Suddenly, A Severe Winter Was Coming (3)

“Is it you who shall face me?” the Orc chief asked me.

“Yes.. Are you not satisfied with me?”

“We will fight, you and I. You have a strong spirit.”

The knights, rangers, and Orcs stood upon the snow, silent deathly stares passing between man and beast. It was with a grudging look of respect that their leader looked at me, and I sensed no bias against me in his heart: Something that was rare and deadly within any foe.historical

“You, youngling, have good blood. I will eat the rarest of delicacies today!”

An ancient Orcish belief held that to consume the flesh of a foe was to absorb a measure of its power.

With a thud, the beast slammed its halberd’s two-meter haft into the ground, holding it out next to him in a pompous stance.

“Your Majesty, can you best this thing?” Vincent mouthed to me, his resolve wavering. Just as he spoke, the halberd was propelled into a two-handed grip, with its vicious blade pointing at Vincent, who gulped in fear. “Orcs despise waiting. Stop wasting our time with idle talk.”

I roved my eyes across the distant mountains, seeing the sky take on more somber colors as duck approached.

“We will win this, Vincent,” I spoke to bolster his and other hearts.

Then, the entire Orcish army erupted into a roaring cacophony of bestiality. Their chief stood immobile, unfazed by their shouting. No, his eyes, those yellow orbs with red irises, never strayed from me. He moistened his lips with his foul tongue. The hunger for my flesh was as an open book stapled onto his face. Fortunately, I valued my blood and flesh more than he did.

“Let us see how you taste,” grunted the Orc. I started a chant, letting it flow from my lips. The chant soon took on the form of the Poem of Divorce, its power welling up within me.

* * *

A full-throated Orcish roar as the one we faced had the effect of preparing their bodies for a battle while also lowering their foes’ morale. It was not uncommon for soldiers to drop their weapons, faint, or even flee when the bestial cacophony washed into them. It was a terrible sound. I noticed with pride that my Balahardian comrades stood fast. Veterans of wars against the Orc, they had long since grown stoic when faced with such brutal malice.

However, their resolve was tested when the chief Orc let loose his roar, an earth-shattering sound that buffeted us with a sudden wind. We were all forced back a step or two, and even the rangers on the walls seemed to flinch. Men who had faced all manner of Orcish trickery looked at one another in confusion. They warily held their silence, awaiting further developments. What we faced was no troll or ogre, merely an Orc. Our hearts should have been fearless, yet this beast had somehow shaken our collective resolve with a single roar.

I felt like a green recruit once more, shaking in his breeches in his first battle. Mastery of my senses soon returned as I stood proud once more, my companions following my example. The Orc, sensing our recuperation, wasted no time in signaling an imminent attack.

“Let’s get them, boys!” shouted one of my knights as he planted his feet in the snow, sword at the ready. We were prepared for whatever was to come. That ancient burning hatred quickly replaced the lethargy and anxiety that the Orc’s roar had instilled within my men. Shouts of encouragement rang from the castle walls as rangers and soldiers alike encouraged us to slaughter every last beast we faced.

Flags fluttered upon the ramparts of Winter Castle as so many men started to clang their weapons upon steel and stone in support of we few who awaited battle.

I straightened my back, looked at my men, and thrust my sword into the air. “This is our land, and now is the time to reclaim it!”

* * *

The chief did not yet goad his clan into an attack, having yet more words to share with me. “What a shabby power, that song of yours, young boy.”

The thing stared at me from beneath greasy eyebrows. “Orc, you can only blame yourself for the misfortune of meeting me today.”

“Fight well,” the Orc said, “and I shall treat you with honor, as if we were kin.”

“Hah! You presume too much,” I retorted. “No honor shall be shown to your kind. Your corpse will hang within a gibbet from my walls. Crows and maggots shall feast in joy upon you, preaching your defeat to all who are wise enough to hear of it.”

The beast shook its head almost sadly. “You talk too much, and still I see you as someone without honor.”

He clucked his tongue as a grandmother would at her disobedient descendants.

“It is certain then, that we shall dine upon your flesh today.”

I modulated my tone, willing to show at least a smidge of recognition towards the foe. “My words are harsh, Orc, because I am at war. Had you been a merchant and I a farmer, we might have shared a barrel of ale. However, we are enemies, not comrades.”

In a deliberate show of impiety, he mounted the bloodied flag of Winter onto his back. I knew that these beasts would be charging us at any moment.

Once more, I thrust my blade into the air, a keening sound emanating from it. By arcane means, a hundred different emotions flowed through my body and into the sword, and vice versa. I felt the resentment and battle lust of a hundred rangers, all the soldiers’ anger upon the ramparts flowing through me. As I had borrowed the power of the sword, I knew I had to surrender to its will.

My entire body started to shake violently, my karma overflowing in a wild, unchecked torrent, pain invading every molecule of my being.

I kept the power contained, bearing against the pain, waiting for the scales of karma (業) and salt (念) to once more even out within my soul.

It was then that everything went down the drain as red beams of energy exploded from the Orc’s eyes, melting the snow where I had stood mere moments before.

“An Orcish shaman!” I informed my soldiers, finally bringing the words of my poem and the power of my sword to bear on the now charging Orcs, slamming a few of them to the ground with a blinding wave of twilight.

* * *

This field of battle was small due to the lessened number of warriors on each side. There would be no grand strategy here, just a messy brawl where a single mistake could spell disaster for either side. Having been repulsed by my power, the body of Orcs now moved with greater care, clustered around their chief. This would be a difficult fight, for the enemy stuck together, finally closing in on us with axes and knives, their blows savage and constant. We were hard-pressed, parrying, dodging, and blocking for all that we were worth.

Every time that I tried to slash at a throat or open a belly, I had to avert another blow or inhibit my swing lest I hit one of my allies. My frustration started to build, for this was not the usual fighting style of Orcs. They fought as we did, in a unit, their leader acting as their core as he roared out orders.

“Kill their cub king, damned be all!” it shouted, hurling a knife in my direction. I ducked beneath the spinning blade, kicking at the Orc’s hip, my leg pulsing with magical energies. It was caught off-guard, momentarily thrown off-balance as it staggered back. It reeled in shock at my impudence. It was just me and it now, and I roared my battle-lust as blue flames embraced my blade like the caress of a long-lost lover.

“Waaagh!” It roared, blood already dripping from the head of its halberd.

‘Clang!’

Our weapons met as the divine flame from mine evaporated the blood on his in a hiss of pink steam.

‘Clang!’

The blue flames suddenly encountered a baleful red light, the same accursed light that had exploded from the Orc’s eyes.

‘Clang!’

Blue and red embers cascaded onto the snow with each strike.

‘CLANG!’

Our respective energies petered out, spent, and now it became a contest of metal upon metal. All other fighting had ceased due to the fact that neither Orc nor knight had ever seen such a bout between their respective kinds.

I read in Vincent’s eyes just how terrifying this shaman of a foe I faced truly was. Could I beat it?

Our arms clashed once more, the holy steel of my blade shattering the ax-head of the halberd into so many metal fragments. I immediately embraced this chance. I worked past my foe’s desperate attempts at blocking, first severing his one arm and then the other in a perfectly executed maneuver that saw me rush right into him from one side and then the other with elegant scythe-like cuts.

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“Aghhhaaaaa!” It howled its pain, even as I started butchering its legs with savage hacks. In less than a minute, the beast had all its limbs severed, with my boot now squarely placed upon its torso. Once more, I suffused my blade with blue flame, reversing my grip and thrusting it into my foe’s chest. The inferno that followed was great, spreading out from me in a rolling mass of intense heat.

“Your Majesty!” A sergeant hollered, making ready to rush into the conflagration to pull me out. The Orcs stood impassively by, knowing that their leader was gone and their attack, for now, rudderless.

“Do not approach! The flame doesn’t hurt me, but it can surely incarcerate you!”

My voice was without pain or urgency, and I saw relief wash over Vincent and Isa’s faces.

At that exact moment, though, the entire situation dissolved into chaos. A great noise came from the plains, the mountains, seemingly from the sky itself. The souls of my men withered as the ground shook under the ravages of some ancient power. Blue traceries of magical energy arced through the sky, their source somewhere deep within the mountains.

With them came an object, seemingly hurled toward me with great anger. It took all the reserves of magic within me to halt this missile’s course, yet so great was its momentum that I could only divert it, and then it still struck a vital target. The great iron spear, thicker than a grown man’s muscled arm and five meters in length, slammed with a great force through the stone walls of Winter Castle.

The Orc chief had been slain, yet here was a new and more terrifying threat: The breaching of our defenses from such a considerable distance, and by an unknown entity.