He was content. Usually his sleep was deep and dreamless, but during the last night his sleep had been mixed with uneasiness. He had tossed and turned all night long.
Now, as he charged from his home, he was filled with dread. His hackles were raised and his heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t know what was going on, but his instincts had him prepared for battle.
Fist’s calm grove of trees seemed peaceful as usual, but something was amiss. He trotted around the grove a ways, then froze. He listened carefully and heard twigs snap. Holding his mace at the ready, Fist advanced towards the sound.
He heard voices. Orc voices. What were orcs doing on his newfound tribal land?
Soon he saw them through the trees. The invaders were two burly orcs and a gorc. All three were fully armed. The orcs wore leather hide armor with metal helms. Each carried a wicked long blade with serrated edges that looked more like saws than swords. The gorc was smaller than the orcs and had a patch over one eye. He carried a long sharp dagger and a bow with a crude arrow notched at the ready.
With a growl, Fist approached them. He stood in their path and rose to his full height with his arms crossed. At his full height, Fist was just over eight feet tall and weighed close to four hundred pounds, most of it muscle. The one-eyed gorc squealed in fear at the sight of the enormous ogre standing in their way. The orcs gulped. They hadn’t seen many ogres quite so big.
“Stop!” Fist commanded in the ogre tongue, his deep voice booming. “Don’t you see the markings? You are in territory of the Big and Little People tribe. Leave my land now or I kill you!”
Two of them looked eager to do exactly that, but one orc stood his ground. “We seen yer marks,” the orc barked. “Our leader, Gerstag, sented us. He say to tell you we are big army of the Barldag. Your tribe joins us or dies like the humans!” The others seemed to gain courage from the orc’s speech and straightened their spines, looking up at Fist defiantly.
Though he betrayed no emotion, the orc’s words struck Fist a mighty blow. It had taken him so long to find a place where he belonged. Now that he finally had it, he could sense it falling through his fingers.
Fist had often wondered about the great army that the ogre mage had tried to raise back in high mountain wilds. Every time the thought had risen in his mind, he had ignored the threat. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Tamboor, hoping that the ogre mage had been unsuccessful in his attempts to unite the goblinoids and giants.
“The Barldag’s army is here now?” Fist asked. The goblinoids nodded.
His worst dreams were being realized. Now the only thought in his mind was to warn his human friends. Fist was trying to decide just how to kill the three goblinoids the fastest, when Squirrel appeared in a branch above them. Squirrel chattered fiercely, shaking one tiny fist at them and berating them for coming onto its land.
“Look what I sees. Little meats for breakfast.” The one-eyed gorc smiled and brought up his bow. He began to pull the arrow back and didn’t even see the metal head of the mace coming. Fist’s new weapon plowed through its skull, leaving a ruined mess and the gorc dropped to the ground soundlessly.
Fist smacked the bloody head of the mace into his palm. “No one hurts my tribe!”
The orcs started to laugh, thinking the death of the gorc nothing but an ogre joke. Fist threw the mace at the first orc. Its laughter ended in a squeak as the round steel head thudded into its chest. The force of the strike knocked the orc off its feet, shattered its ribs, and pulverized the vital organs beneath.
The remaining orc backed up, “The Barldag commands that you join us!”
“If the Barldag comes, I will kill him too!” he promised and charged.
The orc desperately lashed out with its sword, scoring a minor hit along Fist’s side. The ogre took the scratch with a slight wince and grabbed the orc’s helmet between his giant hands. He squeezed and the metal screeched until there was a loud pop and the orc stopped thrashing.
Fist threw its crushed helmet to the ground and spat at the bodies of the goblinoids. He then picked up his mace and whistled. Squirrel jumped from the tree to his shoulders.
Fist stood in his quiet grove for a moment while Squirrel munched a seed and wondered how far away the army was. The orcs had said that Gerstag was their leader. That was an ogre name and it sounded familiar to Fist. Though he could not place where he had heard it, the name confirmed to him that at least some of the ogre tribes had joined the Barldag's army. This did not bode well at all.
He had to warn his human friends so that Tamboor could get word to the rest of the town. The Barldag's army would destroy everything in sight. He looked at his beautiful territory and felt like weeping. How much time did he have?
Fist sniffed the air and his heart sank even further. With squirrel safely in its pouch, the ogre ran to a nearby clearing and saw with his eyes what his nose was telling him. Smoke. Great columns of smoke were rising from the human town of Jack’s Rest. He had no time at all.
Fist ran back to his house and retrieved the fine steel spear that Tamboor had purchased for him. The ogre took one last sorrowful look at his marvelous home and hurried through the woods. He couldn’t save the land, but he had to at least save the only family he had left in the world.
Fist ran through the familiar trails of his woods, the smell of smoke thick in his nostrils. He felt a pang in his heart as he thought of the friendship that the humans had shown him. Right now in the village, people were fighting and dying at the hands of this evil army.
As Fist sprinted, he caught sight of a party of four goblin scouts slinking through the trees just inside of his territory. They were moving toward the home of his human friends. Once again, anger surged through the ogre.
The little goblins looked up in surprise just as Fist’s spear took one of them in the belly. He followed with an underhand blow of his mace, caving in the pelvis and belly of another goblin, sending it soaring up through the air. Before the two remaining scouts could do anything more than squeal, he smashed their heads together with a wet crunch, his enormous strength ending their lives quickly.
Adrenaline surged through his massive body as he retrieved his weapons and raced recklessly through the forest. He didn’t give much thought to what would happen once he found his friends. Maybe they could escape down to the towns in lower altitudes. He didn’t have time to worry about how the humans in another town would receive him, his only concern was getting to Tamboor's family. They were his tribe now.
As he got closer to the house, he saw with relief that there wasn’t any smoke coming from that direction. Perhaps he would get there in time. Squirrel crawled out of its pouch and curled up along the back of his neck as he ran, its furry warmth helping to comfort the ogre. Fist rounded the big rocks that lined the edge of Tamboor’s property and sighed with relief. Everything seemed to be untouched.
When the ogre’s presence had first been revealed, Tamboor hadn’t let Fist have anything to do with his family. But as the friendship between the human and ogre had grown and his wife and children kept insisting, Tamboor had relented. Fist had become a regular visitor to their home.
The inside of the house was small for the ogre and he had to hunch over more than usual to move inside the place, but he didn’t mind. The children loved Fist and climbed all over him, including the ogre in their games. Fist pretended that he was putting up with the children’s attention, but both Tamboor and his wife knew that he enjoyed the children’s play just as much as they did. Their only problem had been keeping Fist’s existence a secret to the town.
Tamboor had taken the credit for killing all of the monsters that Fist hunted. Though the ogre had not known it, he had even bought Fist’s land from the mayor of Jack’s Rest so that none of the townsfolk would go up there without his permission. It had worked so far. No one in the town even suspected the ogre’s presence.
As Fist approached the house, Tamboor’s wife Efflina opened the door. At first she smiled, but when she saw the st
ate the ogre was in, she became worried. Blood was spattered on his arms and ran from the cut along his side.
“Fist! What’s going on? Are you okay?” The two children, Cedric and Lina, darted out from behind her in the doorway and ran to the ogre, laughing and yelling “Fist! Fist!”
“No! Stay inside!” the ogre commanded. As the kids pouted and walked back, Fist looked to their mother. “Where is Tamboor?”
“Why he left a little while ago and told us we had to stay in the house. Evidently there is a big fire in the village or something because smoke is everywhere.”
“Not just fire,” Fist moaned. “Goblins and monsters is attacking the peoples in the town.”
“How many goblins?” she asked. Every once in a while a troop of goblins would come too close to Jack’s Rest. Usually the tough men of the town handled such raids easily.
“Too many,” Fist said impatiently. He looked up the road that led to the town. The army could come down on them at any moment. “A army comes! We must take Cedric and Lina away. We must keep them safe!”
Efflina looked uncertainly at the pillars of smoke coming from Jack’s Rest and then looked back at the ogre.
“Please,” Fist begged. “Trust me.”
Efflina bit her lip. She hated to leave her home; the home that Tamboor had built with his own hands. But she trusted the ogre. She turned to the children.
“Cedric, Lina, gather the ‘run packs’. We are going with Fist for a while.” Her husband had demanded they always keep emergency supplies for just such an occasion. Lina squealed with delight, but Cedric frowned. He knew what those packs meant even if Lina didn’t. The children ran towards their rooms.
“What about Tamboor?” Efflina asked.
Fist had fought alongside the retired academy warrior several times during the last year against savage beasts and had great faith in his prowess. He could only hope that Tamboor would survive the attack.
“He will come. Hurry!”
Efflina ran back inside the house and Fist could hear her directing the children in the things they had to bring. Fist paced on the porch, knowing that every moment before they left was a moment wasted. Then he heard goblin voices. Bile rose in his throat. He crept to the edge of the porch and looked down the road.
He ran back to the house and yelled through the doorway, “Wait! Hide! They is here!”
The goblinoids streamed from the trees and headed up the hill towards the house. More than a score of them came, goblins, gorcs and orcs.
“Protect the tribe,” he whispered and Squirrel left his shoulder to run into the house.
Fist did not know what to do. He doubted that he could defeat twenty of these creatures by himself, but if he failed, his tribe would be killed. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He would not fail.
He walked off of the porch and stood in the road where the goblinoids would see him. The goblinoids seemed unconcerned about the appearance of an ogre. They stopped in front of Fist and one of the bigger orcs stepped forward.
“Ogre! I am Pintok, square leader. What you here alone for? Why you not killing mens at the village?”
Fist thought quickly and shouted back, “I followed mens to this house and killed them.” He showed his bloody mace and forearms. The orc smiled evilly.
“You kill them all and leave none for us? Not even womens?” the orc asked.
Fist had to force a growl out of his throat. “No. I kill them all.”
The goblinoids scowled in disappointment. The orc sighed. “Then we takes foods and burn the house.”
“No!” Fist shouted, and tried to think of a good excuse.
“Why not?” The orc drew his wicked sword and sneered at the ogre.
Fist fumbled about for a bit, but finally found some words. “This house has been claimed by my tribe!”
Pintok clenched his teeth with anger. “What tribe is that?”
“The Rock People,” Fist claimed, randomly picking an ogre tribe that he thought would have joined the army.
The orc pointed his sword at the ground. “Gerstag’s tribe?”
Fist finally remembered who Gerstag was. He was mighty warrior of the Rock People tribe. Fist had fought him once years ago, when the Rock People had stolen some of the Thunder People’s women. Fist had gained the upper hand and been about to kill him when the leaders of the tribe had stopped their fight.
“Yes,” Fist said with new confidence. “Gerstag wants this house and the foods inside.” He was beginning to think that this just might work. The orc didn’t look too happy about Fist’s declaration and appeared as if he was thinking about going in the house anyway, but finally he grunted and turned to the other goblinoids.
“Gerstag’s claimed this house. We go down the road to find other foods!” The goblins started to leave and Fist was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a cry rang out by the road.
A small goblin ran up to the orc leader. “Human’s coming!” it declared and Pintok grinned.
The orc directed the goblinoids to prepare themselves. Five archers stood just in front of their leader, while the rest ran into the trees on either side of the road that led up to the house from Jack’s Rest.
Fist stood by the porch, waiting to act until he knew what was happening. From his higher vantage point, he saw who was approaching before the orc did. It was Tamboor, followed by two villagers that Fist knew on sight, a solid looking dwarf named Ryebald, who carried a heavy axe and a human named Petyr, with a long slender sword and a small shield. Both of them were retired academy graduates, just like Tamboor. They were running towards the house as fast as they could.
The orc leader saw their approach and grunted out a command. On cue, the goblinoid archers pulled back their arrows.
“Hold it,” the orc whispered. “Wait, hold it . . . Fi-” Pintok stopped in mid-word and looked down at the bloody tip of Fist’s spear that protruded from its chest. The archers didn’t even hear their leader fall over. With one powerful swing of his mace, Fist sent two of the goblin archers to the ground crushed and bleeding.
“Tamboor! Goblins in the trees!” Fist bellowed and kicked another goblin in the face, caving it in, sending teeth and eyeballs flying.
Tamboor heard Fist yell, but didn’t stop. He turned his head and shouted something to the two companions that were with him. The other two, simply nodded and followed Tamboor’s lead. They were combat veterans, unafraid of goblinoid riffraff.
Fist crushed the head of another archer with his mace, but the fifth one, an orc, saw him coming. It shot an arrow from five feet away. The arrow struck Fist between the eyes. The tip of the arrow ricocheted off of his hard skull and burrowed upwards under his skin to protrude weirdly out the top of his scalp. The fletchings came to a stop right above his nose.
Fist’s head snapped back and he stumbled a couple of feet, his head ringing from the blow. His vision blurred for a moment. He saw two orcs instead of one slowly reaching into a quiver behind their shoulders to pull out another arrow. But it was okay because as he raised his arm and stumbled forward, he saw that he had two maces.
Things didn’t move that slowly for the orc archer, though. It hadn’t expected the ogre to keep coming after it an arrow stuck in his head. The archer backpedaled as it tried to fit another arrow to its bow, but the ogre was faster.
The mace whipped across, breaking both of the orc’s arms and knocking the bow away. The orc stood, vacantly staring at his arms which were bent in weird angles, as the ogre’s giant mace came back around and connected with the side of its head.
As Tamboor and his two friends neared the house, the trees on either side of the road erupted in a flurry of motion. The remaining goblinoids rushed out of the foliage with weapons held high. The companions were lucky that the ogre had warned them, because if they hadn’t been prepared for the strike, they likely would have died in the first few moments of the fight.
Fortunately all three of them knew how to fight against overwhelming odds. Ryebald, th
e dwarf, roared and plowed headfirst into the orcs that came rushing at him, surprising them with his fury. Tamboor and Petyr stood back to back and fought in concert, Tamboor’s savagery and Petyr’s style of calm, piercing attacks set the attackers off balance.
Fist stood over the body of the orc and shook his head. He was still dazed and blood began streaming into his eyes from his garish head wound. He could hear the fight between the goblinoids and the warriors, but he could not join the battle if he couldn’t see.
Fist grasped the tip of the arrow that stuck out at the top of his scalp and broke the arrowhead off. Then he grasped the fletched end and pulled the arrow shaft out of the hole over his nose. The removal of the arrow brought a fresh rush of blood, but that was good. The blood would help clean the wound. The ogre wiped his eyes and rushed towards the battle.
Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) Page 15
