Struggle for D'Hara - The Push

[Lord Rahl]

Arya Meiffert crouched low to the ground as she slipped into the camp beside Captain Arlan.

His men, trained in the arts of stealth and infiltration, were fanned out behind them, quiet as could be. They had taken out sentries in the boulder fields stretched out around the encampment, and the army had been able to creep in behind them, the boulders shielding them from view so long as they moved to the right places at the right times.

Unfortunately, the boulder fields were still a ways back and, while the army was able to get relatively close without drawing attention, going any further would undoubtedly alert the sentries closer in, and they were still too far off. The encampment was massive — larger than the last time she had been there. It alarmed her that so many men would join their army in such a short period of time. She knew that there was no way they could hope to destroy the army here in the plains. But Lord Rahl didn't want that. He wanted to trap them, make it more difficult for them to fight.

They were relatively close to the mountainous regions off to the west, and further south and west lied the Deep Nothing. Lord Rahl's goal was for them to drive the "Free Peoples of D'Hara" back into the ancient city of Caska, where Lord Rahl himself and a number of gifted waited. She had fought against him, at first. He was needlessly putting himself in danger. But then he told her that if he was not there to help, to command the gifted in what needed doing, that they would all die, and then there would be no hope. Eventually, whether it be in the Palace later, or in Caska now, he had said, he would die. The risk was no greater in Caska, it was just more immediate. She had grudgingly accepted his plans.

Now, she had to free Eris. Captain Arlan intended to help her see it done. Apparently the two were friends. Then, Lord Rahl instructed her, she was to tell him of her plan and from inside the camp send wizard's fire into the air to signal the army to attack. But he also told her he might not live, or something might go wrong, and if that happened she had to capture their wizard and have him do the task. He had also said that if she should fail at that, the army would attack four hours after she had left. He said he expected her to succeed, but they had to plan for every eventuality.

The army would pour in from the south and then spill across to the east to create a curved wall of sorts. They would be divided into battalions, each battalion shielded with magic by the wizard they had brought with them. The shields would not hold long in the strain of battle, she had been told, but they would begin to force the defenders back. Then, when the shields failed, they would fall back and the second wave of battalions would push, also shielded. The wizard would re-shield as many of the first battalion as he could while the second battalions assaulted the enemy, but he had said within four waves it would be impossible to shield enough of them to make any meaningful progress. They could only depend on the first two waves to actually work properly.

Then, the wizard would rain fire down on them. Drabic, the wizard with the Free Peoples, would be on the opposite side of the encampment, expecting an attack from the north, and their gifted assaults would work for at least a small amount of time. Assuming the Free Peoples hadn't gathered more wizards since before.

The D'Haran Empire had one thing on their side — their numbers. While those numbers were constantly thinning, and the numbers of the Free Peoples were constantly growing, the D'Haran Empire still had many more men than the rebellion. Unfortunately, most of the men of the Free Peoples were highly skilled and would not be defeated easily. While she doubted they would actually make much of a dent in the enemy with their assaults, the goal was to convince them to give ground and make for the mountains. Then, their second force, waiting within tree cover towards those mountains, would block them off and force them downwards toward Caska.

There, Lord Rahl would lie in wait with the majority of their gifted. When the Free Peoples tried to take refuge in the mountains, they would methodically be picked off with powerful assaults of magic led by the Lord Rahl himself. If things went wrong, they could escape through the Sliph, which Lord Rahl had explained was an ancient device of magic constructed to travel long distances in short amounts of time.

Now, she just had to do her part.

[Lord Rahl]

The command tents had been moved since Arya was last at the encampment, but with the help of the captain they had located the tent she remembered to belong to the wizard. A painted blue circle stood out on the side. She peeked in. The wizard was not there this time either. She looked around before she found what she was looking for.

Three bold strokes of dark red paint stood out on the side of the tent.
It looked like blood.
This was a torture tent.

She looked inside, but it was empty. Several more tents surrounded it, each with the same diagonal pattern of red brushstrokes. She looked in yet another. A man lay on the ground, bloody and broken, but it was not Eris.

She spent several minutes looking through the tents, evading the sight of a guard passing by here and there, Captain Arlan at her heels. She began to lose hope. What if they had already killed him, and got rid of his body? What if she had already seen the tent he had been in, but he was no longer there?
As she considered the possibilities, she looked within another torture tent.
Eris was there, his wrists shackled, his weight held up by chains connected to a construct of beams within the frame of the tent. He was covered in dirt and sweat. Unlike all the other tents, there was little to no blood. Instead, Eris was covered with burns and lurid bruises.

But he was alive.
His breathing was even. It appeared that he was asleep. She lifted his chin. His eyes were open.
"Eris?"
He did not acknowledge her.
"Eris."
Still nothing. She began to worry if he really was okay. She leaned in to his ear and, loud as she dared, whispered his name once more.
"Eris!"
He suddenly jumped back and gasped, blinking rapidly for a moment, before looking around in confusion.
He mumbled, somewhat groggily, "Arya? And Arlan? What are you doing here? What..."
She cut him off. "Well, someone had to come. You weren't going to rescue yourself. Where is the key to those shackles?"
He shook his head. "Drabic has it, and he's not going to give it up. You need to get out of here, now. Before he returns."

She flashed him a crooked smile. "Get out of here? But where would the fun be in that? I need to get you free, then you can signal the army."
"The army?"
"You didn't forget so soon, did you? You did well, you did what Lord Rahl asked you to do. They think we're attacking from the north. The army is waiting to the south in the boulder fields."
"What do you mean, I can signal them?"
"You are to use your magic, wizard's fire, Lord Rahl said, to signal the army."
He was beginning to look more alert. "I can't, Arya. The wizard, Drabic, he did something to my gift. I can't use it. It's there, within me, but it is in a tangle, or something. It is useless like this."
She frowned. "What do you mean? Can't you just, I don't know, untangle it?"
"No, it's not that easy. It would take weeks to do that. I already started trying, as soon as I found out about it, and while Drabic wasn't torturing me."
"Weeks..."
He nodded.
She strengthened her resolve. "Then I will have to capture Drabic. He can untangle it, or at least signal the army himself."
Eris nodded. "But you know it won't be easy."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Why would I ever want it to be easy?"

[Lord Rahl]

"Wizard! Your shields are not working! The men are being cut down! Dear spirits, what's going on?!"

He turned to the soldier to his right, one of the highest ranking officers who had stepped up to take control of the army after the commanders were slain. His sword, slick with blood, reflected the light of the fires that surrounded them. Before them the army relentlessly charged between the openings of the shallow ditches. He saw a rope of Subtractive magic cut down an entire battalion in one effortless sweep.

"Bags," he muttered. "They said Drabic wasn't that powerful."
He had to reinforce the shields. He raised his arms and called forth his Han, sending his power into the shields, weaving stronger supports through them, warding against the Subtractive magic that was so easily cutting through them. Another twisting rope roared through the air right towards the shield he was working on. He worked faster.

The bolt slammed into the shield.

With a deafening, explosive sound the rope of lightning disintegrated, particles of magical discharge skirting the sides of the shield and blowing out into the air behind it. The shield strained under the power. He knew now, though, that it would last for the duration of the plan. They had already lost most of the first wave of the shielded battalions, but the second wave still waited for their chance to attack. He began to reinforce their shields as well. It was going to be a long night.