Sancho walked down the streets of Azgadal with the verve of a man who’s just been promoted at his job. A crowd of his new zombies surrounded him, walking at the brisk pace that he’d demanded. Ahead of the group, a handful of guards struggled to fulfill their task and keep a delicate balance at the same time: On the one hand, they needed to calm down the terrified people crowding the streets unsure of which direction to go that wouldn’t lead to a horrible death. On the other, they needed to play the bad cop and shout at them to clear up the streets NOW. The scales tipped toward the latter aspect of their job and the guards screamed, shouted, pushed and even hit people with the bottom of their spears.
“Mooooooooove! No questions! My comrades will die if you don’t get out of our way, get the fuck out! Out!”
The crowd’s voices of fear suddenly rose. Sancho glanced at them and found out the reason. Two guards were shooting at a man trying to get lost in the crowd. The combat runes covering every inch of his face made him stand out among the traders like a sore thumb. A long black arrow penetrated his neck and the man shivered for a moment before dropping like a heavy rock.
“War is a nightmare!” said Pel next to Sancho. The telepath’s ashen fingers held on tight to his cape. She’d been completely quiet until then, probably overwhelmed by the surrounding zombies. Hundreds of dead men and women, some dressed in ragged brown clothes, some mere heaps of decaying flesh, and others reduced to walking skeletons with clean ivory bones. The sight of a single zombie was enough to scare anybody who wasn’t an adventurer, and now Pel was in their midst. She took a look around and immediately gripped Sancho’s cape with her other hand too.
“That man must be one of the mercenaries that managed to escape,” said Sancho. “The guards are hunting them one by one. There must be a few around the city, lost and aimless. They came for a dragon’s treasure and now they’re about to lose their own lives.”
“How can the guards know for sure if that man’s one of them?”
“They can’t, right? Mistakes are made in the heat of battle. You’re right, Pel. War is horrible, but it will be worse if they win. Imagine four thousand murderous orcs joining the chaos on the streets. Now that would be a nightmare.”
A burst of flames exploded in the distance, tall as a building. Several houses caught fire and Sancho realized that the explosion had taken place near the gates protecting the Inner Quarter and the Unholy Cathedral.
“Ask Fran if we need to make a detour.”
“Who?”
“Dhenn. Ask Dhenn.”
The reply came back negative. Sancho’s force was to keep south and engage the orcs.
After what seemed like too long, they finally reached the South gate. The open space, flanked by the two sides of the city’swooden palisade, was blocked by dozens of carts and carriages of all kinds put together by the guards as a barricade of last resort. To Sancho, it looked like the worst traffic jam in the world.
A hundred guards stood in a hedgehog formation with their spears stood on top of the carts and carriages as close to each other as possible. The shield wall was quiet and static, meaning that the screams of agony the necromancer could hear must be coming from fights outside the city.
Sancho raised his right palm to salute Hugül, the captain of the guard. The dwarf nodded at the necromancer with impassible demeanor, but some of his men felt a deep shiver run down their spines and dropped their spears. They turned and their jaws fell too as they witnessed the procession nearing from their rearguard: A skeleton necromancer with powerful streaks of blue light on his body politely approached their captain. A horrified telepath walked next to him. Behind them, the main course: Hundreds of zombies preceded by the overpowering stench of dread that always came with such creatures. That was the reason that some guards had felt compelled to drop their weapons.
“I’m here to relieve your men,” said Sancho.
“We didn’t even start fighting yet,” said Hugül. “The Sun is just getting bright enough for us to shoot arrows, but I won’t give the order. The fighting’s too close and we’d risk shooting our champions.”
“How many of your men are out there?”
“None. It’s just Blacktongue and your lion friend.”
“He didn’t tell you to clear the gate?”
“He just said to clear the main street with a few guards because help is coming. Then, he leaped over the carts and charged the orcs. He’s determined, that one.”
“It’s his unhealthy obsession with glory. Damn, I should have expected this. Well, you know the situation now.” Sancho said, piinting at the zombies. “Make room, we must kill the orcs before they break through the wall. Imagine the massacre if they mix up with the civilians. The whole city will be bathed in blood.”
Hugül turned around and shouted at his lieutenants in a booming voice.
“Eeeeeeeeeveryone get down immediately and clear out the gates. Get the carts out! Out! Make room for the zombies!”
Sancho made his zombies stop and watched as the guardsmen hurried to move the heavy carts. He felt a pang of guilt for using his friends for a battle that wasn’t theirs, but he also felt ready to protect the living souls of the city from the orc onslaught. He turned to look outside, but he couldn’t make out any orcs in the distance.
”They should be next to the wall. Where are they hiding?” he asked the telepath.
”I can’t see them either,” she said.
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Fran watched the beautiful Melan dawn from the window of his command room. The Sun rose on the horizon, and the blue liquid moon slowly became visible next to it.
Things didn’t look that bucolic closer to his own building. Around two thousand people fleeing the docks and the south gate pressed up against the locked gates of the Inner Quarter, where the blood monks and the dragon’s servants lived. He could hear their muffled shouts despite the room’s position near the top of the cathedral and the distance to the wall. They moved like a single organism, pushing against the wall, then receding for a few seconds before trying again.
The Archbishop burst into the room and headed straight for Dhenn while he pointed an accusatory index finger at the Terran.
“It was your decision, young man! Your decision, not Azgal’s, to send every single guard away from the Inner Quarter.”
Fran observed the Archbishop with disdain. His patience with the hooded man had run out.
“Don’t be a moron, we have 4,000 orcs trying to break into the city. The guards are where they’re most needed.”
“You’re changing the subject,” said the Archbishop. He looked out and pointed at the crowd downstairs. “What do you think those savages will do if they break into the quarter? How many raiders do you think are infiltrated among them?”
“The gates are solid. I wish we had gates like that at the city’s entrance. That was your decision, wasn’t it?”
“We trusted Azgal to defend the city, I told you. Defending our quarter from riff-raff and thieves is a different story. But you’re trying to distract me again! We’ll defend ourselves, but I want you to know that I’ll be telling Azgal about this.”
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Dhenn laughed.
“Like he cares! And what do you mean you’re going to defend yourselves?”
That’s when the flame burst and the echo of an explosion made the windows rattle. Dhenn looked out of the window and saw hooded figures dropping buckets of blood onto the crowd. Then, one of the monks jumped off the wall, stabbed himself in the air, and burst like a wineskin as he fell into the crowd. An impossible amount of blood spread and caught fire on contact with the crowd pushing the gates. The flame expanded to the people stained with the blood that the monks had dropped on the crowd. It caught fire faster than oil and the crowd went crazy with terror. The screams of the dying were impossible to ignore.
“Lord of Light protect us!” shouted the telepath.
The Archbishop held his hands together and slowly walked away towards the room’s exit.
“Those people are civilians! We’re supposed to protect them!” said Dhenn, drawing his sword in anger. “What the hell have you done?”
“That brother gave his live so that the order survives,” he said.
“You never told me you could do that whem we planned the city’s defense!”
“The Inner Quarter is the city,” the monk replied. “Good night.”
He closed the door delicately on the way out.
Fran looked down again. The crowd turned away from the deadly fire, fleeing to the rest of the city. But hundreds lay motionless, their bodies in flames, flames reflected on the telepath’s snowstorm eyes.
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Seros sped up as much as possible, jumped with all his might, and his enormous body surged above the barricade of carts. Hugül’s voice with its insistence on learning more about the state of the battle faded in the background. No time for that now. Seros felt the morning air in his face and looked down. He saw the guards in their hedgehog formation below him. He hoped he’d be good enough to save them, and frankly, he wanted every orc to himself.
He landed heavily on the other side of the palisade and a thundering sound filled the plain. The lion looked around, gripped his axe firmly and sprinted toward the dancing fuchsia light in the distance. The neon light and the ugly faces it illuminated reminded him of an after-hours rave he attended years ago. The party started at 9 AM and ran into the following night. Never again.
The bloodsword’s light moved too slow to defeat the two dozen orcs surrounding Blacktongue. Seros wished he could see better, but the daylight wasn’t there yet. It probably would be in 10 or 20 minutes. In the meantime, he’d have to do with the bloodsword’s light and his instincts. He could definitely sense the palpable heat and the accumulated rage of the vast orcish horde in the distance but for some reason, only a couple dozen orcs were attacking the dragon knight. Step by step, they were getting closer to victory. He heard three strikes hit the scale armor for every orc that fell to the magic sword. And it moved slow now, so slow. Seros grabbed his axe with both hands, cleared his throat as he ran and jumped at the green melee. Showtime.
“Of all the things you could be you had to go to and be an ooooooorc!!!!”
His axe severed an orc’s head cleanly from his neck, and continued to swing so fast that he’d finished two more before the head of the first one touched the ground. His axe seemed to move randomly like a crazed painter’s brush, but any warrior from the Phoenix Legion would have realized that Seros was immersed in a battle trance operating at the highest skill level, his actions free from thoughts and distraction.
The orcs fell to the ground one after another. Soon, the whole group was dead. Another two dozen orcs charged in the dark and Seros welcomed them with his axe. It took longer this time but eventually Seros killed all of them and smiled. Meanwhile, had barely been able to defend himself. The lion thought that, from now on, the battle was his to enjoy. He turned to the forest and screamed:
“This is what happens when you visit without knocking on the door!”
Next to him, Blacktongue fell on his knee. Seros could hear his quick, heavy breathing. He could also see better in the fading dark now, and he couldn’t help but be impressed. The dragon knight had sown the field with the bodies of a hundred orcs of all kinds, from lean scouts to potbellied mace wielders twice as big as a human. The rest, thousands of them, screamed and hollered at each other in the distance. Seros knew about this custom: Orc hordes lived for the adrenaline rush of battle, and it wasn’t unusual for them to stop and watch someone else’s fight if a worthy champion was involved. Check out the trailer before you watch the movie, so to speak.
“Warm-up’s over, dragon boy,” said Seros. “It’s time for the big boys to play, so go back in and rest. I’m relieving you.”
Seros didn’t wait for acknowledgment. His eyes scanned the long line of green barbarians until he found exactly what he was looking for: A large orc covered head to toe in warpaint, wearing light armor decorated with the bones and skulls of previous victims, and wielding a crude and huge stone hammer in his hand. An orc chieftain. The real deal. Because, among orcs, wearing heavy armor or using a sleek weapon forged by a dwarven master smith was only acceptable in the way that a human army would accept a recruit with a sign on his chest saying My name is coward.
The lion knew what to do now: Point his axe at the orc chieftain and mock him cruelly. But the sound of vehicles behind him interrupted him: the guards were pulling the barricade apart. This could only mean that Sancho and his army of merry zombies were about to exit the city and attack the orcs.
“Fuck no,” said Seros. “Not this fast, why this fast, goddamnit.”
No time for challenges, then. Seros caught the chieftain’s eye, nodded briefly and charged toward the orc.
The chieftain blurted something at his troops, who raised their weapons in the air in response. Everyone was happy, everyone was screaming. The chieftain showed Seros his mouth full of rotten teeth and ran at him hammer in hand. Around him, thousands of orcs advanced in a wave of rage and jubilation.
“Time to end it once and for all, right?” said Seros as he ran at them. They must be thinking that the mercenaries in the docks were going to have all the treasure in the city to themselves if they didn’t hurry up. If only they knew how things had ended in the port…
Seros heard a familiar voice shouting behind him.
“For the blood and the dragon! For Azgal the Protector!”
Somehow, Blacktongue had regained enough strength to catch up to him sword in hand. Seros admired his attitude, it was exactly what he would have done, so he saved his taunts for the orcs.
The two defenders of Azgadal crashed into the orc horde and green blood flew toward the sky as hundreds of orcs surrounded them. But that’s not what it felt like to Seros. In his view, these kind orcs were just politely making it easier for him to kill them without having to chase them one by one. That would be such as waste of time. It was preferable this way, with Blacktongue’s sword feeding on the blood of so many orcs and Seros’s axe maiming, slashing and killing, making life impossibly short for anybody that dared approach him.
After a few dozen openers, the main course arrived, the orc chieftain wielding a stone hammer thicker than Seros’s head. Blacktongue pointed his sword at their enemy and advanced toward him for a frontal hit. Seros felt a spiral of anger taking over. His axe hit his ally’s weapon, which moved left and hit another orc, one who looked around for a second before concluding that yes, this was real and he was dying.
Seros’s body rolled to dodge the powerful hammer, landed on his feet without skipping a beat and immediately had his axe paint a dozen lines in the orc’s chieftain body, each enough to kill a normal orc. His limp, dead hand let the hammer go with the twelfth hit.
A couple more quick rounds followed until the sunlight hit the orcs, breaking the spell of violence and making them realize that, hey, this wasn’t the raid they’d been promised and they weren’t even fighting two humans with a sword and an axe, not really. They’d been thrown into a dual chopper, a two-bladed mincer that turned orcs into dead bodies by the hundreds and never wanted to stop. Also, were those running zombies approaching? Yes, indeed. A thousand of them. Wonderful.
What was unthinkable became inevitable: Time to run. Thousands of orcs turned around and fled back toward the trees.
Seros spit on the ground and ran after the orcs, followed by Blacktongue. The lion man wanted more. More feats, more glory, more renown. He caught some orcs as they fled and killed them without hesitation. The thick forests would make them much more difficult to catch. It wouldn’t stop him but it was frustrating. He swore when he saw orcs vanish into the tree line.
Soon it was like the horde had never existed. He and the dragon knight had just entered the forest when a fire as wide as the horizon, a true conflagration, rained on the trees in a merciless torrent of death. The infernal heat made Seros fall to the ground. He stood up in time to see Blacktongue shake, drop his sword and grab his own throat before falling unconscious. A heatstroke, undoubtedly.
Surrounded by burning trees, Seros took Blacktongue’s sword in one hand and his armored body in the other. The lion man grunted. He’d expected the nimble-looking armor to be lighter, but it was fine, he’d manage. He ran away from the forest surrounded by a heat that threatened to choke him if he stayed just a few more seconds.
The lion ran toward the zombies, who had stopped their charge and stood around the plain, surrounded by orc corpses. His breathing became irregular. Finally, his body gave up and had to stop.
Seros dropped the dragon knight and turned to the forest. As he expected, the majestic body of Azgal flew in the morning sky. He was turning back toward the forest to rain a second wave of flames on the orcs that had threatened his city.
Seros spat on the ground again. He felt exhausted, cheated and disgusted by the lord of Azgadal. The moment the battle had been won, Azgal had shown up and done just enough to claim the victory for himself.
Impeccable fucking timing, thought Seros. Well, let's see what Fran makes of this, Mister Lord Protector. He won this battle for you, and I think he would win one against you too.
The dragon breathed out his glorious flame again, turning the dawn into noon with its light and devastating the little remnants of the forest that weren’t already in flames. The temperature in the forest must be so high that the orcs must be burning to death instantly, painlessly. A small mercy. He wondered if a single orc would live to share the news of the massacre.