A Ballad of Heroes

Prologue - The Dragons Fall

The screams of the dying mingled with the sound of clanking weapons and the rattle of heavy chainmail. The air was thick and sticky with the stench of sweat, blood and faeces. Fallen soldiers lay scattered everywhere among mud and mire. On top of each other, limbs bent and grotesquely twisted. Hideous piles of flesh and remains. Spears and lances towered everywhere, and the once proud banners waved like symbols of fading hope in the frosty wind.

The brave Soldier struggled forward laboriously and frantically, tripped over a dead man and fell knees and hands first into the muck. The mixture of mud and blood oozed between his fingers, and his sword landed in the sticky mud with a dull splat. The hurried gaze of brown eyes flickered to the pale face of the dead man. In the young features, the terror of certain death was frozen forever, the spark of life extinguished, and the former springs of hope stared into the void.

Whether he had been an enemy or a former comrade, he could not tell, for the blackish mire had quickly turned the colours of their tabards into a uniform mixture of brown and black. Only here or there was the enemy's purple or his king's green still recognisable.

Nor did the soldier, whose life lay on a knife's edge between the fighters around him, have time to think about it any longer. Panting, he struggled to his feet, slipped again, and only found his footing again.

The battle raged around him like a fire that devoured all life like dry brushwood. It was pure chaos. Many struck uncoordinatedly at anything that moved. Blades crashed mercilessly down on shields, and men and metal groaned under the weight of this battle. Beside him, a man collapsed to the ground, screaming in agony as he tried to close a wound from which a red gush of blood poured onto the floor.

Under the wild drumming of his heart, he perceived a movement out of the corner of his eye. Just in time, he snatched up his short sword before his enemy's sharpened steel crashed against it. His arm trembled under the force and the effort it took to brace himself with all the desperation he possessed.

His heart drummed so wildly in his chest that his blood rushed in his ears. Again and again, the enemy struck at him. Again and again, the blade clashed against his. He could not think clearly. All that ruled him was instinct and adrenaline, driving his body to peak performance. Survival. That was all that mattered.

The enemy soldier struck him furiously, again and again. From the right, from the left. It was a dance that humanity already knew too well and yet lost all fairness and grace in the formless struggle for survival. They staggered, slipped, and just managed to fend it off.

His body also reacted on its own. There was no time for thought here. He parried - just then, his enemy's blade slipped to the side and opened a gap in his defence. Without thinking about it for a second, he thrust. The cold steel pierced mercilessly through tabard, skin, flesh and muscle. Immediately, the red lifeblood gushed forth, soaking his blade and the enemy's tabard darker and loosening something inside that had been wedged before. With a loud roar, he pulled out the blade and struck at the enemy again. This time the blade cut across a throat. The other soldier's hands immediately went to his neck. His eyes widened, but the blood gushed mercilessly from between them like a spring that could no longer be restrained. Breathing heavily, he watched the light go out in them within seconds.

His chest rose and fell heavily while his fingers gripped the sword so tightly that the knuckles of his hand stood out white under the smeared blood. Then he struggled forward again. He had to find the king! That was all that mattered as he pushed his way across the battlefield. He crested a small hill... and there he saw him.

The tall, broad-shouldered figure of King Pendragon raised his sword above his head, ready to deliver the coup de grace to the bastard of a usurper and end the suffering of this war once and for all. It was his own brother who lusted for the crown and power.

But today and here, the fate of the empire was to be decided.

The sinking sunlight enveloped everything in a fiery sea of bright red and refracted in a flash on the blade and the gold-embroidered crest with the mighty dragon. Never before had the soldier seen anything more heroic and breathtaking.

Then, all at once, the traitor's hand went up. The sharpened tip of the lance burrowed between the helmet and chain mail into the king's neck.

Nausea pressed in the soldier's stomach as he watched helplessly as the usurper reared up and now drove the blade of his sword into the king's body. Their king... fell.

The loyal soldier could only stare. All at once, his mind went blank, and his throat tight. All strength drained from his limbs, and all hope shattered into shards.

"THE DRAGON IS DEAD!" the first shouts echoed across the battlefield, for he was not the only one to have witnessed the event. What was an abomination to some was a blessing to others. Where their will to fight and the fire of hope suffocated at sight, it now blazed brightly in their enemies and turned into a wildfire that spread across the entire battlefield.

The tide of battle was turning. As the cold shock dissipated, soldiers fled the battlefield, driven by blind fear of the consequences and death. Formations and defences - if they still rudimentarily existed - collapsed. Soldiers became inattentive and instantly paid dearly for it with their lives.

King Pendragon was dead. The enemy had won.

He, too, finally broke free of his rigidity. His legs flew across the field of blood and death, and with a roar, he lunged death-defyingly at the enemy. As a cold blade drove into his chest, his world blurred. He felt his body grow heavy as if a cloak of lead had been placed around his shoulders. Warm blood opened from the wound like a flower as he sank to his knees and then to the side in the dirt.

The light of the sun drowned in the heavy veil of night, and inevitably the decline of light brought oppressive darkness over the land.

His last breath was near. And as his senses faded, dead to king and realm, loud shouts rose into the dusk and accompanied him into the darkness of death:

"THE DRAGON IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!"