Note: This story is an attempt at describing what the start of the Trolloc Wars might have looked like. It is consistent with known sources but the secret histories in Tar Valon are likely to be the only place where the true stories are told.

The Mountains of Dhoom had stood for a thousand years as a bulwark between light and dark. Since the time of the Breaking, when the madness of male Aes Sedai had torn the world asunder and reared the entire mountain range from the ground, it had served as a barrier. It was penetrable, and passes were known, but men rarely ventured into the passes, preferring instead to guard them against the shadow’s return.

Not all of the passes were guarded, however. A mere millennium since the Breaking had allowed the numbers of men to prosper, yet there were still vast tracts of the world which had returned to wilderness. Fully half of the Eastern length of the Mountains were nominally bordered by Aramealle, but even with the capital at Mafal Dadaranell, a traveler could skirt the foothills of the Mountains for many days without seeing any sign of human settlement.

Besides, for nearly a century, the passes from the Mountains of Dhoom had been silent. Trolloc raids became less frequent, then infrequent, then rare. Men began to hope that the constant threat from the Shadow had passed. The passes leading down from the mountains were watched, but the watchers lost their sense of imminent danger.

So it was that at the end of a long, cold winter, few noticed the initial trickle of trollocs making their way through difficult and little-used passes, well to the west of Mafal Dadaranell, but well to the east of the Jaramide border. Even when the trickle became a flood, and farms and villages began to be overrun, the trollocs killed with such efficiency that none were left to tell the tale. Flocks of ravens hunting overhead saw to it that no pigeons carried their messages. In the course of a month, nearly a million trollocs filtered their way through the mountains into staging camps set up in the mud amidst the spring thaw. Thousands of myrddraal accompanied them, with hundreds of Dreadlords and Draghkar. A mighty army, all but unnoticed.

They had not been assembled long before their first, decisive move. The trollocs had been driven over the mountains in order to kill, and they became restless in encampments. They sought to attack smaller communities, villages and towns, but this would just result in warnings to the capital. The extinguishment of a couple of farms and flyspeck villages meant nothing, but attacks on larger settlements could not go unnoticed. No. A large, decisive thrust against Mafal Dadaranell was called for.

Chiia A’Daran, once Chiia Sedai, secretly of the Black, was in command. At her order, a million trollocs, driven on by vicious myrddraal, flowed across the land. The closer they came to the capital, the more eager they became for blood. They came within sight of the capital in mid-afternoon. Dawn would have been better, but the trollocs were now an avalanche, and not even the Dreadlord Chiia could slow them.

The men of Aramaelle fought well. They managed to get the gates of their city closed in time, but they were outnumbered nearly one hundred to one by their attackers, and much of their strength was deployed against an attack from the north. An attack from the west was unexpected, and such was the size of the dark army that any hope of help from Almoren – or Tar Valon – was soon cut off. Worse, the city was without resident Aes Sedai, and those who were in the city were no match, in strength or viciousness, for a dreadlord.

The trolloc army rushed straight at the walls of Mafal Dadaranell, and the trolloc wars had begun.

~~

Andanar was bored. He had been on watch now for four hours, by the bells, and had two more hours to go. Two more hours of wandering listlessly back and forth on the walls of the keep. Two more hours of occasionally scanning the horizon for an attack which had never come. Not in hundreds of years had Mafal Dadaranell been attacked. He kicked at a stone, which flew in an arc over the parapet, and down into the drymoat below. Two more hours.

The darkening of the horizon was a mere smudge at first, not enough to attract the attention of even the most diligent watcher. Yet as Andanar paced back and forth, the smudge grew imperceptibly. Five minutes later it was a definite darkening, enough to attract his attention, and that of the man on the next tower. He peered out. It wasn’t just the shadow of a cloud on the land – the sky was a clear blue. What could it be?

The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he shivered. Light. Was it? Oh, peace, it was. An army was rushing towards the city. An attack by the nation of Jaramide was unthinkable. That left only one option. The shadow. Without warning.

He unsheathed his sword and rushed to a nearby gong, striking it time and time again with the butt. Moments later, the gong of the next tower rang. And the next. And the next. Within a single minute, every resident of Mafal Dadaranell knew they were under attack.

In the palace, King Radan was almost fully into his armour as his generals arrived. “Tell me,” he said. A man of few words, especially under circumstances such as these.

A large, grim faced man stepped forward slightly. “A single army is attacking from the west. Trollocs. It is difficult to tell their numbers because they are still flowing over the horizon. So far, I would estimate they outnumber us ten to one.”

“Our defences?”

“Every man who can draw a bow is posted at the towers. Catapults are being mounted in the squares, with oil-barrels ready to launch if … when … they get close enough. The gates are locked, other than the south gate which is open for the evacuation.”

“How long?”

“Perhaps two hours. Trollocs move quickly, and there are myrddraal driving them. It will take them four hours or so beyond that to encircle us. We’ll be in a siege by nightfall.

“The evacuation?”

“We have always assumed the shadow would attack from the north. The south gates were opened at the sound of the bells, and every horse which can gallop has either left, or is about to. Most of the women and children are now fleeing. We will leave the gate open another hour, then anyone who remains will have to wait with us.”

A door opened and another man entered. There was no salute, no bowing or scraping. Radan forbade it during battle – there was too much else to do. The man spoke. “They are still coming over the horizon, my King. It is pointless trying to even count them.”

“Can we hold?”

The King’s final staccato question hung in the air. Nobody wanted to answer it. The silence stretched on for a few seconds, before Radan himself broke it. “That is the way it is, then. Let us go.”

Surrounding Mafal Dadaranell were several miles of cleared land. Waist high trenches had been dug at irregular intervals from the length of a good bowshot away from the gates. They were filled with spikes. They would not stop an advancing army, of course, but they would slow it as the enemy moved around the trenches. At least, that was the theory.

The trollocs, however, had no intention of waiting outside arrowshot and commencing a siege. They flowed on, directly towards the city.

The front row of trollocs plunged straight into the trenches without even seeming to see them, and those behind were unable to slow or to avoid the trenches. The massive press of a million shadowed beasts behind them drove them forward. Soon the trenches were piled with Trolloc dead, and others simply ran over the top of them. They were within arrowshot now, though, and the sound of ten thousand bowstrings made the air literally throb. There was no need for the archers to aim – there were so many trollocs down there that it was impossible to miss killing one of them.

Those leading fists of trollocs were paying a fearful price, but there was nowhere for them to turn back. Even the myrddraal were in range now, and here and there one of the arrows found the Eyeless, and soon-to-be-dead shapes flailed around them with their dark swords, wreaking further carnage.

Radan surveyed the scene from an inner tower, a high tower which gave him an excellent view of the battlefield. The south gates had been locked, and the frontal assault of the trollocs had bought the fleeing evacuees more time. Normal practice would have been to encircle the city at a range just beyond bowshot, which would have brought the trollocs round to the southern side of the city within hours. As it was, the main thrust of the trolloc army had simply crashed into the western wall. Sheer numbers meant the trollocs would soon be flanking the city, but at the wall, not at bowshot range.

Radan was watching the incoming army for signs of siege engines, but there appeared to be none. He looked up at the man next to him. “We may hold. How do they mean to breach the walls? Even a million trollocs will not be able to tear down a wall by main force, under fire. We must have killed twenty, thirty thousand of them already.”

The General nodded, grinning viciously. “We will hold. And we will kill them until help arrives.”

Radan nodded. Neither of them knew that the pigeons they had dispatched west and south had been hunted down by marauding flocks of ravens, and that nobody would know of Mafal Dadaranell’s plight until the evacuees found their way to Deranbar. But for the moment, it looked as though they had a chance.

The King paced backwards and forwards on the parapet. There was little for him to do except watch. Every man firing into the mass of trollocs knew what to do, as did the catapult crews who continued to send barrels of burning oil hurling over the walls, to land in a muffled explosion, drenching twenty trollocs at a time with the burning oil which caused a painful, hideous death, even for a trolloc. And yet despite all of this, the trolloc numbers came on.

Behind Radan stood Dorien, Aes Sedai of the Brown, with her warder Davyd. She was one of just four Aes Sedai in the city. Three of the Brown, who were here continuing their apparently endless quest for writing which had survived the Breaking, and one of the yellow. None of them useful for battle, in Radan’s view. But they were all he had. She spoke up now. “Someone is holding a large amount of the power, out there, Radan.” He did not know it, but she had seized the Source herself as soon as she felt those in the trolloc army – Dreadlords, surely? – do so. A few seconds later, she stamped her foot. “Davyd, I am shielded.”

The warder sprang to her side. “From this distance?” She just nodded, not understanding how, either.

At that point, the battle changed completely. Suddenly, the south wall of the city just … ceased to be. The roaring crash of a massive avalanche shook the air, and the wall, towers and all, crashed outwards, its explosion pulverizing man and trolloc alike. For a few shocked moments, there was no movement on the battlefield. Regaining themselves, the trolloc army roared and began to pour into the city. Men from all corners of the city abandoned their bows and drew sword, rushing to meet the invaders.

Radan drew his sword and looked at those around him. Thoughts of repelling the dark army were pointless. All they could do is set the price of Mafal Dadaranell high. Take as many trollocs into the night as possible, so that it was a smaller army which flowed southwards into the land, as this army surely would.

The King led a rush of his generals, swords bare all, into the square at the foot of the tower. They did not have to hunt for a fight. In just those few minutes, the trollocs had begun to flood the city seeking prey. Radan and his officers ploughed into a group of trollocs who entered the square, butchering the grotesque half-animals grimly. Yet more, and more followed.

Radan fought through them. A dozen, a score had fallen to his blade, when he found himself face to face with one of the Eyeless. The look of the Eyeless is fear, and Radan felt it to the core of his being as he faced the inky black figure. But he did not hesitate. Form followed form as he danced with the myrddraal. The myrddraal made no mistakes, but Radan was too good. A feint fooled the Eyeless, and his blade sunk deeply into the Fade’s torso. It stiffened, shrieking in a shrill voice, and began writhing.

Radan withdrew his blade and turned to fight on. But his fight was over. Behind him, a trolloc hefted a short, vicious spear and drove it through the King’s back. He roared, but his body gave out. His fingers opened, and his sword clattered to the ground. His Generals fought towards him but one by one, they fell too.

The men of Mafal Dadaranell fought with the light, and killed ten times their number of trollocs. But the day belonged to the Shadow, and the following days would be much, much worse.