Chapter One
Die, Slay, Sleep, Repeat
Blood dripped from the sleeve of the gloves he wore, as he struggled to hold onto his too big sword. His hands were slick with it and his body ached from trying to keep the blade between him and his foe. Sweat stung his eyes and the small wounds all over his body, making him squint through the pain and grind his teeth to keep from moaning. The malformed goblin saw his distress despite his efforts and cackled, poking his rotten yellow fangs from his lower jaw into a mocking pout. He saw its green form become a blur as if a memory he recalled. He heard the agile, 'tap''tap''tap' of its bare feet over leaves and twigs and smelled its musk grow from bad to overpowering in a flash.
He did not know how he was able to ward off those cuts and stabs that made sparks against his sword, any of which could have opened his neck or pierce his eyes. But he knew that a part of it was the goblin being a sadist and missing on purpose, another part was the dose of fear quickening his limbs to keep him alive. It pushed him back though, and his heel touched a still body. He nearly rolled an ankle on a soft limb and he choked back a sob not daring to look back at it. The goblin laughed again with such evil delight that the boy froze, chilled to his core on how inhuman the creature was. It was green, with a head that was way too big for its thin body and an ugly face fit only for nightmares. Fat yellow eyes lined with red veins faced opposite ways and not one of them seemed to focus on him. That green thing whipped a rusty iron dagger for his throat seeking to make him trip on the body. He was prepared for it this time and his sword was already at his side, he ducked lower letting his foe's blade cut a line of fire across his forehead as he swung his entire body in an arc, hips shoulders and limbs, with all that he had. The weight of the iron sword threw him into a circle showing the move for what it was. It was a suicide strike.
Even at point blank range, the goblin was agile enough to react, it leapt back, but his sword was too long. The heavy iron blade smashed into it, making it explode with red-green blood and ropes of viscera and offal. It flew apart splashing him and the small clearing with its life fluids. Its dark greenish blood painted over the old red blood of its victim. The goblin screamed and cried as it died. It sounded like a pig being gutted as it still lived and hearing it made the boy's knees buckle. He dropped the point of the sword into the earth to keep it from flattening him as both knees struck the ground sending bolts of pain to shoot up each thigh. On his knees and breathing through his teeth, he quickly looked around.
Early morning kept the woodlands dark, cool, and dank, droplets of dew mixed with blood, and sweat. The smell of the earth, and tree sap mixed with wet excreta, raw meat, and sickly-sweet death. The day was gray and the sky a muted blue, bright enough to show carnage but with the golden slip of a sun too low to show it all. The boy kept looking around as he held his side and tried to get to his feet. He failed twice, feeling the wetness between his fingers on his side, too afraid to see how bad it was. On the third attempt, he grunted to keep from screaming and got to his feet. More wetness flowed over his left eye like a bubbling stream. He did not bother to try to stop it, he had more than one other cut that was worse and he could do nothing for that either. Instead, he grabbed the hilt of his sword and grunted as he lifted it and then drug it to the top half of the goblin.
It was dead already to his eyes, its creepy glowing eyes dull, and the blood from its mouth pooling like black tar in its throat. He kicked it in the head and cursed it quiet and low as to keep from being heard by any other goblins that may still be near, but did it with vehemence.
"Let the blackness take you and all that favor you and all that birthed you!"
He then lifted his sword just high enough to bring it down with force into the thing's face. It jerked back to life, eyes bulging hate for an instant and then truly died. His heart leapt into his throat at the realization that even with half its body missing it still lived.
The boy vomited all over himself and the creature and heaved until there was nothing left in his stomach. He felt the skull give way to the dense iron that sunk deep into the fat that filled the inside of the skull. Thinking about that made his stomach squirm and his throat tighten reflexively. The brown ribbon that floated before his eyes vanished when he blinked. And he knew then that he was going mad with grief. He knelt in that pool of filth and cried, when he recalled the body that he stepped on before he turned and looked at the still form of the girl he loved. The fight with the lone goblin was a fierce one. It stalked him before dashing and cutting at him with its dagger and then vanished in the dark brush cackling. It must have pushed him back to where they slaughtered her, after he returned to see what became of her.
Her fine wool dressed was in tatters her body mangled and twisted, bones poking through flesh. Her stomach was an empty black chasm, pink bones bare to the world and dark red blood covered everything below her chin. Despite all of that, her face was remarkably clean. But she was no longer the beauty that stole every heart that could see it. Her face was changed into a mask of such horror and agony that it broke what he thought was already broken in him to see it once more. The boy screamed at the top of his lungs, no longer caring whom or what heard him. That fear that drove him to survive for just one more moment was lost in a pit of despair too deep for words and sorrow that no amount of blood could quench. But the fire in him smoldered. When his voice was spent and the tears gone, he was forced to realize that the clearing was filled with the stench of goblin bodies.
He felt cold. He looked around at him, seeing their greenish yellow teeth, fat and long noses, and huge bulging yellow eyes squinting against the rising sun. He hated them. He hated how ugly they were and how rotten they were to the core. He hated how grotesquely big their heads were on too thin short bodies with small potbellies and a look of endless hunger. He had heard the stories but they were worse than any tale or nursery rhyme. The smell of just one of them was enough to drop a wild pig. They looked at him with such inhuman hate, hate that he could not even hope to match and shook his head at them. The thing they did for fun would break the most evil of evil men. And they stayed in the shadows, afraid of light as all evil was. They were a caricature of what is right and good for all men to hate and to extinguish from the world. There was no doubt that they would do worse to man, woman, and child if they had half the chance.
He dropped his sword waiting to die, wishing they would do it quickly. And then he almost grinned, as they flashed their teeth in a cruel approximation of a smile. Even at that moment, at the lowest he had ever been, he could not give up.
The boy took his sword, not caring about its ridiculous weight. They did not deserve a good death for what they did to Sarah. A good death would be too quick for evil like them. He had to give them pain, as they gave her. He wanted to...the boy shuddered as he recalled her face...no he could not want to give them the same face that she had...not even to the goblins that he hated, more than he feared them. He could only kill them, every last one of them or kill them until his life was spent. The fire burned within him but his body stayed cold. The boy stood and held his sword in both hands so tight that in that cold numbness he knew there was pain. And when the goblins leapt as one for him, almost a sea of putrid living green, he swung his sword with abandon. He found his smile in the ripping of green flesh and howled his joy in concert with their songs of death.
He opened his eyes to darkness, sliding the dry blood caked lids inch by painful inch from his orbs. The cover in the trees was so thick that moonlight and the starry night sky struggled to pierce the canopy. His skin felt cold but his wounds burned as if he had a fever. And he was so thirsty that he was sure that his throat would crack in half if he tried to speak. His heart beat wildly in his chest as he struggled to comprehend where he was. Why am I in a forest? Oh Yeah...we were supposed to run away together and this is where we were to meet. Wait, where is she...oh no... He buckled and drew in on himself as he recalled her twisted face and mangled body. Oh yes...she is dead, it killed her...but why am I alive? Cold lumps of flesh with enormous heads, big hands and feet and all manner of crude weapons surrounded him. He had been wet with blood and worse but now that filth dried to skin and clothe in a stiff crust. His wounds, and cuts were caked in the filth and the smell of himself turned his stomach. He heaved but not even bile would come out and he wheezed as guilt and shame for not being able to protect her tore at his eyes. The tears would not come he was so dried out, so thirsty, so dead in spirit that producing any type of wetness was a pipe dream. His hands ached still clutching the hilt of his sword. The blade was as long as he was tall and wider that the width of his chest, the blade was thick too, a hundred weight of iron. He had been a smith's apprentice and the scrap iron was a gift from his master. He had used every bit of it to make the monster sword that no one could properly use. The biggest man in the village, the smith could not wield it. And yet he used it to slay goblins.
His name was Brandt and her name, his beautiful golden headed secret fiance was Sarah. He was well muscled from long hours in the forge and a childhood of doing hard labor on his parent's farm. His hair was long enough to cover his ears and dark brown almost black, and his eyes a light steel gray. He hated his hair long for he got too many comments about his looks from boys teasing him and girls he did not like, being too insistent that he talk with them. He wore it long for her, for Sarah, she said she liked it that way. She made him promise not to cut it.
Brandt groaned deep in his belly, wanting to pull his hair out in clumps. He was a fool to think that he could steal away the daughter of a lord and not face the wrath of fate. He had been told that highborn and lowborn did not mix save to serve and to be served but he did not listen. And she was as noble as it gets, for even if her father was not a landgrave she was far above him anyways. Now she was dead, dead because he dared to think that he was worthy of her, that he could protect her. Brandt wanted to scream, beat himself to a mess of scabs and blood, to cut his throat on his own sword. Her father, the Lord Highcrown had men-at-arms that could have protected her. He took her away from the safety of a walled manor, steel armour, and many swords. He took her away just to be brutalized and murdered.
He was walking before he knew it, his steps almost sure even in the dim light. He knew the forest as any boy of Feldenfield did, having hunted, played, and made his way through it more times that he could count. He had never seen any goblins in the woods surrounding the place, nor any signs of the filthy creatures before the day. Why now, why this day of all days when we would have been free of the yokes that bound us and free to love each other, as we want? Was hope just there to make the world feel so that when it is dashed the pain is all the greater? Brandt could only frown, the tears would not come, a fist seemed to stick in his throat but his sobs were just cracking moans. He had nothing else to give to his grief for he was spent, mind and soul, in full. I should have buried her...They are going to eat the rest of her or she is going to rot and go putrid! She does not deserve that! She cannot deserve that! She deserves a lot better than that...she deserves a lot better than you do! I should go bury her now...she deserves more than to rot and fill the bellies of carrion eaters! However, the boy's feet did not stray from their path for he kept for the village and did not look back once.
They had gone almost a half's day brisk walk through the forest when the goblins set upon them, and he could not walk half as fast as he did then. They did not go to the next village well outside her father's manor, by her choice, for that would be the first place they would look for them. And she thought camping alone with him would be fun. The goblins beat him as they took her away, and stole everything they had a mind to carry, including his pack, yew bow, boots, belt and belt knife. I should have fought harder...I know I could have...they could hardly move my sword and I killed some of them with it. I swung it and they could barely lift it! I should have taken it and killed them all! Brandt remembered her screaming and he had never heard anyone or anything scream like that. Guiltily he recalled thinking, couldn't they wait until they were further away before they started on her like that...did they have to put it in his face what they could do because he was so weak?
His walking slowed, blood was dried on his feet mashed into a compost with leaves and earth, and ground his teeth to keep from screaming. He felt so empty, so alone, so useless. He did not realize he stopped until he took a deep breath and looked at the blood encrusted iron sword. The triangular blade was replete with shiny gore, and bits of hair and bone. Brandt even pulled a tooth from its point. He smiled a cruel smile remembering that he used the blade to pierce the greenskin's throat from its mouth as it snarled in fear at him. He felt good when he recalled slaying the goblins and he felt cold on the inside when he thought about Sarah. He moaned and pressed his filthy hands into his face, bruising his cheek and the bridge of his nose on the hilt of his sword. He was covered in blood and worse and breathe in the ripe stench with every breath, tasting it, rolling it over his tongue and swallowed it. His stomach churned and bile rose, bitter and awful. Thinking of slaying goblins was better. Brandt heard stealthy footprints over the calls of birds and the crunch of heavy feet not even bothering with quiet. Actually, slaying goblins was much better. He could redo what happened with him and Sarah, and kill the things that were responsible. But that was only what he told himself for there was a thrill to ending the lives of thing that were so inherently cruel. A bleak joy came when you could kill and people would praise you for it. It was a wild thing of freedom when justice and vengeance was one in the same.
They were stupid, if they wanted to sneak up on him they had to do something about that smell they gave off. Brandt knew where they were even with his eyes closed. He was so close to meeting her again. He was sure there were big ones with them this time...Hobgoblins, heavy, thick with muscle so they would not go down without a fight. And even though he was sure she would not want to see him, he hoped that she would be whole in the next life and that he could see her impish smile one more time.
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The parchment ribbons flashed in his mind, showing sums and words that meant nothing to him. Two days ago, he would have pissed himself with joy knowing that such things marked those who would be heroes. As a child and one born to work the fields or serve lords and ladies if one was lucky, such thoughts gave him life. As a near grown man of fifteen, he knew that it would be a dream to be able to do quests and provide for Sarah in a way that not even her Noble father could. Now they were just annoying brown maggots to shoo from his mind for he had work to do. A goblin, half blinded by a ray of sunlight coming from a gap in the canopy slashed his side with a scrap iron dagger. It skipped off a rib sending a jolt through Brandt, as he smashed its head into a paste of brain, and shards of bloody bone with the flat of his blade. He did not have time to relish the kill as more came to take its place.
His survival made little sense. He despaired of it even as he howled in sick abandon as he split a goblin in two with a perfect blow from pate to loins.
More gore splashed him and some of them started to run. He felt mindless seeking out the next one to slay. And he barely noticed that with each kill, his strength was mended just enough to be drained with the next swing of his sword. He was lucky he lasted a few seconds and after that the luck and savagery he fought with it mixed and grew. The heavy blade never grew light but the pain in his shoulders and the joints of his hands gave way to a coldness. His breath was hot, and steam rose from his body in spectral ropes of white that vanished as they rose away from him. Tears, salted sweat, snot and spittle added wetness to the horrid paste that grew thicker on him
Cowards! He screamed in his head and moaned deep in his chest, making his teeth rattle and his throat ache as if it was being torn from his spine. He pulled his sword from the eye of a hobgoblin, as it spasmed and grabbed hold onto the blade. Brandt heard a story where a knight grabbed another knight's arming sword with just fawn leather gloves and then proceeded to beat him with his sword grabbing it in the same fashion and using the blunt ends of the crosstrees for the deed. The dying hobgoblin lost fingers when it tried to do it as Brandt once again pulled his sword away. The smaller goblins ran but their stench did not fade, his heart beat faster as he thought about what this meant, lifting his sword. They would come back for him, they would come back to kill him if the hobgoblins and other greenskins failed. The punch from the largest of the greenskins, a brute that was twice and more his weight, slammed the hunk of iron into his face and chest. His lip split and he cracked his teeth just before his breath left him like a bellows. Death screamed in his face and he felt panic that he did not know he could still feel, as he tried and failed to take another breath. There had been a louder, more sickening crunch and the hobgoblin howled, making the boy's ears vibrate with it, but Brandt saw only spots of blackness as he swam in the air and the then the floor of the woods. Finally, he choked in a deep lung rattling breath and he swung his iron sword in an arc above him. Iron daggers and short swords chipped and bent and blood splashed on him in a crimson downpour.
Brandt kept swinging his sword with both hands until he was able to wipe his face on the earth, loam and brush under him, the earth kept free of gore and blood by the shape of his form. He got to his feet and tried to look at the world through gore gummed eyes. It was as if black fingers held his orbs shut but for a thin band of brush and forest and goblins standing back waiting. He was a special type of weary. As a farm boy, sheepherder, and an apprentice to a blacksmith he knew what hard work was. He worked from dark to dark for months at a time and worked longer at the furnace pounding steel and moving piles of iron and steel. A month of all that grueling work could not compare to a few minutes of fighting. He was sure his entire body burned in a numbing cold but he could barely tell anymore. He felt like a specter, halfway between this world and the world of spirits. He moved by instinct lashing out at the horrid smells that danced about him. Brandt pried his eyes wider, and tears streamed from them, burning and clearing his vision just a bit.
Some of the goblins wore clothes and bits of armour that he almost recognized. Even midday would be a gray affair under the dense shelter of the trees, save for pools of sunlight that he could fight in to give himself an advantage. They waited and he waited, not sure which goblin he should kill next. The hobgoblins were all gone, hacked to bleeding meat and splintered bone. He recalled the heavy swings of their clubs that were as thick as his leg and the rattle of his body as he bore their blows. When he moved they moved back and after a time of this game he blinked and looked harder in the gloom at them. There were a lot of them dressed in iron and some steel plate that was too big for their thin chests. But these were thicker and more muscled than the starved things with oversized boils for bellies and sagging yellow eyes. Their heads were still as thick as a man's chest, but their eyes looked at him with more animal cunning than the peers that fell to his pitted blade.
There were noises that came from the goblins around him that might have been speech, but it grated on his ears making him bare his teeth. Even their language sounded brutal and evil. A large group moved from the darker depths of the forest, bending and tearing large underbrush from their path. He saw the shape of the largest ten of them head and shoulders over the first hobgoblin brute he had slain. They were squat with muscle with a beast stench worse than any he smelled with mass and weight that felt more like an animal or a small tree than a humanoid. The one who strolled from at the head of the procession was the biggest. He stepped on the smaller goblins that ringed Brandt, bursting their heads like overripe melons. His heart leapt in his chest but his fear and relief at finding the one who might kill him soured as he recognized the hobgoblin brute. It was there when Sarah was taken from him bleeding and screaming for help and mercy eyes welling with fear as she looked into his soul.
He was in motion before he knew it, hands free and raw after throwing the ponderous iron sword at the brute. He saw it pull a hobgoblin in front of it by the back of its neck, but the sword went through meat and bone like cleaver.
Brandt was sure he was wounded as his shield fell to pieces. Brandt tasted rotten meat and a heavy wash of wet salty iron mixing with the smell of offal, as it filled his mouth. He bit down hard and tore his mouth away when his teeth met. The Brute screamed in a piercing cry, unlike the roar when he lost half his hand with the sword. His world went dark and he woke from the impact of bark smashing against his back. A loud groan escaped from behind the awful meat and blood filling his cheeks and spewed from his mouth. It swung a steel mace pulping goblins that could not get out of its dying spasms. The rest of the greenskins seemed frozen in shock but he ran for the creature, slipping by luck on a bloody mound of green flesh and damp rotting cloth. The mace cut a thin line over the top of his head brushing his dark hair. He jumped on the creature again grabbing its enormous head in his left by a clump of thinning hair and punching an arm, fist to elbow into a gelatinous eye. Eye, brain and blood dripped from his arm as he pulled it from the eye socket of the hobgoblin brute. Brandt grabbed the hilt of his sword, but the goblin leader managed one last swing of his mace. He folded in half over the steel, hearing ribs crack and muscle roll and rip. He flew through the air, head over heels but felt no pain. His sword flew from his grasp but did not go far from him and he was knocked clean of the circle of greenskins. They no longer looked willing to wait.
Brandt did not much time but he did manage to get to his sword, coughing blood and bile, before they got to him. After that he swung and swung his blade and they came in never ending waves.
When Brandt thought he forgot pain, his body reminded him in waves of blistering agony. His throat was raw and filled with the taste of gore and offal. His body shuddered with heat that made his limbs feel as if they were boneless. But as long as he slew them, his blade kept swinging.
For every goblin he slew the last one fell easier, for every bone he hacked through the next skull was split as if its skull was dry kindling. Goblin and hobgoblins bodies were strewn about the forest as he moved. Night turned to day and day back to night, with long stretches of blackness where he fought by smell and hearing alone. His world dissolved into a nightmare of swinging and the inhuman screams of the dying.
He was so tired from the lack of sleep that he would past out if there were minutes between the endless bouts of melee. When he woke it was in a fog of exhaustion and often after he slew hordes of green skins he would attack bushes and trees mistaking them for goblins and hobgoblins. He could not count the days for it was all one long night of terror for him. But it was not long before Sarah chased him or was it he that chased her? Her face was warped, her belly was open to the elements, her hair and fine clothes ripped and fouled by blood and worse. He tore through more of them as the day went light and dark, going in circles and painting the woods in gore. He followed her in caves and filled them with the dead flesh of goblins. She chased him into an old mining tower where he beheaded another few dozen goblin brutes. He hounded her through old villages that were small and out of the way and slew the green skins that piled the dead villagers in the squares.
He fell on his face just after he stumbled half hopped from the cover of the forest. Darkness was slow to pull him like a damned soul into its lightless depths. So he tried to rise and could not. He tried again and failed. He could not lift his head and his eyes were glued shut from so much gore and filth that he could not see even if he wanted to. But he could still see her and the shapes of goblins. His sword slipped from his mouth, taking with it a few teeth. He lost the use of his hands a while ago and one leg seemed to have vanished for all he knew. He could barely feel his lips and he lost the feeling of his limbs a while ago. He wanted to scream and rave at his body for failing him but taking a breath was almost too much for him. He waited for a fretful sleep. This was not the first time his body quit on him. He had a dim memory of taking the legs from a goblin with a steel cuirass and waking to see the creature over him with a dagger slipping through the filth on his neck, its eyes rolling as it died. He did not recall passing out in the short fight but he was surprised that the goblin pulled its body over to him and still could not manage to slay him as he slept. This was not the first few dozens of times that he could not move one inch. However this was the first time he was starting to feel his body again after a long time. It usually felt like dead flesh, as heavy as a mountain of steel.
Brandt's breath slowed and shuddered through him. But his last thought as he slipped to what he assumed was death was not triumph. But he felt misery, regret, and shame that no sum of dead greenskins could ever cover. The last memory that went through his mind was the truest. It was rush of wind as he ran, clothes flapping, brush and trees a blur. As he ran away from her and the goblins that took her, he heard her scream, "No you Coward! Don't leave me here, don't let them get me!"