Chapter 30
The Saga of The Grass Knight Part 1
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The bells continued ringing when the blacksmith Roderick alongside Suzie burst out from the second story entrance. “They are here.” Roderick somberly grunted. Wink was standing atop Suzie's shoulder, while she was carrying the cloth wrapped Art in her arms. Noticing this, I asked. “Suzie, can you look after my charge while I’m at the gate?”
She looked at me then at the baby in her arms. She nodded in acceptance, comprehending her responsibility for this dire time.
“Wink, can you and Suzie head to the Tawdry Inn and tell the Bard---to get to the gate, with his fair folks?”
“Why would they come?”
“Tell them, the lives of Ebenfurth depends on it.” I grimly replied.
“Suzie, get back here when you're done with Sir Ghras's request----and here let me take the child.” Roderick sternly instructed. Suzie looked at my mecha’s helm for confirmation, which I acquiesce. The man was still a stranger to me, but I had trusted Suzie to watch over the child, so why not her father.
Suzie followed behind me, as I hurried down with Amelia, to collect Sera and Teka who had made more grass microphones for the battle ahead. With the time we had allocated, we had made approximately 6 grass-made voice amplifiers--so far, which was enough for what we needed them to do. Oona was hovering above us as we headed out from the smithy, whilst Roderick looked on, a worried expression on his face from our departure.
With my new hollowed-out sword on my mecha’s back, we split up to go to our separate destination. I swivel Amelia's helm back to glimpse the baby’s sleeping face held by thick burly arms. It was strange to me, how much I was willing to risk for a child that was not mine. I felt the wheels of fate turning me, every which way whilst guarding my promise.
Sera and Teka were atop the right pauldron of Amelia as she ran to her script. “What's the plan, Commander?” Teka said with a serious expression plastered on his green face.
“When we meet up with the bard---we will split up. You will go with Sera, and protect them from all enemies. Peb and I will do what I had suggested earlier.”
“I should come along with you,” Teka argued. Sera had grabbed his arm when he requested this.
Noticing, “No, your place is to protect the bard and Sera.”
Teka grunted, disheartened by my command, for no soldier likes to babysit when a battle is right in front of them. But I needed him to guard them, for they were vital in for my plans.
Peb shouted up from below. “Both gauntlets are loaded.” His voice altered by the crunched pebble in his mouth.
“Have you placed all the rubber stones where I asked you to place them?” I asked.
“Yessrh."
Nodding satisfied, I checked both my controller tables and the pebble-buttons situated on them. Having activated the diagnostics of my mecha---all green pebbles had lit in the positive, reinforcing my confidence in my plan.
Running by, we had noticed refugees from the farms around Ebenfurth hurried by with their mules dragging their carts. Small children and young teenagers pointed their dirt fingers at my mecha Amelia as continued on. They seemed to have garnered confidence when they saw a knight with a plumage made out of grass, running to the defense of the town.
Reaching the closed gates, I noticed a mixed militia of guardsmen and townsfolk forming a spear wall behind. A familiar officer stood by the side, instructing them to tighten their formations when I had approached. There were young boys holding full quivers, climbing up the wooden stairs to reach atop the crowded ramparts up above. Following behind, I reached the ramparts of the wooden wall to overlook the scene beyond.
The town militia and guardsman had built an uncompleted moat below of the wooden walls. It was deep enough for half a man, and wide enough for a full man, but nonetheless shallow to all reasonable bounds. It was crippling to think that this was all the defense they had conjured for the upcoming siege ahead.
The small army before them was a contrast of green with sparse blue. The green wave of goblins, had unpolished metal helms on their tops, with their iron spears, rusting in their forefront. It was an amalgamation of poor metals they had equipped, distinct through their disparity and their green goblin complexion. The Ogres, on the other hand, differentiated like tall anemone flowers above iron fleck grass with their nine feet tall height. They were bare-chested with rippling muscles, flabby, and stretched out from proportions. They held huge lumbering logs as their weapon of choice, branchless and varied in origins.
It was a frightening sight, but what truly had scared the grass marrows in my bones into chattering silence, was the two trolls at the head of the Warband. At 15 feet tall with their skin aspected from dry stone, their colossal weight conveyed dominance amongst their subordinates. Their maws were fixed agape with disgust with their mismatched armor gleaming past the blotches of dry blood. They were giants amongst giants, shrubs above the greens. They were definitive answers against my plans, they were goddess be damn trolls.
I stared at the plains they were standing upon. There was barely any green foliage below their feet or near in proximity. My plans could not work if there weren’t any grass to assist me during this battle that I had chosen to attest. Muttering a few choice words, I asked Oona. “Oona, can you scout above and tell me if there are any fields of grass nearby the town?”
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Oona eyed me pensively, then at the goblin horde beyond the wooden walls. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved with humans.” She remarked. Then she nodded in acceptance of my request. She flew off up above and zoomed across to the left.
Lieutenant Marcus noticing me by the shimmer of Amelia’s plates amongst old metal and thick leather, started towards me. “It’s gonna be a bleak day for Ebenfurth, if those cretins bypass our defense.” He somberly remarked, a dire warning of defeat in his summary. “I apologize Sir Ghras for conscripting you to fight when you could have escaped with your charge and left us to our doom.”
Muttering again another choice word under my breath, I replied. “I should have asked for more.”
Marcus flashed me with a bellowing laugh. “That you should have--that you should have...”
No point in adding more droplets of regrets into the lake of regrets that I had accumulated--I shrugged. I heard a ruckus of strings, accidental strums, with yelps and innuendos from behind. The Bard climbed up the ramparts with his fair folk, and Wink standing atop his shoulders. Gan the wizen old grass man and three other female singers were all there, volunteering to my request. It was a strange sight, seeing a bard, carrying a congregation of small folks onto his shoulders, but nonetheless it was a relief to my souring thoughts.
“Just because I had rescued you in an alleyway brawl, does not mean, I, Wilaver Merrywind, can save a town from an army of marauding goblins.” The bard griped, annoyed of being called forth into action.
“Don’t mind my pupil, sprout. Just tell us what to do, and we will do what we can.” Gan offered. Merrywind looked aghast but did not rebuke his little fair man.
I asked them for patience for a moment. I was waiting on Oona to arrive back with information on the surroundings around. When she came back, I started again with a small summary of my plan.
“Okay…”
So I told them the plan, they were to take Sera and Teka along with the voice amplifiers we had built to where Oona had scouted. To the left of the town, there was a plain of knee-high uncultivated shrubs and grass. It was the perfect location for an environmental ambush for the small horde. Telling them the basics of what they need to do and the signal, they readied themselves to depart through the ramparts to the direction where Oona had pointed.
“Teka, protect them,” I commanded before they left. He gave me a stern nod, comprehending my part of the plan which was to lure them into their destination. When they all departed, leaving Peb and me alone in my Mecha, I took a deep sigh. Oona had hovered by, watching the bard’s retreating back alongside the fair folks who stood atop his shoulders. She had a grave expression on her face.
“So what's my role?” She subduedly asked.
“Retrieve and retreat. If Amelia does not make it, retrieve one of us out from this disaster.”
She grunted in understanding. “Saving your hide again?”
“You could say that.” I sighed.
“Why are you even fighting? You should run, this is not your conflict?”
“You have a point.” I shrugged.
“It’s still not too late to leave this all behind?”
I had no answer to give to her suggestion. I could leave, run away, with my charge. But I’d be leaving people I had just met into torment and death. Will my conscience accept such a decision? I did not want to know the answer. I felt like I was a brick house plastered with crumbling mortar, close to the precipice of collapsing from rigid supports that had helped build me.
Stirring Amelia to grab the wooden cover of the walls as support, I prepared myself for my departure. “I am just me,” I muttered. Faults and all, I am just me, with a task that was pushed by the silent guilt of not acting, when I should---so I shall. Using the jump scripts that were aligned with the pogo-sticks within the sole of both legs, I jumped off the precipice of the wooden walls, past the moats, and into trodden soil.
“What are you doing!” Screamed Marcus from up above. I turned Amelia to face him, giving him a mechanical salute. He stared back at me in disbelief and horror, but there was a glimmer of understanding in his eyes, understanding of what course I am willing to take, and that course was to bring war.
The goblin horde beyond was going in the motion of formation, when suddenly, they halted from my mecha’s landing arrival. They stared at me pointing, disbelief at the concept of one human facing the horde they were in. One of the trolls barged through the gobsmacking goblins, stomping and clubbing a few who were too slow in its path to me.
“Puny humane, haveth youve comfth to surrenderfth?” The troll garbed, his voice jumbled by translating the common tongue into his broken mawed mouth.
“Killth it brah!” The other troll hollered, who was aways and behind, inspiring the troll before Amelia to lift a giant branchless log like a wooden club.
I could not fathom why I thought lowly of these sentient creatures before me when I had reasoned the course of my plans. I had contemplated in grief and guilt in killing a human. Why was this so much different? Was it because I was once human? Or did the fantasy fictions in my past life, sedate me into murdering lower forms of sentients, tagging them the name of monsters to soothe my conscious and remorse? It was puzzling to suggest that I had murdered scores of mushroom men, and the Leviathan to preserve the lives of other sentients, but when It came to humans, I grieved and felt guilt. The brigand Felix and that one man, who was about to murder Amelia and Art before me, were justified murders, impulse or not. 'I was justified? Wasn't I?' Did the rage and adrenaline of battle overcome my moral outlook, or am I just a tool---swayed by the whims of fate, when called forth to act? I invented contraptions to kill. The very dream I dreamt of, was building a machine for killing...
I directed Amelia to draw the hollowed out long sword from her back with the left gauntlet, and the grass wrapped dagger from my belt on with the right. I stared up at the Troll, and his ready stance to charge me with his large club.
I pulled the tempo lever up to 11, once again. The grass links connected to my grass wrapped dagger, singing the grass to extend than vibrate to quadruple the beat of the tempo settings I had set. I turned to Amelia’s left gauntlet, a weighty expression on my face, as I pressed the red pebble. I hope the history of the world doesn't judge me too harshly for what science I have decided to introduce to this time.
“Bolt.”
Electricity began to energize out from the sapphire stone embedded inside the pommel of the hollowed-out sword. Sparks of electricity finding the copper wires wrapped around the stones, began to path through the conducting path onto the summit of the pommel. A grass mechanized trigger was sounded within the lower half of the pommel, bursting air stones to rush through past the sapphire and out through the top half of the pommel, like a high current airway.
Hugging the wind, the courses of electricity paved up; climbing through the copper wires, leaving electricity pulsating and currents conducting between the wrapped steel. When they reached the first magnetized diamond coifs, the electricity began to funnel into the electromagnetic field creating a constant chain of lightning between the conducting copper and coifs, heating the heat resistant metals and air substance around into a sizzling foist of burning energy. When the electricity had ended at the tip of the hallowed sword, the light show materializing inside began to become prevalent to all spectators around.
For the whims of fate, and my fandom was obsolete, to introduce a plasma sword in these middling times...
I grinned.
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