Everlasting Hero II

a TR flash

 

 

 

When conquistadors rode from the east on frothing horses, he stood on a Tenochtitlan watchtower of hewn stone alongside the King's priests, listening to those rheumy old men mutter prayers and incomprehensible premonitions. 

He shaded his eyes against the setting sun reflecting off the burnished helms and distant armor of the bearded strangers.

Hernándo Cortés Pizarro rode at the fore, bleary eyed with exhaustion, under the colors of the Holy Roman Empire and Charles V, who sought to arrest him for mutiny and disobedience to the throne. At his side was Jeronimo de Aguilar, a soft-spoken Franciscan priest, given to drink but fluent in the tongue of the barbarians and none too mean a swordsman for a man of the cloth.

Their mounts were beasts strange to his eyes, rearing and squealing like the damned, covered over in trappings of leather and metal.

He smiled grimly as he sent word to his celestial majesty Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin. 

The time foretold had come.

He watched Takeda Shingen, the Tiger, slash to the right and left on the field of Sezawa to the terrifying sound of his own laughter.  Takeda's sword arm was bloodied from wrist to bicep, dripping with gore as he lifted it, again and again. 

Men fell before him like shadows at daybreak, fear gripping their hearts and weighting their weapons at their sides.  Brave men ran shrieking, falling to their knees under heaven to weep, as Takeda advanced, jeering and growling like a maniac.

He fingered the hilt of his perfectly balanced blade and let the impetiuous Tiger advance, but Takeda would not pass him, not this day, this hour.

Takeda must face his Dragon, the Tiger must die at Sezawa.

Daimyo Ogasawara Nagatoki had commanded it.

He carried a musket and pike when they wore red coats through Ulster, marching under Bagenal's flag to relieve the fort at Blackwater. 

The bogs had slowed the horse, the thorny pickets delaying them still more, companies separating and men lost in the fens, until the main bulk reached Béal an Átha Buidhe, weary and grimed and ready for such sleep as the ground could give, but alas, it was not to be.

In their exhaustion, they had ridden into and down the breastworks and trenches of the ambush, as tame as spring lambs to the slaughter, and their fate was sealed.

Aodh Mór Ó Néill and Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill sat atop tall horses as they led their men from the woods, first stealthy and then bursting forth, a thousand throats screaming like banshees and arms holding spears high, and all fell hard on the English like a Gaelic storm.

He saw the English artillery stuck in the mud, men sweating and straining at the wheels, before he turned and knelt, fumbling, to load his musket. 

He had a sharp eye and, sighting down the barrel, blew off the head of a man aiming for Henry Bagenal, a lucky shot, just as their gunpowder store went up, exploding like stars in his eyes and near blinding him.

He blinked and got off two more before a spear pierced his lung, leaving him straining for air as the light faded.

To right and to left, Englishmen fell; gasping their last into bog-mud and filth, and the Irish soldiers came after to cut off their gaping Tory heads.

The rest of the redcoats, survivors and one, were evacuated by sea from Newry to Dublin.

He had considerable time aboard the creaking rat-infested ship; enough to wonder what would happen if he simply leapt in to the sea.

The eye of heaven heard and saw, paused, and passed on by.