Chapter 2 - Arrows in Flight
In the quiet shade of the eternal grove, shining eyes blink as scenes shift in the silver water. A goblin shaman steps forward. Eliethen’s slender hands channel crackling bolts of magic through the Scrying pool.
The Elven king raises his own staff, emitting a sickly azure mist that creeps along the sides of the pool, seeking out the crackling magic and wrapping around it almost sensually.
“Very well incanted Eliethen,” the king’s rich sonorous voice echoes around that grove. That sacred place of constant calm where only he is ordained to speak “that pitiful goblin shaman has barely the power to paralyse a Brace of warriors of the Seventh Company. Your magic has the whole human force in its grip… even some of the Westwold Orcs are staggering in confusion.”
The king’s smile creeps across his lips like a snake in the final stage of the hunt.
“Step into that wretched creature and guide the tides of battle, Eliethen. Our warriors wait under the eaves of Blackenblade forest.”
The king shifts the angle of his staff, wafting its power to wrap tendrils around his chosen sorcerer. A silent scream echoes across his face as he seems to shrink, walking through the air into the pool at the apex where the goblin Shaman’s staff glows.
Captain Gream screams at this spindle-armed creature, calmly approaching.
Silence.
He thought he’d screamed.
His mind rages with wrath, insults, and threats. He issues commands to the last of the surrounding Seventh Company. All thought.
The only sound, the harsh caw of a crow, disturbs the field of carnage.
A sudden grumble of thunder heralds the advance of dark clouds.
A single lightning bolt arcs from the sky to strike the Goblin’s upraised staff. Saved by the gods… Captain Gream tries to bellow. But still his arms flap limp, his vocal cords dead, cuckold to this venomous worm’s magic.
The Goblin Shrieks at the Orcs who stagger about in confusion from the initial blast of magic. High and shrill, the Westwold tongue startles the crows from their feast, one takes wing over the brow of the hill trailing a string of intestine in its mouth.
Pressure builds in Captain Gream’s head. He knows a little of the Westwold language but one word burns in his thoughts; attack.
He looks at the men in his field of vision all in a similar statuesque state. It is truly hopeless.
The Orcs slowly rally around the Shaman as they come to themselves. He shrieks at them again, eyes now a mirror of silver that seem to ripple like water. Finally, the fierce Warriors of Westwold shake off the confusion and charge.
The pressure mounts in Captain Gream’s head like the building thunder. Pressure spawned from ancient anger born of rage, born of nights spent hiding beneath the grain bags in the cellar as his father raged around the kitchen looking for another body to beat.
Anger born from watching the petty concerns of the Lords of Eastwold’s pointless power struggles that started the first war.
Rage born of seeing three sons die on the field of battle, three of his blood taken by the great game.
His arm twitches, it feels like a river of fire as he slowly moves that arm upwards as the rage builds.
Pointless death after pointless death, until he had learned to tutor even the most yellow-bellied lad to see the whole thing as a game, with rules, and prizes for those who could last.
His second son’s eyes stared emptily at the greying sky in the fields outside the great city of Gramburg.
His vocal cords awaken in a guttural howl.
The Goblin Shaman looks his way. Chattering in Westwold, arms waving furiously.
Captain Gream explodes forward in a cathartic spasm of rage so deep that it unleashes a torrent of hot tears down his face.
His wife’s bloated corpse, almost unrecognisable from the play of the maggots, after an elven raid upon his homestead.
The howl explodes from his lips louder this time in a single word, almost drowning out the thunder.
“Seventh.”
Orcs crash into the Company.
Some of the Seventh Company awaken with his howl.
Those with the gift of the many horrors that the circus of life plays out in an unending cavort, a dance of suffering and death.
Gream sees it, that hot wash of tears in their eyes and the blood trying to burst from temples.
Gream barges the first orc aside, determined to get to that Shaman. As it stumbles he slashes at its heels spinning his blade around his head from the backslash momentum to lop a Westwold’s head clean off.
For a second he sees the Goblin Shaman swiftly loping away from the fray in the direction of Blackenblade forest.
Eliethen glances back as he turns to the distant green of Blackenblade forest.
That dam captain’s eyes burn right into his, an unnatural wildness shining through streaming tears, his face red with raging blood flow. The man lifts up one arm and points right at Eliethen riding in this Goblin wretch.
“I know the truth.”
The captain’s voice bellows so loud it pierces the din of battle.
Eliethen runs as he prepares another spell, how the hell has this captain and so many of his men resisted the paralysis spell?
His countenance, his actions and the flush of blood and rage driving him spoke of a Berserker, yet Eastwold had no Berserker warriors. In fact, they were nothing but a myth of the north.
He stumbled in this ungainly body, realising that the spell had been blown away by the wind of his thoughts.
His training kicked in.
The concentration of steel.
Will of iron.
No thought.
He channels the magic reciting the simple spell double speed instinctually.
Voice amplified he shouts a short series of commands at the now not-so-distant trees.
Thelithen dalieth brenmn bremnessen.
Gream hears that retched Shaman shouting Elvish words, those most cursed of syllables that he understands all too well.
Thelithen dalieth brenmn bremnessen.
He nearly stumbles as he translates the words and a Westwold’s cleaver nicks his left ear clean off. The grisly talisman sails toward those thunderheads, trailing rubies of blood in its flight.
He laughs at the capricious beauty of the great game. This Westworld is a wily one, and Gream trades slashes and parries as he carefully translates through the rhythm of battle.
Thelithen means brethren in common, the general name a group of elves give each other.
Gream manages a low slash between the Orc’s greaves and its shoulder armour and the creature dances back flipping its long axe to the other hand.
Dalieth means to advance, he was certain of it. The Orc came back in at him axe slashing fast and furious nearly catching the captain off guard with its ambidextrous skill. Gream spun away sword deflecting the axe in the spin.
Brenmn meant to rain arrows. There was no real comparative word in common, it was a single word for an action so usual to the elvish scum that they felt no need to elaborate meaning.
Gream ends the dance as the Orc slips on a well-trodden corpse and he thrust his sword through the creature’s backbone. Bleeding good fighter, for an Orc.
Bremnessen was simply an extension of the word. It meant to rain arrows of death at will.
The captain smelled how wrong this was, just as he saw svelt figures emerge from the trees of Blackenblade forest. The wretched Shaman was only about fifty yards away now, still madly running in that strange way, almost like it wasn’t used to the length of its arms and legs.
Without thought, Gream scoops up a spear from the mess of the sepulture battlefield and launches it in a high arc.
Thunder rolls as most of the Seventh now follow their fellows to the fray, defying the magic from the inspiration of their molten-faced companions.
Willow spins his usual dance, standard swirling and slashing its spear end through throats, but he seemed to dance a little faster and anticipate the movement of opponents even more gracefully.
Others stumbled as if drunk, finding the magic’s hold harder to shake. They are quickly either skewered like suckling pigs by Westwold spears or slashed to ribbons by saw-toothed Orcish scimitars.
In the distance, the lone figure of Captain Gream stands stock still as he watches a spear tear through the neck of the fleeing shaman.
He stares back at the Seventh Company and the Westwolds, and on the wind of the storm his voice bellows first in Eastwold common, and then in broken Westwold tongue.
“The Shaman Elvish puppet. Look to the skies. The elves approach.”
A hail of arrowheads lights up the sky for a single moment, as a break in the clouds allows the sun to illuminate their adamantite tips.
The sky above the distant forest shimmers like uncountable diamonds raining down on the gore of the battle between Blackenblade forest and the Cramndel Hills.
A million tiny rainbow specks alight on trampled heads, limbs lone and lost from their owners.
The great game continues.
To be continued...
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