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>
> Fall of 182 NC
>
> Eight years after the ‘Warbands Rebellion’
>
> Murky Woods near Iron Mountain
>
> Six kilometers outside Numre Burg
>
> Fetya
>
>
> A fierce red.
>
> Rubicund.
>
> ‘Cursed Geary did it,’ Arlo Numbers had said holding his butchered lungs. He’d blood crusting on his chin, more coming out of his mouth. The color rich and contrasting with the snow. ‘On orders from Keelan Steele.’
>
> Not my fault, he meant to say. I just went along for the ride.
>
> ‘Rik Gilmore fought with Oscar Steele and he lost. Mya went feral and went after me instead, I had to put her down and then Alan Barret just couldn’t let it go.’
>
> So Arlo had cut him down too.
>
> Logan didn’t much care for the old man, or Gilmore but he loved his sister.
>
> He didn’t much care for Arlo’s sad story also, about how Keelan and Geary had betrayed him to the Jarl afterwards and put the blame on him for the raid.
>
> So Logan cut him down in his turn.
>
> It is how things went in the North.
>
> Turned around and went after Geary and Steele next. Caught them on their return from Numre Burg with the Numbers girl. They were six of them on horses to move faster ahead of the raiding party. They were going back to Blonden Port with the girl.
>
> Logan killed the first two with a dagger afore drawing his sword. Slashed the first one’s face off and stabbed his friend in the hip to the hilt, right where the leg connected to the body. Geary didn’t like the odds and made a run for it, but Keelan was an older prouder man and stayed to measure his skill against Gray Barret.
>
> He figured the odds were good, three against one.
>
> So Logan killed him last to show him the error of his ways.
>
> Then cut the girl loose, since he didn’t wage war on young lasses.
>
> Now, bigger lasses carrying a blade were a different story.
>
> Two kilometers later Faye had jumped on him out of a bush and almost killed him with a dagger he’d left behind. Fought him proper she had, her hair in his face and teeth clenched in a snarl.
>
> A fierce red.
>
> Rubicund.
>
> Logan could have killed her, but he didn’t. Just kept the dagger.
>
>
> You kill a girl’s father, ye better look after her then.
>
> See that she comes into no harm, even if she asks for it.
>
>
>
> “You know,” a sour-faced young Oscar Numbers told him three days later. “I could start with you, then work my way to them bastards in Blonden Port. Avenge my father proper.”
>
> “Yer father got what he deserved,” Logan warned him eyeing the rest of their group warningly, especially that fool MacCee with the short fuse.
>
> “What about my sister? Got her face all swollen, huh?” Oscar growled. A cunning lad, good with the blade.
>
> “Half of it is from me,” Logan admitted. “But she gave me most of it back.”
>
> “Well as I said,” Oscar decided. “I’ll start wit you, then head for Blonden.”
>
> “Ye’ll never reach it,” Logan repeated his warning. “This is where yer revenge will stop. In this gulley.”
>
> “Earh!” Oscar grunted, blood rushing his youthful face, but Benton stopped him with a bark and then turned to face Logan.
>
> “You’ll give us Faye?”
>
> “I ain’t keeping her for sure,” Logan replied honestly.
>
> “Fuck you Barret!” Faye cursed behind his back from her horse. Logan had to tie her up. The lass had a heavy hand and knew how to use it. “I’ll fight you now. Just untie me!”
>
> “There’ll be no fighting girl! You’re twelve for crying out loud!” Benton roared her in silence. “The Jarl gave Numre Burg to Keelan Steele. He’ll hunt us down. I won’t have Brugavik Burg come after us too.”
>
> “You won’t have to worry about that Benton,” Logan assured him. “I’ll kill ye myself. That’s not much of a party you have here.”
>
> Benton snarled, eyes wild and the mark of a dangerous man only lacking in experience.
>
> “You’ll give us my sister and we call it even?” he asked him.
>
> “Done enough killing for the week,” Logan replied.
>
> “Come on Faye,” he told his sister that was glaring at him. “Get over here.”
>
> “Benton we can take him,” Oscar protested.
>
> “Shut up Oscar!” Benton snapped. “Twotrees only lost one fight and it was to Barret.”
>
> It was a wager, no blades involved. Twotrees had a weak chin for such a big guy.
>
> “You go your own way then Logan,” Benton told him watching his young gang untying Faye’s hands. “And we go ours. After Keelan and Geary.”
>
> “Forget Keelan. He’s in the mud what’s left of him. You attack Blonden Port with what you have here, you’ll get yer sister dead. All this would be for naught,” Logan rustled cautioning him.
>
> “You think I should rouse Numre? Make a bigger fight for it? O’ Dargan won’t like it.”
>
> “There are few good men here. Everyone’s went with the Jarl to fight the three Kings. Most didn’t return,” Logan replied. “You want to get what’s yours back ye need to wait for yer chance lad. This ain’t it.”
>
> Faye kept her eyes on him. Red hair blowing in the cold breeze.
>
> A fierce red.
>
> Rubicund.
>
> Like his sister’s.
>
>
[https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt8ixM1lRYEA8banaTwN3CJM1vBaJsbot8T3rZnS_goP8S0p9wCsCzAUGJ5qo8NpMhYznG9q_OKbwbKMeB1xqh6zjzXh0QDP-CBAX5t2G90Wcefnp-0_EyXHAH25IPboJ3TAPzYv7FG-sar5ajnFScAIwc7_8waaIyQbtaT-8XKuJCfxgsnOaYzUBl8jc/s2500/OLDFORT.jpg]
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Logan ‘Gray’ Barret
Roadblock
Part II
-The color of ash-
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Third Month of summer 193 NC
Edges of East Richforest
Oldfort
Kingdom of Regia
Third month in the siege
“Gray!”
Colors, Logan thought looking at the fires ravaging the forest. Large waves of it dancing over the treeline, black and white smoke covering the open field to their east, ever expanding following the firestorm. It burned for half a day now and it was almost night. The light losing the fight for hours and both camps staring at the inferno awed.
It’ll stop at the river, Bloody Tiger had said. Or afore it. But it’ll cut through the drier parts for kilometers. It’ll also get everyone out until it’s finished.
Then everyone will get back in was his meaning.
But they’ll find fewer trees blocking their way.
And it’ll be killing time again.
The tiger could smell the sea and he wouldn’t be denied. You allow a man like that to grow and he’ll go through you like an avalanche. Logan had him figured out since Maza Burg. Two things he liked about him. He’d keep his word and Faye loved him.
The latter more important than the first.
Still, Logan had to make sure the tiger didn’t get her killed. A man wanting to take a throne carries ruin with him and is bound to make a lot of enemies. Even amongst his friends.
So Logan had come along for the ride to make sure the lass would be fine.
It was a good thing that he had.
“Allgods darnit old blade,” Adam ‘Jaws’ Hough grunted approaching him. A Brugavik lad, as hard as they came. Not much smarter than a rock, but a good fighter. “Have ye gone deaf on top of a bloody mute?”
“That’s a lot of ruckus,” Cole O’ Dolan said looking at the forest burning. “Haven’t seen a fire this big afore.”
“Neither have I,” his brother Aiden agreed, the rest of the men approaching nodding with their heads.
Adam sat across from him with a weary sigh and scrunched that big chin of his this way and that.
“We are supposed to get in there?” He asked looking at his big calloused hands.
Logan kept cleaning the oil from his freshly sharpened blade. Good dwarven steel, old and trusty. No cracks on it. Only Gutrender was finer. An Imperial blade now carried by Sam ‘O Dargan. Not that ‘Mad Wolf’ knew fuck all about swords. He could chop down things that was it.
“Ayup,” Adam Hough continued seeing as he was getting nothing from him. “Ain’t no way to fight this, right? Hurling stuff from afar. Burning shit and sweating our arses off. Fuck is this heat man? Then ‘Bloody Tiger’ goes and starts an even bigger fire!”
Logan finished cleaning the blade, gathered the cloth in his satchel and sheathed the sword. Then started working on repairing the leather wrappings at the iron handle.
“Thanks for the bloody talk ‘Gray’,” Adam grunted and got up frustrated. “Yer an inspiration mate.”
“Horses coming,” Torcal informed. An older Torcal this, still easy to stir trouble, but with a longer fuse. “Couple of fancy armours there.”
Logan raised his greying head, the long hair on it caught at the nappe, but haphazardly, lots of curls loose and some red still in them. He stared at the approaching party, but it wasn’t easy to see clearly amidst the smoke and the dimming light. Torcal who had better eyes guffawed.
“Hah, that’s Red Faye Lads!” He bellowed happy.
Logan got up from the cut stub he was sitting on. The engineers had cleared part of the woods already to make the camps and if they were allowed to keep on for another month, the Lord of the Lorians wouldn’t have needed the fire.
But he didn’t have the time to wait apparently.
Big ambitions. Big enemies.
Lots of them.
He could see the red now as Faye was galloping ahead of her group with her long hair loose.
“Mm,” Logan grunted and Ned O’Farrell turned to stare at him surprised as he hadn’t talked for three days.
It wasn’t that Logan didn’t want to talk. He just couldn’t get much out. Ludriver had tried to kill him and failed, but gave him a good hurting in the process. So the old fighter had to economize on the words as much as he could.
You never know when you’ll need them out.
For real.
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“You don’t look happy to see me?” Faye yelled jumping from the horse. Logan grimaced knowing she carried a child. You wouldn’t know it seeing her, as she was fit like a snow cougar and wearing good armor and pants.
Maybe in the chest. She’d filled out there a lot the last couple of years.
Most of the men noticed, as Faye had turned from a scrawny wiry girl into a fierce beautiful woman.
“Why the long faces ye sorry fucks?” Red Faye queried eyeing them as they gathered around her. “Is this how we’re going to get them white cloaks out of the woods? Shame them to vacate the field?”
“Yer coming along Red Faye?” Ned O’Farrell asked with a smile.
Faye turned to glance at the men escorting her. The half-breed Nero wearing the Legion segmented armor frowned under his helm.
“Mister Nero? What's me status for this operation?” Faye taunted.
“The Praetor gave us strict orders Lady Faye,” he said through his teeth. “We’re breaking them right now. That’s too close to the front.”
“I see no front at the near,” Faye replied and turned towards them again. “But I can’t sour me Lucius with another wife in the house right boys?”
It was a thorny matter for her despite trying to hide it. Not easy accepting yer not enough. Logan knew the southern customs were different, but this was mostly the tiger looking to gather more allies and not on her.
Big ambitions. Big troubles.
Faye was learning it slowly.
Logan wasn’t that worried about that. No one would put another woman over her if he had half a brain and the tiger wasn’t stupid.
“I want you to give it your best, aye,” Faye continued. “This is my fight as well make no mistake about it. I want Lucius on the throne something fierce. We should all want him to succeed and he will allgods darnit!” She paused and stared at them. “The North fights here against people that have hurt us in the past! We kicked them out of Krakenhall, let’s kick them bastards out of this forest as well!”
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“Well they seem enthusiastic enough. Wanted to say something else but got all worked up and lost me thoughts,” Faye commented hoarsely after blowing her lungs out yelling and coming to stand next to him. She’d sweat on her forehead and the roots of her hair were darker, cheeks rosy and healthy, her sky-blue eyes excited from being near the men.
Her blood aching for a good fight.
Ah, Logan thought and grimaced.
“What is it Barret?” She asked seeing his face. “How difficult?”
“Um,” Logan grunted and shrugged his shoulders.
“That bad?”
“Ergh,” Logan rustled and pointed at the burning woods now well away from their position.
“Yeah, I can’t tell from the map how far they go,” Faye agreed and pursed her lips. “You walk a place and learn it, but they like their maps here.”
Logan wasn’t worried about maps. Deep in them woods, a map can’t help you.
“That’s Cartagen somewhere beyond that river,” Faye murmured wrapping her arms around her chest. “Not that we’ve seen it. The darn river. Then there is another river after that and then you reach it. Big city apparently. Three times the size of Ludr, four times the people.”
Logan didn’t know about that. It seemed too big a number.
“Another near it, a port. Bigger than Krakenhall, can you imagine that?”
“Ahm,” Logan said as he couldn’t.
Faye furrowed two fine red brows. The red spots on her face gathered near her upturned nose. Logan put his scarred hand on her shoulder comfortingly.
“Aye,” she said with a deep sigh. “A lot of cities still. Imagine the armies they can gather.”
Logan didn’t know about that either. In the North every man could fight, but most of the Lorians he’d seen in Asturia couldn’t. Some like Sirio who had come from further south looked outright incapable of even defending themselves from an old woman or a kid.
That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
Beauty and muscles mattered little in these things. The scariest women Logan had seen were the priestesses in the Duke’s palace. Pretty as Goddesses but with the alluring gaze of a mature viper.
“He wants a compromise, but I don’t think he’ll find one,” Faye continued now sounding worried. “I don’t think this land likes him as much as we did. He’s too good for them. Some they do like him yes. Others have all their ambitions fulfilled next to his shadow. But beyond that forest are people who had decided they didn’t want him on the throne years back. Will they change now? He’s the same man.”
The tiger didn’t need people to like him. He could force them to bend the knee and they would, or they would lose their heads. That’s how the realm worked. Logan had fewer friends than Lucius and he was still breathing.
Then again.
Big ambitions. Big troubles.
“We can’t lose Barret,” Faye said her voice cracking. “They’ll kill us all. Roderick, the baby.”
Logan gathered her in his arms without a word, his cold eyes on the burning forest, now illuminated in the darkness. A fierce glowing red.
“We… won’t lose,” Gray rustled in her ear and he felt her shudder.
He was going to kill them all first.
Eight hours later
Early dawn
East Richforest
Heat.
Cracked hot earth and cracked black trunks.
The wind blowing through the smoking gutted trees.
Ashes billowing to its command.
They painted the armours, stuck on skin and boots.
Lathered up the carcasses of the blackened trees that had died where they stood, turning them a sickly lighter shade.
The fires still glowing in the distance an otherworldly red.
There was light, but not much of a variety in colors.
Black for the burned-out wood.
And the color of ash on everything else.
Washed-out lead.
Grim silver.
And Gray.
The soldier opened his mouth wide to scream an alarm, the blade of his dagger penetrating his palate behind the front teeth stopping him. Blood gushed out of the ruined mouth, a couple of teeth in it and doused his white hand into a garish red. Logan yanked his dagger out, placing the free hand on the soldier’s forehead to keep him steady in his death throes, making the wound even worse.
He stepped aside, boot sinking in the soft grey-white powder and glared at his friend. The Lesia soldier regular took two steps forward and then dropped to his knees, afore collapsing on his face in the ashes. The back of his head pulverized.
“Motherfucker turned to look at you,” Adam commented coming out of the artificial fog, covered in the white powder-like substance and looking like a corpse that had walked out of his grave and found a bloody war hammer to carry.
“Um,” Logan grunted and started after the others with a cursing Hough following after him.
They had split into large groups led by MacCee, Farrell and the O’Dolans.
Layton had gone ahead on his own to see the damage done by the fire.
Or something like that.
Logan had taken the fewest warriors with him as he needed to move fast and couldn’t suffer fresh fools tripping over their feet. He could barely tolerate the old ones. They found their group duking it out in the semi-darkness, under the shade of the still smoking trees and ground, raising enough ash clouds to make the scrap interesting.
They fell on them like wolves on a pack of dogs.
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“ARGGH!” The soldier groaned, his arm severed below the elbow joint and slashed at him with his sword. Logan moved his head out of the blade’s arc, then followed the blade as it retreated, ears ringing, blood pumping in his veins and only the sounds of battle coming through.
Screams and yells.
Groans and a lot of pleading.
Blades clanging on blades.
Blades hitting armor.
Blades thudding on burned out tree trunks.
Or flesh.
Other weapons doing the same with a good degree of variations in the acoustics.
The sharpened tip of his sword found the man’s neck under the nervous protrusion, arm extended behind it and his opponent backed away in panic trying to keep his flesh from the sharp steel. Three shaky backwards steps later he found the turned back of another soldier and stopped unwittingly with a gasp of despair. Logan who’d followed after him to keep the blade touching his neck kept on moving. A heave and he shoved his sword through both of them, the angle favoring a double kill, blade coming out of the back of the armless soldier’s head and stabbing his friend at the nappe under the edge of his helm afore coming out the underside of his jaw in turn.
An eerie silent Logan put a dirty boot on the chest of the first one to retrieve his sword but caught out the corner of his eye a sergeant rushing him from the sides through the fog, boots thudding on the ashes-covered ground and let go. Logan twisted to the right moving away from the collapsing duo, the furious hack clipping his left sleeve shaving the skin away from his flesh there along the jacket’s leather.
The Lesia sergeant growled at the near miss and turned around emboldened, Logan jumping back sporting the same expression since the start of the fight –a sinister mean scowl- and landing on a butchered corpse half-buried in the soft ground. The sword returned now traveling parallel to the ground until it didn’t. Logan had stricken the blade with his dagger to change its direction, the dagger’s blade breaking, the weapon coming apart in his hand.
A good blade ruined.
He fell back, turning mid-air to a half-roll. Logan landed on a shoulder, ashes in his face and jerked away from the sergeant’s boot that landed where his head had been.
Fast motherfucker, not easily rattled, he thought frustrated and stopped on a knee, his left hand scooping up some of the warm soil mixed with ashes, the right going for his axe. A single bladed weapon Logan used to cut wood mostly, but he’d installed a new shaft in it recently made out of hardwood, worked on it to give it a bit of a curve to better swing at a target.
Be it wood, or wearing chainmail.
The sergeant grunted, seeing him slow to get up and rushed the distance jumping over the corpse that had almost killed Barret. Logan glanced at the corpse, mostly to evaluate his position in the chaos of the scrap and recognized David Egan, a good lad running with the O’ Dolans.
Hells cries over shallow graves, he cursed realizing they had lost their way in the woods and then the sergeant was on him with a roar.
Cut short, a mouthful of earth mixed with ash down his gullet and in his eyes. He saw Logan move lithely up and then to the side and probably realized he had encountered the worst opponent he possibly could. Not all wolves run with the pack.
Some they just follow it around to better pick out prey.
But they prefer to kill it on their own.
The axe whistled and the sergeant tried to twist away, but Logan had aimed low, chopped his right leg off instead to make sure he wouldn’t run away. The man went down on the stump with a groan, blood spraying out of the artery and Logan circled around him without saying a word, flipping the axe in his arms, cold eyes on the events unfolding around him. Looking for the next kill.
“Allfather’s mercy—” the man screamed a last minute plead afore his head detached from his shoulders, flew briefly leaving a gory trail behind and smacked a burned, hollowed-out trunk with an echoing bang.
Managing not to lose the iron helm in the process.
Logan missed all of it as he had already turned around to go and retrieve his sword from the other two corpses, but kept the bloody axe out just in case some fancy motherfucker pops out of them bushes all offended and shit.
No motherfucker did.
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“Allgods darnit Gray!” Aiden O’ Dolan yelled at him ten minutes later. “Cole is hurt.”
Cole was dead.
He was missing a lot of body parts to put back together.
Egan too.
A lot more of them would be in the mud afore the day was over.
“The bloody fire turned,” Aiden continued his face dark. “South is that way!”
“Mm,” Logan grunted stopping him with a slap on his chest. He pointed east and the sun trying to pierce the smoke clouds over the destroyed part of the woods.
“We’re past the palisade,” Adam translated since he knew Logan’s mind well by now. A crack was heard a burned tree toppled and crashed down ten meters from them and the giant Nord Layton appeared from where Adam had pointed.
“Lots of little soldiers back there,” Layton said, his eyes red and tearing up. “Gathering up I reckon.”
Logan grunted and started that way.
“What the fuck?” Aiden cursed on his back.
“Wanna avenge yer brother,” a covered in gore and ashes Adam told him going after Logan. “You follow after him. Everyone. Where Gray goes Oras follows is the word. Move and there shall be more killing coming yer way.”
Logan didn’t adhere to any of the nonsense the men believed. The circle of shields was a fancy way to kill a man and call it honorable. A named fighter was a fool people ached to stick a blade in, preferably in the back and make a name for themselves. So it gave ye nothing but trouble.
In war you try to finish your opponent fast, keep on killing him until he runs away, or he runs out of men.
No wiggle room.
Nothing in between.
Layton grinned, ever in good spirits when in the field and started after him in his slow deliberate tempo that wasn’t slow at all in reality. You run as fast as you can, Layton will catch up with you eventually walking energetically.
The big guy never got tired.
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A weary Logan eyed their different groups coalescing at the edge of the forest hours later. Almost a kilometer away the legionnaires were coming, marching their way through the ravaged woods and following the corpses Logan and his men had left behind.
Lads from a lot of places painting the burned ground with their blood.
Nords, Southerners and a couple in between.
The Lesia regulars gathered in rows, shields gleaming in the sun. Boars on them. Or vines. Conned helms, spears and swords. Their lines neatly arranged, but only three rows deep now that Logan could see them a bit better.
“Go around them?” Adam ‘Jaws’ Hough asked tiredly. A cut on his face bleeding freely.
Logan spat down to clean his mouth but said nothing. No need to use words here, he thought. Best to leave it for an emergency or to speak with someone more worthy than the likes of him.
He glanced at Layton and then showed him the soldier lines. A good run to get at them of about thirty meters. They were right at the edge of the woods, the field covered in smokes behind them but visible sort of. A bit of the wooden tower as well showing in the background.
“I go through,” Layton told him with the others listening a little freaked out. “I’ll grab four from each side. Ye come after me little man. See they don’t poke me in the eye wit a spear. It hurts.”
Logan nodded agreeing and cleaned his gory blade on his pants. Then reached behind his back to get his axe out as you never know when ye mind need a good ole hack to open space in a tight scrap. He’d have preferred the dagger, but he left that broken back in the smoking woods.
He sighed pensively at the loss.
It was a good dagger Logan had since his youth.
“Eh,” he grunted and turned to glare at the warband leaders waiting for his decision.
“Shit,” Aiden O’ Dolan cursed realizing that what the crazy Nord had just sprouted out of his big mouth was the plan.
Ayup.
That was it.
Ye don’t pussyfoot yer way around a fight.
Let the southerners do that. Do it your way Logan, the Bloody Tiger had told him, who knew when to get his hands dirty, or who to send to do a nasty job if he couldn’t.
“Was going to empty me fucking bladder,” Adam commented pursing his cracked lips. “Reckon I leave it for afterwards. Don’t want to get the cock out in front of you ladies.”
Logan grunted angrily grinding his teeth, looking every man near him in the face and they all turned sober. Logan knew what was ahead of them. All they had to do was follow him into the meat grinder.
Let the chips fall where they may.
He was going to put the fear of Oras in them motherfuckers either way.
Screams and yells.
Groans and a lot of pleading.
Blades clanging on blades, or shields.
Blades hitting armor.
Blades thudding on burned out tree trunks.
Or skulls.
The fine ash on the ground turning a dull red with all the gore spilt on it. Not red like the fires still raging out in the distance, or Faye’s hair that fierce rubicund, but a dull soulless hue.
Ugly and tasting bitter.
The men came after them in their ferocious charge. Layton arriving first and Logan right behind him. The rest had followed not that far behind them finding their courage along the way. The route they took led them to Lesia’s lines and then out of ‘em smoking woods.
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