"There is honour in death, those foolish Sel say," King Goron bellowed as he walked among his warriors. "I say, serve your neid! Fight in service till shaky breath is drawn through your wrinkled lips, and your eyes pierce the air only an arm's length in front of you; till your bones creak, and the flesh sag off it; till your mighty battle cry becomes no more than a hoarse whisper; till your arms can neither support the weight of your blade, nor nock an arrow! Our worthy sacrifice to our neid is our way of life, our pride... our honour!" He stared Gulo in the eye. The boy had become a man, a warrior. Goron let his eyes roam the faces of as many as he could. He knew them well -all four hundred and ninety seven of them- including Gulo, his younger brother. Goron trusted these warriors. He could give them his back; and give them his back, he did. Turning around in his well-bruised but uncompromised leather armor, he smiled. "We live and fight for..."
"GALORA!" The shout of four hundred and ninety-seven elite predators sparked the blue-gold flame Goron knew burned in the chest of every Galoran. King Goron's band. His band. He smiled again.
Denca watched him turn after giving his iria. She had hoped to catch his eye this day. Alas, Galoros had not flamed upon that particular eventuality. She did however catch Gulo's eye, as usual. They grew up together. Back then in the citadel, they would run in the fields amidst the trees, beneath Galoros' warm golden gaze. That was a different time, a different life, a time before Goron became king.
Two years ago, scouts reported an army marching east along the coast of the great river, Kuridis, two days' worth of travel from the Citadel by beast. They raised the Sel flag and numbered around twenty thousand: roughly three thousand vorgen riders, and infantry.
King Goron assembled his band and rode out to intercept the intruders, the rest of his force would have to catch up, assuming his band were not enough to handle the situation. He thought to himself, Do the Sel really hope to take Galora with those numbers? They had been quiet a very long time, why now? What could that Sukkra be plotting?
It was dawn when Goron was seen riding up alone to the Sel camp.
"I would speak with your leader," his voice rang out in the neutral Tenauri language. He rode a bragge fit for a Galoran king, a vicious, intimidating predator of a beast. Goron's tan skin and shoulder-length, blood-red hair held together at the back of his head by a thin string, were closely matched with the red mane and brown fur of his beast. In his gauntleted hands, he held the reins, not linked to a bit as with horses, but to a wide leather choker fastened around the beast's neck. Together, rider and beast were several times more intimidating than either would have been alone.
"How considerate of you to grace us with your presence, Your Highness," came the toned voice of a man from the group directly in front of Goron. His voice, though soft and smooth, had a certain depth to it.
"Spare me, Lasair, you think us all inferior to your kind. What is the meaning of this?"
The group parted to reveal a lean Sel in battle regalia of form-fitting, white bevor and sallet with a white-frilled, red cape brooched at the clavicles. His pale face looked much like the others, but he had on a white metallic headband dotted with glass stones that sparkled in the morning light. He was young, but unmistakably royalty in untainted white armor. He was of a height such that he was eye-level with the beast, and on his right hip hung The Sukkra's Blade. By Sel standards, he was tall; by Galoran standards, most people were not.
"Well, you see, you have forced my hand, Your Highness. Your people are small, your territory and resources, massive. You refuse integration, you also refuse trade – the Sukkra will not be denied any longer..."
"Take your men and go home, Lasair, while I'm still asking. No one needs to die today."
"How about this, then? A duel. One of your warriors against one of mine..."
"What!" King Goron interrupted, laughing, "Surely, you did not become Sukkra thinking like that."
"...should yours win," Lasair continued, "I would take my men and leave and that would be the end of that. But should mine win, then you would have to accede, especially to my pending demand for access to lumber zir in your zir forests...amongst other things."
"You have entered my lands with your troops, unwelcomed. You are hailed the most intelligent man alive, so listen Lasair, I am only going to say this once more. Take your men and leave."
"Goron!" Lasair called firmly. "I am Sukkra Lasair, Sukkra, Supreme ruler of Selmerdina. You look down at me from atop your beast, you feel powerful?" Linking both hands behind him, he continued coolly, "Know this, while your Galoros watches, your people will be destroyed, and by the time he looks away, Galora will belong to the Sukkra. Go now and make your peace, for you will be the last King of Galora." Casually glancing at the river in the distance, he added, "The Sukkra wills it."
Hearing those words, the rage within Goron began to struggle for dominance over his other sensibilities, but A King must rule himself first. It was a war the moment these Sel troops entered Galora.
I could take this Sukkra and maybe a hundred of his troops with me, here and now, Goron thought to himself, his mind beginning to withdraw.
"No, Lasair, you have made a mistake coming here," Goron said as he turned and rode away; any longer, and his actions would have been out of his hands. "Damn you, Lasair! Damn you and your greed!" The beast bounded on.
As soon as Goron was out of earshot, without turning, "The durat-en may proceed," Lasair said to the spectre beside him that wasn't there moments before, "and they must not fail." He continued to watch the diminishing figure of beast and rider. "It begins," he said, his silver hair fluttering in the dry wind.
*****
It had been five days since the breakdown in negotiations between King Goron and the Sukkra. Both parties seemed to be at a standoff of sorts.
"What are they waiting for?" Denca asked Gulo. She stood leaning against a tree. A few members of the band were uniformly distributed in pairs along the length of the enemy's camp to keep lookout. They had been monitoring the Sel camp from the cover of greenery beyond the coast for the past five days, alternating watchers. It was first light and Denca's and Gulo's watch had just begun.
"They could be waiting for reinforcements. Those numbers are great, but not nearly enough to hope to defeat us", Gulo replied contemplating from his perch on a rock beside her. "But something else seems wrong," he continued...
Their movements are wrong. The camp is too busy. Something else is going on. Could they be buying time to complete...whatever it is? A weapon? Even so, is there anything to be done about it? We need our reinforcements to arrive too. They should be arriving sometime before the light fades today. With eight thousand more Galorans and the territory advantage, even with one to five odds, it should be an easy victory...
"What??" he heard Denca ask.
He looked up at her, realizing he had zoned out again, then noticing just how intently her dark brown eyes were focused on him, he quickly turned away toward the enemy camp. "They seem to be doing something else besides preparing for a war," he said.
"What could it be?"
"A weapon, maybe," then with a chuckle, "or digging for buried treasure."
"Goron needs to know of this..." Denca began.
"You go tell him. I will continue to watch."
Without another word, Denca bolted to relay the message. She was fast, faster than him, a streak of red and different shades of brown, and Gulo felt his fire dim a little.
After about half a stroke of running through the trees, Denca reached the clearing that served as a base for the band. She quickly moved past several other redheaded band members, her slender – but sturdy – frame making a beeline for the King's tent.
"When will they get here," she heard Goron ask. He was speaking with his second-in-command of the band, Darrosh.
"The advance group arrived the day before – six hundred riders. The rest should arrive today, five strokes past the north, just before the darkness." Now Darrosh, like all Galorans was a redhead, his tan skin taut with muscles. He was taller and had a bigger build, even than Goron, and Goron was bigger and taller than most. Yet, when you saw them both in the same place, you had to be more aware of Goron, not for lack of Darrosh being imposing, but for Goron having too overwhelming a presence, like a contained furnace.
They both looked her way as Denca entered. Goron sat in a small stool on one side of the low improvised war table – a board placed over a tree stump in the middle of the room.
As soon as she was inside the King's tent, Denca went down on her left knee, rested her left forearm across her elevated right knee, both palms balled into fists, she placed her right forearm across her slightly bowed forehead, and said, "Gouramazul," by way of hailing the Galoran prime leader.
"Deburou," Goron responded, indicating she rise and proceed with her message.
Rising, Denca began, "Gulo thinks those Sel are up to something. He believes they are too busy for a war camp."
"Did he say what they could be up to?" asked Darrosh.
"A weapon, he said, or digging for buried treasure, but that last part might have been a joke..." she stopped speaking, seeing the look on Goron's face.
"Gourama..." Darrosh called tentatively to Goron from just beside him.
"Denca, hand me that scroll," Goron said recovering his manner and indicating to a scroll in a pouch hung on a pole just to her right.
Taking the scroll Denca handed him, Goron unrolled and placed it on the table, overlapping the map of Galora.
The map and scroll together, Goron confirmed what he already knew he would find. The insignia at the top of the map was not just the symbol of Galora – the image of the mighty bragge. The three-eared, red-maned, light-brown-furred wildcat, was underscored by the Gourama-shida symbol. The symbol indicating the secret of the prime family, passed down only from prime leader to prime leader. Just as Gared's father had done with Gared, King Gared the previous prime leader –and Goron's father– had taken Goron as a fifteen-year old boy to the coast of Kuridis and said to him, "Here lies the Broken Slate, first of five secrets. It is said that if ever all five secrets should be revealed to one person, he shall transcend reality and in so doing, obtain divinity at the expense of the rest of Heres."
It so happened that Gared's father believed something so tempting and dangerous should not reside amidst his people, so he hid it, in plain sight, buried deep in the earth. The only reference to its location could be found on any of Galora's maps – also in plain sight – but anyone looking would have to know, to know. The King Gerud was a shrewd man. He chose the location such that it was in open space and would not be affected by the expansion of his people's civilization. He and his three companions, Kuuren the Immortal Manipulator, Ynsolwine the legendary seer, and Hsharshhamroj of the Ramakhine were sworn to secrecy under Kuuren's blood oath. The Broken Slate was given to the care of Gared and his people by Ynsolwine at the end of the last war. Before it was buried, Kuuren placed a seal laced with a drop of Gerud's blood on the slate that eternally linked him and his descendants to it.
Goron felt it. He felt himself become agitated, for no apparent reason. He had felt the effects of Kuuren's seal five days ago when he confronted Lasair, but this was different. He knew...somehow...that the Broken Slate had been disturbed.
Just then, another band member rushed in, a girl, and saluted the King the same way Denca had earlier.
"Deburou. What news, Arderra?" Goron said, putting down the scroll.
A little out of breath, she began, "The Sel are withdrawing. They have been withdrawing since the last stroke. I should have arrived with this news sooner but Badon had to make sure given that we are farthest from here..."
"Hardly a surprise," Darrosh said, "it was a bluff after all, that Sukkra...Unless..." he trailed off, realization setting in.
"They have it," the prime leader muttered.
"Ready our riders," he said to Darrosh, standing, "We pursue."
"Gouramazul." Said Darrosh, a puzzled look on his face as he turned and strode out of the tent, Arderra and Denca in tow.
"Denca." Goron called, stopping her from leaving with the others. "Bring Gulo here, be quick."
"Gouramazul."
Leaving the tent, Denca could see the flurry of activity. They were ready to move out, for the most part, waiting for Goron to mount and give the command. The six hundred that arrived the day before rode vorgen; Goron and his band rode bragge. Each band member had had to find and tame one as an induction rite. Finding a bragge was difficult enough, but taming one, even more so. Goron had tamed the biggest baddest of them all, and it sat just outside his tent. Denca walked over to hers where it sat unattended, placed a hand on its head, and brought its forehead to hers for just a moment then withdrew before turning around and running off into the trees to get Gulo.
Goron mounted, and led the charge. Over a thousand riders dusting the coast. The Sel had withdrawn far, not too far, but seeing as they were never too far from the border to begin with, they were now close to leaving Galoran territory, heading into theirs.
Goron and his men gave chase, but the Sel were prepared for them. They had rigged the site of their recently vacated camp with fire traps, and just as the Galoran pursuers were approaching, ignited the oils setting up an impassable terrain of fire in their path...just to buy enough time for them to leave Galoran lands. They got what they came for, it was time to leave. They would fight someday soon, just not today. Meanwhile, Sukkra Lasair was already long gone with the artefact.
Upon returning to his tent, Goron saw that reinforcements had arrived, a messenger from Galora along with them. He brought terrible news.
"Gouramazul," Bodelo, the messenger hailed.
"Deburou."
"Three days after your departure, the Consecration by the mountain springs was attacked. Everyone was put to sleep by something in the air, and by the time they awoke, thirty newborns were missing, among them, Gourama-ishi – the King's heir. The only one who saw anything was Dovon Jayo of the black ruby blade. He said they were shadows. Even in the morning light, they were shadows and they moved quickly. There were too many of them for him to defend against. Between the sleep infection and the zir incense that saturates our home, he was powerless to do much. Eventually, even he succumbed. He believes they came through the mountains. He also believes they were Sel."
Goron let out a long breath. His skin had turned more red than light brown, and his hairs were on end. "Your work is not done," he said to Bodelo. "Ride back now to the windspeakers, give this message for the queen of Tenauris, 'The stone is moved, Goron attacks Selmerdina.'" Then to Darrosh who stood beside him, "Gather the harisch to me, commanders of thousands only."
After a century of peace, the realm was yet again plunged into war. Denca had never known war, none of them had, except for some of the older harisch who were little more than children in those days. The Galorans bear in them the fire of Galoros, yet they dread war. Possessing a natural talent for learning combat skills, they fight with unwavering tenacity. In terms of raw power, they are physically unmatched by any other race – masters of combat and the art of war, but it all comes at a price. Most frightening about them is the curse of Galoros.
After the Sel invasion, excavasion, kidnapping and escape, King Goron besieged Selmerdina. It was an odd sight. The kingdom was walled all the way around, and was so massive, so much so that it made Goron and his men seem like a joke in poor taste. Of course it didn't help that the average person within those walls was likely mentally on par with the Galoran strategist, his only advantage being that he had actually seen a war before.
The wall, ten-men high, was merely the outer wall that indicated the reach of Sel civilization. The biggest obstacle however, was the inner wall several days beyond the outer wall. It was a testament to the King's city, Urtea, and rose thirty-men high, projecting itself away from the slope of the hill on which the city stood. The wall itself was called Urtea's Crown.
Where the lands of Galora and Selmerdina would otherwise have met, rose mountains that began just after the coast of the great river, Kuridis, and extended far into the dead lands, effectively walling both peoples apart.
For the first wall, the Galoran siege was faced with three options, as far as they knew: go through the wall, go over the wall, or go over the mountains.