The enforced closure of Five Mines Hold
PCs: Derek, J'lor, Lucian, M'khar, Nera, Ownah, Sedgewick
NPCs: G'mal, Conclave guards, Ilonzo (a guard at Five Mines)
A wedding is celebrated, and a seige broken. Five Mines Hold is attacked and defended - and emptied, in the end, of people.
For weeks Five Mines has been under seige, and the holdfolk - renegade, refugee and ordinary - have suffered for it. With no trade in or out, the winter stores designed to support the hold through the snow are rationed carefully; the food must be made to last until crops can be sown again on the mountain slopes, or until the seige is broken. The tension and uncertainty and the sense of being isolated from the world has begun to take its toll on the psychology of the people of Five Mines, and more than a few skirmishes and brawls have been broken up - or instigated - by Derek's guards, a force that wields ever-greater power in this increasingly paranoid, skittish society.
Today, however, is a day for whistling in the dark. The wedding took place in the morning, leaving the greatest part of the day and evening for celebration. The headwoman's workers have set out the best she can spare from the hold's stores, and for once wine and ale and spirits flow relatively freely, a wide variety of qualities and kinds put up over the past couple turns of trading. There has been music: Lucian, once his duties in officiating the ceremony were complete, enlisted the help of those holdfolk with any musical skill to assist in providing tunes danceable and sometimes even merry - quite unlike his usual fare. The celebration started with lunch and has worn on into what will now be dinner, roast and quail put out among a great deal of salted and cured meat, cheese and potatoes and anything else that can be made fit for feasting, and despite the tension the evening has been pleasant for most, even the wary folk who distrust the guard Captain and, by association, his Headwoman bride.
Pleasant, anyway, until now. Maybe it was intended just to be an air show, a little display in honor of the newlyweds. J'lor and a wing comprised mostly of his old cronies from exile and the weyrlings who impressed there took to the air in what seemed to be a routine drill formation, staying low to the ground so as not to awaken too much ire from the forces - including other Weyrs' queens - waiting a few miles outside the mountain mine, blocking the road in and out. It worked; no objections came bearing down on these riders or their mounts, not anyway until they suddenly broke formation and went flying at full speed up the mountainside to the north and west, soaring tight to the ground, the tips of firs below shaking off their coats of snow in the wakes of dragon wings. The Instigator dragonriders, it seems, made a break for it.
What's happened since is a blur. A great thundering announced the invasion: men on runnerback and on foot pouring up the southern road and out of the foothills, coming into Five Mines from every downhill direction and a few uphill ones. Behind and above them, bronzes and browns form practically a net of wings and fury, trying to seal the hold from above. Guards of every kind and in uniforms of every color from Holds near and far run over the grounds and through the hold and even up into the dragonweyr mineshafts like a plague of rats - and over it all there hovers the deep shadow of disapproval, the heavy weight of the foreign queens' minds, casting out hooks for the departed exile dragons and pressing down hard on the wills of those who remain. It is chaos.
The sudden defection of J'lor's wings draws some impressed wows from the crowd, in the half second before they realize this is not a part of the routine. Over at the harper stand, Lucian is concentrating on his music and his haphazardly collected "band" too much to notice the change right away; but when the sounds turned into screams and the guardians of the hold erupted through its borders, it was kind of hard to ignore. The band has dissolved, abandoning their instruments in the interest of personal safety, but Lucian remains. In his case, it is not so much a case of the musician going down with the Titanic as the fact that it is simply a /mess/ down there, with people running about and sometimes hitting each other in their frenzy, and he has this very valuable guitar that he would prefer, very much, to keep safe up on the stand. Thus the harper gets up from his seat, watching the panic from above with an expression of snifty disapproval.
It doesn't take a lot of wisdom to realise that now would be a good time to do one of two things: run and hide or just run. Wisdom, after all, generally convinces people to deter from any sort of violence or reciprocal violence. Of course, it's not as if she's truly done anything wrong. Poor girl. Wrong place at the wrong time and all. Ownah is certainly no sort of threat or Instigator or even Igenite. She's just a laundress, sometimes floor mopper, one time murderess. But no one needs to know that last bit. So, when the chaos starts she does what any sensible young woman would do. She looks for a spot to observe said chaos and determine exactly how she should act from now on. Just in case it's needed she slides a hand into a pocket to pinch at her thigh hard enough to make her eyes water. Poor scared little girl.
The wing of fleeing dragons keep close and low even as they stretch further away. The pressure of the queens cause a few to wobble out of formation and one to drop outright, sinking with a *piff* into the snowy peaks below to hunker there and await further instructions from the gold whose will it obliged. Those that wobbled, pull in again and the blue in the lead tosses back a final message for those fellow Five Mines dragons left behind (though likely it will also be overheard by the others). << Follow! >> There is, in this sudden thought, a burst of icy wind and frigid climes. Or perhaps it is only the anticipation of between, because in the instant following, the wing is gone.
Nera reacts in a manner that either bespeaks the cool-headedness that makes her a strong Headwoman, or else bespeaks some foreknowledge. She's already wading through the milling bodies as the guards of every hue run in to add to the confusion, voice raised to start shouting instructions. Does this make her a target? Perhaps. Her targets seem to be the youngest members of the celebration, the children and teenagers, most of whom were gathered in one spot to inspect a newly released batch of candied sweets. Her red hair is visible, and her tall angularity, as she glances back towards Derek, chin lifted so she can find him above the crowd.
Derek's guards are doing the best they can to hold back the forces of the invasion. They have brutality and meanness on their side, these hardened men who've varyingly lived through torture, exile, and all the other trappings of criminal and marginalized life. They form knots and clusters here and there, knives and fists clashing with those of Conclave's holdsmen, outnumbered but not outspirited. Among them, Derek himself is hard to find; for the moment, the command is in the hands and voice of his lieutenant, the aesthetic curly-haired Sedgewick. At his direction one of the knots spreads thin, forming a line designed to try to clear back enough of the many-coated invading guards that desperate people of Five Mines can make a break for the road, the hills, or for anywhere that might offer protection.
The violence is worst, so far, at the mouth of the pit mine where the road disappears into characterless dirt. There are already men dead there, or dying, the sort of men that have fallen and won't be up again. The other sort surge deeper into the 'bowl' of the mine under the shadows of two dragons, one bronze and one brown, and holdfolk scatter so as not to be in the way as those beasts attempt to find purchase for landing.
<< Stay your flight, wings of Igen, >> comes the clarion voice of G'mal's powerful bronze - not the one who's circling over the mine. His voice comes from farther off, above the mountains, and carries with it the crisp cold of a dragon just emerged from between. << Join them not. Escape is foolish. Wait for our lead, and we shall see you safely home in time. >>
The bronze and brown overhead dive, circle and dive again, so close that their riders' knots can be sighted - one from Fort, one from Ista. On each dive, people below plow away in panic like herdbeasts on the feeding field, but the dragons do not seem inclined to actually land - their goal might seem to be that of herding, and those who ill-fatedly follow their pushes are pressed ever southward toward the road, the mouth of the mine, and Conclave's forces waiting there with chains and shackles, forces ever-growing as dragons pour in from around Pern to join the seige.
And thanks to Sedgewick's efforts, a fair number of Five Miners are getting out, past the confusion. Lucian takes advantage of a brief dwindling in the mess that so displeases him to step down off his stand, and as soon as he does decide to move, the harper is surprisingly quick. Well, he should be, skinny thing that he is. He weaves with decision through the massing crowd, swinging wide around a dive from the Istan brown, decidedly on his way towards the hold. There's less cover, the closer he gets to his goal, but he can hope that a lone man in harper blue won't merit an individual skewering from one of those angry dragons. Guitar cradled tightly to his chest, Lucian dashes to get undercover in the main hold where - if he makes it - he'll lock himself in his room till the dust settles.
The invading forces are starting to show better organization than the defense. A group of guards, mostly Telgari, splits off as a 'peace' force, a loud-throated man hollering out that if everyone will just line up over by the hold's wall, no one will be hurt, we want to be fair about this, we know you're in need, we're here to help... It is a song not unlike the one G'mal's bronze sings, though the weyrleader's dragon is selecting out as best he can his own Igenite rebels, offering relief and peace to those who betrayed him, if only they'll stay their place and hold back their friends as best they can in the here and now.
The curly-haired lieutenant has other orders he'll follow, rather than the ones shouted by Telgari. The line of Derek's guards holds and surges up to meet the next wave of outsiders. Blades flash and ranks close as some of the guards begin to fall. But a good number of those attacking fall as well, and of the knots of Derek's men, one more joins the fighting line while another begins to move towards and flank Nera and the women and children she's gathered around her.
Derek's appearance seems sudden, as if he's just materialized inside one of those knots of guards brawling with the invasion. That knot's having relatively good success, bloodying faces and breaking noses and knifing ribs, and all at once the Five Mines part of it overwhelms the others, practically stampeding out over and around the bodies of their enemies. The softspoken order of the mustachioed man is not so loud that it can be heard but by those closest to him - but they take up the call and soon the forces are echoing the chant. "Spears," they call out, "Spears, SPEARS."
But Derek is impatient, his small eyes even now gray with a sick apathy. He unbelts from the man beside him one of the daggers they wear at all hours now - and turns it with a toss of his hand, then hurls it with a hiss of effort over the heads of his men. Many of them watch. Many of them see, when that blade buries itself between the flank and the chest of the diving bronze.
The dragon screams, wounded though not mortally, and as he rises out of reach of further blades that might come his way the invaders below surge forward. They have a target now, and a sense of duty they wouldn't be able to put words to if asked. The dark form of Derek in his black wedding coat disappears, he and the men closest to him swarmed by furious guards of the Holds of Pern.
One of leaders of the Stone order, a chubby man who used to go around in fine brocade vests before he became locked up with renegades and exiles, narrowly avoids being knifed by one of the Renegades who, no doubt, counts himself among the many people screwed over by this particular man. In a panic now that his own people have turned on him, the man flees towards the front line and the guards coming in to invade Five Mines, hands waving in his head in a gesture of supplication that is abruptly cut short when someone - it's hard to tell, with him mixed up with both Derek's and the Conclave's men - succeeds in putting a knife into him, and he falls with a high-pitched, startled scream.
Large numbers of Five Miners are declining the invitation to form an orderly queue, though some are inclined to obey, and as they try to push in the direction of of the hold's wall, they add to the confusion. Nera lifts her head, shouting something to the bodyguard forming up near her that's drowned out amidst the chaos. She's forsaken the traditional red of the bride -- perhaps she knew how ill it would look with her red hair, or perhaps she considers herself too old, or perhaps Five Mines simply could not yield up anything appropriate for her to wear. She's marked out only by a red sash, over the best of her usual, practical dresses, and rapidly, a slash of crimson is becoming something that does not draw the eye for its strangeness at all. She lifts her head, shouting words that are drowned out, and that are subsumed by a wordless shout of distress as Derek is swarmed under. She stands, stock-still for a moment amidst the sea of movement, her mouth pressing into a straight, hard line. Then her gaze lifts, not to the dragons above, but to the place at which J'lor and his wing vanished. Then she turns, and raises her voice and her arms, herding the children away between two buildings, as the guards hold off pursuers. The children have been drilled, perhaps, for they know where they're going. They run, the Headwoman and a small handful of other women running with them, and disappearing from sight.
They're not Igenites, but a few dragons are quick to broadcast compliance. As identities are sorted by those dragons not too distraught by the monstrous attack on their bronze ally, it becomes clear who these dragons are: former weyrlings, abducted from their homes a long time ago and forced to stand for the Instigator clutch. Quick orders are relayed to their riders, who begin dodging through the crowd to join that orderly line of those who yield, while their dragons scramble into the safety of their weyrs and there remain, bellies and chins pressed flat to the stone in a gesture of submission even while their whirling white-yellow eyes keep a terrified look out for anyone who might have gotten an idea from Derek's spear-throw.
M'khar jogs as best he can through the confusedly milling crowd far from those Telgari enforcers, skirting the action to join up with a knot of his riders doing the same. His trusty knife has a chance to serve him now, flipped out and carried at his side, though that chance is still only a potential; it's seen no fighting yet. A few wilting faces are addressed in a yell that carries over the shouts and cries that press in on them. "Are you listening to him?!" he demands, voice harsh with adrenaline. Mute guilt answers him and a few fearful riders begin to wander wall-wards. The brownrider catches one by the arm of his jacket and hauls him back forcefully, gaining the attention, at least, of the others. "They murdered us in Threadfall, now they're trying to do it to our faces," a finger jabs in the upward at the attacking dragons, and one, as if on cue, drops in a herding swoop just to their right, "and you're just going to let them?" He spends a beat glaring them all down. "We came here to fight for what we believe and now we're going to do just that!" The scream of a dragon interrupts him, commands the gaze of each one of them, but M'khar's yelling continues undaunted. "Come on! Now! Now!" The rallied few follow him as he charges into the fray, but a few, unwilling still, melt back toward the complying herd.
Derek falls, or so it appears to those of his men looking back as the outsiders swarm him. The shouts of "Spears! Spears!" erupt into a wordless roar of outrage as their captain is lost, and their fury doubles. But where among them is the lieutenant, so vocal and boisterously beside his men only moments before? Sedgewick's curly head can perhaps be seen just once more as he runs northwards and towards the same cold path that J'lor's wing soared above.
The spears have come, too late for the one who ordered them, but not too late to prove their use. Some choose the saner route of simply using them as longer pointed weapons. But one dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed man, known as a member of the Captain's inner circle, launches his weapon towards its originally intended target. A brown dragon roars with pain and outrage as the spear sinks into his shoulder.
Somewhere in the milling masses of bodies, some moving toward the hold to submit to promised peace and safety, some plowing toward the hills where Nera and the children fled, a young woman moves about. Ownah seems to be trying to get into the lines of the surrendered, but through her bleary eyes she cannot quite find the way, and keeps getting shoved upstream by the current of those attempting to escape. Farther and farther from the hold proper she's pressed, flailing a little and looking around wide-eyed for salvation, but not quite troubled enough to call for help or otherwise give her position away.
The crack of between means nothing in this mess, and even a few golds arriving in the sky outside Five Mines don't register in the muddled psionic mess that's swarming around the dragons. Not until those golds concentrate their efforts and suddenly, a few of M'khar's remaining loyal riders suddenly stumble back, hands to their heads, while the squeals of their dragons sound across the mountains. << Cease immediately, >> comes the cold command from G'mal's Rianeth, focused on those Igenites who still resist.
M'khar draws up short along with his Igenite fellows, his knife nearly careening into a bumbling man that brushes past him in his confusion. A growl of anger and frustration rises up, and he yells back at the other, visibly cowed riders. "No! Don't let them," he orders them, face contorted with the effort that bit of rebellion takes him. He stumbles rather than charges another few steps forward, bumping into a Telgari guard, who gets the brunt of the knife handle wrapped in knuckles rather than its blade.
There's more dragons now, browns and bronzes mostly - the queens won't risk entering, not after what's been done to the first two that invaded the air directly over the chaos in the pit mine. But their brethen soar in, counting on numbers and the beating of their wings to cow the people below, diving and dodging every time there's any sign of enemies with those spears.
The sky isn't the only battlefield that's changing. The mix of people rushing about in the mine has changed. There are very few women and no children left; they have either surrendered or fled under guard of Sedgewick's men. Many of the 'civilian' men who remain have joined the battle or the stolen weyrlings who're giving themselves up; some march south to the road with their hands in the air, others take up knives and daggers from fallen bodies and turn with them upon the invading forces. A call goes up, 'For Five Mines! For Lord Odern!' but after a couple of echoes fails to gain further momentum. The tide is changing. Where resistance survives it is brutal, deadly resistance, fought for with blade and blood. But resistance is shrinking, and those who've been proud to call themselves the guard of Five Mines number fewer and fewer as the men who were once Derek's are by turns killed or captured and dragged south, a black-haired head among them.
It starts with the civilians. Having joined up with the regular guards in some frenzy of courage or desperation, they fight fiercely at first, but their lack of training soon starts to show. The Conclave guards shove them back, pushing holes into their lines until a few, then a mass of them begin to flee. Once they've turned their backs there's no stopping the crush of invaders, and even the most stalwart defenders must throw down their meager weapons in the face of that storm. One Telgari guard gets lucky, probably without knowing it, and blocks a blow from Igen's runaway M'khar, grabbing the arm that attacked him and following up with one of his own. A sharp, trained blow takes M'khar across the jaw. Meanwhile, Igenites on every side are stumbling from the force put on their dragons, and the guards that they were facing down flood over them. One of them, in passing, helps his fellow when he sees him grappling with a rebel: the man knocks M'khar on the head with the butt of his blade, then runs on, leaving it to someone else to truss the now unconscious brownrider. Five Mines is overrun.
The foreign queens farther down the road add their pressure to that of the Igen leadership, suppressing the remaining rebel Igenites. As suddenly as it began, it's over. This is abundantly clear, essentially to everyone, at the same time. There are no choices left - surrender is required. The tail end of the flood of people trying to escape into the mountains is separated from those who have fled successfully by a chain of guards aiming to round up the rest of the renegades, and desperation leads these last few people to flail and scream at the guards who hold them back. Their fate seems, like the fates of all others resisting, sealed - until an exile brown, one of only two of the returned Instigators who didn't flee with J'lor in the beginning, comes bearing down all of a sudden on the little chain of guards. Before the word can get back to the queens outside that there's someone left who's not from Igen to suppress, the rider's scooped up a handful of desperate folk by their flailing hands and one last dragon leaps skyward, vanishing instantly with his bevy of passengers clinging to straps and sails. It is the last stand Five Mines makes, and after it, a sickly quiet descends over the living, the captured, and the dead.
In the days following, Five Mines Hold is searched repeatedly by guards and dragonriders. A number of renegades are rounded up, but the mountain cave which houses Nera, the children and a few other escapees is not found. It will not be found until late spring, when all that remains there are a few broken tools, bones and other discards of daily life.
Those who were not present for the Five Mines scene may assume (and bbpost or write vignettes to such effect) that their characters:
• fled with J'lor to HRW at the beginning of the battle (dragonriders only);
• fled into the hills with Nera and the children, and are now scattered around northwestern Pern, keeping low profiles and trying to make new lives (non-riders only);
• escaped to HRW with the last brownrider who made a late exit at the end of the scene;
• were captured by Conclave forces and will be held pending trial (ask staff if you have questions about how your character will be treated and/or tried); or
• died in battle.
NPCs: G'mal, Conclave guards, Ilonzo (a guard at Five Mines)
A wedding is celebrated, and a seige broken. Five Mines Hold is attacked and defended - and emptied, in the end, of people.
For weeks Five Mines has been under seige, and the holdfolk - renegade, refugee and ordinary - have suffered for it. With no trade in or out, the winter stores designed to support the hold through the snow are rationed carefully; the food must be made to last until crops can be sown again on the mountain slopes, or until the seige is broken. The tension and uncertainty and the sense of being isolated from the world has begun to take its toll on the psychology of the people of Five Mines, and more than a few skirmishes and brawls have been broken up - or instigated - by Derek's guards, a force that wields ever-greater power in this increasingly paranoid, skittish society.
Today, however, is a day for whistling in the dark. The wedding took place in the morning, leaving the greatest part of the day and evening for celebration. The headwoman's workers have set out the best she can spare from the hold's stores, and for once wine and ale and spirits flow relatively freely, a wide variety of qualities and kinds put up over the past couple turns of trading. There has been music: Lucian, once his duties in officiating the ceremony were complete, enlisted the help of those holdfolk with any musical skill to assist in providing tunes danceable and sometimes even merry - quite unlike his usual fare. The celebration started with lunch and has worn on into what will now be dinner, roast and quail put out among a great deal of salted and cured meat, cheese and potatoes and anything else that can be made fit for feasting, and despite the tension the evening has been pleasant for most, even the wary folk who distrust the guard Captain and, by association, his Headwoman bride.
Pleasant, anyway, until now. Maybe it was intended just to be an air show, a little display in honor of the newlyweds. J'lor and a wing comprised mostly of his old cronies from exile and the weyrlings who impressed there took to the air in what seemed to be a routine drill formation, staying low to the ground so as not to awaken too much ire from the forces - including other Weyrs' queens - waiting a few miles outside the mountain mine, blocking the road in and out. It worked; no objections came bearing down on these riders or their mounts, not anyway until they suddenly broke formation and went flying at full speed up the mountainside to the north and west, soaring tight to the ground, the tips of firs below shaking off their coats of snow in the wakes of dragon wings. The Instigator dragonriders, it seems, made a break for it.
What's happened since is a blur. A great thundering announced the invasion: men on runnerback and on foot pouring up the southern road and out of the foothills, coming into Five Mines from every downhill direction and a few uphill ones. Behind and above them, bronzes and browns form practically a net of wings and fury, trying to seal the hold from above. Guards of every kind and in uniforms of every color from Holds near and far run over the grounds and through the hold and even up into the dragonweyr mineshafts like a plague of rats - and over it all there hovers the deep shadow of disapproval, the heavy weight of the foreign queens' minds, casting out hooks for the departed exile dragons and pressing down hard on the wills of those who remain. It is chaos.
The sudden defection of J'lor's wings draws some impressed wows from the crowd, in the half second before they realize this is not a part of the routine. Over at the harper stand, Lucian is concentrating on his music and his haphazardly collected "band" too much to notice the change right away; but when the sounds turned into screams and the guardians of the hold erupted through its borders, it was kind of hard to ignore. The band has dissolved, abandoning their instruments in the interest of personal safety, but Lucian remains. In his case, it is not so much a case of the musician going down with the Titanic as the fact that it is simply a /mess/ down there, with people running about and sometimes hitting each other in their frenzy, and he has this very valuable guitar that he would prefer, very much, to keep safe up on the stand. Thus the harper gets up from his seat, watching the panic from above with an expression of snifty disapproval.
It doesn't take a lot of wisdom to realise that now would be a good time to do one of two things: run and hide or just run. Wisdom, after all, generally convinces people to deter from any sort of violence or reciprocal violence. Of course, it's not as if she's truly done anything wrong. Poor girl. Wrong place at the wrong time and all. Ownah is certainly no sort of threat or Instigator or even Igenite. She's just a laundress, sometimes floor mopper, one time murderess. But no one needs to know that last bit. So, when the chaos starts she does what any sensible young woman would do. She looks for a spot to observe said chaos and determine exactly how she should act from now on. Just in case it's needed she slides a hand into a pocket to pinch at her thigh hard enough to make her eyes water. Poor scared little girl.
The wing of fleeing dragons keep close and low even as they stretch further away. The pressure of the queens cause a few to wobble out of formation and one to drop outright, sinking with a *piff* into the snowy peaks below to hunker there and await further instructions from the gold whose will it obliged. Those that wobbled, pull in again and the blue in the lead tosses back a final message for those fellow Five Mines dragons left behind (though likely it will also be overheard by the others). << Follow! >> There is, in this sudden thought, a burst of icy wind and frigid climes. Or perhaps it is only the anticipation of between, because in the instant following, the wing is gone.
Nera reacts in a manner that either bespeaks the cool-headedness that makes her a strong Headwoman, or else bespeaks some foreknowledge. She's already wading through the milling bodies as the guards of every hue run in to add to the confusion, voice raised to start shouting instructions. Does this make her a target? Perhaps. Her targets seem to be the youngest members of the celebration, the children and teenagers, most of whom were gathered in one spot to inspect a newly released batch of candied sweets. Her red hair is visible, and her tall angularity, as she glances back towards Derek, chin lifted so she can find him above the crowd.
Derek's guards are doing the best they can to hold back the forces of the invasion. They have brutality and meanness on their side, these hardened men who've varyingly lived through torture, exile, and all the other trappings of criminal and marginalized life. They form knots and clusters here and there, knives and fists clashing with those of Conclave's holdsmen, outnumbered but not outspirited. Among them, Derek himself is hard to find; for the moment, the command is in the hands and voice of his lieutenant, the aesthetic curly-haired Sedgewick. At his direction one of the knots spreads thin, forming a line designed to try to clear back enough of the many-coated invading guards that desperate people of Five Mines can make a break for the road, the hills, or for anywhere that might offer protection.
The violence is worst, so far, at the mouth of the pit mine where the road disappears into characterless dirt. There are already men dead there, or dying, the sort of men that have fallen and won't be up again. The other sort surge deeper into the 'bowl' of the mine under the shadows of two dragons, one bronze and one brown, and holdfolk scatter so as not to be in the way as those beasts attempt to find purchase for landing.
<< Stay your flight, wings of Igen, >> comes the clarion voice of G'mal's powerful bronze - not the one who's circling over the mine. His voice comes from farther off, above the mountains, and carries with it the crisp cold of a dragon just emerged from between. << Join them not. Escape is foolish. Wait for our lead, and we shall see you safely home in time. >>
The bronze and brown overhead dive, circle and dive again, so close that their riders' knots can be sighted - one from Fort, one from Ista. On each dive, people below plow away in panic like herdbeasts on the feeding field, but the dragons do not seem inclined to actually land - their goal might seem to be that of herding, and those who ill-fatedly follow their pushes are pressed ever southward toward the road, the mouth of the mine, and Conclave's forces waiting there with chains and shackles, forces ever-growing as dragons pour in from around Pern to join the seige.
And thanks to Sedgewick's efforts, a fair number of Five Miners are getting out, past the confusion. Lucian takes advantage of a brief dwindling in the mess that so displeases him to step down off his stand, and as soon as he does decide to move, the harper is surprisingly quick. Well, he should be, skinny thing that he is. He weaves with decision through the massing crowd, swinging wide around a dive from the Istan brown, decidedly on his way towards the hold. There's less cover, the closer he gets to his goal, but he can hope that a lone man in harper blue won't merit an individual skewering from one of those angry dragons. Guitar cradled tightly to his chest, Lucian dashes to get undercover in the main hold where - if he makes it - he'll lock himself in his room till the dust settles.
The invading forces are starting to show better organization than the defense. A group of guards, mostly Telgari, splits off as a 'peace' force, a loud-throated man hollering out that if everyone will just line up over by the hold's wall, no one will be hurt, we want to be fair about this, we know you're in need, we're here to help... It is a song not unlike the one G'mal's bronze sings, though the weyrleader's dragon is selecting out as best he can his own Igenite rebels, offering relief and peace to those who betrayed him, if only they'll stay their place and hold back their friends as best they can in the here and now.
The curly-haired lieutenant has other orders he'll follow, rather than the ones shouted by Telgari. The line of Derek's guards holds and surges up to meet the next wave of outsiders. Blades flash and ranks close as some of the guards begin to fall. But a good number of those attacking fall as well, and of the knots of Derek's men, one more joins the fighting line while another begins to move towards and flank Nera and the women and children she's gathered around her.
Derek's appearance seems sudden, as if he's just materialized inside one of those knots of guards brawling with the invasion. That knot's having relatively good success, bloodying faces and breaking noses and knifing ribs, and all at once the Five Mines part of it overwhelms the others, practically stampeding out over and around the bodies of their enemies. The softspoken order of the mustachioed man is not so loud that it can be heard but by those closest to him - but they take up the call and soon the forces are echoing the chant. "Spears," they call out, "Spears, SPEARS."
But Derek is impatient, his small eyes even now gray with a sick apathy. He unbelts from the man beside him one of the daggers they wear at all hours now - and turns it with a toss of his hand, then hurls it with a hiss of effort over the heads of his men. Many of them watch. Many of them see, when that blade buries itself between the flank and the chest of the diving bronze.
The dragon screams, wounded though not mortally, and as he rises out of reach of further blades that might come his way the invaders below surge forward. They have a target now, and a sense of duty they wouldn't be able to put words to if asked. The dark form of Derek in his black wedding coat disappears, he and the men closest to him swarmed by furious guards of the Holds of Pern.
One of leaders of the Stone order, a chubby man who used to go around in fine brocade vests before he became locked up with renegades and exiles, narrowly avoids being knifed by one of the Renegades who, no doubt, counts himself among the many people screwed over by this particular man. In a panic now that his own people have turned on him, the man flees towards the front line and the guards coming in to invade Five Mines, hands waving in his head in a gesture of supplication that is abruptly cut short when someone - it's hard to tell, with him mixed up with both Derek's and the Conclave's men - succeeds in putting a knife into him, and he falls with a high-pitched, startled scream.
Large numbers of Five Miners are declining the invitation to form an orderly queue, though some are inclined to obey, and as they try to push in the direction of of the hold's wall, they add to the confusion. Nera lifts her head, shouting something to the bodyguard forming up near her that's drowned out amidst the chaos. She's forsaken the traditional red of the bride -- perhaps she knew how ill it would look with her red hair, or perhaps she considers herself too old, or perhaps Five Mines simply could not yield up anything appropriate for her to wear. She's marked out only by a red sash, over the best of her usual, practical dresses, and rapidly, a slash of crimson is becoming something that does not draw the eye for its strangeness at all. She lifts her head, shouting words that are drowned out, and that are subsumed by a wordless shout of distress as Derek is swarmed under. She stands, stock-still for a moment amidst the sea of movement, her mouth pressing into a straight, hard line. Then her gaze lifts, not to the dragons above, but to the place at which J'lor and his wing vanished. Then she turns, and raises her voice and her arms, herding the children away between two buildings, as the guards hold off pursuers. The children have been drilled, perhaps, for they know where they're going. They run, the Headwoman and a small handful of other women running with them, and disappearing from sight.
They're not Igenites, but a few dragons are quick to broadcast compliance. As identities are sorted by those dragons not too distraught by the monstrous attack on their bronze ally, it becomes clear who these dragons are: former weyrlings, abducted from their homes a long time ago and forced to stand for the Instigator clutch. Quick orders are relayed to their riders, who begin dodging through the crowd to join that orderly line of those who yield, while their dragons scramble into the safety of their weyrs and there remain, bellies and chins pressed flat to the stone in a gesture of submission even while their whirling white-yellow eyes keep a terrified look out for anyone who might have gotten an idea from Derek's spear-throw.
M'khar jogs as best he can through the confusedly milling crowd far from those Telgari enforcers, skirting the action to join up with a knot of his riders doing the same. His trusty knife has a chance to serve him now, flipped out and carried at his side, though that chance is still only a potential; it's seen no fighting yet. A few wilting faces are addressed in a yell that carries over the shouts and cries that press in on them. "Are you listening to him?!" he demands, voice harsh with adrenaline. Mute guilt answers him and a few fearful riders begin to wander wall-wards. The brownrider catches one by the arm of his jacket and hauls him back forcefully, gaining the attention, at least, of the others. "They murdered us in Threadfall, now they're trying to do it to our faces," a finger jabs in the upward at the attacking dragons, and one, as if on cue, drops in a herding swoop just to their right, "and you're just going to let them?" He spends a beat glaring them all down. "We came here to fight for what we believe and now we're going to do just that!" The scream of a dragon interrupts him, commands the gaze of each one of them, but M'khar's yelling continues undaunted. "Come on! Now! Now!" The rallied few follow him as he charges into the fray, but a few, unwilling still, melt back toward the complying herd.
Derek falls, or so it appears to those of his men looking back as the outsiders swarm him. The shouts of "Spears! Spears!" erupt into a wordless roar of outrage as their captain is lost, and their fury doubles. But where among them is the lieutenant, so vocal and boisterously beside his men only moments before? Sedgewick's curly head can perhaps be seen just once more as he runs northwards and towards the same cold path that J'lor's wing soared above.
The spears have come, too late for the one who ordered them, but not too late to prove their use. Some choose the saner route of simply using them as longer pointed weapons. But one dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed man, known as a member of the Captain's inner circle, launches his weapon towards its originally intended target. A brown dragon roars with pain and outrage as the spear sinks into his shoulder.
Somewhere in the milling masses of bodies, some moving toward the hold to submit to promised peace and safety, some plowing toward the hills where Nera and the children fled, a young woman moves about. Ownah seems to be trying to get into the lines of the surrendered, but through her bleary eyes she cannot quite find the way, and keeps getting shoved upstream by the current of those attempting to escape. Farther and farther from the hold proper she's pressed, flailing a little and looking around wide-eyed for salvation, but not quite troubled enough to call for help or otherwise give her position away.
The crack of between means nothing in this mess, and even a few golds arriving in the sky outside Five Mines don't register in the muddled psionic mess that's swarming around the dragons. Not until those golds concentrate their efforts and suddenly, a few of M'khar's remaining loyal riders suddenly stumble back, hands to their heads, while the squeals of their dragons sound across the mountains. << Cease immediately, >> comes the cold command from G'mal's Rianeth, focused on those Igenites who still resist.
M'khar draws up short along with his Igenite fellows, his knife nearly careening into a bumbling man that brushes past him in his confusion. A growl of anger and frustration rises up, and he yells back at the other, visibly cowed riders. "No! Don't let them," he orders them, face contorted with the effort that bit of rebellion takes him. He stumbles rather than charges another few steps forward, bumping into a Telgari guard, who gets the brunt of the knife handle wrapped in knuckles rather than its blade.
There's more dragons now, browns and bronzes mostly - the queens won't risk entering, not after what's been done to the first two that invaded the air directly over the chaos in the pit mine. But their brethen soar in, counting on numbers and the beating of their wings to cow the people below, diving and dodging every time there's any sign of enemies with those spears.
The sky isn't the only battlefield that's changing. The mix of people rushing about in the mine has changed. There are very few women and no children left; they have either surrendered or fled under guard of Sedgewick's men. Many of the 'civilian' men who remain have joined the battle or the stolen weyrlings who're giving themselves up; some march south to the road with their hands in the air, others take up knives and daggers from fallen bodies and turn with them upon the invading forces. A call goes up, 'For Five Mines! For Lord Odern!' but after a couple of echoes fails to gain further momentum. The tide is changing. Where resistance survives it is brutal, deadly resistance, fought for with blade and blood. But resistance is shrinking, and those who've been proud to call themselves the guard of Five Mines number fewer and fewer as the men who were once Derek's are by turns killed or captured and dragged south, a black-haired head among them.
It starts with the civilians. Having joined up with the regular guards in some frenzy of courage or desperation, they fight fiercely at first, but their lack of training soon starts to show. The Conclave guards shove them back, pushing holes into their lines until a few, then a mass of them begin to flee. Once they've turned their backs there's no stopping the crush of invaders, and even the most stalwart defenders must throw down their meager weapons in the face of that storm. One Telgari guard gets lucky, probably without knowing it, and blocks a blow from Igen's runaway M'khar, grabbing the arm that attacked him and following up with one of his own. A sharp, trained blow takes M'khar across the jaw. Meanwhile, Igenites on every side are stumbling from the force put on their dragons, and the guards that they were facing down flood over them. One of them, in passing, helps his fellow when he sees him grappling with a rebel: the man knocks M'khar on the head with the butt of his blade, then runs on, leaving it to someone else to truss the now unconscious brownrider. Five Mines is overrun.
The foreign queens farther down the road add their pressure to that of the Igen leadership, suppressing the remaining rebel Igenites. As suddenly as it began, it's over. This is abundantly clear, essentially to everyone, at the same time. There are no choices left - surrender is required. The tail end of the flood of people trying to escape into the mountains is separated from those who have fled successfully by a chain of guards aiming to round up the rest of the renegades, and desperation leads these last few people to flail and scream at the guards who hold them back. Their fate seems, like the fates of all others resisting, sealed - until an exile brown, one of only two of the returned Instigators who didn't flee with J'lor in the beginning, comes bearing down all of a sudden on the little chain of guards. Before the word can get back to the queens outside that there's someone left who's not from Igen to suppress, the rider's scooped up a handful of desperate folk by their flailing hands and one last dragon leaps skyward, vanishing instantly with his bevy of passengers clinging to straps and sails. It is the last stand Five Mines makes, and after it, a sickly quiet descends over the living, the captured, and the dead.
In the days following, Five Mines Hold is searched repeatedly by guards and dragonriders. A number of renegades are rounded up, but the mountain cave which houses Nera, the children and a few other escapees is not found. It will not be found until late spring, when all that remains there are a few broken tools, bones and other discards of daily life.
Those who were not present for the Five Mines scene may assume (and bbpost or write vignettes to such effect) that their characters:
• fled with J'lor to HRW at the beginning of the battle (dragonriders only);
• fled into the hills with Nera and the children, and are now scattered around northwestern Pern, keeping low profiles and trying to make new lives (non-riders only);
• escaped to HRW with the last brownrider who made a late exit at the end of the scene;
• were captured by Conclave forces and will be held pending trial (ask staff if you have questions about how your character will be treated and/or tried); or
• died in battle.