Chapter 4 (Finale) - Deathdrinker’s Bite
Captain Gream darts this way and that, head hunched down as he dances over bodies. The song of arrows whistling past him adds to his merriment.
This is the great game at its most precarious. Life or death on the roll of the dice. Left or right? Hunch more, or leap into the rapidly approaching corpse pile? Choices, so many choices, each with a chance of an arrow taking out an arm, leg or even closing the curtains on his finale in the great game with a headshot.
At the last minute, he dodges left, and spins a full circle, snatching a glance at the elves, before he rolls behind the stack of mingled corpses.
From his glance, he knows the elves have gained only a little on him, but four at least are skilled shadow runners, the crack troops trained in defence of the Elvish forest. They could run and shoot with deadly accuracy.
Arrows pelt the mound of meat he hunkers down behind as he assesses the distance of the advancing alliance lines.
Sometimes the game required chaos, sometimes control.
The elves were seconds away from their distance mark.
Elven arrows rain down on Westwold Orc and Eastwold humans alike.
The Eastwold turtle formations slow their advance to keep pace with the Orcish shield walls. The turtle’s shields pulled tight around them, some overlapping.
Willow gasps for breath in the middle of the central turtle.
“Hold strong.” He shouts through the tightness in his chest.
A powerful adamantite tipped arrow pierces the shield next to him, blinds his companion as it dives through his eye. The man drops, unlucky to have chosen an Eastwold shield instead of the tougher Westwold tower shields.
Suddenly, the panic drains from Willow.
Captain Gream’s words on the first day of infantry training echo in his mind: In the great game, there will be moments of panic, moments of rage, moments of clarity and moments of pain. The trick is finding balance. Know when to give in and when to fight. All these moments are part of the battle, part of the great game, but you must be able to take back control when needed. This is how you win, this is how you stay alive!
“Pass his body back through the ranks and close up the gap” Willow commands, his voice sure and sharp, rising above the cacophony of the deadly rain.
Death continues.
The flow of blood seems to measure time. The stench of trampled corpses becomes overpowering as they make quick advances between volleys. This hellish rhythm seems endless to Willow as he glances out of a crack between shields at the Orcish lines.
They fare worse, with near one-third of their ranks decimated, and their shield wall close to collapse.
Suddenly, Willow hears a voice that brings a grim smile to his lips.
The Elvish king dips the blade gently into the silver water. Ripples emanate from the centre outwards as a scarlet haze engulfs the scene in the scrying pool. The black blade throbs as veins of power flash across the Voidmetal with each death.
Every new corpse on the battlefield feeds its power until the eternal grove shakes with the sword’s pulses. The giant mother tree’s canopy creaks and rattles in response to the building maelstrom.
Captain Gream peaks above the mess of gore, now pockmarked with ten score arrows.
An arrow nearly takes his eyebrow off as it whistles past, and he instinctually dives onto his back. He’d seen all he needed. These scum were about to feel it.
He sits up and coughs out a mouthful of blood, checking his wounds to make sure none hit a lung. It must just be the stress of the great game.
Gream sits up, takes a great breath and then shouts in Westwold and common.
“You’re within striking distance. Charge, damn it, charge.”
Willow swallows his smile at the sound of that powerful voice and re-issues the command in a quick bark.
The Orc general bellows at his troops, “pace the Eastwold beetles ten yards behind.”
As the stampede grows, the elves realise what the captain has calculated - that they’d never get off another volley in time, and quickly drop their bows, drawing slim, shining blades.
The elves form up into circular formations, each with two dancing shadow runners at the centre, most weaving hypnotic patterns with dual swords.
Captain Gream leaps and rolls as the press barrels past him, barging his way into the nearest Turtle, which opens up to swallow him.
“Great gameplay lads,” he screams, wild-eyed with red-tinged spittle at the corners of his mouth from his newfound battle lust.
Slim silver swords slip through gaps in the Turtle’s wall, killing two Eastwold soldiers as Gream dodges madly. A strange red mist darts skyward as they fall.
He bursts through the Turtle wall and dives into a roll, coming lightly to his feet as he slashes the ankles of an outer ring elf. The elf drops as he rolls to his feet, quickly skewered by an incoming Westwold spear. Again, Gream notices that moment of red mist, almost quicker than sight, but not quite.
“Now to the press lads,” Gream shouts above the din of battle “The Turtle is useless now, form pinch groups.”
He looks to the sky. The once black thunderheads pulse with a lurid scarlet light.
This red day’s madness screams the last blast of furry, of steel, blood, mud and lurid corpse green.
The Westwold Orcs charge the elves in tight rectangular formations, scimitar-wielding Orcs at the front trade blows with the outer-ring elves, as spearmen launched by their fellows, sometimes six at a time, crush or skewer the shadow runners with brute force. They die by the score.
The thunderheads glow deep crimson with seething unnatural lightning, mirroring the bloody field.
Gream spins and ducks, parries and counters, but he sees the inevitable in the eyes of the shadow runner. This elf, tall for its kind, towers over six feet tall, wielding duel slender swords that glitter with magic enchantment. Silver hair frames a grim smile as emerald eyes flash amusement at the captain.
“Let’s play some more human,” the elf hisses at Gream in heavily accented Eastwold.
Gream growls like a dog as memories bolster limbs against his many wounds. Only raiders learn the common tongue to taunt their victims or mock the slaves they take.
A silent field of golden wheat waving in the breeze, broken by the occasional bright scarlet sunflower, tanned red in late summer. A concession to his wife, a crop and also a flower, she’d said.
His first son, tall and strong like a young willow, racing his horse across the fallow fields before plough time.
The barns burning on his return from battle, homestead house left alone, to present the slaughter as a macabre calling card. A message left only at a warrior’s home.
This could be one of those that raped and killed his wife, burned his barns, and left his mind a barren field, useless for anything other than death-dealing.
Gream crouches in a feint before launching forward in a corkscrew dive. Time slows in his rage and he slashes four times in a matter of seconds, each attack deflected by an elf sword and a strange electric jolt that seems to slow his limbs.
He bites through his lip, growling the magic away, as he hits the earth, then deftly rolls and springs back to his feet. A sword narrowly misses his head as he spins back to face his opponent. The elf weaves those two strange blades, sparks trail mingled silver gold against the crimson skies.
One blade darts out to slash at Gream’s right shoulder.
The captain barely parries as the other blade whips down and left, lightning fast, before reversing mid-slash to dart through Captain Gream’s well-worn breastplate.
He slides off the blade, crashing to sit in the mud.
The elf raises both his swords like scissors to decapitate the captain.
Suddenly, a slender figure knocks the elf aside.
Willow bends into a cat-like crouch, two swords spin comfortably in his hands.
“Are you OK, captain?” The young man growls through gritted teeth.
Gream tries to answer, but only bubbles of blood shudder from his mouth.
With his last breath Captain Gream forces through the pain, and wheezes from emptying his lungs, “Kill the scum, Willow… win the Great Game.”
Gream eyes the thunderhead, now flushed with a fiery red, almost as if it could dump all the blood of the battle upon their heads. As his brain slows, Captain Gream summons his last drop of rage and shoots toward the cloud, intent upon revenge and an end to this Red day.
The world flips on its head. A sword pulses with crimson fire, trying to tear him from his grasp on the edge of a stone pool. His hands are translucent. He peers through them and silver water, the scene of battle playing out in their depths.
He sees Willow slay the elven shadow runner with a slash to the throat and tries to shout encouragement from non-existent lips.
The captain glances from the pool.
An elf holds that terrible sword. On its head, a crown of golden leaves glitters and its eyes rage with azure fire.
Gream hardens his will. Every moment of pain the elves have brought him, every life he has taken since, all a great game, all an illusion, a pretty lie made up by a madman to feign sanity in a world gone mad.
Gream claws his way down the well, calling on his last reserve of strength to resist the pull of the sword until he sees the corpse of an elf.
A jolt, his eyes flicker.
He stares up at the mad elven king, swinging that terrible sword through the water of the Scrying pool. He knows things he shouldn’t; a memory of trees and endless lessons incanting spells.
He knows about the sword.
Like a sprung snake, he leaps to latch both hands around that blade, forcing it from the surface of the pool.
As the elven king turns, the artefact Deathdrinker unleashes a mighty blast.
The power of all the souls, blood, memories, hate and love of a whole battlefield of the dead explodes in one great blast.
In a world of flame and raging magic, as the lips burn from his face, Gream utters his last words to the astonished elven king.
“The sword can’t drink what is already dead. You lose!”
The end.
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