The White and Dark One’s

Chapter 3

Philhaz and The Dark Lands


We were told to assemble in the wrestling grounds. I was excited but nervous, we all had to be fully armoured up, ready to rumble. I could see Hamkirk in the distance, he was wearing his best gear and Vedin was already there.
Looking at him, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Poor Vedin’s cheap gear looking completely out of place in pretty much all of our whole academy. He apparently doesn’t mind, this was normal, he says. I hope that was true.
I had such mixed feelings, to know we were about to be going out into the lands spoken about our whole lives! Vedin and I were there first, grinning at each other.
"Well, well, breeder boy didn't chicken out!" I called to him jokingly.
He glared at me and said ,"If you fall over and something bites your leg off, I'm totally leaving you mate."
I laughed. "You can have my room, and my house Privileges, if that happens!"
Vedin smiled. The others turned up with Clare arriving last and we waited and teased each other for the fancy gear we wore.
Instructor Jarmusk came walking speedily out of the main hall and came over to us. He looked cross so I moved back a little behind the group.
“Good morning; let's move," He said, looking like he hated us for disturbing his important life, and with that, he turned and took off.
We followed a little behind him. Crap, I hope he isn't coming, I'll definitely not make it home in one piece!
It was thirteen miles to the walls first gate and each wall had a watch at all times. We had a few men on the walls, just in case, and even more in the barracks ready for the horn, and even more soldiers in the training grounds, right next to the wall. They were hardly ever brought into action all at once, when it was rare for a full scale attack from the Dark One’s in our light. They now had masks that helped them breathe and see better, like we did in their lands. So more and soldiers were needed.
As we moved, we passed a few small roads. It seemed not very busy at the moment, it must be one of those rare moments people were off sleeping. We mostly only slept a few hours here and there.
Hamkirk was puffing a little bit beside me, his heavy armour and shield looked impressive and was strong, but it slowed him down. Not to mention his gigantic sword, which was nearly the length of my body! It weighed 70 pounds, However it had a small switch which split it in two. Then he would usually ditch one and draw his shield.
We sometimes sparred with our favourite weapons and I couldn’t go toe to toe with him and that damn giant sword. He was to strong for me. At least with his shield We were evenly matched.
I lifted my helmet off and grinned at him, bumping into him slightly. I couldn’t see his face but he pushed me back to the side, and took off a head of me, as I stumbled to keep my balance.
Jarmusk was leading us towards the markets but we soon turned off and down towards the military running path. It was a crime to wander down our paths without a permit or unless you had official business. It was there for speed and urgent business and if anything major were to happen, we would clear off, as the leader of our realm and council have warned. This was the road reinforcements would pore down to help a struggling wall under attack.
Sometimes the poor, or robbers, have attacked the food carts heading down there, but always they are hunted down and cut to pieces or killed publicly to set an example. Attacking our own soldiers or guards was a huge crime.
Looking in at the market as we past, I could see loads of places were already preparing for the eclipse. Some were leaving, and a few had armoured stalls in place. Most of the market people were hard pressed to find a decent safe house and a lot of lives could be lost in cheaper areas, but this richer area would mostly be fine. It was far safer to lock yourself in somewhere than defend and fight at this part of the wall during an eclipse. It was very close to the wall.
Jarmusk directed us to go through a long, old tunnel. No light was needed even underground, the very dirt we live on in this area, it would all basically glow white.
Most of the houses were cheaper in this area so going under them was safer. We came out and I looked behind us at the white marble houses, it looked as though some could crumble at any time. It was the oldest area in the whole city and it was broken down in many spots, unlike the academy and surrounding houses of the rich families, where even wood, something so rare, was used only for the rich of the realm.
We were all puffing and blowing a little now, this was a hard running pace with all this gear on. Gust pulls out in the lead, a bit of arrogance can be detected from him, his light weight armour was brilliant. It was very mobile stuff and like my stuff, built for speed, however still able to withstand the force of an axe. Although more likely an axe shot from our people, not a dark one. His was of a far higher quality then mine but I had a secret, I hadn’t told the others about my father’s dark metal armour.
It was the rarest and most valuable armour and only the richest families had a set. My father was given a set after mother died saving the city and he had never warn it or spoken of it. One day it would be mine.
I look over at Gust and a small bit of anger arises. I honestly don’t know what it is about him, but his smug attitude drives me up the wall. Maybe it’s me, to be honest, but I just can’t help it. We are reasonably polite to each other, but we both know we have a problem with the other. His short, slightly darker hair, and waxy smug face, grinds my soul....
We come into a small clearing with the common dusty white dirt and bits of small dead grass. The road is clear because not many live this close to the training grounds of the defenders of the wall.
We see through a large fence, where men everywhere are sparring and training with swords. We keep going and all we can see is the massive wall and one of the biggest gates to the darkness. This one was one of the main attack points against our enemies, we sent most of our troops out from this one point. It was the closest to the forest and one of the safest hunting area’s around.
We arrive before the gate. Troop movement is all around us, teams going in and out of the gate, some carrying massive beasts in on poles and some squads heading out. We watched a small team return, helping wounded men, and you can guess where the rest are.
Instructor Jarmusk walks off into the crowds of soldiers not even saying a word.
We looked around a bit confused. It was awkward standing there, not knowing what to do and very embarrassing, as we all looked at each other.
Ian looking over just grins, “Well that went well, let’s get out of here!”
We laughed nervously but waited, looking around, Clare looked pissed off.
“Okay; I’ll go ask someone and find out where we're meant to be. This will be embarrassing if we miss this,” Clare says.
I nodded, happy she was taking control, but then a group of ten soldiers come out directly towards us. They were armoured up and not in any of the training gear, so this was definitely the real deal.
Their leader and Jarmusk came out last, chatting away. Their leader has a strange helmet on and his face is clear, he looked young, and you could see the humour in his eyes. To have a helmet that looked like part of a beast, you must have some sort of special treatment. His armour was pretty standard, only with the officer sign carved into it. He looked pretty bad ass, with no guns, just two long swords criss-crossed on his back. I wondered if anyone had the legendary dark armour around here, surely there would be a few.
I looked around but I couldn’t see any. Most seemed to be the common white basic metal armour. This group here sported a huge mixture of armour as well as weapons. A few warriors sniggered at Hamkirk, he looked massive compared to them and all their light weight and mostly cheap gear.
I sometimes teased him, his armour was from a dead Auntie’s but they had re-tailored to suit. We always called Hamkirk Aunty when he wore it to annoy him but this was different.
These Adult warriors had dents and cut marks over theirs and some of them weren’t much older then us.
What would they think of us rich kids I thought.
Jarmusk walked right up to us and spoke over us, like we were a pest. "This is captain Yimas, do everything he says. Try not to die, or you will embarrass your family, your house, and most of all, your academy.” With that he nodded at Yimas and left.
Yimas waited until he was gone and then he grinned at us, his eyes beaming. "Hi team. I see instructor Jarmusk hasn't changed much, he's still the same old stuck up prick."
We all laughed a little, but a sad, nervous laughter, before he carried on talking.
"OK. I see some of you have some pretty decent armour. Lucky, lucky. Some of us had to kill for ours,” He said, smirking at Hamkirk.
Hamkirk who was already looking uncomfortable went a different shade of white with embarrassment! Yimas face suddenly went serious.
"OK; in all seriousness. Your safety is of our most importance, and we respect that you lot are trained. However we are the professionals and even we struggle to keep ourselves alive. If something gets through our protection, I ask that you run. We will be following one of our common trails where we probably won't come across any danger, but, there have been whole teams wiped out before. We are also a big group and will decide, depending on the size of a creature, whether we should take it down. Now, no talking unless I say otherwise. We only use Morse code out there. Obey any order I give to you and we will be fine. Let's get sorted, then head off."
He looked at us each closely, then walked over to his men and started having a chat with them.
This was even our first time outside the gates into the darkness. We were all geared up, helmets back on and our breathing masks were at the ready. I breathed deeply, slowly, just think 'In the moment', not about the future or 'what ifs', I thought to myself.
His men introduced themselves quickly and we could tell they weren’t interested in meeting us. We were spoilt little rich kids to them. They soon turned to each other and laughed and joked, and so we sat there not making a sound, nervous as hell. Then after many awkward moments, we were off. We were signalled forward.
A small whistle horn went off and the gate slowly opened again. It took a while and once it started budging, a massive wind blasted our faces as we stood there, right in the gate way. Then we pushed against the wind through the gate and we moved out.
It was a bit of a shock hurrying out the gate as the adults went seriously hard and started running, as a unit, around us. I wanted to look and take in the surroundings but I guess they had seen it hundreds of times. Their pace was fast and it was almost overwhelming being surrounded like this, Lead out like babies.
Ian tripped suddenly, but one of troops grabbed him, ruthlessly throwing him to his feet.
“Stay on your feet boy! Next time we will leave you!” Roared someone in behind us.
All of us felt embarrassment for Ian and I couldn’t help but feel that some of these men hated us. They probably hated our rich families and had lost friends for rich kids. I felt sickened, but I could think of what their reasons were, they were dying babysitters and I wanted to get away from this.
I looked around trying to take my mind off this awful feeling inside of me. From what it looked like, it was maybe five miles to the full darkness. It was getting slowly darker as we were passing through the weird grey zone which was extremely uncomfortable on the eyes, and no mask could help that. I looked up and admired the gigantic stones we used to tell when an eclipse neared.
They were dipped in darkness and as the darkness grew to a certain level the eclipse would come.
These parts of the White lands were very bare and dusty, just whiteness almost and dust blowing around everywhere. In a thick dust storm we would come across almost invisible. The ground was all cracked with a few dead trees around. It’s Wood was useless to us, you couldn’t build anything off of it because it was to soft. Then I saw something else on the ground I’d never noticed on the wall. bones. Lot’s of bones.
I froze up as I saw the bodies. I was shoved from behind, nearly causing me to fall over on my face. However I stayed up and continued to run. I nudged Vedin and pointed down but making sure I wasn’t seen. His eyes went wide and he just nodded, obviously he hadn’t spotted them. A sudden crunch under my foot and I now knew what it was. This was a waste land of the dead. Their people and our people, everywhere. No wonder everything was tense. Gust noticed next, from the sound of it, but Vedin slapped him gently on the back of the head and motioned for him to continue.
I looked in the distance and hundreds of skulls and bones could be seen all over the land. I brought my eyes back up and swallowed my growing unease.'Come on, man up,' I told myself.
I spotted some snake bones, Apparently snakes used to be common here but now are rare, since we were able to eat them. Even with all these bodies as a to eat, they were hunted to they were no more.
We ran on with ease, in our cramped tiny circle, the pace wasn’t too fast now and the men were watching around us like hawks. Maybe this was a good spot to be ambushed, I couldn’t see any reason to be worried. With the Dark One’s standing out in this light but they obviously knew something I don’t, and maybe many men had died not paying attention. No dramas happened, but we all began to sweat like crazy, this grey zone was disgusting.
The forest loomed ahead closer and closer, with dead rotting trees around us, and it grew thicker and into actual trees, as it got darker and darker.
And there they were, right before the dark woods, huge tower pillar stores. They were gigantic up close. We stopped at the massive stones, staring up at them.
The eclipses were once very few only, now, they are more and more frequent.
Snacks were quickly eaten and not a word was spoken, because it was time for the final push to leave the grey zone behind. As we now slowly moved into almost pitch black, the sun faded to nothing, and only small rays shone through. I took a last glance, feeling a small tremor in my right hand, as I turned and pushed through the last bit into the bushes. There we crossed over into the full darkness of the forest, and pitch darkness.
The masks kicked into gear and we could see, but nothing like any of our training. This place was an ever moving, living thing, around us. Practising on still objects in our kingdom was nothing like this I thought As I looked around. No fire would work in an open area as it also affected the masks use and blinding us. Only a very sheltered cave would be safe, from what we had learnt.
The coldness was intense and something we had never felt before, it was half the reason the masks were required. Our lungs froze in this cold air and it had killed hundreds of us.
Back in the first days They used to just wrap cloths around their mouths and go in. It worked but not for long they found from so many dying.
I could feel one of the others shaking next me, but we pushed through, together, behind, and in between the adults. If this was a common path, I’d hate to think what an uncommon one would be like, because these thick bushes felt as though they drove you back. I’d never felt like I didn’t belong before, not like this.
Yimas had stopped up ahead and he called a halt and a break. We had a quick snack, water and dry meat. Yimas wandered around talking and laughing with his team. We sat together pulling our mouth parts of our masks off and I felt the extremely icy air going into my lungs and my mind went instantly to thinking of this poison I was breathing.
We ate in silence but our young little group were all feeling the same thing, why us...? If this was our future, then I don’t want it, and I could tell the others didn’t either.
Yimas came over to us and said. "You know, in the Eastern realm, they have massive orchards half in the dark lands and in the grey zone, right? Crazy bastards, ah!? We swap most of our meats and leathers with them. They hardly go into the dark lands to kill like us, they just focus on the defence of their orchard. They have the greatest losses of life and that's why our people are the strongest. We pride ourselves on our aggressive approach; of taking what’s theirs and attacking them back when the time is right. You can never just let an enemy walk into your home. You must take the fight to the bastards."
I felt uncomfortable, we as a realm hadn’t attempted a major attack in years. It accomplished nothing, according to my father, who played a big part in making those decisions.
Gust stood up. "Sir, why are their hardly any Dark Ones here? Aren't they nearly always attacking the wall, so how are we able to get in and around here so easy?"
"Because boy, the eclipse is near, so they retreat and prepare for full invasion,” he laughed. “If one day boy, the sun never came back up, we would probably all be wiped out. There are far more of them and they are stronger, and faster, than most of us."
Ian piped in. "How many have you killed, sir? If you don't mind me asking?"
Yimas smiled ruthlessly, "I've killed seven and maybe wounded three or four. My team do well for themselves. We average two to three per man. We have lost twelve men since I became captain."
We went silent for a moment, in shock. He honestly didn’t seem old enough to have been around that long to lose that many men. Were the losses really that great?!
"Sir, is this all your team does?" I asked.
"We take you rich brats out and show you guys around the park,” he said with a chuckle, making us feel like he was joking. But then he continued, even with our uncomfortable silence.
“Is Putting our lives on the line so you lot get a taste of the darkness, not good enough?” Yimas said half laughing which scared me.
I couldn't believe it. I’d honestly hate to do that. I wonder if father ever did anything like this, and all those men and women dying, for what? Just to see others die? Why?
Yimas didn't seem to hold too much of a grudge or care, he chatted away for a little bit before he walked off, and soon we started moving again.
Yimas called me up to the front with Morse code as we moved, which was as difficult as you could imagine. Trying to push through brushes and trees, trying to catch up with someone obviously more experienced and faster than me. I got to the front and I could hardly see him. He moved so fast through the forest, he had a flow to it that seemed impossible to copy.
"I knew your mother, boy,” Yimas said to me. He paused to let that sink in for me.
I was surprised he was old enough, to have known my mother. It took me by surprise because, here I Am, going through the most terrifying thing ever, and someone’s bringing this up.
“She was a great lass her, and your father. I've never seen a pair like them. I was about your age then, and they were legends of our age. She lead me into battle a few times and damn, she was very cunning. I'm sorry she passed and you never really knew her."
"Me too. All I ever hear is these awesome stories, it would be nice if I had my own stories of her,” I said with a of touch sadness.
"You still have your father at least. And he's a good man. We used to fight together. He was our squad leader, he was very clever, so cold and calculating when combat started. He’d never leave a man behind," He said with a tone of respect.
“Everyone says that, but he's quite distant now, I don’t know him. He seems to prefer the wall to being at home, and he looks at me strangely and doesn’t say anything,” I replied. I couldn't believe I was accidentally opening up to basically a stranger, embarrassment hit me. I breathed deeply, maybe it was this funny air.
"That's because you look just like your mother, boy! Probably a big reminder that he didn't save her, or something, people are strange.”
"I don't want him to feel like that. He couldn't have saved her, it wasn't his fault. How can I stop that?" I responded, caring so much what this stranger would say.
"You can't mate. He'll get over it. Everyone blames themselves when they lose a loved one, your doing nothing wrong, just be who you are," He said sensitively.
I swallowed hard and couldn’t manage to say anything else. If he wasn’t over it by now, then he never will be, I thought.
"OK; go back now to your place, Philhaz. Be safe," he said softy.
I nodded my thanks, whether he saw it or not, I’ll never know, and I headed back to the middle of our group.
Everything suddenly went really quiet and I worried others had overheard us. The Morse code wasn’t created like that thankfully. We changed direction in the bush and it was straight away instantly more dense, dark, and colder. We were in a massive circle, and looking for a decent trail. We were moving very fast for such a big group. There was a massive screech right by us to the left, we tensed, waiting for instructions and drawing weapons. Then there was a thud, followed by a painful screeching before it was cut off, then it was silent again.
We were Morse coded to come take a look. This creature was long and tall but very thin. It was basically cut in half. It looked like it had very little meat but the boys got stuck into it, cutting decent bits off, and putting it on a wee pole.
To be honest, it was yuck and it made my skin crawl. Who the hell will gut the creatures in our squad? I thought.
Yimas Morse coded for our group leader and second in command to come forth, and so Clare and Vedin went up. To our shock and surprise, the next thing we knew, they were directing the whole group. Yimas obviously kept a close eye on them, discussing tactics with them and what to watch for.
Then Ian, who was our strongest tracker, was actually taken away from the group. I couldn’t imagine how nervous he would be. As I was thanking the gods I wasn’t one of them, Hamkirk, Gust and I, were pulled aside and shown stuff to watch for and safe noises. Which wasn’t to bad. We found the beginnings of a big trail and followed.
They showed us where good spots would always be to place types of food and how scattering flavour seeds would draw out creatures to eat, making them easier targets. But it also drew out more aggressive animals at the same time. They smelt our scent and the creatures we killed. Blood could be smelt from miles away.
I knew were everyone was now, from the communication from the Morse code going on. It was far better then when we first came in. Vedin and Clare were sending us down deeper into the Dark land under Yimas supervision. The trail we were on opened up into a small clearing for the first time. It was such a relief to be able to move freely.
Yimas called a halt and to fan out and make a perimeter, he called us younger ones over into a small group with him. Yimas pulled off his breathing mask and helmet and we all looked at each other, unsure what he was doing.
"Pull off your helmets and mask guys, it's OK," he said.
Gust shook his head and said. "What is going on” Yimas glared in his direction.
"I say what is allowed! This is where you learn!" Yimas blasted at him.
Gust took a step back at Yimas’s rage. Vedin started to unbuckled his mask and I followed. Yimas seemed like he knew what he was doing. I took it off, too scared to breathe too much of this freezing cold air. I couldn't see either and I felt exposed in the dark. Yimas, seeing my hesitation, said, "Come on, breathe you lot, just relax.”
I sucked in Properly, continuing to breathe. It was freezing! But It didn’t feel like I was about to die though.
"How long are we able to breathe in this until we die?"Ian asked a fair bit pissed off.
Yimas then threw us all some goggles so we could actually see each other before he threw us some fruit to quickly eat.
"It takes a wee while, and if you lot were out here too long, it would freeze your lungs and you would slowly die. But you can build an immunity to it, by slowly getting your body used to it," Yimas said.
"Why bother? Why wasn't this talked about before we came here, and why didn't we know this?" Gust asked with one of his tones.
Yimas grinned a dark grin at us, and my blood ran cold.
“It’s about coming of age and learning. You guys are to be left out here..” He stood up, looking at all of us, grinning away, “your breathing masks will be somewhere else and to survive, you will need to find them. Also, bring back something from your own hunt, or don’t come back at all. Good luck!”
And with that, Yimas and his squad, all but disappeared.