The Battle of Bloodneck Valley
Shog, called the Bonecrusher by his people, knew they’d lost when human horns roared across the battlefield. The Imperiate had come after all, to aid their elven allies of the Alish’tae Republic. Shog’s people, orcs of the Galak Tribe, so named after the mountain upon which they’d once lived, fought hard and well. But they fought alone.
Orcs no allies. Not even their Gods, the Old Ones, cared anymore.
As the morning sun crept above the clouds, illuminating the blood soaked fields, the Imperiate horsemen charged out from the forest. Muk’nola, matriarch of the Galaks, sounded her war horn, signalling the retreat. But it would be too late, Shog knew. Those horsemen would slaughter them as they fled. Their children, next.
An elf, empowered by the sense of looming victory, stormed forward from their line, straight towards Shog. He parried the elf’s longsword then heaved his mighty hammer, Breaker of Worlds, in a perfect arc. It smashed upon the elf’s helmeted skull, and he proved his namesake for the countless time. The elf’s head exploded in bone and carnage.
“Back!” he heard. “Fall back!” In disarray, the others around him fled towards Bloodneck Valley, where they’d encamped. Their position fell. Shog screamed to maintain the line but knew the day was lost. His people fled. He had no choice but to follow.
He reached the camp, already nearly moving again, fleeing up the valley to the highlands. Shog, exhausted, reached Zee-zee, his daughter, and Gheelah, his love. Gheelah had already packed their yurt and few remaining possessions. “Flee!” he shouted to her.
“And you?” Gheelah asked.
“I stay to hold them back.”
In typical orcish fashion, their utter devotion, love and mutual respect expressed itself only in their shared gaze, never in public, spoken word. He gripped her hand. He told Zee-zee to be strong. Gheelah nodded. Then the doy galloped away with the rest of the fleeing, broken host.
Muk-nola, matriarch, rallied the remaining Galak warriors. They reformed to a single line. Bloodneck Valley was narrow. Rocky. Layered with crimson colored clay. The land elevated as it led to the Highlands, their only advantage.
Maybe at the height of the tribe’s strength, before the humans had come with their purges and stolen their land, before the elves had arrived to ‘cleanse the world of evil’, maybe they would have been strong enough. But Shog saw they had a few hundred left. A few hundred to hold a line against an entire battalion of Imperiate horsemen and Alish’tae swordsmen, the latter no doubt already being reinforced.
The ‘Fair Folk’ would aim to eradicate the Galak now, as they fled.
Shog marched up to Muk-nola. She hailed him. “Yog-Sothoth burns in us,” she said.
“Yog-Sothoth hasn’t given a shit about us since Galak Mountain ceased its fire,” Shog replied.
Imperiate horns loomed. The sun flared, blinding Shog for a moment. Another disadvantage. The ground rumbled with the cavalry charge.
“Either way. I’ll crush his soul in hell. Right after I’m done with these Fair Folk.”
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Shog cast his gaze up to the face of fire. Kharag’s burning eye winked cruelly on the horizon. Long ago his ancestors had learned to tolerate the suns bite, standing in line in the murmuring morning, quiet gloaming soft with the lilt of bird song. As one nation they had stood together at the mouth of caves, arm in arm, embracing the rising sun. They had learned to farm, trade and shun the old ways; forged a new Orc nation from a different metal. They had evolved, and yet the cursed usurpers still came. Ravaged their lands and left them barren in the wake of the great extermination.
Horns boiled in the hills, signalling the Alish’tae attack. Elven archers lined up at the mouth of the pass. The sun’s glare tore at Shog’s eyes, a physiological vestige of the darkened times. Fierce tears flowed, washing away doubt. The battle-rage descended as the whistle of a thousand arrows filled the air. Shog smiled, bared his teeth and bellowed.
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Muk’nola cast the bones across the packed earth.
“Yog-Sothoth, hear our ancient call. We are the seeds of Galak mountain. Folk of the warrens, tunnels and mines… hear us in our time of need!”
Silence greeted her proclamation, blossoming like the flower of the Wervzel plant which stretched out its petals with the promise of moonlight.
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A thousand hoofs worried the earth as the human cavalry line held. Shog leaped like an arrow from the bow, his rage unleashed. He snatched a shield from a dead Imperiate soldier as the arrows rained down around him. Racing for the line of grinning men and snorting horses, Shrog thrashed the shield around, catching arrows from the air like pollen in the spines of catkins.
The diminished Orc battalion followed the legend known as Bonecrusher to the last one of them. His mighty hammer ‘breaker of worlds’ bounced on his back as he leaped forward, shield held high, the tip of a spear thrumming with the final gasp of the tribe of Galak.
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“Look at the filth stampede, to their final doom.” Alieth Crinsbourn, second general of the great Alish’tae army sneered as he looked into the distance along the valley.
A group of Elves laughed as they watched the green tide wash in for a final time. The great Orc host, once a sea, was now barely a trickle. The elven command stood imperiously on small ledges on the cliffs of the pass. Levitation spells barely firing to keep them from falling from their precarious perches. All around them the common archers of the Alish’tae floated up to find perches, ready to rain death on the foolish Orcs below.
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Muk’nola stared at the battle-packed earth. The message in the bones told of the failing line of Orc chieftains, the death of children and barren ending of her race. There was one bone out of place though, one that didn’t follow this pattern. The final chance, she knew what she must do!
“Yog-Sothoth, take my blood onto the earth.” Muk’nola slashed her knife quick and sure across her brow. Blood flowed, a curtain of crimson drew a veil across her sight. The world went all red; a tint of death.
She fell to the earth and felt the ground shake as her last words gurgled from closing throat. “Let loose your ancient power…. Yog…Soth…oth.” The name of the god croaking out in a coughing death rattle.
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Shog tossed the shield and drew his hammer in a fluid motion as arrows thudded all around him. One passed clean through his arm and he winced but shook it off. Breaker of worlds was thirsty for blood.
The earth groaned as Shog hefted the mighty hammer..
The Orc battalion halted as Shog rent the earth with a mighty stroke as a flurry of arrows pierced him. Still he stood in the crimson fire of the setting sun. A terrible thunder from beneath the earth struck the whole field of battle to stillness. No one breathed… then the cliffs of the pass caved in as Yog-Sothoth laughed in the deep places of the earth.
The battalion waited in seeming endless night for the morning. Nothing was left of Bloodneck valley other than a tumult of stone and a great hammer thrust proud from the rubble, shining in the sun.
The end.
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