Atlas struggled under the rubble of a fallen building. His head bleeding, painting his vision red, body aching with small shivers. Waking from unconsciousness he pushed against his restriction, uselessly trying to return to the ongoing battle.
He heard the roar of the King Boar even through the ringing in his head that threatened to split it open. He clenched his jaw, gnashed his teeth and desperately wiggled in his confines. Wrangling every bit of leverage he could out of the concrete blocks, wooden boards, and bricks.
The King Boar roared once more flaring its nostrils as the face off between it and the two Patriarchs came to a swift end. Ru Wai took the initiative. Knocking an arrow and letting it loose. At the same time the twang of his bow cracked into the air the projectile lodged itself into the Boars thick neck with a heavy thump. The Boar swerved its eyes back towards the two men having barely moved its burning eyes out of the way.
The King charged, its fiery mane flaring up. Its hooves dug into the ground as it lunged to the right, going straight for Archeseus. He held onto his
pitch black spear, his feet gliding on the earth as he turned and span leading the Massive boar in a wild chase over the grassy fields between the broken wall and the battlefield his people were waging war on.
The Boar’s anger rose as it could not find purchase on the shifty man, moving about like a dragonfly over still water. Despite his fragile stature it escaped its tusks, bites, and hooves. {WEE!} The Spiritual Beast squealed. It spun around on its stumpy legs. It jumped and galloped at full charge for Ru Wai, who had been sticking it full of arrows all the while. He released his fingers as he rolled aside, his arrow flew true, it stuck on the boars temple, only to be burned to ashes as a plume of fire blew out of its mouth. Roaring with its throat the fire spread out. It grabbed onto Ru Wai and seared his flesh.
Ru Wai rolled on the dirt having lost his balance. He pushed himself up and tried to jump away as the Boar once more charged him but his burning flesh burst open, the jolt slowed him down just enough to force Archeseus to jump in. He slammed into Ru Wai in a tackle, tumbling on the ground away from the King’s charge, it bowled past them, tearing flaps of silk caught in its left tusk.
Archeseus untangled himself and faced the repeating charge, dodging was not an option, The King chortled in satisfaction. He drove his feet down, lowering his waist before charging forward. Spear met tusks in a flash of blinding sparks. Twisting and bending his spear a large gash was cut through the forehead of the beast as Archeseus was swatted aside tusk of marble whipping into his side. He flew through the air, planted his feet on the ground and slid back, biting back a yelp at the pain flaring on his ribs.
He cursed as he saw Ru Wai facing the full force of the charging beast. It pierced forward with its tusks, and even as the man deftly jumped above them, its thick bleeding skull clipped his legs, he flipped and flew over the beast. Disoriented and injured he hit the ground hard knocking the breath out of his lungs.
Archeseus rushed to him and pulled him back even as the beast readied another charge. “Can you still walk?” Archeseus asked as they reached the cobble paved artery of the compound.
“Of course. I just need a bow in my hands to blind it and you can take care of the rest.” The man pushed himself into a crouching position stabilizing himself on the ground with his hands. He hissed as he bent his knees, yet did not move.
“Yeah… And now to find that bow.” Archeseus said, shifting his eyes around. Only to feel something hitting the heels of his shoes. He spared a look and saw water, blood, and grime carrying the dead and their items through the path. A grim gift from the heavens, bow and quiver, floated atop the filth.
“Well. I’ll be damned.” Ru Wai said as he turned his head to the bow. He grabbed onto them and struggled to stand up straight.
Before he could exclaim on his luck the squealing, dying cries of the hoard of boars behind the, reverberated in unison with the rallying cries of the fighting men and women. A feverish pitch. Archeseus heard all this and stared at the King Boar. Its face wrinkling around its eyes. Its flames burning brighter, hotter than ever before. The Boar comparison to rage etched in its face of fat and muscle.
~~~~~~~~
“Five as one! One mind four limbs! Bait! Defuse! Counter! Pierce through them!” Xanthip shouted amidst the bloody mayhem. She dove aside, rolled and sprung to her feet having dodged a frontal assault by a hog. She thrust her spear forward, cutting into another beast attacking a group of men. Twisting her body around, she carved through the face of the boar whose charge she’d dodged.
More Boars stormed through the gaps in the front lines. She lunged at them, Spear in one hand, short sword in the other. She danced through the boars cutting and slashing. Spear snaking, carving up the flesh. She pushed against the wave and plugged the gap before retreating back into line. “Push these pigs into line! Stay your ground men!” She shouted over the mayhem. Yet despite all efforts of the men fighting against the mighty force of these wave of beasts, casualties racked up, and the lines became fractured. Spears could only do so much, and daggers could do even less. The Arrow fire assisting from behind worked to little effect, enraging instead of demoralizing.
As the lines retreated, with mounting despair, so where their bodies mounted, trampled, squashed and torn apart. Blood-rage pushed the boars forward, up the main avenue of the estate and its paved cobble. Amidst houses and workspaces, underground tunnels and wells. Wet, sticky blood, covered the cobble.
Xanthip grew more and more manic in the use of her aging body. Her muscles burned with her every movement and her chest ached with every breath. Her voice grew hoarse as despair clung at its edges. “Fight! Everyone! Fight together! Work as one! Protect your home!” She screamed her spear launching from her palm to stick into some boar or another before she jumped, piercing down with her sword into the meat of a charging hog, she mounted it, clung to it as it thrashed. She bound her legs on its waist, it lunged, and lurched. It was in the moment between it manic attempts to throw her off, that she pulled her sword out in a deluge of blood, using every fiber of muscle on her body she plunged it back in and carved the boar open along its spine, as if she was trying to fillet it. Steaming organs and innards flooded out of its body along with liters of bubbling blood.
Xanthip pushed herself of the carcass, turning around in panting breaths, gulping down air. A Boar stormed through the ranks, tusks poised to skewer through her. She swatted its protruding face away and stumbled drunkenly back. Her arms hanging loosely from her side as she fought to catch her breath. Her joints rattled in her ears, she could hear none of the cries around her. She gathered the dying embers of her body and pushed them to her limbs as the Boar charged her once more.
She clenched her jaw so tight her teeth nearly cracked. Veins popped on her neck, the hand clenching her steel turned an ungodly shade of white. She twisted her body at its charge, one last hurrah.
{SPLASH!} A bucket of water tumbled on the cobble ground as a deluge of water washed over the boar. Another bucket came and then the next.
“It has no bloody effect Gramps!” shouted a young womanly voice. The Boar crashed through the wall of water.
“I think you gotta check again!” The gruff voice of a very old man responded with joy. Another bucket at the ready he stood right outside the entrance to one of the many underground bunkers of the clan with glee in his eyes, and a smile on his lips hidden by his proud white mustache and beard.
The charging boar, locked into its paths found the ground slick with mud and filth, its own filth, and its hooves, iron hard as they were found no purchase on the rock. It slipped, slammed its head on the large cobble rocks as more water sucked it in its growing current. It slid under, as she jumped away, and tried to get up. In a show so humiliating that it was spectacular it failed in rising anger, and Xanthip found the humor within herself to laugh. Until her thoughts turned to the Old man; Grand-daughter pair.
“What are you doing! Hide underground!” Xanthip shouted with concern. Rushing to the old man, much older than her. “This is impossibly stupid! How can someone be more idiotic?! If you come out do die like this… Then why are we giving are lives for?!” Images of the clans children, like Argea, flooded her mind.
“And you expect us hide away and do nothing, while you rotten fools die to the swine!? You expect me see my whole world by trampled by some filthy pigs and do nothing?! Useless? Helpless?!” The retort slapped Xanthip across the face.
She went to speak, her humiliation, her despair, her anger, it brought words to her lips that she had never uttered before, to an elder at that. Yet she trumped over her hurt pride and looked at the old man and the growing group of non combatants that was storming out of the underground.
“Look! Look at what a non combatant at deaths door can do! Watch your steps!” He warned the soldiers still in the thick of it.
Xanthip stopped her lecture and turned her head around at his words. Realization of what she had already seen dawned on her. The battlefield had completely shifted. Boars slipped and slid up and down the road, crashing into trees and into each other as the better equipped soldiers stood their ground and dodged their telegraphed attacks. Suddenly all the men found room to breathe. Room to think and to act. Dirt mixed with the water and the blood and it gathered speed as the wells of the clan were emptied, by the fearful, stuttering, old and young that had been hiding in the dark.
Shouts of liquid courage filled the throats of these men and women as hundreds of them found their fighting spirit growing in a great pyre.
“This is amazing. You had a wonderful Idea for sure. With this… We can win.” Xanthip smiled brightly at the old man.
Xanthip grasped the fire and put it to work. Quickly regrouping these warriors could now follow her orders, as the tides turned their first experience with actual war solidified into real power.
With efforts of non combatants a flip had been switched and the orderly, organized dismantling of the hoard of Boars had commenced. And every man turned into a viper, a python. Either with pure venom, or overwhelming force the techniques of the Clan that had been beat into them since youth finally showed their might.
Xanthip there, above all, like a machine of slaughter, her spear and form painted red as boars died at her whim. Suddenly, she lost her balance, a Roar that nearly popped her ears rocked the earth, the ground shaking below her. A gust of wind buffeted her face, yet she looked over the battlegrounds, to the most important ongoing struggle.
There she saw her brother and Ru Wai sliding through the wet road one in front of the other being pushed by the enraged King Boar. Its skull dripped with blood as it pressed against Archeseus’ spear who’s efforts of stopping the boar in its tracks amounted to nothing.
Its frontal charge made it all the way to the back lines of its horde, and in one mighty swoop it tossed the two men aside and hurled itself to the skies. Its malefic shadow growing over Xanthip.
“XANTHIP! DODGE!”