The brothers of the Order of Light were using all their sword skill and strength, yet the spider’s legs parried the swords. The exoskeleton of the giant spider was stronger than steel plate armour. Its forelegs flicked out with unnatural speed, knocking the swords away with the dull thud of a blacksmith hammering iron.
A man-at-arms was swept off the battlements by one of the spider’s legs. Another was knocked to the stone floor. The huge spider reared up on its back legs. It screeched its rage then brought its forelegs back down on the fallen man, crushing his skull and dashing brains upon the stone.
‘Bowmen!’ Audemar shouted above the sounds of battle and the screams of pain. ‘Take down the rider.’ He commanded his men as he notched another arrow to his bowstring.
Not all the bowmen were able to shoot, but at least a dozen arrows sped towards Arachnithion. He had his staff raised. The stoned pulsated as it gathered energy. Arachnithion slashed the staff downwards, as if it were a sword, and the arrows withered in flight as a wave of heat turned the arrow shafts to ash in an instant.
The wave of energy that destroyed the arrows knocked the men-at-arms to the ground, and the spider took advantage of being momentarily free of combat. It reared once more and let fly the hair that covered its body. The needle-like hair flew in all directions, like thin darts they flew seeking soft flesh. Audemar threw himself to the ground and managed to escape the spray, but many others were not so lucky. Everywhere Audemar looked he saw men lurching about as if deeply intoxicated, big pus-filled blisters upon their faces and necks, as they tried to pull the multitude of toxic hairs from exposed flesh.
A thought struck Audemar, and he leapt back to his feet, dodging the men who were staggering around and the ones still seeking the spider’s death. He reached the barrel where the fire arrows were kept and took the single remaining arrow. The arrow’s shaft was cracked and the fletching loose. It mattered not, Audemar thought. The flight would be short. He ran to the brazier; coals were nearly all but ash, but it still held heat. He placed the arrowhead, bound in cloth and soaked in pitch, into the centre of the brazier. Nothing. He waited for the flame to catch. Goblins had again re-joined the fight, scaling the battlements. The men-at-arms were being overwhelmed, yet they fought on with bravery. Several of the bowmen were down, some were still fighting, picking Goblins off with calm skill.
The flame caught. Audemar took the arrow and nocked it to his bowstring. He waited, for he had only one fire arrow left. The fire was blazing brightly, the substantial heat was burning his hand. Yet he waited.
The spider reared backwards, not fully but enough to expose its underside. The moment had come. He released the arrow and watched with bated breath as it cut a flaming path towards its target. It flew straight, the distance too close for any arch. Audemar laughed aloud as he watched the arrow strike home. It glanced off one of the spider’s mandibles and scorched a flaming line across the thing’s lower abdomen. The hair on the spider’s body caught like dry thatch, and within seconds the thing became demented with panic as it reared its body this way and that. Arachnithion jumped nimbly off the thing’s back. He waved his staff impotently as it sought a way to aid the giant Arachnoid. But the spider was doomed. Thick, pale goo bubbled up through cracks in the spider’s exoskeleton as its insides were being boiled like a crab in a pot.
Arachnithion was on his knees weeping, and Audemar felt no mercy for him. He unstrung his bow and hooked it back on to his back. He drew his long and curved hunting knife and calmly walked towards the grief-stricken chieftain of the Arachnoid riders. He was only five paces away from Arachnithion. He remembered the death he had given the man-at-arms with his accursed and evil magic. The time for vengeance was nigh.
Audemar had his focus so solely on the kneeling and weeping Arachnithion that he had failed to see that the giant spider had regained some of its senses. It was fully engulfed in the flame but had lost its panic. It halted in its mad dashes back and forth and focused upon Audemar. It ran towards him, its legs faltering as it ran. It stumbled and hit the stone floor hard, sending sparks and embers to fly on the night wind. Audemar finally noticed the spider as it got back up. He took a step back, and another. Arrows whistled past him, and though they penetrated the weakened exoskeleton, they did not halt the spider.
Audemar wished to call for help as the giant flaming spider moved slowly yet seemingly inexorably towards him. The men-at-arms were rushing away from the spider, towards the northern battlements. Audemar thought for a moment to call them cowards, that they flee from the beast when he saw them. Two more of the giant spiders crept tentatively over the battlements and the despair washed over the fortress like a rainstorm, soaking everyone in misery and hopelessness. As the spiders cleared the battlements, they were met with a flurry of sword blows, yet none seemed to hold any effect. A man-at-arms grabbed hold of one brazier and threw the contents into a spider’s maw. Only ash came from the brazier and he had come within the creature’s grasp. The spider picked him up with its forelegs and dashed him back down with bone shattering force.
‘Bowmen!’ A warrior from the brotherhood called. ‘Flee! There can be no victory here. Flee!’
Audemar saw his few remaining bowmen grab the ends of rope, already tied to anchors in the stone floor. They would repel to the ground, but it was a last and desperate chance. Then all that stood before him, his entire world, was flame and smoke. The giant spider, now a boiling pus-covered mess, made one last finally lurch and took Audemar with it as it dived over the battlements and into death’s hard embrace.
Gymir stole a glance towards Iron Guard and the small hope for victory vanished like the flickering of a candle confronted by a gale. He saw the giant spider upon the battlements. The dazzling but demonic blue light wielded by the creature that rode the spider as a man rides a horse. He saw hundreds of Goblins scampering the sides of the keep like squirrels up a tree. All this he saw in the few moments he was not engaged in battle himself, all this and more. For he had seen two more of the giant spiders began their climb up the walls of Iron Guard. He shuddered, cursed and prayed aloud to He who is Greatest. The accursed Arachnoid riders. Only spoken of in ancient tomes and folklore, yet he knew them to be real and their presence here in the land of Man foretold the very end of days.
Iron Guard could not hold. He knew this in his heart to be truth, not just despair or lack of faith. And with the fall of the great keeps of the north, so would the lands behind be ravaged. But now was his time to fight, and here at least the Brotherhood of the Order of Light had the measure of the battlefield. The Orcs came on, but the barricade slowed their ferocity, checked them in the moment of their bloodlust and gave the men-at-arms the moment needed to dispatch them with sword stroke or thrust. Hundreds of greater and lesser Orcs lay dead on the far side of the defences, and many lay slain on the brothers’ side as well. But many brothers also lay dead or grievously wounded. Fifty or more.
Word had already been carried south. All should flee, taking only what they could carry with ease. All except those who could wield a weapon. Yet no aid had come forth as yet. No colourful swordsmen adorned with their lords’ sigil. No gallant horsemen wielding shining lances and bright pennants.
Gymir saw a great Orc standing atop the barricade, an axe, its head monstrous and double-bladed, in one hand. A dead Goblin held by the back of its neck being used in place of a shield in its other hand. The Orc had its head held back, roaring its challenge before its enemies. Gymir raced forward whilst the guttural noise came from the Orc’s mouth and swung his sword with all his might. The noise that came from the Orc changed, as Gymir’s blade bit deep, to one of confusion and then to one of pain and rage. Gymir’s sword had cleaved through the creature’s huge leg, just above its knee, and now the Orc collapsed from the barricade where it died quickly under Gymir’s experienced blade.
The knight-captain looked beyond the barrier, past the Orcs who were still coming in great numbers and saw a shadow of horror lumbering from out of the
trees. The thing looked like a boulder given form. A humanoid-like rock brought to movement and life by some arcane and malevolent reason. He could not tear his eyes from the thing that lumbered slowly yet relentlessly towards him. An Orc’s axe came over the barricade and missed Gymir’s head only by chance. He thrust back at the creature, but likewise his blow missed its mark. He put a foot upon an oak log and raised himself higher. With the additional height he gained, he thrust downwards and took the Orc in the throat. Blood gushed high and Gymir had to close his mouth to stop the foulness entering his body but felt rewarded with the warm blood coating his armour.
The walking boulder loomed ever closer. Now only a hundred yards from the defences of Man. He could make out some details in the monster, though they were in truth few. It had holes where one would expect to find eyes on a man, holes which were bright with fire, like glowing coals on a blacksmith’s forge. It tilted its head this way and that and opened the gaping maw it had for a mouth. As the monster came relentlessly forward, it shot an arm out with surprising speed and grabbed a huge tusked greater Orc. It held the Orc by its throat, high as if examining the struggling creature. The Orc swung with its axe and the sound of iron hitting rock echoed back to Gymir. No mark was made on the Ogre. It showed no sign of pain and responded the same way a boulder would, without the slightest regard. Without apparent effort, the Ogre closed its hand around the Orcs throat and at once the Orc ceased its movement. The Orc’s body fell to the ground, lifeless as its head rolled from the top of the Ogre’s hand.
‘There will be only death if we stand before that Ogre’, Gymir said aloud, yet to no one in particular.
Other men-at-arms had seen the Ogre approach now. the Orcs had cleared from its path as it grew closer and closer.
‘Pull back from the barricade’, Gymir said. He looked to his left then right and saw his men standing, shields held firm, swords bloodied and damaged from countless impacts. Yet they stood, defiant, strong, ready to face down the servants of Darkness, even unto death.
Gymir searched his memory, trying to bring a way to defeat the Ogre, but none came. He saw a father of the order some fifty feet back from the barricade tending the wounded.
‘Father!’ Gymir called, and after saying a prayer over the body of the man he was tending, the father came and joined the knight-captain.
‘Know you a way to destroy that thing, Father?’ Gymir said whilst pointing at the Ogre who had stopped again as it seized another Orc.
‘No. It is a thing beyond the laws of nature, a remnant of the dark age brought to motion by foul arts.’ As the priest spoke the monster walked casually through the barricade, snapping thick timbers like twigs.
Before Gymir could stop them, the men-at-arms attacked the monster regardless of their inability to cause it any harm. They ran forth in numbers, seeking to overwhelm it. Their sword blows rang out loudly, a testament to their great strength, yet the damage done was to the steel in their hands rather than the monster they struck. The rock giant opened the gapping chasm that was its mouth, and the howl of a hundred souls in torment thundered out through the hot wind that reeked of death. It lashed out with its human-like stone hands, hammering them down at the men who attacked it. The boulder-like fists crashed into the ground as men dived away. Another took a blow upon his shield, breaking the arm beneath.
‘What undoes stone?’ Gymir said more to himself than to the priest who still stood beside him.
‘Stone masons use hammers’, the priest said, his eyes upon the stone giant that grew more frustrated and aggressive as the men kept up their relentless yet seemingly pointless attack.
The field in the area of the stone monster was now nearly free of Orc and Goblin, so Gymir called the men of most experience to him, whilst the others kept worrying the stone beast.
‘There is a small limestone quarry not one mile south and west from here’, Gymir said. The men nodded and voiced their agreement.
Suddenly, a small army of peasants descended from the gentle hills to the south. Armed with reaping hook, wood axe, hammer or hunting bow, they were not men who fought for their living and so they brought the tools of their trades with them to war.
A burley, short and round bellied man came to stand before Gymir. The peasant looked at the Ogre with something akin to disgust only tainted with fear.
‘Knight-captain’, the man said with a bow of his head. ‘We were waiting out the way as instructed.’ The man spoke with an indifference towards Gymir, even though the man scarcely reached Gymir’s chest.
‘Where are the soldiers? The horsemen?’ Gymir said gruffly.
‘Sprettaman is under attack. The horsemen left at the gallop for her defence.’ The man pointed at the peasant army that numbered in the hundreds. More still appeared. ‘We are what you have, brother.’
‘My thanks...’
‘They call me Bill or master Mason.’ The peasant army leader introduced himself.
‘My thanks Bill but this a place for warriors not tradesmen’, Gymir said.
‘Aye, that’s the truth of it, but we cannot sit idle when works needs doing. The women folk and littl’ens have taken the king’s highway south. We saw that thing coming from out the shadow of the trees and decided it was time to join the fray.’
Without waiting for a response, Bill turned from Gymir and addressed his men.
‘Ropes first, lads. Let’s get the bastard on the ground.’
As soon as he spoke the words, a dozen men ran forward holding lengths of rope. They gave the monster a wide berth as they ran by it, turning they ran back the way they came, turned and looped around the monster before coming back. As they came back to their own men, their comrades greeted them with raucous applause and much backslapping.
‘Right, lads. Put some muscle on these ropes’, Bill said. He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he was talking about some mundane task in his day-to-day life.
The coils of rope around the monster’s legs were pulled taut, twenty men to a rope. They pulled as one to the shouts of ‘heave’ shouted by all the peasants.
Gymir called to his brothers, ‘Cover the peasant army!’ as he saw Goblins and Orcs come over the remnants of the barricade to assault the brave tradesmen.
The rabble pulled and with an ultimate effort the monster’s legs were pulled together and it came down to the ground with all the force of the giant boulder it resembled.
‘Picks and hammers!’ Bill roared as he took a huge sledgehammer from a comrade.
The rabble swarmed over the monster with surprising bravery. Hammers and picks were brought to bear. Chips of rock flew from the creature and it roared, either in anger or pain, but, though the effort valiant, the monster seemed little damaged. It grabbed the peasants and crushed them wherever its hands gripped flesh. It took a peasant in each huge hand, its grip vice-like, and smashed them together. Blood pooled down over the monster’s head; it opened its mouth wide as the bright blood gushed down.
Bill seemed unmoved by the horror of watching his friends and kin brutalised. His head stayed calm, his voice commanding.
‘Bring me a pry bar, boy’, Bill called to the young man who had handed him his hammer. In short order, a great pry bar was brought forth. Resembling a four-foot-long spike with a large flat end that had often seen the force of a hammer. Bill took the pry bar and with a calm ease he stood above the monster’s head, a firm foot either side of the blood guzzling mouth. He brought the spike of the pry bar down in a firm and controlled manner, the spike going into the open maw.
Bill stood. Determination was etched into his face. His calloused hands gripped the pry bar. His legs slightly bent, utilising the muscles in his thighs. ‘Strike!’ He growled. And from behind, a broad-shouldered man swung a massive headed sledgehammer, bringing it down upon the heel of the bar. ‘Strike!’ And the bar was struck again. This time Bill felt the spiked end bite into the stone. ‘Strike!’ The monster shook with the strike. The fire in the pits of eyes burned brighter. ‘Strike!’ This time
Bill saw the spiked bar move downwards as it bored into the stone that was the flesh of this monster. ‘Strike!’ Bill’s hands burned from the friction. ‘Strike!’ This time the call was taken up by hundreds, peasants and brothers of the order alike. The spike burst through the back of the monster and into the ground below. A crack at the edge of the monster’s mouth began spreading upwards, towards the thing’s eyes. Bill grabbed hold of the pry bar and jarred it backwards with all his might. The crack raced upwards, like water running down a mountain. Bill jarred back again, and the crack split the monster’s skull asunder. The fire in the eyes died, as did the monster’s movement. Bill heaved a final time on the pry bar and the monster’s head split in two separate pieces. The rabble roared as if the war was won.
Audemar opened his eyes but saw nothing but a blurry haze. His body felt broken and his limbs felt twisted. He tried to move his arms and though it sent waves of angry pain throughout he moved them without hindrance. He closed his eyes again and fought back against the pain that threatened to overwhelm him. He felt somebody tug at him and call his name. He opened his eyes again and recoiled with fear. An Orc stared back at him, and he scrambled backwards. His legs and arms protesting as he sought to escape. His vision cleared somewhat. He saw the vacant look of fear and disbelief in the Orc’s eyes. Then he saw the broken tusks and the slack jaw. The pole coming from the Orc’s ragged neck. He saw the Orc was not an Orc coming to finish him, but a severed head upon a pole. He saw it was the banner of the broken Orc. He blinked away confusion. His eyes became clear. Sounds came to him.
‘My Lord Audemar.’ Oleif stood over him, speaking in hurried and frightened tones.
The Banner of the Broken Orc: The Call of the Darkness Saga: Book One Page 45