Well, it's been a long time in coming, but here it is. The beginning of my first true story, The Final Stand.
I wrote this last semester and it's gone through a few revisions and some grammar editing. But not THAT much, so if you see anything, just point it out. :D
Also, I'd love some plot/story feedback as well if you have any. :D
(Also, if it's a bit small, one zoom [Ctrl +] should fix it. )
Chapter
one
Jett walked through the forest
trail towards the encampment. He had
dark brown hair, blue eyes, and was a tall well-built man. He’d just been out to the watch perimeter to
make sure everything was running smooth. Jett was a very scheduled person; he
always had his days completely planed out. Because of this, there wasn’t much
change in the routine every day. So
every morning at dawn he would visit a tower or outpost, and would make sure
that things were running smoothly. Of
course, he could have sent anyone out to check… but they wouldn’t know exactly
how he wanted it, and thus wouldn’t notice small discrepancies and then things
might really get bad. Jett looked around while he walked, the forest
was beautiful. Looking up he could see the morning sun shining through the
leaves, casting a light green shadow over everything. Looking down, Jett saw the myriad of roots
which crossed the dirt path he walked on. While looking around, something bothered him;
he kept noticing things that weren’t the same as they had been on his way to
the tower. An overturned leaf, a branch
that had been across the trail now moved to the side; small things like that. And then he heard it; the small, but distinct,
sound of someone trying to match his footsteps. It could almost have been the
wind, but there hasn’t been any sort of wind whatsoever today. Without changing his stride, Jett listened
more carefully and could definitely hear that someone was following him. He assumed that they bore him ill
intentions, since otherwise they would step out and call to him. Five minutes
later, his suspicions were confirmed.
Two men with fully drawn bows stepped out of the brush. The one on the
right gave an ultimatum.
“Stop or be stopped.”
Before he had even finished, Jet
had started to move. He pulled out a
throwing knife from his belt and threw it at the man talking. Then he lunged to the side behind trees to avoid
the second man’s arrow. Jett rolled out of the lunge and stood up facing
backwards with his sword drawn. A dull
thud and a small gasp confirmed the hit.
Three other men were running up the path toward him, about ten feet
away. Jet deflected the first man’s
sword with a swipe and dealt him a strong blow to the left shoulder. As the
first man collapsed, Jett turned to the next man, caught his sword on the flat
of his blade and gave him a kick to the stomach, then a pommel blow to the
head. Since the first bowman was
recovering from the surprise of losing three men in about ten seconds, Jett
turned so that he was behind a tree for cover. He then picked up a decent sized
rock, feinted to the left, then leaned right and nailed the bowman in the head.
The bowman’s taunt bowstring launched the arrow ineffectively into the air. Now that he had taken care of the major
threat, Jett turned back to the final man, disarmed him with a twist of his
sword, tripped him and as he fell, hit him in the back of the head with his
gauntleted hand. Out cold. Jett jogged
the rest of the way back to camp, which was only another 80 yards down the
trail. When he reached the camp, he
ordered to some of the soldiers watching the perimeter of the camp,
“Go see to the assassins. Help those who can be helped and bring them
back under armed guard to be questioned. Hurry, they’ll be waking any minute.
Two of them are in dire need of medical aid or perhaps they’re already dead,
I’m not sure. See to them.”
Once the soldiers left, Jett
walked toward the second command tent where there was a meeting of the army
generals today. The military camp was nested in a sort of bowl shaped
valley. It was oval shaped and on one
side there was a pass that opened down into a large plane. The entire bowl was heavily wooded. There
were three decent sized camps in the bowl.
Each camp was set in a circle with three watch towers around the
perimeter. They had to do quite a bit of ground clearing to make space for the
camps, but since they had been here for months, it was worth it. Jett’s camp was the one in the middle,
directly in front of the opening to the pass, where Jett had gone to the
watchtowers, facing out onto the large plain. The three armies were stationed
here as sort of a last line of defense between the invading army and the
populated area of the country. It looked
as though they were going to be needed, since messengers coming from the front
lines had said that the other armies sent to fight had been practically
decimated. Luckily, when Jett had been
out looking, there had been no sign of the enemy army anywhere. Walking through his camp, Jett noted the
straight tent lines and how clean and organized everything was. The men were doing well. Leaving his middle
camp and crossing to the southern camp, Jett also noticed how very unorganized this one was. It wasn’t terrible,
but the soldiers obviously didn’t take pride in their work and didn’t care much
for the appearance. Arriving at the
command tent and stepping inside Jett saw the other two commanders. Naphe was a tall man with a tan complexion.
He had black hair, deep green eyes and always wore a small golden arm
cuff. Dan was a broad shouldered
well-muscled man of average height. He
was as pale as pale could be, no amount of sun could change that.
“Jett,” Naphe said after he they
had all been seated, “what have your watchmen seen?”
“Well,” Jett responded, “I was
out thirty minutes ago and I saw no sign of the enemy anywhere.”
“You didn’t have to go out
yourself…” Dan said, “That’s why we stationed the watchmen out there in the
first place.”
“I just like to see how my men
are doing,” Jett said, “they’re all still new.
Many haven’t had much experience.”
Naphe rolled his eyes, “Not this
again… Jett, most of these soldiers have been fighting just as long as you
have! Half of them are older than you.”
“Still…” Dan and Naphe sighed at
the same time. “Look,” Jett said, “Soldiers have to be told what to do. They
have to be lead along.” Jett stood up. “They don’t do well independently. For
instance, look at your camp, Dan. The
men aren’t disciplined enough. They need
to be orderly. That’s what will make
them efficient.”
“Okay,” Dan said resignedly.
“We’ll agree to disagree. But even with your opinion in mind, you’re over the
top, don’t you think? You go way beyond disciplined and into
micromanaging. Besides, you’ve
disciplined them enough; they could walk through a field of cacti without
breaking ranks.”
Naphe
cleared his throat, “Terribly sorry for interrupting your philosophical debate
on leadership, but we have to talk about the very much non-philosophical
problem of 70,000 men marching on our position now.”
“Well actually that could be a-” Dan started, Naphe glared
at him.
Jett snickered; sometimes Naphe
could take things a bit too seriously. A few hours later they had come up with
a plan. Jett was skeptical, but Dan and
Naphe liked it; so he was willing to go along.
It involved making their way south by the mountains next to the plain,
setting up a group on the hill and trying to hide their numbers. It had promise. But Jett was worried that the men wouldn’t be
able to do it right. He also worried that with so many men, there could easily
be spies mixed in. Dan had suggested that they do random checks to make sure
everyone was there. But even with Jett’s
army, which was the most organized and with leadership all the way down to
groups of ten and with squad leaders in charge of them, it would take way too
long and would miss too many people to be useful. In the meeting they’d also talked about the
assassination attempt, which was the fourth this week and the second on Jett.
Dan and Naphe each had faced attempted attacks on them. They were increasing in number, which meant
that the enemy was getting closer.
Finally, after three hours of
talking, they ended the meeting and went back to deal with their respective
duties. Jett wished that he could just
stop working, eat and sleep. It had been a long
day. But, considering that it was still
only midafternoon, he headed back to his command tent to work. He had just arrived and settled down to work when
a messenger came in. “Sir, a man has shown up with five other men and is now
waiting to talk to you.”
Jett sighed, “Alright, tell him
he can come talk to me.”
“Well, uh,” the messenger
hesitated, “He said that he wants you to come talk to him.”
Annoyed, Jett said, “What does he
think? That I just sit around all day doing nothing? I don’t have time to
wander around looking for him.”
The messenger said, “He, uh, he
said that his name is Keth, Keth Seventhor.
He also said that that would change your mind. Uh, sir.”
Jett got up with a sigh, “I
suppose I should go talk to him,
blasted old man…” Jett stood up, buckled his belt, adjusted his shirt and put
on his gilded cloak.
Turning to the messenger he said,
“Lead me to him.”
With a salute and a quick, “Yes,
sir,” the man left the tent. Jett
followed him to find his old mentor.
And there's the first chapter! That's about one sixth of the story.
Also, I think that the formatting got thrown off a bit when copy-pasting.
Anyways, yeah! If you want the rest I'll be posting it within the week. Or just like tell me and I'll give it to you. But yeah, if you got this far I guess you read it, so thanks for reading! :D
