Chapter 15 War Crimes

Grumish was right up in my face, which was funny, at seven feet in height, I was as tall as a normal orc, but Grumish had to lean down. Chief of the Broken Fang tribe, wife of Tamara, father of Goo, had been a decent student of primordial cultivation and a natural student of Legion tactics. He would, physiology aside, have been welcomed into any gathering of Centurions in the Dread Empire. He was reacting about the same way as any Centurion when he thinks his troops have been found unfit for a critical tasking.

“You racist prick, my Broken Fang cohort finished second only to your Cadre. We are undefeated against any of the other cohorts. You yourself have admitted we are BETTER than the other cohorts of the Legion you deserted. You can’t say we aren’t strong enough to join you. You are looking at driving into the heart of the Goblin lands, right to the World Tree itself. They will send the whole of their people against you and not count the cost. Two hundred years ago Brok Ironhide lead fifteen thousand of his horde to wipe them out and all we got back were stories. Not one survivor, not one. You cannot go alone.”

Loyalty is a funny river, it runs both ways or not at all. I had freed his people from fear of disease, from crippling injury, from famine, from death in childbirth. I had taught his people that they did not need to cower in their hills when the magic gifted god blessed armies of the Holy Land or Dread Empire next undertook to “cleanse” the border of their subhuman filth. In return, he demanded the right to die along side us in what he intellectually and instinctively accepted was a suicide mission.

I grinned, which had Grumish held back only by the recently instilled discipline from trying to punch me out. He was also my brother in law, which blurred the subordinate lines slightly, and orcish family disputes were settled with bare knuckles and boots. I was spared having to explain why I was sparing his troops by Captain Xiang.

“Put your dick away Grumish, first it isn’t big enough, second, it’s clean and that disqualifies you.” Captain Xiang marched Grumish back from me using the point of her Xiphos beneath his chin rather than testing (and failing) her strength against his.

“You keep mistaking this for a suicide charge and some sort of honour story, which is very orcish I am sure. It isn’t. Clover is planning a war crime. Not a suicide charge, a slaughter devoid of anything but casual brutality and horror. You orcs do honour and glory. We were the XVII Legion, the Butcher’s own. We do war crimes. Stay clean boy. You have a leader that is willing to do the dirty himself and leave you clean. Fifty fucking years a soldier, and he is the first one I have ever served, so back off, and leave the war crimes to us.” Captain Xiang’s eyes did not burn with righteous fury like Grumish, they were flat, black, and cold. Endless pits that reached into the abyss of memory in which the screams of the innocent and the stink of slaughter could be found. Grumish stumbled back, making the sign against curses with his hands almost instinctively.

Captain Xiang laughed, and it was a soft broken thing. I looked at the ground and echoed her words for all my assembled cohort leaders.

“This has to be done. The first crime was the gods, and there is nothing I can do about that. They have their magic and chose to use it to do something so foul I don’t ever want to understand it all. I am not a god, I don’t have any magic. I can’t just wave a wand or chant some bullshit and make it go away. All I can do is spill an ocean of blood just to water a fucking tree. It probably won’t even work. The first crime may have been the gods, but the last one will be mine, but I will be damned if I will let it be yours.” I said as I raised my eyes to look at them. They looked away. I don’t know what they saw in my eyes, and I made a note never to ask.

I marched my cohort out at dusk. The work we did was best done by night. I should have felt sick from what I had planned, and part of me wept that I didn’t.

We ran through the night. 480 human soldiers and a hundred twenty trolls clad in celestial bronze plate. Most bore the spear and shield the Dread Empire was known for, and the short brutal Xiphos for when it was too close for spear work, but one in four was a bowman using a bow that could drive an arrow through a three foot block of granite, and our trolls, unlike the Legions we came from, were armoured as well, and bore halberds that could cleave through armoured men like a farmer reaping wheat. Inside our muscles burned with the golden glow of our will, the primal force of creation, making our flesh stronger than a Holy Knight or Dread Empire Shadow Knight, not just for the short time of a spell, but as long as we still lived. The light burning from our pumping muscles would have given our position away, even as the sound of so much metal would have wakened the dead to the approaching doom, yet we were cloaked in tentacles of primordial darkness that drank light and ate sound.

We were a stain spreading across the land, silent, and deadly.

We came upon the first village, we ignored the gate, Gracie and Fuckhead swept us a larger hole in the wall and we stormed through at the run. The goblins cried out in fear as we came. We made red slaughter among them, and the song rose in us as we butchered, a darker song than I had ever sung before, as I did not let the dead die, but bound them to me.

The darkness around us was tainted with scarlet as the spirits of the goblins we bound and did not let pass on denied us the pure darkness that shielded us. The next village raised a cry, and there were almost a hundred warriors manning the rammed earth ramparts behind the wooden stake walls. Captain Xiang laughed and called out the command.

Left to right, by column, staircase cast.

No other force in the world could do this, but Captain Xiang had us in basic and with half a century of the Dread Empire’s wars behind her she had worked out ways to use our gifts that terrified even me. Driven by the power of more than human strength, the first rank of spears drove into the wall at knee height. Then the next beside to the right about four inches higher. The palisades shook as the spears hit with the impact of a siege bolt thrower, but it was the cry of despair from the wall top that signalled the goblins had noticed they turned the outer wall into a staircase made of spears.

We hit it at the run, shield to the walls, we raised them above our heads as we ran the spears like we trained to run the oars of a bireme in naval training, running up the outside of the wall like a staircase. I was First Spear, it was my job to take and clear the rampart so that my squad could force a big enough opening for the rest of the troops to not have to slow. I didn’t need to kill, I needed to clear. Ignoring my Xiphos, I put my strength behind my shield as I blasted the goblins trying to thrust at me with their own spears off the palisades to fly through the air and land on the ground beyond. Dropping my stance low, I charged along the walls to my left, drawing my Xiphos now, the brutal wide tipped short sword was point heavy and sharp on both edges, designed for brutal short chops and full power thrusts at quarters too tight for swings. It was perfect facing goblins on the walls. My legs churned on the rammed earth ramparts of the inner wall, forcing the weight of dozens of goblins back as my Xiphos ranged beside, above, and below my shield. I didn’t do heroic work cleaving goblins in half, thrusting into hearts or anything worthy of song or story. I was a soldier, not a hero, and heart thrusts got swords stuck.

I chopped wrists, knees, necks, shoulders, across the faces behind the bar nasal of their bronze helms. I maimed and butchered, driving my hobnailed boots into the bodies beneath my feet knowing they were still alive and trusting to my squad following behind to take care of them. I drove forward. I felt an arrows hammering into me, but my armour shrugged them off. One caught me in the thigh, and I could feel my flesh tear as my legs kept pumping. My body burned with the song, it rose in me, filled me, and the fall of my own blood made it sing louder. The night sky split with lightning in time with my pulse as my blood coursed down my leg. The lightning lashed down at the goblins on the wall and suddenly there was no resistance in front of me.

The wall swept clear, I stacked up behind the first squad that found an open ramp and we plowed into the desperate goblin force gathered at its base. We hit them like a drunk smashing a wine bottle and red life wine spilled upon the soil. We killed every man woman and child of our second village and pressed onward to the tree.

Now it was a race, the earth beneath us cried out in protest as the goblins it loved so dearly were butchered by us and their souls not allowed to return to the tree. The earth cried out and every goblin village answered back. From each a wave of goblins charged. As they charged, the Savage Lands animals ran to meet them. The magic of the goblin was tied to the Savage Lands and all the beasts in it. They were shit fighters, but no beast in the Savage Lands would harm them, so they lived in the places even orcs feared to tread. Now those monsters ran to become their steeds.

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Dire wolves, sand tigers, great metal horned Auroch all ran to the nearest village and became steeds for the charging goblins. We ran for the World Tree, and the world behind us closed with thousands of goblins, the first wave of an endless sea.

I went to the base of the World Tree, an ash tree that rose so high I could not believe it’s height, yet the sweep of its branches was so broad as to leave it looking squat. It was bone white, not a leaf had graced it in centuries, not since the gods had rose against their parents. I that bone white tree, the bones of Demeter stood gleaming the bronze white of divinity, shining softly, her skull was trapped open in an endless and soundless scream. Harsh cuffs of Acheron Iron, forged from the hell built to hold the slaughtered titans chained her to the tree and through its roots her power linked her forever to the prison of her parents, even as the iron bound her soul forever in the spell raping her chosen land of all its life.

I set the anvil down, Gracie and Fuckhead set up the rest of my field smithy as I let my tentacle friends lash out at the broken branches of the World Tree itself to light a fire hotter than any the world had seen before, unmaking the symbol of eternity, and letting it burn.

I dropped the celestial bronze of my weapons and the prepared ingots into the crucible and began to heat it. The first of the goblins met the shield wall of my square formation. The first rank thrust with their spears, the second grabbed the wounded or dead goblins and passed them inward. My own squad ripped them apart, and painted the bones and the tree in the blood of her children, watering the Tree of Life with goblin blood. Janice knelt to gather the blood pumping from my own wound, and poured it into the crucible with the melting bronze.

As I poured the mix of celestial bronze and my own blood into the moulds of spearhead and Xipos, Gracie began to sing to the World Tree. The song of creation and destruction raged as my troops slaughtered goblins like some sort of farm threshing machine, but the goblins were mad with the need to protect the tree and their goddess and soon weight of bodies dragged down spears and my troops were forced to begin to collapse the square or be overwhelmed. Superhuman or not, strong and fast beyond any mortal creature or not, my troops too began to fall. Maybe one for every hundred killed, but it was not just goblin blood that painted the roots of the world tree, and the tree began to wake.

Removing the spearhead first, I saw the bright celestial bronze was blood red now, darkened by my impure mortal blood. It was not weaker with the added mortality, but stronger. I scraped the and scoured the roughness off, watching the Mortal Bronze chew the Celestial Bronze tools I used against it. It was not yet enough.

I was born of the blood of the first titan, but I was also born of the clay of this world. The shit and corpses of a billion worms and bugs, cows and kings, trees and weeds made up the base stuff from which I was formed. Not the unformed chaos of the primordial darkness, but it slept within there, within all of us. Every song has an ending, and when my father sang the universe into existence with his song of creation, she whom he birthed and whom he loved sang her own song into it. The song of endings. That is what lives within all of us, the song of creation and destruction. The mortal song.

When I forged Celestial Bronze I filled my will into the metal to make it a pure thing to impose my will upon the world, a weapon fit to defy the darkness, a fit weapon to defy a god. But that was an echo of what Ajax remembered. That was him, that was not me. I was mortal. I would not live for eons and fall only in battle. If I lived long enough, my hair and teeth would fall out, my muscles waste away and one day I would fart too hard and die. That was mortality. I laughed and took up my hammer.

I looked upon the pure order of my Mortal Bronze spear head and brought my hammer and the darkness down upon it. My tentacle friends lashed the edge, shattering that perfect order, then my hammer fell and imposed something stronger. Again and again up the edge of the blade I worked this, and I fed the souls of the slaughtered goblins into that edge until it darkened to deepest black. Primordial darkness that unmade whatever it touched.

Gracie had sung her song to the World Tree, and it grew heavy with leaf again, deep greed of life flowed from the spilled blood, and in gratitude she offered up an eight foot ash shaft white and pure as bone, hard beyond the dreams of iron.

I fit the spear head and lizard sticker to the spear and raised it to the sky and screamed, the sky screamed back and lightning hammered into the spear, searing the shaft to the head and tail spike. I turned to the chained bones of the fallen Demeter, the goddess/mother of the goblins and I struck. Mortal Bronze struck the First Magic of the gods themselves, the new order that overthrew the Titans and ruled over the mortal world. I cast my hate and my rage into my thrust and I drove the mortal bronze into the heavy links of Acheron Iron, and they broke.

I thrust again and again, until the bones of the goddess fell from the tree to the ground, and the ground exploded with life as they hit the blood soaked sand.

Flowers wove up into her bones, crushing them and returning them to the earth, all around me I felt the world cry out, I fell to the ground as the earth rocked under a wave of power. The goblins that had been near to overwhelming my own troops cried out, and then fell to their knees and wept.

Grass and flowers, trees and shrubs exploded from the ground for miles in every direction, growing as we watched, but my eyes were drawn to the quaking earth in a line a mile long, growing darker, growing wider, growing blurrier. It’s beginning was not glorious, like any birth, it was dirty, slimy, and stinky. The rivers that had been chained beneath the Savage Lands to take its life to lands the gods loved more were clawing their way to the surface again. Dirty muddy things, it would be weeks before they scoured a new bed to run, but the water that fell here would stay here, would feed the land it belonged to once again.

The gifts the dying Demeter had made of her cut open womb to offer the goblin children born of her falling blood would slowly come to be, for she was a goddess of patience and season, of growth and renewal.

I felt hands close the wound upon my thigh, their song joining the song of slaughter I had raised, and offered healing to my wound. It scarred, as I did not give my will to the healing. The hand that pressed the wound closed was small, clawed, and green.

All around me, goblins, men and maiden, danced and hugged each other, hugged my soldiers, the ones who made red slaughter of multiple villages and half a goblin generation just to get here. Soldiers that made of goblin blood the water to wake the tree from a sleep the gods imposed. They hugged us and praised us, for freeing their goddess, even as the blood of their infants stained my boots.

I fell to my knees and puked.

When there was nothing left in my stomach to give, the sky shattered and an eagle of gold that shone brighter than the sun, and whose wing beats were the thunder itself dominated the sky above and the voice of the God of the Sky sounded so loud the very stones upon the earth bounced at its tone.

“Mortal, you have dared to defy the work of the most holy gods, for that you will die!” The great eagle opened its mouth and lightning thicker than the body of a horse lashed down at me. I took it on my spear, and drove my lizard sticker into the ground to ground it out. I called lightning stronger than that when I went to war, you won’t be killing me with it. I looked upon a field where I had buried the goddess of peace, where I had slaughtered and sacrificed thousands of goblins, were over a dozen of my own troops had died, and hundreds more would be weeks healing fully, and was flat out of give a fuck.

“ARCHERS, KILL THAT FUCKING DUCK BEFORE IT QUACKS AGAIN!” I roared, and my voice too shook the earth. A musical thrum filled the air, like a well plucked lute. The sound from the noble eagle as big as an elephant was less elegant, more like the terrified quacking of a duck caught in a catchers net. A dozen arrows strong enough to punch through stone walls pierced its divine flesh. Celestial bronze met celestial flesh, and flying became impossible.

Falling to earth in an explosion of light, the blast threw everyone back but me.

The divine eagle, symbol and extension of the King of Gods looked at me in contempt, a mere mortal who knew nothing that had dared to defy my betters. His beak opened as the eagle died and mocked me.

“Fool, you think killing me is victory. I am immortality, I am eternity, I am THE PHOENIX!” The bird collapsed upon itself and from its corpse sprung up a bird of living flame. The phoenix of legend, forever dying and being reborn from its own ashes, a symbol of the godly immortality that had died and been reborn in every generation of man. The laughter of the phoenix sounded as his flames licked my flesh, burning and scarring me, I screamed in pain, but I had been hurt before, been burned before. I strode forward into the flames.

The bone white shaft sung from the World Tree itself, offered willingly was untouched by the flames, filled by my own burning will, the mortal bronze of my spear head heated in the immortal flames, but the edge grew blacker than the night an edge of darkness so brutal as to deny the very existence of light.

I thrust, feeling my blade ram home, I drove forward, causing the bird to collapse to the ground. I thrust again, driving my will and my spear deeper. The Phoenix cried out as the edges of primordial darkness drank the light, and the fires of the phoenix dimmed. My tentacle friends lashed out at the bird as its fires dimmed, eating the flesh of the most truly immortal of all, and devouring it. I watched the light go out of the phoenix eyes, and its fire go out. Its body did not collapse, it stayed simply another corpse on a field of corpses.

“Thus, eternity ends.” I said, collapsing to my knees, too spent to care anymore.

Above me, the rift in the sky through which the King of the Gods observed my punishment slammed shut like a bank vault before a bandit.

The Savage Lands would grow again, the goblins were returned to the song of creation, the song of my mother. They were clean of the rage and madness that had claimed them. Rain fell upon the Savage Lands, soft and welcoming, and in it soldiers and goblins danced.

There had been two crimes committed in this place. The first, an eternity ago had been done by the gods, but the second was done by me. Clover, son of a mother who offered only love, now the murderer of children. Unnoticed in the rain, my tears fell, and I cursed the healing that left my skin unmarred even now, for I should not leave this field unscarred.