Send a spelling or grammar correction to: Tracy Johnson
This is Part V & VI 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
"They'll gut us both if they find these." Kyle said to Giffard.
His friend put one of a pair of fine daggers back into the carrysack he'd
slung over his shoulder.
"One's for you. We always swore that we'd share our loot." Giffard
said. He handed off the other of the pair to Kyle.
"Loot. Yeah, they've kept us from most, and stolen whatever else
we've found." Kyle put the dagger within his shirt. "Those two sergeants,
they're the worst we've ever had."
"I wonder how they'll fight." said Giffard
"Quiet There!" A voice boomed. Swegen, the monitor of their squad,
ran up along the column. He'd been back keeping the stragglers up to pace
and now jogged alongside, making sure the line was even.
There was a roar from up ahead, then shouting, the line slowed,
and like a barrel fallen from a cart, it splintered off, troopers running
in all directions.
"What the hells?" Swegen cursed.
"Ambush! Ambush!" they could hear the cries.
"Squad form up," Swegen yelled. "You there, form ranks."
A thud rumbled across the ground, then another, and then a boulder
came crashing down amongst the forming line. One trooper took the brunt of
the massive blow. It knocked him back and crushed him but not before his
body knocked five more troopers down as well.
"Swegen," Kyle grabbed the monitors arm. "It's giants. We must
attack. They're just throwing rocks, they can pick us off, and our
slingers will never reach them."
"Attack." Swegen yelled. "look around, they have us on the run
already."
More boulders came crashing down. The men who'd lead the way came
streaming back and the column began to break into flight.
"There're too many green recruits. They'll never stand and fight"
Swegen said. "Scatter.." he began to call. Kyle struck him across the
head. The monitor dropped like a sack of wheat.
"Giffard! Get them moving forward. To me!" Kyle yelled. "To me!"
He grabbed a signalman, a new recruit from another squad. "Sound the
horn." he ordered the rattled man.
"What call?" the hornsman asked.
"Advance! Advance under fire!" Kyle punched him in the shoulder
and turned him to face the troops.
Panic had just raised its voice. The column spoke from a hundred
different heads. Then the horn began to sound.
Giffard threw the men ahead, he grabbed them by their collars and
their arms. He pushed and prodded them toward the open field on their
right which ran beside the road. Up ahead, the ruins of a wayside inn
lay along the road. Three giant shapes could be seen hefting stones from
its broken walls, and, with arms like engines of war, they sent their
rocks crashing among the running troops.
"There must be a score fallen already." Giffard said aloud.
Where were those sergeants now, he wondered. "Come on, lets go," he
screamed at a dozen men in his charge that he'd kept together. "Spread
out. Lets get them before they get us."
More men circled around Kyle and the horn. He had half the company
at least. "At them." he cried, and in a mass they charged down the road.
Boulders plowed a bloody swath through the massed ranks, but Kyle
kept running, the hornsman sounding at his side. He lead them and they
followed after.
Giffard's dozen had grown to two score as men who'd fled came back
to the sounding horn. He snapped them up as quickly as they appeared, and
together they went wide, round the far side of the wrecked inn.
Three giants laughed and raised a sweat with their heavy work.
They tore a standing wall apart and hurled the stones into the oncoming
troops. Giffard took them by surprise. Thirty-eight troopers followed him
into the ruin's overgrown yard. Some held back, but most charged,
screaming as loud as their throats could manage, both in fear and in
anger.
Giffard drew first blood. His sword sliced away a chunk of giant
flesh. He aimed a blow behind the knee, but the giant moved. The blade
cut into the monster's thigh and released a stream of blood.
The giant jumped, startled and hurt, but not badly. Nearby, a
second giant took a sword through its upper arm, but it pulled the weapon
from the trooper's grasp and swatted the man down with an open hand. The
man would never rise again. The third giant was further on. He turned and
saw the men attack. The boulder in his hands killed three. He tossed
it as if it weighed no more than a brick, but it crushed the troopers like
ants beneath the heel of a shoe.
Giffard cut again and felt the sword jar in his hand as he struck
the giants knee. It howled and kicked him in the chest. Giffard flew like
a rag-doll and bowled down several of his men. His iron helm brought
sparks from the stone as he skidded along the ground, and a wave of black
washed the battle from his sight.
* * *
The soldiers yelled as they charged. The noise drowned out the
horn which blew the advance on and on. No longer did the boulders fly.
Kyle and the Eighth company ran toward the ruined inn. They could
see the giants towering above the fallen walls, but the monsters had their
backs to the advancing men.
A dark shape went flying through the air, but it did not go far.
Tossed over a giant's shoulder, it struck the ground with only a single,
wet bounce, then lay crumpled ans still. The trooper's corpse landed in
Kyle's path, but far enough ahead so that he had time to leap over the
ruined body and keep on running.
Kyle was the first to reach the wall. The young signalman was
next and clambered up beside him. The scene before them revealed a
desperate fight. A score of troopers faced two giants, another score lay
scattered about, broken, bleeding and dead. Before him, just beneath his
feet, Kyle might have stepped out upon the head and shoulders of another
giant. Wounded, perhaps crippled, one hand holding its knee, the other
waving a club at three soldiers, the monster was unaware that a foe
stood behind it. The men who darted back and forth trying to get a sword
within stabbing reach held all of the giant's attention in a grip of
sharpened steel.
The giant jabbed with its club and knocked one man aside. Another
trooper darted in and slashed its arm, but its other hand lashed out and
grabbed the daring swordsman by the head. There was a snap and the sword
dropped from the lifeless grasp. The trooper's head, cracked like a walnut
in the giant's massive fist. Kyle cursed and thrust his sword into the
monster's neck.
A whispering gurgle escaped as the giant tried to roar. Kyle's
sword had pierced its throat. The giant let go its club and grabbed its
throat, trying to close the hole that Kyle's sword had opened.
The two surviving soldiers rushed forward. One buried his sword up
to the hilt in the giant's belly. The other man thrust up and under the
trunk-like arm, but ahuge fist came down and hit him squarely across the
head. The soldier fell, head lolling at an obscene angle, dead.
Encircled, the last two giants still fought, and they took a
fearsome toll among the soldiers. Swords cut them from behind, sling
stones bounced from face and head, and off of mountainous shoulders and
chests. One giant fell, a tendon severed behind the knee. The other took
flight.
Bellowing like a maddened aninal, the giant brushed aside or
crushed all those who stood in its path. It ran through a thicket of
swords, and the blades slashed its legs cruelly, but struck no vital part.
With strides longer than a man was tall, the giant soon left the fight
behind and ran off into the night.
With its tendon cut, the giant had fallen on its face. The monster
had been sent crashing down like a tree beneath a woodsmans axe. The giant
tried to push itself to its feet, but a dozen swords hacked it down again.
Swords cut into the giant from foot to crown. They hewed at arms thick as
a fat mans waist. They stabbed the huge warrior, sought its eyes to blind
the monster. Blades glanced off ribs like barrels staves, hacked at hide
thick as leather armor, but finally the giant died. The troopers kept
slashing long after it had drawn its final breath. They did not stop till
the giant's body was a bloody hash and their tired arms could lift their
dulled blades no longer.
Atop the wall Kyle fought the giant before him face to face. He
used both hands to bring his sword around and caught the monster across
the brow. The blade sunk in above the giants eye, burying the edge into
the jutting bone. Metal snapped, cheap steel fractured at the hilt, the
length of sword lodged tight within the giant's skull.
Below, the last of the three swordsmen retrived his fallen
comrade's sword. His own was sunk too deep, buried within the vitals of
his foe. He slashed the giant's upraised arms. The monsteer struck the
wall, ignoring the man's attacks.
Above, the horn gave a wailing off-tune note and the signalman
tumbled from his perch. Kyle grabbed out, but could not stop the trooper's
fall. The man hit the ground head first, then was crushed beneath the
giant's stamping feet.
"Damn." Kyle cursed. He threw the useless hilt at the giants face.
It might have left a scratch, but did naught else. Kyle pulled the dagger
from his belt and, as he did, remembered the other knife that Giffard had
handed him. He drew that blade as well, letting the fine sheath fall
carelessly away. With a knife in either hand, Kyle threw himself upon the
giant's chest.
* * *
(To Be Continued...)