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This is Part I of a stories first draft set in the World of
Greyhawk. Its based on my own campaign so some persons, places and things
are not in line with the published setting. Any helpful comments or
suggestions are welcome.
This story will appear on a sporadic basis since I currently have
one daily story active and a second regular story that, so far, has been
flowing along on a daily basis.
I have also finished a first draft of a story called,
'An Unsung Death in Geoff' if anyone would like a copy for review please
email me.
Thanks
Jason Zavoda
P.S. I have about 20 stories worked up as concepts and I have found that
I really, really, dislike trying to write them as a single long
composition. But being a big fan of the old movie serials and pulp
magazines, not only is it a great deal of fun writing these stories in
snippets but it is also extremely productive (for me). So I have a lot of
stories I want to tell but will try to refrain from telling them all at
once. In the case of this story I failed and it just wants to be told.
"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 had never forgotten his past and 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
fathers fate.
It was as a poor relation among his mothers kin that he'd been
raised, a boot boy to his cousins who were cadets in the commandants
Gran March guard. He'd left home at the first chance, age fifteen, and
become a common soldier in the guards auxiliaries. At eighteen he was a
seasoned veteran, he'd fought for the liberation of Sterich alongside the
young hero-bard Cian, who was betrayed and fell in battle against the
giants. His company had won high honors, it was the auxiliaries who
were the first into the battle and the last to withdraw. During the
years of warfare and refugees, new recruits were a cheap commodity,
and 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 he had dreamed of was at hand, the Gran March
soldiers marched into Geoff. The Siege of Hochoch had begun.
* * *
The road was a sea of mud. Dinet sat upon the tail of a wagon
piled high with supplies. He was young, but not as young as he tried to
appear. Time was his enemy at the moment. 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 boothes and tents were set.
This loose band of thieves, the free traders association as they
called themselves, it was no guild, 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 hung from a lamp post in
the marketplace to be discovered by the merchants as they set up their
wares in the early morning. His uncle had raised him, and as soon as he
could walk, trained him to steal and set him to work. Dinet had proved 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 nephews skills.
There was money set aside at least. Dinet was no fool such as his
father and uncle had been, 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.
* * *
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...
* * *
(To Be Continued...)