Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  The descent into the box canyon was much easier than the climb had been. The floor of the canyon followed a river upwards, reducing the distance they needed to drop. Lowering climbers was also much easier than hoisting them and with the help of a few conveniently placed ledges, the five warriors found themselves drinking from the river and plotting their next move. Stratera handed the three black gourds that contained the poison to Fritigern who slipped one into his belt and handed the other two to the surviving Dwarves.

  “A few drops sprinkled over a bag of flour or a bushel of potatoes will turn all of the food around it to death,” said Andrika, reciting what the Nymph envoy had told her of the poison.

  She withheld the knowledge that it was a combination of a very poisonous beetle ground together with a mold spore taken from the top of a very specific stand of pines. Little was known of the Nymphs culture and history other than what was garnered by Cherubim children in their youth. Their blood ties to the tribe and mutual interest in defending their forest home had made them into interesting new allies. The Nymphs had many skills unknown to even to their children. They traveled outside of the forest as little as the Cherubim and lived deeper into the mountains. They were incredible smiths, knife fighters, and herbalists, growing plants in ways that were as far beyond the Giant’s farms as the Cherubim were beyond the typical warrior.

  “Just don’t get it on your fingers or in your mouth,” said Stratera. “We know from the knights who were stationed here that the food stores are kept in the central storeroom on the rear level, how do we get you inside?”

  This was the fight Fritigern had been born for, had trained for. As darkness fell his advantage grew over the defenders. Out of fear of betrayal, the men had murdered any Dwarves in the outpost who could have matched his ability to fight at night. Strapping quivers of bolts to their backs and long double-sided daggers to their belts they hoisted their crossbows and then rested in quiet anticipation while one of their kin scouted the way.

  While they waited for the scout to return, Fritigern watched the half-moon rise; it would only appear for an hour before dipping behind the mountains. He thought of their companion, his cold form lying higher than any Dwarf had ever rested. Probably being eaten by that Griffin. He thought for a moment that it was foolish to trust this tribe. After all it was Donus who had killed Alman, his king, and the actions of just three of their warriors had changed the course of the North from one of unity with the South against the Centaurs to one of fruitless struggle against impossible odds. But he had befriended Ignatius; he had seen Stratera and Andrika risk their lives to get them over the mountain. It does feel good to be free of the yoke.

  The clouds were deepening the darkness when the scout returned to report a clear path to the back of the fort and into their storerooms. The way was lit by several torches, reducing their advantage, however there were only a few guards on duty that far back in the fort.

  “The Cherubim will take the roof tops,” said Fritigern. “Get those torches and use them to set fires at the rear. We will move up the sides, eliminating the guards and converging on the storeroom. You must fly to the battlements to set up the rope so we can escape out the front. They didn’t expect us to come in the back, they won’t expect us to go out the front.”

  Andrika nodded, squatting down to slice off a smaller portion of their rope before hiding the remainder under some rocks. They moved much more clumsily than the Dwarves down the path following the river towards the fort. With the settings reversed, Andrika realized how the Dwarves must have felt on the mountainside- out of their element and afraid. Just as I feel now.

  The rock walls began to open nearer to the camp and they could see the torches burning in between the storerooms, bunkhouses, and armories. Using their elevation to glide into the camp, the Cherubim tried to clear thoughts of proving their worth as fighters from their minds. Landing lightly on the roof of one of the buildings, Stratera spotted a sentry making his rounds down a well-lit alley. She slowed her breathing but could not stop her pounding heart when she knocked her arrow and drew her bow in one fluid motion. The release was perfect, sending the arrow straight through the muscles on the man’s back and into his heart until his breastbone stopped it.

  He spun and fell without a sound while a shadow that was Fritigern moved rapidly past him before disappearing into another shadow. Stratera could see Andrika reaching down from the roof to grab a torch. She did the same, following her sister in war across another roof to where a pile of hay rested in front of a stable.

  The animals. Stratera dove from the roof and opened the gate as Andrika’s torch exploded the hay into flames. A surprised soldier jumped up at the sight of a blue winged warrior barging into the stable, torch in hand. She kicked him square in the chest, sending him flying, before following her kick with a dagger that caught him under the chin. She dove forward, collecting the dagger and using the momentum of her roll to hurl her torch to the far end of the stable where it caught fire. Terrified animals fled the fire, jumping through the flaming hay with Stratera.

  She landed next to Andrika who had just finished gutting another guard with her dagger and had sheathed it. They both drew arrows and headed for the wall, lower in the fort, while a pandemonium of fire and animals erupted behind them. Andrika led the way, burdened by the rope. Both Cherubim loosed arrows at guards whose night vision was being blinded by the flames. Two men toppled into the darkness beyond and Andrika landed, ignoring the other men on the wall while she searched for a place to tie off the rope.

  Stratera drew a second arrow before she landed, ducking a blow from a mace and striking upwards with a spinning kick that sent the attacker tumbling off the wall. When she landed back on both feet she released the arrow so close to Andrika that it brushed her hair, punching through the leather on a swordsman whose dead weight rolled off Andrika’s back.

  The rope affixed, the blond Cherub threw it over the wall and drew both daggers. They were like quicksilver in her hands as she moved her legs in a way the less flexible males never could. She spun and punched with the sole of her foot, using the strength of her legs to knock one man unconscious with a blow to the temple and to crush another with a blow to the throat in rapid succession.

  Behind her Stratera was loosing arrows at dark forms where they ran around the storeroom. With only a few left in her quiver, she knew the Dwarves must be trapped. Shouting for Andrika to follow, she flew from the battlements, an unknown roar escaping from her lips.

  “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR”

  The high-pitched war cry turned the heads of those surrounding the granary as the Cherubim sailed over them in the black sky. Stratera crashed through a bolted door legs first, her momentum splitting the timbers, black braids flaying the ground. Andrika reefed her wings and sailed into the room over her friend, daggers drawn. Three dead Men littered the floor along with one dead Dwarf. Fritigern was making a stand against five soldiers wearing nothing but his breeches but slashing dangerously with his own dagger as well as that of his dead companion.

  Andrika’s daggers found their targets with lightening precision. Fritigern took advantage of the distraction to sweep another solider from his feet just in time for Stratera’s dagger to down the last man. Above them, in the rafters, a Dwarf could be seen running between piles of food, dumping droplets of the poison with reckless abandon.

  “The way you are throwing that around the whole fort will be useless!” yelled Andrika, collecting the daggers and tossing Stratera’s neatly back to her.

  “Time to go!” shouted Fritigern.

  Grabbing the downed Dwarf’s empty bottle of poison Fritigern ran out the door just as a flaming horse ran past.

  “What did you do!?” he shouted, slicing at a nearby soldier’s belly and running for the wall.

  The others were hot on his heels, loosing their remaining arrows and listening to the sounds of the fully roused garrison not far behind. The Cherubim made the rear guard, flapping and hopping backwards
up the stairs behind the Dwarves. At the top they turned to see their path to the rope completely blocked by dozens of warriors. Without thinking Andrika wrapped her arms around one Dwarf and dove from the battlements. Stratera did the same, feeling the weight of her charge pull her down like a stone even as he struggled to keep fighting.

  Their wings slowed the fall significantly, but it was the loose dirt and sharp slope of the approach to the wall that saved them. Tumbling in a mass of feathers and arms the two pairs of fighters rolled down the slope for a dozen yards, spears and arrows falling in the darkness behind them. The Cherubim hopped to their feet, bruised ribs and miscellaneous cuts not denting their desire to escape. Fritigern looked to his companion who had foam coming from his mouth and convulsions wracking his body and felt Stratera pulling him away. She knew his brother in arms had poisoned himself while poisoning the food.

  “He won’t make it,” she shouted, reaching up out of instinct to deflect an arrow with her bracer.

  Fritigern turned to run down the steep trail and out of the range of their attackers, the night hawk Cherubim swooping above.

  In the morning Stratera and Andrika nursed their wounds with salves from the Nymphs. Dealing with the emotional fallout was more difficult. The screams of poisoned men could be heard in the fort above and the Cherubim knew they had proven their worth in the most brutal of manners.

  “Three lives to take the entire fort,” said Stratera.

  “Plus the lives of all the defenders,” said Andrika.

  Stratera shook her head and hugged her companion, wrapping her up in her wings in a failed attempt to keep the screams away. When the surviving defenders lowered themselves over the battlements three days later for a final charge, the Cherubim stood behind a barn so they did not have to watch the Giants, Centaurs, and Dwarves extract their revenge for their murdered comrades.

  Chapter 4

  W hen his troops crested a small rise in the prairie Atlas scanned the horizon and saw his father’s settlement on the boarder of the forest. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time. He had chosen to follow his father in trusting the Cherubim and breaking with the Old Alliance and the consequences of that choice were visible even several miles out. Smoke rose from dozens of new buildings, the fields being planted with new methods learned from the Elves over the winter, and they had left Fritigern in command of Fort Hope along with his hundred archers. He smiled, thinking how it was his decision to follow through with the plan to allow the Dwarves and Cherubim to poison the fort, and now he was bringing home all of his warriors.

  Ahead of him he could see three pairs of females with youths plowing the fields using buffalo they had received through trade with the Centaurs. The new type of collar the beasts wore enabled them to plow much larger fields than they had in the past. This would provide a huge surplus of food they could store up and trade. That, however, was not the real miracle. Trading with the Centaurs, who had previously only ever raided and killed anyone caught in the open, was truly a miracle.

  The women and children shouted and stopped their plows to follow the warriors into the settlement. Everywhere green shoots were sprouting and he could see the snow in the forests had been reduced to small patches in the shade of big furs. The ringing of hammers and axes could be heard, the sound of ceaseless building, and he felt a welling of pride when he smelled the fresh cut wood and caught the scent of bread wafting on the warm southern wind. Avenging the Giants and taking Fort Hope had given him confidence that he could be a new kind of Pathmaker for his people. He could feel the potential for this little village to grow into a massive city with bountiful crops, trade, and security in their own lands.

  The workers had stopped now and Giants were running out of the forest and homes that had overgrown Parfey’s original fort. How nice it will be to not tower over Dwarves and constantly look up for Cherubim. He could see Theia, his mother, leading the tribe out to meet the conquering warriors and in her hands was a nine-foot long mass, covered in cloth. Atlas felt trivial thoughts of the height of his people disappearing at the sight of his father’s sword. Parfey had wielded it as if it were weightless, years and years of fighting for Theseus making it small in his hands. Atlas knew the Dwarves had forged it after his father had earned his armor through five years of backbreaking labor.

  There were tears in Theia’s eyes as the stocky Giantess handed the weapon to her son. He knew she hated the war parties, the wondering, the endless loneliness that came from the loss of a husband and a son. He also knew what that loss made him to her. Though he was not full grown and still six inches shorter than his mother, he swept her up in one arm, embracing her while holding the sword at arms length. When he put her down he could feel the hands of the people grabbing his arms and pleading for news of the fight. He smiled at Theia.

  “Is there food to feed these hungry warriors, mother? We have stories to tell.”

  She nodded. Tears turning to a relieved smile, she led the returning knights and fighters as well as the rest of the tribe towards the great hall. Atlas left the telling of the slaughter and the story of the Cherubim and the Dwarves’ climb to others. He examined the sword, its silver length appearing mythical in the dark, fire lit confines of his father’s hastily constructed hall. He looked around at the feasting faces, noticing the supportive nods of many as well as the hard looks of others. The knights in particular, whose support and experience were so critical, were slow to accept his leadership. They remembered hard years in service of the Old Alliance, loved ones killed by the Centaurs, homes destroyed. They also knew the story of the Cherubim who had killed Parfey, their brother in arms and Pathmaker for so many years. It is easier to build trust than to rebuild.

  Atlas sighed at the weight of leadership in uncertain times, sheathing the sword and leaning it against the table next to his trusty war club. When the food filtered along the table to him he ate heartily with the others, swilling mead down with turkey legs and buffalo chops. The din of so many Giants was enormous but the sounds of life and bounty were new blessings to the Pathmaker.

  After the meal a group of knights walked with him away from the hall and into the glen where a small river moved out of the forest and snaked its way through the settlement and out across the vast plains. They found rocks amid the melting snow, and Atlas breathed the pines of his home. He looked to Debir, a trader who had fought with the Cherubim when Crius had been killed. Atlas was amazed the Giant was still alive after being skewered through the stomach and shoulder as well as loosing some fingers blocking a deathblow.

  “You did well to take the fort so easily,” said Debir. “But all of our achievements will end in slaughter when the South returns with their legions. This place will be swept away by their phalanxes.”

  Atlas looked around at the circle of Giants, all much older than himself, and recognized many who had only known the Old Alliance that had been controlled by the kings of Men.

  “We will fight that battle,” answered the Pathmaker. “That is the price of no longer sending our sons as slaves and mercenaries against the Centaurs. Centaurs who fight beside us, who trade with us instead of using our backs.”

  Several of the Giants nodded, but the harsh power of the South outweighed the philosophical arguments for others.

  “Saying we will fight that battle and listing the benefits of turning against the South will not turn them back,” continued Debir. “What will you say when you see them coming across the plains like herds of buffalo, too many to count? What will you say when they mete out their punishment for disloyalty?”

  Atlas tried to keep calm but he felt his youth and inexperience laid bare on the forest floor under the stern gazes of the Giants who looked to him for leadership. He glanced up into the pines and spotted a chickadee landing in the branches.

  “We have the Cherubim at our backs, the Dwarves to the north, the Centaurs on the plains. We will hold Therucilin and without that city what army would survive a winter in the North?”

&nbs
p; Around the circle beards were stroked as the others considered his words. Before anyone one could speak, five figures appeared silently out of the woods. Two unfamiliar Cherubim jumped through the branches ahead of Stratera and Andrika who walked with the Elf named Arbolante. This was the Elf who had spent the winter teaching the Giants to farm on a grander scale using technologies from the South like the buffalo collar, adapted from their horse collar. He had lived in the Southlands and knew their ways. The Giants shifted uneasily, still uncomfortable with the strange beings.

  Arbolante adjusted his green kimono and lowered his hood, pushing his katanas to the side of his sash so he could sit with the others. Even sitting, the fully-grown Giants were not much lower than the branches where all four Cherubim females lay draped across limbs, their wings dangling down over the others.

  “Tell us,” Debir asked the Elf, “how our people may avoid the fate of the Elves and survive the new course our Pathmaker suggests.”

  Arbolante crossed his legs with both feet resting on his thighs, balanced artfully on his stone. His perfectly straight silver hair seemed to reflect the snow. He reached out his arm, which was covered in a leather glove, and whistled a clear, high-pitched note. A moment later a falcon darted through the trees, landing roughly on his outstretched hand and walking up his kimono to stand comfortably on his shoulder.

  “You will change your thinking,” said the Elf, his face expressionless at their surprised looks. “The South always longed to fight the Centaurs in the manner to which the South is accustomed; pitched battles on open ground where their phalanxes are unstoppable. They will try to fight you in the same way. You must become like the Centaurs, ambushing them, fading into the wilds, never massing.”

  Atlas nodded, recognizing that if they could hit and run, living off supply caches hidden across the land for the summer, the Southerners would need to retreat before winter. If we can keep them out of Therucilin.