El-Vador's Travels

by J. R. Karlsson

  What they hadn't been banking on was the likes of Cusband.

  Before the Goblins and Orcs outside the encampment reached their target of the Elven archers, Cusband and his fellow foot soldiers swept out to meet them. A large Orc thrust at Cusband in surprise. He parried the spearhead aside with his shield and thrust the point of his axe up into his opponent's jaw. Blood sprayed and spurted, splashing Cusband in the face. Roaring in triumph, the forester pressed on.

  He might have been hewing firewood in the forest rather than Orcs on the battlefield. One after another, they fell before him like so many twigs and branches. Certainly they were better armoured than the trees he faced daily, yet even the strongest armour could not help but be breached by the wide swathes of his axe.

  Forward then, ever forward. Cusband waded into the press of green flesh. An arrow ricocheted off the head of his axe, harmlessly bouncing off his leg and impeding him not. Another volley from the forest silenced the Orcish archers for a while longer.

  He tore through the chaos toward one of the gateways in the palisade. If they could trap the remaining Orcs inside as they fell back in disorder, they could end this attempted occupation here and now.

  'To the gate!' he roared at the men who stayed with him. 'Secure the gateway!'

  On they came, smiting and shouting, goal clearly in sight now.

  The resistance they faced continued to give ground. A few Goblins were routed, fleeing the battlefield in the vain hope that they could escape. To the enemy's credit, the majority of their soldiers fought until their dying breath.

  In the red rage of battle, Cusband cared nothing for the seemingly endless supply of foes pouring out of the gateways. The more enemies he had to face him the more he could dispatch with his axe and the more his thirst for vengeance would be sated. He chopped down another foe with ease, clearly the Orcs had sent the bulk of their best force against them already. The gate, was very close now and in spite of the influx of numbers they were not overwhelmed. He blazed onward, fuelled by his rage, not willing to cease until every Goblin and Orc lay dead at his feet.

  'By the blue hells!' exclaimed Gurgash, ducking under the palisade as the arrows came flying in.

  'Mother preserve us.' Harg replied in agreement, weapon already in hand. 'You were right, they were out there this whole time.'

  'Protect the gateway!' bellowed their commanding officer, walking out of the tent and somehow evading the rain of arrows. 'Protect the gateway, and fight for your lives. If they break into the fort, we're history. Stand fast and stand with me.'

  Gurgash could clearly hear another officer shouting about protecting the archers, who were already pouring shafts into the lines of Elves that had come out of the forests to greet them.

  Every so often one would find its mark and one of the Elven enemies would drop dead. Others seemed impervious to the retaliatory arrows, diving into the Orcs at a staggering speed and eating up the ground to the palisade walls.

  Gurgash suddenly discovered that he was terrified. Jogging toward the gateway with Harg and his Commander he felt an almost overwhelming urge to flee so that he need not fight for his life

  Then came the collision, and he forgot all about fear.

  An Elven warrior swinging a two-handed sword that shouldn't have been possible to lift raged toward him, shouting something Gurgash could not understand but felt very intimidated by.

  Gurgash stabbed wildly at the creature with his pike, feeling the blade sink in with as much surprise as his Elven foe.

  To his shock, the Elf tore the pike from his chest and levelled his greatsword at a defenceless Gurgash. The Commander's sword came clattering down and decapitated his foe before being swept off into another skirmish on the field.

  Gurgash had to find a weapon in a hurry, if he remained this vulnerable some other Elven beast would cut him down. At his right hand, Harg speared another Elf, too engrossed in his own fighting to notice that his cousin was weaponless.

  Gurgash's cousin could not defend himself against another Elven warrior, this one swinging a wicked looking mace directly at his head. Gurgash had no time to thrust but drew the dagger from the Elf's belt and tore at his face with it.

  The enemy warrior wore a leather cap strengthened with iron strips, it did little to protect his face from the slash and he went down screaming. Harg's pike made short work of the man afterwards.

  As the Elven warrior fell, Gurgash dropped the dagger, a blinding pain enveloping his left hand. It was as if the blade had turned on him and set itself ablaze.

  'Are you hurt?' Harg asked, thinking his cousin mortally wounded.

  'I'll be fine.' replied Gurgash. 'These Elven blades burn to the touch.'

  Harg nodded, 'I should have warned you about that.' Then they were back fighting once more.

  They were being pushed back through the gateway by the Elves in spite of their efforts, it wasn't looking good.

  Raising his voice above the din of the fight, he called once more to his cousin. 'Harg, we're losing ground!'

  'I can see that!' screamed Harg, locked in combat with an Elf he was slowly getting the better of.

  Gurgash had to fall back several paces or be left behind by their retreating allies, which would have left them cut off, assailed from all directions at once and doomed to quick destruction. Harg risked staying forward a moment longer to finish his opponent before being surrounded by Elves.

  'Get back here you mad fool!' Gurgash wailed at him as he saw the Elves converging on his position.

  Harg skewered his opponent and leapt back, dashing toward the palisade gates and narrowly avoiding getting speared in turn.

  The reinforcements from the gateway were entering the fight too slowly, the Elves they were facing were not the prancing fools the Orcs had slaughtered in earlier campaigns. The Elf that nearly ended him roared out a wordless bellow of hate and rage at having narrowly missed, his face contorted into a mask of fury that would have made any foe quail.

  Harg jabbed with his pike to keep the warrior at a distance as he retreated. The Elf howled incomprehensible but oddly musical curses at him.

  Harg didn't mind being cursed, so long as he could join his cousin's side in one piece at the gateway. Then his foe reached out with his left hand to seize the pike and shove it aside so he could close, Harg expertly jerked it back before thrusting forward again. He felt the soft, heavy resistance of flesh as the tip of the weapon pierced the man who sought to slay him.

  Harg had just made it to Gurgash's side when they had to retreat once more to avoid being surrounded. 'How far are we from the gateway?' he shouted.

  'We have a few feet to spare, nothing more.' answered his cousin. 'But if reinforcements don't push up soon they'll overwhelm us.'

  That was precisely what the Elves were doing. They continued to force the Orcs and Goblins back even further until they were fighting desperately to hold them out of the fortified encampment. If the Elves made it into the camp, Chief Sarvacts' army was doomed. Even the champions couldn't fight off these numbers.

  'What are we going to do?' cried Gurgash in despair and exhaustion

  'Fight,' said Harg grimly. So they did.

  'Keep pressing them!' Cusband howled. 'Once we make the gateway they're ours!'

  They had pressed the Orcs to the very gates of their camp but had been unable to force their way beyond that bottleneck. Their opponents now had the dead-eyed look of creatures who see death behind them and death ahead of them and fought in a frenzied, primal manner that actually worked in their favour.

  There also seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them coming out of the gates to bolster the numbers. Somehow these inner Orcs had evaded the arrows previously sent into the encampment. The remaining Goblin archers had only one target to aim at and were becoming much more deadly as a result.

  Cusband hacked desperately at a spear thrust out at him, barely lopping off the tip with his axe before it punched a hole in his ribs. The blow from the shaft still winded him sli
ghtly, causing one of his comrades to waylay the creature in his defence.

  The Orcs outside the gate that Cusband faced fell back into the camp for reasons unknown. The foot soldiers who had been hurrying out to help defend the lines ceased to press forward. Why had they given up this natural bottleneck?

  A cry of victory came from the Elven forces who pressed on with a renewed vigour in an attempt to gain the gateway.

  A deep horn sounded inside the fort, the retreat from the Orcs had been tactical as he had suspected. Now what was left of the Elves faced off against the huge armoured champions that had remained out of sight until this moment.

  They lumbered forward, some mounted and some on foot, slamming into the oncoming warriors in a wave of steel. Clubbing blows from vast maces and shining hooves of galloping warhorses greeted the tiring Elven forces.

  They fought back as best they could against such a devastating counter attack but their swords and spears rattled harmlessly off the champions' thick plate.

  Cusband's axe felt as if he had hacked at a stone wall. In spite of the encumbrance of the champion's armour the Orcs displayed surprising agility. These elite warriors bellowed out the name of Chief Sarvacts after each kill and in return one of the riders pumped a mailed fist in the air.

  Cusband could not see his face but the Orc fought like a creature who had no regard for its own life. Relentlessly he charged his armoured warhorse into the press, killing Elf and Orc alike.

  The Orcish champions had superior armour, were fresh into the battle and had momentum on their side. Never had any of their foes been able to stand against these warriors in battle and here was no different than any other slaughter they had been part of.

  Those that did not flee the assault fell, with the few forces left being routed. Cusband found himself alone.

  He knew that he must flee. He could not stand alone against this onslaught where their combined forces had failed. And so, cursing the Orcs and Goblins with equal vehemence, he ran. That he was last to leave the field alive was little consolation, he had fled like a coward where others had stood and given their lives for the cause. He was no better than the craven fools that had been routed as soon as the champions had appeared, a disgrace to his name and his ancestor's memories.

  He had almost reached the safety of the trees when an arrow pierced his arm.

  He snarled one last curse at the Goblin that had shot him and staggered deeper into the forest to evade pursuit.

  He caught sight of his homeland a few days later. The Orcs had done their best to stop him from ever returning and they had failed. Though he may be craven he still yet lived, while more than a few of them lay dead at his hands.

  It was little solace to him as he made it to the door of his home. They had lost.

  Gurgash stared at the wounded Elf, uncertain how to feel after the battle was over. The Elf glared up at him and spat in his face. With a sigh, Harg speared him in the gut. 'That one would have made a decent slave.' he remarked. 'I wonder what their price on the meat markets is these days?'

  Gurgash didn't comment, sending another Elf he found still breathing on the field out of this world with as much speed and mercy as he could give them. Somehow they had won the fight, and it had been the champions they had been cursing before that had swung the battle.

  Most of the Orcs and Goblins he had seen felt the same way, wondering why the champions hadn't come in sooner and changed the course of the fight before so many lives had been lost. No one who had stood against the Elves rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them anything but worthy foes requiring the intervention of their strongest forces.

  'Isn't it obvious?' Harg commented as he picked over a corpse for valuables. 'They want to save their best until the very last moment, we're the grunts and we're expendable, all of us. The champions are not. They probably feel aggrieved that their hand was forced.'

  Chief Sarvacts rode up as the foot soldiers continued picking through the corpses, a murderous look of disapproval in his eyes. It was as if they had failed him personally by dying too often.

  'When next we fight the Elves.' he said. 'My champions will not intervene. Should you all fall we shall simply replace you with others.'

  'Aye, Chief,' came the chorus from the Orcs. The sight of Sarvacts in such a mood despite victory scared them. They didn't want to see what would happen should they ever be defeated. Then again if they were ever defeated they'd probably not live to witness it. After all, they were mere grunts.

  'Our goal remains the same, we shall seize this land and make it our own by washing it clean of the Elven impurity. Then in time the site of our final victory will become a city to rival the great Orcish burials of home. We have smashed the back of their armies but there is much yet to do, we must still root the rest of the Elves out of their huts and exterminate them so that they breed no further.' he waved at the corpse-strewn field. 'When everything that is Elven feeds the ground with its maggot-riddled pestilence, then we shall be free of their blight.'

  From the battle that Gurgash had just fought through, he hoped that there were few places left to conquer and that had indeed been the bulk of the Elven military might.

  'I just hope that's the most they can send against us.' said Harg in a low voice, echoing Gurgash's own thoughts. 'We barely made it through that last encounter. If that happens again we'll need more than champions to turn the tide.'

  'Do you suppose hunting the rest of the Elves down will be as easy as he says?' asked Gurgash.

  Before Harg could answer, their commanding officer arrived. 'We've broken their backs now, it won't be easy to hunt them to extinction but I don't expect an armed resistance like this again.' he said.

  Harg looked up from searching another a corpse. He rose, muttering to himself and shaking his head. 'I've not found anything worth keeping. The poorest, most miserly Goblin carries more in the way of loot than these pale ones. This conflict just isn't worth it.'

  Before his commanding officer could bite back a retort, Harg had strode across the field to look for more Elves to finish. The skies were dark but the cries of the carrion birds had only just begun.

  El-Vador healed quickly thanks to his youth and the natural capabilities of his people. He was not only up and about but busy equipping himself for war a couple of days after his father had beaten him.

  When he finally set off on the road to join the battle, he was quick to meet one of the Elves who had taken word of the Orcish invasion to the nearby settlements and then gone on to fight. The wounded figure limped up the path toward him, a blood-soaked bandage covering what was left of his right arm.

  El-Vador dashed toward his stricken kin. 'The battle, what happened?' he asked.

  The Elf fell onto the road, his bleeding wound much worse than it at first seemed. He then spoke the words El-Vador had been fearing the most, 'We were routed.'

  He shook briefly on the path and then stilled into the repose of the dead.

  III

  My first sight of actual death, of something other than a beast. That was when the realisation started to sink in, it woke something in me that had but briefly slumbered. Whether it was passed down from my father or a product of circumstance I shall never know.

  The Orcs marched up the track the Elves used in retreating from the battle. Their teams of Goblin archers advanced with arrows in hand and bows at the ready. The surrounding infantry were alert against any potential ambush that might come from the woods after surviving the first attack on their fort. In spite of their wary vigilance there seemed to be no ambush in the making.

  It was a small sortie of about twenty members, scouting ahead in the hopes of uncovering the Elven settlements and hamlets tucked into the mountainside. El-Vador watched them cautiously from the tree line. 'These are the creatures that slaughtered our kin?'

  He had found Cusband further up the track, his father had been in a sorry state. They hadn't exchanged as much as a word between them since he had come back, the knowledge
that his father was a coward who had run from the enemy was something that El-Vador had not been ready to deal with.

  His father didn't take the question rhetorically. 'They are heavily organised and very experienced in the matters of war, their individual strengths may not match our own but as a group they have strength unseen.'

  'I did not ask for the opinion of a coward.' El-Vador snapped, knowing his father was in no condition to spar with him.

  Cusband seemed to take that in his stride. 'You may not think much of me any more, that does not change the capabilities of our foe. We sent our finest warriors against them and they bested us. Their actions speak not of our weakness but of their strength.'

  The words rang true, regardless of whether his father had been cowardly or not almost all the best warriors the settlement had to muster had been annihilated by this force. El-Vador fought down the rising sensation of fear, the knowledge that the invaders were probably too great a force for his settlement to repel, that they would undoubtedly reach the settlement before help arrived from deeper in the mountains. He could see Cusband was right though, should the Orcs find them their resistance would only lead to massacre.

  Those he had left behind were those too young or infirm to fight, none of them had much weaponry beyond basic farming implements and even less training in battle. They would be slaughtered if the Orcs reached them, which is where this path was undeniably leading them toward.

  The marching was called to halt, Cusband cursed quietly, it was no coincidence that they would cease right here.

  The Orc who had given the command strode out in front of his soldiers. A long red braid affixed to the top of his helm singled him out as a Commander of some kind, as none of the others were sporting it. He marched out closer to their tree line and grunted out something in his own language.