NaPoWriMo #18: Tapestry

It's all captured here.

All written down,

all embroidered in stitching

as a song,

an eternal tale of war

told across millenniums

of three kings and three battles,

soldiers head to toe in suits of chain mail,

horses' hooves churning the mud,

shields feathered with arrows.

A time where any one action

could severe any thread

and the tapestry would unravel.

Yet all of it remains here,

the formations, the marches,

the victories, the defeats,

the conquest and the dominion,

the fall and the coronation.

Defenders of the Realm Act IV

(Read Act III here.)

The Welshmen sat in the cave aghast
at what bad luck had come to pass,
that they had slaughtered a whole tribe
of woodwoses in their home.

That one of their number escaped
was giving them all a headache,
and the thought of woodwose hatred
pressed forcefully on their minds,
a prospect they tried and failed
to forget and leave behind,
fruits of Aled's botched design.

They began the lengthy trek back
to the castle, open for attack
from the fierce dragon still at large
in the skies above the hills.

At last they reached the castle gates.
A small detail did indicate
the results of Aled's mistake,
namely smoke above the walls,
rising above the battlements
and billowing off the walls,
indicating fire galore.

It took them hours to douse the flames,
by which time Gethin was enraged
about leaving themselves open
to the wrath of dragon fire.

They gathered what servants remained
and they resolved to formulate
an effort to eliminate
the curse of the endless fire.
Gethin's grand plan did however
draw most of the servant's ire;
he had them all tied to pyres.

And so the waiting game began
with the only live bait to hand.
Gethin guessed the wyrm favourite
living prey which it could scorch.

Just as the afternoon ended,
chaos suddenly descended
as the servants, undefended
saw wild men upon the walls.
Woodwoses scaled the battlements
and descended down the walls,
to maim and slaughter them all.

The Welshmen returned from dinner
to find the charred courtyard littered
with bloody remnants of servants,
their assailants long since gone.

Gethin and Hywel cursed their luck,
then Fergal shot up, thunderstruck,
and said their luck was not yet up
as they still had some bait left,
in the form of dear old Burbage
sitting in the hall at rest,
his dinner yet to digest.

Burbage pleaded and protested,
but his case was uncontested
and they strung him up on the pyre
before sitting down to wait.

As sundown gave way to nightfall,
with a castle still to fight for,
Aled spotted it well before
it plummeted from the sky,
plummeted out of the blackness
of the dimly starlit sky
with the most bloodcurdling cry.

Burbage on his pyre stood no chance,
with no sword to hand or a lance.
The dragon snatched him off the pyre
like a bird skimming a lake.

And the friends charged out of hiding,
still at severe risk of dying,
with their focus firm on fighting,
fighting the ferocious drake,
aiming to cast it from the sky.
With the castle still at stake,
they charged headlong at the drake.

Nothing went according to plan,
but they stuck to the task at hand,
as they incurred many wounds
thanks to their fire-breathing foe.

Hywel was sideswiped by its tail,
flung by the enormous scaled flail,
into the gatehouse did he sail
with a crash of shattered stone.
Fergal was caught in the beast's flame,
his arms were charred to the bone.
Quite a mess the friends had sown.

As Gethin attacked with his bow
he tripped and fell into the moat,
leaving Aled the last defence
against the winged beast of flames.

He sprinted up to the ramparts,
protected by tattered armour
and although not the best archer,
grabbed Gethin's quiver and bow.
He ran up the nearest turret
and took aim with Gethin's bow,
aimed right down the dragon's throat.

The dragon flew at him headlong,
but his grip on the bow was strong.
Aled loosed the arrow just as
the beast swooped down upon him.

He fired two seconds too late,
be it by sheer fool's luck or fate,
the arrow became a checkmate
when it struck the dragon's throat,
with Aled loosing his bow hand
to the dying dragon's throat.
Then it fell into the moat.

And so it was a victory,
the tone was contradictory,
the slayers sat, mutilated
in the wreckage of the yard.

A messenger arrived later,
and his news was none the greater,
the prince who had been a traitor
had slayed King Richard the Third.
His Welsh soldiers with their polearms
had slayed King Richard the Third,
leaving the reward deferred.

Defenders of the Realm Act II

(Read Act I here.)

They arrived at the castle late,
a fortress frail and in dire straits
with foundations which were flaking
from attacks by the vile wyrm.

They met a man named Burbage,
who looked to Aled a durbage,
a man with no room for verbiage
who tended his mottled perm,
a butler minding the castle
tending to his half-arsed perm,
a man proud a dully firm.

The four friends set about their work,
snubbing Burbage's pompous smirk,
thinking how best to kill a beast
they had never seen before.

Gethin put archers on the walls,
Hywel guessed the dragon would fall
to some unjustly small axes
he bought from the smith next door.
Fergal brought in some trebuchets
to line the castle walls.
Aled just rolled his eyeballs.

They decided to get practice,
as they all did somewhat lack it
in any way of weaponry
or the forms of martial skill.

Gethin's archery went sideways,
he aimed as how one stargazes,
he hit two men in their faces
while his friends joined for the thrill,
joined for the thrill of shooting arrows
lined with finely trimmed quills,
and aimed at Burbage's frill.

Night fell over the Pennine hold,
and very soon the friends were told
that the dragon had been sighted
flying to the castle walls.

Gethin's archers were set aflame,
the dragon-fire put stone to shame,
and Fergal commenced his mad game
of flinging rocks at its hide,
rocks which hit everything
bar the dragon's armoured hide,
debris flying on all sides.

Then Hywel saw an opening,
charged through the wreckage smouldering
to clout the dragon with his axe
when it tried to eat him raw.

With a screech to deafen whistles,
like a cat caught in the thistles,
the beast took off like a missile
soaring up into the night,
leaving Hywel to boast and brag
for what was left of the night,
claiming he was proven right.

(Continued in Act III here.)

NaPoWriMo #21: Battle

Every once in a while the fields rumble
when cuirasses and greaves clatter on the march
and sword and shield rattle in unision
while a robin sings his tune in the thickets,
unaware of the great king's defiant speech,
fuel for the brave and the petrified
should there be any breaks in the line
when the enemy advances in formation
like driver ants marching in a column,
arrows buttering up their impeding obstacle
before steel rings against steel
and dying scream blends with battle cry.