Send a spelling or grammar correction to: Tracy Johnson
This is a first draft of a story set in the world of Greyhawk.
It is based on a home campaign so some of the people, places and things
may be different. Any helpful comments or suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks
Jason Zavoda
The walls of Hochoch rose into sight. Each step forward brought
them closer into view as the land sloped gently down toward the banks of
the Realstream.
Kyle marched at the head of the column. The Eighth was on point.
The lead company in the vanguard of a mighty host. Behind them, strung out
along the old road, were auxiliaries and regulars, footmen, archers,
knights on horseback and an endless train of supplies and equipment. A
traveling city of merchants, whores and thieves followed closely, ready to
set up within a stones-throw of the army when it camped.
Only the rangers and scouts were ahead of the Eighth. Now it was
the turn for the common troopers to see the brutal devastation that the
giants had brought upon Hochoch.
They slowed without knowing it. Kyle faltered and the entire
company came to a stop. A sigh escaped from several score of throats. It
was as if they had all been struck. For some the sight of Hochoch was a
rude slap. For others, a painful stab into their hearts, but many of the
raw recruits felt as if a clenched hand twisted at their bowels.
The land around the city was bad. Trenches and pits had been cut
and gouged into the oerth almost at random. It looked as if a long and
hard siege had been abandoned before the walls, but a siege without plan
or order. The soil had been burnt and scraped, there were no living things
to be seen, no green grass, everything was brown and grey.
To the south of the city walls there had been a great orchard. No
trees remained, only rows of stumps. The ground was all mud or patches of
clay the color of stone, but with an oily greenish tinge as if the oerth
itself had died and lay their rotting among the slain roots of trees.
A stream ran round the city. The Realstream fed it on its way to
the Javan. Now only a trickle stirred the once clear water. It was a fetid
mire, thick with refuse, stinking in the sun.
These were unpleasant things to see. The land, the water, both
despoiled by the giants, but it was the walls of Hochoch that brought the
column to a halt. Once they had been white. Strong, so the people thought,
and tall. The coming of the giants had taught them that their pretty walls
had not been strong or tall enough.
The walls were no longer white. Filth stained them. Vile words and
pictures had been scrawled on them many times until they were a
meaningless layer of crude scribblings and half-visible images. Lewd icons
had been formed with sticks, garbage and the rotting mire that lay in
scummy lumps along the waters edge. Refuse had been thrown, dumped or
poured over the top till it lay piled halfway up the outer wall. Where
the wall was bare near its upper edge, the color was of dark browns or
greens that were almost black. Mold grew in a thick coat underneath the
merlons atop the wall.
They town was ringed with jagged teeth. The merlons were all
broken, missing or askew. Those that were left each had a rope or wire
tied about their base. It was this that made the troopers stop and gasp or
sigh, or reached inside and brought out their fear.
The people of Hochoch who had not escaped the coming of the giants
were there to greet their rescuers and returning kin. The walls of Hochoch
were decorated with their bones.
* * *
(To Be Continued...)