Dragon Rider (#Wattys2016)

The Battle for Amu

"I don't know, maybe death?!" I exclaimed.

"Death is nothing to me, I'll be dying for a cause greater than me. Next fear?" Ala said.

"Umm... Killing, how are you going to deal with that?"

"They chose their path Thea. Sometimes we have to do awful things in order to help people. I don't want to do this, but I'm willing to do what I must to survive. If to survive I have to do this, then I shall. Everyone around me I trust and has my back, so I'll have to protect theirs in return." Ala said kindly, her harsh attitude fading for a moment and letting me see the kinder side of her.

"I- I just, I don't know. I don't want to do this Ala, I resent it with every part of me." I choked out, feeling slightly hysterical as what I was about to enter.

"You've come too far to back down now. Think of Storm, does he want to go through with this? Does he want to kill?"

"No," I whispered, "But he does to protect the others, he does what he must. You haven't seen him though, it haunts him Ala. By killing how are we any better than our enemy?"

"You forget, Igraine is my dragon and I share everything with her as she does with me. I know how Storm is. But the fact is, every time he remembers those he kills, every time he thinks how much he doesn't want to do it will remind him. Remind him that he still has his humanity, and that's what makes us better than our enemy. We have our humanity and it isn't going to desert us nor us it. We are better than our enemy and you are stronger than this."

I smiled at Ala, "I needed that. Thanks," I said feeling stronger. Ala's little talk had reminded me of why I was doing this, and the reason why I had to do this.

I gripped my weapon tighter and lifted my shield. "On your toes," I said to the group. I was the leader of the unit, simply because I could contact Storm first and he was leader of the dragons. The second leader of the unit was Charlie and together we'd made the decision to let Ala be third leader as she was someone we could both count on in a battle.

"Does everyone remember what to do?" Charlie asked, and everyone nodded in reply. The horn rang out there, two short notes.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion and I could see the other units running out in groups, their mouths open as they screamed. I watched everyone start moving and then it went back to normal. I ran out at the front of my group, we were in ranks of six with the exception of the front row, which had five, in four rows. I watched ahead of me as the jumbled army started retreating, hurriedly running to fix their ranks and make a proper stand. I could see some falling as arrows hit them in the back.

"Everyone, two rows with twelve in rank, faster people ahead, and attack whatever you can. If you manage to get a group, surround them." I said, and the others did as I asked. Twelve riders ran in front of me, speeding up. The remaining eleven caught up to me, and we kept up the same pace as we were running a few seconds earlier. The group ahead managed to attack some of the men, and I figured if I really didn't want to kill anyone all I had to do was harm them enough that they couldn't retaliate.

We soon caught up to the group ahead of us as they'd stopped with the army in front reforming ranks again. As we reached the group, we went back to our four rows with me in the front. The horn rang out, two long notes. "Arrowhead formation. Charlie take point, everyone else you know your positions. Charlie aim towards the middle, if we make through the first rank and start to get surrounded, I would a smaller triangle formation with Rachel, Opul, Eylna, Svala, Ademar, Fai, Spiritus, and Dai guarding our backs." I said. After I'd finished saying the plan, everyone got into position.

I found myself between Sly and Allie. A moment later, we were jogging slowly towards army's ranks. We attacked quickly, I found myself near the front rank of the army, and I was instantly attacking. The length of the blade staff allowed me extra reach to attack opponents with swords and other shorter weapons. It was all so surreal as it happened, but ever so slowly our unit slowly pushed through. Nearby I was vaguely aware of other units pushing through doing the same as ours. The fact we were simply pushing through was amazing, as the enemy had close to double our numbers. Yet the training and preparation of the rebels was proving them stronger than Amu's army. I suppose all the hardships they, the rebels, and we, the dragon riders, had gone through had hardened us to battle.