by David Oliver
It didn’t take him long to come around. In some of the plays I had seen the hero punches the person in the jaw and that's the end of it for however long the hero needs. Life unfortunately doesn’t tend to work that way. If you hit someone in the jaw and they are out for longer than a few minutes...chances are you’ve killed them. Hitting someone in the neck was even trickier; it gave a much higher rate of rendering someone quickly unconscious, but if done overly hard you could permanently injure or kill. Thankfully the officer was coming around within seconds but was still groggy whilst I finished binding his limbs. Ignoring him for the moment I searched the room, looking for anything valuable. The first thing I came across was one of the most useful finds, a large map of what I presumed to be the territory of the Hrudan complete with a somewhat detailed survey of the Meredothian heartland, including the location of Jadira’s fort. Judging by what was drawn on the map the Meredothians had a larger village or fort about four days west of the pass and considering the number of crossed out markers it was likely that a number of local villages had met a grisly fate. There was even a marker where the ice caves were and the route through looked to be quite a long walk. Interestingly, sketched next to it was a skull which suggested that the Hrudan had encountered the spiders in the ice as well. An area marked with black concentric rings was in the northern part of the heartland, a place I would put money on being where the Hrudan caravan was intending to head before we ambushed them. There were a few more items of note that the Hrudan had found within the heartland but much more interestingly to me was the fact that the map contained a well-drawn and presumably not fantasy rendering of the lands north and east of the heartland. Lands that bordered the Andurran Empire. Lands that bordered the mountains that once harboured my home. If this was accurate then it seemed like a gold mine. I had little idea if the Emperor had maps revealing such data - knowing the Academy he probably had a couple of full-time spies ensconced in those regions - but something so up to date would certainly be of interest.
I rolled up the map and scanned the room, looking for anything else that might be worth taking. Spying a chest with a padlock I snapped the metal with a quick downward jerk and opened the box - the officer grunting through his mouth rags as I rummaged through it. Fortunately for him it was only personal items, nothing of any particular value to myself or the Empire as a whole. A few drawings of presumed loved ones, a locket of hair, a fancy but somewhat impractical knife - all useless to me. There was even a bag of crudely cast non-Andurran marked silver coins, interesting but somewhat impractical to take back with me as the bag clinked quite loudly.
Some armour lay on a stand in the office, treated leather with metal vambraces and pauldrons. As much as I am meant to be an upstanding member of the Empire and decry any other workmanship as shoddy...it actually looked quite good. The leather was supple yet felt strong, the metal showed signs of wear and impact but had obviously done a decent job at keeping its owner alive - something I valued much more highly than looking pretty. I was half taken with wearing it but sadly the commanding officer was much bulkier than myself and the armour was sized to fit accordingly. I was still a growing lad so with a heavy heart I turned away from the stand and resolved to update those in the Academy that the so called ‘northern barbarians’ had some well-equipped armour that would likely deflect an imperial blade or two, and that if they got in range of our men the quality of the axe that I picked up next would likely kill via the impact of being hit even if it didn’t cut. Shaking my head at the foolish idea of myself fleeing the fort whilst hauling a double-bladed battle axe I went back to the table and absentmindedly picked up a few documents. I couldn’t read Hrudan but there would be someone either in the heartland or in the Academy who they could be useful for - though knowing the many documents that Major General Kyle used to have to sign it was likely that they were just orders for requisitions and troop movement. Either way I folded each one carefully and folded them into a pouch on my belt.
I was almost done when I picked up a letter that I almost put away before realising that I understood the language. It was written in Meredothian and gave rough coordinates of a number of the villages within the heartland itself. Even though I should have expected it - there was an entire country worth of people within the heartland after all - I still felt a bolt of disappointment strike my gut that someone would have the gall to sell out their own kind. There was no signature, no revealing mark of any kind that I could immediately use to identify the writer but I kept the document anyway with the intent to give it to Jadira in the hope that she would at least know that someone, somewhere, was acting against the rest of the country.
Finally I turned back to the fully awake officer. He was a big man, almost the size of Kane in girth and probably broader across the shoulders too. He was busy trying to pry apart the linen that held his wrists and didn’t bother stopping even when he noticed I was watching. It was somewhat admirable that - he didn’t care because he either didn’t mind if he died or because he knew I could have killed him in his sleep and was betting on me not having the balls to kill him now. I couldn’t risk pulling out his mouth gag - one shout and the entire fort would be alerted and so I did the only obvious thing. I hit him again and used the remaining linen to reinforce my previous work. One final cast of my eyes over the room and then I was out, shutting the door as softly as I dared to attempt avoiding the squealing hinge. I looked down the corridor I had come from, knowing that the route back lay in that direction, but my feet took me the other way. What can I say? I always had a nose for trouble.
Moving swiftly but quietly I flitted down the corridor whilst using my nose to define what each room held. Sleeping person, sleeping person, toilet, sleeping person, carpenter, I checked off as I moved. Finally a familiar scent hit my nose and I grinned in pleasure. The smell of steel, iron and the harsh combination of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal. Following the scent I went through a door and straight into the fort’s armoury. Racks of axes and bows lay along the walls, gleaming and freshly oiled. Stacks of boiled leather armour lay on pallets in the centre of the floor and towards the back were three fresh barrels of what had brought us on this suicidal mission in the first place; black powder. With a mischievous smile I moved two of the barrels to the centre of the room and removed the lid from the third. Slowly I poured a thin trail along the floor, through the door and into the wood working shop up the corridor. Pouring the rest of the powder in the corner of the room I set about stacking all the many highly flammable woodworking items in the centre and then using the flint and steel from a pouch on my belt I sparked into the pots of resin until they caught and then ran like the wind.
Out of the corridor and back into the courtyard, along the inner wall until the stairway and then up onto the parapet with all the guards. I practically sprinted the distance, my feet making little noise on the hard stone. The smell of smoke caught up with me, the scent on the wind faster than my feet. A quick pause to let a guard walk past and then out, over the far wall and dropping the distance to the outside of the fort. I began moving more quickly, heading back up to the pass as the scent of fire filled the air. Soon I could hear shouting and alarm bells and bit by bit the hornet nest within the fort began to wake. I danced past one guard and then a second, both of them too busy looking at the beacon of fire that now lit the pre-dawn light to notice me. It was about this time that I realised the potential error of my plan - would the alarm make it to the other side of the pass before I did? If so I was about to face a lot of enemies in a very narrow stretch of land. I could only hope that I hadn’t just made things much more difficult for the others.
I was twenty feet into the pass when a roaring explosion thundered behind me, nearly knocking me over as a torrent of sound rippled and rumbled down the narrow passageway. For a long second a somewhat less sane part of me wanted to turn around to witness the damage I had just wrought but I forced myself to keep moving, to keep my legs pumping along the crevice. I was nervous now. I knew thund
er travelled far, that the sound of it could be used to measure distance and as such my best guess was that the noise would reverberate along the whole mountain range and do it far faster than my feet could carry me.
In other words, I was quite possibly screwed.
Regardless, I carried along, practically flat out sprinting my way down the rapidly lightening pass, relying on my senses and quick feet to keep me from careening into one of the twisting walls, or in the case of one very confused guard, a person. Leaving him slumped on the floor, unconscious but breathing, I continued my mad run, forcing any thoughts from my brain that weren’t to do with my immediate survival, banishing anything that remotely suggested that it was almost certainly dawn and that the others would detonate the pass any moment, focusing only on my breathing and my pounding feet, tunnelling my vision. It turned out that wasn’t the best idea when running through an enemy held encampment. I practically sprinted into a squad of six men who were marching two by two towards the fort I had just escaped - probably some kind of dawn patrol - and sent them sprawling to the ground, myself amongst them. I lay on-top of a very surprised Hrudan, gave him a gentle pat on the jaw and used his torso as a springboard to get back to my feet. Very soon I was running for my life with shouts of alarm and rapidly fading footsteps behind me.
As I neared the exit of the pass my nose became filled with the smell of black powder and smoke. Somewhere above and around me lay the bags of black powder, meaning that at least some of the others had succeeded in planting the explosives. The smell of the smoke was thick and oppressive, not the usual crisp wood scent of breakfast fires but that of heavy material burning. I could hear cries of alarm ahead of me and as I rounded the final corner I saw that the others had taken the art of improvisation to heart.
Within the fortified approach to the pass there had been a number of heavy cloth tents. The Hrudan likely hadn’t had time to make everything a permanent building before winter set in and consequently had a number of heavy tarps battened down with iron pegs. On the way in they had rippled with the cold wind and provided a good bit of cover for any errant sounds that the others had made. On the way out they did the same job but as a flaming distraction. One of the group - my money was on Rikol or Ella - had been enterprising enough to take the time to find a source of flame, sneak to the tents and coax them alight. I would have been annoyed if this had been a stealth mission but that ship had sailed with my theatrics at the fort. Hrudan milled around the tents trying in vain to put out the roaring flames that hungrily licked towards the sky. An enterprising commander had organised for buckets of snow to be collected and thrown at the tents but not yet in enough quantities to threaten the fire. A quick glance over the rest of the camp showed that the other Hrudan were organised and alert with units of two and three moving around the encampment with bared blades. My blood ran cold. It could either be a precaution or they had seen one of the others. Hoping everyone was safe I briefly pushed out with my senses and looked for anyone freshly bleeding - of which I found several - and any smaller figures lying dead or injured - of which I found none. A silent sigh of relief and then I was running again, not bothering with dashing from shadow to shadow but relying on my speed and the distraction of the fire to cover my approach. I saw a flicker of light beyond the camp perimeter, like someone kindling a torch and then a duo of Hrudan walked round the corner of a building, had a moment of stunned silence as they saw my face and then promptly roared with alarm.
Keeping my momentum I rolled under the first swing of an axe, coming up into a spin with my leg outstretched to catch the back ankle of the second man and sending him tumbling to the ground. The first man reacted quickly, moving with rotation of his first cut to swivel and bring the blade down from his shoulder in a devastating cut. Throwing myself backwards I rolled to my feet and drew the daggers at my side in the same movement, noting the sound of tramping feet rushing towards my position as I did so. A shout from my left and I spun, reflexively shifting into the third pattern of Kaschan, my feet carrying me into the range of the descending axe, around and behind the wielder before putting two puncture wounds in his back. He coughed, a wet and bloody sound, then slumped to the floor. The other men approached more warily now, content to use time to their advantage. I moved back, trying to find my way out of the encampment but found the press of stone against my spine. Axemen surrounded me now, gleaming blades catching the dawn sun as it finally peaked over the mountains. Snarling, I made a dash for one warrior then spun and lunged for the one behind me as the half circle contracted. He deftly parried my lunge, pinging the blade from my hand with the haft of his axe. He looked pleased with himself so I robbed him of his satisfaction by breaking his knee with a kick. Inured to his howling I calmly picked the axe from his flailing hands and turned to the enemy before smiling a terrible smile.
“Come on then,” I barked loudly. “Let’s be having it.”
What followed couldn’t be called a battle or barely even a fight. It wasn’t honourable. It wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t anything worthy of a song. It was more like a taproom brawl that had spiralled out of hand to involve sharp implements and murder. The Hrudan had numbers on their side and each soldier was surprisingly strong, flinging their axes around with wild abandon. I stabbed two, crippled a third and maimed the fourth before being blindsided by a Hrudan who tackled me to the floor, using his superior weight to bring me down. After crushing his testicles with my hand, I had a brief respite to see a bright flame dart across the sky before the man’s forehead came down to rock my skull, and then the world shook.
The ground shifted beneath me as bags of black powder erupted one by one in a chain reaction. Chunks of rock hurtled through the sky, arcing up and up before plummeting back down with frightening speed. A thick, black combination of ash and smoke gushed over the encampment, rendering visibility down to practically zero. The rumble of the explosion receded into echoes and was replaced by sharp, frigid cracks that splintered the air. They were the sounds that any climber would be terrified to hear. The sound of breaking rock. The men surrounding me were just as stunned as I was, one had fallen to the ground whilst the others had stumbled in the wake of the explosion and were choking in the wave of dust and ash. I caught the man atop me with a hook hard enough to shatter his jaw and twisted, bucking my knees to get out from under his legs. Impressively the man still had enough sense in him to try and regain his balance but with my legs now available I quickly shifted, propping a knee across his chest and splaying the other leg out before pushing and sweeping simultaneously; turning him over in one smooth motion. Another punch and this time his face became a mangled mess. I managed to get one foot under me before being sent sprawling to the ground by a stumbling warrior. My head spinning from the impact against his hardened breast plate I rolled, flailing with a leg and connecting with a crunch and a howl. I rolled again, knowing that my legs would be jelly if I tried to stand, and gasped as the same warrior I had just kicked fell onto my chest, driving the breath out of my lungs. I bucked with my hips, throwing him off and twisted to all fours. Slowly, head pounding, I drove myself to my feet. And it was then I heard the screams.
At some point the background roar of the collapsing rubble had been overtaken by something more primal. Something that bellowed its rage into the collapsing night. And frighteningly it was something that I recognised. A horrified scream rent the air above the din and abruptly cut off. I stood for a long moment, temporarily forgotten by the enemies around me as shouts, screams and bestial roars filled the ashen sky. Something flew through the air and I ducked instinctively, narrowingly missing being bludgeoned by half a torso.
Yes. I had a very good idea of what was decimating the soldiers within the smoke and ash - I had wondered where our strange ally had got to. It seemed likely that it was the one who left the sign for us to follow and find this encampment in the first place which begged the question - who was it and how did it know these things? And for that matter how did it know us?
I had some strong suspicions on that subject. The troll creature wouldn’t be the first strange beast I had met that somehow served the Andurran Empire - Merowyn and her strange inner travel companion being the first that jumped to mind. Kane had alluded that certain Imperators had been subjected to the same process as Merowyn and that sometimes the creature won. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it knew me...which - if my theory was correct - meant that surely I had to know whoever it was at the core of that beast?
I shook my head as much to clear my thoughts as to clear my face of ash. Now wasn’t the time to be considering what may or may not lie beneath the troll-like exterior of our seeming ally. The Hrudan were in trouble. At least temporarily cut off from reinforcements and reeling from the twin disasters of explosions and an angry troll, now was either the time to strike or flee. Moving to run and suspecting that attacking any survivors would be easier once the dust had cleared, I heard a bellow of pain and hesitated. With a sigh that turned into a hacking cough I turned and sprinted further into the dust, blade out.
Now that the rumbling and cracking of the pass had largely subsided the dust was no longer the impediment it once was. Focusing on my hearing I was able to move fairly rapidly within the swirling motes of ash, or as quickly as one could when there was still the threat of running head first into a stone wall. Either way it gave me an acute advantage over the remaining Hrudan who were making their way towards the troll. Most didn’t see me coming.
