El-Vador's Travels (4 page)

Gurgash
could clearly hear another officer shouting about protecting the
archers, who were already pouring shafts into the lines of Elves that
had come out of the forests to greet them.

Every
so often one would find its mark and one of the Elven enemies would
drop dead. Others seemed impervious to the retaliatory arrows, diving
into the Orcs at a staggering speed and eating up the ground to the
palisade walls.

Gurgash
suddenly discovered that he was terrified. Jogging toward the gateway
with Harg and his Commander he felt an almost overwhelming urge to
flee so that he need not fight for his life

Then
came the collision, and he forgot all about fear.

An
Elven warrior swinging a two-handed sword that shouldn't have been
possible to lift raged toward him, shouting something Gurgash could
not understand but felt very intimidated by.

Gurgash
stabbed wildly at the creature with his pike, feeling the blade sink
in with as much surprise as his Elven foe.

To
his shock, the Elf tore the pike from his chest and levelled his
greatsword at a defenceless Gurgash. The Commander's sword came
clattering down and decapitated his foe before being swept off into
another skirmish on the field.

Gurgash
had to find a weapon in a hurry, if he remained this vulnerable some
other Elven beast would cut him down. At his right hand, Harg speared
another Elf, too engrossed in his own fighting to notice that his
cousin was weaponless.

Gurgash's
cousin could not defend himself against another Elven warrior, this
one swinging a wicked looking mace directly at his head. Gurgash had
no time to thrust but drew the dagger from the Elf's belt and tore at
his face with it.

The
enemy warrior wore a leather cap strengthened with iron strips, it
did little to protect his face from the slash and he went down
screaming. Harg's pike made short work of the man afterwards.

As
the Elven warrior fell, Gurgash dropped the dagger, a blinding pain
enveloping his left hand. It was as if the blade had turned on him
and set itself ablaze.

'Are
you hurt?' Harg asked, thinking his cousin mortally wounded.

'I'll be fine.' replied Gurgash. 'These Elven blades burn to the
touch.'

Harg
nodded, 'I should have warned you about that.' Then they were back
fighting once more.

They
were being pushed back through the gateway by the Elves in spite of
their efforts, it wasn't looking good.

Raising
his voice above the din of the fight, he called once more to his
cousin. 'Harg, we're losing ground!'

'I
can see that!' screamed Harg, locked in combat with an Elf he was
slowly getting the better of.

Gurgash
had to fall back several paces or be left behind by their retreating
allies, which would have left them cut off, assailed from all
directions at once and doomed to quick destruction. Harg risked
staying forward a moment longer to finish his opponent before being
surrounded by Elves.

'Get
back here you mad fool!' Gurgash wailed at him as he saw the Elves
converging on his position.

Harg
skewered his opponent and leapt back, dashing toward the palisade
gates and narrowly avoiding getting speared in turn.

The
reinforcements from the gateway were entering the fight too slowly,
the Elves they were facing were not the prancing fools the Orcs had
slaughtered in earlier campaigns. The Elf that nearly ended him
roared out a wordless bellow of hate and rage at having narrowly
missed, his face contorted into a mask of fury that would have made
any foe quail.

Harg
jabbed with his pike to keep the warrior at a distance as he
retreated. The Elf howled incomprehensible but oddly musical curses
at him.

Harg
didn't mind being cursed, so long as he could join his cousin's side
in one piece at the gateway. Then his foe reached out with his left
hand to seize the pike and shove it aside so he could close, Harg
expertly jerked it back before thrusting forward again. He felt the
soft, heavy resistance of flesh as the tip of the weapon pierced the
man who sought to slay him.

Harg
had just made it to Gurgash's side when they had to retreat once more
to avoid being surrounded. 'How far are we from the gateway?' he
shouted.

'We have a few feet to spare, nothing more.' answered his cousin.
'But if reinforcements don't push up soon they'll overwhelm us.'

That
was precisely what the Elves were doing. They continued to force the
Orcs and Goblins back even further until they were fighting
desperately to hold them out of the fortified encampment. If the
Elves made it into the camp, Chief Sarvacts' army was doomed. Even
the champions couldn't fight off these numbers.

'What
are we going to do?' cried Gurgash in despair and exhaustion

'Fight,' said Harg grimly. So they did.

'Keep pressing them!' Cusband howled. 'Once we make the gateway
they're ours!'

They
had pressed the Orcs to the very gates of their camp but had been
unable to force their way beyond that bottleneck. Their opponents now
had the dead-eyed look of creatures who see death behind them and
death ahead of them and fought in a frenzied, primal manner that
actually worked in their favour.

There
also seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them coming out of the
gates to bolster the numbers. Somehow these inner Orcs had evaded the
arrows previously sent into the encampment. The remaining Goblin
archers had only one target to aim at and were becoming much more
deadly as a result.

Cusband
hacked desperately at a spear thrust out at him, barely lopping off
the tip with his axe before it punched a hole in his ribs. The blow
from the shaft still winded him slightly, causing one of his comrades
to waylay the creature in his defence.

The
Orcs outside the gate that Cusband faced fell back into the camp for
reasons unknown. The foot soldiers who had been hurrying out to help
defend the lines ceased to press forward. Why had they given up this
natural bottleneck?

A
cry of victory came from the Elven forces who pressed on with a
renewed vigour in an attempt to gain the gateway.

A
deep horn sounded inside the fort, the retreat from the Orcs had been
tactical as he had suspected. Now what was left of the Elves faced
off against the huge armoured champions that had remained out of
sight until this moment.

They
lumbered forward, some mounted and some on foot, slamming into the
oncoming warriors in a wave of steel. Clubbing blows from vast maces
and shining hooves of galloping warhorses greeted the tiring Elven
forces.

They
fought back as best they could against such a devastating counter
attack but their swords and spears rattled harmlessly off the
champions' thick plate.

Cusband's
axe felt as if he had hacked at a stone wall. In spite of the
encumbrance of the champion's armour the Orcs displayed surprising
agility. These elite warriors bellowed out the name of Chief Sarvacts
after each kill and in return one of the riders pumped a mailed fist
in the air.

Cusband
could not see his face but the Orc fought like a creature who had no
regard for its own life. Relentlessly he charged his armoured
warhorse into the press, killing Elf and Orc alike.

The
Orcish champions had superior armour, were fresh into the battle and
had momentum on their side. Never had any of their foes been able to
stand against these warriors in battle and here was no different than
any other slaughter they had been part of.

Those
that did not flee the assault fell, with the few forces left being
routed. Cusband found himself alone.

He
knew that he must flee. He could not stand alone against this
onslaught where their combined forces had failed. And so, cursing the
Orcs and Goblins with equal vehemence, he ran. That he was last to
leave the field alive was little consolation, he had fled like a
coward where others had stood and given their lives for the cause. He
was no better than the craven fools that had been routed as soon as
the champions had appeared, a disgrace to his name and his ancestor's
memories.

He
had almost reached the safety of the trees when an arrow pierced his
arm.

He
snarled one last curse at the Goblin that had shot him and staggered
deeper into the forest to evade pursuit.

He
caught sight of his homeland a few days later. The Orcs had done
their best to stop him from ever returning and they had failed.
Though he may be craven he still yet lived, while more than a few of
them lay dead at his hands.

It
was little solace to him as he made it to the door of his home. They
had lost.

Gurgash
stared at the wounded Elf, uncertain how to feel after the battle was
over. The Elf glared up at him and spat in his face. With a sigh,
Harg speared him in the gut. 'That one would have made a decent
slave.' he remarked. 'I wonder what their price on the meat markets
is these days?'

Gurgash
didn't comment, sending another Elf he found still breathing on the
field out of this world with as much speed and mercy as he could give
them. Somehow they had won the fight, and it had been the champions
they had been cursing before that had swung the battle.

Most
of the Orcs and Goblins he had seen felt the same way, wondering why
the champions hadn't come in sooner and changed the course of the
fight before so many lives had been lost. No one who had stood
against the Elves rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them
anything but worthy foes requiring the intervention of their
strongest forces.

'Isn't
it obvious?' Harg commented as he picked over a corpse for valuables.
'They want to save their best until the very last moment, we're the
grunts and we're expendable, all of us. The champions are not. They
probably feel aggrieved that their hand was forced.'

Chief
Sarvacts rode up as the foot soldiers continued picking through the
corpses, a murderous look of disapproval in his eyes. It was as if
they had failed him personally by dying too often.

'When
next we fight the Elves.' he said. 'My champions will not intervene.
Should you all fall we shall simply replace you with others.'

'Aye,
Chief,' came the chorus from the Orcs. The sight of Sarvacts in such
a mood despite victory scared them. They didn't want to see what
would happen should they ever be defeated. Then again if they were
ever defeated they'd probably not live to witness it. After all, they
were mere grunts.

'Our
goal remains the same, we shall seize this land and make it our own
by washing it clean of the Elven impurity. Then in time the site of
our final victory will become a city to rival the great Orcish
burials of home. We have smashed the back of their armies but there
is much yet to do, we must still root the rest of the Elves out of
their huts and exterminate them so that they breed no further.' he
waved at the corpse-strewn field. 'When everything that is Elven
feeds the ground with its maggot-riddled pestilence, then we shall be
free of their blight.'

From
the battle that Gurgash had just fought through, he hoped that there
were few places left to conquer and that had indeed been the bulk of
the Elven military might.

'I
just hope that's the most they can send against us.' said Harg in a
low voice, echoing Gurgash's own thoughts. 'We barely made it through
that last encounter. If that happens again we'll need more than
champions to turn the tide.'

'Do you suppose hunting the rest of the Elves down will be as easy
as he says?' asked Gurgash.

Before Harg could answer, their commanding officer arrived. 'We've
broken their backs now, it won't be easy to hunt them to extinction
but I don't expect an armed resistance like this again.' he said.

Harg
looked up from searching another a corpse. He rose, muttering to
himself and shaking his head. 'I've not found anything worth keeping.
The poorest, most miserly Goblin carries more in the way of loot than
these pale ones. This conflict just isn't worth it.'

Before
his commanding officer could bite back a retort, Harg had strode
across the field to look for more Elves to finish. The skies were
dark but the cries of the carrion birds had only just begun.

El-Vador
healed quickly thanks to his youth and the natural capabilities of
his people. He was not only up and about but busy equipping himself
for war a couple of days after his father had beaten him.

When
he finally set off on the road to join the battle, he was quick to
meet one of the Elves who had taken word of the Orcish invasion to
the nearby settlements and then gone on to fight. The wounded figure
limped up the path toward him, a blood-soaked bandage covering what
was left of his right arm.

El-Vador
dashed toward his stricken kin. 'The battle, what happened?' he
asked.

The
Elf fell onto the road, his bleeding wound much worse than it at
first seemed. He then spoke the words El-Vador had been fearing the
most, 'We were routed.'

He
shook briefly on the path and then stilled into the repose of the
dead.

My first sight of actual death, of something other than a beast.
That was when the realisation started to sink in, it woke something
in me that had but briefly slumbered. Whether it was passed down from
my father or a product of circumstance I shall never know.

T
he
Orcs marched up the track the Elves used in retreating from the
battle. Their teams of Goblin archers advanced with arrows in hand
and bows at the ready. The surrounding infantry were alert against
any potential ambush that might come from the woods after surviving
the first attack on their fort. In spite of their wary vigilance
there seemed to be no ambush in the making.