[Master Thread] The Oncoming Storm | Treize Dreizehn

[Treize Dreizehn]

Along the Watchtower

Two men in light brown leather armor stood along the walls surrounding Alexandria in the flickering light of a single torch and the low moon. Both were armed with bows and long jagged daggers. One was stringing his bow while leaning against the dusty colored bricks that made up the parapets. The other sat on the ground, sharpening his dagger in the light of the torch.

In the distance, though not distant enough for the bowman's liking, a war-camp was arrayed outside the city. If he looked hard enough he could see the shadows of soldiers around the fires. He slipped his bowstring down onto the upper limb and relaxed slightly to test the piece. It held and he let the rest of the string's resistance pull the bow slowly into shape.

The daggerman looked up from his sharpening at the bowman and shook his head. "Why do you think they're waiting?"

"What?" The bowman held back a laugh at the suddenly broken silence.

The daggerman lifted his knife up and pointed it past the bowman and out at the war-camps. "The Pharaoh's army. You think they're negotiating a peace?"

The bowman scoffed and shook his head. "No. I think we missed out on that a long time ago. And I don't think the Nomarch'd take peace now anyway."

"Even with an army at his doorstep?"

The bowman raised his eyebrow and laid his bow against the parapet. "Especially then. He's not gonna be humbled by 'Cormac Sethos'."

"I just don't know how a man's supposed to go about staring death in the face," the daggerman said with a shrug.

The bowman crouched down beside the daggerman. "It's not about dying. It's about having faith in something greater than yourself. For us it's The Rising One. For the ones we'll be killing tomorrow, it's the old gods."

The daggerman stayed silent for another moment. As he began sharpening the blade again he continued. "What else do you believe in?"

The bowman nodded with a smile. "My wife. My son and daughter. My father. The Nomarch as well. You?"

"These two hands," the daggerman began, before holding up his blade, "and this knife."

"That's not faith." The bowman shook his head and grimaced slightly.

"No it isn't. But it's what I have."

A silence fell on the two, with only the flickering of the torch interrupting the sounds of the desert winds. The bowman shrugged his shoulder and stood up to face the warcamps again.

The daggerman rose as well and stood beside the bowman. They both looked out over the desert sands and watched the shadows around the fires of the camps once again. The daggerman broke the silence one more time. "What are we going to do?"

The bowman smiled. "We're going to kill them. We're gonna man this wall and take as many of them down as we can before death takes us. And then we go to our rewards."

The bowman did not have time to call out as the darkness took him and he tumbled over the wall protecting Alexandria from invaders. Treize Dreizehn looked down at the body of the bowman and cleaned his dagger. The wind blew harder then, as the rest of Treize's men began their own work. In the morning, what was left of the city watch would be in panic.

For now, Treize walked eastward again, towards another torch, and another bowman.