Charge of Clan Renegade
by Clan Lord Tennishron
Historical note: The Charge of Clan Renegade describes historic events occuring during The Great Clan War of the yazerian homeworld's Gunpowder Age. Clan Renegade was not originally a clan but a collection of small disaffected, outcast, or unrecognized clans. During the clan wars military units were all organized on the clan level but the outcast and unrecognized clans tended to be insufficient to organize proper clan units so they were lumped together under the designation Clan Renegade.
The Clan Renegade military units, when they were used at all, usually had the poorest moral and elan. The label of renegade became synonymous with deserters and criminals and few generals gladly added them to their order of battle. That changed with the charge described in this poem. It was a very typical Renegade unit lead by a defrocked priest turn Clan Lord that saved an armies flank with a wild sucide charge. In the aftermath of the battle the decimated survivors of this unit swore blood oaths to each other and forged a new clan that would forever welcome outcast to its ranks. The victorious Warhon recognized the new clan on the spot and made them his personal body guards. Clan Renegade became an elite and highly decorated fighting unit with a storied history surviving up to the Great Exodus to the Stars.
Translator's note: As much as possible I've used archaic terms form human history for words that don't translate easily like league and saber as well as a few common words from PanGal to approximate the rhythem and rhyme of the original
Half a league, half a league,*
Half a league onward,
All in the Valley of Death
Flew the six hundred.
'Forward, the Clan Renegade!
Charge for the guns!' he said.
Into the Valley of Death
Flew the six hundred.
Forward the Clan Renegade!
Was there a clansman dismay'd?
Not tho' soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to rage and die!
All in the Valley of Death
Flew the six hundred.
Cannon to the right of them
Cannon to the left of them
Cannon to the front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd
Raged at with shot and shell
Boldly they flew and well
Into the Jaws of Death
Into the Mouth of Hell
Flew the six hundred
Flash'd all their blades bare
Flash'd as they turned in air
Sabering the gunners there
Charging an army
While all the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Clan and Yazerian
Reel'd from the saber-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd
Then they flew back, but not
The six hundred.
Cannon to the right of them
Cannon to the left of them
Cannon behind them
Were slineced of thunder.
Storm'd at with shot and shell
While winged hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the Jaws of Death
Back from the Mouth of Hell
All that was left of them
Left of six hundred.
When can there glory fade?
Oh the wild flight they made!
All the clans wonder'd
Honor the charge they made!
Honor Clan Renegade!
Noble six hundred!
For other reading on Clan Renegade see Killick Toofrick's The Romance of the Renegade.
