Born a Monster

Chapter 47

Broken Gate

I squinted, but could not make out the heraldry. Something red on a white background.

“Well,” Gurmolok said, “As an axe-wielder, my place is down there now.”

“Axes!” I called, “There is no more need for lumber! Grab your other axes, and go with Gurmolok. The rest of you, to the inner trench!”

He cleared his throat. “Might I order my troops?”

.....

“Please do so.”

“Are you certain?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want you forgetting to give them orders, being so eager to return to the actual battle.”

“You heard the kobold! Get up here! Form four columns, rank and file. Axes to the front, bows in the back, all others by at least one other of your weapon type. Move!”

It took them near nine minutes, even with Gurmolok vociferously encouraging them.

As we passed, farmfolk either kept working their fields or huddled inside their buildings. They must have been using their Systems to pass silent messages along; the doors and windows were all shut as we marched inward.

“Shields up if you have them! Everyone double time! To the trenches, we’re in arrow range. Get there, get there, get there!”

Only one spearwoman got hit by an enemy arrow, and nobody needed to be told to take cover behind the stone barriers.

“You!” I called. “Arrow in shoulder! Get over here for a bandage.”

She sauntered over. “You sure you don’t just want a peek at my boobs?”

“Reptile. I don’t find the lumps of fat on your chest as interesting as you think.”

There was a complication almost instantly; the arrowhead caught and remained in the flesh.

“This is going to hurt.”

“More than it already does?” She still made a noise when I reached my talons in to pull it free. She was quiet as I applied the comfrey patch treated with garlic powder, and tied it securely against the wound with linen.

“How well have you eaten today?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Can you take a healing potion without harming yourself?”

I offered her a plainswalker’s formula potion. She drank it with a single swig. “Do all of us merit those?”

“Only the three I have.” I said.

“Medic, over here!”

“Axes to the left. Your other left, Yarrow Head! This left, toward me.”

I moved around from wounded ally to wounded ally; it didn’t take long at all for the healing potions to be given away. It wasn’t long after that that I exhausted my medical supplies entirely.

The axemen were still assembling at that point, so I moved along the trench lines toward them.

I may not have been under mental domination, but I wanted a good look at Rakkal.

The flag in front was a red axe on white. At first I thought they had horned helmets, which never struck me as practical. Then I caught one in profile.

Minotaurs. Rakkal and his family were minotaurs.

#

The First Men created many of the beastmen races for their wars. Others were made by elven lifeshapers; minotaurs, the legends say, were made by an angry sea god.

They had the size and Might somewhere between bulls and men. They needed more nutrition each day than they could possibly forage. They hunted, and they usually hunted other sentients.

Among monsters, they may not have been the alpha predators, but they were well above anything I’d previously met. As a race; the measure of a greater hero is sometimes whether they could stand up to one or not.

One. Assembled around the axe-flag were no less than fourteen of them.

They were clad in overlapping plates of bronze, shaped to their forms. From helmet to hoof-cover, only small gaps showed at the joints, and Rakkal’s not at all. Instead, his had articulated plates that slid over each other smoothly.

I know you’re expecting me to say that he was the largest, but the truth is he was smaller than his brethren, but looked no less powerful. He was shorter, but broader of shoulder.

And those shoulders supported arms no smaller around than those of his brethren. Clutched lazily in his left hand was a double-bladed axe that might have been the one his heraldry was made to duplicate. It was made of dark red metal, almost black.

The light reflected from it almost as from a liquid, giving the axe a sanguine appearance.

I couldn’t imagine the metal it was fashioned from, nor what arcane powers it must possess.

Wait, wasn’t blood magic a subsidiary of Eldritch Magic? What manner of eldritch powers must such a weapon possess?

He stood there in the trench, chatting idly with his family, and sometimes with an uruk who pushed through them to address him. Then, he raised his axe and bellowed, a wordless cry taken up by every warrior in the trench.

He vaulted out of the trench, over the stone shield raised to protect him. He took three steps, and then activated Flash Step to reach the gate in a series of rapid hops.

BOOM!

The axe struck the gate head on; a circle of red energy radiated outward from the magical field that protected the steel doors from harm. Although the arrows fell thick about him, he never seemed to flinch, dancing smoothly left and then right.

BOOM!

Another strike, before the radius of the first had exhausted itself.

With a roar of victory, led by the minotaurs, the axemen flowed forward. Those with shields had them raised, and the others seemed to simply ignore the arrows that fell among and upon them.

Rakkal activated a Flurry of Blows, and the final two struck the doors and threw sparks.

The protective field on the gates had already exhausted its mana? Or had Rakkal somehow cancelled it?

Boiling tar fell upon him, but he seemed to ignore the flames.

As he continued to strike the doors, they flexed inward, then back out. Each blow resounded like a battering ram.

Then his brethren reached the doors to hold them. With a final BOOM, the bar holding the doors shut broke.

#

“Axemen!” he called in Uruk. “The city is ours! Ravage it as you will!”

They entered the city at a jog, and divided among the streets. Some began attempting to force their way into the towers flanking the gate, others followed in the wake of the red axe flag, and still others turned to savaging the town and its inhabitants.

The rest of us followed the axemen. I had been meaning to remain in the trench, but some helpful brute grabbed my belt and hurled me into the open area between the trench and wall.

Exposed to arrow fire, I tried to stay hidden among larger bodies. But those bodies were moving forward, and I was swept forward with them.

I saw little, but the smell of blood and ash seemed to be everywhere. Screams and how they were suddenly cut off informed me what was going on around us.

I was suddenly free, near the center of the town, near a fountain that hurled water at least three dozen feet into the air.

A large number of horses lay around with the bodies of humans and uruk, some dead, the unfortunates still dying.

I saw no evidence of fighting on the wall, and arrows came into the town from the walls.

Booming laughter redirected my attention toward the flag of the red axe, momentarily paused in its advance toward the fortified building across the town from the main gates.

I advanced that direction, and clearly saw one of the pikemen raised above the battle on his own pike, then slammed to the ground.

This had to be a dream, didn’t it? This level of violence, what was I doing here? What was ANYONE doing here?

[You have been struck for 12 points of piercing damage. After armor, you have taken four points of damage. You have 26/30 health remaining.]

I looked down to my left side, pulled the arrow out.

[You have taken four points of lacerating damage. You have 22/30 health remaining.]

It just didn’t seem real. How could it be? This was the town of the Crimson Hand, people who had been willing to go to war with an entire town just to spread the faith of their falcon-headed deity.

The townspeople were fighting back, but the Uruk had a plain advantage, about one in sixteen corpses was one of the attackers.

The doors had locks, but only a handful of them were built for war, and of those houses that had those, some had windows that were easier to break through.

What had inspired me to walk in this carnage? My sanity and serenity meters were already in the yellow, and I hadn’t DONE anything.

Well, except for walking. I wanted to see what happened when Rakkal reached that large fortress.

I mean, I knew what was probably going to happen, but I wanted to SEE it.

#

I had to stop along the way to puke into someone’s flower garden. On their lawn, the disemboweled corpse of their dog was clearly dead, flies already circling.

.....

I like to think he died attempting to defend the corpse of someone’s daughter, also on that lawn.

Which was worse, the carnage there, with bodies left, or the carnage at the lagoon of my birth, where the bodies were eaten?

I moved forward, it seemed to be the only direction available.

There were tears streaking down my face. I didn’t need to ask why.

The red axe banner was moving away again; there were fewer and fewer live Uruk in the main street ahead of me.

I wondered if Rakkal cared, or if he believed that he was actually conquering this town by himself.

Ahead, he roared as he assaulted the final units arrayed before the fortress.

I was most of the way there when the priests summoned – something. It was double Rakkal’s height, and when it moved, its footsteps echoed off the town walls (which, I noticed, there was now fighting atop of).

It had the body of a man and the head of a hawk. Whether construct, or spirit, or avatar, this was what the priests had conjured to fight as they envisioned Montu should fight for them.

It struck down at Rakkal with a bare fist. He met that strike with his axe, and coughed up blood.

I don’t know where he got the energy to keep fighting.

Montu threw his arms akimbo, and Rakkal struck his leg just before a column of searing flame descended from the heavens upon them both.

That flash blinded me, but again I found my other senses more than compensated.

I saw only flashes, red when Rakkal struck, blue or yellow when the Montu-thing attacked. To either side, minotaurs crushed the men arrayed before them.

Rakkal shouldered the larger being, which stumbled and fell. He performed Flurry of Blows upon it.

That didn’t finish the fight. It flailed around, unable to stand. Rakkal danced around it, striking it repeatedly. It said something menacing in the language of the Numinarian builders, became sunlight, and shot up into the heavens.

The high priests of Montu gathered their robes up off their ankle, and fled up the stairs into their temple.

Bleeding and clearly tiring, Rakkal advanced toward them. As I reached the entrance to the bloodied courtyard, the flanks fell inward.

Where once there had stood fourteen minotaurs, only twelve remained standing. One sat with his back against a building, surrounded by corpses.

The other lay where he had fallen, blood no longer gushing from his neck.

I raised my shield, angled to deflect arrows. Why the archers inside and atop the fortress thought I was a more tempting target, I may never know. Maybe they just wanted to kill SOMETHING.

Maybe they’d gone insane or were suffering emotional turmoil.

BOOM, Rakkal had reached the bronze double doors of the temple. If anything, the shielding seemed stronger here than at the town gate. Still –

BOOM!

Rakkal was tired now, and his blows came at a slower rhythm. But they still came, each one cascading a little further along the front of the fortress temple.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BONG!

The axe made contact with the brass doors.

#