The Chronicles of Crallick

by Brad C Baker

  “Yeah,” Crallick agreed. “We’ll kill every last one of the blighters. I promise you.” Then, tucking his arm under Vlados’s shoulders in a mockery of what Vlados had done for Crallick for nearly ten years, Crallick helped the vomit-messed, sluggish dwarf to his feet, and helped guide him out of this twisted misery.

  Up on the deck, the sea air revitalized the dwarf. The rest of the crew, having been forewarned by Mr. Drake, had the good sense to give the two fathers their space. Crallick fished his rum flask out. He offered a shot to Vlados. “To the hunt?” he toasted, and swilled the amber potable down his numbing throat.

  Vlados grabbed the flask and tilted it up, pouring a generous helping into his mouth. With a gulp, he cried out, “To killing every last one of the fuckers!”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Pyrotha veiled the village with streamers of red.

  Vexed Knights heard screams of anguish and smelt cooking pork,

  Then Crallick gave the orders that filled them with dread.

  "It's a trap, we all know. Time to take the hard fork.”

  Verse 13: Ballad of Ser Crallick Carnage-born

  The crews, having sense enough to swallow their own opinions, clambered back into the four launches and made for the sandy shore. They marked a point on the beach where the overturned humps of six much larger launches lay on the beach, dragged up from the high tideline in the sand.

  Eli and his crew had obviously landed here. Something kept gnawing at Crallick’s rum-dulled intuition. This was too easy. Why would Eli abandon his ship? Take his entire crew ashore? It didn’t add up. Unless… His thoughts came quicker all of a sudden. “Vlados!” he called across the distance between their boats, loud enough, he figured for the others to hear him as well. “Expect resistance on the beach!”

  Vlados grimly raised his hammer in acknowledgement.

  In his own boat, those not rowing got weapons accessible for those rowing, then got their own weapons ready too. Crallick imagined the same was happening across the small flotilla.

  Crystal blue waters flew by, under the boats. It was so glassy-clear and beautiful that Crallick could see the ocean floor. There was light aqua coloured sand, punctuated by blossoms of vibrant coral. Fluttering leaves of schools of fish danced in tidal winds. The poetry of the serene scene was violently ruined when about fifty men broke cover from the treeline, running forward and shouting.

  When their defiant yells failed to change the course of the four longboats, the fifty men raised pistols and crossbows, and let loose a volley of shots and bolts.

  Of the first volley, only four crossbow bolts found their marks. Pistol shots whizzed like angry mosquitos, and the later firecracker pops that followed were the extent of their influence. The crossbows, silent, save for the hissing of missed shots, were more effective. Crallick’s own boat had two victims. Jettin had a quarrel bite into his right shoulder as he furiously sculled the oar he handled. Brom Corr, working the other oar, cried out as a bolt careened off the paddle of his oar and ricocheted into his left thigh. “Of all the damnable luck!” he bellowed.

  Vlados felt like he had been punched brutally in the side. He looked down to see blood seeping from around the tail end of a bolt. It was buried square into him. ‘Damn,’ he thought. ‘This is a shite way to start a rescue of my daughter.’ Jaw clenched, uttering not a word, just a massive exhale, he snapped the protruding part off. “Pull hard lads!” he yelled.

  Mr. Drake’s boat was the only other boat blooded by the first volley. Jarod had a bolt graze his right hip, giving him a torn side, and a scare. Immediately he began invoking the name of Moredhel, goddess of fate, begging her to keep him in her plans for a while yet.

  The four boats ate up the distance to the shore in a hurry. Those not sculling grabbed whatever ranged weapons they could find and returned fire, just as the shore’s forces let loose with another volley. Their volley was much smaller this time, as pistols took a while to reload.

  This volley, though only twenty-four crossbows strong, was just as effective as the first. Four bolts, again, struck flesh.

  Crallick’s launch received ineffective attention from the shoreline defenders.

  Vlados was spared further punishment. However, Izzy Nunez’s brother, Fransisco, was killed mid-joke, as he rowed. He was opening his mouth to finish a Jherrim word when the bolt slammed through the back of his skull and erupted as a perverse mockery of his tongue. Izzy screamed. The monitorman, Menshirre, went to grab up Fransisco’s suddenly impotent oar, only to be rewarded by stopping a quarrel with his left forearm.

  In Erik’s boat, Gregor was the unlucky one. As he stood to take a shot of his own, he felt his left foot go numb. He discharged his own pistol, then fell to the boat. “Blighters shot me!” he groaned, looking dumbfoundedly at the quarrel that had severed the nerve and locked his ankle into place.

  Bargress’s launch had been tailing the Captain’s, just off to the side. So far, they had been fortunate, but when Wanda insisted she be given line of effect to try to strike back with a spell, their luck ran out. Wanda was halfway through casting her spell when Bargress noticed a quarrel streaking towards her head. Having no desire to see magic go horribly wrong in such close proximity, Bargress lashed out his tail with a grunt. Taking the bolt in the meat of his tail, he simply fixed upon who would pay for that insult. He hafted his spear, and with monumental strength, let it fly.

  That volley from the longboats, though much smaller in number, found three marks, and promptly ended them. Crallick’s greatbow drove a shaft through a man’s right shoulder, severing his brachial artery and causing the shattered fragments of bone to pierce his lung. The man was swiftly unconscious in a maroon patch of blood-soaked sand.

  Bargess’s spear lanced through a defender’s spine. The man never felt his death.

  Erik Drake’s pistol rang out. The shot left the barrel, rich with the stench of black powder. It flew, sunkissed, through the tropical sky, over shoals of fish, over the white foamy surf, the creamy sands, entering the throat of a statuesque man with a very nice hat. Upon hitting the man’s throat at such speed, it malformed, spinning into the man’s spine. This caused it to ricochet down through his torso, puncturing a hole through his lung, kidney, colon, intestines, and rectum, before punching through just beside his anus. The man gurgled once, shat himself, and then unceremoniously dropped amongst the cries of “Captain? Captain?”

  There was just time for the defending shore party to fire off one last volley as Crallick, Vlados and the rest of the Flamerunner’s crew beached their boats in the clear beach surf. As they scampered, leapt, or just plain flung themselves out of their craft amidst the devastating shots and bolts, Vlados cried out “Have at ‘em lads!”

  Crallick leapt from the bow of his launch, firing one last shot from his bow that flew wide, before dropping it into the surf to call his greatsword to his hand. He knew his bow would be all right. All he would have to do later is call it to him, and the etherian enchantment would draw it through the plane of light to him. He began his rush towards the closest foe.

  Kittalae followed her master, grabbing a discarded oar as she left the boat. She followed him closely as they made their way up the beach. The sight was both horrible and beautiful in her demonically formed thoughts.

  Jettin, who had followed Crallick into Jamtown, rose from his feet to again follow Crallick into harm’s way when he abruptly sat back down. He had been punched firmly in the chest. It was impossible to draw a breath. He tasted iron in his mouth as he looked down to see a bolt stuck through his heart. He never saw the shot that took the back of his lizard-hided skull off. He pitched backwards, convulsing, as his nervous system desperately tried to hold onto life, and then he was still.

  Brom Corr pulled the quarrel out of his leg, then gracelessly fell over the side of the boat into the surf. Dragging himself low in the water, he pulled himself close to the beach to begin his run at the enemy.

  To say Glip-Glip could fly would be poetic.
What the little tree froggle could do was leap many times his height with a single bounce. He also could rub darts on his toxic skin, and throw them with vicious accuracy. He jumped from the stern of the boat, landed just five feet away from a sailor from Chess’s Blight, and promptly killed him with a scratch to his cheek from a tossed dart.

  Hunkering down in the bow of his launch, Vlados, nursing his grievous wound, fired his crossbow into a blond boy of no more than sixteen years, who held a brace of pistols. His shot nicked both the aorta and esophagus, causing a violent crimson gout to erupt from the wound where it passed through the boy and his mouth.

  Menshirre hefted a harpoon, then let it fly. He never bothered to watch his cast. Instead, he dove into the water to get a boost of speed from his muscled tail. That loosed harpoon took a defender square in the abdomen, pinning him to the sand like a parody of a butterfly collector.

  Lawrence Marley took a load of shot to his left arm while in return, he fired his own pistol into the heart of the offender. As he clambered over the side of his craft, he spat, “Chessintra take ya bra’.”

  Izzy, still distraught, was rocking his dead brother in his arms, when Fransisco, even in death, proved to be a saving grace for his brother. Fransisco took a bolt into his back that would have surely slain his brother. Izzy lost all reason at that point. Standing tall, he yanked his brother’s pistol, then fired it and his own, before charging forward into the growing melee. Neither shot amounted to anything other than noise, but they did serve to bolster Izzy into action.

  Eric, having discharged his pistols, dropped them in the boat. Drawing his cutlass, he leapt forward from the prow of the boat to charge headlong into the fray. He was followed by Jarod who shot and missed with a small crossbow, but then swiftly clambered after the first mate.

  Hullaboo leapt with his powerful legs to send him sailing through the air. A bolt pierced his thigh shortly after his launch, so when he landed he crumpled in pain. This didn’t help the victim of his pounce, however, as Hullaboo’s spear devastated the man’s belly.

  Gregor Titus’s day quickly went from bad to worse. First, his shot missed. Second, when he went to go over the side of the boat, a bolt took him in the calf, causing him to topple. He cracked his head and lay, dazed, in the bottom of the boat.

  Jaroll Hawthorne lobbed a flaming flask that shattered amongst three shoremen. The burning poultice erupted and sent two diving to the sands, and immolated the third. He then blanched and sat back down in the boat as his breeches became very wet, very swiftly, as though he were a babe not yet out of swaddling clothes and peeing himself freely. The intense pain and the telltale hole in his pants told him a very different story.

  Bargress’s launch had the unfortunate luck to have landed at the focal point of the enemy’s fire. His left shoulder was grazed by a bolt as he launched a second spear at their adversaries. This time he failed to find his mark.

  Wanda’s incantation was cut short by a bolt through her throat. As she squeaked out a desperate plea to her goddess, she had her chest explode with the force of a horse’s kick, compressed to the size of a thumbnail. This instantly shattered her sternum, driving shards of lead and bone into her heart and aorta. A bolt ruptured her lung. A third and final blow, that she scarcely felt, rent through her uterus and exited her lower spine. So committed to her divine worship, her dying breath actually managed to complete her prayer. The life-giving waters of eight enemies of Flowwe were drained from the blasphemers and poured into those servants most in need of them. Her goddess was a just goddess.

  Mahar never even got the chance to get out of his seat. He was shot from behind, still holding his oar, intent on getting them to shore safely. The bolt created a small tent on his shirt, by his left breast. He swooned and passed, almost immediately.

  Hurling a throwing axe, along with Amarallan curses, Lavarth leapt the gunwale of the boat to go tearing across the beach, only to have a bolt skewer his right thigh, causing him to stumble into the surf.

  Cowering behind everyone else, Ronald Noble propped his pistol on Mahar’s still shoulder, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. With a gout of smoke and a sense of worthwhile pride, Ronald watched a sailor drop into the sand.

  By the time the melee on the unnamed beach had reached full swing, fifteen of the original twenty of the Flamerunner’s crew had made it to shore. They had done incredibly well, all things considered. The defenders, once numbering fifty, now seemed closer in number to the mid-thirties. Those numbers, mind you, kept reforming into disciplined fire lines. That is, of course, until the beachhead was made by the attacking force. Then all thoughts of ranged combat were tossed aside, and melee weapons were drawn. The onrushing mass from the Flamerunner barreled headlong into troops trying to ready their melee defense.

  Crallick, leading the way for the crew of his launch, parried one strike, before reversing his blade to sink it deep into the side of an unsuspecting adversary. The blade only stopped when it caught hold of the man’s spine. Crallick drew it out with an accompanying gout of effluvia.

  Glip-Glip, beside him, slapped an opposing sailor in the jaw, his toxin immediately sending him to the ground in convulsing death throes. A second man fell this way when, unthinking, he tried to drag Glip-Glip away from his friend with his bare hands.

  Kittalae’s oar seemed to writhe about with an entrancing life of its own. As she casually jogged beside her master, the oar lashed this way and that, sparing her incoming blows from her master’s enemies.

  Brom, eager to revenge himself upon one who may have injured him or his mates, leapt over the slain bodies of those poisoned by Glip-Glip to drive a cutlass towards the throat of one of the beachholders. This frenzied assault was batted aside with practiced ease.

  From the prow of the launch, Vlados wearily cranked his crossbow, locked it, set the bolt, took aim and fired. A nekomin dropped off his graceful feet; Vlados’s bolt driving home where the nekomin’s heart was.

  Menshirre, charging along, swept his cutlass low and had it come up in a spray of gore as it severed a man’s leg, at the knee. The victim fell hard, darkening the crystal sand with a garnet finish.

  Izzy Nunez, out of his mind with rage at the loss of his brother, stomped his boot into the head of that fallen man, breaking his neck with a satisfying crunch of vertebrae, before launching himself, cutlass first, into the defending line. He did so, heedless of personal harm. Thus, his accuracy was uncanny. He drove the tip of his cutlass through the windpipe of a shocked goblin, who never really had time to realize his peril before it was already over.

  Marley, meanwhile, found himself embroiled in an even struggle between himself and another islander. Matching each other blow for blow and parry for parry, the two danced in a graceful and perilous ballet.

  Erik hit the first line so hard that both he and the defender were staggered, and heaving mighty breaths, unable to do much else.

  Beside him, Hullaboo was in his element. His spear flashed here and there but was unable to break through any defenses. Likewise, no defender was able to get a blade on the dashing, jumping, hopping, and jabbing froggle.

  Jarod used the deep wound in his hip to lure in an opponent. The gullible mark soon found himself skewered upon a darting and very lithe blade.

  Jarrol Hawthorne tried to flank the fore defenders, but instead found himself flanked in turn. It was all he could do to keep hungry swords from feasting upon his flesh.

  The Komodoman Bargress locked blades with a warrior, who leered in his face. Only seconds later, that leer, along with the rest of the face, was torn free of the skull by the helmsman’s brutally toothed jaws. His opponent fell screaming into the sand, writhing and convulsing in excruciating pain and panic.

  Lavarth and Ronald teamed up to distract and disembowel a defending sailor.

  Kittalae’s oar swept back and forth like a living serpent. It kept all comers at bay.

  Brom Corr coughed and grunted as a blade snuck in under his guard, and slid into his right armpit
to pierce his lung. Meanwhile, Crallick parried a brace of daggers that tried in vain to cut through his feints and parries.

  Glip-Glip, finding no one around him, took the opportunity to leap behind those harassing his fellows in the front lines.

  Vlados set about reloading his crossbow. His haggard breath coming in short spurts.

  Menshirre battled his adversary. No blade from either side finding purchase.

  Izzy, incensed, turned from his fight and blundered right into the fight between Marley and his opponent, only to deflect a mistimed swing from his sudden intrusion, just to have it bury itself into the side of Marley’s brain. Marley staggered, sagged to his knees, then in an uncomprehending shudder, sat down on his buttocks and dully looked around the battlefield.

  Erik ran into little resistance as he and his opponent both frantically drew ragged breaths after their collision.

  Jarod, Jarrol and Hullaboo all held their own, staving off rebuts to their own assault. Gregor, still dazed in the longboat, vaguely wondered where he was and what was with all that clamor spoiling the warm sun.

  Bargress took a biting welt into his right chest as a cutlass furrowed a trench into the thick scales over his ribs. This opened a pinkish-red valley that oozed blood and caused pain with every breath.

  Ron Noble ducked under an assailant, shoving him aside, only to realize too late that he had tripped the man into the blind quarter of Lavarth. Lavarth let out a blood-curdling scream as a hatchet chopped down between his shoulder blades and his spine, renting muscle, ligaments, tendons, and bones alike. The fissure tore through the man’s aorta and ended Lavarth’s existence with a vibrant spray of vital fluids over the beach, the sand acting as the wicked artist’s canvas.

  Braving the slaughter, the crew of the Flamerunner continued to fight their way up the beach. Every yard seemingly came at the cost of another quart of blood.

  Crallick grimly went about his business, no more harried than a maid selecting a dress for a ball. He stepped purposely to his right, reversed a swing of his greatsword, and amputated the left leg of the man he had just stepped by, removing it at the hip. This set him up to follow through, swinging forward to drive his serrated blade home into the right side of another defender. Crallick’s once green clothing was becoming more and more burgundy, as spatters, gouts, and jets of his opponents’ blood bathed him.