The Sweetest Morn

[Arithon]

Gentle curtains of swaying grass stained with dew and limned by the gentle rose of sunrise lapped frowzily around his boots as he made his way through the meadow, step by unhurried step. With the rising of the day's crowning light birdsong awoke, stuttering but melodious like an orchestra playfully tuning instruments and voices, slowly coalescing into one glorious harmony. The springing wild flowers of the vale found him on he knees in meditation, savoring each moment of awesome silence as foot by fot, acre by acre, the song of wrens and robins died aborning in a hundred avian throats.

At the moment of release, timed to exquisite perfection, Arithon shuddered in near ecstasy as the whisper of the fields was replaced by the whistling of a thousand arrows loosed from bows by hands drilled endlessly to their lethal task. Now the time for silence was gone, and a thrill of a different kind awaited as his troops, weathered and indomitable veterans, swept across the border beneath the canopy of feathered shafts, swords rising and falling, hooves pounding and spears clashing on shields.

Without further words he rose to his feet and swung easily into the roan's saddle, booting it into a gallop and reining off towards the distant river. His portion of the plan was progressing as Shakira desired, chaos and destruction spreading all along the borders of Loiselle as the hand picked units, long hoarded in jealous secrecy, exploded into pre-staged battle positions. Across the Settle river, small holdings and farms burned by the dozen even before the cloaked and masked demon warriors added their obscene weight to the push. Garrisons were overwhelmed without hope of relief and mercy was given to none.

Noon found Arithon riding his new borders, fully 15 miles deep on a front of well over 30 miles, a deep salient into the surrounding realms. And by eventide, Arithon slipped from the saddle on a shadowed street in badside, flanked by a pair of feral corporals eager for more rapine and bloodshed. As they vanished into the mists to do their lord's bidding, Arithon smiled and made his leaisurely way up to a room, there anticipating a meeting with Shakira.