It was the small victories that Wilhelm savored most. As fate would have it, he managed to put
together a nice string of victories which made him a hero of his
regiment. In the battle of Hanover Gorge, he
accidentally stumbled upon the enemy trying to prepare an ambush for his
team. Always one to act alone, he let
his crossbow sing into the enemy ranks.
Once the enemy had identified their attacker, they pursued him on foot
and horseback. Weaving in and out of the
nearest tree line, he managed to confuse the enemy while blowing his horn to
notify his own regiment of his need.
The enemy was counting on their foe to lead them back to the
encampment where hopefully they would be caught unawares. Their thinking was that in flight, Wilhelm
would flee back to the familiar and safe territory of his men. Wilhelm instead was leading them down into a
gorge which eventually led to a shear mountain wall. Soon, the sounds of his horn died away and he
was trapped. The mounted soldiers pulled
up as they got within sight of the mountain wall. There was no sign of Wilhelm trying to climb
out of the gorge and they know he couldn’t have climbed the mountain without
being seen from this distance.
As the mounted enemy waited for the footmen to catch up,
one by one, they fell to an arrow from Wilhelm’s crossbow. He was prolonging the inevitable, they
thought. Worse for Wilhelm, he was
making them mad. At this point, they
wanted to take him alive and make him pay for the dozens of men felled on this
day. When the last of the footmen
arrived, they place the pike men at the front, intermixed with the mounted
officers. From the rear, the bowman
formed up and marched along. There was
no sign of Wilhelm, and the occasional bolt felling mounted officers
turned into nothing but silence.
As they approached within fifty meters of the wall, the
enemy was surprised when hundreds of bolts rained down on them from all directions. From the top of the gorge and from the rear,
Wilhelm’s soldiers rained death upon their enemy. As the afternoon wore on, the prisoners were
transported to the divisional encampment and the dead were picked clean of
their valuables and their weapons. Not a
single soldier in Wilhelm's regiment was lost.
The night found Wilhelm wandering into Duck Park. The forest cleared into a meadow with
unnaturally glowing blue light. After
removing his mail and armor, he set up his bedroll next to the soothing fountain
that brought him piece. Midway through
the night, the kitten was found snuggling up to Wilhelm’s chest. In the stupor of his dreams, he kitten was a
beautiful woman he would hold tight while he slept.
Strange dreams behind him, he returned to the camp to find
Sir Neil clapping him on the back and boisterously bragging of Wilhelm’s
exploits on the battlefield the previous day.
Throughout all of this, Wilhelm’s mind would only ever take him back to the
meadow in Duck Park.
