Fable - Ask Embrace the Slaughter

[Irene Savashal]

Irene Savashal wiped blood from her face with the back of her hand. She gave both her swords a hard flick and blood spattered to the ground before her, joining in with the deep crimson already present and the corpses of the gretches. Behind her the warhorn from the ogre contingent bellowed a new note and the trumpet from the Templars sounded its sharp alert as the horde of gretches, together with the fresh arrival of Spine Trolls, regrouped and gathered at the top of the downsloping mountain pass.

Disgusting creatures, these gretches and trolls, the whole lot of them. The wholesale massacre of them uplifted Irene's spirit, for she was certain that this pleased Regel and affirmed the Right Ordering. Yet the problem which bothered her from the very beginning of the battle: neither the gretches nor the trolls were intelligent enough to make such a coordinated push toward Campania. A horde like this was unheard of. Something was driving them.

"Praetor!" came an urgent shout from one of the men of her maniple. "PRAETOR!"

* * * * *​

The Spine, that great barrier which rested to the north and to the west of Gildan territory in Campania, was home to many dangers. And though the rugged mountains were indeed a barrier, from the traversable passes could such dangers on occasion descend into the green fields of Campania and wreck havoc.

So reports of the kind the Church received were not new, but they were always concerning. Church Regulators acted as Gild's very own monster hunters in addition to other specialized martial functions, and to Irene did this duty fall. Eagerly did she accept.

The reports from the countryside farms and villages were thus: that gretches had been sighted scouting near, this in both the dark and the daylight, before skittering away back to the foothills and into the mountains proper. Gretches were trolloid creatures, human-sized things (if a bit gangly and with a large tendency to trundle about on all fours) with a rudimentary cunning and intelligence enough to fashion weapons for themselves but not enough to form a proper language or culture; they lived in symbiotic relationship with their larger Spine Trolls cousins, often devising traps or plans to capture or corner, or simply scouting and tracking to find, big prey for the Trolls to kill, and then together they would all feast. A general worry among the farms and villages, therefore, quickly came to be: that perhaps the gretches were planning a raid to capture livestock, or worse, even farmers and villagers themselves. Such a thing was certainly not unheard of, and it was a terrible fate indeed to be captured and eaten by foul creatures of their ilk.

This worry was all but confirmed by the arrival in Gild of the Keepers of Oath chapter of Templar. They had recently descended from the Spine, and told of increased signs of gretch and Troll activity. Something big was coming.

But at the time, no one knew just how big.

Irene, as the Regulator charged with the mission, used her privilege as Praetor enroll a maniple of soldiers into active service. Hearing that the enemy was expected to be Trolls, a good number of Gildan ogres signed up, given that they were ancient enemies, and a good number of dwarves as well, for they hated trolloid creatures perhaps even more than the ogres. In total there was but twelve humans (and two elves) in her one-hundred and twenty strong maniple. All the better, so far as Irene was concerned: both ogres and dwarves made for excellent warriors. She reached out as well to the Keepers of Oath, inviting them, and declaring that she would be honored to have with her their company. Their chapter master accepted without hesitation.

And so the small army marched toward the Westlurch pass, the most likely place where they would find their quarry.

* * * * *​

Under gray overcast skies, in the narrow and rugged confines of the Westlurch pass, that mighty gorge, did the gretches spring their ambush. They had been waiting for them. They knew they were coming.

The initial assault was one marked by fury and frenzy. Caught in no kind of battle order, the army of Gildan soldiers and Templars were everywhere engaged in a fierce and chaotic melee. The dwarves formed what small blocks of shoulder-to-shoulder, shield-to-shield ranks that they could, making little units wherever possible. The Templars formed a wide ring, covering each other's backs, and providing some protection for the two elven archers and the human crossbowmen. The ogres, accustomed not to fighting in a line, thrived in the chaos, and with such wide room given to them they cleaved great swathes of death with huge swings of their gigantic maces, clubs, axes and polearms.

For Irene, she was much like the ogres: she didn't fight well in a line. With flashes of steel and a flurry of ceaseless strikes she flew from one gretch to the next, slicing, carving, cleaving, cutting, butchering. The final gretch she slew before their tactical retreat she beheaded with a scissoring swipe of both her blades; even in death, with its head severed from its grotesque body, the gretch grinned, bearing all its yellow fangs as if it knew something Irene did not.

The regrouping of the gretches, the arrival now of the Spine Trolls at the top of the pass's slope.

The warhorn and the trumpet, preparing the Gildan warriors and Templars for the next round.

The urgent shout: "Praetor! PRAETOR!"

Irene looked back over her shoulder to the man. "What is it?"

The man whipped his pointing finger back the way they had come, back down to the bottom of the pass: "LOOK!"

And there, visible even in the far distance, could be seen the tiny figures of gretches felling trees and boulders to collapse the passage. Trying, in fact, to seal them all inside the gorge.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Mogrin threw down the final gretch he'd gotten his hands on. The gangly thing gibbered and shrieked, squirmed and writhed frantically on the ground in its feeble attempt to escape, but its bones, broken from the sheer strength of Mogrin's grasp alone, doomed the little fiend. Mogrin hefted a gigantic booted foot and stomped down on the gretch's skull, the very crunch of bone smothered completely beneath his sole. All the gretch's flailing ceased in an instant, and Mogrin scraped his boot along in the dirt to rid it of the mess.

Annoying little creatures, puny trollets, these gretches. They had a feral spirit of hatred for ogres (and, ha, the feeling was mutual); what they would do was swarm an ogre, attacking many at a time in an almost suicidal frenzy, and while one gretch suffered the brunt of the ogre's wrath its vermin brothers would climb and stab, climb and stab. Mogrin had dozens of gashes, cuts, little wounds decorating his bare chest and back and arms from their assault. But only the faintest traces of blood oozed from them. They'd have to do better than that if they wanted to claim his head.

Mogrin bent over to collect his axes. Stood back up straight by the time the first Trolls atop the pass came into view and Irene received the warning of the roadblock being formed at the pass's bottom.

"Chief!" called one of the ogres nearby, jerking his head down at the blockade at the bottom of the pass, before barking out a laugh. "These gretches think they're smart!"

Mogrin spat out some gretch blood and skin from his mouth, snorted, and said, "Even better news. We're eating troll steaks tonight, boys."

Jeers and cheers aplenty from the Maulgar. The dwarves were stolid like granite, the humans save for the Praetor Irene anxious, the Templar humans alarmed, and Mogrin liked to think he saw the two elves quaking in their boots. There was one truth Mogrin for all his years saw as unbroken: no one reveled in battle like the Maulgar.

As soon as their Dhuumok put his warhorn back on his belt, Mogrin pointed his way and shouted, "Strike up that drum!" And eagerly did the Dhuumok comply, taking up both mallets and rhythmically beating the huge drum strapped to his belly—just as he had throughout the whole of the ambush. Mogrin knew damn well the drums annoyed the hell out of the dwarves, but the role of Dhuumok was not only sacred and not only pleased Threshkuul, it was also Mogrin's clan namesake before the surname was Gildanized centuries back.

And more than that, Mogrin just couldn't get enough of a good percussive beat that reverberated in his hulking bones.

Mogrin faced his fellow ogres. Hunched over and snarled with a feral pleasure and battlelust. With great alternating stamps of his feet did he match the beat of the Dhuumok's drumming, and soon every ogre in the pass was joined in that ritual frenzy, all stamping their feet as well, each and all combined making a mighty thunder. Left, right, left, right, drum, beat, drum, beat.

"Maul! Gar! Maul! Gar! Maul! Gar! MAUL! GAR! MAUL! GAR! MAUL! GAR! MAUL! GAAAARRRRRRR!"

And there came an almighty bellowing deep from the throats of every ogre, an anticipatory euphoria at the promise of more battle to be joined and greater foes to sate the savage ferocity now roaring like a bonfire's blaze in their collective breast. The beating of chests, the thumping of guts, the butting of heads, all this erupted among their number as none present in the Westlurch Pass matched their resounding joy.

Mogrin grinned, bearing his bloody teeth. Nothing quite warmed his heart like amping up his fellow Maulgar.

Then came the summoning shout from Praetor Irene, "Mogrin! A word!"

With a parting growl of savage approval for his celebrating ogres, Mogrin turned and walked up to the front of the formation—such as it was, given the ambush. This was why when he heard Irene Savashal was the Praetor enrolling the maniple for this mission, he didn't hesitate a moment to enter his name. She didn't let the comforts of the Senate Hall soften her, she didn't join the Church of Jura to give sermons and tend the temples. She was a combat Praetor through and through.

And she always led from the front, no matter the danger, and that alone earned Mogrin's respect.

 

[Irene Savashal]

Mogrin was a dependable soldier, and, truth be told, the sort of presence often needed to keep his rowdy brethren in check. Dwarves had a strong sense of self-discipline, and an even stronger sense of group discipline—if one dwarf was for some reason out of line, there were usually no less than three dwarves nearby ready to set him straight. Ogres, on the other hand, could be testy and impatient, and they did well to have one among their number whom they respected who in his turn respected the authority of their overall commander; more readily did they follow the lead of someone who either was their size or matched (or, even better, exceeded) their boldness and battlelust. And the wise Praetor did well to recognize the traits of her soldiers.

Mogrin stood before her now, and Irene thrust one of her bloodied swords down toward the bottom of the pass. "Your ogres: how quickly can they remove that barricade?"

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Mogrin followed the track of Irene's pointing sword and spared another look down at the bottom of the pass. The gretches, the sight of them made even smaller by the distance, were still hard at work pushing over those loose boulders with their devious little contraptions, felling those pre-cut trees; there even came an explosion, the sight of it visible a solid second before the sound followed, and blasted rocks from the mountainside tumbled into place along with the corpses of a few careless gretches.

Where the hell did they get access to that kind of magic?

Regardless, Mogrin looked back to Irene and gave his assessment. "Not fast enough. This downslope will have the Trolls on us all before work can even start, let alone have it done before they reach us. And if Maulgar hands are moving stones, they're not killing Trolls; we'll be out of the fight."

 

[Irene Savashal]

"Then it is as I suspected," Irene said. While she was loath to hold such an unfavorable position in the pass, right at the site where the enemy had launched their ambush and, therefore, wanted them, it was unacceptable to have her whole ogre contingent occupied with labor instead of slaughter.

She voiced then the accurate summation of their tactical situation: "We are on death ground."

Do.

Or die.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

"No jin or kujar has killed you yet, Praetor," Mogrin said, again bearing his bloody teeth. "And if one does, I'll kill em harder—I promise you that."

Irene would love where she'd end up in the afterlife. Some Troll or gretch here today, if Mogrin had to lay avenging hands on them? He'd beat them through the earth and into whatever underworld was beneath it, and they'd spend all of eternity broken and battered down there.

If Irene met her end here in the Westlurch Pass, Mogrin thought that'd make a nice parting present for her before she flew up to the Fields of Emir.

 

[Irene Savashal]

Irene smiled—a rare sight. "I will ask Regel to hold you to it."

"Praetor Irene!" called Chapter Master Arndel of the Templar, and he in his now not-so-gleaming armor came hustling up to her and Mogrin. Alongside him was the eldest dwarf, affectionately called Ol' Kegbreaker by his dwarven kin (for his propensity to cleave open kegs of ale with his axe and drink heartily of the flowing spillage), and together the four of them represented all the highest leadership of the joint mission.

"Among my Templar I have near half wounded. None are wholly incapable of battle, but another assault such as the one we suffered will be devastating if this is left as is. In courtesy, I ask if you will permit my clerics to heal our wounded, that we will regain as much fighting strength as we can."

Irene's expression remained solid, but inwardly she felt the small and inevitable tinge of disgust which always accompanied these situations. Yet this was hardly the time for her to voice her staunch opposition to the Church's practice of Clemency; and the Keepers of Oath, despite dabbling in Curite ways, had long been friends to Gild. At least Chapter Master Arndel had the decency to ask first, and to only suggest it when all was so dire, instead of outright engaging in appalling sin at the merest chance and earliest opportunity.

"Do it, and may Regel have mercy upon you."

"We can take the front, me and my dwarves," said Ol' Kegbreaker. "We'll buy time for the Templar to patch up, and they can use their spears and polearms over our heads from the back ranks when they're in fightin' shape."

"Don't you have wounded, dwarf?" asked Arndel.

"Aye, we do," Ol' Kegbreaker began a bit blithely, "but you won't find a dwarf here who'll accept yer magic healing."

"Fine time to be a chooser," Arndel said.

"Enough," Irene said, settling that matter before tempers could possibly flare. "Mogrin, have your Dhuumok watch our rear. Have him sound the warhorn again if he sees anything alarming. I do not want these filthy jins and their treacherous ways to gain any more purchase while we are all engaged with the front."

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

"It will be done, Praetor," Mogrin said. He'd just have to make sure he bashed into the Dhuumok the importance of keeping a keen eye out as well as keeping a keen beat. A hearty headbutt ought to seal it in through his thick skull.

"Kegbreaker," said Mogrin then, turning his gaze down on his short but stout fellow Gildan.

"Mogrin."

"Keep some open space on the flanks. And that goes for you and your Templar too, Arndel. My boys are going to need space to tear apart those Trolls."

"Aye, all yours," said the dwarf. "There's plenty of those stinkin gretches to keep Arragoth axes busy."

"Very well, Mogrin," said Arndel. "If you need any assistance with the Trolls, let my Templar know. We can call upon the fire that is their inherent frailty."

"No need." Mogrin grinned with a feral pride. "We might live in a city now, but my Maulgar haven't forgotten the ancient ways of butchering Trolls."

"All the same. You need but call, and my Templar will come to your aid. We despise these foul monsters as much as you do."

"Good. Then let's fill this pass with their sorry carcasses."

 

[Irene Savashal]

Irene glanced over her shoulder up toward the top of the gorge's ascending pathway. The distant hoots, shrieks, and guttural shouts of the gretches came alongside their hasty gathering, their herding and enticing of the dimmer Trolls where they wanted. No less than ten gigantic Trolls did Irene count, standing as tall as ogres; some even more so, for they never stopped growing, perishing only when killed or through starvation when they could no longer find enough food to sate the demands of their voracious bellies; and the taller a Spine Troll was, the older, and all the more dangerous and deadly, as its strength and regenerative ability increased in proportion. They were one of the many reasons the Spine, that harsh land, claimed such a bountiful host of lives.

And now she and her small army were facing down no insignificant number of them, supported by the flood of chaff that were the gretches. It would by no means be an easy fight.

The gretches in unison reached a feverish crescendo of wild shrieking, the Trolls roared one after another until all fell into frenzy, and together the tide of gretches and the lumbering Trolls began to wash down the descent of the Westlurch Pass toward the Gildan formation like an unbound sea of savagery.

"We're out of time," Irene said. "Everyone, move your soldiers back. Enough to give us some clear ground, away from these corpses. Kegbreaker, organize your dwarves. Arndel, get your battle-ready Templar into the line behind the dwarves, and take command of the elves and crossbowmen. Mogrin, I'm counting on your ogres to handle those Trolls; make it happen. Now move. Move! Regel be with you."

"Aye, Praetor!" Ol' Kegbreaker said enthusiastically.

"By your order," said Arndel, with no less military bearing.

 

[Marta Maisal]

IN GILD​

Priestess Marta Maisal hurried up the steps and into the Temple of the Everburning Flame. Through the vestibule she ran, alarming the guards posted there, and into the grand rotunda, the great central chamber known as the Heart of Jura which housed the Everburning Flame itself. The chamber was filled with supplicants, all praying, and around on the perimeter walkways did Marta have to run. She deftly slipped around passersby where she could, pushed her way around others with sharply exclaimed apologies where she could not.

In her hands she clutched a parchment, a report, and in her expression were the twisted brows and tight lips of worry.

Once past the Heart of Jura and deeper into the Temple's many halls, Marta was able to run faster. To outright sprint down those long halls, flying right past her own office chambers as it were. She sought the office chambers of her superior, Bashrahip Mustafa Junnal, and she prayed to Regel that he would be there inside.

At last she came to his door, and she did not knock nor announce herself. She simply threw open the unlocked door and burst inside.

Mustafa glanced up from his desk with stark and puzzled surprise. "Priestess Marta? What is the meaning—"

"Praetor Irene is in dire peril!"

He blinked, considered for a second, and then said, "I am confident that it is well within Praetor Irene's proven ability to handle the likes of some gretches and Trolls."

Marta crossed the distance of the office chamber and planted the parchment down on the bashrahip's desk. "It is more than just a gaggle of malformed jins which imperil the Praetor, Bashrahip Mustafa."

Mustafa's eyes fell to the report. He reached out. Slid it closer to himself and picked it up and took hold of his reading monocle and gave it a quick review. And with but that quick review, Mustafa's expression morphed to match Marta's own, paling at the implications.

"Marta," said Mustafa, dropping the formalities for a familiarity which only confirmed the utter seriousness of the situation and, unintentionally on the bashrahip's part, frightened Marta further. "Go. Hurry. Gather every available Praetor you can; invoke my name, invoke the name of the Pontifex if you must. I will do the same with what Regulators are present now in the Temple."

"Horses?"

"I will see the swiftest mounts assembled for the purpose as well. Now run. Run! Godspeed!"

"Yes, Bashrahip, it will be so!"

And Marta rushed out of Mustafa's office chambers as quickly as she had entered, terrified that Irene Savashal and her maniple, that the Keepers of Oath, might already be engaged in combat somewhere in or close to the Spine.

That she might be too late.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

As Kegbreaker and Arndel turned and hurried to their respective commands, Mogrin had a small moment with Irene, now that it was just the two of them at the head of the army. He slotted his axes into the loops on his belt, this in large part because he was going to need his hands free to grapple with the incoming Trolls, but also to offer her a clenched fist.

"Irene," Mogrin said, "make Regel pleased."

 

[Irene Savashal]

Irene impaled one of her long seaxes into a nearby corpse of a gretch. She balled her now free hand into a fist and punched it into Mogrin's own. Held it there. Great was the disparity in size between the two fists, yet equal were they in resolve.

"And the same for you with Threshkuul," Irene said, honoring the ancient god of the ogres. "Today, of all days, he will witness you."

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Mogrin gave Irene a parting nod, and then turned back to the formation, striding through the assembling line of dwarves and back toward his kin. He vigorously waved his hands, summoning them all close, and every ogre of the maniple gathered round him.

"Maulgar, listen up, because I've got good news. The dwarves and the Templar are going to hold that line, and it's up to us to handle those Trolls. We're going to tear those green-skinned, foul-breathed, pig-faced jins apart just like our ancestors did." This got some hoots and howls of approval, some stamping of feet, from the ogres. "The dwarves are going to give us some room on the flanks, so bait em over there. Then we grab em. Pull em back behind the line however we can. When they're far back from the fight, we beat em to death and rip em apart. Help your fellow Maulgar out; I want to see three ogres on each Troll, more if need be. Watch those tusks and those claws."

He glanced back up the pass, and saw that the clash was coming.

Mogrin beat his bare chest with a massive fist, three thunderous thumps. "Now go make it happen, Maulgar."

A short round of cheers and headbutts ensued, and then the ogres, all fired up now, started toward the flanks of the dwarven line. Not all of them would be able to fit, so they'd have to wait their turn to grab a Troll and wrestle it back.

Before the Dhuumok could start up his battle beat once again, Mogrin dropped a heavy hand down on his shoulder and said, "Skrog, your eyes aren't crooked are they?"

Skrog flashed his rack of broken teeth. "Only after a barrel or two of beer, Mogrin."

Mogrin grinned back. "I'll get you three after this fight. But you got an important job. You keep looking that way; make sure no gretches, no Trolls, no anything sneaks up on us from behind. We're all going to be busy with the front. Sound the horn if you see something isn't right. You got that?"

"I got it. They'll hear my horn all the way back in Gild if I blow it."

Mogrin heard the high-pitched shrieks and gibbers of the gretches behind him, the roaring of the Trolls, and the clash of initial contact against dwarven shields. The battle was on.

"Good. We're counting on you. Now strike up that drum!"

And with that, Mogrin turned, hurried up past the Templar and their clerics healing their wounded, and already saw a place where his strength would be needed.

 

[Irene Savashal]

Irene did not belong among the dwarven front ranks. She lacked a shield, and her height—unremarkable though it was—would be a mismatch among them. Her proper place would have been at the flanks as a skirmisher, but that room was left clear for the ogres; until they were done, until they wrestled all of the Trolls back and away from the dwarves, she would have to wait to take up her proper place in the fight.

But such was no excuse for idleness. Irene had sheathed her swords and called for one of the busy Templar clerics to relinquish his polearm; he did, Irene caught it, and she joined the battle-ready Templar behind the dwarves, halberd in hand, ready to receive the savage charge of these shrieking, gibbering jins.

"A plague upon the Spine," Arndel, standing next to her in the line of his fellow Templar, remarked of the gretches and Trolls.

"And all Arethil," Irene said, this with a hatred as cold as the glaciers found in the Spine's highest reaches.

"Would that my blade could cleave through the whole of their kind, felling them all in the single stroke."

"This horde before you now will have to suffice."

And at this did the time for words depart. The first of the gretches in that foul tide slammed against the shields of the Gildan dwarves in such a manic frenzy that they were reduced to naught more than thrashing arms and gnashing teeth, their wild rage perhaps claiming as victory each and every ineffectual bash of their spiked clubs or stab of their crude spears against that unphased bulwark. And such was the momentum of the gretches behind them that they mounted their brethren, indeed climbing up them and vaulting over the rims of the dwarven shields holding back their kin. These foulhardy creatures and their crazed assault was cut short by the coordinated thrusts of the Templars, the pointed tips of halberds skewering and impaling these gretches, their bodies either falling back whence they came or tumbling down behind the dwarves and at the Templars' feet and sliding some matter of meters down the slope. Irene, with some effort, chucked the corpse of the gretch she had stabbed straight over her head and back, its body slipping off her halberd in its backward arc.

The first of the Trolls, as well, had been baited over to the flanks, and the ogres had already begun grappling with them, pushing and shoving and pulling them back, pinning and sliding them along the rock walls of the gorge to keep the massive creatures as far from the formation (given what tight confines they all had to work with) as possible. When a trio of ogres had the first Troll wrestled back, and now the trio on the other side had the second, in came their replacements, eagerly awaiting the next Trolls to succumb to their instinctual hatred and charge them.

But one Troll had not been baited. One Troll kept charging right down the center, without care or concern stepping on and crushing gretches beneath its feet, as it with frothing rage eyed the front line of dwarves.

This rogue Troll crashed into the dwarven line, battering back many Arragoth, pushing through to reach Irene and the Templars. Irene shoved her halberd up into the Troll's chest; several other halberds pierced into the creature's hide, but these were all like thin boards propped up against a bursting dam. Irene's boots slid back in the dirt as she held her weapon and was pushed back. The Troll's stink assaulted her nose. Saliva dripped from its roaring maw and splatted in her hair.

"Mogrin!" she called through teeth clenched with effort.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Irene had barely called out his name before Mogrin was already there. He'd seen the rogue Troll barreling down the center of the pass, figured the beast had its sights set on the dwarves rather than his ogres, and pre-emptively he moved up through the line of Templar and arrived right when the Troll found itself pierced by no less than four different halberds.

Mogrin threw his hands up on the Troll's shoulders—the creature stood at least a foot taller than himself. The Troll responded by taking hold of him in its own turn, and they were now locked in grappling match, jostling for control.

"Let it loose!" Mogrin said. "And stand back!"

Irene and the Templars pulled back their halberds. Mogrin started to shove the beast over toward his left, trying to force it out of the formation and into the somewhat free space available on the flanks; and, more so, toward his fellow ogres over there. The Troll snapped and bit at him, its massive head lunging forward in its vicious attempts, its teeth clapping together with that hard and dull sound of enamel on enamel. Mogrin had to keep it at bay at the same time as he kept his footing and as well steered the powerful monster where he wanted it to go.

The gap in the line left by the forceful incursion of the rogue Troll had to be filled by the recovering dwarves and Irene. It was up to them to plug that gap.

 

[Irene Savashal]

As Mogrin did battle with the Troll, wrestling it away, what was left when the two giants departed was a gap in the dwarven line. Those dwarves who had been knocked over, even launched into the air and away, by the Troll's forceful charge were getting back to their feet—those that could, at any rate, for the Troll's strength left those that weathered the brunt of its attack with debilitating injuries.

Such was to be expected, for the longer the fight went on, the more casualties would amount. But these creatures, though in the gretches' case crafty, in the Trolls' case fierce, were both at their hearts cowardly and opportunistic. Whatever brought such a horde together was not as of yet known, but how said horde would crumble would be fear. Just like when the initial ambush of the gretches failed, when they scampered up the pass to regroup with the larger part of their horde, so too would a loss of their bestial morale put them all to flight. Irene knew that her maniple just needed to endure. Endure.

Gretches readily poured into the gap in the line, attacking the dwarves from the sides, spilling inward and leaping at the Templars. Halberds came crashing down on them, the axeheads, the hammerheads, the speartips, every facet of the polearms brought to bear against the green-skinned jins.

Irene chopped open a gretch's skull with her halberd's axe. Thrust forward the speartip into another. Freed her right hand from grasping the halberd and whipped it to her waist, slashing open a leaping gretch's stomach and cutting it clean in half in the fluid motion of drawing one of her seax swords. She pulled back her halberd as she stabbed over her left arm with her sword, puncturing the neck of a gretch who had pounced onto the armor of the Templar beside her.

Then she herself was pounced on, and down she fell.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Mogrin slammed the Troll into the rock wall of the gorge. The beast snapped at him, and he had to jerk his head away lest he lose an ear, or mayhap even half his face. Mogrin whipped a punch into the Troll's jaw and, though the beast's head rocked to one side and slobber splattered along the rocks behind it, all it seemed to do was enrage the creature even further.

"On your left!" said one of his fellow ogres, coming to his aid. He grabbed firm hold of the Troll's left arm.

"Here for ya, Mogrin!" said another, taking hold of the Troll's right arm.

"Shove this big bastard back," Mogrin said, his words strained with all the physical effort it was taking just to keep some semblance of control. Even with three ogres grappling with it, the Troll put up a fearsome fight, even causing one of the ogres to lose his footing and go tumbling to the ground—smacking his head against the gorge's rock wall even. Good thing for that thick Maulgar skull though, he was back up on his feet and throwing himself into the fight again without delay.

Together the three of them got the towering Troll pushed all the way back behind the formation, there along with the other two Trolls manhandled in the same manner; back here there was plenty of room to fight without endangering their fellow Gildans or the Templar.

And it was needed.

The Trolls just seemed to gain more strength the more they got enraged; and the more ogres they fought, the more enraged they became. Ogres were getting pushed around almost as much as they were pushing around the Trolls themselves. It was exhausting work having to match the titanic strength possessed by these Trolls.

"Get him down, get him down!" Mogrin said to his fellow ogres. And one of them had a brilliant idea for just that: after getting thrown down onto his ass by the Troll, he scrambled over behind the Troll's legs on all fours. Mogrin capitalized. Threw himself forward in the grapple with all of his weight, and both he and the Troll toppled over the ogre.

Mogrin and the Troll went rolling downhill for a small while, a stream of dirt and small rocks chasing after them, until Mogrin ended up mounted atop the giant beast.

He knew not what was happening with Irene. All he could right now was deal with what was in front of him, beneath him.

 

[Grigori Mikhal]

IN GILD​

The Council of Praetors had just adjourned from the Senate Hall for the midday hour. Several invitations had been genially extended to him, asking if he would like to join this group or that group for lunch. He declined them all.

What consumed Grigori Mikhal was a kind of restlessness, a feeling of not quite being ill yet not quite being well. Some days it was better, days where the past, blissfully, did not intrude upon the present. Some days, like today, it was not so good. Perhaps it was the weather, if only in small part; in his paintings, Grigori never liked to paint a completely overcast scene.

Where was the remedy he sought? Where could it be found? After the incident, Bashrahip Mustafa recommended that he take some time away from his more militant Praetor duties, and so that is what Grigori had done—he'd not once lifted his axe in all the months since. He had joined in the sessions of the Council, but he had to be truthful with himself: politics were simply not for him, even though the very name of Praetor conferred the distinction of "warrior" and "statesman". In the Council sessions he rarely gave his opinion on matters, and when he did, he certainly could not match the flowing eloquence of the Praetors more experienced in public speaking (and perhaps, he thought, it was only his history of service which made his fellows seriously listen). Many could strike that balance of warrior and statesman, but Grigori knew that he leaned by far more on the martial side.

The trouble was, the thought of once again touching his axe, which sat at rest on the wall at his home in the Krala Ait, made him feel uneasy. Nauseous, even.

Yet today, the choice of once again taking up his axe would be presented to him.

For, as he was the last Praetor leaving the Senate Hall, indeed, just as he stepped out through those grand doors, he saw none other than Priestess Marta Maisal running up toward him, the look on her face speaking of relief to see him, speaking of a deep worry which had prompted her haste to begin with.

 

[Marta Maisal]

IN GILD​

Thank Regel and all the Saints!

Of all the Praetors Marta could have chanced to encounter first, perhaps there was none more suited to the task at hand than Grigori Mikhal. He was a hero of the Ommite war, and though the war itself ultimately saw Gild signing an unfavorable truce, Grigori had performed admirably in battle after battle, winning for himself and the Mikhal name many military decorations and awards. She had not the chance of going through the War College with him, for he was in his elder fourth year while she had just been enrolled into her junior first year, nor had she yet the privilege of working with him in duties of the Church. Little more than passing acquaintances were they.

But today, that unfamiliar state of affairs would seem to be on the precipice of change. To Marta, who felt the winds of providence in the subtle workings of the world, by no thing as meek as mere chance were she and Grigori brought together on this day of all days. Regel himself, she very much believed, had willed it, for he cared for his faithful servant Praetor Irene Savashal, for his loyal Gildan ogre Mogrin Dhuumal, and all the others who had marched out in search of those forsaken jins.

And it would be up to Marta, to Grigori, and to all the Praetors and Regulators they could summon not to disappoint their god.

"Praetor Grigori!" Marta called in a thin, exhausted tone. "Praetor! Grigori!"

She came skidding to a stop before him, doubling over, hands on her knees, panting from the effort of so much running. Her spirit was strong, but her body, like all mortal flesh, was limited. She needed a brief moment before she could speak.

 

[Grigori Mikhal]

IN GILD​

Grigori found himself taken aback some by the Priestess's current beleaguered state, and, like a ray of the sun finding purchase through a gap in a blanket of stormclouds, he as well found himself instantly energized, enthralled even, by what serious matter had so rattled Marta in its grasp, and by what he himself could do to help.

"Take a breath. Take several," Grigori said encouragingly, placing a hand onto her shoulder. "Collect yourself."

And he would wait those few seconds until the wind was back in her lungs, until she was standing up straight again with a posture more stately, and more befitting of her rank.

"Tell me what urgency has driven you to me."

 

[Marta Maisal]

IN GILD​

At last was she able to speak! Even that small matter of seconds seemed an interminable torture, what when she knew that time of was the essence and no less than hundreds of lives at stake.

"Praetor Irene Savashal and her mission stand on the precipice of catastrophe! They know not the scope of what they pursue!"

And she told him. That fateful report, delivered to her by one of the faithful, the connection she made between it and the mission upon which Irene departed to accomplish, she told Grigori all this, summarized into a single pointed sentence.

The name of a great nemesis of Gild left her lips, and bitter was its taste upon her tongue.

 

[Grigori Mikhal]

IN GILD​

Alarm brought a pallor to his face, and a rise of his brow.

Grigori knew, of course, of Praetor Irene's raising of a maniple, about the Keepers of Oath, and about the recent departure of them all. Like everyone else in Gild, be they Praetor or Insan, Beyar or Noble, all thought their task would be nothing particularly remarkable; jins being jins, and not even ones possessed of anything more than a rudimentary cunning. Some Gildans even thought that a maniple and a chapter of Templar was an excessive answer to the threat at hand.

Yet it would appear in ghastly truth that even this "excessive" force might not be enough.

"The Council has already adjourned for midday," Grigori said with all the haste the situation now warranted, "but our fellows are not far. We can go after them. Work together. Cover more ground and rouse them to arms all the swifter."

Bashrahip Mustafa's advice had been well-meaning, but Grigori had to be truthful with himself: at long last was anything resembling a fire kindled in his breast once more. His heart burned with purpose, and he knew intuitively what he had to do.

Because deep in his psyche, the prospect of saving someone was like a soothing salve placed upon a grievous wound.

 

[Marta Maisal]

IN GILD​

"Then let us hurry," Marta said. And before they began, she felt compelled to add, "And Grigori? Thank you. It is an honor to act in Regel's name with you."

She was aware, by some small remarks made here and there by Bashrahip Mustafa, of the troubled times through which Grigori presently walked. Yet for whatever weight burdened his shoulders, it seemed to her that he was bearing it well enough.

For there was no trace of it in the smile which he gave her.

Together they ran; this for a short while, until at last they had to part to spread the word faster among the dispersed Praetors. Yet even with Grigori departed from her direct company, simply the knowledge that he was a part of this urgent task help to put Marta's mind at ease. A distinguished hero of Gild, answering a hero's call with her—where could be found a greater cause for repose?

 

[Irene Savashal]

Irene sunk her teeth deep into the gretch's exposed neck, feeling muscle give way and blood vessels pop and collapse beneath the cutting and crushing pressure of her incisors, her canines, her molars. She twisted her head hard to one side to rip the flesh and tear open a fatal, gushing wound. The gretch on her torso, the one she'd bitten, shrieked horrifically, twitched and shivered. With her free left hand she grabbed hold of one of the thing's big ears and wrenched its head back, forcibly opening the wound in its neck even further, and great squirts of blood pulsed out in rhythmic pace, sailing through the air like fair day streamers. It weakened quickly, and Irene pulled the gretch off of her; let the damned jin bleed out there in the dirt and suffer all the while. She spat out its own torn flesh from her teeth onto it.

Several gretches had piled on her when she went down. Her light armor wasn't meant for such a predicament as that, and in several places on her legs, on her arms, had she suffered some bite wounds, some slashing wounds. It had been all she could do to keep the one gretch on her torso, the one she'd resorted to using Mogrin's savage old trick on, at bay while she, blindly, cut up the others with her seax sword, going purely off of tactile feel, pain, and instinct.

But now she was risen. Back on her feet. All her face beneath her nose, all about her lips, the whole of her chin, was red with blood. If she saw herself in a mirror she'd be disgusted, looking as she did like a vampire after a particularly messy feeding.

Irene drew her other sword. "Arndel," she called over the mayhem.

The Templar Chapter Master, nearby, looked to her. For the briefest of moments she could see the shock in his face as he beheld her bloody countenance. "Praetor."

"Close that gap," Irene said of the hole in the dwarven line, the fighting hardly more than arm's reach away from her now.

"Where are you going?"

The blue of her eyes could have frozen over the whole of Eretejva. "To the slaughter."

On the flanks, gretches were harassing the ogres as they awaited more of the Trolls to lumber down the pass and toward them. The little jins were trying to get past them, and, despite the big sweeping strikes of their clubs, the massive boots of their kicks sending the runty trolloids flying, some were leaking through and harassing the dwarves and Templar at the very edges of the formation. Between the left and right flank, the left was seeing more gretches reckless enough to try their luck against the ogres.

And so that's where Irene resolved to go. There simply weren't enough gretches for her to kill where she presently stood.

So, over there, all the better to exact the revenge for her wounds on the gretches' kin. All the better to embrace the slaughter so mentioned to Arndel.

 

[Mogrin Dhuumal]

Mogrin didn't have to fight with the Troll by himself for long. Soon came the other two ogres who had been helping him, catching up with where the fight had tumbled to. One of them seized the Troll's right arm and slammed it down to the ground, held it there. And the other brandished his gigantic warhammer, held it up high, and began the work of pounding the Troll's bones into dust.

Living side-by-side with these big, ugly jins in the Spine, competing with them, Mogrin's ancestors learned the best way to kill them and to kill them good. As far as martial weapons went, slashing and piercing didn't do all that much. A Spine Troll's hide was tough, and its regeneration was rigorously adapted to healing the wounds an axe or a spear might inflict. Even worse? There were tales aplenty of headless Trolls, still moving about, still able to fight and kill, and, if they survived, even able to regrow their damned heads in time.

So what'd Mogrin's ancestors do? They beat the Trolls to death. Crushed their bones. Dismembered them piece by piece. Their bones didn't regenerate nearly as fast as their flesh and their bulk, and this left them vulnerable to the grueling work of sawing, hacking, chopping, or outright ripping off their limbs. Most of the time it wasn't necessary to remove all four limbs and their head—they would be dead before then. A big, elder Troll like this one though? It was going to take some work.

The drumbeat of the Dhuumok echoed through the Westlurch Pass and over the ferocious din of the battle. And the crushing blows of the warhammer from Mogrin's fellow ogre came to match every fourth beat. Mogrin held the Troll down, one hand to its neck, one to its other arm, both struggling to keep the beast under control while the vicious work was at hand.

Through it all, a savage glee overcame Mogrin, a primeval feeling of triumph, this of the most exquisite kind: that which could only be found in the brutal besting of one's enemies. The corpse of this stinking Troll, this hated jin, would be just one of many that would please Threshkuul today.