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The Bow of Haladan |
Posted by: JasonZavoda
on Saturday, March 04, 2006 - 09:40 PM
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Needs Intro
Posted - Oct 05 2005 : 7:06:59 PM
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"Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayers hauing slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song."
Spencer 'The Faerie Qveene' Book I, Stz I
The Bow of Haladan Part I
Kyle Lackland was coming home. He'd been gone a long, long, time, but he'd never forgotten his past or Geoff, his homeland. His father had been a ranger of Geoff, sent out, according to his mother, to find a mystic druidess during the terror of the coming of the giants. He had never returned and no word had ever made it to Kyle's ears of his father's fate.
It was as a poor relation among his mother's kin that he'd been raised. A boot-boy to his cousins, cadets in the commandant’s Gran March Guard. He'd left home at his first chance, age fifteen, and become a common soldier in the Guard's Auxiliaries. At eighteen he was a seasoned veteran. Kyle had fought for the liberation of Sterich alongside the young hero-bard Cian, he who was betrayed and fell in battle against the giants.
Kyle's company had won high honors in Sterich. The Auxiliaries were the first into battle and the last to withdraw. During the years of warfare new recruits, drawn from refugees of many lands, were a cheap commodity. In combat the commandant was a generous man. Their lives were spent like coppers and their blood flowed like water across the fields of Sterich.
Now the time Kyle had dreamed of was at hand. The soldiers of the Gran March crossed the border into Geoff. The Siege of Hochoch had begun.
* * *
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Country: | Posts: 612
jasonzavoda
Moderator
Posted - Oct 06 2005 : 3:42:51 PM
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Part II
The road was a sea of mud. Dinet sat upon the tail of a wagon piled high with supplies, his feet dangling above the waves of mire. He was young, but not as young as he tried to appear. Time was his enemy. As a youth he had a place among the camp followers, but as a man he would have to fight for his space in the wagons or his right to steal, cheat, and rob the drunken soldiers when the sprawling booths and tents were set.
This loose band of thieves, the Free Traders Association as they called themselves, was no guild, at least not the kind that his uncle had told him of, not such as they had in the legendary city of Greyhawk. Dinet dreamed of Greyhawk and how things might have been if his father and uncle had not tried to steal from their own guild.
"The fools." he cursed them both and spat into the mud below his feet. His father had paid the price of betrayal, his throat slit and his body hung from a lamppost in the marketplace to be discovered by the merchants as they set up their wares in the early morning light.
His uncle had raised him, and, as soon as Dinet could walk, trained him to steal then set him to work. Dinet had proved to be a gifted thief, a natural, as his uncle would say. But the old man had saved himself from the just wrath of his guild only to drink himself to death on his nephew's skills.
There was money set aside at least. Dinet was no fool, such as his father and uncle had been. He'd scrimped and saved, waiting till he had enough to escape and flee to Greyhawk, but this was the only life he had ever known. No cities, but an endless tour of armies and battlefields. This would be his last. The Siege of Hochoch it was being called. It would be his last campaign. He would not fight to earn a place among the scum who preyed on a soldiers pay, Greyhawk awaited him.
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Country: | Posts: 612
jasonzavoda
Moderator
Posted - Oct 08 2005 : 3:57:41 PM
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Part III
The armies of the Gran March were on the move. They crossed open fields and reclaimed old roads long since fallen to disuse and the encroachment of weeds and wild grains. Their patrols had kept watch on the once fair city of Hochoch, but had held back from sight themselves. While the giants and their minions looked south toward Sterich and the great retreat of their forces from that land, the Gran March guards and the Knights of the Watch gathered and bided their time, preparing to strike...
* * *
The sound of horses drummed across the field. The noise reached the ogre's ears before a single horseman came in sight. It turned its head, and all along the line of goblins, orcs and gnolls, a hundred smaller heads turned to the east as well.
The field rolled up, became a gentle slope and formed a crest where on a higher plain the border of old Geoff lay, forgotten and unmanned, though monsters claimed the boundary line as theirs. Below and to the west the fields ran down till they met the Great River and held poor Hochoch in a sad embrace.
These monsters, a patrol lately come to test the strength of their human foes, the guardsman and the Watch, they'd had a lonely hunt along the eastern fields. The only sight they'd seen was a distant cloud of dust that never came close and shortly disappeared. But now the horsemen revealed themselves, at least in sound. Hooves, a thousand strong or more, drummed against the oerth.
"Form a line!" the ogre growled. "Archers string your bows!" Three score bowmen, a dozen gnolls, all obeyed, though not as one. A chatter ran through the goblins ranks, gnolls whined and barked, they gathered in a pack. The ogre swore, but saved its breath, the scent of fear was in the air. If these dogs and rats obeyed at all and did not run, that would be much more then it had any reason to expect from such scum as these under its command.
A pennant fluttered in the wind, half black, half white. A griffon flew with wings of silk and snapped back for all to see, caught in a south-eastern breeze. A great helm appeared and then a horse's head. A lone knight halted on the ridge, his tabard black and white, his horse's barding covered in the same. A hush went through the ogre's troops, then a small cloud of black fletched arrows rose into the air. The knight and horse made not a move. The arrows spiked the ground well short, a bad omen for the goblin-kind.
The ogre growled again, and the goblin archers wavered and drew back. "You stupid rats!" it screamed. "A single human in a metal pot, and you run away!"
A gnoll let out a high pitched whine. Behind the knight a hundred lance points gleamed. The knight began to pace his mount and then turned it to a gallop. The hundred lances followed him, behind came a hundred more. The rolling thunder of their hooves washed down the slope and drove an icy blade of fear through every monster's heart. They ran. The ogre stood alone.
Ahead, not far, the knight picked out his foe and dipped his lance. A small salute to bravery, respected, though it wore a brutish face. The ogre turned its shoulder to the lance and swung back a huge wedge-shaped club of fire-hardened wood. The club's head run through with iron spikes rusted a dusky red. It tried to dive beneath the point and swung low to break a foreleg of the horse. The knight had expected such and reined his horse just to the left. His lance cut across the ogre’s ribs, his mount crashed armored chest to thick-skulled head. The ogre fell beneath the horse's hooves.
The gallop took the knight beyond his foe, but he turned his horse and saw the ogre rise and shake itself, hurt but braced for another charge. The knight trotted up the slope a bit, he needed ground between them to build up his speed. The ogre waved a hand and called out through broken teeth, but its words were lost. The knight heard only his own beating heart and the breathing of his horse. Each charge wore down his mount, the heavy barding, the knight’s own weight, all added to the burden that it carried, but this warhorse was bred for such a life. The knight clicked his tongue and prodded with his knees. The horse took off, the downhill slope added to its speed.
With two hands back behind its head, the ogre prepared to smash this knightling down with a single blow, but the lance point struck it first. Dead center, the point went in and out the back, the ogre dropped its club. For just a moment it was lifted up and then the lance bent and snapped in two. The knight rode past, while the ogre skidded across the ground, slick grass and fresh turned oerth. The lance point, sticking from the ogre's back dug deep and stopped the slide. The ogre moaned and a wash of blood poured from its mouth and chest.
Throwing away the broken haft, the knight walked his horse to the ogre's side. The beast reached out and grabbed the lance stuck through its chest. It pulled, and as it did, it shook and coughed out a bloody spray. The knight shook his head, then dismounted from his horse. He drew a gleaming sword that hung from a saddle sheath. The ogre let its hand fall away, too weak to try again or resigned to its approaching fate. It closed its eyes, the blade was sharp and quick.
Across the field the last of the ogre's troops fell beneath the hooves and lances of the Watch. No knight bore any wound, the ogre alone had stood and fought, but died like all the rest.
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