She nodded, peering through the looking glass again. “They certainly do,” she said. “However, if they’ve decided to flee, they haven’t done so yet.”
“Mmh,” I grunted. “I guess that means they’re not going to. They obviously see that half of our forces are on horseback. There’s no way they’d make it back to Homehold if they waited any longer to evacuate.”
Now this was a decision that I didn’t want to make lightly. I held up my left fist, as my raised Soulguard was the signal for the caravan to stop, then hustled back down our line, to where Erhoff was marching with the Red-Hands.
“Erhoff, what are the chances that the Red-Hands are stationed at this garrison to the north?” I asked.
He frowned. “Unlikely,” he said. “Last I heard, Therena was sending some true-believers down to that garrison. Men who were unlikely to flee. Why do you ask?”
“Because the garrison is manned by several hundred Imperials,” I said. “And they haven’t fled yet.”
“Then I suppose they won’t flee at all,” Erhoff grunted. “Aye, I suppose they’ve been ordered to hold until the end.”
I turned back, looking north, where I could see the stout garrison just over the horizon. A couple hundred die-hards could make trouble for us. At the moment, I was sure they’d already sent some riders to Homehold to warn them of our approach. If we got tied up too long trying to overrun the garrison, Therena would have extra time to scheme and plan.
“Alright, let’s see how die-hard these assholes really are,” I said. I flagged down Hingar and Gorrok. “Guys, keep your men here for now. I’m going to approach the garrison to give them a warning.”
Gorrok bared his teeth. “I’d just as soon kick their walls down, Gamelord.”
“I share the same sentiment,” Hingar echoed. “Let’s overwhelm them.”
“Aye,” Gorrok said. “Then let a handful flee, to show the others what fearsome foes they have coming for them.”
A solid plan, but it wasn’t quite my style…at least, not while I had other options on the table.
“Back where I come from, they say you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar,” I said. “No, you guys stay here.” I glanced back at Pandora. “Come on you, we’ve got work to do.”
As always, Pandora knew exactly what I was thinking. She grinned. “That’s a fair distance to teleport,” she said. “Once we reappear, you’ll need to cast a TK shield spell along with me to make sure their arrows don’t pierce the shield.”
My god, I fucking loved her so much. “Way ahead of you,” I answered. I patted the warhorse on the snout. “You stay here for now, big guy,” I said, because I didn’t want him to get spooked by the sudden teleportation.
Pandora and I dismounted. A moment later, we vanished.
*****
When we reappeared, roughly one-hundred yards from the wooden walls surrounding the garrison, a chorus of shouts rose up from the legionnaires inside.
At once, several dozen archers perched atop the wall shot a volley of arrows at us. With our combined TK powers, however, not a single one of them came close to penetrating our invisible barrier.
They fired another volley and got the same result. Their captain, some hulking knight, shouted for them to hold their fire.
I used my illusion magic to make my voice louder, since I didn’t feel like yelling my voice raw.
“Men of the Imperial Legion, you know exactly who I am,” I said.
Even from a hundred yards off, I could hear them gasping and muttering my name.
“You won’t get past us ‘til the last of us draws his dying breath!” the hulking knight shouted in response.
“Well, I don’t want things to come to that,” I said. “Right now, I’m giving you men the chance to head back to Homehold. I see no reason for slaughter at this hour, and you men surely know this battle would amount to just that. We are not like your Emperor! We value life, even those of our enemies!”
Pandora smirked as she studied the garrison through her looking glass. “A number of the knight’s men don’t seem to share his sentiment, Earthman,” she whispered.
As if in response, the hulking knight suddenly whipped around to address some of his men. They must have been grumbling nervously. “Shut up, you cowards!” the knight shouted. He turned back to me. “These men love their Empire!” he screamed. “And any coward that won’t fight won’t have to worry about you Earthman, because if they try to flee, I’ll cut them down myself!”
This guy couldn’t have made this any easier for us if he tried.
As I assumed his men wouldn’t appreciate being threatened like that, I made my next move.
“To all the honorable men of the Imperial Legion who don’t believe in needless bloodshed,” I said. “Hear me now. If you stay in this garrison, but don’t want to listen to this motherfucking knight flap his gums anymore, then join us!” I raised my voice at this point. “When my forces draw near, simply pull out your daggers, cut your palm, and brand yourself with your own bloody handprint! No harm will come to you! You have my word on that!”
The knight roared in frustration. “Fire on them, you bastards! Fill them with arrows right now!”
But by the time they drew their arrows back, Pandora had already teleported us back to our army.
I did note, however, that only about half of those archers even decided to draw an arrow, and now I had a great feeling about what was going to happen.
*****
I called upon six hundred warriors for our assault.
“Earthman, that’s not nearly enough!” Gorrok shouted.
“Oh, trust me, it’ll be plenty,” I said.
I made sure the force was a mixed group, with three hundred orcs on horseback and a wood elf warrior riding with each one. Though they were hesitant to mix their numbers at first, they’d warm to each other soon enough.
I rode to the front of the caravan with those six hundred warriors along with me. “Me and Pandora will lead the charge,” I shouted. “Our TK shields will block the brunt of their arrows, so stay behind us!”
Pandora had her looking glass out again. Her smile curved wide when she spied the garrison again.
“How’s it going up there?” I asked.
“Just as we hoped,” she said, then handed me the looking glass.
“Fucking right on!” I said, as now I saw that the legionnaires were skirmishing amongst themselves.
Sure enough, I’d just convinced roughly half of them to join the Red-Hand Legionnaires.
I turned back to the six hundred warriors. “Any man with a bloody handprint on his chest is an ally,” I said. “Now CHARGE!”
Chapter Eighteen
And we charged toward the garrison where, inside, that hulking knight was taking on almost half of his own men.
I cast another ally beast spell, just to be on the safe side.
GREEN MAGIC SKILL INCREASED +1
HORSEBACK SKILL INCREASED +2
As we drew closer to the bedlam in the garrison, the warhorse seemed to grow more eager, to run faster, as if he were thirsty for battle.
The six-hundred warriors at our back were coming two abreast behind us. I used my illusion magic to raise my voice. “Circle clockwise around the garrison!” I shouted to the force behind me. The orcs and wood elves roared in response.
Of course, I wanted to add that, once we were in the thick of it, that the wood elves should fire their arrows while the orcish cavalry took care of the melee, but my hybrid orc-elf force was already beginning to come together. Already, the wood elves were drawing their arrows.
I grinned confidently, because this force was coming together faster than I thought it would.
The warhorse neighed and drove itself even faster. I turned back to Pandora. “You take him for a ride,” I said as we closed in on the garrison. Even from here, I could see that husky knight was busy hacking through newly-minted Red-Hand Legionnaires. “I want to get a shot at that asshole as qui
ckly as I can.”
Pandora nodded, then shimmied around me to take the warhorse’s reins. “You can never do anything the easy way, can you, Earthman?” she said, grinning.
“Nope,” I said, then the moment we got close enough, I cast a teleport spell, vanished, and reappeared behind the garrison’s wooden barricade.
MYSTICISM SKILL INCREASED +1
The hulking knight snarled as he whipped his iron claymore around, coming within inches of hacking off a Red-Hand’s left arm.
When the Red-Hand Legionnaires saw me, they roared in excitement.
“Hey motherfucker,” I said. “I really, really don’t like you.”
The big knight knew he was fighting a losing battle by now. I could see it in his face that far more of these legionnaires branded themselves as Red-Hands than he’d anticipated.
And no wonder. The way I saw it, these men would have held to the end, yeah…if they hadn’t been given a chance to join us. If they would have run, the Emperor would have executed anyone who fled as a deserter. And even if they got away, it wasn’t like most of them didn’t have a family to worry about, right? I assumed their wives or even their kids would suffer the consequences of their actions.
So it was either certain death against us, or certain death in the aftermath. No wonder the morale amongst these Imperials was shit.
But the hulking knight had no such reservations. I could see it in his eyes as we squared up with one another. This fucking psychopath was ready to die for his Emperor.
“Rebel bastard,” he growled.
“Make your move, asshole,” I said, then drew my amber longsword. Yeah, I could have fried this douchebag with a quick lightning spell, but I wanted to feel my blade drive into his worthless husk.
He was faster than I thought, bringing down that heavy claymore in quick, successive strikes. Of course, I blocked each one easily enough with the Soulguard.
BLOCK SPELL INCREASED +1
Even better, because the war mage class gave bonus modifiers to my unarmored skills, I was far more adept at simply evading his clumsy blows altogether.
I sidestepped his next thrust then slashed at the hilt of his weapon with the amber longsword. He cursed as I hacked off three of his fingers, but the crazy bastard wanted to keep going, despite the blood gushing from his wounded hand.
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
“Look pal,” I said as the knight tried to regain his bearings. “There’s no way you’re winning this fight. So c’mon, come to your senses. Yield now and I’ll let you walk.”
But the blind fury in his eyes was burning even hotter. He was wheezing and gasping for breath, but nevertheless hacked a loogie toward my feet.
“Burn in hell, rebel!” he shouted, then came at me with one last wild charge.
I pivoted, spun around his desperate slash, then drove the tip of the amber longsword right through his throat.
Now, all the fighting around me had stopped. Even the ‘loyalists’ had seen the mercy I’d offered to their captain. Many of them promptly dropped their weapons.
“Yield, boys, yield!”
“Mercy, Gamelord, please!”
“We yield, we yield!”
A Red-Hand spearman looked to me for leadership. “What should we do with them, Sir Gamelord?”
“I’m no ‘sir,’ pal,” I said. I looked over the twenty or so loyalists who’d begged for mercy. “There should be room for them in the jails. Stick them in the cells with plenty of food and water. Also, leave behind a half-dozen men to make sure they don’t try to escape…or starve to death.”
The battle was winding down all around the garrison. Just outside the wooden barricade, the foolish hundred-odd true-believers who tried to throw themselves against the orc-elf force had all been cut down.
Pandora came riding up to me, and it was only then that I saw the wound in the warhorse’s chest.
Pandora frowned, with tears brimming in her eyes. “Earthman, the horse took a spear to the heart,” she said. “Only his thirst for battle keeps him on his feet, yet he won’t let me tend to his wound…”
The warhorse was already growing unsteady on his feet and the blood loss was only getting worse.
“I’d been dealing with several legionnaires on my right flank,” Pandora said. “I never saw the spearman approaching from the left.” She wiped a growing tear away. “The horse reared back and crushed the spearman’s skull with its hooves, but not before getting stuck in the heart.”
The horse huffed and looked at me with drowsy eyes. I’d only been riding the horse for a short time, but I’d already grown to care about him. My guts coiled in doom when the warhorse suddenly lurched forward, then lay down on the ground.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I said as Pandora hopped off his back. All around us, our forces were watching closely as I tended to the animal. The warhorse licked my hand. “I’m just going to touch your wound, okay?”
The horse huffed quietly as I slipped my left hand toward the gaping wound in its chest. The horse flinched a bit, and the wound was dire, but I channeled all the mana I could into the Soulguard, then cast an overpowered healing spell onto the horse.
I could only hope that the damage hadn’t already been too far gone. I rubbed the bridge of his nose again. The warhorse huffed gently. “How about we give you a name, buddy?” I asked. “A horse as brave as you deserves one.”
The horse let out a weak little neigh.
“What about Doombringer?” I asked.
The horse huffed.
“Alright, how about Warmonger?” I asked.
The horse growled.
“Well, you need a name, buddy,” I said.
The horse’s eyes went wide and he neighed excitedly.
I laughed. “Alright, Buddy it is!” I said. I glance down at the horse’s wound and saw that it was closing nicely. Even better, the internal bleeding seemed to have stopped. Within minutes, Buddy was back on his feet again, neighing for me to return to his saddle.
“See!” Erhoff said, though I wasn’t sure when he approached. “How many Imperial officers loyal to that wretched Emperor would have simply slaughtered that mighty horse for meat? Not so with the Earthman!”
“Cheers to the Earthman!” the new Red-Hand Legionnaires cried out.
Behind us, the rest of our forces did the same. I grinned out at all of them, which included the three-hundred-and-fifty or so new Red-Hand Legionnaires that joined us. “Let’s go, people!” I shouted. “Therena is waiting for us!”
*****
During the rest of the journey, I was surprised that Therena hadn’t sent any patrols to hassle us or even attempt to thin our numbers. I figured she was playing it safe. By now, she knew what was coming for her. She knew that she’d need every last one of her men if she even wanted a shred of hope to win the coming battle.
It was just before noon when we broke out of the treeline and began marching across the flatlands leading to Homehold. Behind me, everyone was itching for battle, and I noticed that the wood elves and orcs were getting along quite well. They’d even mixed their ranks around, with certain orcs joining wood elf divisions, and vice versa.
Then, in the middle of them all, were the Red-Hand Legionnaires. These men had a different look in their eyes than their loyalist counterparts. The loyalists, before going into battle, always looked as though they were only joining the fight because they’d known they’d be executed otherwise.
Not so with the Red-Hands. Their eyes burned with a righteous fury, as if they were itching for revenge after being used by the Empire to subjugate their fellow citizens.
Greenbeard appeared before me, contacting me through the amber leaf amulet. “We’re in position, Earthman!” he said. “And half of our number, me along with them, will fall upon Homehold within the hour!”
“Good,” I said. “The battle will be underway by then. You and your forces will be the final nail in their coffin.”
“I look forward to it!” the spriggan bel
lowed, then the image of his face faded into the ether.
Across the flatlands, I saw that Homehold was opening its gates. A small group of figures came walking outside, toward us.
Pandora, on Buddy behind me, watched through her looking glass. She handed it to me. “It’s her,” she said.
I looked. Sure enough, there was Therena, only she was surrounded by a dozen huge warriors in glistening white armor. It only took me a moment to recognize them.
When Bella had created her seraphs from illusion magic, they’d been strong, yes, but ultimately they’d just been facsimiles. Now, I saw that those illusory seraphs weren’t even close to the real thing.
Their white seraph-style armor was painfully bright, even though they had skin the color of rancid milk. They looked like a mix between humans and elves, though their cold, dead eyes hinted at an inherent ancientness, some timeless, unnamable power that existed long before the dawn of man and mer.
Each one carried a seraphim longsword on their hips, with an immaculately white shield on their arms.
They walked out about halfway through the field before stopping.
“She wants to give us her terms,” I said. “Gorrok! Hingar! Erhoff! Each of you come along with me, and bring three of your best men.” Then I looked to Pandora, behind me. “You want to join us?”
Her hostile grin told me all I needed to know. But, she added, “I know it’s not honorable, but I’ll have to try quite hard to resist hurling my dagger into that wench’s throat.”
Once the party was gathered, we headed out across the field where Therena stood, tall and proud and sneering among her seraphim guard.
“Gamelord, so nice to see you again,” Therena said as the wind caught her ravishing Imperial attire, blowing it against her seductive frame. “It’s a shame it’s had to come to this. If you’d only fucked me when you had the chance…”
“I’ll cut your throat open right now if you keep that kind of talk up,” Pandora growled.
“Don’t tempt me, Manabitch,” Therena said in her smooth tone. “I’d love to clip those ugly wings from your shoulders.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” I said. “Therena, what the hell do you want?”
Monstergirl Quest Book Three Page 14