That sounds promising. Is it valuable then? ….maybe?”

“Dunno that – you’re the merchant now my friend!” Another laugh and a solid slap on Micha’s shoulder and Lasheer wanders off.

“Aw, crud. Somebody in Babylon will know what this all is,” Micha finally decides. He wanders back to where the troopers had set up their tents. His belly tells him that it is time for his dinner. He knows that there may be little sleep for him tonight.

Surprisingly, he turns out to be incorrect with that thought. He sleeps solidly through the night without being awakened. One of the perks of being the captain of the troop is that he doesn’t have to take a watch. He wakes up with some troopers kicking a fire to life and starting to brew coffee. The smell brings him awake. “Coffee! I wish that I had bought a cargo of coffee! Oh, that’s how to get rich!”

The camp awakens and the troopers goad people to be quick with their breakfasts. Micha wants to get on the road early and to try to make up some ground. They are probably still two days hike away from being safely in the borders of Inanna’s Throne, at a point where he and his men can stop their escort.

People get up and pack up their gear and their belongings and start the march again as they are ready. However, there is a cluster of people that are still sitting on the hillock. Micha leads his horse over to see what is going on.

“Hello there!,” he calls when he sees the pretty green eyed woman, “what seems to be the hold up here.”

Sharro turns from talking to some of the seated people. Her eyes narrow briefly with a, “Oh, you,” look in them. But she answers, “These people are just done in. The walk yesterday took everything out of them. They just can’t go on. They need more rest than this.” Indeed, there are old people there looking at him wearily.

He starts to ponder this new problem when the woman looks at his horse and says, “Maybe if you let them ride your horses, or at least carry them on your horses, they could keep up.” “A healthy man like you should be able to walk better than these poor people.” She says that last bit a trifle defiantly.

“Wait a second now, we need to guard the train.” Micha quickly responds. She looks ready to rebut him again, so he quickly continues, “But we do have some remounts. If we take any other load off of them, they could probably carry two people apiece as long as they aren’t pushed. We’ll try that!”

He quickly calls Lasheer over and gets some troopers together to bring the remounts to the group. They start boosting the worn out travelers onto the horses. “Mind now, riding all day is no picnic either if you’re not used to it.”

By this means, almost all of the remaining people are put on mounts and led out to the road in a sort of human baggage train, led by a trooper. But there are still a few left… and there are still two remounts left. Unfortunately, these horses are carrying Micha’s trade goods. Sharro looks at him and then at the horses, expectantly.

“Aw, double damn again!” He jerks his head at the troopers as a sign to take the cargo off the horses so that they can be used to carry the last few people. “Here, wait a moment, now – hand me that one bag.” He takes the bag with the yellow powder and ties it to his own horse. “At least I can save enough to buy a meal in town maybe.”

Finally, everybody is mounted and the troopers are taking them onto the path to Babylon. Only Micha, Lisa and Sharro remain. Micha leans over in his saddle and grabs the little girl around the waist as she jumps into the crook of his arm. He pulls her up and sets her on the saddle in front of him as he remembers, too late, about how much it is that his shoulder hurts. That causes him to make a grimace.

Sharro notices the look and examines his shoulder from where she stands on the ground. She sees the cut tunic and blood. “I don’t suppose that you had anybody look at that cut last night. It could start festering you silly goose!”

“No, I didn’t. I’ll be all right and don’t worry about me.” Micha feels a little smug that she actually showed a tiny bit of concern about him. Now, it would have been nice, maybe, to have HER take care of that wounded shoulder. The thought of her hands on his shoulder gives him a light tingling sensation across his body. The pain doesn’t seem so bad now!

“I’m sorry for you, though, you’ll have to walk.” He says to the strawberry blond woman.

“Oh, no problem with that, I need to walk with these people anyway. But,” she looks a little awkward, “…I do want to tell you that I appreciate the way you’ve helped by sharing your horses. I know that’s a hard thing for a soldier to do. And, and…” now her face colors prettily, bringing some bloom to her cheeks, “and we all are thankful for guarding us and keeping those people away. We just hope none of you get hurt doing it.” She says the last part really fast – then picks up her sack and starts walking to the road.

Lisa’s dog looks at her and then looks at Lisa on Micha’s horse. His mind made up, he stays with the horse and gives a little yip as if to say he’s ready to go now.

“Let’s take you for your ride, my lady!” Micha says to Lisa, who is clearly excited by being on the big horse.

Micha thinks that he didn’t realize that Sharro had freckles until she had blushed!!

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Golden Bear you certainly have a talent for this stuff, though this piece has more faces than the average Babylonian

Im not wanting to cause you to stop so please dont take offense.

Of course quality is in the eye of the beholder or in this case the mind of the reader, and this is merely an opinion. I dare say other readers will differ from my view and that is all well and good.

You write well, the succint use of language especially the descriptive is at times confusingly professional, but you tell us you are not a writer by trade !

For me the best chapter of this tale has been the one where the worker party was beset by the Scythian raiders. That was a fast paced exciting episode well worth reading and i thank you for that. On its own it would have made a great tale of epic standing set in some imagined alternate reality.

Im not so fond of the bulk of this work which revolves around the characters of team Babylon and its trials and tribulations, though I still acknowledge you have written it well, just for me not as absorbing as Ardos's adventure in "his own road to hell"

That chapter was to my mind a story whereas the bulk is more a diary of your team.

A story devoted to Ardos and his companions and their flight from danger would I believe be a very good story, maybe you will someday expand on this character and take us with you on a journey of imagination.

Finally to the suggestion to top this thread, I honestly dont see any reason to do this or can understand why you feel you cannot find this thread without it being topped ? You have managed thus far !

Its always up to the individual to decide what he or she should and will write about, but Id like to see you tackle a real imagined work, I think Ardos shows you have the ability to do this and look forward to future writings you may procure.

Again dont stop this it is entertaining, especially to a Mongol

[conmcb25]

Nice work , GB.

[Beta]

Lovely stuff GB. Thank you!

I should get out on my horse more often. It has perks I never realized.