THE BATTLE

As the sun set, we stood on the top of the narrow pass on the main trail through the Dragon's Backbone.

Behind us a valley led to the plains of our home. Before us a valley led down the steppes across which the main enemy army had come.

We were watching them coming up the valley not far from us now; they would start crossing the pass on the next morning.

The captain spoke to us, only a few words, but even now, as I write this, they give me shivers in my bones.

"Soldiers of Livia. They are coming."

The captain's eldridge tones filled my heart with awe. I hadn't heard him speak like this before, but standing on the pass with the army approaching us and the sun setting behind the mountains, there could be no other way.

"You know what will happen when they get down to the plains. You know what just ten soldiers did.

If they get down to the plains, our kingdom will fall, our people will be killed and raped and our land destroyed. You've seen this yourselves. We must stop them here."

"I swear this to you now. As long as I live, no enemy soldier will pass over this narrow strip of rock alive."

He paused, and we filled his pause taking the same oath, all of us.

"It may be that tomorrow some or all of us will meet our doom. Soldiers of Livia, if you meet your doom with honour, you will be covered with glory."

"But I believe that this army that will meet their doom tomorrow. We have a plan, and if we stand together, then we will destroy them all."

Always remember, greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for this comrades, his brother,his people.

"My friends, we are standing on the dragon's backbone itself, a knife's edge between doom and glory, between light and darkness.

Of all the soldiers I've ever served with, there's no one I'd rather be with here than each of you. Make me proud, show these enemies the strength of our weapons and our hearts!"

He paused, and looked at each of us in turn, as we were spellbound by his intensity. Then he pounded his staff on the rock.

"Soldiers of Livia, are you ready?"

We growled and yelled. Yes, we were ready

"Soldiers of Livia, why do you fight?"

"For the people and the land", we cried in unison.

Then he dismissed us, and sent us to get ready. For the first time since we knew of the army's approach, we had hope.

As we stood there and watched the captain, burning like a flame, I could feel that we all dared to believe that we could actually stop this army, that our plan would work.

We had been busy since that time three days ago when we first knew that they were coming. As soon as we knew about the army, the captain had sent Whistle off to ask for help and instructions.

He had looked quite unsurprised when Whistle came back a couple of days later, with the information that all the other soldiers had been withdrawn to the far border to prepare to meet the main enemy army there, because spies had said that the main army would invade there.

The commander of the army had given instructions that we were to hold the mountains to the last man.

He just grunted, and said that indeed, we were alone, just as we had supposed. It didn't make any difference to our plans, we had already assumed that we would be alone, no one had time to come to our aid.

In fact, we had already decided on our plan within a few minutes of finding out the army was coming.

The squad had decided that there was quite obviously only one place to make a stand, at the top of the pass.

The enemy could only approach the top on the normal trail one at a time, and any other way up the cliff was impossible, or at least, very easy to defend against since they were vertical rock climbs.

Since there was only one workable route to the top, and it was a great killing zone for archers, they figured that they could hold out against the army for several hours, even with just a few of them.

Eventually they'd run out of arrows — they thought they had maybe a thousand stored across the mountain, so this alone wouldn't hold the pass. This was where our secret weapon fitted in.

Looming above one side of the pass was a massive bank of snow running up high towards a mighty peak. It had received a massive dump of snow from that huge storm, and it was all sitting up there, slowly warming up in the sun.

There had been hardly any run off from it, so the men had already placed bets on how long it would be before the whole lot filled the valley below in a massive avalanche.

They figured that there was a chance that a battle would precipitate an avalanche. It only took a few minutes for them to get to that point.

Here, the captain smiled, and said that he had a magic spell that he could use to help make the avalanche happen.

So the plan was simple: to hold the army at the pass, wait for them bunch up below the snowfield, and if the avalanche still hadn't happened, the captain would trigger it.

There were lots of things that could go wrong with the plan, but no one could think of anything else that sounded remotely plausible.

Then they started talking about what the enemy might do. It was hard to imagine that the enemy would simply walk up to the pass, and gather under the snowfield, but equally, it was hard to imagine why they were risking coming through the mountains so early in spring at all.

The captain said it was the enemy king, that he was reckless, and that if we could just kill him, then the enemy would probably turn around anyway.

They decided that the one thing they could do was to make the enemy scared. So almost straight away, Ferret, Digger and Junior set off on their horses with a very simple mission: to stay out of sight, to kill anyone who got separated from the main body, and then to return to the head of the pass before the army.

The three of them were our best stalkers — Junior had learnt a lot through the winter — and they were the best at something we had been doing all through our time in the mountains.

The squad had these tiny bows and arrows, where the arrow was tied to a string. The small arrow would just penetrate the skin, and it was painted with a poison.

If they approached close enough, they could hit a person, who would think it was just an insect. They'd be dead a few moments later.

It was pretty scary, and the hope was that they could induce the army into a superstitious fear of being alone, as this would encourage them not to spread out as they approached us.

The rest of the squad spent the time preparing for battle. They retrieved all their arrows and stored them around the top of the pass.

They surveyed the top of the pass to see what possible routes there was to the top.

But though we had a plan, and they were busy, their mood was fey. I could tell that they didn't really believe in the plan.

Actually, the captain didn't really believe in the plan. But he said that he believed it, he looked liked he believed it.

I watched as he got more and more intense, as if he could destroy the enemy just by his intensity alone. But it held the squad together, they were each reluctant to show that they didn't believe as long as the captain was sure.

And they were prone to posturing to each other to show how they were tough, not scared. It didn't fool me, but with these men I was past being fooled, I could read them all like a book. Except for Scar.

I saw him, often, watching me, any time he thought I wouldn't notice. But no, I really did have eye's in the back of my head, I could see.

I would wonder, why was he watching me so? On the day before we went out to battle, I had the chance to speak to him, alone.

It didn't go well. He responded coldly. All I wanted to do was to talk to him, to tell him that he was special to me, that I was sorry for upsetting him, but he just looked at me distantly and said that it wasn't a great time. I was heartbroken, to be rebuffed by him like that.

So I ended up with a fey mood to. It was a good thing that the men were too busy for my normal services, I might have been a bit savage to them.

I was still giving them all — even Scar — nightly checks, particularly their feet. And otherwise I prepared for the battle, for my own role.