Chapter 66: Tale 6, Ch 10: Prisoners of War

Initially, the Torin tried to escape, running toward the northeast entrance and back to his vehicle. He’d forgotten Aela had come that direction and when she saw him she knocked him off his feet with a quick pulse from her Golden shield. He willfully walked back to the square after that, ignoring the jeers from the Joya soldiers as he dug a deep grave with angry swings of his borrowed shovel.

When Aela heard an Ierilan squad approach, sending Darren off to dispatch them, one of the Joya soldiers took it as an opportunity to flee. Darren casually shot him in the shin as he ran toward the entrance where the Ierilans were. Aela healed the soldier as the Torins laughed.

It took a long time for the two sides to start talking. It took even longer when Aela and Darren had added four Ierilans, another Joya, and two more Torin soldiers to the burial team.

At first the conversation was nothing more than comparing the Torin and Joya soldiers’ attempts at escape, both sides claiming they were closer to getting away than the other. When the new Torins were added to the rest, they proceeded to only talk amongst themselves, as did the Joyas when the Ierilans joined them. They talked about squads, progress, what they’d been doing. Then they talked of home, families, good food, girls, food they missed, music, food that didn’t come in a can.

Food soon became a common topic with both sides of the square. They compared which country in the Joya Union had the best wine, the Ierilans complaining that their wine was just as good. The Torins boasted about the ground beef sandwiches of their particular regions in Torin, all claiming to have the best cattle.

“Yeah, as if the long-horned steers in Torin could compare to a good brown-back,” an Ierilan soldier remarked, referring to Ieral’s strain of cattle when he’d overhead the Torins’ conversations about beef.

A Torin soldier smirked at the comment. “Have you ever tried a long-horn sandwich?” he asked the Ierilan.

“Nope. Don’t intend to. I don’t want to get stomach poisoning.” His allies laughed at this remark.

The conversation went on like this for a few minutes, neither side giving any ground on who had the best beef. As they argued, the siblings sat and listened to the sounds of the approaching armies on east and west.

“How long do you think?” Darren asked his sister, his gun at the ready.

“Not long,” Aela replied, wishing they had a White with them. “At least I don’t think long. It’s hard to hear over them yelling.”

“We could shut them up.”

“Don’t bother. Let them fight.”

A fireball erupted in the southeast barrier, sending shards of debris skyward as the soldiers in the square dove into the graves to use as cover. A couple instantly ran, hoping the blast would give them cover. Darren shot them. “Stay where you are!” he shouted, aiming his gun to threaten anyone who might run. “See this? This is Gladys. This little honey only stunned those two but the next who runs won’t get up. Gladys has a very short temper. Aela, heal those two while Gladys and I take care of the tank.”

Soldiers of both sides of the war looked incredibly confused by this statement. Aela rolled her eyes and said, “I really wish he’d never have named that thing.”

Aela healed the two would-be escapees as Darren ran to the southeast entrance. He climbed on top of the pile of debris, in sight of the soldiers in the square, and fired repeatedly till a blast erupted from the street further down, the tank exploding and further blocking the entrance.

“I hate tanks,” Darren said as he walked back to the square. “You don’t have a choice with them. Blow ‘em up or get blown up. No chance of taking them alive.” An explosion on the other side of the square signaled that a Joya Union tank had come out front to try and blast its way through the northwest entrance, as did an Ierilan tank on the southwest. “Ah come on!”

A short while later there were two explosions and one partially burnt Ierilan in the square, the tanks dealt with and the only survivor healed.

“Did you see any more while you hit them?” Aela asked after she’d healed the Ierilan tank driver.

“No,” Darren replied. “But I’m sure they’re fanning out around us.”

A sharp buzzing overhead caused everyone in the square to look up. A squadron of Ierilan bombers was heading their way, getting ready to blast the Torins before the advance to the river.

“Darren, shoot into the sky,” Aela said as she pointed her shield in the air and sent all the energy she could into it. It lit up the air like a glistening spotlight.

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“What? I can’t hit anything that far away,” Darren said.

“Just do it.”

Darren rolled his eyes and fired, his red gun flashing brightly as he casually aimed into the air. After his bullets had expired and his sister insisted he reload and fire again, he asked, “Now what was that for?” at the exact moment that the lead bomber turned around.

Aela smiled, saying, “They think there’s more of us. They’re afraid of the Prophets because they think they betrayed us.”

Almost immediately after the Ierilan bombers flew away, a group of Torin fighter-bombers sailed down through the sky. Aela and Darren repeated their motions, Darren actually knocking one low-flying fighter out of the sky, and the Torins turned around, deciding to look for easier targets elsewhere.

“You know, if they ever find out there’s only two of us here they’re going to be very angry,” Darren noted.

“Then let’s make sure they don’t,” Aela said. She noticed the captured soldiers hadn’t emerged from the holes yet, still waiting out the attack from the planes.

At first Aela was going to shout at them to make them start working. Then she saw that in the central grave, a Torin and Joya Union soldier had dove in together. They hadn’t noticed each other yet and still hunched down, waiting for the bombs to fall. Aela decided to let them sit it out together.

“Troops this time,” Darren said, and readied his gun as he ran to the Northeast entrance. “Get ready I think they’re coming from both sides!”

A single Torin soldier came over the top of the debris, put his rifle to his shoulder as he aimed at Darren, then fell as Darren shot him in the hand, the Red bullet knocking him unconscious as his hand bled.

Darren leapt over the debris to the sight of a full squad of a dozen Torin riflemen bearing down on him. They opened fire and Darren did as well.

As the shots from Darren’s pistol rang out in the square, the captured soldiers were forced to stay hunched down in their holes, wary of Aela and her shining Golden shield. When a second full squad of Torins poured through the southeast entrance, Aela was ready for them. So compacted by passing through the debris, half of them fell to the ground when Aela sent a shockwave at them through her shield. Two more waves of golden energy sent all twelve of them flying back and cracked the skulls of two. Aela quickly disarmed the disoriented men then flung them into the square, stunned and confused.

Darren emerged moments later, clutching his arm with blood gushing from it. Aela didn’t say anything as she rushed to her brother’s aid, healing him quickly. “I had to kill a few,” Darren said as he moved his renewed shoulder. “You might want to be careful when you get them.”

Aela nodded and ran to retrieve the unconscious soldiers Darren had fought.

“Why are you capturing them?” the first Torin soldier asked.

Darren didn’t reply, only ran to the southwest entrance when he heard gunfire.

“Hey!” the soldier shouted. “Why aren’t you killing them?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” the Joya Union soldier, standing next to the Torin in the hole, remarked. It was only then that the two noticed each other. At first they balled their fists. But as they sized each other up, they saw the dead bodies around them in the grave, and they lowered their hands.

There was a temporary lull in the fighting. They’d been going on for nearly an hour, both he and his sister rushing off to one entrance or the other whenever gunfire or an explosion signaled coming troops.

The only reason they hadn’t been blown to ashes by artillery was the fact that a couple of soldiers on both sides had been able to run off before being captured, most likely radioing the situation back to there command. It was deemed too risky to kill the Prophets and take out the near fifty soldiers on each side burying bodies in the square, with even more still lying unconscious when Aela had deemed it too risky to fully revive all the soldiers they’d captured. Darren had to knock a few of the more unruly ones unconscious to keep escape out of the walking soldiers’ minds.

“I can’t go all day like this,” Darren said later that afternoon, wiping sweat off his forehead as he sat by his sister in the middle of the fountain.

“I can,” Aela said, inadvertently insulting her brother. “But I don’t think we can hold the two armies in their positions forever.”

“It sounds like they’ve engaged on the other lines.”

Darren and Aela listened for the sounds of bombs and gunfire going off. They could hear the sounds of men dying all around them. From the government district to the northern highway the Torins and the joint Joya Union and Ierilan forces battled in a final push to control the city.

“They must be going through a lot of trouble to avoid us,” Darren noted.

“We are in a central conduit of the city. You can get anywhere from here and it’s well-protected. It’s only a matter of time before one side attacks us,” Aela said.

“Or they don’t know what side we’re on so they’re not going to attack.”

“What, you don’t think they’ve figured out we’re not on anyone’s side?”

Darren shrugged, quickly shouting at the soldiers to move faster as they buried the dead. “They’d have attacked us in a lot bigger force if they did. Right now, they’re only attacking each other.”

Aela cringed as a building crumbled to the south of them, far enough off she couldn’t hear the screams of the soldiers killing each other.

A fighter bomber, a single one flying low on the Torin side, came in quick and turned away just as quickly before Darren had a chance to shoot at it. Right afterward an explosion signaled another tank was on its way from the Torin side.

“Well, back to work,” Darren said, and rushed off. A few minutes later he was dragging another ten unconscious Torins into the square, complaining of the tanks he’d had to destroy. Almost immediately afterward he had to rush off to the south and do pretty much the exact same thing.

“They’re coming faster,” Darren said as his sister helped him retrieve the Ierilan soldiers and pile them in the square.

The conscious soldiers were beginning to look frightened and anxious, meaning the siblings had to watch them closely to make sure they knew escape would be useless. The sight of so many dead in the graves around them was a good deterrent to the soldiers’ willingness to rush out into the city-wide fray without a weapon.

Aela touched her brother’s arm and healed the minor wounds he’d received. “We have to hold out,” she said, hearing gunfire from the east entrances. “They’re coming from the east.”

“And the west,” Darren said, and made sure all eighteen bullets were locked and loaded in his crimson and black pistol.