The Chronicles of Crallick

by Brad C Baker

  Coming up on Crallick’s right-hand side, striding forward to the space vacated by the blade of her master, Kittalae interposed herself between another foe and Crallick. She thrust her oar at his chest. Her foe didn’t really pay attention to the blunt weapon, being more concerned with the toxic skinned tree froggle nearby. She imagined his surprise as the suddenly magically morphed oar pierced into his liver in a gruesome spray of black gore. The oar shortened and fattened to get free of the falling cadaver on its own accord.

  Brom was wheezing heavily and coughing up blood. He forced himself to run at the next line of defenders. They had arrayed themselves in a skirmish line, five abreast. Forcing himself to focus, Brom targeted the last man on the outermost side of the engagement. This meant that it would take slightly longer for him to become surrounded and overwhelmed. Brom launched himself forward, stiffening his right leg ahead of him. His foot landed squarely on the man’s knee with a crunch of gravel caught in a mill wheel. As the man toppled and fell, Brom ensured that he fell chest first onto his dagger. The man began to vomit blood onto him; Brom hastened his death with a quick strike of his cutlass to the temple of the dying fellow.

  Glip-Glip hopped along the back of the frontline of the shore defenders. He found a man whose shirt had come loose from his breeches and flapped sloppily as he fought a massive form in front of him. With a happy “kree-kree”, Glip-Glip patted the naked flesh of the now convulsing sailor. As the body spasmed to the ground, a bull froggle appeared, which looked gargantuan from the three-foot tree-froggle’s point of view. “Kree!” called Glip-Glip in his cheerfully tenor voice.

  “Hello yourself,” Hullaboo replied. “You stay clear of me now. No touchy!”

  “No touchy,” agreed Glip-Glip. Then he turned to find another quarry.

  Vlados’s strength was waning. He slipped as he cranked the winch for the crossbow. It snapped through to its fired position. Dejectedly, Vlados began cranking the crossbow back again. Gods, he felt so tired.

  Menshirre grabbed a descending strike with his scaled claw, reversed the blow, and thrust it deep into the bowels of his aggressor. As the man began to bellow, Menshirre silenced him by extending his neck, opening his jaws, and clamping his teeth down on the disemboweled man’s windpipe.

  Screaming like a wailing spirit, Izzy disregarded all form and finesse that usually goes with wielding a cutlass. Instead, two-handed, spurred on by his grief-fuelled rage, Izzy cleaved a man from his hip to his groin, sending grey-pink loops of eel-like intestines puddling the beach around his victim. He dove forwards, trying to find a way behind the defenders to wreak more havoc.

  Erik and the other man looked at each other for long moments. “You’re as solid as an Amarallan,” huffed Erik.

  Nodding, the other man said, “You get a head of wind on you like one too.”

  “I’m from Drakespire,” Erik said.

  “Wyvernhold.”

  They nodded and stood silently while the tumult raged around them.

  Jarrol broke free of the front line to rush forward. He saw Brom taking on a skirmish line by himself. It wouldn’t do to leave his mate out to dry alone. With a war cry to let Brom know help was on the way, he charged the other end of the line. A scruffy Nekomin hissed at his charge. Jarrol batted away the Nekomin’s feeble parry, then he changed the angle of his thrusting sword, and drove the tip into the hollow of the neck of the scruffy thing. The tip of the blade sliced over the sternal notch, and dove, as though a kingfisher seeking the heart-fish. His blade came out with the smell of iron, and scarlet spray.

  Noticing the rising struggle deeper inland, Hullaboo leapt the forty feet to dive his spear towards the midst of the skirmish line that was fast turning into a front. The surprisingly nimble, but heavily muscled orc deftly stepped aside, and Hullaboo’s spear point struck nothing but sand.

  With thrusts and parries coming at swifter periods, the momentum of Jaroll’s duel took a life of its own. Faster and faster until it deteriorated into unplanned thrashing, the outcome of which would be decided by either fate or chance. Well, one of the goddesses must have been pleased with him, Jaroll decided, as his blade failed to meet resistance and buried itself to the hilt in the opponent’s chest. His cocky well-being was short-lived, however, as the man fell away, twisting his cutlass half from his grip. Then, with the torque on his elbow, there came a brutal eruption of pain and a spurting flow of blood, as the dying man took his elbow clean away as he fell. Jaroll fell too, screaming, and crying in pain.

  Gregor had lucidity come back to him with a start! He bolted up in the bottom of the boat and felt the lump on the side of his head. Then he remembered they were trying to storm a beach. He took a quick stock of himself. Shot in the left calf; he tied that off. He’d limp, but he’d manage. Knot on side of the head, nothing to be done about that. Next, he grabbed his dropped sword. Finally, as he got out of the boat, he marked his surroundings. He noted the captain, looking ashen in the bow of a nearby boat. That wasn’t good. He hurriedly limped his way over.

  Bargress lumbered through the fray without bothering to use his sword. Instead, he tore a man’s right side free of its fleshy moorings with his own claws. The fearful image of the blood-soaked Komodoman roaring and flinging bits of carrion away like slobber drooling from a hungry mastiff’s mouth set terror in the hearts of friend and foe alike.

  Ronald Noble was finally stymied when his less than noble tactics were sniffed out and foiled. Coming for a deft strike on the flank of a defender, his motion was caught in their peripheral vision and his target pivoted on one foot, carrying them out of the reach of his blade.

  The man caught the unsuspecting Ronald’s arm and pulled, adding to his forward momentum. All that acceleration made Ronald’s encounter with the man’s sword very abrupt indeed. With the force that launched the blade into his chest and the air out of his lungs, Ronald twisted to the side to try in vain to save his life. This had the undesired effect of slicing the blade through his lungs. Ronald’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed, unseeing, into a darkening patch of sand.

  Nursing his stump of an arm, Jaroll wondered why he felt dizzy, and then the world went topsy-turvy. It wasn’t until his body rolled into view that he realized the grave state he was in. Then without closing his eyes, sight left him. His mouth felt dry. Then nothing.

  Bargress, roaring, frothing at the mouth, raging forward, locked his sights on the five men who fired bolts and shot at him. He deftly evaded three of the missiles, only to have a bolt imbed itself in his chest. It shot a trough through the scales on his left leg. Staggering, he kept coming.

  The three remaining men in the skirmish line focused their fury against the massive froggle. Hullaboo dodged one strike, parried the blow of another, and grunted in pain as a third struck home. Noting the limp in the froggle’s right leg, the defender waited for the shift in weight, then sank his cutlass into the right thigh’s already weakened flesh. Hullaboo dropped to the ground.

  Crallick silently charged across the reddening beach to the side of his friend. Standing over Hullaboo, he drove a bolt of fire into the face of a man who seemed intent on cleaving Hullaboo’s head from his shoulders. The man wasn’t even able to scream as his vocal chords were immolated almost instantly, and his brain parboiled in his own skull. Crallick’s sword kept another blade from falling onto the fallen froggle.

  Kittalae followed her master, dutifully staying in his shadow. As he deflected a sword with his own, she snuck her oar-turned living spear into the liver of the oaf who had the gall to assault her master. She smiled bitterly as he slid free of her serpentine weapon, spilling more blood slick ichor onto the once pristine beach.

  Wheezing heavily, his arms feeling heavier with every passing moment as oxygen starved-muscles cried out for relief, Brom kept soldiering on. He managed to side-step a man focused on the fallen Hullaboo, and he drove his own cutlass into the man’s kidney, his body weight, more than his muscle, driving the point lethally home.

>   Two springing leaps sent the three-foot tall Glip-Glip sailing to the rearmost group of enemies. They were still using missile weapons and were frantically reloading. None of them saw, until it was too late, the flying blue and yellow tree froggle. The man pounced on was fortunate enough to have his crossbow up. Screaming, he tried valiantly to keep the slimy creature from touching him on his skin. Glip-Glip’s rather non-toxic tongue slobbered all over the man’s face, sending him into hysterics.

  Menshirre ran heavily along, trying to close the distance between the former front line, and the missile shooting Chess-spawn in the back rank.

  Izzy heard a plaintive cry from behind him, spun around, and saw two vile defenders still threatening his crew. For all he knew, they were the ones who had killed his brother. He grabbed one by the neck, taking him totally off guard, locked his hand in the man’s sword arm and proceeded to use the man to run through his mate. The shocked and flat-footed man simply gurgled up blood as the slender blade struck through his neck, slicing out the other side. Izzy giggled.

  Vlados managed to raise his loaded crossbow and fired ineffectively at what he thought was a member of the abductor’s force. Blearily he took note of Gregor approaching.

  “Seen better days, Captain?” asked Gregor.

  “Yeah,” breathed out Vlados. “I’m afraid they killed me.”

  “Aww, Captain, now don’t ye be saying that. We’ve got your daughter to fetch. Ye don’t want to be disappointing her, now do ye?” Gregor prompted.

  “Now that’s just not right,” Vlados grumbled.

  “Now, I’m not saying ye have to be a hero or nothing, just hang in there.” Gregor knelt beside the dwarf. “Now let me have a look at ye.”

  Vlados let himself lay back in the boat. He sprawled across the seat. As he felt Gregor tugging at his shirt, and the clammy hands sending jolts of pain through him, he gazed up at the sky and thought about what a perfect blue it was. Vlados smiled.

  Gregor, meanwhile, was not enjoying the romance of the scenery, nor was he casual. His frenetic, jittery hands tore Vlados’s shirt off, then fetched a dagger from his boot. He ran his tongue along it to clean the old gore from it, then drove it into the wound, pushing the bolt out through Vlados’s back. When he heard it hit the bottom of the boat, he withdrew his dagger. He poured rum into the wound, then frantically pulled out four of his black powder bundles for his pistol. One by one, he emptied them into the leaking wound. Once he finished, he leaned forward and whispered, “Vlados, mate, I’m truly sorry for this.”

  Jarod leaned into his swing and drove the man’s own parry into the man’s trunk. He then headbutted his nose. As the man staggered back, reeling in pain, he felt Jarod slice his side open. Then he tasted the alkaline flavours of the beach’s sand as he crashed to the ground.

  Hullaboo used his spear to regain his footing.

  “You alright?” Crallick growled.

  “Yep, yep,” Hullaboo then swelled his throat and erupted into a foghorn-esque bellow that rolled the length of the beach, matching Bargress’s roaring from the other end of the skirmish.

  Drake and his opponent had exchanged names, and to keep up appearances, were batting at each other’s weapons, perhaps not entirely convincingly. The two fellow countrymen parlayed as the violent struggle went on around them.

  Roaring the whole way, and oblivious to his wounds and pains, Bargress rushed across the beach and leapt upon the two end crossbowmen, taking them unawares as their fear and concentration had been split between the toxic tree-froggle and the massive Komodoman. One he only knocked back, the other was more grievously wounded. His left hand had fortunately found the man’s throat, and claws left it a tattered ruin.

  Bargess took a blow to the side of his head as a man, instead of drawing steel, chose to smash his crossbow down into his skull instead. All that accomplished was to break a perfectly good crossbow. The man Bargress was on was bleating like a wounded sheep. He clumsily fished out a dagger and dropped it in to the sand.

  Glip-Glip fared well with the defender he was grappling with. However, the pain that erupted in his back, followed a breath later by the report of a pistol, did not entirely signify the end of his fortune. The shot passed through his side and into the chest of the man he was struggling with. Nevertheless, he let out a baleful “Kree!”

  The poor sailor locked in Izzy’s giggling grasp struggled, twisted, and finally managed to turn to face Izzy. The wild-eyed countenance he beheld made him lose all hope of reconciliation. Izzy giggled again, “I have a short point to make. I hope you get it.”

  Feeling the gentle pressure in his belly, the man cried, “No!” With a sudden surge of adrenaline, he tore away and began running up the beach.

  The last five defenders rushed their fallen companions, leaping over the corpses to stab and strike and thrust at the Flamerunner’s crew. Most of the blows were ineffective, being either dodged or parried. Two fell through the defences.

  One sought out the flesh of the already wounded Hullaboo. The blade opened up his throat pouch, sending mucous and air blowing back at the attacker. Other than pain, and disrupting his bellow, Hullaboo’s pouch did exactly what it was designed to do. It made him look bigger. It also took an otherwise lethal blow into a sack of skin.

  Kittalae was the other victim. She held up her oar crosswise to deflect a blow. The ship’s hatchet cleaved the oar in two, along with her left wrist. She screamed. Her senses assailed by the most intense pain she had ever experienced in her life.

  Upon hearing her scream, Crallick dropped any pretense of calmness he had for these proceedings. Hissing out arcane syllables, he vented fire at the one who hurt his girl. His sword rent the torso of the other in front of him. Both dropped. One immolated, the other simply adding to the charnal colouring of the beach.

  Kittalae threw what was left of her oar at another Chessintran sailor. It burst into scores of flying splinters that accelerated far too swiftly to their marks. He died on his feet before falling in a gory heap amongst the dunes.

  Brom Corr sliced open the tendons on the wrist holding his opponent’s blade. The blade fell to the sands. Corr wheezed, “Do you yield?”

  Glip-Glip finally caressed the cheek of the man he was tussling with. There was a brief spasm, then he focused on the one who shot at him.

  Vlados erupted in a sweat. Then his numbed brain registered the smell of burning sulfur and… pork? Mmm. He would be hungry, if not for his damn belly ache. He groggily lifted his head to see Gregor having lit a bit of black powder that was on his tummy. ‘Oh no,’ his mind screamed. Then there was searing, excruciating, burning, stinking, and screaming. Contrails of smoke whisped out of his body. Gods, why couldn’t he just lose consciousness? That seemed so appealing. But no, the goddess of fate had it in for him today.

  Izzy, calmly for one deranged, fished out his pistol, loaded it, then aimed at the fleeing sailor and fired. The figure took three more footfalls and collapsed in a snowy plume of sand.

  Jarod flanked around the man who cut at Crallick and liberated him from his head.

  Hullaboo drove his spear deep into the defender who stood against him. The man’s ribs split and snapped as the wide-bladed spear point rent through them, then with a twist, sundered the man’s lung before withdrawing to the air.

  Bargress filleted the man he knocked prone under him, his back legs kicking repetitively until there was little more than ruined meat staining the sand.

  Menshirre devastated the final opponent he faced with a ravening draw of his blade across the offender’s throat. So coated in blood and gore was he, you could no longer tell the monitorman’s original coloring.

  Wanda gasped an alarmed breath. One she never thought she would ever draw again. She sat upright. Her spell had gone off. Sadly, instead of providing a healing mist for allaying the wounds suffered by her comrades, it poured all of its power into restoring her fluids and healing her tissues as a whole. She still felt a wreck. In the distance, she could make out the
dying sounds of battle, and the cries of the wounded.

  With a rather cocky and sheepish grin, a final defender dropped his blade into the sand and coyly said, “I surrender mate.”

  Crallick strode up to the surrendering man and drove his serrated blade through the man’s midsection. “I don’t care,” was his dry response. He then took a moment to gaze around the once beautiful, now quite grisly beach. It looked like a child had dumped buckets of red paint over a white canvas, then added splotches of brown and maroon. There was one stranger talking to Mr. Drake. Marley was sitting curiously in the middle of everything. Of the twenty men he had set out with in the launches, a mere thirteen besides himself remained upright.

  Crallick marched over to Drake. “Who’s your friend?” he growled.

  “This is Armon Faulk of Drakespire, in Amaral,” Erik explained.

  “Good to meet you,” Armon began.

  Leveling his sword point at Armon’s throat, Crallick warned, “Shut up. I’ll talk to you when I want to hear you, not before.” Then to Erik, he lightened his tone slightly. “What makes you think we should keep him alive?”

  “He felt their mission was shite. But being the only rational man in a crew of zealots meant he kept his head down and prayed for deliverance,” Erik explained.

  Nodding, Crallick said, “Fine, but he’s your responsibility, and he only lives if he tells us everything he knows. Not now, mind you, I have to take stock of our resources and check our wounded. Later.” He put his hand up when Armon seemed about to speak again. Then he walked away, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Everybody, listen up! Collect yourselves by me. We’ll take stock of how fit everyone is, and figure out our next step.”