Spider_Jerusalem
Explorer
Damn. I hoped you guys hadn't seen that movie
. Anyway, here is the next chapter...[Edit]Edited in past tense 10th September 04[Edit]
Ice, Luck and Honour
Chapter 8: Red is the Colour
Middle Winter, Realms Date 1372
…Milo crouched over the man and looked into his eyes. Wild with pain, he stared over the heroes who pulled him down and managed to speak in a halting, crackling voice.
“You, you must… not stay… she is there…” the man coughed violently, his face wracked in agony.
“What? Why will your wounds not heal?” shouted Torious
“… no… you cannot trust her… the fire is from the abyss… cannot be healed,” wheezed the man, his body suddenly spasmsing, his face contorting in pain. He then spluttered once before speaking his last words.
“You… you cannot trust her… the woman… that woman in red.”…
Torious watched the man die, the priest’s face relaxing as death soothed him into the afterlife. A sudden draining sadness pierced through the aasimar as he imagined every being felled by Robar would have endured this very same fate. How many more lives will be extinguished to appease this fiery god?
Torious gently closed the bodies crusted eyelids, whispering a prayer to ease the murdered soul into the next life. The aasimar then stood and drew Freedom’s Edge.
“Thalin. Milo. We are to take those knights in the village alive.” Torious clenched his mailed fist in a sudden burst of rage, “I swear to bring the sword of justice to Robar, even if I must chase him through the Nine Hells and back. He shall not escape my wrath.”
Torious spun to glare at Mikka with an almost level hatred.
“And you. You shall stay here.”
“As you command, oh illuminated one.” remarked Mikka, sitting himself down and resting his back against the charred stake as Torious stalked purposefully towards the village. Thalin followed.
Milo threw a look back at Mikka and checking the others weren't looking, struck a ridiculously dramatic pose, imitating the grand movements of Torious. Mikka started to laugh like a baby hyena as Milo turned and scurried after his companions.
- - - - - - - - - -
After quickly discussing the words of the dying cleric, and agreeing that they should be on the lookout for this “woman in red”, the three heroes advanced cautiously through the trees towards the village. The stench of smoke lay heavy and unmoving as Milo crept forwards, his crossbow levelled. Ahead of the companions, the village came into view. The few small houses were burnt shells, trails of smoke from the ruins drew lazy charcoal smears in the sky.
“Alive.” hissed Torious as he saw the eager halfling sight the two knights, who had dismounted and begun to nonchalantly sift through the smouldering remains of a village house.
Milo detached silently from the tree line and like a shadow, drifted from one wall to the next as he circled out of view of the two knights. Thalin began to summon arcane energies forth, his brow knotted in concentration as he left the last words unspoken.
Torious stepped out from the trees, his crossbow levelled.
“Defilers! Lay down your swords.”
The knights turn promptly as they heard the voice, their half plate glinting in the embers of the burning town. One knight wavered for a moment, his young face uncertain. The other reacted lightning fast. Dropping to a crouch, he dashed forwards, his longsword drawn.
“For Robar!” bellowed the man as he charged.
The knight didn’t travel far, as a bolt from Torious thudded heavily into his breastplate, making the knight lose footing. A split second later, a second bolt whistled from the shadowed Milo and punched cleanly through the falling knights visor with incredible precision.
Thalin watched the dead knight crash heavily to the floor then released his spell, soothing the remaining knight into unconsciousness. With a creaking thud, the second knight folded to the floor.
Thalin stormed forwards, his knuckles clenched white around Erifeci.
“What in the blazes are you doing? You said alive!” cursed the mage.
“Defending myself. One is alive,” retorted Torious as he crouched next to the fallen knight, “Milo shot him in the face. I was simply halting his attack.”
“I couldn’t see properly!” called Milo from across the village square, hoping to pass on the blame again.
“But you can still shoot.” said Thalin with an angered edge to his voice.
Milo shrugged, and then suddenly jolted upright.
“Wait! Someone is shouting. From the town hall!” Milo cried, darting towards the smoking building. Torious dashed across the square without a moment of thought, whilst Thalin stooped next to the sleeping knight, ensuring his spell is security enough to keep the knight inactive.
- - - - - - - - - -
The second head of the ettin slowly turned to the side, its heavy-set eyes staring numbly into the trees. The first head gaped straight ahead, its wide mouth dripping a thick line of saliva to the ground, some ten feet below.
“Uhh,” grunted the ettin’s second head, “Urrrnnng.”
Huge nostrils opened sluggishly, and its eyes seem to dimly focus somewhere beyond the trees. Thinking for a full minute, the ettin finally began to move. Lumbering over the carcass of a stag unfortunate enough to get caught earlier that morning, the two ugly heads looks down at the huge sleeping form of another ettin.
Swaying for a moment, the ettin ponderously raised a foot and stepped on the sleeping ettin’s face.
After a few moments, the ettin spasmed to life, “Rragrghhhh,” snarled the second ettin as he shoved the first ettin’s foot off and sat up, “Gruhh.”
The first ettin motioned with one head towards the trees whilst the second head spoke, “Urrrnnng… gurrrrn… aaar.”
A tense moment passed as the second ettin tried to understand the first.
Then, after the second ettin stood uncertainly, the two giant figures began to push through the trees, occasionally grunting between their own heads or between each other.
- - - - - - - - - -
Torious burst through the town hall doorway, his eyes quickly shifted across the scene before him. Milo was crouched next to a mound of burnt timbers, his hands scrabbling desperately at the heavy wooden beams. Looking up, Torious saw the roof had entirely collapsed in on itself and the floor was layered with the scattered debris.
The aasimar closed his eyes and prayed to Tyr for aid, his mouth whispering divine incantations.
“Torious! Help me. People are trapped under here,” grunted Milo as he heaved a smaller beam from the latticed pile.
The aasimar finished the prayer then stepped forwards determinedly and gripped a charred beam in each hand. He could feel the rush of strength flowing through his body, coursing throughout his veins as his fingers closed around the timbers. With a roar of both exertion and triumph, Torious began to clear the fallen beams. Milo helped as best he could, taking smaller pieces away and giving wholehearted vocal support to the empowered Torious.
As the aasimar dragged the last of the beams to the side, a charred trapdoor began to jump in concert with muffled shouts from beneath it.
- - - - - - - - - -
Thalin snapped his head up as a flurry of small birds swirled overhead, their furious forms blurring away from the tree line in a cacophony of squawks.
Rising from his crouch next to the sleeping knight, Thalin slowly guided his hand to the hilt of Shard as he scanned the dense foliage.
- - - - - - - - - -
“By all the gods, demons and devils.” exclaimed a portly priest as he is helped to his feet, his eyes full of incomprehension as he surveyed the burnt ruins of the hall.
Torious gripped the hand of another villager from the darkness of the basement and hauled them into the afternoon light. But the praise and thanks went unheard by Torious as a young woman passed a crying baby into his waiting hands. A dirty red cloak was slung around her shoulders. Before Torious could react, she had ducked back into the darkness to help another villager out of the basement.
A moment later, the woman’s head returned into the pool of light.
“There are only two more left now. A grandson and grandma,” said the woman with the red cloak as she squinted up at Torious from the shadows of the basement. Torious gazed back, his words suddenly lost in the woman’s steely brown stare. She let the stare linger a moment too long before dropping back down.
A rasping voice drifted up from the darkness, “I’m not his grandma. Simply a guardian…”
“Whatever you say, but you still need to get out of this basement,” said the disembodied voice of the woman in return.
A young man of about seventeen appeared in the spotlight of sun, his black hair wild and unkempt. He looked up as Torious offered a hand to help him, but instead he jumped and gripped the basement edge, hauling himself into the light without a word.
Milo chatted excitedly to one of the halfling villagers, happy to have found a fellow half-man in a situation such as this. Keeping half an eye on the basement exit, Milo suddenly trailed off his sentence as a young man with black, unkempt hair pulled himself out of the basement.
Milo blinked once, then looked again. I've seen him somewhere before… but where?
- - - - - - - - - -
Thalin pounded up the steps to the town hall, skidding to a halt in the doorway entrance. A loud, guttural roar echoed past Thalin and everyone in the hall turned in surprise to look at the silhouetted ice mage.
“Ettins! In the village!” shouted Thalin before ducking back out of the door in a flurry of robes.
The villagers began to panic, their momentary sanctuary from the marauding knights suddenly shattered by this new threat. The women and children rushed towards the back of the town hall with a symphony of frightened screams, picking their way across the scattered debris in the hope to find a hiding place from the half-giants.
The woman in red snapped her head back into the darkness as she heard the mages warning, “Curses. The old woman can wait. Here, help me up”.
She extended a gauntleted hand to Torious, who faltered for a moment then helped her into the light. Her face was coated with a sheen of sweat from the heat of the basement and her hair was plastered against her forehead. Despite this, a few slivers of beauty shine through from beneath her overworked exterior.
“Wait… there are ettins… you might get hurt,” uttered Torious, doubting his own words as he looked at the tarnished half-plate and the longsword slung at her side.
Pushing herself to her feet, she threw a playful glance back at Torious, “Don’t worry about me. You can stay here and help out the old woman if you’re scared.” With that, the woman in red dashed out of the hall.
Torious stood unmoving for a moment, his thoughts reeling as he tried to sift through his own emotions and the dead priest’s warnings about the woman in red.
The distinct hiss of Thalin’s icy bolts followed by a thundering roar of pain from outside bring Torious to his senses. He unsheathed Freedom’s Edge.
“Men who can and will fight, then do so,” shouted Torious over the chaos of noise around him, “women and children take shelter at the rear of the hall.”
Surveying the beginnings of the skirmish at the base of the steps, Torious watched as five men rushed out of the hall to join the fray. Stepping into the light, Torious glanced back to check for any remaining volunteers. Instead, his eyes met the sight of the wild-haired man carefully helping an aging woman from the basement. Her wiry body was draped with sleek red robes, a heavy hood shadowed her face from the afternoon light…
To be continued in…
Ice, Luck and Honour
Chapter 9: Eye of the Blizzard
The heroes valiantly defend against the maraudering ettins, but as the combat rages, a bizarre twist of fate snares the attention of a deity. As tempers flare and suspicions clash over the true identities of the mysterious women in red, the heroes attempt to guide the homeless villagers through a deadly mountain pass.
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