Some of you may have noticed a story called Birds of War posted on here before; however I decided to change my approach and here's a revised edition of the beginning to it.
The future belongs to those who dare to dream. That was what my father told me over and over again while I sat innocently beside the roaring fireplaces and listened to him tell me wonderful tales of my ancestors. That was my childhood – at this moment, I couldn’t be further from the safety and warmth of that grand castle that was once my home.
The cold was biting into my skin even through the protection of multiple layers of clothing and my silver plated armour. Shivering slightly as my worst nemesis, the wind, pushed past my face, I grasped the scarf that lay around my neck and pulled it up across my mouth and below my nose. I was daring to dream, here, now. This was my time, in the freezing winter, with the rest of the survivors of the infamous massacres. We were refugees of our own nation, the nation we had built, and now we scrounged on dying animals and snow-tipped berries to keep ourselves alive, waiting for the day when we could return to our rightful home.
I was daring to dream. I had congregated together over a score of tough, hopeful men who sought the same as me. The hard winter had hit them badly and they were not the skilled fighters they once could have been – but they were my army nonetheless. Several of them had been former soldiers; they were my sergeants. The rest were big men who were ever hopeful and fantasised of reliving the old Kingdom. We all shared the dream, and that was good because dreams are only come true if everybody believes in it.
We waited in a sea and cloud of whiteness. The surrounding environment was just a swirl of snow powder and white-covered ground. Even the trees were little but a host for the undying winter virus that had swept the region. The cold was forever harsh – I could feel it tingle the hairs across my body from the bottom of my legs to the unshaved stubble on my chin. The men were trying to move to keep warm, and I copied them, furiously rubbing my hands together and allowing my legs a bit of jig. They didn’t seem to enjoy the experience – it was if the very blood in my veins had frozen and I was but a vessel of the unrelenting coldness that shadowed us all.
I heard a hoarse cough beside me, but without turning I know it would be the old man Perrin. An old warhorse respected by the men and I alike, he had seen a hundred battles before I had batted an eyelid and so I had made him my second-in-command on the spot. He was often bad tempered and forever pessimistic, but was an invaluable source of support and experience.
“Nice day yer picked to be ambushin’, laddie,” Perrin mumbled without sarcasm. I looked to my right to see the old man unhappily scanning the horizon with his hand poised above his eyeline. I followed his line of sight and looked over to a mesh of trees, low-lying shrubbery and bumpy ground. A path ran solemnly through the middle of it, noticeable only for the void in foliage. “There’ll be expecting it,” he added, as an afterthought. But Perrin never mentioned anything lightly, only deciding to talk when he was sincerely worried about something.
I shivered again. “It doesn’t matter if they’re expecting it – we’ll hit them hard, and fast. Break the rear first.”
Perrin nodded slowly. “Anything to say to the men?”
I shook my head. “They know what to do.” I mean it too – we had trained for months for this moment. The first time we could strike back against our oppressors. The first time we could give them what they had been giving us. The first time we had gathered enough strength to threaten them. Perrin walked off without a word and went over to the men, who had mostly stayed close to keep warm. I had no idea how we were going to notice the darkskins in weather like this. It blinded me almost totally; the windswept snow a constant mist. But I trained my eyes to watch the path regardless, kept my ears tuned to the light sound of horseshoe upon frozen ground, and my mind focused on the bloodshed ahead.
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