Friday Fiction: What Grampa Did in the War

     “Oh, them was the darkest days of the war, me grandboy, when the Black King opened the Gates of the Knash and unleashed legions unnumbered of his Ogru horde at last. We had thought their raids bad enough in the old days, when they’d smashed Rhavenglast and overwhelmed the Camps of Darfen, but that was naught but the trickle afore the flood.

     “I were just a butcher’s boy back then, barely out of my Third Beard, when the day struck. Hurr, people thought it was Bataluk come at last, when certain word came from the scouts what was marching towards the White City. Running to and fro? A anthill stirred with a stick was nothing like it, I tell thee, child.

“And me, I was running too, when the orders come from the White Tower that all able-bodied folk were to report for the defense and come to the Watch House for weapons and to be assigned a position. But I weren’t running there right away. I was running to your Granny’s place o’ employment.

“Now, she worked in a tannery back then, and I seen her about in the natural course of my business, delivering hides and whatnot. Ah, she was a pretty young thing, then. Still is, of course, but in a different key, if you get my meaning. I knowed when I seen her that I’d be pressing my suit by-and-by, and I’d seen her giving me the eye whene’er I was in the shop. But it had been a pretty slow dance up to then.

“But war has a way of speeding things up. I barged into the tannery with never a ‘good morning’ or by-your-leave and went straight out into the yard. There was your granny in an apron with her hair done up in a kerchief, sleeves pulled back and arms up to the elbow in some foul mess she was stirring the hides around in. It, and she herself, didn’t half stink.

“I was a sight myself, which your granny’ll probably tell you if you ask her, as she’s never tired of recounting it. I was in my butcher’s apron, spattered in blood, cleaver still clutched unthinkingly in my right claw, and, says your granny, a wild look in my eye. I had been kind of wondering, with half a thought, why the crowds had been parting so easy before me on my way over.

“Girl, says I, "the Black Horde’ll be here in two days, and nobody knows if any of us’ll be alive in three. Will you have me?

“She sort of grins at that, and says on those terms she’ll have me, and that I certainly took my time. But instead of running off then and there, she takes me over to her boss (a grim, sour-faced old she-hog she was, too) and asked for some time off as it was her wedding day. The she-hog grins and says as it looked like business was goin’ to be interrupted for a while anyway, of course she could. Granny takes a few minutes while I’m champing at the bit to finish up her work and tidy herself a smidge. She was always that way, practical, and not one to lose her head. She might still need a job when everything was over. Then she cleaned me up, too.

“We went looking for the nearest Witness after that, and that took a while, I can tell you. It seems we weren’t the only couple who had the idea, and besides that there was a flock of folks what wanted to make out their wills as well, as had never given a thought to the Last Reckoning in their lives. We stood in line quite a while, with the ol’ Witness never hurrying, never scamping on a ceremony, stamping seals as calm as anything. Your granny and I was foaming at the muzzle at the delay, but we were glad as anything afterward that the Witness was careful of OUR ceremony as we took the vows. It’s always been a good memory, a moment of peace amid the hurricane.

“Afterwards we retired to her madra’s house, to give the family the news and spend our wedding night. I couldn’t take her to my place; twas no more than an attic over the butcher shop. Her sisters was a little weepy but glad, and her madra sort of miffed about the speed of it all, but she blessed us in the end. We went to bed in her old girlhood room that night, but with one thing and another we din’t get much sleep. The bed weren’t very big, for starts. Ten months later your dad was born, one of those babies what came to be known as the Desperation Batch.

“Well, next morning I was up bright and early and headed for the Watchtower, as per orders. But when I got there all the best and the brightest had already been handed out to the earliest, to Morgs more on the jump than I had been. Alls I got was a manky old pike and a battered suit of horn-scale armor, which would have been fine for a summer skirmish at Camp but seemed mighty flimsy against an Ogre’s sabre. Course I took along my cleaver at my side, and IT was sharp and firm and mighty easy and comfortable to my hand.

“The officer I was put under command of had seen his better days, as well. That was old Lieutenant Borl, what hadn’t seen real battle in decades and was mostly the old king’s running boy. He weren’t exactly in his Seventh Beard yet, but there were a great grey streak eatin’ up his ginger-red chin whiskers.

“For all that, he carried hisself well. He was round as a barrel but had fat of steel, if you take my meaning, and he could still give a clout on the ear to be reckoned with. He seemed mad at the war for intruding into his peaceful march to retirement and was ready to take out his displeasure on whatever was nearest, Bharek’s troops for preference. But until they arrived, he worked out his feelings on us, and that put us in the mood for bloodshed, for sure.

“And I remember Karth, what was as skinny as Borl was fat, but tough as old teak. He might have been a scholar, or wanting to be one, or maybe even had been one, the way he was always quotin’ the old songs and given military examples to old Borl’s exasperation. He didn’t wear the Colors, as I seen many from the College on the field do. But he carried a long dagger on his belt, that if you squinted looked like it might have once been a Scholar’s Sword, but so battered and tarnished there was no sure way to tell. I puzzled about it when I had a minute or two to puzzle about things, then set it aside for more pressing matters. Afterwards, I never could find anyone who knew the rights of Mr. Karth’s story.

“There was another member of our troop I knowed only too well. That was Pel Pelnik, King of the Pluckers, one of the Mad Lads. How they managed to get him inducted I later learned from a reliable source. HE always claimed, even then, that he did it out of sheer patriotism, but I was told the Mad Lads had been wanting to bounce him for years. They got him drunk and left him at the Watchhouse, and the next morning he found himself hustled into the recruits, and Borl’s eye heavy on him so he couldn’t run.

“They was others in the troop, o’ course, including a passel of Men as well, but them’s the ones I remember. We were awful busy taking orders and making preparations, mostly digging holes and setting up barricades, and there never was time for a formal roster, so most of their names is lost to history, at least my history. I’m sure they’re in the Silver Book somewhere. Perhaps Mog’ll let me take a peek at it in the Halls o’ Waiting and then I can look them up and stand the lads an ale.

“Anyways, Mr. Borl was none too pleased with us at the time, and kept asking us, in his sarcastical way, if we din’t remember ANY of our Camp training, and what was the Morg race come to if it had to rely on the likes of US to protect the White Tower. He asked me straight out, after I’d toppled a barricade over from piling it too high, what I did in life and weren’t I good for anything, even stacking rubbish. I tole him straight out I was a butcher, and a damn good one. Just wait till the fightin’ and I’d show him how to separate an Ogre bone from bone and wrap it up pretty too. He grinned at that and passed on and I started building the stack again.

“As for Mr. Karth, he seemed as familiar with the roughest work and the best way to do it as anybody I ever seen. We would be digging trenches, which is hard work, me grandboy, and takes the breath out of ye, but he still had wind enough to be reciting some great song or epic from the old days, to give him the rhythm of his shoveling. And it put the heart into the rest of us, to hear them old deeds again. Some o’ us wondered if we’d ever be sung about, or maybe be in a tale. Stories just seemed to bleed out of his leathery hide, and I don’t recall he ever spoke but that it was a perfec’ly apt quotation from somewhere. I went to sleep that first night listening to him telling the tale of Traxik’s Chase.

“But for complete uselessness, give me Pel Pelnik. Ye may note I do not call him Mister, my lad; any title, no matter how common, would be allowin’ him more respect than what he’s eligible for. Put a shovel in his hand and he’d stand blinking at it as if overcome with invincible ignorance, or try to set him on an errand and he’d request such an explication of it that you’d lose your temper and do it yourself, or if you was Lieutenant Borl, pass it on to someone else who at least had the sense of a boiled cabbage. Not that Pel was stupid at all, at all. You could see his weaselly little eyes darting around now and then, and his craft shining through. Slowest at work and fastest in line for grub, was Pel, and even in the short time before the battle, folks started missing little articles of value from their belongings.

“Somehow or other I got through that first night, though I had been twanging like a badly tuned harp all day. I was woke up about two o’clock to stand my watch, and the feller who I relieved pointed out something to me that made my beard stand on end like a cat’s back. Off to the North there was a spreading blackness, eating up the stars and headed our way with uncanny speed. It was Bharek’s Breath, as we’d seen afore sometimes, but never so fast or so wide. Maybe you’ve seen it, my lad, when a thunderstorm come down from the North, black and laced with lighting and thunder. People still call it Bharek’s Breath these days, though Bharek’s been gone for many a year. Well, worrying as that can be, that’s only a little bit like the real thing, when the lightning was red and you could feel the thunder in the stones and under your feet and it came rolling at you like a wave. All that started up a whiles later as I watched, and very few people got any sleep after that.

“Dawn came, but you could only tell because you could see the darkness a little better, like in a room with a dark sheet over the winda’. The sky were completely covered in black cloud, with the Sun Tower sticking up and gleaming like the white ghost under the pall. I remember thinking it looked like it could prick the low-hanging clouds like a spear, and I took heart with the thought. But over the land below, like an echo of the dark above, another shadow was spreading and coming near.

“It were the Black Horde, all right, and it came across the plain like a flood. There was Great Ogres, and the little Ogres hopping around like kids out o’ school around their striding feet. There was those big old beasts called Pounders – ye’ve seen the bones, no doubt, at the New Royal School, when your granny took ye – and they was scattered through the army, as they tended to attack one another if they got too close to each other, as we found out later. There was Wolf-Riders leading the Ogre squads, and them was humans, and as clever and as cunning as they come, and full of dark magic. Their wolves was howling something dreadful, and that cut through the grumble and growl of the army as they moved in on the City. That and the occasional scream of the Pounders as they was driven forward. I never heard no other lizard make no other noise above a hiss. It were kind o’ like this.

“Did that scare ye, my wee krach-ling? Tis only a pale echo to what it REALLY were; and it turned my bones to water in me, it were so big, and argied about the size of the hollows inside just waiting to be filled with Morg-meat.

“The Horde as it came on was divided into three columns, though they weren’t nowhere so neat as that sounds. They kept mingling and crashing into each other then parting again with fights and screams. Each part was under a diff’rent commander.

“There were Groka Graybeard, a wizard like our own Koppa, or Dunwolf that was. Bharek’s army was always mainly Ogres, but he liked his commanders to be humans, as he used to be. Also, they was more clever than any Ogre ever was, and less likely to just go berserk and forget any plans. Groka was head o’ the Wolfriders, and he rode on a big gray wolf with two others leashed to his saddle. He had a black iron battlestaff, and it glowed red at the tip, so you could always see where HE was.

“At the head of another were Ferrus, and you could tell where HE was because he was surrounded by a squad of about fifty Great Ogres, marching with more discipline than any o’ those swine ever showed before. He was some new kind of Ogre, apparently, more cunning and crafty, and bred by Bharek they said, to be the Ogrun’s great messiah. For all that, his squad would march over any smaller of the fry that got in its way like they was weeds on the road. I’ll tell ye more about Ferrus in a bit, me grandboy, because I saw him up close later.

“I’m not sure WHO was leading the third column, for we never did find out. Alls we could figure out afterwards was that it were maybe some new protégé that the Black Lord was bringing along. It certainly weren’t Bharek hisself, cause he never left Thoravil, ever, and probably wouldn’t have until the fighting was over proper. Some folks said it were cowardly, and others said he didn’t feel the need to take the trouble just yet. Whichever the case, it din’t work out any better for him in the end, did it?

“Well, for the next day or two we was besieged. That means we was shut up in the City while the Ogres were not too politely knockin’ at the doors asking us to come out to play while we pertended not to be at home, ‘cept for a hail of arrows now and then or a spurt of flaming oil as might naturally fall from the walls now and then. I didn’t see much of the big picture, of course, being fairly occupied tending my own patch of garden, as it were.

“I remember wondering what your granny was up to during those days, longing for her, like, and hoping we’d make it through together. She weren’t idle, neither. All the Madras and their daughters was preparing hospitals and watching over supplies and such, fortifying strong places in the City and planning emergency defenses. Your granny took up a place watching over one of the dormitories set to take care of the children while their parents was fightin’ the fight, and she tole me later that was as harder nor wrangling Ogres, which later she had need to do.   

“Finally, it was decided by those higher up that it was no good just waiting inside till we was too weakened to fight. It was arranged that they’d try a sortie through the East Gate, where the enemy seemed most vulnerable, and try to peck ‘em off a bit at a time.

“What’s a sortie? Well, it’s like a raid, very quick and rough. The idea was the troops would go out fast and unexpected, do as much damage as they could, then rush back in before the Horde knew what hit ‘em. My company, and a few others, was assigned the job of protecting the gate behind and then covering the retreat when they came back. I see that, now, because of what we lacked in speed, we made up with in toughness. If you don’t run so well, you have to fight better where you stand. And our boys, as I told ye before, weren’t the sprightliest of lads. But at the time I grumbled a bit in my head and wondered why we didn’t just wait behind the wall.

“There was some as said later that old King Thron was just doom-crazed and wanted to get things over with quick. Others will tell that ‘twas the only plan with any possibility of success, slim as it might be: to nibble away at the Horde till it was small enough to take down in one bite. Me, I’ve come to the conclusion it was six of one and a half-dozen of the other, and I always want to give ole Thron the shadow of a doubt. Ye’ll understand when I tell you later.

“So there we was, all gathered at the East Gate, and trying to be as quiet as can be so as to not give the enemy any clue that anything unusual was going on. The colonels gave a silent signal and the gate was opened and out rushed the troops, cavalry, most of it. We oozed out behind them, to fill in the gaps and hold the gate.

“It’s one thing, me grandboy, to look down on a batch of Ogres from a wall, and another to see them face to face with naught but a bit of rattling old scale armor atween them and your skin. My heart sank a bit with the shock of it, I can tell you, but the next minute it rose with the sight of our lads striking out and cutting into their foul ranks like a clean knife into rancid butter. Suddenly I wanted to be out there, and deeply regretted never learning how to ride. I gripped my manky pike tighter, and stood up a bit straighter, and thought of the old songs Karth had sung to us. He was there not too far from me, and there was a light in his eye, too.

“The enemy might have been surprised for a minute or two, but it didn’t last long. Soon they was swarmin’ on the sortie like ants on an apple, and before I knowed it the riders was cut from my sight. ‘Keep sharp now,’ growls Borl, and the next minute the Ogres was on us as well, the little fellers mostly (for which I thank Mog), but scores and scores of them. There was some hot combat that seemed to last forever, and my pike went to bust on me at last, and then it was close fighting with cleaver and fist for a while.

“When they fell back and I had a minute to breath, they was a wall of dead around us, and Mr. Borl was standing there, panting like a winded ox and covered in that purple stuff Ogres call blood. What was left of our troops was gathering around him. Most of them was dead; I never saw Mr. Karth again. Pel Pelnik was there, though, looking clean as a pin except for a spatter here and there, and kind of hiding behind the lieutenant.

“’Close ranks,’ says Borl, and we gathered around him, just in time to see what was left of the sortie bust through the line of fighting and head for the gate, hell for leather.  I saw most of them cut down even before they reached us, and then I was shocked when I saw the leader raise up his horn and sound the call to shut the Gate.

“They was far enough away so I knew that if that call were heeded they’d never reach it before it was closed, and my heart sank. But what really stunned me was that in lifting his head to give the order I recognized the Morg what gave it. It was Thron hisself, dressed in the common uniform of a captain. He had come out to lead the sortie in person.

“Pelnik grabs Mr. Borl’s shoulder and he says, ‘Loot’nent,’ says he, ‘We got to get back in afore they close the gates,’ and behind us I could already hear the grinding of the doors in their sockets. ‘I’m staying here,’ says Borl, all fierce-like. ‘King knows theys too few left to keep the doors open and risk the city, even for him, for the Horde will be close enough to barge after. And I ain’t leaving him. Go if you like,’ says he, ‘but I’m stayin’ right here.’

“Pel rushes off like he was give an order, but the rest of us stayed with Mr. Borl, though not without a qualm, I can tell you. This was it, so far as we knew. I was thinking of your granny then, hoping as she’d make it through the war and maybe have your dad, as which it turned out she did but under happier circumstances than I could have believed at the moment. Right then I was wondering if all us Morgs would be wiped off of Forlan, as the Dark Lord had swore, and hoping somewhere over the seas at Home there would still be some of our folk, though they’d never know our story.

“Well, Thron and the sortie rushes up to our line and turns to face the Ogres to keep them off until the gate can close. Borl stands to attention and salutes, and the King nods his head grimly in acknowledgement, and I could see that them two understood each other completely. Behind us I can hear the door grundling down ever so reluctantly. I never knowed anything seem to come down as slowly (to shut out the Ogres) or so quickly (to leave me on the other side) at the same time.

“Anyways, what was left of us joined what were left of the sortie, and for a minute or two we made a pretty good stand, half-ringed around the gate. But the attempt had drawn the attention of the rest of the Horde and they came pouring over on us in waves. That’s when Lt. Borl goes down, swinging and swearing and roarin’ to the end, five Ogrelings hanging onto him and him still charging forward, trying to protect the King, till he goes down and is covered up under their bodies.

“I seen that and was wondering with a corner of my mind when my time would come, the rest of my brain being occupied with dismembering the skelt what’s trying to chew on my arm, when suddenly there’s a sort of pause and the Ogres draw back a ways. At first, we didn’t mind and blessed it as a bit of a breather, but the next minute my blood ran cold. Ferrus, the Ogre King, drawn by the ruckus, had come to the front of the line.

“He were ten foot tall, if he were an inch, and not gangly like an Ogre, but stood straight as a elm and were muscled like a bull. He had on black armor, not iron-silk as t’other beasts, and a hoop of iron like a crown around his punkin head. But his eyes was still those sick, purple-white Ogre balls and you could see the hate of his people burning in them.

“’Oho’, says he, looking at Thron, ‘What has we here but the King of Morg City hidin’ under a soldier’s cloak?’

“Old Thron he grins. ‘Ye can’t judge a fruit by its rind. Come and have a taste, if ye dare!’

“’Oh, I been waitin’ to take a bite of ye for years,’ says Ferrus. ‘Never fear! Never fear! I’ll carve ye up as supper for my guards!’

“’Speakin’ o’ carvin’,’ say Thron, ‘I see you still has the little present we gave ye once on a time. It ain’t too painful, I hopes?’

“Now, Ferrus flushes at that, not a proper red, but a sort of pale lead hue (‘twas that purple blood, I guess), and then I can see even where I’m standing, watching ‘em, the pale track of a gash running down one side of his face.

“‘I been meaning to return the gift, ye dried up old chirk,’ growls he and sneers, ‘And now I means to. Have at thee!’, and he lunges forward.

“Now, the other Ogres hang back ‘cause even they realize this is a duel and not to interfere with their boss’s fun, and Thron, he’s up on his horse so it don’t seem quite so uneven, and the two rushes at each other, weapons swinging. Thron he has the King’s Sword, a’ course, a good bit of steel, and Ferrus he’s got a club, but it’s five foot, bound in iron, and has some wicked spikes on it, especially one long one like a dragon tooth, and it don’t take no finesse to land a brutally fell blow with it.

“For a while Thron was giving as well as he got, darting in and giving some good stabs, but he couldn’t reach any vital spots, and he was old, already in his seventh beard, and I could see his getting slower by the second. At last Ferrus lands a shattering blow on the back legs o’ the horse, and down they goes with a sound I don’t want to hear in this world again.

“Up jumps Thron out of the wreck, with a bellow, what seemed to be … I don’t quite know how to describe it. It were anger, and defiance, yet somehow kind of happy, like he didn’t mind what was comin’. And it came, all right, the next instant, as the club smashed down and the spike speared his heart. I think he were dead, instantly.

“A roar goes up from the Ogres, triumphant, like, what turns to confusion the next minute. It seems that while they was distracted by our little show, another band sallied out from the South Gate and had sat fire to some of their supplies’ wagons. They runned off in that direction, and Ferrus follows ‘em, taking only a moment to spurn the King’s body off his spike with one filthy boot.

“The gate was almost down, only a couple or three feet open now, and the few of us lads left were scrabbling under it as fast as we could. I don’t know for sure what made me do it, for it weren’t sensible, but I raced over to Thron and grabbed the corpse and lugged it after me. I don’t know; maybe I couldn’t bear the thought of the King becomin’ an Ogre barbecue. Anyways, I was the last to come rollin’ back under the gate, and it almost nipped me backside as it went down the last inch!

“They was nurses waiting inside what relieved me of the body and hurried it away, though there was nothing to be done, o’ course. Since my commandin’ officer was dead and my weapon broke and I’d lost my cleaver, I thought it best if I nipped over to the Watch-house to see if maybe I could get re-armed and tole what to do. That’s why I was there when the Horde broke in and started sackin’ the City.

“Oh, them was the worst hours of the War! Not quite two days, but it seemed to last forever. Everybody retreated to the strong places, to the Sun Tower and the Watch-house and the Royal School, and couple of the bigger Noble Houses. Your granny was stuck in the Hospital, which weren’t the strongest o’ places, but the Ogres soon regretted having got past the soldiers and come upon the Madras pertectin’ their childern! Ask your granny to see her old skull-bone sometime. For a while it was over the fireplace.

“Well, you know what happened next. Taryn came out of the East, with Mr. Roth fresh from his slayin’ of Drang, bringing an army of Woses and Ghamen and Men and the Morgs of Steepwater with ‘em, and fell on the Horde. We come out of the strong places then and we had the Horde atween us, Ogres and Wolfriders and Pounders and all. But it was going pretty bad for us even so, and we might a’ been whelmed after all, ‘cept at about the third hour after noon the earth gave a sort of shrug, and it stopped everybody, Ogre, Man, and Morg alike, in his tracks.

“We stood around blinking and was just about to set back to our hopeless slaughter, when suddenly there comes a blast of wind from the North worse nor anything ever known, and it breaks up the Bharek’s Breath like clearing steam off a’ hot soup and blasts it all to nothing. A big groan goes up from the Horde, like somethin’ just broke their hearts, and it was the Oath what the Dark Lord had spelled into ‘em being unbound, they say.

“Their courage and purpose was gone, just like that, even before the wizard Koppa suddenly appeared and began smitin’ ‘em with magic. He had come direct from Thoravil, by spell, just from blastin’ Bharek with the Goldfire, and the power was hot within ‘im. Taryn killed Groka – half his magic had died with his master – and Roth got Ferrus and put his head on a pole. Without any leadership the Ogres broke and ran back up North. Mog knows what THEY been up to; we ain’t heard anything of ‘em since, and we ain’t even built up again enough yet to go callin’ and enquire after their health.

“So Taryn was crowned king, the first human king Morg City ever had. It remains to be seen, me grandboy, if there’ll ever be another. Roth became his general, and Koppa vanished out of ken, as wizard’s do. Thron, he’s buried up in the Tombs, and peace to his bones. There’s some as has harsh opinions o’ him, but not me. Mr. Karth and Mr. Borl was never found, but you can see ole Pel Pelnik any day of the week, beggin’ at the East Gate and braggin’ about his great deeds in the war.

“Your granny and me was right glad when we found the other was still alive, and a sweeter reunion there never were. We set up our own business afterwards, when there was plenty of rebuilding to be done, with me butcherin’ and her tanning. We had your dad first of all, and plenty o’ family after that, till we could rest back easy and let them take over, and we now we spends our time watching you, me grandboy.

“Now let’s go see if Granny has them oaty cream cakes ready. I could use a flagon o’ red ale, too. Tellin’ tales is thirsty work.”

 

-   First Draft begun 9/14/2020

-   Finished 9:30 AM, 9/17/2020

Notes

This story came about because I always wanted to write the climax of the proposed Goldfire book. I thought that this somewhat telegraphic version told by one of the common folk would be a good vehicle for it. I wanted to give Thron a fitting farewell; I'd grown rather fond of the old boot over the series of short stories I'd been writing about the Morgs. He'd developed quite a bit since his appearance as an obstacle in the first draft of Goldfire. The end of the tale is a sort of parody. Back in the JW days, people had to make little skits about how to 'witness' to the patsies. They always ended with some wholesome, folksy, down-to-earth, good-natured banter, like "Let's go see if those cookies are ready!" It's also a reference to Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and Big Red, our local 'red cream-based soda.'