The Horned One peered over the gathered squad and snarled. Then, she turned and skulked off to hunt the horrifying wolf man that guarded the carts filled with black shot, which the legion so badly needed.
Elaina kept her head low as she peered over the grassy knoll, adjusting her mechanical eye's gears to zoom in on the ruins of Karlsburg.
"Do you want me to get a closer look?" Rainn, the legion's chief scout, asked. She lay next to Elaina, ready to leap up at a moment's notice.
Elaina shook her head. This position gave them a demanding view of the city outskirts. She turned to address the members of Ghost Owl squad who knelt and waited for orders. "We'll sneak through the alleys over there and set a trap. We'll catch those nasty critters in a crossfire."
Sverina, the de facto squad leader who was still a rookie herself, stood tall in response. "I can't wait to bury my axe in some of those bastards. I'll take them all on!" She boasted, with her smaller sister patting her shoulder and standing with her.
The specialists with the Ghost Owls on this mission, Rain, Elaina, Colay, and Emerald, all gave a bit of a side-eye at the rookie's bravado, who only barely survived the battle of Ettenmark Fields. Nonetheless, they moved down the hill and through the outskirts like a group of ghosts.
Minutes later, the trap was set. The group was ready to spring it when a screech from the Horned One caused the attention of the greatest beast ahead to turn. A moment of hesitation, and then the giant wolf-man bounded off to find the threat. Just as it appeared that the ambush would go off without a hitch, two of the nervous rookies stumbled into each other while setting up.
The monstrous creatures, looking like burned husks of people, all turned and sprinted towards the sound. Elaina scrambled, and the boisterous rookie, Sverina, offered her joined arms to help Elaina up. Elaina nodded in acknowledgment and took the boost up onto the window sill, from which she grappled and quickly climbed onto the roof.
The battle that ensued was fierce. The legion, usually a well-oiled machine of manpower, had been decimated recently by the massacre of Ettenmark Fields, so things didn't work quite as they used to. Before the burned ones got to the trap, the rookies of the squad opened fire from the nearby windows. Rain and Elaina found themselves on the same roof by accident, but their withering rifle fire assisted the squad on the ground. The burned ones hit the trap, and just after it exploded, Sverina and Colay raised their weapons. They both screamed out excitedly and led the charge of some of the squad.
The battle on the ground was chaos, with the strange smoldering undead locked in combat with the excitable Ghost Owls. Sverina was surrounded at the front of the squad, fire blazing from the trap all around, and enemies mixed in, little affected by the trap's fire. Her sister, Freya, also a member of the squad, screamed out louder than her demeanor would normally allow as she charged in to save her sister.
As the undead's attention was diverted between the two sisters, sure to overwhelm them, another member of the squad joined the fray and distracted them just long enough. However, he was knocked back into the flames and burned alive, but his sacrifice allowed the sisters to unite.
“Oh gods!” Freya said as she embraced her sister as the remaining monsters were felled from fire from the nearby buildings.
Emerald leaped down from the roof and the squad watched in horror as it looked like the medic broke her leg. Miraculously, she stood up from where she tripped and started running for the wagons carrying the black shot they came for. A moment later, Rain and Elaina looked down and saw the coast was clear, just as a body of some creepy woman, covered in sigils in her flesh flopped down dead on her back.
“Is the area all secured down there?” Elaina asked.
Sverina nodded as the Freya checked on the others.
“Secure those wagons so we can get out of here.” She ordered.
The group quickly moved to follow Emerald and start rigging up the supplies. Just as Elaina and Rain started down the stairs from the roof, a gaggle of burned climbed over the building and started coming up the stairs.
“We’re trapped!” Rain exclaimed as she spotted the rest of the enemy entering the house from the rear.
Elaina frowned and assessed the situation. “We have to hold them off.”
The two of them set up after reloading and setting out extra shot. Just as the two groups both poured onto the roof, the fire crawling up the building forced it to collapse. They both grabbed onto each other’s arms and fell through the floor and were not surrounded by an engulfed building. Fortunately, this crushed the undead that they’d sought to hold off.
Out on the street, Emerald saw the collapse and heard the surprised shouts. She looked and saw the Ghost Owls, down to four now, working up the ropes. “Get this done.” She said as she started running back to the burning building.
Emerald got close enough to start to look for a way to help the mission leader and the scout when the building exploded. She took cover and felt a tinge of pain on her twisted ankle. The real pain was losing two more people on this mission, her as the medic feeling all the blame.
Emerald turned to walk back to the supply wagons when she saw Elaina and Rain both helping each other limp out of the wreckage.
Elaina smiled at the medic. “Crispy like the quartermaster McKellum’s bacon.” She saw the joke didn’t land. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
The sound of more shambling creatures in the distance forced the caravan into motion as the minutes passed by. During the frantic exchange, another of the rookies, Taupe Runner Bear, stumbled and the cart behind him ran him over, a sickening crunch came from his chest cavity as the sound nearly echoed.
Emerald, the Viscount, and Sverina pulled him out and a short debate followed. He looked just as well dead, but Emerald refused to give up on him, getting him up on one of the carts and pushing on.
The Medic’s Persistence
The cart with Taupe Runner Bear pressed on past the initial barricades and the squad that defended them. The rest of the team all collapsed just inside the muddy interior of the defenses. Emerald struggled to push the cart to the medical tents, struggling to move it forward. Elaina sighed as she got back up after thinking she could rest.
“Emerald, its too late for him. You did all that you could. You need to accept his life is lost and its best to let him rest eternal with dignity.” Elaina walked next to the medic at first.
Emerald shook her head and pressed on. The squad watched her struggle through the mud. Sverina looked to her sister and motioned and they both stood, the other two members of the squad following along. They took up positions to help push the creaking cart up to the medical tent entrance. The quartermaster’s staff swiftly joined Emerald there and looked over Taupe’s injuries. Emerald pulled out an unguent that was known to her and Taupe’s people. She applied it to the grievous wound and commanded the staff to take the shirtless nomad into the tent. There, she lit incense and begun rituals that came from her people’s faiths in the land and nature. The squad waited as all but Emerald waited outside the tent. Tense hours passed and then finally the medic walked out.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The squad was exhausted and asleep except for Freriya. Her and Emerald locked eyes and Emerald smiled and nodded. Freriya cheered and that was the sound that woke the squad and they all excitedly cheered the heroic efforts of the Legion’s highest-ranking medic.
The Command Tent
It was not what it once was, not on the inside anyway. The command tent that the legion had been using throughout the campaign against the Cinder King was still the same, but inside it was wholly different. The Legion, once a thousand or more strong was now dwindling down to under fifty. The battle at Ettenmark fields, thought to be the climatic conclusion and victory had turned. Instead, it was the Legion that was in a shambles and prepared for retreat.
Commander Dame Livia Albrekt had been an officer in the legion for years, and she had a great deal of experience to show for her several campaigns that she’d had under her belt. She’d turned cold and hard in the last few months of the campaign to stop the Cinder King. Now, she gritted her teeth as her gauntleted fist rested on the table that showed little by the standards of what it once did.
“Report.” Her word was blunt and quick, like a period that ended a final sentence of a long and tiresome manual.
Marshal Halir Kupta hadn’t yet the time to busy himself with tidying the paperwork, and his sole adjutant that remained was rushing about camp, trying to confirm the status of the remaining men in each of the squads. He gave the stack of papers a quick tap on the table to better organize them and slide them across the table towards the Commander. She didn’t look through them but instead looked into Halir’s face. “Do tell.” She preferred to see the expression of her subordinates when they delivered news.
He looked into her eyes with his dark orbs, a solitary thread of hair escaping his turbine. “I’ve assigned five of the trainees that didn’t flee to each of the five squads. With them and our veterans, we are totaling thirty combat ready personnel. All the soldiers returned from our most recent foray into Karlsburg.”
She nodded to him and then her eyes slid over to Quartermaster McKellum. “And our supplies?”
“Ach. Missy, our supplies be about what you’d expect for a situation like this.” He said in a heavy accent that betrayed that even though he looked like a local, he was foreign.
“More precision please.”
“Aye, the main thing we be lacking would be the filled fiery hearts of the legion’s bravest. And we have a few wounded to boot.” He pulled out a tattered journal, looking over the most recent entries. “We rescued the black shot from the old wagon train by Karlsburg. If the undead swiftly march this way, they’ll hit a wall of the black that’ll burn ‘em out for sure.” He nodded as he closed his book.
“I want a special wagon prepared to help with evacuating our wounded.” Dame Livia had once been suffering a long term injury and cared for by the legion while she recovered and that was of great importance to her.
“Aye, I’ll see it done.” The Quartermaster left the tent and went to take care of his duties.
She looked about for the Lorekeeper and found him busy writing in the nook of the tent at a small desk. She thought to ask him to join her at the table, but no doubt, he had a great many eulogies to write and people to immortalize in the records of the Legion. Her eyes slid over the rest of the tent and landed then on a figure in the dark, touching the soft interior of the canvas tent. “Spymaster Kita. What do you have to report?”
The spymaster slid her hand down off of the material and turned to approach the table quietly. Her dark complexion turned golden in the fiery light of the lanterns there. “What would you like me to say? We are surrounded on three sides, morale is low, the local’s armies are disbanded, and the old capital of Karlsburg blazes throughout the night like the sun does during the day.”
Dame Livia gritted her teeth as she heard all of those descriptions and knew it to be true. She didn’t need a spymaster for that kind of clarity. “Give me something useful. I have reports from the scouts, but I need more.”
The spymaster snorts and then she nods. “Of course, my apologies Commander. To go from spy to the puppet master is.. an adjustment. I have tasked Ingrid with trying to find any of our previous network. With the roads so dangerous to travel, it is taking me longer than I would like. One thing is for sure, something is happening to the South of our position that is unsettling. Localized storms that prove of a dire future for us should we remain for long. They are not natural.”
Commander Dame Livia Albrekt considered on all the compiled intelligence as she prepared the wounded legion for its next moves.
Meanwhile, Quartermaster McKellum went about his vital duties as the supply lord of the Legion. He started to organize some of the laborers into digging a few trenches and preparing the defenses and keeping the supply depot dry. Even those that were just here with a shovel were of the most stalwart and loyal variety. In the aftermath of the battle of Ettenmark Fields, when the supply staff arrived at camp, they found that a string of cowardice had infected many of the camp followers. Those that were still here, McKellum knew, could be counted on for anything just short of shoveling a zombie in the head.
He walked the camp and saw nothing but dour faces. A medical wagon would need to do more than just tend to injuries, it would need to tend to wounds of the soul. He knew that what he needed to do was not really what was intended. He also knew that a good Legionnaire thought on their feet. He started to direct the labor forces and gather the supplies. He worked with them hand in hand to build up the wagon’s sides and gave it a little canvas cover as well.
When McKellum and the laborers were done, he started to walk out amongst the exhausted soldiers. He left a trusted staff member behind that could stay tight lipped. He came across group after group of soldiers that were licking their wounds and looking exhausted. “Aye, lads, I have a medical wagon prepared over there. I’ve been ordered to send ye over there. This is an order from me and not a request.” He winked.
One of the soldiers who looked exhausted, but not hurt just shrugged. “I’ll be fine. No injuries here.”
He went to put his head back down when the quartermaster’s thick and long beard touched his face as the portly man leaned down. “No laddy, I don’t think you be understanding me. Get yer arse over to the wagon.” And then he winked and moved on to the next squad.
Calaban Solo sighed and groggily stood up. He walked like one of the zombies himself. He figured a short trip over couldn’t wear him out much more. Then, he could report to his bully of a squad leader, Cer’tan Blackmarsh. He nodded to the guard at the front of the covered wagon. The guard smiled at him and he peeled back the canvas and there sat one of the women that worked as a camp follower. She smiled as she held out a ladle and put a finger to her lips.
He saw a giant barrel of liquor there, tapped and ready for consumption. He took his share and walked over to lean against another wagon. He sipped the strong swill and smiled and then coughed as the heat of it hit his parched throat. He let out a cackle of satisfaction as he reported quietly to his squad mates that the medical wagon was indeed filled with morale lifting booze.
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Meanwhile, the commander looked over the reports, trying to decide on the best course of action. She hadn’t been solely in command of the legion before now and she felt ill prepared.
She left the command tent and walked to look for an answer.
She heard a bit of commotion and a splashing of water almost violent sounding up ahead. She turned the corner around the ruined building and there she found a muddy pit filled with murky water. AIt was the horned beast girl that the legion had taken inspiration and divine guidance from.
The Horned One is what the Legion had called her. She was feral, bestial, powerful, fast, and she knew the land well. Not only all of that, she was indeed a divine creature. She’d been born a living avatar of the God of Nature, or so those that witnessed her arrival had said. Dam Livia Albrekt had been on guard duty the night of that fateful summoning. Indeed, with her noble upbringing, she would have preferred an avatar of one of the more orderly gods, but she was not about to waste any asset she had. She walked up to the edge of the pit and waited.
The Horned One was thin, but her muscles were defined, especially with the dirt and mud. Her horned were like that of a ram imbued with magic. New to her appearance were the burns and claw marks that noted her body as being a victim of a recent, fearsome battle.
She slid mud along her scarring wounds for a few minutes until she finally slid up to face the Commander. “Care to join me?” She says in a raspy but strong voice.
Livia shook her head. “I’ve come to discuss the upcoming direction of the Legion’s actions. I’m left with a conundrum.”
The Horned One digs around in the water and pulls up a very natural looking walking stuff. She leans against it as she looks up at Livia, naked and feral. “Go on then.”
“We have reports that the Legion’s banner might still be outside of enemy hands.Its a powerful symbol.” She says as she watches the creature that was once human for a reaction.
“Its a piece of fabric. It holds no real value. There must be far more important tasks at hand.”
Livia bites her tongue for a moment, wanting to say something about symbolism and all that. Truth is, she was struggling with the Legion’s new identity as well. “I see. I understand. It won’t put food in our bellies or help us to find a way out of this miasma.”
“I could smell that you’d be a worthy successor to the old Commander.” She took a step out of the pit towards Livia as muddy water splashed up on her armor that she still wore despite not being a front line fighter. The Horned One inhaled a sniff of her.
She didn’t budge or panic despite seeing those pointy teeth smiling at her. “I’ll set our forces seeking an escape route and gathering information on what we expect to face in days to come.”
Without another word, just a deep breath and a smile, The Horned One sunk back into the pit. Livia could see the grimace on her face, she wasn’t invulnerable after all.