THE BATTLE STARTS

Down below I could feel the restless waiting, they were waiting for the scouts to come back. The army was spread out, some were still back at the camp, but they were starting to gradually gather in the huge field at the bottom of the trail, as the captain had hoped.

After a short wait, another group of scouts set off up the pass. I could feel their fear and wariness, I didn't think that we'd be able to pull such a trick as the first time.

This time, when they started to come out of the cloud, they froze, and a small group of soldiers walked the last little section of the trail together. At set points, a soldier would stop and wait.

At first I wondered what they were doing, and then I realised, they were maintaining visual contact, but were spread out too far to get caught in any ambush. I was impressed, and cast an image of what they were doing to the squad.

Two soldiers made it to the top of the trail, and as they went forwards to look over the far side of pass, the others started following but maintaining their rough position.

Suddenly I heard one of the leading soldiers cry out, and he stooped down to look at the ground. All of a sudden all hell broke loose. The squad jumped up and killed the few soldiers in reach of their bows, and started chasing them back down the path. They killed many, but several got away and headed back down the trail, while the others gave their lives to make sure they got away.

Open battle was at last joined. A few moments after those three soldiers got to the bottom of the trail, I felt a stream of soldiers heading up the trail. I let the squad know, keeping track of their progress.

This time, as the enemy approached the top, the archers stood in the open and killed the soldiers as they entered the killing zone. This was the last part of the trail.

where it was really the only choice, there was just no other way to approach the top other than a smooth vertical cliff with no handholds, and there was a higher cliff face overlooking the trail so that we could fire at them, but they couldn't fire back.

In addition, the trail was very narrow at this point, just wide enough for a horse. For an hour or more the enemy tried to reach the top of the trail, but the killing zone was something they could just not penetrate.

For this part of the battle I was just a spectator. There was nothing I could do except watch. I was supposed to warn if the enemy tried any tricks, but they'd tried nothing.

While the fighting was going on, I could feel the day warming, the cloud thinning, and the enemy bunching up at the foot of the trail. Finally, they withdrew back down the trail.

There was no point pursuing them, the trail was effectively blocked by dead men and horses and slippery with blood. More than a few men had died simply by slipping off the trail. The captain and his men let out a cry of victory.

Within a few minutes of this, the cloud finally completely disappeared quite suddenly. Suddenly I could see the army below, and they could look up at the pass above and see the bodies spread out on the rocks and cliffs below the top of the trail.

For a while, nothing happened, and the enemy soldiers slowly moved back down the trail. I could feel the happiness from the squad;

we had won the first battle without even any casualties. But that was the easy first battle. Now they could see what they were facing.

As I looked down I could see a huge army gathering at the base of the trail. My heart fell. The trail seemed like an easy position to hold, but this was a vast army.

As I watched, I could also see themes forming into divisions and I could hear their chanting and trumpets, but I could also feel their fear and dismay.

I got a chill as I felt their fears, these soldiers weren't really different to us, and they had families they were concerned for too. But it didn't matter, we still had to kill them, or they would kill us.

All of a sudden, they started heading in all directions, approaching the walls of the cliff, trying to climb anywhere they could.

I sent this message to the squad, but they had seen it for themselves, and I watched them spreading out along the top of the cliff to their prearranged spots.

For the next little while, I watched them trying to climb the cliffs. Though the day was warming, it was still very cold, and there was plenty of ice on the cliffs; they were very treacherous.

I saw and felt several slip to their deaths. But they kept coming. Eventually I could see that they were making substantial progress on many fronts, and preparing for another assault on the main trail.

While we were waiting for this to happen, I saw the captain try something he'd thought might make a difference to the outcome.

He summoned his falcon, and gave it a fist size rock. It took the rock in its talons, and flew out over the army. Then I saw the falcon dive towards the army. I felt the falcon's burst of pleasure as it approached the fastest point of its dive and then lift out of the dive.

The captain gave a cry of pleasure. I knew that his target had been the King. He hoped that with the King out of the way, the other commanders might be more willing to withdraw.

I wondered whether we had hit the king. But the falcon had enjoyed that, and spent the rest of the battle finding stones to dive bomb the army with.

They started firing arrows at it, but it was moving way to fast for them to hit it, and I think the arrows killed more soldiers than the falcon did.

All of a sudden, my life became very busy, as they started approaching the top of their routes. Some didn't make it, they found the route had simply led to a dead end.

But enough were getting close that I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to hold them. Once the first of them made it to the top, I was busy co-ordinating several different battles.

I didn't tell the men what to do, just kept them informed about who was coming their way.

At first, they simply shot the climbers with arrows, but they kept coming, and in a few places they were able to make it to the top and get to hand-to-hand fighting.

The enemy soldiers were exhausted from their climb, and could hardly lift a sword, but nevertheless they put up a good fight, better than I had hoped.

The worst trouble spot was at a point where they had two columns of men coming up near each other, and one column had made it to the top. Scar was at the top, and Sock had joined him. They were hard put, with Scar having to put his bow down and use his sword.

All of a sudden I saw an enemy soldier creeping along the rocks behind Scar. How did he get there? I freaked, I should've known that he was there.

He was quite close to Scar, behind him, ready to kill him. I cast an image of him to Scar, and saw Scar turn around and kill him with a single strike.

I scanned around the pass. Had I missed others? I become aware that there were quite a few loose soldiers near to the top or coming onto the top of the pass.

As I watched, one drew a bow and shot one of the squad with an arrow. I felt Crunch's cry of pain, and then he fell forward and over the edge of the cliff.

My eyes followed him down, and I noticed something that sent a shiver through my bones. There were a couple of soldiers climbing my pinnacle. I had thought it was impossible, but they were looking at me, and I could feel the hunger behind their eyes.

I wondered how they knew about me, but I knew with certainty that I was their target.

Alarmed, I sent a message to the captain, things were starting to get out of hand, and it was obvious that we wouldn't be able to hold the pass for much longer.

I looked down at the army, and saw that they were fully gathered at the foot of the trail, perhaps two thousand soldiers still down at the bottom. Time for the avalanche, as soon as possible.

The captain turned to his magic. It had involved quite a bit of preparation, mixing a small cauldron of black stuff he had made up. I had wondered what it was, hiding in our storage cave through winter, but he had always laughed, saying that I probably didn't want to know.

He had taken the cauldron to the bottom of the massive snowfield the night before, much to the disbelief of the other squad, who wouldn't go near it, and left it at the bottom. I waited, and while I waited I felt something that shocked me to the core.

Sock died. It didn't seem possible that such a fun loving bundle of energy could have died. I turned to look, and as I looked, Scar killed the soldier that had killed Sock.

I felt the captain perform some sort of spell, and there was a massive sound from where the cauldron had been.

I felt every single soldier in the area stop what they were doing and look towards the cauldron, which had disappeared in a cloud of snow. I waited for the avalanche, but nothing happened