> “Wher’ did ye get the sword lass?” The ancient half-breed brigand asked mouth crooking on the left side, showing a couple of rotten teeth, with more black and yellow than white on them.
>
> The young Issir narrowed her fiercely-green eyes, rich white hair forming thin cornrow braids on her head dancing, when she turned to glare at him. She’d raised a mocking eyebrow to get her message across.
>
> “She’s a feisty one this,” His young Lorian friend commented tauntingly. Their differences striking to her. The young man, was devilishly handsome and dressed in leather finery from his boots to his expensive armour. He had a gold earring on his left ear, that garnet stone on it alone worth’s good coin, she thought eyeing him. “But that’s a legitimate query miss. This a knight’s blade yer carrying, pretty sheath and all.”
>
> “It was my father’s,” Nienke replied angrily. “You ain’t taking it you foul brigand!”
>
> “Haha,” The young brigand guffawed wickedly. Handsome are the devils and their spawns, she told herself. Ever vigilant must be the faithful to their mischief. “What need have I of a blade? We were just curious is all, made a small bet about it.”
>
> “A wager sire?” Nienke asked disapprovingly and he seemed taken aback at her tone.
>
> “That’s right,” He replied and turned to his friend. The maimed brigand old enough to be his grandfather. “Gotta pay up old man. I’m sorry but ye clearly lost this one.”
>
> “She could’ve lied chief!” The old man protested spittle flying out of his crooked mouth.
>
> “Nah, I don’t think she’s that kind of lass,” The young man replied returning her stare with a wink that made her blush to the roots of her ebony skin.
>
> “That’s pretty convenient,” His friend argued not happy with his explanation. “The lass is right I reckon, yer a fuckin’ brigand Silvio.”
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Sir Shane Est Ravn
The High Queen’s bodyguard
Part II
-If your soul is worthy enough-
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The warhorse neighed deafeningly, nostrils expanding, lips pulled back to its dark red gums and large black eyes gawking panicked as it charged ahead. Iron hooves digging at the ground and the sound of galloping thunderous.
Shane saw the heavy lance leading almost a body ahead and twisted away on his toes, torso turning and the longsword lashing out. The lance went through the robes he wore over his armour, steel tip clanging as it slid on his spaulders –the angle helping- and almost knocked him aside.
Sir Marcel went past him yelling profanities whilst dancing on the saddle, a leg hanging loose as Shane had slashed at the stirrup leather in his botched attack and trying desperately to stay upright, but failing. Sir Marcel slipped from the saddle, just as Shane twirled on his feet trying to find his balance, a part of his robes torn apart at the shoulder and his ears ringing.
One of Oras Servants slashed at him with his long knife, the blade striking his breastplate and deflecting upwards to nick his chin. Blood trickled down his neck, as Shane pivoted with his boots slipping in the mud and hacked blindly, his blade dancing upwards as well. It got the man as he made to step aside and knife the knight in the ribs. The longsword carved a cavernous wound out of his face, splitting his lower jaw apart looping viciously and coming out of his ruined mouth. The Issir let out a gurgling moan, only the root of his mauled tongue showing and warm blood painted Shane’s blade down to its grip.
It made it slippery.
Shane stepped aside, mud and gore covering his boots and his shockingly maimed opponent stumbled away, another taking his place. The new man, eyes a bright green and sporting a white beard but for his upper lip that was cleanly shaved, roared something indecipherable and tried to stab him in the neck. His opponent missed when Shane jerked away, but foolishly went at it again jumping forward and got his right arm chopped off a couple of fingers under the elbow by the Knight’s returning sword.
The severed piece flew in the air between them still holding on to the long knife, gore spreading over both men.
“Argh!” The second man said, more stunned than in pain seeing his arm hitting the ground. Then he started screaming, as you can only be stunned for so long. Shane punched him in the face, steel heavy gauntlet covering his knuckles ripping the teeth off the screaming man’s mouth and splitting his lips. The man’s head was knocked back, Shane stepped forward to finish him off, but got a knife where his plate cuirass met the spaulders, the thin blade slipping through the seams and jerked to the right panicked.
Uher cast yer light over this unworthy disciple.
The knife came out painted red and the third Oras Servant made a gnarled face, stumbling forward after the attempt. Shane felt his sword tip hit the ground as he twisted away and he slashed upwards in an arc on instinct. He got the man right between the legs and lifted his robes up, the blade going through hemp pants, splitting cock and scrotum right at the middle, then slicing open his belly afore exiting a mere palm under the sternum.
Deliver yer justice over his foes.
“Curse ye!” Sir Marcel yelled behind Shane, the man facing him just letting out a guttural groan, both hands desperately trying stop his ravaged innards from spilling down, but failing. The stench coming from the grotesque pile of gore nauseating.
Shane stepped away, bleeding down his chin and having a burning wound stuck between the shoulder and upper left part of his chest. Three minutes into the fight, he’d managed to even out the odds, but Sir Marcel, now sporting a longsword wasn’t just going to give up.
Shane knew that because he offered it.
“Let us go Sir Buld. You don’t want to do this.”
“You’re on the wrong side priest,” Marcel spat and attacked him ending the brief respite.
Shane felt fear gripping his throat, no air coming through when he attempted to breathe and the knight of Tyeus went right, then left with large confident strides, his longsword hissing as it came down, the rising sun catching its steel blade and turning it a sinister red color.
Shane parried with his sword, blades clanging, fat sparks alike tiny stars exploding outwards and sidestepped to attempt a low cut of his own. Marcel half-turned, pulled his leg back and slashed at him viciously. Shane abandoned his attack mid-move and put a blade up to deflect his opponent’s. Marcel’s sword pushed his back towards his face, with Shane jerking his head away, banged on his chest and then slid down to open a gash –a finger in length- on his padded-mail left leg, right above the poleyn-covered knee.
“Ah!” Shane roared and switched grip on his sword in the same breath to cut Sir Marcel across the face. His fingers slipped on the handle, rough leather gloves soaked underneath the half-gauntlet, the blade turning mid-air and smacking the side of Sir Marcel’s helm with the flat right above the shielded ear.
CLANG!
Went the knight’s helm rattling him hard. Sir Marcel stumbled on rubbery legs trying to get away, but Shane who’d gotten control of his sword in the meantime stepped forward, left leg dragging behind and slashed in a semicircle starting low and rising. A dazed Marcel turned on instinct and raised an arm to block the attack, the blade striking his steel vambrace and deflecting it sideways.
Marcel realizing he was in a bind snarled irate, teeth showing through the slits of his visor, whilst Shane switched his grip on the handle again on the return, but kept the blade high and parallel to the ground. Marcel still roaring, half-dazed half-panicked tried to step back to put some distance between them, but the blade caught him on the right shoulder and bounced off of it, a fiery spark almost taking Shane’s left eye out, ended up in the knight’s face and lodged in the narrow slit of his Bascinet helm visor.
Marcel had lowered it at some point, or Shane’s previous attack had dropped it, but even so Uher wasn’t on his side. The blade had lunged inside, stricken at the bridge of his nose, cutting skin, thin flesh and tiny tendons and then broken the skull-bones underneath it. Shane realizing what had transpired shoved his long-bladed weapon fully inside savagely with a twitch of his shoulder.
The longsword plunged through the half-shattered skull, pulverized Marcel’s brains, found the back of his skull and broke through that too, stopping with a loud bang on the back of his steel helm.
Sir Marcel’s roar was cut in half, his body turning to rubber and only his arms and right leg twitched occasionaly, as he was held upright by Shane’s blade. The knight put a boot on his opponent’s chest and retrieved his sword. Marcel went down on his back with a loud thud, body half-burying itself in the soft muddy ground and the helm popping off the mangled, mushy top of his head, the knight’s mouth frozen in a bloody half-snarl.
Gods forgive me.
Shane faltered, breathing fast, his ears ringing and tried desperately to keep his stomach under control, a battle he failed to win.
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“Sir Est Ravn?” The High Queen asked, face pale and looking as sick as Shane felt after retching three times already.
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“Stay back!” He warned her. “You don’t want to see this,” He added then realized the first man was alive, a gurgling faceless zombie stumbling in horrifying agony in circles around them.
With a grimace and vomit lodged in his throat Shane walked towards him, clenching at the handle of his longsword so hard, he could hear the bones creaking in protest.
“Uher’s Glorious Heaven’s,” Nienke gasped in shock, when he tried to finish the maimed man off with a high chop at his neck. It wasn’t a good attack, as his arms were weak and he felt sick. So a pale-faced Sir Shane had to raise his sword and strike at the collapsed on his knees and wrecked with spasms man again. Once and he almost chopped his head off, but a bit of flesh and skin kept it hanging sideways grotesquely. He clenched his jaw and went at it one more time from the other side. This time his opponent’s severed head hit the ground with a thud after flying in a bloody arc and rolled slowly in the mud, no longer resembling a head.
“Sir Shane,” Nienke said barely able to speak and a sweaty, breathing heavy knight turned to stare at her with bulging eyes.
His instincts, or Uher himself, telling him this wasn’t over.
“I think it’s coming,” The Queen of Kaltha said and she had as much fear in her voice, as despair.
> The aged magister raised his head, washed out green eyes burning with renewed fervor. The ragged yellow robes hissing as they got dragged on the ground, when he moved. His voice raspy and judgmental.
>
> “Do not question Godsfather’s designs boy. Uher’s light shall fall upon the unworthy, burn their flesh away. Torch their words and their voices. Melt their lines away. If what’s left of your soul is worthy enough, it’ll outweigh your deeds however foul and be saved. Not the other way around.”
Nienke opened her mouth impossibly wide, the strain distorting her lovely face, the pain gnawing at her soul and the cry escaping her white lips ghastly. It went on and on, her nails digging inside Shane’s forearm and drawing blood. Red was her undergarment and a stale crimson painted her thighs darker. The color of the mud under her uncovered legs.
Shane turned his head towards the bridge they had crossed an hour back and was still visible in the distance. He’d forgotten about his own injuries in the desperate attempt to help the High Queen deliver her baby. The sun had come up slowly on the sky and people would start appearing on the road soon.
They shall find the slain first and then discover them loitering by the road.
The baby wouldn’t come out properly.
Nienke pushed screaming, turning into a drenched bloody wraith, giving it all she had, her eyes bloodshot and wild with pain and deeply rooted fear.
Oh, ye mighty Godsfather offer solace to the faithful, Shane prayed trying to clean some of the blood and fluids away, both shamed at handling the Queen’s private parts and scared he wasn’t doing enough to help her.
“You… need,” Nienke gasped, her teeth rattling, hard nails tearing at his skin and the strength behind them otherworldly. “…to save my baby.”
“My Queen,” Shane croaked and heard horses coming over the bridge.
A lot of horses.
“I won’t lose… another,” Nienke’s strangled hoarse voice said, then turned to pleading. “I beg of you… good sir.”
Ah, I don’t know what to do, gods help me, Shane thought, feeling overwhelmed and weakened from blood loss.
> It shall outweigh your deeds.
>
> However foul.
Nienke reached for his waistband and found his Imperial steel dagger. The handle on it made out of one piece of ivory, the five-headed Hydra of Midlanor engraved on it alike his longsword, an ancient priest weapon of another era and his father’s gift when he came of age. She took it out of its expensive leather sheath, white-gray blade catching the sun’s rays and shining once from hilt to tip.
Shane grabbed at her hand, but she fought him for it. Her strength great at first but diminishing. Her ebony face turning grey first and slowly white alike his blade. The blood loss too great. Shane could feel it soaking his knees and legs through his pants. Sipping into his armour, and coagulating at the joints. Nienke snarled once, more animal than person and she let go of the blade. Shane caught it before it dropped into the gory mud between them and breathed once deeply, hearing his name being called from afar.
Half in recognition, half in warning.
If your soul is worthy enough.
“Do it…” The High Queen had commanded. “Save…” Her voice going away for a moment, although a grief-stricken Shane could understand her. “… Whatever the cost.”
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“Lord Commander,” Sir Albert Kosters said treading carefully, when he turned towards them, the tiny life in his bloody hands. All Shane could see and smell was gore. He could taste it on his tongue, felt it stuck in his gums and down his throat, as if he was bleeding internally. “I have orders from your father.”
Shane stared at the wrapped up small soul in his arms.
“There’s an inn at the turn of the road. A devout woman runs it,” He rustled at his second in command in the Order. “I intend to rush there Sir Albert to save Queen’s offspring.”
“There’s another plan in the works sire,” Sir Albert responded looking at him strange. “In case this didn’t go well.”
Shane stopped on the way to the slain knight’s horse.
What other plan? He wondered.
Forget Uher son, this is politics, the Lord of Midlanor had cautioned him.
“I can save her Sir Albert,” He argued measuring his words, now alarmed. The rest of the riders standing back nervously staring towards the bridge. They had four dead amongst them they’d left behind and three injured they had dragged along tied on their saddles that might or might not make it. “She’s the Queen’s daughter.”
“I fear that it’s not good enough sire,” Sir Albert replied. “Measures have been taken. I urge ye to read your father’s orders.”
“I’m getting on that horse Sir Albert,” Shane insisted brusquely.
“The Queen had a son milord. He’s in Midlanor with his ailing mother,” The Knight said, his face torn between duty and their friendship. “I can’t let you take the baby.”
Alive was his meaning.
“The Queen is dead. She’s right there Sir Albert!” Shane admonished him and put one hand on the pommel of his longsword. “And I have her daughter.”
Sir Albert hanged his head. “You won’t make it sir. Please don’t force me to do this.”
“You’ll have us both killed?” Shane said shocked when he realized it. “Albert you’re my oldest friend!”
“Give me an alternative good sire, my old friend,” Albert pleaded with him. For a moment Albert was that small boy again that couldn’t remember his prayers.
Ah, there it is then.
Praise be the all-knowing Uher's designs.
“Sir Shane Est Ravn died protecting the High Queen,” Shane told him gravely and reached for his father’s dagger. He got it out of its sheath, the blade gluey in Nienke’s blood as he’d forgotten to wipe it in his shock. “You burry her properly back in Midlanor. She deserves it. Take her body with you.”
“I…” Sir Albert said. “What about you? What about the girl?”
“She might not make it,” Shane replied, his mouth bitter and tossed him the dagger. “Give it to my father. It’s his. Tell the men I’m too injured to follow. Use the blood on me as an excuse. Inform my mother I did all I could, but didn’t make it. I’ll disappear.”
“You’ll give up the cloth? Yer position and name?” Sir Albert asked him, looking at the ancient dagger.
Save her… The High Queen had ordered him, because she knew even before hearing the baby’s cry this wasn’t what the Wyvern Throne wanted. The Throne was an unforgiving master.
Whatever the cost.
“All we have is our soul, every bad deed we do feasts on it,” The ‘Priest Knight of Midlanor’ had answered him.
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Shane stayed back to watch his former men riding away with the Queen’s mutilated body, afore getting up the saddle to disappear as well. He headed towards the turn on the road leading to the bridge over the river Balworth and the city of Quarterport after crossing the Crimson Forest. The small girl started crying with a mighty voice the moment his foreign warhorse started moving.
It reminded Shane of her mother, so he named her Nienke to honor his late Queen.
> In the chaos that followed Antoon’s assassination attempt, heavily pregnant High Queen Nienke tried to leave the capital. The reasons still debated till this day, with each side having completely different arguments. The decision was taken by Lord Anker Est Ravn according to most sources out of fear for her safety during those tumultuous days. He gave this crucial and sensitive mission to his third son and famed knight Sir Shane Est Ravn.
>
> No one would ever question Sir Shane’s honor.
>
> The ‘Priest Knight of Midlanor’ always trustworthy and dutiful perished in the attempt to bring the High Queen to Midlanor. The conditions surrounding his demise peculiar, with his mother Lady Margaret going to her grave not accepting it. Whomever the assassins were had enough skill to overpower him was the official story.
>
> Sir Shane and his men did deliver the High Queen to Midlanor’s ‘safety’ and under his father’s sphere of influence. Queen Nienke unfortunately died birthing Antoon the third. The young boy, named after his incapacitated but surprisingly still breathing father, was to be a controversial figure in the years to come and Lord Anker’s greatest asset in his rise to prominence.
>
> His youngest son’s sacrifice paving the road for it.
>
>
>
> Lord Sirio Veturius
>
> Circa 206 NC
>
> The Fall of Heroes
>
> Chapter XXXV
>
> (Lord Anker Est Ravn,
>
> Duke of Midlanor,
>
> Keeper of the Forests, Guardian of Nordland Pass,
>
> Uher’s First Sentinel and High Regent of the Realm.
>
> Uher’s Will & Testament
>
> Volume II
>
> -The tale of the good Priest Knight-
>
>
>
> Circa,
>
> late spring of
>
> 190 NC