“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
