Emerald Knights Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1
EMERALD FIRE

            Rain clashed against the black stone. The growth between the castle blocks seemed to sing out in praise, dancing subtly as the droplets embraced their green stems and pink petals. The ruins lay quiet; the once great fortress of Ravenspire had long fallen.

            What’s fallen, is fallen.

            Thunder rolled through the clouds like wind in the meadow… like rain down a mountainside. A spark of light illuminated the dark clouds above. The war still waged up there, it seemed; the heavens were unaware that the mortal blades had ceased long ago. So long ago.

            To survive war, I became war.

            A fog fell over the eastern crag and into the dale. Its thick tendrils advanced with avarice, consuming all beneath its reach. They were as the encroaching footsteps of doom. The tragedy of that castle and those who sought refuge in its hallowed halls.

            I dare do all that may become a redeemed orögmur. Who dares do less is none.

            Fire and smoke lit the South. Those who wielded the heat growled and cursed. Their twisted bodies and pale limbs jumped at the premonition of bloodshed. They were the virar: those who’d conquered this land decades past. Liffs, both stupid and cruel, readied for war under the command of Furglok, the abyssal liff of Bogdread. His armor was that of bone and his flesh black and red.

            Have they not heard? The war was already lost. These fools are as misled as the sky.

            SCRABOOOOM!

            The mixed-blood briskly walked up the stairs from behind and sat beside the old orc on the moistened stone, in grime and grit.

            “They have come?” the half-breed asked.

            “You know they have,” replied the orögmur.

            “Then we are to die?”

            He looked at his friend through the rain and fog with a single emerald eye. “I cannot die… but you surely will.”

            The mutt looked confident that he might survive the thousand-to-one odds. He smiled and unsheathed his brown longsword. “If I am to die this day, tell me of when you were young. Tell me of brighter days, before this dismal reality befell this fair land… before what was green wilted, and the rot was given lordship.”

            “You know I do not speak of such things.” The greyed orc touched the reflective black scale lodged into his right eye socket.

            “If I am sure to die, what is the harm?”

            “You will die, foolish half-breed.”

            “Then ease my passing with your story. You know these liffs. They will not attack until nightfall.”

            The orc looked at the black sky and snorted. “Night is here.”

            “No,” his companion countered, “it isn’t midday yet. Have you forgotten this present darkness?”

            “Never!” the orc shouted. He soon calmed, wearily gazing south. He sighed. “I will tell you of the old days, but not all of it. For me, that last war is still too near.”

            “And I shall fill in the details he misses,” purred the feminine voice above.

            The orc looked through the rain at the winged demon above. Her amber eyes glowed in the darkness menacingly, her long horns given life amidst the lightning.

            “You will speak only when spoken to, succubus,” the orc spat, disgusted.

            The demon chuckled coquettishly. “That is no way to speak to your savior.”

            “She was there too?” the mutt asked.

           “In a manner of speaking,” the orögmur replied. He pointed to the succubus and scowled. “I’ll kill you, wretch. Demon which haunts me! I will bleed you dry if it is the last thing I do! I will see you damned to the abyss.”

         “Looking forward to it,” she purred in reply, sprawling out upon the black castle stone dramatically. “Hahaaaa!”

         The mixed-blood waved the demonic presence away and motioned for his orc companion to continue.

            “To begin, I must first tell of my dear friend, Yoren… may Gesú rest his soul,” the old orc continued. “It began on a day, not unlike today…”

…

            Mist fell over the bleak mountains like blood spilt from a mortal wound. It descended into the dale… into shadow and memory, the woes of mortal men doomed to die. With the sword and the spear and the axe, damnation had come to wanton hearts. A red moon rose and fell. To each, his purpose and cause no doubt seemed a worthy rock on which to die; but as they floundered in the mud and blood, doubt began to creep in. Like a virus of the mind, they grew infected, left to ponder if their tenets were real and worth the crimson beneath their torn bellies.

            Did they die in fear or faith? Was it a good death? Did their sacrifice mean something? Would they be remembered?

            Black silhouettes ran and fought before a backdrop of crag and moisture and soaring mud. Bloodied swords raised; corrupted axes fell; guilty men died.

         Yoren Bloodaxe, a loyal soldier of King Harald, thrust his sword through the throat of his foe and swung his hilt counterclockwise, sending his steel to circle through the neck meat. The head fell with a burst of crimson, and the orc soldier kicked the body.

            “Any more of you scum? Huh?” the orc cried out to the merciless pit of pervading despair. “Who among the Amber Death can best me? ME!”

            A man wielding an axe and bearing the orange skull of the Amber Death clan charged for him. “I’ll carve ye bloody and make yer toad wife squeal fer me bits!”

            Yoren laughed in the man’s face and spat. Blood cascaded down the orc’s wet face, staining his white teeth red.

            Axe and sword met as both challengers led with overhead strikes. The clash deflected the orc’s sword back awkwardly, but he managed the recovery and countered with a sidestep and superficial jab on the human’s unprotected fingers, exploiting the fault of axes as martial weapons.

            “Ah!” the man howled when three of his fingers fell with a rush of scarlet.

            The orc whacked the axe out of his opponent’s hand and headbutted the fool. The man was left dazed, and Yoren was able to grab his foe by the skeletal breastplate and turn him around.

            “What was that about my wife?” the orc asked.

            Yoren’s steel edge split the human’s throat. The subsequent attempted reply was indiscernible.

            Blood squirted from the cut vein on a third potential challenger, hindering the elf’s sight, and Yoren advanced. The elf lie fondling his own guts seconds after the orc’s blade eviscerated him.

            The smell of fear and iron rose from the mud as the dying elf soiled himself. Yoren scowled at the pitiful wretch and kicked his skull in with one heavy step.

            Combatants raged around him as blood, black, and mist permeated the scene. An orc was cut down beside Yoren, his skull split down the middle by a wicked axe. The pink tissue of his thoughts and memories decorated Yoren’s breastplate and sight. Below, a second friend was drowning in the muck at the behest of grey hands. Yoren stabbed the human through the temple and pulled the cuff of his fellow. The orc was already dead.

            Green eyes surrounded by sage flesh stared up at Yoren vacantly as the scalp fell into the sullied tarn. Life dripped from the fleshless top into the shallow black. The pink tissue of sawed meat turned grey against the white skull. Tears of scarlet fell from Yoren’s blank face, and a fire burned in his chest.

            Yoren rose from the living grave and screamed with untamed zeal. His seated heart knocked against the bone as adrenalized courage coursed through him. Orcish steel struck soft meat, unseaming a man from nave to jaw. Raw flesh and scarlet gore spilled forth like the uncoiling of pale snakes upon the cadaverous field of ruin.

            The orc commander raised his tool of damnation to the firmament. His steel smoked with bloody execution, enshrouded in tumultuous fog.

            A man stood on the far hill. It was Gallus, leader of the Amber Death and scourge upon Yoren’s fighters. He pointed his foul blade toward Yoren and spread wide a set of demonic wings to challenge.

            GRRRRRRRRRRR.

            The earth shook and panic flooded the fray, save for Yoren and those he commanded.

            “Foul deeds await on this hallowed grave, for wrath and ruin and the emerald night!”

            BOOOOOM!

          An emerald inferno filled the atmosphere. A large plume grew upon the far hill where the enemy held their reserves, sending fiery debris to the black dirt and scarlet pools of blood.

            The eerie light illuminated the orc’s dark eyes. Screams of the great burning blessed his ears with paradoxical thrill.

            Victory.  

…

            The grey and black field below lay silent in the night. Sparse spells of green fire littered the graveyard as birds of prey circled above.

            The orc commander sat on the hilltop, heavy of heart. His warm breath dissipated into the chill wind like winter vapors before the rising sun.

            “Victory yet again,” said the orc to the food of crows. “A foul day indeed, the morn I lose my nephew, the last of his line. On the oath I swore his father, I have failed.”

            A harsh cotton sleeve smeared the sticky blood coating his harsh face. The smell of liquid iron assaulted his senses.

            “But the war is done,” he told himself, taking the flask from his belt and drinking its mind dulling contents. “Hurn and Falnor may finally know peace.” He scoffed and took another swig of his favorite whiskey. “Peace or no, I will have my payment from King Harald… find my own peace, if I must.”

            The crows beneath the hill filled their bellies. An eye, a tongue, an ear, a finger - it mattered not to their greasy beaks. Meat was meat.            

            “You’re welcome. I cooked it for you, ungrateful bastards,” Yoren commented to the bleak birds. “Question is: What place does a war-torn orc have in society? When all I’ve known is killing, where do I find purpose? Where do we, my brothers in arms, find purpose? On a farm?” he laughed, and the sorrowful chuckles carried for miles… like some morbid commentary on the field below. “Maybe I’ve got it wrong; maybe I am cursed and those at rest are blessed.

            “No, not that,” he reasoned. “Harald of Falnor and Rollo of Hurn will fight again in a different war at a later time. Only a matter of when. And when it comes, he will need soldiers – orcs. And Rollo will need Amber Death… and so the fight continues between our two islands. Till one finally reduces the other to glass.”

            Mentally deficient practices: human kings dividing their land among sons, he thought to himself. It pleads for war between the sons. Maybe that is what King Erik wanted. I don’t profess to understand the minds of humans. Nonetheless, I will profit from their foolishness or become a feast for crows.

            “Such is the voice of the river beneath the cobblestone bridge in winter.”

            The day passed, and the commander drank in purposeful contemplation. He was uncertain about his place in the world, of the orögmur’s place in it. He did not wish to always be fighting but what else was there? He pondered solutions and grew frustrated.

             By mid-day, a familiar face emerged over the hillock. It was his friend, Yuval – the orc who’d acquired the ingredients for the green fire. A rather dark-skinned orc, the mustached orögmur was the commander’s most trusted ally.

            “Commander Yoren,” he greeted, handing his superior a sealed letter. “This letter is from the King. Declaration of your payment.”

            Yoren took the paper from his friend and held it as a precious gem. “Is it enough to get the abandoned inn on Pallell Road?”

            “Together with Yaffa’s and mine, I believe so.”

            “Good. We will have a home at long last… big enough for our kind to have shelter.”

            “There is more,” Yuval informed, solemn.

            “What is it?” Yoren inquired dutifully. He offered Yuval his flask, and his friend accepted.

            “King Harald wishes to see you.” Yuval took a sip and handed the flask back.

            “The prize?”

            “He did not say, but I believe you might be able to convince him to go high enough. We could commission the suit you designed.”

            Yoren perked up at the possibilities. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

            “Yes. We are in King Harald’s favor. Why not seek to build upon that trust and reap the rewards?”

            Yoren smiled, taking his friend’s offered hand. Together, they departed the silent, cold fray and headed north, toward the city of Troov.