It was a cold and wet night spent in an open area at the top of a small hill. The view was unobstructed, for the trees on the hill had long since been felled. With the abandoned town on the west, and forest half a mile to the east of the group, Brondolf felt safe that attack would be seen with ample warning to wake those not on sentry duty. Sleeping under the wagons would prove to be uncomfortable, yet they feared becoming easily trapped if they sought refuge within the town itself, and clearly this was not a welcoming area.
They lit fires from wood stored under the canvas of the wagon and warmed salted pork over the flames. The warm food, arduous travel and free flowing ale allowed some respite, though it was a guarded rest.
Dawn broke, revealing a miserable day. The fields had become sodden with mud and the travellers seemed forever wet and cold as they slogged onwards to the north. Jacob brooded silently as Frostbite walked at the head of the group. He had visions of crowds greeting him in the streets and breaking bread with village elders. Hearing stories of old as ale flowed, and how Jacob would make right the wrongs of Kane the Cruel, first of his name, but now he felt out of place in this cold and wet land, where people ran from his standard and feared him, in place of the great love he had hoped for. He spotted smoke on the horizon and his heart warmed at the thought of greeting his people only to arrive at the village to find it empty, cooking fires still smouldering.
As Jacob entered another seemingly empty village, he came across a middle-aged man who sat cross-legged in the street and just stared vacantly up at Jacob as he reined Frostbite in. The man was caked in mud, motionless, and Jacob had failed to see the man until he was almost on top of him.
Jacob jumped down and smiled warmly at the old man. ‘Greetings, friend.’
The man looked at Jacob with coldness but stayed cross-legged in the mud, his dirty hair plastered to his face and his lice-ridden clothes covered in mud. He looked like he might have been there for days.
‘You look in need of some food and warmth. Please, eat with me.’ Silence greeted the prince, who looked at Brondolf, who shrugged to say that it was not in his field of expertise. Jacob then called over Red Rob, who squatted down in the mud to be at eye level with the troubled man.
‘My name is Robert. I am a father of the Order of Light, and this here is my friend, Jacob, the prince of this kingdom. Are you unwell, my friend?’
The old man took his stare from Jacob and glanced at Robert with scorn before looking back at Jacob. ‘So, you be the new king then, is it?’ The old man spoke in a knowing fashion, as if he had seen too much of life and could be impressed by nothing.
‘I am not the king, but I am the heir. My name is Jacob. What is yours?’ Jacob spoke as one would to a sick child, gently and soothingly, as clearly this man had some reason to be all alone sitting in the mud.
‘Folk call me Digger on account I digs the holes, Lord.’
‘Well, Digger, what in the name of He who is Greatest of them all, are you doing sitting here in the mud?’ Jacob said cheerfully, feeling he was making headway with the man.
‘Me, Lord? Well, I be the bait.’
Jacob looked to Rob, who looked equally puzzled. And then the arrows fell.
Short arrows scarcely longer than half the length of the ones Jacob had fired from Audemar’s great war bow, and unlike those lethal, armour-piercing, bodkin-tipped arrows, these were barbed and suited for hunting rather than killing warriors. All this Jacob saw in the first few seconds of the ambush as he looked at the arrows peppering the ground around him. Robert stood as Jacob did, in a state of complete surprise and shock when Brondolf unceremoniously pushed the large priest to the ground and brought his sword to bear. With the speed and accuracy of a striking snake he lunged his sword through Digger’s throat. The razor sharp steel and the strength of a warrior’s arm sliced through the windpipe, neck muscle and smashed the spine as it exploded out the back of Digger’s neck in a spray of bright red blood.
‘Under the wagon!’ Brondolf roared at Rob who squirmed his way under the protective boards of the wagon. Like a worm he wriggled and Jacob noticed that Askia was dragging the priests Michael and Stephen off the exposed seat area at the front of one wagon as Gulkin used his size to cover Elysabeth as he ushered her to a place of safety. Two servants already struck by many arrows lay motionless on the ground, bloody and in twisted forms.
‘Jacob!’ Brondolf bellowed, causing him to wake from the nightmare he was witnessing. ‘Drop your face plate and draw your sword!’
Jacob did both and felt the actions transform him. Anger raised as the young father of the order Michael was struck by an arrow, his face contorting in pain as the flesh headed arrow ripped into his abdomen. Michael looked straight into Jacob’s eyes as he spat up blood. Jacob saw the blood was dark and knew the poor man’s liver had been torn. He was dead already, and the only question left to the agony-stricken man was how long his suffering would be. Jacob ran to him and took his face in his gauntleted hand, Michael could see the compassion in his prince’s eyes, the only part of the prince’s face visible. ‘I offer you mercy, brother.’ Jacob whispered into Michael’s ear before Jacob ran the edge of his sword along his throat, opening the artery and causing blood to spurt in powerful gushes as the man’s suffering was brought to an end whilst in the compassionate hold of his sworn lord.
Anger had now turned to furious rage as Jacob laid down the body of a man who had died a terrible death, having given no harm to any man. He strode out into the open area of the square and faced the buildings and alleyways where the arrows were still sporadically coming from. Brondolf, Wilhelm and Zachary joined him as he raised both arms in the air. Michael’s blood trickling down the blade and congealed on the hilt.
‘We show no threat! Cause no harm! And you seek to murder us! Lay down your arms and we shall talk.’ Jacob roared and was answered by an arrow striking his mail plate at the chest, pinging off harmlessly. ‘Suggestions?’ Jacob said over his shoulder at his men.
‘Wait. They will soon see their arrows cannot pierce our armour’, Brondolf said calmly. ‘They will either run and hide, or charge. I would wager they will charge, around thirty judging by the number of bows firing. They will charge and we shall slaughter them. Make room!’ Brondolf shouted the last as an order for battle, and the warriors obeyed without thought. The four of them spread out, a half dozen paces between each man as they waited to return the aggression they had received.
And then the bow fire stopped, and a screeching rent the silence that followed the sound of arrowheads striking wood, stone and steel. An unearthly sound, savage and filled with bloodlust.
‘Come and meet your death!’ Wilhelm shouted back defiantly.
And they came. Wild-looking men clothed in rags streamed from the alleyways, windows and doors, bearded and with long matted hair. They came seemingly without fear. Without a shred of discipline, a piece of armour or a warrior’s weapon they came, with a fury akin to madness, armed with wood axes, hand scythes and pitchforks. Brondolf had underestimated. Around fifty enemies ran at a sprint, screaming their battle charge. Brondolf, Wilhelm and Zachary smiled beneath their armoured face plates as they each shared the same thought. It is like slaughtering Goblins. They stood ready for the bloody work to begin.
Jacob neither smiled nor waited to receive the charge. Instead, he strode towards the charging rabble and began his dance of death. He swatted aside the first man who came within his reach. His backhand slice was delivered with only a hint of his strength, and it still gauged a chasm in his foe’s skull as he brushed him aside. With his next stride, he grabbed a man’s throat while the man attempted to use a simple farming tool against a wall of hardened steel. The man’s feeble weapon crumpled like parchment as Jacob’s steel fist tightened on the man’s throat. Jacob lifted the man as if he was a mewling kitten. Effortlessly Jacob raised the man high in the air to the extent of his arm’s length then slammed the helpless man to the ground, his head exploding in a shower of bone, blood and b
rains as his skull struck rock. Jacob’s focus on reality was now gone. He was a feral creature with the undiluted power of a raging storm and as unyielding as a mountain. He stepped from side to side, with each step accompanied by a downward hack of his great-sword, bringing death without mercy as his blade tore through the flesh of Man. He neither smiled nor scowled, felt neither the pity nor the joy of battle. He just moved and in his wake lay the butchered bodies of his enemies. He carved a path clean through the charge of the outlaws and turned, seeking to find more life to end, but instead he saw the remaining foemen being subdued as Brondolf bellowed that he wanted prisoners. Jacob strode towards the disarmed men who kneeled stunned and dazed in the mud and brought his sword arm up, ready to behead a man that looked up at him from his knees, head wobbling and blood gushing from a large cut upon his forehead. As Jacob made to deliver the killing blow Brondolf stepped between Jacob and the prisoner and took hold of Jacob’s sword arm at the wrist.
‘It is over, my prince’, Brondolf hissed. ‘Put up your blade.’
Jacob nodded once and exhaled a long breath as if he had been holding it in for a long time. He wiped his bloody blade upon the kneeling man’s rags and slid it back into its scabbard, then lifted the visor on his helmet. He looked thoughtfully at Brondolf, who was staring at his prince with awe in his seasoned eyes.
‘Thank you, Brondolf. I shall question this man before I deliver the sentence.’ Jacob looked towards the wagons and was pleased as he saw Elysabeth and Robert appear from underneath the middle wagon and saddened when he saw Stephen cradling the body of his friend as he wept openly.
‘Who leads you?’ Jacob asked sternly. The man just looked up defiantly and remained silent.
‘You forfeited the right for silence when you attacked and killed without warning or cause’, Jacob said, anger threatening to rise again.
‘Without cause, is it?’ the man said. Resigned to his death, he chose to be defiant.
‘This man was a priest, a healer of the sick and champion of the infirm’, Jacob shouted as he pointed towards the corpse of brother Michael.
The man shrugged as if one death was of little importance and said, ‘I lead. So, take your tarnished blade and take m’ head.’ He spat at Jacob’s feet and lifted his head to the sky.
‘You are an outlaw and therefore you shall hang.’
‘Outlaw, is it? Well, yes, we live without protection of the laws of a corrupt monarch. Hang me if that is your wish. It matters not the method of my death, only that I died fighting the oppressors and murderers of my people.’
‘I am not the king! I am not your people’s oppressor!’ Jacob replied, though the anger was fading as he faced the plight of the common folk of this land.
‘Ah, I see now, you think you are better than Kane the Cruel, and your young lady and your priestly friends believe that too, I think. But do they know of the young man who was taken into slavery at the order of the king and then executed by your own hand on the march south to bondage.’
An image can to Jacob’s mind unbidden, of a man shaking in fear as he died unjustly at Jacob’s hand. He looked down upon the man, guilt and shame threatening to overwhelm him.
‘His name was Eddy’, the man said. The pain of grief marked his voice. ‘He was my son.’
Jacob kept his thoughts to himself as they neared the end of their journey. A harsh silence had fallen on the band since the ambush four days earlier. Stephen wept sporadically and was comforted by Red Rob, who had neither left the young priest’s side nor spoken to Jacob with words of any substance since the attack. Even Elysabeth gave Jacob time to be alone with his thoughts, riding beside him in silence as he wrestled with thoughts beyond his young mind’s ability to organise.
His mind kept returning to the look of the young man whose head he had taken in the valley pass and the look of the man’s father as he looked upon the eyes of his son’s killer. It was not hate or anger in the man’s eyes but pity, and it tormented Jacob; he was seeing the man others saw in him rather than the man he thought himself to be, and that man sickened him.
‘May I offer advice, my prince?’ Jacob turned in the saddle to see that Brondolf had appeared at his left.
‘It is your duty to advise.’ Jacob looked upon Brondolf with a stern expression. ‘But it is mine to choose whether or not to heed said advice, so I shall hear no more about how I should have hanged those men.’ Jacob had released those few men taken prisoner, much to the dismay of his warriors who believed they should have dangled from gallows in the town square. Even Stephen had argued for their death until Robert had taken him aside and spoken with him in private.
‘And yours is a duty I do not envy, my prince. What is done is past. I advise only about the future’, Jacob’s adviser said in a diplomatic tone of voice he had developed since coming to his new office.
‘Then speak freely, Brondolf.’
‘We shall arrive shortly at Iron Guard. My advice, my prince, is you leave unspoken about, if possible, the release of the men who freely attacked you. The brothers of the Order of Light are men unflinching in dealing death to those whom they believe deserve it. For the purpose of your visit, I believe it would do you harm.’
‘To show mercy?’
‘Yes, my prince.’
‘Are the brotherhood not defenders of the people?’ Jacob asked, becoming irritated.
‘They are’, Brondolf conceded. ‘Yet if they were attacked by the people, to whom their lives are often sacrificed in defending, they would kill them to a man without hesitation.’
‘I hear your advice’, Jacob said then checked his horse as he cleared a small rise and came within sight of Iron Guard for the first time.
Iron Guard. The most imposing of all the forts on the front line of the borderlands of Man sat in the gentle, rolling slopes of lush countryside. Fifty paces to a wall and forty feet high, its enormous stone blocks looked like they would stand throughout time itself. A large black rectangular piece of cloth waved in the gentle breeze. Its gold circle sigil showed friend and foe alike that the Brotherhood of Light garrisoned this most formidable of strongholds.
Jacob was still motionless as he observed the view before him. The squat grey and foreboding structure was nothing compared to the wall of lightless green that stretched from horizon to horizon.
‘It is daunting, is it not?’ Robert said softly, breaking the silence. He pointed at the dozen men-at-arms who ran at a steady pace and in formation two across and six deep. ‘These brave warriors are the soldiers of the light and here along this great stretch of the kingdom they alone hold back the tide of Darkness, yet the Darkness knows no boundaries be them boundary of Man or nature. It invades unseen and must be challenged and opposed by folk, common and noble, farmer and warrior. All must resist.’
Jacob met Robert’s gaze and for the first time since the birth of their bond Red Rob’s smile did not give him comfort. ‘And yet your guidance has led me to kill’, Jacob snarled angrily.
‘It has.’ Robert agreed in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘And for my actions I shall carry great shame and guilt until my day’s end. And at the end I shall embrace the judgement I receive.’ Robert looked to the heavens with closed eyes for a moment then brushed aside his thoughts and said cheerfully, ‘Now, my dear prince, it is time for you to cease dwelling on matters already decided and deeds done. Straighten your back and present yourself.’
‘We shall talk no more of this, Father Robert, but I am finding myself resenting you for the choices you have led me to.’
Red Rob nodded his head in understanding yet remained silent as the warriors approached. Jacob held his head high and his chest out as the twelve men-at-arms went to one knee in front of his horse.
‘Prince Jacob. Honoured am I to kneel before you. My name is Gymir, I have command at Iron Guard.’
‘Rise’, Jacob said in a formal tone. ‘Gymir, the Death Dancer. I have heard your name and with it high praise.’ And that was the truth, for Gymir’s name had become s
ynonymous with the deeds of the battle of the valley. ‘It is said, Knight-captain, that during the battle you decapitated a monster greater Orc and took the time to piss on its severed head before decimating their ranks with your sword skill.’
‘I was one of Many who fought the horde that day, my prince, and I am proud to have fought alongside such brave warriors’, Gymir said now standing before Jacob, his face a scarred and battle-hardened mask of coolness.
‘And the pissing on your enemy’s severed head?’ Jacob replied with a smile.
‘It was after the battle, my lord prince. I was merely showing contempt at the filth that plagues the land’, Gymir said, not returning the prince’s smile.
‘Well, I wholeheartedly endorse the telling of the story of Gymir, Death Dancer, and the washing of his enemy’s severed head. It lessens the fear of the beasts.’
‘It is a fear well deserved and not known well enough, for the Orc lays safe in its own domain whilst our people live in constant threat of their wanton cruelty.’ Jacob felt the animosity and looked slightly embarrassed.
‘Well, Knight-captain, we have matters of import to discuss. Lead the way.’
Knight-captain Gymir neither asked Jacob the nature of his visit to Iron Guard or the matters of import and who they were to be discussed with, he just nodded once at the order, signalled his men into formation and led them to the great northern fortress, Iron Guard.
Grooms came and took the horses as Jacob and his followers dismounted and with no pomp or reception Gymir led Jacob, Elysabeth, Brondolf, Robert, Stephen, Askia, Zachary, Gulkin, Holak and Wilhelm through a small oak door in the fortress’s rear while Jacob’s entourage saw to the wagons. Gymir said nothing as he led them through a dimly lit corridor, up four flights of stairs and on to the landing of the top floor of the keep. The room they entered was equivalent in size to that of the keep itself. Its ceiling, and the floor of the battlements, were held up by square pillars plain in design yet strong. The entire room was lit by large windows, the shutters thrown open to reveal vast views of the countryside to the south, east and west, whilst the view to the north was dominated by the never-ending expanse of jungle. Benches with tables enough for a hundred men to sit took the southern half of the large room whilst the front was left open, where large boards rested vertically. Pinned to each board were maps and countless scraps of parchment with numbers and writing amassed upon them.
The Banner of the Broken Orc: The Call of the Darkness Saga: Book One Page 30
