A Song and Ale

by M E Wolf

  He got the knuckles of his left hand smashed when he grabbed Bart to ask him a question, but the worm seemed to know what he was going to ask him because he spoke to him in harsh words. “You will get your turn when we have tortured SilverFox and the girl, Alexandra. Greenwood, you will watch them all be tortured and possibly killed and then we will torture you.

  It is because of you that we were not promoted long ago, so you will pay first by watching then we will torture you with more cruelty then you have seen in the past couple of weeks. Tomorrow we will begin the torture of SilverFox and the girl.” As the treasonous cretin walked away from Greenwood he did a little dance that made the captain feel very ill.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BlackBear got the news that the rescue party for his son, SilverFox, was betrayed and captured. He had no time to send another rescue party since all of the scouts he had set up reported that there were over twenty thousand enemy soldiers converging on his location and twenty thousand heading to each of his sons’ posts.

  If that were true that would make one hundred thousand enemy troops. There were reports of thousands of his troops being killed already and the bulk of the enemy was still expected to engage him in battle right where he stood. Having fifty thousand troops with him might help keep them at bay for the better part of the next five years, but his supplies would run short within the next two years.

  The enemy approached the north, west, east and south of the compound with over fifty thousand combined troops. BlackBear split his troops up and sent twelve thousand and five hundred troops to each main compass direction. Heavy horse was placed on the ends, light horse in the middle and infantry in the front. From his tent, BlackBear could see a lone figure standing well beyond the enemy armies.

  It appeared that he was raising his arms and when they were lowered the enemy charged into each of his four units. Both sides were hard pressed and within the first few months of constant battle half of BlackBear’s army remained while only a third of the enemy remained either on horse or on foot. Green fire and smoke came from the lone man’s hands and engulfed most of BlackBear’s troops.

  BlackBear’s troops began to cough and spit blood, but continued to fight the enemy. By day’s end of the last day of the seventeenth month of battle, BlackBear’s troops were all dead and the lone man was all that was left of the enemy army. The lone man raised his arms again and the enemy army stood again even if some were missing an arm or a leg or even half their head they still stood and the strangest thing was when BlackBear’s army rose from their deep slumber of death and joined the enemy.

  Knowing he was defeated badly and that he had no idea how to fight the undead, BlackBear gathered his royal guard and what was left of five thousand odd reserve troops and left the field of battle to head to his stronghold in the hills. He might not make it, but when he noticed that the undead troops just turned and headed for the other outposts he considered that he might make it to the stronghold after all.

  It was hoped that his sons in the field would make it as well because they all might stand a chance in the stronghold. Fire oil might have to be set up at the perimeters of the stronghold to help fight off the dead. He lost half of his royal guard and two thirds of his reserve troops on the way to the stronghold, but when he arrived he was greeted with three of his sons and one hundred thousand troops inside the stronghold.

  His wife, Maria, nearly knocked him over when she embraced him on his arrival to his family’s shared quarters in the keep. His sons DragonFang, Viper, Elkhorn and his brother GreyOwl were all looking at a map of the surrounding area with skulls drawn in certain places and other symbols in other places. DragonFang was named because of the permanent scar above his right eye that he had taken when fighting off a dragon sent by the emperor.

  He later killed that dragon and made a Dragon Fang necklace from its teeth. Viper was named because of his wiry frame of small muscular appendages that were usually attached to a dagger that always had rattler venom on the blade. Elkhorn had a horn made that could call the power of many elk and also gave him the ability to command them in battle. GreyOwl was a Wiseman.

  On the map BlackBear could see many thousands of skulls, which as his son DragonFang explained to him were the undead troops outside the stronghold. The emperor’s pet necromancer had amassed more than one million undead troops of various different armies.

  Fire oil was placed a few hundred yards from the stronghold’s walls that contained enough firepower that could wipe out everything within it up to three hundred yards radius per canister of fire oil. Combined, all of the canisters would light up the sky and leave pitch-black char in the air for miles.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BlackBear looked through the spyglass at the preparations of the enemy. They had already passed the first stages of the siege and had dug out the second parallel and had left a fifteen-foot gap in the center. Some sort of catapult, a trebuchet BlackBear thought it was, was rolled up to mid-field. He did not think that it had enough range to lob a stone at the stronghold.

  Maybe it would be within range in one hundred more yards. He passed the spyglass over the field to see more of the enemy’s preparations. The enemy seemed to know a lot about siege warfare because they kept just out of range of the fire-oil canisters. In fact they would be in their range in one hundred more yards of their advance. BlackBear knew that his two ballistae would then be in range and his archers would be in range as well.

  The fire arrows were ready to be lit and would be lit at his command. They would be loosed upon the fire-oil canisters. It may not do too much damage to the enemy beneath and behind the saps and batteries, but at least it should destroy the catapult and a good number of the undead soldiers.

  While the enemy was still preparing their first parallel, BlackBear had his men prepare defenses around the stronghold. These defenses included quicksand and various other traps to impede the enemy’s progress upon the stronghold.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Michael Cronin was displeased with what he saw and of what transpired in the months following the creation of his undead army. He was at the middle point of his siege on the enemy’s stronghold and he still had not breached the wall. Half of his troops and three of his catapults were taken out by fire and he barely made a dent in the exterior wall of the stronghold. Cronin hoped that his battering ram and siege towers worked as well as he had planned.

  Considering that nothing was going according to his plan so far he doubted this would be as planned. Undead soldiers were far different than the regular soldier in that regular arrows could put down the average soldier, but undead soldiers were dead and not really dead and still not alive. Even as a pincushion, they would still perform their duties.

  Only fire could put them down. Fifteen undead soldiers moved fluidly with the three-ton battering ram covered with a water soaked leather pitched roof that resisted being caught on fire. For fire was the bane of the undead soldiers. It would clearly take twenty minutes for the battering ram to reach the gate of the stronghold.

  It left plenty of time for the enemy of his emperor to shower his undead soldiers with fire arrows. Sure they got a few of his soldiers still, but they would reach the gate all the same. At least that is what he thought in the first few moments from their current position to the gate. Just as they were about to ram the gate, the enemy unleashed some sort of liquid that when it came into contact with the roof of the ram it consumed it and the undead soldiers stopping the ram in its tracks.

  This was not all. The calamity that would befall him did not stop there. His enemy systematically destroyed most of his siege towers by having previously set up quicksand in the predicted path of his siege towers. Sunken siege towers were now all over the battleground and obstructed his view of the enemy stronghold.

  Some of Cronin’s undead soldiers got over the wall in two of the twenty siege towers that actually made it around the quicksand set up by the enemy. Each siege tower had forty undead soldiers in it. Eighty unde
ad soldiers was not much to take over the stronghold, but enough that they should force the ones on the wall to fall back into the keep allowing his troops to enter through the gate.

  After all, his troops did not need to eat and he could always call up the enemy dead and make them into zombies that obeyed his every command. Starving out his enemy would be the plan, but so far none of his plans had worked. Throwing his enchanted augury bones on the ground and saying a few words in his ancient arcane tongue he could graft his sight on a zombie and control one of his undead officers, which had made it over the wall.

  He was not much of a fighter or one for hand-to-hand combat, but he could rely on the knowledge of his undead officer for that. The officer that he chose to control was well versed in the martial arts and the fine techniques of swordsmanship. Defects arose from having the undead soldiers fight the living and that was that there was a chance that the living because they were still alive was most likely more skilled or more cunning in staying alive than the undead.

  That seemed to be the case with these enemy soldiers. They happened to be very well at keeping themselves and their comrades very much alive. One of the living soldiers was equivalent to ten of his undead soldiers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BlackBear was worried about the onslaught of the undead soldiers until the preparations of the quicksand began to work amazingly on the siege towers. Despite the preparations two undead siege towers were able to make it to the wall and that is when slaughter on both sides began to escalate. The undead and living were dying continuously. Ten times as many undead fell to the sword than the living.

  Men at arms of BlackBear continued to drive the undead back to their graves, but new graves would still be dug for the living as they passed to the dead. It was not long before BlackBear had to rally his men to the keep as the undead soldiers spilled into the courtyard of the stronghold. Many men were lost, but at least BlackBear retained his sons even though Dragonfang was seriously wounded from an enemy pike thrust through his leg.

  The next few months the undead soldiers kept the wagons of supplies from reaching the keep. BlackBear and his army had enough supplies to last a few days short of four months and the last month they were on half rations in hopes that someone might relieve them of the undead army outside the keep’s gate.

  Their continuous pounding on the gate during the night hours kept them awake, if the undead soldiers actually got through the gate there would not be much of any soldiers able to fight them off. Just as the dusk of the last day that they had used up their last bit of rations a noise was heard, but not the pounding of every night of the last four and a half months. Metal upon metal was heard for many hours and when it finally stopped, there was silence.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alexandra screamed. The last few days of SilverFox being tortured, let rest and then tortured again was unbearable. She was not sure of what she felt for him and was still confused by most things done to him. Savage butchers is what these people, not people but animals, that were molesting someone she was not sure of. Not sure of her feelings for him.

  Being good-natured as she was and sharing a part of his life when she attempted to heal him nearly a year ago from arrows or whatever was lodged in his chest and leg. Felt something for him she did, but how much was what she had been asking herself these past months of sharing the same hard rock bed of captivity. Cold and hunger brought her to share his warmth and enjoy it.

  It was life saving, exhilarating. She was not sure what her feelings really meant because even if they made it out of here alive she would have to watch him grow old while she remained young. Killing SilverFox would be the eventual case with this prolonged torturing by these evil men, per se evil things, because men or humans would not or could not rightfully do such as this.

  This was the nature of humans, or those that were lucky to have a short life span of sixty years. Were they always this impulsive and evil? Tears would not come to Alexandra. She used up her last bits of fluid that could have been used for tears to cry the day before this day and the days prior to that. Alexandra wished she could still cry because it felt worse inside for not being able to cry over what they were doing to SilverFox. The soldiers’ tortures she had to watch too.

  All except one, he too cried. His name was Captain Greenwood or so Alexandra thought that is what these evil things called him. They teased him with every torture, but he never cried. Not after the first, he only became more hard. If steel could be made harder, this man would be that steel. Today was like any other day except Alexandra would be tortured before SilverFox died.

  Alexandra screamed again as she was dragged along the stone floor of the dungeon which would be the place of her torture. In the previous night and every night three days past, she was left in a hole in the ground that stunk of sewage, sweat and blood. Rats had crawled over her and sores developed in her open wounds. The hole had to be more than ten meters deep for when they lowered her in, it was a while before she felt her naked skin touch the two foot deep fowl smelling liquid at the bottom.

  She was not fed or given drink in the last six days. When she was not watching the torture, she was in the hole. Barely being able to walk on her own, her captors mostly dragged her along. Naked as the day she was born. Filthy with dirt, lice and other pathogens she was brought to where SilverFox lay naked on a cutting beam. A beam where the torturers cut victims while they still lived.

  At first she did not realize what they were about to do with her, but then it dawned on her. She was confused. Alexandra would or may do what they were asking if under better circumstances and she knew that SilverFox was the one. Even if she loved SilverFox doing it this way would not be the same. This was totally wrong to her, totally wrong.

  It was impossible for them to ask this of her, impossible. Being afraid, she sat in a corner as far away from the beam as she could go. Them kicking and punching her was far better than her being violated, even though she did realize that she loved him and he was not the one truly violating her. Confusion was getting the better of her and so were the kicks and punches of the torturers.

  Then they said something or one of them did she was not sure,

  “If you don’t let this man that you know, violate you gently, hehe, one of us will do it for him and we definitely do want to enter you.

  “Now, that is a good girl. I think we have an understanding, you and I. Now go to it, before your purple face becomes black.”

  Even though she loved SilverFox, every motion of the two hours that she and him were made to make love or forced vagina entry or whatever it was construed as, hurt her and damaged her beyond any physical contact between her and SilverFox. She wished that it would have been different and she hated these evil things for what they were doing to her and SilverFox.

  No matter what physical torture they could have done to her, it would not have hurt as much as this. This was even worse than the violations to her entire body that were already committed against her. She wondered if this was what life would be like and something dark and powerful within her growled a definitive no to her, which also reminded her that she still had three outstanding contracts to complete.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It only got worse. She was to live with this stain on her life among other things that were unbearable that happened in the past. Alexandra did not want to suffer anymore. Something inside of her snapped, maybe it had something to do with what happened to her in the past with the L’art’o tribe it was hard to say. Hair or fur rather grew upon her and her physical structure changed.

  Her basic animal instincts pushed the intellectual into the back of her mind and the animal reigned for a time. As soldiers upon soldiers came to despoil her, the animal in her grew and one after another of the evil soldiers were shredded with claws of silver, sharp fangs and not much was left of them.

  Four days ago this started and she ravaged the evil creatures in front of the caged captain and many times he soiled himself because he was very afr
aid. Eventually, the soldiers stopped coming in and the door was thrown from its hinges as the dungeon was besieged. The animal in Alexandra was pushed far into the recesses of her mind and the intellectual part of her came to the front of her consciousness and then she passed out from exhaustion.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Alexandra came to she saw two strange looking women with pointy ears hovering over her, one had a light blue almost frost complexion and the other had a dark ebony complexion as though she was burnished in a forge. Curling up into a defensive ball, bringing her knees up to her chest to protect herself, she tried not to look into the women’s eyes.

  They were both running their hands through her hair trying to soothe her. No matter how hard she fought their attentions, she felt herself giving into their enchantments. If she ever had sisters, these two would be them. Alexandra panicked when the captain tried to approach the three of them and a low growl escaped her lips. Something came over her and she attempted to gouge his eyes out.

  One of the women spoke, she was not sure which one,

  “She has been violated and I am not sure if this carnage was done by her. The last thing that she needs to be near her right now is MAN.

  “Come with us dear and we will look after your wounds and get you some clothing. When you are comfortable we will talk and you can tell us what happened.”

  “Where . . . is . . . SilverFox?” Alexandra cried, hoping that he was still alive.

  The two elves looked at her. Katlin spoke, “I do not know dear. Who is SilverFox?” Katlin did not know who SilverFox was, but the name was familiar to her.