Chapter One
These red days stretch as far back as I can remember.
The sound of iron on iron, the cacophony of timber screeching as shield grinds against shield, and the screams of the dying mingling with the slick squelch of blood and mud.
Rain flays my upturned face as I drink in the scene, a discordant ballad that plays in my warrior’s heart. Each note leaching a part of the soul like a pestilent drug, satisfying while emptying.
The duality of battle lust throbs in my chest. I drink it in.
“Captain Gream.”
A slight soldier barrels through the press, waving a Blackwood stave in my direction. I watch him duck and weave, vaulting sword slashes to the knees only to flatten the enemy’s nose with a knee adorned with spiked greaves, which arc a rain of blood to dilute the morning deluge.
What was his name? Saminson, Saimsan?
Memory filters through like treacle in my battle lust. Sailinson, that was his name.
Willow is the nickname the seventh company gave him though, on account of his quick fighting style and ability to weave with the winds of battle.
The standard flaps madly around the Blackwood stave as he drives the butt end into the top of a Westwold’s spine as an afterthought in his mad flight.
I grin in appreciation.
Westwold’s clan sigil of the sable dagger shatters with Willow’s blow to the prone Orc’s armour.
Specks of ichor flick through the throng of men, staining the armour of friend and foe alike.
“That’s it lad,” I bellow, heartened by the spirit Willow is showing in his first attempt at the great game. He tumbles in a heap, tripped by one of ours, rolling smartly and scooping up the standard as he exits the roll.
“Well Done”… A large Westwold Orc knocks the wind from me, cutting my shout short as I scramble to grapple with this giant warrior.
We tumble for what seems an eternity; I feel a finger snap as I wrench the sword from the large Westwold’s hands. Blood mingles with bile that bites at my throat as the dirk I kept clenched against my wrist enters his neck.
Blood fountains high merging with the general madness of the smoke-sickened battlefield.
As I struggle to my knees, I hear the snap of bone as willow drives home the standard through the dying Orc’s backbone.
“For the seventh company” the lad screams.
A blue vein pulses with battle rage as his eyes glisten in that dead way of the newly initiated.
With that call, the men rally around the banner fighting for what seems an eternity.
A green wave of Westwold Orcish flesh and jagged cutlasses carves meat from the seventh. A copper stench fills the air as the crimson sunset stains the battlefield, illuminating sallow cadavers, eyes missing as the crows start their grizzly endeavours early, wings flapping madly as they caw at the continued fighting.
In the distance, a lone figure steps out from the brow of a hill.
Wrapped in a leather cloak with animal bones dangling from his neck, this small goblin fixes the captain with azure glowing eyes, like the depths of the Calista sea where the whales sing to the sea folk.
Staff upraised, the spindly creature almost coughs a series of guttural croaks that reverberate through the earth, shaking the standard in the still air of the dying day.
Captain Gream stands stock still on a heap of bodies he has kicked into a makeshift platform.
Silence descends, Orc and man stiff as desiccated trees as the incantation takes effect and the shaman walks calmly toward the final enclave of knights frozen like stone statues.
Image by Gioele Fazzeri from Pixabay
Chapter Two
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.
Image by Peace,love,happiness from Pixabay
Chapter Three
As captain Gream’s words fade, the Westwold general holds up a claw and utters a long guttural command. The orcs stop their advance. Some dive backwards from seventh company attacks to roll back to their feet out of sword range before continuing a controlled retreat.
The Orcish general strides forward spitting harsh syllables across the newly formed area of no-man’s-land.
The highest left in command, Lieutenant Alnader shakes his head in frustration. How to deal with this strange twist?
“Does any of the Company speak Westwold?” he glares at the remaining troops as a slim figure strides forward, burying the Company standard in the mud at his feet.
“Yes, sir.” Willow snaps out a salute. “I learned it in the intelligence division.”
Alnader grits his teeth. “Well, what is that behemoth grunting about?”
“He suggests a truce, sir. His exact words translate something like; your captain makes it clear our best interests would be to butcher these elvish dogs together. I agree with him, then we can finish our business, perhaps.”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” the irate lieutenant screams at willow. “If we join these scum, they will just attack us after we’ve dealt with the elves. It’s obvious.”
Willow lowers his voice to a rhythmic, calming flow. “With respect sir, no you haven’t studied Westwold society and honour system as I had to in intelligence division training. The Westwold general is offering an alliance with no stipulations. It is extremely rare that they would even do this, sir. Just as rare as his use of the word, perhaps.”
“Well, spit it out man, exactly what does this mean, and quickly” the lieutenant barks as he waves his arms at the distant figure of Captain Gream diving toward the ground as a rain of death rapidly approaches him.
“Yes sir. The way we have fought brings us honour in their eyes, as much as they could afford an Eastwold. The general’s use of the word perhaps shows that if we fight just as well, and we defeat the elves together, the truce will hold true for this battle. This is just the way they think, sir. They have a code of honour, it is just different from ours.”
The Lieutenant shakes his head, pulls his badge of rank from his shirt and hands it to Willow. “You have my authority to broker a truce, and as you will speak to the Westwold general, I abdicate command for this battle only.” He eyes Willow sternly.
“Yes, sir.” Willow salutes just before he pins the badge to his chest.
“Back in line soldier” Willow nods to the former Lieutenant.
“Everyone, we will move in turtle formations, and those who fight without a shield, scavenge one from the battlefield.”
He turns to the Westwold line and shouts two clear, guttural words.
“Truce accepted.”
The giant Westwold general strides right out of the line of Orcs, walking fearlessly into the middle of the widened battle line.
Willow strides quickly out to meet the general.
“You fight well, man” the Orc grunts, “and command well.”
The giant nods at the rapidly forming shield bunches of the Eastwold turtle formations.
The Orc turns its sinewy neck and shouts at the Westwold warriors “form small shield walls, two warriors deep, to bar their arrow stings from both above and forward.”
Willow speaks faster now, the language flowing back into his memory. “Our shield beetles are more mobile than your shield walls, but we have few spearmen.” He improvises knowing Westwold’s a landlocked nation, and turtles are unknown.
The Orc general interrupts him. “We will move in a staggered formation, small walls anchored to your beetles and make as many alive to the elvish scum that way.”
There is no hint of a question in his voice.
“Yes, then when we get within striking distance, the beetles will charge forward quickly, as the Westwold walls link up. We will break whatever formation they take, then your shield walls and spearmen will have time to pick them off easier.”
“You would be first into the fray?” The giant Orc almost laughs.
Suddenly, they’re interrupted by mingled cheers from both Eastwold and Orcish troops alike.
Captain Gream dives through the mire of battlefield gore as he hears the whistle of descending arrows, snatching up one massive Westwold shield before curling up into a fetal position and pulling the leather strap tight to his shoulder.
Hundreds of adamantite-tipped arrows rain down like a squall sent from hell.
They shudder against the shield with clinks, screeches and the occasion dull thump accompanied by pain. This symphony of death continues for what seems an age as he desperately pulls the shield this way and that, trying to cover all of his balled body against the furious volley.
Silence.
Wind.
Gream leaps to his feet, noticing three arrows have pierced the shield. They scream pain at him, oozing crimson tears despite their shallow depth. But no poison. He feels no poison... as yet. He snaps each shaft, grimacing with each jolt, before pulling the shield free.
His eyes work double quick, assessing the scene.
This volley was a test firing.
A long strip of arrows approximately ten yards wide nestle in the ground like a neatly sown crop.
The elves sprint forward in the distance, some with bows upraised, taking aim.
They know the distance they have to travel before they can hit the Seventh Company and remaining Westwold Orcs with the same deadly volley.
Gream eyes those sharpshooters as he swings the oversized shield strap over his head and sprints back toward the Seventh Company’s line, as mingled cheers echo across the battlefield.
Wind whistles through golden leaves amid towering branches.
The Elvish king glances at his failed sorcerer’s body, which was spat back through the scrying pool as he died.
“Bring the sword from the crypt.” He waves a hand at a silent, hooded servant. “Bring Deathdrinker to me.”
His eyes blaze an unholy light in the deep calm of the eternal grove as he watches the Human Orc alliance advancing toward his troops. The light of his fury illuminates the mother trees, bark flickering like rent steel.
Glaring through the pool’s silver waters at the lone captain leaping up from the onslaught - a bug unwilling to be squashed - the king narrows his eyes as the servant returns, placing a velvet-wrapped object in his outstretched hands.
The king lets the velvet drop to reveal a rune inscribed pommel and handle, gems flashing flecks from within the etchings. An ancient blade extends from the handle, black as night in the depths of a sunken ship. The king touches its tip to his dead sorcerer’s forehead and the blade shivers red tendrils of flame through the black void of the otherworldly metal.
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
Chapter Four (Final Part)
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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