They walked for two hours at a moderate pace and twice glimpsed movement in the distant murk as their quarry retreated before them. Runners had come from the city asking for orders, and the whole population had been made ready for war. One hundred and fifty Elven warriors now marched behind their leader, and hundreds more stood ready at the mouth of the tunnel. All were armed with the new steel, either sword or long dagger, and many relished the opportunity to use them.
The war band came to the breach in the tunnel wall and Cameos, Thakern and Talako peered into the ragged gap in the clay of the great tunnel wall, ten feet in length. The first thing that struck the Elven warriors was the stench that emulated from the place where their new enemy had come, and more to Cameos’ interest, where their enemy had gone. The smell was enough to make some of the warriors heave; it was the smell of death, rot and decay and to an Elf they dreaded knowing the cause of the stink.
‘We shall walk four abreast. Any Elf who takes a wound is to fall back to the city and send forth a replacement. Do not fight to the death. Every Elven life is sacred, and we shall utilise the gift of healing the Mother has bestowed upon her children.’ They set off at a weary pace, seeking the enemy in the shadows of its own domain. Onwards they walked, with trepidation and rage conflicting. Cameos could sense his brethren behind him and hear their controlled breath. He felt a joy that was madness, a battle joy, and his sword ached for bloody satisfaction in his hand. Already he felt an odd bond with the steel as if it opened up a connection with his ancestors who had carried the same weapons against their enemies millennia ago.
Movement ahead caused the war band to halt for the briefest of moments before Cameos called ‘charge’ and released the full aggression of people. The Ratton bounded on all fours as they ran to meet the Elves in combat. Against the sides of the tunnel they ran, and a few even ran upon its ceiling, a grotesque abomination of gravity. Two dozen Ratton threw themselves upon the Elves, without apparent care for their own lives, as they were met with steel and anger. In less than a minute of furious fighting, the last of Ratton went down in a flurry of sword and rage. Thakern looked around him and surveyed the carnage. Butchery, he thought and was pleased. Not one Elf had taken more than a glancing wound. They had fought as brother and sister, each warrior fighting for their fellows more so than even to defend themselves.
Cameos calmly walked to a grievously injured rat monster and looked down upon its agony. ‘Do you speak, Rat Thing?’ he asked the groaning creature with a voice filled with contempt and hatred. A sound like laughter greeted the chief, a snake-like sibilance as if its tongue struggled to work behind its massive front teeth.
‘Do we speak?’ the creature retorted. Again, the laughter sounded and all the warriors around Cameos turned to look upon the creature that had arisen from their nightmare to disturb their waking peace. ‘You, who are new to the ground where we have allowed you to abide, dare to question the Ratton?’
Cameos brought his sword’s point to the monster’s throat. ‘Why did you attack us? What cause did we give you? Monster!’
The creature looked upon Cameos without a trace of fear. ‘We allow you to live in peace and you seek to expand your territory. Digging your vile tunnel into the ground we have called home for an age before your race came beneath the surface. You filthy Elves!’ The creature known as a Ratton screamed the last in a sound that echoed through the ground.
‘How many are you?’ Cameos asked, his voice now quiet but still filled with menace.
‘My young will gnaw on your bones.’ The wounded Ratton forced its head up swiftly before Cameos had time to react: the creature had impaled its throat upon his blade. As it lay back, blood squirting from a severed artery, it showed the slightest hint of something that suggested a smile.
They marched onwards for another hundred feet and came to an intersection where the pathway opened to a small chamber. Around the chamber they saw odd bones discarded haphazardly and some piles of what looked and smelt like bodily waste. The stench was even stronger in this chamber and wafted in on a slight breeze that came from three tunnels that led forward, right and to the left of the tunnel the Elven war band came from.
Cameos looked from tunnel to tunnel deciding the best course of action and split his band into three groups of fifty, to explore each tunnel whilst he called a group of reserves from the city to hold this chamber should they need to retreat. Then the attack came.
A frenzied attack, as scores of Ratton poured from each tunnel and threw themselves wantonly at the Elves. Cameos barely had time to bring his sword up as the monsters came at him, a blur of claws as they sought to rip the flesh from his body. The howls of pain and outrage that came from his brethren alerted him that his people were taking casualties and he tried to disengage to assess the battle and nearly had his throat ripped out for his effort. It was only Talako and his brothers Tasunka and Tatanka pulling their chieftain back, and forming a shield of their own bodies, that saved him. Cameos looked to his left, as the brothers cut down foe after foe who sought to destroy the leader of the invader’s war band, and saw Thakern on his knees defending himself valiantly but he could see the master of combat flagging, blood poured from lacerations deeply ripped into his face and neck. Cameos rushed to his bondsman and pulled the noble warrior from the front line and back into the tunnel. Turning back towards the battle he bellowed above the sound of meat being cleaved and Ratton and Elven war cries.
‘Pull back into the tunnel! Pull back!’ He grabbed Doista, who was fighting as he moved back towards the sound of Cameos’ voice. ‘Doista, I charge you with a great task.’
Doista bowed his head and said, ‘How may I serve my chief?’
‘Take the wounded and fall back to the city. Return with one hundred of our warriors and have them each carry a lit brand as well as steel. Instruct another hundred to follow you in twenty minutes. We shall hold them here and when you return, we shall destroy this vermin, root and stem. Go now, brother!’
Doista began grabbing wounded Elves and unceremoniously pushing them towards the way they had marched from as Cameos calmly strode to the front of the battle and issued his commands. Within minutes the Elves stood shoulder to shoulder in a semi-circle just inside the chamber and covering the tunnel whilst the wounded retreated. Cameos looked out through a gap in the coming onslaught of Ratton attack and glimpsed Tasunka in his final moment as he went down. Sword raised, he took one last villainous creature in the throat before a particularly huge brute of a monster swiped at his face with claws outstretched. The last thing Cameos saw of his lifelong friend and sworn brother was the creature’s claws ripping Tasunka’s face to pieces. Three ragged lines ripped his cheeks to shreds and left his jawbone naked of flesh as he went to the Mother in abject agony.
‘Hold the line! We do not give one inch!’ Cameos roared as another wave of Ratton screeched their war cry and pounced at the Elven line. Cameos raged. His assault had been repulsed and now they were forced to hold a defensive line against a relentless enemy. He lunged and lunged again. The points of the Elven steel were holding the Ratton at bay; the swords giving the Elven warriors by far the longer reach. Minutes dragged by and the great endurance of the Elf was beginning to diminish but since their retreat and forming the defensive line, their wounds were few and those wounded were quickly moved to the rear while those in the rear replaced them.
Cameos’ arm ached as he lunged with his sword time and time again. His fatigue lessened every time he was rewarded with a gush of blood and the pain filled wails of his enemy.
‘Cameos’, Talako said, needing to raise his voice to be heard even though Cameos was fighting at his side. ‘We cannot hold them forever.’
‘Do not worry, my brothers and sisters’, Cameos said, feigning cheerfulness. ‘The sport is not over yet, though our foe seems to be tiring.’ This brought a few grunts of laughter from the fighting Elves as all could see that the enemy were relentless in their attack, their numbers unknowable due to the cramped co
nditions of the battleground.
Cameos was struggling to organise his thoughts and fight at the same time, but knew his presence was needed in the front line to secure his people’s respect. One thought kept coming unbidden to his mind, should I order a full retreat? He tried to push the thought away, but his warriors were being forced back. He could hear their cries as the enormous claws of the Ratton found flesh.
And then Cameos heard a different cry, a cry of anger, primal and full of enthusiasm as fresh warriors stormed into the battle, dragging the wounded free to avenge their fallen comrades, armed with flame and steel.
Cameos seized a brand and thrust it into an assailant’s face, causing the creature to erupt into flame, with its oily, coarse hair catching like pitch. It flailed back into its fellows, causing panic amongst the Ratton. The battle became a slaughter as the fresh Elven warriors followed their chieftain’s example and began burning the creatures before ending their existence with blade and fury. The air became acrid as black smoke hung in the tunnels with almost no air movement to ventilate. But the enemy here were defeated and Cameos pressed forward into the chamber and within moments only the dead and Cameos’ war band occupied it.
The chief wasted no time as he made a rough count of his remaining warriors, who bore no injury. Splitting them into three groups of around sixty per group, he ordered one group to enter the tunnel to the left and another to the right. His orders were simple: find them and kill them, every last one. Wiping the Ratton blood from his face, he led his sixty Elves into the central tunnel and said a silent prayer to the Mother that his people would have complete victory over these monsters from nightmares.
After marching for five hundred metres Cameos ordered a halt. His senses felt a change in the air. The stink of decay and death was stronger here but also he felt the air that carried the stench and knew there was another chamber up ahead. He crept forward sword and fire at the ready. Reaching the entrance to the chamber, Cameos stopped just short of leaving the tunnel and before him stretched a chamber equal in size to the great temple hall in his own city.
In the centre of the chamber that spanned at least a quarter mile sat a giant stone slab, two hundred feet in diameter, that gave off a very slight green glow. Cameos felt physically sick, for on top of this great glowing slab of smooth rock sat the most hideous thing he had ever seen, or even heard of. A grotesque rat queen lay on the rock. Its rolls and layers of fat were obscene in contrast to those of the Ratton warriors he had faced. The creature took up most of the stone slab it lay upon, being at least fifty feet in length, and as it was lying on its side Cameos could see its width was the size of a fully grown Elf’s length. A dozen or more Ratton young suckled on its teats and took no notice as the enormous monstrosity struggled to lift its head towards the Elven warriors. It sniffed at the air and howled a high pitch wail that set Cameos’ teeth on edge.
‘Let us end this sick parody of life!’ Cameos roared and threw his brand as far as he could, to land just short of the rock but as it arched through the air, he saw much more of the cavern and was gripped by revulsion as he saw the filth in which these vermin lived. Rotten flesh and excrement littered the floor where their young crawled. The smell was like a physical strike. ‘The Mother has brought us to this place to do her bidding. Throw your brands. Let us bring light into this place of darkness and disgust.’
The Elves threw their brands. As the first wave of ten reached the pinnacle of their arc the next line of Elves threw theirs and it was as if daylight had descended as, from tunnels from the left and to the right of the rock upon which the Ratton queen squirmed, the two other groups of Elves also threw their flaming brands. After they had thrown around a hundred torches to burn where they landed, Cameos could see clearly and found that there was pitiful few Ratton warriors left in this great chamber and he began his cleansing of this vermin from the earth.
‘Kill them all!’ he screamed as he charged forward, his blade’s silver steel stained black with the dried blood of his foe. ‘Kill them all!’ he bellowed again. Soon the cry was taken up by all as they charged into the chamber without mercy or regard, hacking in to all that was not Elven, regardless of age or its ability to defend itself.
Before long Cameos had cut a path through to the great rock and with ease he jumped the four foot to land upon its smooth surface. He looked upon the Ratton queen with abject disgust. As he walked towards the thing’s head it looked back towards him in the same fashion. As he neared it Doista, Talako, Tatanka, Adela and Deleif came to stand beside him.
It spoke in a deep growling voice. ‘You, Cameos of the Elven folk’, it said accusingly. ‘You are filled with the Darkness! I see it within you as clearly as I see my butchered kin. You are but a puppet for the Dark Lord’s whim. End it and be about your dark destiny but know you all who follow, destruction awaits at the journey’s end!’
Cameos pulled back his arm and thrust deep and true, sending his sword’s point through the Ratton queen’s eyeball and into its brain. Such was the force of the thrust, the hilt of the sword struck the creature’s face and as it dropped its head away, the blade fell from Cameos’ grip. As the creature was struck, a horrible wail came from a hundred tiny voices and Cameos noticed that along with the dozen newborn Ratton suckling at the queen’s teats dozens more lay sleeping in the folds of her fat.
‘What of the babes, my chieftain?’ Talako asked in a weary voice full of grief for the loss of his blood brother, Tasunka.
‘Kill them all. Not one of these things shall drew breath after this day’, Cameos stated without emotion.
‘It does not seem right’, Talako replied.
Cameos rallied on him. ‘They are enemies!’ he shouted.
Talako looked from his chieftain to the infant beings. ‘And yet they are also intelligent creatures not long born into this world. Do these harmless-looking things share the guilt of their forebears?’
Cameos became enraged. He reached round to the creature’s side and grabbed hold of the first youngling he found by one of its rear legs, and with loathing he smashed the helpless mewing creature down upon the rock, dashing its brains out and discarding it with disgust. Laughing, he skewered another on a dagger he pulled from his belt, relishing the creature’s death. He picked up another by its face and looked at the creature who was still blinded by unopened eyes it was so new to the world and he closed his hand around the baby Ratton’s skull, crushing it slowly. As he cast the thing’s corpse to the ground, he sought another and ended its short life by grinding his heel upon the thing’s skull and all the while he laughed as if it were the greatest of sport. Talako looked from Cameos’ display of pure hatred to his comrades, who looked on with the same distaste as Talako. The chieftain’s staunchest supporters and closest companions looked to one another and each one knew the other’s thoughts, Madness.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Northward
The king’s rage was felt throughout the entire castle. The general tone of the people within was unnaturally quiet and guarded as they sought to keep themselves hidden from his sight and wrath.
‘You will wed whom I tell you to! Do you dare to think you are my equal? You are neither king nor great lord. By my charitable adoption and the blood in your veins you are heir, but it is by my generosity you have a position at all!’ The king screamed into Jacob’s face. They stood alone in the king’s war room. Moments after arriving back at the keep the king had been informed of Elysabeth’s health and the demise of his pawn Jim. Jacob stood firm. He neither had knowledge of the king’s plan nor the manner of Jim’s death and the subsequent failure of the plan, yet he had known of the dangers when he had left. Since his return from Albert and becoming aware of the enormity of the universe, and his own part to be played in this grand game of creatures, and the forces that move them, he had become distant, and colder. He thought about his future bride in a new light, and often he was contemplating the significance of any romantic bonding.
Jacob felt his r
age rising. He sensed only an enemy in his uncle now, a reek of corruption, and he fought the temptation to draw his blade and take his uncle’s head.
‘Regardless.’ Jacob began speaking to his uncle as an equal. ‘I shall not marry a daughter of one the great lords, or in fact any women I do not love. I have chosen my bride and be damned any who try to contest me in this matter. Or would you have the crown and its power handed to another family? Would you hand the lead of the grand quest to another and with it the great treasures that are your due?’ Jacob bowed his head respectfully towards his uncle and took note of the silence his words had gained him. ‘I shall do all you have bid me do but this one thing, I shall marry Elysabeth and in return I shall bring you wealth but Elysabeth will be my wife and stand beside me when I eventually take the crown.’
‘If you take the crown’, the king mumbled before turning and leaving Jacob frustrated and angry. The Lord Godwin walked into the chamber after the king had left and came to stand before Jacob.
‘My prince, I could not help but overhear your conversation with the king.’
‘You were stood in quite the position to overhear, my lord’, Jacob snarled. ‘Say what you will.’
‘My daughter will bring you many sons, Your Highness. She is of the purest line apart from your own. She knows a woman’s place and will gladly and quietly do her duty to her husband. I see no reason you cannot keep your peasant girl as concubine and do your duty by uniting the strongest houses of the kingdom.’ Godwin spoke as one might speak to a child who was being reminded of the fundamentals of a lesson he had been taught repeatedly.
‘You think I would dishonour Elysabeth by reducing her to a slave to warm my bed? No, I would not! And she would never accept it if I did. That is why she has my heart because she is strong, intelligent, and kind, and not some dowdy slave who does not even see the chains around her feet.’ Jacob turned to leave, then sharply turned upon Godwin, fury clear upon his face. ‘You talk to me about duty and a united kingdom, yet lust only for power for yourself. You will remember your place, old man!’
The Banner of the Broken Orc: The Call of the Darkness Saga: Book One Page 28