Enter your own Revolution today!
Courtesy of peakpx"Oh man, we're so screwed," one of the younger men cried out.
"Hush, the plan will work," Otto said through gritted teeth. It had to work
There had to be near a thousand of them. Shining in the mid-morning sun. Big knights in gleaming armor riding huge warhorses that must be from the Totivian plains. They were riding towards the town at a leisurely pace and stopped some 200 meters back. The knights were on a bit of a rise just before the town and had a commanding view of the eastern side of the town. Content to wait for orders, the knights simply stood in place, waiting.
5 minutes Very slow writing today :/
"Alright, boys. You know the drill. We go out there, egg them into a charge, then fall back to the town and use the traps we set up." Otto said to the men around him. He started walking towards the corner of the building, leading his men out into a narrow strip 5 meters from the edge of the town.
The rebels started clattering and banging on their shields with their swords and axes. Shouting insults at the Totivian knights. But the knights stood motionless, unphased by the comments of these peasant rebels. After a few minutes of noise, the knights silently turned and parted ways, walking away from the rebels in a U shaped fashion. As the knights cleared off the hill a volley of arrows unleashed from archers hidden just on the other side of the low hill.
Totally unprepared for an attack from archers, the rebels were pelted. The archers had the time to estimate the range and windage by spying through the legs of the horses and landed their volley directly on top of the rebel line. Half the men were dead or injured instantly. The others were too stunned to do anything and another hefty chunk of their numbers fell to the second volley of arrows.
After that, the rebels broke and ran into the town. Otto was among them, his mind still unable to comprehend what had just happened. He knew Totivian tactics. They almost exclusively attacked on horseback. Opting for lightning-quick assaults meant to grind and wear down an enemy rather than one swift blow. Archery was almost unheard of.
Otto kept running through the town. He knew, as well as all the other rebels, that their numbers were now too low to hope for any true resistance. All that was left to do was flee. But it was a trap. On the northeast side of town was the Lygenian army. The rebels were surrounded. Otto saw the men in front of him raise their hands in surrender. It was over. The rebels had lost.
A small scene from the rebels point of view. A companion freewrite to this prompt, what do you see.
I will have to flesh out why this rebellion took place in the first place and the ramifications of it in a later Worldbuilding blog.
Enjoyed your story. I wondered if the word ‘screwed’ was used back in the days of the knights and warhorses. 😂
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Hmm... the Archimedes screw was a thing since 3rd century B.C., so they may have. You'd be pretty "screwed" without one to move the water from a pond to your irrigation system lol. And then there are thumbscrews for torture. Wouldn't want to get screwed by those lol
I will admit, the language I use could definitely use some revision. The etymology of screwed as in to mean "in a bind" seems to originate from around the 1600's to 1700s. I'll definitely be keeping this in mind when I do larger works. I find that if I think too much doing these freewrites I end up getting bogged down in the details and editing while writing. Endlessly editing something that's not meant to be perfect lol.
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Perhaps ‘screwed‘ is fitting but it sort of threw me for the time period. I was racking my brain to think what would be the colloquialism of that age-maybe ‘ruined’ or ‘destroyed?’
Hey Shakespeare, “What do thou thinkest dear bard?”😂
Shakepeare’s reply, “There is nothing either good or bad but thou thinking makes it so.”
As for the freewrites, I type out the story in five min. directly on my iPad and then go back to edit for grammatical errors and sentence structure without changing the content.
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You raise a good question, redheadpei. I questioned Ken Lizzi on contemporary slang in his fantasy/historical novels, and he defends it. So do other authors. I got used to it after a while. This isn't historical fiction so much a fantasy, right, @worldbuilder? I think that's your "out." It's how things get done in this genre. And if video gaming factors in, it's all the more so. (BTW, I really do believe you'd enjoy "Thick As Thieves," my favorite Ken Lizzi novel.)
I love how you indicate the 5 minutes are up but you keep on going. And yes, some days, it feels so slow. Others, the story gallops away with us.
Well done!
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Thanks Carol. I certainly didn’t want to be critical of @worldbuilder’s word usage as freewriting is to be fun and relaxed. When I saw the word ‘screwed’ I wanted to bring it to his attention about the the speech used during that time period to enhance his excellent knight story.
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It's a good question!
I don't know the answer, either. I only know I've said the same thing to Ken Lizzi. His fantasy settings feel like medieval Europe. "Anything goes" these days, it seems. I don't know all the genres. Now VR, virtual reality, video gaming, is the newest, fastest-growing genre. I've never even played Pac Man. Or Dungeons of Dragons. #Late to the Party!!
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OMG I didn't imagine that ending
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Oh dear, they should have known always to expect the unexpected;) Good work!
It’s half the dynamic duo here with the desiccated prompt for today:
https://steemit.com/hive-161155/@mariannewest/day-845-5-minute-freewrite-wednesday-prompt-dehydrate
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