Send a spelling or grammar correction to: Tracy Johnson
This is Part I&II of a 2nd draft of a story set in the World of
Greyhawk. It's 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.
Thanks
Jason Zavoda
"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
Kyle Lackland was coming home. He'd been gone a long, long, time,
but he'd never forgotten his past or 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 father's
fate.
It was as a poor relation among his mother's kin that he'd been
raised. A boot boy to his cousins, cadets in the commandants Gran
March Guard. He'd left home at his first chance, age fifteen, and become a
common soldier in the Guard's auxiliaries. At eighteen he was a seasoned
veteran. Kyle had fought for the liberation of Sterich alongside the young
hero-bard Cian, he who was betrayed and fell in battle against the
giants.
Kyle's company had won high honors in Sterich. The auxiliaries
were the first into battle and the last to withdraw. During the years of
warfare, new recruits, drawn from refugees of many lands, were a cheap
commodity. In combat 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 Kyle had dreamed of was at hand. The soldiers of
the Gran March crossed the border 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, his feet dangling above the waves of mire. He
was young, but not as young as he tried to appear. Time was his enemy.
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. At least 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 his body hung from a lamp
post in the marketplace to be discovered by the merchants as they set up
their wares in the early morning light.
His uncle had raised him, and, as soon as Dinet could walk,
trained him to steal then set him to work. Dinet had proved to be 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 nephew's skills.
There was money set aside at least. Dinet was no fool, such as his
father and uncle had been. He'd scrimped and saved, waiting till he had
enough to escape and flee to Greyhawk, 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, Greyhawk awaited him.
* * *
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...
* * *
The sound of horses drummed across the field. The noise reached
the ogre's ears before a single horseman came in sight. It turned its
head, and all along the line of goblins, orcs and gnolls, a hundred
smaller heads turned to the east as well.
The field rolled up, became a gentle slope, and formed a crest
where on a higher plain the border of old Geoff lay, forgotten and
unmanned, though monsters claimed the boundary line as theirs. Below and
to the west, the fields ran down till they met the Great River and held
poor Hochoch in a sad embrace.
These monsters, a patrol lately come to test the strength of their
human foes, the guardsman and the watch, they'd had a lonely hunt along
the eastern fields. The only sight they'd seen was a distant cloud of dust
that never came close and shortly disappeared. But now the horsemen
revealed themselves, at least in sound. Hooves, a thousand strong or more,
drummed against the Oerth.
"Form a line!" the ogre growled. "Archers string your bows!" Three
score bowmen, a dozen gnolls, all obeyed, though not as one. A chatter ran
through the goblins ranks, gnolls whined and barked, they gathered in a
pack. The ogre swore, but saved its breath, the scent of fear was in the
air. If these dogs and rats obeyed at all and did not run, that would be
much more then it had any reason to expect from such scum as these in its
command.
A pennant fluttered in the wind, half black, half white. A griffon
flew with wings of silk and snapped back for all to see, caught in a
south-eastern breeze. A great helm appeared and then a horse's head. A
lone knight halted on the ridge, his tabard black and white, his horse's
barding covered in the same. A hush went through the ogre's troops, then a
small cloud of black fletched arrows rose into the air. The knight and
horse made not a move. The arrows spiked the ground well short, a bad omen
for the goblin-kind.
The ogre growled again, and the goblin archers wavered and drew
back. "You stupid rats!" it screamed. "A single human in a metal pot, and
you run away!"
A gnoll let out a high pitched whine. Behind the knight a hundred
lance points gleamed. The knight began to pace his mount and then turned
it to a gallop. The hundred lances followed him, behind came a hundred
more. The rolling thunder of their hooves washed down the slope and drove
an icy blade of fear through every monster's heart. They ran, the ogre
stood alone.
Ahead, not far, the knight picked out his foe and dipped his
lance. A small salute to bravery, respected, though it wore a brutish
face. The ogre turned its shoulder to the lance and swung back a huge
wedge shaped club of fire-hardened wood. The club's head run through with
iron spikes rusted a dusky red. It tried to dive beneath the point and
swung low to break a foreleg of the horse. The knight had expected such
and reigned his horse just to the left. His lance cut across the ogres
ribs, his mount crashed armored chest to thick-skulled head. The ogre fell
beneath the horse's hooves.
The gallop took the knight beyond his foe, but he turned his horse
and saw the ogre rise and shake itself, hurt but braced for another
charge. The knight trotted up the slope a bit, he needed ground between
them to build up his speed. The ogre waved a hand and called out through
broken teeth, but its words were lost. The knight heard only his own
beating heart and the breathing of his horse. Each charge wore down his
mount, the heavy barding, the knights own weight, all added to the burden
that it carried, but this warhorse was bred for such a life. The knight
clicked his tongue and prodded with his knees. The horse took off, the
downhill slope added to its speed.
With two hands back behind its head, the ogre prepared to smash
this knightling down with a single blow, but the lance point struck it
first. Dead center, the point went in and out the back, the ogre dropped
its club. For just a moment it was lifted up and then the lance bent and
snapped in two. The knight rode past, while the ogre skidded across the
ground, slick grass and fresh turned oerth. The lance point, sticking from
the ogre's back, dug deep and stopped the slide. The ogre moaned and a
wash of blood poured from its mouth and chest.
Throwing away the broken haft, the knight walked his horse to
the ogre's side. The beast reached out and grabbed the lance stuck through
its chest. It pulled, and as it did, it shook and coughed out a bloody
spray. The knight shook his head, then dismounted from his horse. He drew
a gleaming sword that hung from a saddle sheath. The ogre let its hand
fall away, too weak to try again or resigned to its approaching fate. It
closed its eyes, the blade was sharp and quick.
Across the field the last of the ogre's troops fell beneath the
hooves and lances of the Watch. No knight bore any wound, the ogre
alone had stood and fought, but died like all the rest.
* * *
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
Horace, Odes, III, ii, 13.