While they closed in with the confidence of greater numbers, Trevor lunged to the left and with a series of blurring slashes at precision angles rendered the lizardfolk spears into sticks. The spearheads tumbled to the dirt. With a rapid agile twist of double-arm strokes and reverse diagonal slashes, first two, then four of the reptiles blinked to look down in horror at the bleeding stumps at the end of their arms.
Clawed hands still gripping spears thudded on the floor.
Pivoting with a left-handed horizontal slash he cut down two spears thrusted toward him and then with a right follow-up he severed an arm. Instinct drove him to crouch down low as he spun around to meet the five spears from the other side as five warriors sought to run him through from behind. Almost sitting on the floor in a powerful twist he chopped through all five spears with his left sword in a backswing while at the same time slashing bloody cuts across the upper thighs of all five unsuspecting lizardmen. The bamboo spears were lethal when thrusting but to Trevor's steel they were weeds too easily severed.
The Borderealm ranger effectively hedged himself within a semi-circle of weaponless and wounded lizardfolk who formed a wall between the human and those other warriors uninjured and the army still trying to get at him. But the doorway out was still blocked and reptillian enemies came charging at him with reckless abandon.
Trevor ran right into them, blades first. Lizard warriors gasped, tried to pull back, stumbled over themselves and one another, fell down, were shoved forward by those behind them, squeaked in high-pitched fright, tumbled to the dirt in pieces as the twin scimitars hacked, slashed, impaled, eviscerated, severed and decapitated the reptiles as the hated human cleaved through them like a god through demons.
Trevor faught solely by instinct as the beautiful image of his elven lover's face passed through his mind. Weolah of Everleaf. Her face was replaced with that of a leathery lizard warrior screaming with blood squirting from both of its shoulders. The vertical downward passes of his scimitars had cleanly removed his arms.
A spearpoint struck Trevor's armored back. The reinforced leather held mostly but the pointy tip of the spear pieced his skin and flesh. Though the assailant believed the strike was unsuccessful, Trevor felt the pain but it did not diminish his onslaught. He switched the grip on his right sword and reverse-impales his attacker while stepping backward unexpectedly. The lizardman grunted, fell backward dropping his spear. None noticed the blood on its tip. He did not begin thrashing about screaming until he hit the floor. Trevor faught on, remembering the somber words of Matthias at Conclave...
...at the end of the war only one Borderealm ranger was left alive.
In a primal flurry of steel chaos Trevor Sindair III felt his consciousness resonate with his environment, extending beyond his body and down the length of his blades. The curved swords were no longer mere weapons but extensions of himself.
Reptillian claws, arms and heads were separated from their hosts as a continual spray of blood anointed the ranger. The hesitant warriors no longer advanced but panicked trying to escape his fury. Slaughtered. The lizardfolk all knew the tales of the valor of the rangers of Borderealm and those closest to the human knew they would not escape him unwounded. So many in the past had tried to kill these mighty men and were punished for the trespass.
Trevor faught with eyes unfocused and his body followed patterns perfected from antiquity. He was a direct descendant of the bowmasters of Caedoria, as all Caereans were, and the dreaded accuracy of the bowmaster was present in the swings of his steel.
Those trying to escape him along his flanks and behind him, he let go. But those caught in the press trying to get out of the burrow chamber were blocking his own escape so he hacked into them with fervor. At the edge of his perception he noticed that some of the lizardmen had been speared to death by their own frenzied people. Without mercy, he cut them down in clearing the stepped entrance. Daylight began to filter down the stair. Two more bodies collapsed, run through by scimitars. More light.
Three folk moved out of his way fleeing the stair upward. The way cleared and none behind him advancing, Trevor ascended and stepped out into the later afternoon light.
Surrounding the burrow entrance was another gathering of lizard warriors with spears, clubs and rusty old swords captured from orcs. They kept their distance but still tried to contain him. A spear flew right by his head, then a second a little higher, that impaled a lizard man on the other side of the circle. Unable to see his drake because of the folk, Trevor plunged into the mass swinging in the direction of his steed.
Three brave warriors stood out to oppose his passage and the others squawked in surprise when all three of them fell apart. Not one of them had screamed as the ranger's blades whistled and passed through their bodies. The ranger moved forward nearing his drake. Another lizardfolk warrior spit up blood and fell aside as others moved out of the way. Trevor whirled and swung keeping them at bay, the tip of his left blade cleaving through a shoulder bone.
And then a strange thing happened.
Stepping forward and running through another warrior in the way with his right sword, he aimed his left at another victim standing too close when suddenly his blade collided in the air with another. It was another scimitar, curved but forged of some dark metal.
Over the crowd he heard the distinct hiss of pain from his mountaindrake.
Lizardfolk moved out of the way as a four-armed black elf with three dark scimitars stood before Trevor. Over eighty feet behind the headhunter he saw a second Aelvatchi elf pull two blades out of his drake's neck. He looked at the underworld elf in darkjade armor. Its three curved swords were made of a strange, purple metal.
The Borderealm ranger spun instantly slashing horizontally at the assassin. When the attack was parried Trevor found his own swords vibrating terribly at the contact with the purple scimitars. He noticed that the dark elf's weapons did not shake. The ranger's second swing was blocked and again the humming effect vibrated his swords.
What sort of metal is harder than steel?
The headhunter's own attack was immediate. One, two, three, four swings of his blades, all precise and perfectly timed. All four of them parried by the human ranger. Five, six, seven, two steps forward, eight, nine- Trevor expertly blocked and pushed away the incredibly fast attacks and took a couple steps backward as the dark elf advanced as two scimitars ripped through his back and pushed out of his stomach having penetrated the leather from back to front.
Trevor looked down at two purplish blades sticking out of his torso. He tried to inhale but found he could not. At the realization, excruciating pain tore through his body as blood spilled out of his open mouth. The weapons were pulled back out with ease and Trevor collapsed to the ground with thoughts of Cavin Knightshade passing through the foggy recesses of his memory.
As he died on the ground in Dretchwold Hills the third headhunter who had murdered him turned as a fourth dark elf emerged from out of the underground burrow chamber it had investigated. The elf told the other three of the carnage effected by the ranger upon the lizardfolk.
"He faught with skill. None have ever defended themselves with two arms as he had done," remarked the Aelvatchi who had faced him. One of the black elves reached down and opened the dead ranger's eyes. They looked in alarm at the palest green eyes.
"The report is true. These rangers are kin to the Barad-ai." The headhunters stood in a tight group pondering this. The Barad-ai were the greatest and most hated enemies of all Hollowrealm. The Deep Men. A race of humans that had adapted to the ways of the underworld and even after a series of wars with several races attempting to oust, enslave or eradicate them, the Barad-ai not only survived, but thrived. All feared to be captured by them for it was certain death to be taken into their infamous training dungeons.
And the eyes of these surface rangers were those of the Deep Men. The three other dark elves descended into the burrow chamber to see for themselves what the human had done.
I live in a world
of beauty. Borderealm and beyond
are vast frontiers. We rangers have never seen it all.
Cavin has told us of the cities and castles of Poltyria,
of baronies and townships teeming with people.
They call us simple, folk of the Old Country, laugh-
ing at our traditions. Smirking, they know that elves
do not exist. Cavin's people do not believe that
faeries live, that dwarven races thrive and carve
mountains into mansions...orcs are fables to scare
children and giants are but the stuff of legend. He
served Poltyria, but we do not. Matthias, my brother,
I feel nothing for those people. The blind will get no
torch from me.
Josiah Arrowloft to Mathias
camped near Kag'ar Grul
Devilspire Mountains...Kag'ar Grul Keep
"Is that the force you saw in Dimwood?" asked Matthias as I leaned back in the shadow of the rock cleft above the cave entrance. He had found the site and cleared out most of the evidence of others who had camped here. Those spying on Kag'ar Grul in the past. Our drakes were resting in the back and our gear was spread out.
"I don't know. I mean, the Warlord is there and lots of orcs, but what we see down there is many times more than I came across."
I had just returned from a flight from Kag'ar Grul fortress and on the way there I got a good look at the Taran Warlord's forces at the western base of the mountain. The Taran army was not at all like the various smaller legions roaming the countryside. I could see heavily fortified floating castles with hundreds of goblin archers, an unbelievably huge walking creature with forts hanging from its flanks and another fortification perched on its back, all with goblin archers sitting or crawling along the walks.
The core army was about twenty-five thousand hornback orcs and they stood rank-in-file, quiet, in their battalions. The scene was most unusual. This organization was to be expected form Poltyrians , or dwarven armies, but not from orcs. There were also goblin archer brigades on the ground, seige engine brigades with titan and slave ogres, pagai waddling about everywhere and two dozen tall armored dusk giants. In a camp to themselves were over a thousand hornhulk knights, mageguards of hornhulks protecting fifty draconian warsorcers and Aelvatchi black elf warlocks, all with their many standard bearers carrying the magically protective shields.
On a rise a few thousand feet away from the other camps could be seen over a thousand winged goblins crouched on the stone, huddled inside the warmth of their enwrapping wings with spears standing straight up. Many subcommander headhunters were spread throughout all of the Warlord's host, some astride their hideous wingmordhs.
But what troubled me the most was the skirmishing halfway up the mountain slope. It was there that the cavalries of hammertaurs and basilaks were charging, then breaking through the front lines of the defending Bholbash orcs outside the fortress stone portals before they suddenly retreated back downward and away from the breaches they made in the enemy force. These assaults were directed by a very tall red and yellow colored half dragonman with a longsword. This sword was all of seven feet in length and appearing rather short compared to the colossus who weilded it. It was not the Warlord, but something bigger. Matthias told me he thought the creature was a mandrake, but he was unsure.
"What do you make of this skirmishing?" I asked him.
"Not what I expected. The Warlord has an impressive force here. Not in numbers. Kag'ar Grul presently holds three or four times the Warlord's fighters. The skirmishing, well, it's not necessary," he replied through a mouthful of deer jerky. We both peered over the edge at the unfolding scene. Matthias had found this dead-end cave on the southern face of a small mountain next to Kag'ar Grul. From our vantage point we could see the whole expansive valley as it stretched out to the north to Dijin Castle and the south to Ebrog Pass.
"If they can't break down those gigantic stone doors and get inside the mountain there is no way the Warlord can gain entrance to the valley. No mountains here are passable. If the dwarves couldn't do it, no one can."
I knew Matthias was right, and that without getting into the valley he would not be able to enter the rest of Devilspire Mountains, a series of impassable mountainous walls for hundreds of miles spanning north and south. At that moment the mandrake spit a stream of bright fire in the twilight.
"Impressive."
"Perhaps that's all it is supposed to be," Matthias remarked, biting off more jerky.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, he didn't burn anything up. He was just showing off."
I dwelled on this for a moment. Showing off. But for what? As I pondered this the basilaks rapidly struck the Bholbash lines causing havok. The defenders in the back pressed forward to repel this cavalry but the orcan riders drew their beasts back to rejoin the mandrake's force below. Bold advances, penetrating the horde of defenders only to withdraw again and again as the Warlord further down the mountain observed amidst an intimidating well-ordered host.
What was he waiting for?
In my own absence earlier among the Bholbash chiefs Matthias had flown about southern Devilspire informing many villages, cavern clan leaders of orcs, goblins, cave ogres and minataurs of the Bholbash Alliance and their new leaders, the orc axemasters. The majority of the southern denizens would never follow Bholbash leaders but all honored and feared the axemasters. Strange orc cultists venerating an unknown goddess in a hidden southern Devilspire temple...the true source of their prowess. This force, led by axemasters, was now joined by dark-skinned cave giants and this army of non-Bholbash orcs and warriors had just assembled in the valley on the north face of Kag'ar Grul. They waited in their camps for their turn to be admitted into the mountain to aid in Kag'ar Grul's defense. Led by the godlike axemasters they did not fear to enter the mountain stronghold of their former enemies.
"Have you heard of anything like this before?" I asked Matthias this because he was the only one of us from Arborealm, a Caerean, that had been to Poltyria and trained among their military at Three-Bridges Lake Garrison. Further, he spent a lot of time among the dwarves of Grol-galdir in Deep Ore Peaks and those of Emim'gard in Borderealm proper who ruled western Drakeroost. He had even visited the Haddarim of Red Anvil, an isolationist civilization of dwarves in the mountains of Ettertooth. Matthias had faught with dwarves in a few conflicts with orcs in the past.
"No. I would venture that he's waiting for full dark. These underworlders see much better than their surface kin. I just don't know, Josiah. He's got a superior force, and a lot of it. Air and ground cavarlies. The Bholbash have none of that. These hornback orcs are far better disciplined, and believe me, that matters.
"So, if they're smarter and better trained...then what we are watching, well, it makes no sense."
"Yeah," Matthias nodded, swallowing another chew. "The Warlord would know that these surface orcs are stupid. If he is anything like his predecessor he is a master tactician. That's what wins battles. Yeah, he is definitely stalling while keeping the Bholbash from knowing it." I looked back down into the darkness of the mountain slope. Something troubled me. Matthias's words played back across the field of my mind.
...if the dwarves couldn't do it, no one can.
Here I observed armies held back with war machines, great beasts, floating battlekeeps, cavalries for land and air, years of coordinated training.
He has a fist but offers a finger.
I watched the tall mandrake point forward and another rush of hammertaurs fell upon the crowds of defending orcs, knocking them about and then retreating without doing any real damage to the Bholbash.
What am I not seeing?
My eyes wandered to the shadowy valley to the north. Far beyond my vision lied Dijin Castle. To the far south stood the twin fortresses of Ebrog Pass. These three were virtually impregnable strongholds and because of the sheer cliffs and heights of the peaks of Devilspire, with Kag'ar Grul, these were the only t
hree entrances into the valley. Between the three fortresses were about a hundred and thirty thousand orcs, and outside Kag'ar Grul on the valley side were now about twenty-thousand allies led by the axemasters.
...in the valley.
Bholbash valley was unusually flat and wide, totally banked by very tall, steep mountains. The back of Kag'ar Grul had a cavern entrance open wide to the valley. Long ago massive stone doors had been there but were destroyed in some forgotten war and never replaced. The only massive portal doors faced the western slope keeping out the Warlord's host. I looked out over a wide valley vanishing into the blackness, and then south toward the same. A chill crept up my back.
There is another army.
The reports of the other legions from the underworld roaming the countryside had been verified by many witnesses at the Bholbash council. Somehow, some way, this other army was going to get into the valley.
"Matthias, he's waiting for another army. He's going to have another force inside the valley."
Matthias looked over toward Kag'ar Grul's rear at the open cavern entrance valleyside.
Beyond Dagothar (The Oraclon Chronicles Book 1) Page 8