Brotherhood

CHAPTER 1

The night was dark, and the moonlight shone on the sigil of The Emperor's tents, flags waving about the wind as men sat by their fire camps, each depicting a tale of the wench they had bed in Iysnk - the Emperor's Capital. There had been a prosperous hunt earlier and so each man was consuming some limb of a bear, toasted warm and slightly charred from the barbaric flames that flickered and danced, creating a spectacle only few had the opportunity to observe. There was peace that night, a certain feeling of comfort after their glorious victory. Each man sat huddled with a company of five.

"We should strike now. They are unarmed - won't even see us advancing."

"Hush."

The man placed his coarse hand just below the woman's breast, holding her back.

"I know you are eager, Faye. Now is not the time."

The two sat on primitive stumps, the woman adopting her given time to whet her blade, using a small pocket-sized stone that had been given to her by her father. She had another, more contemporary knife in her second sheath, albeit it was not used often and so rust had began to consume it's lustrous edge. They were established for only a few more hours, before a scout, who must have been only 5"4 made himself acknowledged and retrieved a paltry scroll, written by the old Maester who had set camp several miles upstream.

"Now."

The man yawned and arose from his stump, before ambling outwards to the opening in the trees and scrutinising the congested war camp that had been erected beneath him, the girl pursued and inclined herself into the one of the tress that was perched just south of the aperture. The men that were once ensconced outside their tents had all gone inside now - aside from the  incongruous few that were still precipitating audible conversations.

"Start off slow and quiet. Then you can have your fun."

The man spoke, before he plummeted downwards over the small ridge that separated Tiberius' army from the knight's of the Emperor, however this time his companion did not supersede, instead, marching towards the right, meeting up with the rest of her regiment. 

"Wait for my command."

From the North of the camp derived an immense flame. For seconds there was silence. The fire merely flickering in the peace of the obsidian, starred sky. Albeit only seconds - for men fell from the opening of their tents onto the floor, flesh melting to the polluted dirt that stuck to the skin. The minority who somehow appeared from their dwellings unscathed were met with iron. Axes to the skull that splintered their bone and left it hanging from their once fruitful bodies, whilst leaving their insides drooping down the primordial hilts of their assailant's  weapons, filling the small, ancient engravings that rest on the oak.

Not before long only a small band of the army still stood, surrounded by the raider rebels that had slaughtered their allies. A man stood forth from the pack and threw his claymore to the ground, one of his eyes had been sliced vertically and was bleeding profusely, his armor blemished - it's Selikian steel almost incomprehensible. It only took a few seconds for the rest of the men situated around him to follow suite, until an accumulation of different weapons became arranged on the sloppy mud beneath them.  

Tiberius shoved a few of his men forwards into the sphere and ordered them to attach a lengthy and rugged rope around each of their wrists, before turning himself around and walking towards the entrance of the glorified camp, his men already working on taking the flags down from their once prodigious seats and into the polluted knoll that supported them.