He was not a prophet, although sometimes he had prophetic dreams.
As the high priest of the Thunder Gods he supposed it was only part and parcel with his choice of career. The city rose above a lake, he knew the lake although he had not seen the city before. It was black stone, mortared together, the walls rose twenty feet in the air all around it.
He could see vast tunnels beneath the city, carved by hand he knew, although he did not know how. Water flowed in and out from the lake into the center of the city.
Deep beneath the city a huge fire sent the water up, and as he floated through the corridors he saw these clouds as he knew the Thunder Gods must see them, the moist air lifted him up.
Into a huge, strongly built room where the water collected again.
From here he looked out upon the city again, there was a second wall inside the first and within this wall every building was made from the same black stone. He saw farmers offering their goods, he saw smiths forging weapons and strange contraptions.
Such as the strange, shiny metals that curved inward to carry this water out to fountains. He saw people washing there, drinking water as it came down, the shiny yellow metal glittering under the torrent. Then the water slid down back into the tunnels.
A black jewel of the North, a testament to a people, he saw forges and soldiers training, he saw a people who had emerged stronger from this bickering, a unified people. He saw a huge temple to the Thunder Gods where the roar of the worshippers in song rivaled the storm itself.
He saw the forges where axes were crafted for the army, he saw soldiers all in wolfskin cloaks, hardly warbands anymore, but a trained and disciplined force, all wielding long, pointed axes and bucklers.
When he awoke it was as though it were a nightmare and he spent the rest of the morning wondering who had crafted those monstrous tunnels.
-
She was not a prophet although sometimes she had prophetic dreams. She too saw the soldiers in their wolf hides. But she knew their name although she did not know how.
Stormtroopers.
But her morning does not have the time to spare for idle concerns about labor distribution, she has marched far to the East with two of her warbands, she has battle to plan.
Her apprentice was one of the strongest soldiers in the army, with the dark hair and wide features of the Stoneys. She thought him quite handsome in a backwater sort of way.
A strange specimen this far north. His family had lived along the border, and following the strangely civil campaigns in Eastern Stoney they had converted to the worship of the Thunder Gods and had been some of the leading proponents of her grandmothers ill reputed decision to complete the roads that the Stoneys had started.
The Stoney roads, the Warlord has personally killed men during conversations on the subject. Gruth had sat quietly to the side while she hammered at the poor fool with her sword, a whirl of the blonde hair that betrayed her ancestry. Her Grandmother’s finest stroke watched as the Warlord had defended the honor for the family’s greatest mistake.
Horclair’s family’s mistake as well, though, and she has often confronted him on the subject. His responses were encouraging, his loyalty to the army was unquestionable, where others had fled to set themselves up as princes Horclair had marched to the ruins of Granae and reported for duty alongside the priests.
Now his loud deep voice, she quite liked his voice, rings out across the battlefield.
“Soldiers of the Wovvolk, I have been empowered by the one true Warlord to offer you,” he spit the word, “mercy, for your treachery if you abandon the battlefield at once. Officers will only be granted mercy if they surrender in person, bearing the head of their false Warlord.”
Her ancestor, the Warlord Arturo had made this same march once long ago, in simpler times, and he had not offered mercy. Her axe still reminded her that Mercy is for the weak.
But then again, simpler times.
“Soldiers who are captured,” Horclair held up a bronze chain, “Will be branded as traitors and will quarry the stone to rebuild Granae for the remainder of their days.”
She could not tell if anyone on the other side of the field is laughing or fleeing, she does not care, she only pats Gruth on the head encouragingly and says, “Feeding time, Gruth.”
She thinks wistfully of her apprentice, his large arms and strangely curled hair as she nocks a pair of arrows fletched with owl feathers into place on her bow, holding them tight in place with practiced ease and looking finally downfield.
As Horclair arrives at the line he says, “The left flank lost the most people, we could probably turn their line if we hit them hard enough there.”
She pulls back the string and aims to her right, letting fly with both arrows at once. They float gracefully across the field and although only one hit a glancing shot on a soldier and the other missed altogether the sheer range of her arm had its own psychological impact.
“Then let’s ride them down, Gruth needs to eat and the quarries need slaves.”
The hammering of drums rings across the battlefield as the priests, all true Wovvolk and devoted to the one true Warlord, order a march on the enemy’s left flank.
