Jargo
09-24-2008, 01:11 AM
They came from beneath
Defeat has a sound. I’ve not heard it often but it is known to me, as it is to most anyone who’s fought on the losing side of an army and lived to tell the tale. When the retreat horn sounded that day howling like the death cry of some doomed behemoth I was unsurprised; the battle was lost before it had even begun.
Somewhere there must have been a horrible miscalculation, or perhaps a bad field report as right from the onset we were outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outflanked. Their battle mages rained down fiery death upon us from unassailable vantage points, decimating our archers and sending some of our greener soldiers into a rank-breaking panic. I still see them sometimes when I close my eyes, the manlings screaming silently in the mage fire, their faces melting off their skulls like red wax. The heat on the battlefield was so great that I had to tear apart the leather straps that secured my plate armor to my chest so that I could cast it aside, lest the metal burn into my flesh.
In battle things happen very rapidly and one often remembers certain details with remarkable clarity while other events fade away like the remnants’ of a nightmare. I remember a young human, probably in combat for his first time, running in circles with a hand axe jutting from his skull. The sulfury scent of magefire intermingled with the stink of burning flesh. A man on his knees, desperately crying for his god to save him. I remember a hundred ghost faces without names. Faces locked in visages of anger, horror and madness.
When their shock-troops assaulted our flank and tore through the line we scattered to the winds as flies scatter from a corpse when disturbed. I do not remember fleeing with the others, or how it was that I came to be alone upon the small cliff overlooking the battlefield amongst the jutting grey stones that reached out to the midnight sky. From my vantage point I bore witness to our failure; scores of humans had been slain in the skirmish and striped of their gear. The enemy had withdrawn from the field, leaving the remains of our troops to rot as they had fallen in battle, their pale twisted limbs and broken bodies glowing eerily in the light of the swollen moon.
There was a dull ache bellow my right shoulder blade. I put my hand over where it hurt and when I brought it back it was slick with warm blood. At the time I thought I had perhaps been stabbed with a dagger, but it would not be until three days later when I stumbled into the Red Blades’ camp delirious with fever that a mender would find the bolt from a cross bow buried deep within my flesh. The stars and the moon spun about me and somehow I managed to drag myself into a small alcove where I fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next thing I remember was that I awoke and it was still dark, but I do not know if it was the same night or the next. My fur was damp with cold sweat and the pain bellow my shoulder was burning a hole into my back. I slowly and stealthy crawled from my hiding place and took stock of my surroundings. The grey, pillar like stones I had observed earlier we’re spaced out at regular intervals upon the cliff and were not a product of nature. At one point they must have held aloft a roof of some sort, perhaps that of a temple or small palace.
From my position I could see similar cyclopean columns and the weathered, near invisible foundation lines where buildings had once stood scattered about the valley and built into the sides of the surrounding mountains. Long ago some ancient civilization had constructed a magnificent city here, but for some reason all of their triumphs had crumbled into dust and all that remained now was the faintest ghost of their memory.
What a fleeting thing life is when measured against time. If this place could be so easily forgotten, how long would the memories linger of those who we’re killed in battle that day? A month? A year or two perhaps? Will anyone remember what they fought for, and will anyone care? It was while reflecting on this that I first saw them.
They came from beneath the mountain, wretched creatures of pale convoluted flesh and unnatural proportions. Humanoid in appearance, they we’re hideously misshapen and they limped, crawled, hopped and slithered over the battlefield, setting upon the fresh corpses eagerly. Despite my lofty position on the cliff I could make out their deformed bodies clearly in the light of the silvery moon. Each monster was a unique nightmare. One of them made its way awkwardly over the field on three legs while its bloated abdomen swayed back on forth threatening to erupt at any moment, spilling its contents upon the ground. Another one had a rotted, skeletal head perched upon a ghastly elongated neck while each of its arms ended with the heads of orks where its hands should have been. The two heads moved about independently directing the monster in one direction or the other while they opened and closed their mouths rhythmically, biting at the air.
They harvested the limbs of the dead and grafted them instantly to their own revolting bodies. Sometimes they removed their own rotting parts and replaced them from amongst the fallen, and sometimes they augmented themselves with extra arms, legs or heads. I saw one of them, nothing more than a head and torso with four human arms on each side to give it mobility skitter to the corpse of a young solider like a spider. It effortlessly ripped the slain boys head from his shoulders and placed it on its own body, directly between its shoulder blades. The head sunk into the monsters flesh until only the face was visible. Then his eyes flashed open and his face twisted into an expression of pain and horror.
The doomed younglings eyes locked on my own high upon the cliff and its mouth moved. I could hear no sound but I knew what he was saying.
Run! Run!
And so I ran. I ran as far as my battered body could carry me and then somewhere along the way I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember was waking up in the Red Blades sick tent dehydrated, feverish and with a mender changing the bandaging that had been packed into the recess of my back from where they had excised the crossbow bolt. Our defeat had taken a great toll on the morale of the clan, and so I chose not to share what I had seen with anyone. That burden would be mine alone.
I can’t be sure if what I saw that evening was real or just some terrible nightmare. Still, whenever it rains I feel a dull ache beneath my right shoulder and I think about the face of that boy fused to the back of the monster, his pale blue eyes wide with terror. War has a way of lingering on long after the dead have been cleared away from the field of battle. It still rages on in the mind of a mother whose lost her only son, the friends who he’s left behind and in the agony of his young widow, alone in the world and pregnant with child.
I wish I could convince myself otherwise, but I know in my heart that somewhere deep beneath a nameless mountain there’s a boy screaming in terror but no sound comes from his lips. For some of us the horror of war never ends.
By my hand,
Jargo Darkclaw of the Red Blades
((Quick note – This was my August entry for the Red Blades monthly writing contest. Each month there’s a scenario we’re given and we have to craft a story around it. August’s theme was defeat and we we’re given a brief description of how the battle went wrong to get us started.))
Defeat has a sound. I’ve not heard it often but it is known to me, as it is to most anyone who’s fought on the losing side of an army and lived to tell the tale. When the retreat horn sounded that day howling like the death cry of some doomed behemoth I was unsurprised; the battle was lost before it had even begun.
Somewhere there must have been a horrible miscalculation, or perhaps a bad field report as right from the onset we were outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outflanked. Their battle mages rained down fiery death upon us from unassailable vantage points, decimating our archers and sending some of our greener soldiers into a rank-breaking panic. I still see them sometimes when I close my eyes, the manlings screaming silently in the mage fire, their faces melting off their skulls like red wax. The heat on the battlefield was so great that I had to tear apart the leather straps that secured my plate armor to my chest so that I could cast it aside, lest the metal burn into my flesh.
In battle things happen very rapidly and one often remembers certain details with remarkable clarity while other events fade away like the remnants’ of a nightmare. I remember a young human, probably in combat for his first time, running in circles with a hand axe jutting from his skull. The sulfury scent of magefire intermingled with the stink of burning flesh. A man on his knees, desperately crying for his god to save him. I remember a hundred ghost faces without names. Faces locked in visages of anger, horror and madness.
When their shock-troops assaulted our flank and tore through the line we scattered to the winds as flies scatter from a corpse when disturbed. I do not remember fleeing with the others, or how it was that I came to be alone upon the small cliff overlooking the battlefield amongst the jutting grey stones that reached out to the midnight sky. From my vantage point I bore witness to our failure; scores of humans had been slain in the skirmish and striped of their gear. The enemy had withdrawn from the field, leaving the remains of our troops to rot as they had fallen in battle, their pale twisted limbs and broken bodies glowing eerily in the light of the swollen moon.
There was a dull ache bellow my right shoulder blade. I put my hand over where it hurt and when I brought it back it was slick with warm blood. At the time I thought I had perhaps been stabbed with a dagger, but it would not be until three days later when I stumbled into the Red Blades’ camp delirious with fever that a mender would find the bolt from a cross bow buried deep within my flesh. The stars and the moon spun about me and somehow I managed to drag myself into a small alcove where I fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next thing I remember was that I awoke and it was still dark, but I do not know if it was the same night or the next. My fur was damp with cold sweat and the pain bellow my shoulder was burning a hole into my back. I slowly and stealthy crawled from my hiding place and took stock of my surroundings. The grey, pillar like stones I had observed earlier we’re spaced out at regular intervals upon the cliff and were not a product of nature. At one point they must have held aloft a roof of some sort, perhaps that of a temple or small palace.
From my position I could see similar cyclopean columns and the weathered, near invisible foundation lines where buildings had once stood scattered about the valley and built into the sides of the surrounding mountains. Long ago some ancient civilization had constructed a magnificent city here, but for some reason all of their triumphs had crumbled into dust and all that remained now was the faintest ghost of their memory.
What a fleeting thing life is when measured against time. If this place could be so easily forgotten, how long would the memories linger of those who we’re killed in battle that day? A month? A year or two perhaps? Will anyone remember what they fought for, and will anyone care? It was while reflecting on this that I first saw them.
They came from beneath the mountain, wretched creatures of pale convoluted flesh and unnatural proportions. Humanoid in appearance, they we’re hideously misshapen and they limped, crawled, hopped and slithered over the battlefield, setting upon the fresh corpses eagerly. Despite my lofty position on the cliff I could make out their deformed bodies clearly in the light of the silvery moon. Each monster was a unique nightmare. One of them made its way awkwardly over the field on three legs while its bloated abdomen swayed back on forth threatening to erupt at any moment, spilling its contents upon the ground. Another one had a rotted, skeletal head perched upon a ghastly elongated neck while each of its arms ended with the heads of orks where its hands should have been. The two heads moved about independently directing the monster in one direction or the other while they opened and closed their mouths rhythmically, biting at the air.
They harvested the limbs of the dead and grafted them instantly to their own revolting bodies. Sometimes they removed their own rotting parts and replaced them from amongst the fallen, and sometimes they augmented themselves with extra arms, legs or heads. I saw one of them, nothing more than a head and torso with four human arms on each side to give it mobility skitter to the corpse of a young solider like a spider. It effortlessly ripped the slain boys head from his shoulders and placed it on its own body, directly between its shoulder blades. The head sunk into the monsters flesh until only the face was visible. Then his eyes flashed open and his face twisted into an expression of pain and horror.
The doomed younglings eyes locked on my own high upon the cliff and its mouth moved. I could hear no sound but I knew what he was saying.
Run! Run!
And so I ran. I ran as far as my battered body could carry me and then somewhere along the way I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember was waking up in the Red Blades sick tent dehydrated, feverish and with a mender changing the bandaging that had been packed into the recess of my back from where they had excised the crossbow bolt. Our defeat had taken a great toll on the morale of the clan, and so I chose not to share what I had seen with anyone. That burden would be mine alone.
I can’t be sure if what I saw that evening was real or just some terrible nightmare. Still, whenever it rains I feel a dull ache beneath my right shoulder and I think about the face of that boy fused to the back of the monster, his pale blue eyes wide with terror. War has a way of lingering on long after the dead have been cleared away from the field of battle. It still rages on in the mind of a mother whose lost her only son, the friends who he’s left behind and in the agony of his young widow, alone in the world and pregnant with child.
I wish I could convince myself otherwise, but I know in my heart that somewhere deep beneath a nameless mountain there’s a boy screaming in terror but no sound comes from his lips. For some of us the horror of war never ends.
By my hand,
Jargo Darkclaw of the Red Blades
((Quick note – This was my August entry for the Red Blades monthly writing contest. Each month there’s a scenario we’re given and we have to craft a story around it. August’s theme was defeat and we we’re given a brief description of how the battle went wrong to get us started.))