Chapter 20: The Three Serpents
As King Rysom's caravan approached, it's kingdom of New Wall the entire sky was an odd orange and brown, rather than it's typical blue, yellow and pink during an evening sunset. The Duke ordered the carriage driver to stop about a half mile outside of the main gates. The smell of ash and death filled the air. They could see smoke rising from a number of buildings and hundreds of people with all they could carry walking down roads leading away from the village. The Duke asked his king and queen to stay as he and two of their guards rode ahead, but before they got halfway to the gates, they were met by two dozen of their soldiers retreating on foot. Aradorn stayed on his steed and called out for the ranking soldier.
"Who is in command?" he ordered, looking over the men for any sign of rank through the makeshift bandages and bloody clothes.
"I am!" A man in the front of the line replied. "Captain Yorow, Your Highness," his face covered in so much soot and blood he was unrecognizable.
"What has happened here?" The Duke demanded.
"The Serpent People. They have returned." The Captain's words sent a wave of fear throughout the caravan as gasps and cries of panic carried the news down the line. Duke Aradorn put out his chin to stiffen his bottom lip as the Captain continued.
"Three of them attacked just after the church chimed five. They had lightning weapons like in the old text. The marketplace and village were hit first. They burned everything. There is nothing left. We did all we could to defend the castle, but they never came close enough for any of our arrows or catapults to do any good. These twenty men are all that's left of our entire regiment of 200."
The day they had all feared had come. The Duke rode back to the royal carriage and looked to King Rysom for guidance, but he was focused on his Queen who had erupted in screams and sobs of pure distress. At that moment it was up to the Duke to lead. Riding back to the front of the line he addressed the lead soldier.
"I understand Captain." The Duke said. "Your men will come with us. We will fall back to Bryerstone and then return with an army and the Warrior's Stones."
The Duke led the men back to the carriage with the king and queen of New Wall and their youngest son Prince Karold. The Queen was still in tears, and the prince was holding on to the seat trying his best not to show his fear. King Rysom looked up at Aradorn and silently nodded to let him know he was doing the right thing in heading back to Bryerstone. Duke Aradorn then took the lead as the caravan of Royals, soldiers and citizens slowly marched down the road away from their home. A great sense of guilt filled Aradorn as he knew they had failed in their duty to their people. Since the days of the first kings, they had always made a point to have a member of the royal house who could wield the Warrior's Stone present and prepared to defend their people for the day the serpents returned. Yet they had become complacent and negligent when they allowed the king's older sons to go off on their hunt while they were at Bryerstone on a courting trip. They had failed to protect their people, and the people paid for that mistake with their lives. He didn't think he could ever forgive himself for that.
~~~
The three Serpent People that had invaded their kingdom were the same three Serkens Roy had shot down. Before crashing in a remote mountain area in the New Wall Kingdom, they had ejected from their ship not knowing if their distress call had been received. When unable to salvage anything from the wreckage they focused on surviving while they waited for a rescue, hunting small animals and collecting as much dry wood as they could burn at night. Despite the risk of a large fire giving away their position, it was a necessity, because they were a cold-blooded species that could not survive without a source of heat.
One night their campfire caught the attention of the royal hunting party led by New Wall's two older princes, Jonn and Morgan. The hunting party thought they were catching some poachers and rode in on the camp fast and loud. The Serkens didn't wait to find out who they were. They merely shot all ten men as they came to the light of the fire. Even when set on a minimum setting to conserve power, the Serken laser rifle was a horrifying weapon, ripping apart flesh and bone as it impacted the bodies of the royal hunting party in the most brutal way imaginable. As the dust and smoke settled, and the screams of the dying fell silent, the Serkens realized they had just killed a group of humans. That led them to their assumption that they had crashed on a remote human colony, so they followed the hunting party's trail back to the main road. From there the Serkens made a plan. They figured that the road would lead them to a colony center that should have an interstellar transmitter that they could take over and then call for retrieval. Their tactical strategy was to travel through the woods just out of sight of the road during the day and hide in places where they could build fires without being seen at night. Occasionally one of them, giving in to its insatiable need for fresh meat, would raid a farm for small animals to eat. The Serken were not known for stealth; they were loud, messy and had been seen a few times by the farmers that they were stealing from. An alert was sent out to the local magistrate, and the royal guard was notified, but no one realized that they were from the same alien race that had enslaved them all those hundreds of years ago. They just thought there were some wild animals that had come down from the mountains.
When the Serkens got to the wall that surrounded the village, market, and castle, they assumed they had found the colony center. There were a lot more humans than they had expected to find since most human outposts rarely had more than a hundred occupants. From their vantage point, they estimated there to be well over a thousand people, too many to take on in a head-on assault. With a quick discussion, they decided the best plan was to flush out the humans into the open and eliminate them from a safe distance. Crawling on their bellies through the tall grass they got close enough to set the crops of one of the farms on fire, and then quickly scurried back to the three foot tall stone wall that outlined the border of the village. As the people ran out into the field with buckets of water they had no idea of what was about to happen. Every able-bodied man and woman who could grab a bucket from the water barrels kept by each dwelling had run out into the field to save it. The crops were well tended and not so dry as to burn quickly. The fire was extinguished without a significant loss. More people gathered near the flashpoint where the fire started to investigate the cause. Nearly 40 people had gathered when the Serkens decided that their trap had attracted as much prey as they were going to get. Sudden high pitch sounds of laser rifles being charged up to their highest setting cut through the air and caught the attention of some of the people. Jumping up from behind the wall the Serkens fired their weapons in a stream of lasers, gunning the people down before they could even run. The Serkens then turned their blasters on the thatch roofs of the village houses. Fireballs ignited in the air as people ran in all directions not understanding what was happening. Some of the people ran into the woods, and others ran for the castle in the hopes the Royals were preparing to save them. Most of the villagers were unaware that all of the members of the royal family were away from the kingdom on that day. The bells in the church tower rang all at once; the call to arms. Every man and boy that made up the citizen's militia grabbed their spikes, swords, and bows to do their part to defend the castle.
The Serkens made their way into the village, blasting their way through each structure looking for the town's communication center. Finding nothing of use to them, they then turned their focus on the castle.
"Stand Ready!" Captain Yorow of the Guard yelled out to his archers that lined the wall. He could see the attacker's weapons fire, as it struck the buildings in the village square, but the enemy was so far back he could not see them. As the explosions got closer to the castle, he ordered the 100 plus foot soldiers, armed only with swords, spears, and spikes to charge the attacking forces, but they could not even get close. The Serken cut them down with their disrupters from over fifty yards back. Witnessing the bloody massacre, the Captain felt helpless for the first time in his life. All of his training and preparation to perform his duty to protect the kingdom from all who would do it harm was proving utterly useless.
"Catapults fire!" Yorow yelled. Balls of rocks dipped in tar and lit on fire flew over the wall towards the enemy's position. It scattered flames but did not slow the advance. The enemies reach was too far back for the barrage of flaming rocks to do any good.
Laser blast continued to destroy buildings and the enemy still would not show themselves so with no other option he yelled "Archers! Ready! Fire!" praying the arrows would be guided by the hand of God to the enemy's hearts. Yet the day would not be theirs. The Serkin's weapons hit the wall on which the archers stood, bringing it crashing down, causing most to fall to their deaths. With tears in his eyes and knowing defeat for the first time the Captain called for a retreat and led who were left out the back gates. That left the Serken free to make their way through the rubble into the castle without any further resistance. What they found didn't make sense to them. Searching the entire castle, they found no communication equipment, no computers, and no technology of any kind. In a rage of frustration, they destroyed furniture, paintings, and art until one of them noticed the suns going down. Knowing the cold would come quickly they threw piles of wood in the center of the room, blasted a hole in the roof and made a fire. Raiding the kitchen for food, they met back by the fire and made plans to continue the search for the human's communication station in the morning