They held one last battle council the afternoon before the attack. It was the same audience as before, but the tension intensified to the extreme when Fran shared the intelligence he’d gathered during his foray into the marsh. Everyone was speechless, then worried, then demoralized. Perhaps even the Blood Knight, still in his black-scaled armor and his helmet. Fran noticed he’d kept his mouth tightly shut this time. No volunteering to take on the tidal wave of zombies that would spread from the docks at the worst possible moment.
“I do volunteer,” said Sancho. He leaned against a wall, arms crossed, the most serious that Fran had ever seen him. “Just get me close to Aggar for a one-on-one and I’ll solve that problem. Someone needs to keep his mercenaries at length, though. I can’t fight them without my zombies.”
“And how will you fight Aggar the Tormentor?” asked Fran.
“Just get me close to him.”
Seros pointed at the docks in the map with his big, hairy fingers.
“Perhaps I can distract the mercenaries long enough for Sancho to kill Aggar.”
Fran shook his head.
“We don’t even know if he’ll cross the lake. Perhaps his magic controls them remotely.”
“He’ll cross with the first boats,” said Sancho. “It’s too much distance otherwise.”
“The Tormentor is a powerful necromancer,” said His Holiness. It had been his first intervention in the meeting.
“Just get me close to him.”
“Seros can’t help you, Sancho,” said Fran. “The south gate needs all the men we can muster. And killing the Tormentor won’t solve our main problem: the orc horde.”
“The mercenaries made it clear that the horde is a distraction,” said Seros.
Fran shook his head in exasperation.
“Yeah, from their point of view as looters! From ours, it’s the main course. I thought the new information might change Azgal’s mind, especially learning that it’s his treasure they’re after, but has anybody seen him today?”
“He’s gone,” whispered the monk.
“He’s gone,” echoed Fran. “He knew we’d come to him for help and flew away.”
Blacktongue approached the map and pointed his black dragonscale glove at the narrow space between the city’s south gate and the forest where the orcs hid.
“My Lord Dhenn, with all due respect I insist on my request to be the first man in the field, Place me here with my squires and I’ll stop the horde.”
“I’ll be there to stop them when they run over your corpse,” said the lion man.
Seros laughed drily and looked at the black-clad warrior like he’d just embarrassed himself. Fran had noticed the envy, or perhaps dislike that the lion had for Blacktongue. He was used to being the strongest warrior in the room and couldn’t stand competition.
“Enough!” said the Archbishop, his wrathful voice filled with insects again. “This isn’t the time for daring feats of courage or the childish brawls of warriors. You aren’t knights fighting for a damsel’s heart. At the break of dawn, thousands of orcs will be running at the south gate to kill us all. A thousand zombies will join them to our back. And in the middle of it all, two hundred veteran mercenaries will loot the biggest treasure trove of magical objects outside the Empire. I need you all to collaborate.”
“I don’t mean to be a jerk, Your Holiness, but daring feats of courage are all we have,” said Fran. “The guards won’t last an hour against the orcs, and how many can we spare to stop the zombies anyway? It’s either crazy heroism or the city turned into a bonfire of the dead.”
“We’re done for, then,” said the Archbishop.
“Wrong,” replied Fran. “I think we’re going to win.”
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The 110 members of the city guard spent the evening enjoying an incredibly good dinner, courtesy of the Blood Monks. Their happy mood took a sharp turn when they joined their captain for a surprise meeting and the dwarf explained what tomorrow would look like.
Elsewhere in the city, things were in motion too. Healing clerics and magicians gathered for a suspiciously well-paid job that would only take a few days. The only two telepaths in town received a generous offer whose acceptance was anything but optional. Mercenaries were paid handsomly to go to bed early and meet by the south gate at dawn for a sparring session with the city guard. Full armor requited.
No one guessed, no one knew, no one spoke. Fran went to bed thinking that at least he’d been able to avoid a panic that would have killed thousands. But despite that small consolation, he couldn’t sleep for a minute. He spent the whole night visualizing his plan mentally like a video game run on repeat.
Much to his surprise, he was tense but he wasn’t anxious or scared. And, just like Seros and Sancho, he didn’t wish that he’d never traveled to Mela. How could he? The vibrant atmosphere of the fantasy world was exhilarating. His only regret was that, if his parents found his inert body on his bed, they’d never learn that their son had become an adventurer, a man who died commanding a force soldiers and heroes to protect the innocent against orcs, zombies and bloodthirsty savages. That was his only regret, because he knew that, even if he died tomorrow, in his heart he considered his brief time at Mela the greatest blessing he’d ever experienced.
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If you were green, ugly, psycho and surrounded by 4,000 buddies just like you, all of them as hyper as you, all of them as bloodthirsty, would you be first in line to attack the enemy city? Orcs would be shocked that you need to think about it. Crashing headfirst into an enemy shield-wall isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s what life is about, it's FUN. Anything that comes after –the swordfights, the crying enemies, the severed limbs, the gold and treasure–, is secondary to that perfect moment of deranged aggression.
Dawn was about to break, and the orc captains had been holding back their troops with shouted threats and cracks of the whips for an hour. Despite that, the anticipation among the horde was too great and becoming impossible to contain. There’s no point in volunteering when everyone wants to be the first at the party, so, when his captain turned his back to whip one of his comrades, Ugüi took advantage of the opportunity and made a run for Azgadal’s gate. A few more followed, then dozens all over the edge of the forest, but Ugüi had the first-move advantage and the right body type too. Lean and fast for an orc, he raced fast as an antelope sword in hand, lost in excitement at the prospect of shedding first blood in what promised to be a day to brag about for a lifetime.
Only a handful of traders and a couple of guards were near the wall. Easy, too easy. Ugüi screamed at them, screamed his name and his horde’s and the death he was about to inflict on every man, woman and child in this city. The traders looked at him in shock for a moment, then ran inside with horror in their eyes. The guards grabbed their spears but didn't act surprised. One of them shouted something and a figure as dark as the fading night exited the city running fast at the orc. That’s when Ugüi first saw Blacktongue.
In a different scenario, Ugüi would have been surprised at the dragon-scale armor. No one in his horde had ever seen one. He might have also been surprised that the dragon knight ran a few dozen meters, stopped, and was immediately joined by an entourage of misshapen creatures carrying bags, a banner, and a sword unlike any Ugüi had ever seen. Its black handle gave way to two parallel silver blades with sharp protuberances across their length. The area between the blades seemed empty at first sight but actually held an elongated glass vial connected to both blades.
But Ugüi didn’t think about any of this or what it could mean. It didn’t even register. He just screamed even louder and attacked his enemy in a straight line, like a real orc. Moments later, when Blacktongue’s sword bisected his face, ending his life effortlessly, a flow of green blood slid from the ornate blade into the vial. As it filled the glass vial, the green blood transformed into a fuchsia liquid with an aura brighter than the magic lamps of the blood monks.
The blood awoke the sword and it was like the dragon knight had started a motor chainsaw. A high-pitched bellow of despair emerged from the blade, spreading across the land and waking up thousands in Azgadal. The gleaming fuchsia vial cast its light upon Blacktongue’s armor and blade, making him the only visible defender in a battlefield engulfed in darkness. The sword's light and the armor’s reptilian scales emanated a foreboding sense of dread that would have stopped anyone but the bravest barbarians.
It didn’t stop the first wave of frenzied orcs, who rushed toward Blacktongue the way a delver lost in a dungeon would run toward a distant light. Blacktongue slashed orc flesh methodically with attacks halfway between an expert swordsman and a butcher. A series of grunts and screams rose, then stopped abruptly. More green blood turned fuchsia in the thirsty vial, intensifying the weapon’s brightness. Every kill increased the sword’s deadliness and gave Blacktongue, who had been consecrated to it, increased vitality, enhanced skills and a turbulent bloodthirst. The more he killed, the better he killed. And the more he killed, the more he hungered to kill.
The bodies of a dozen orcs formed a half-circle in front of Blacktongue. He stepped over them, covered in their blood head to toe, and readied himself for the hundreds of orcs running toward him, their avalanche of warcries ringing in his ears. Blacktongue responded screaming his secret name and a list of his achievements, feats performed long ago as the Order of the Vampire’s best young knight in a land of barren plains months away to the southeast. Only the Archbishop knew his real identity, but Blacktongue told himself that sharing it with the orcs was fine.
Because, you see, dead orcs don’t tell secrets.