A New Power

[Shadow of the Fallen]

After only a few minutes of toppling ladders, to his own pure delight, he began to realize that there were way too many for him to keep shoving them off.. Not compleatly unexpected, but slightly dissapointing. Yet now his attentions were focus on his immediate surroundings.

 

Death swirled around him like a malestrom of fury, Thrins blades arced with the currents. The balance the two weapons shared together was uncanny, like they were ment to be together. Resounding against foe blades as Thrin swirled and bobed with the dance of death. So far he had held the same two legionairs for about a minute.

 

Finnaly one broke his defence, leaving his stomach open to attack. A fatal move. Thrin was within the gap in only a split second. He immediatly turned from the falling warrior to parry a blow from the opposite enemy. Again, he swung the sword from the corpse of the first to render a corpse of the second. A wet 'thwack' sound announced a solid hit, and the soldier crumpled to the ground accordingly. Two more soldiers were in their place almost immediatly.

 

Thrin began to wonder why he was the only one attacking these people, where the archers were, but he didn't dare look, and instead focused on the battle at hand. Again, he claimed another soul for the Keeper of the dead. He felt almost invulnerable as he dodged left and weaved right, ducking and parring (sp?) blows as fast as the came. A thrust shot past him, barely skimming his shoulder, but it was enough to remind him of his mortality.

 

A splintering pain shot through his arm almost instantly. As he crumpled to the ground he had only enough time to slay his attacker. An archer saw what happened and rushed over to help, hacking into one of the enemy as he came, sending the man toppling over the rampart. He put a hand defensivly on Thrin's uninjured shoulder as he bade his sword into a gap in anothers defense.

 

"Are you alright?" He shouted above the unending noise.

 

The question struck Thrin with anger, not at the man, but at his own helplessness... It would not end, not like this, and not this soon...

 

"Only a fleshwound, cover me for a second," Thrin was already bandaging his arm with a strip of cloth he ripped from a fallen mans clothing. He pulled the knot tight and tested the arm, quickly, for he dared not to leave himself open for long. His blades were back up in short order. And this time only the all-consuming rage dominated his thoughts. He fought like a deamon fresh out of hell, guided by primal instinct and will to survive. He started to create more gaps then he looked for, adding more kills to his roster.

 

Seventeen, counting the men that died on the ladders.

[ObsidianKnight]

OOC: The "archer blocks" are crenellations,MDRud.

 

And I thought this battle was over....Armiena grimaces as she sees another company besieging the palace. At least they don't have siege equipment... A couple of seconds later, a ladder makes it to her position at the wall, and a trooper scrambles up it, not knowing death was upon him.

 

The first man up always dies, Armiena thinks as she stabs her dagger through his helmet. In an instant, the man's eyes roll up in his head, and his muscles seize up. Armiena kicks back the ladder, and several troops fall to their deaths against the wave of attackers. For good measure, she throws a torch down to the ladder.

 

The wood quickly catches fire, and the soldiers shy away from it, trying to avoid the flames. Armiena looks up to see another approaching army. She's about to be resigned to fight to the death, when she recognizes the blue and grey of the nation of Habassa. At last, Alenee had come with reinforcements.

[MDRud216]

The ladders were popping up too rapidly, Quarian saw the archers falling backwards over the wall and into the fortress. It was looking bad, then suddenly it became a lot worse. A soldier had managed to make it up the latter had opened the gate beofre a mercanery cut his head off. Invaders poured through, slaughtering every refugee down below...ma woman and child. Alenee was still blocks away...

[Peregrine]

Aseir's formation finally broke free of the invading horde and into a clear field in front of the fortress. Now the last remains of the invading army were within range of his longbows. As the last opposition died on his men's pikes, he slowed his advance and turned back to address his soldiers.

 

"Set pikes and stand your ground here! All archers, fire at will! And NO QUARTER!"

 

His last words were almost burried by the yells of agreement as his archers released their arrows. The first shots slammed into the back ranks of the invaders who had just breached the fortress walls. The entire rear of the formation collapsed into panic as they tried desperately to react to the new threat. But for many, it was too late as the second wave of arrows claimed their lives.

 

Now caught in a deadly trap, a wall of pikes blocking one way out, a fortress of mercenaries blocking the other, and a rain of arrows in the middle, the invaders hesitated a few fatal seconds too long. The third wave of arrows were aimed at the ladders, their stationary climbers little more than helpless targets. Barely a third of the targets survived, and the collapse of the ladders cut even more holes in the unfortunate formations below.

[Shadow of the Fallen]

Thrin brought his blade up over his head, blocking a powerful blow from one of the ladder-men. It occured to him that there were two 'clangs' with that strike. He brought around his other sword and planted it halfway down the blade in the mans stomach. He glanced below with a pause in the almost-constant chaos. Invaders were flooding through the breech, slaughtering refugees by the thousands..

 

He remembered then, the things they had done, the lost empire they were now locked in combat over. He remembered the oaths.. He remembered the blood.. It all came to him like a rushing tunderstorm of thoughts and feelings.. He used the thoughts to channel his rage then like a lightning rod would channel electricity. He used it to fuel himself to sudden, bold, highly destructive action.

 

Time seemed to wane, streach on to an infinite eternity of pause.. He knew only a second or so had passed, but he saw the events as if they were in slow motion... And then he saw them again and again, like a tape that just keeps getting replayed over and over in his mind. He saw the swords arch up, and fall... The blood.. He looked to his own blades.. And the blood... Nothing seemed real..

 

Then its started again in a sudden burst. Action, reaction. Thrin saw what was happening below, and deemed it evil, therefore he set out to stop it. He looked out, half way across the rampart was the lever, a good sprint.. Almost impossible to reach under the fighting. It didn't make a difference, dead men held no bounds.

 

He began to hack through the enemy on the battlements with vengence. There seemed to be no good in this world, no army that was fighting for a just cause. Except the one he was fighting for... They were saving the innocents, not slaying them.

 

His blade again contacted flesh, tearing a wound in the unfortunate victim. He fell, and Thrin charged over him to attack the next. This time his foe was off gaurd, and took the blade well in the back of the neck. The man fell like a sack of grain. Again Thrin charged forward into melee. Intent on reaching that lever and cutting off the enemy advance. He hadn't made much progress.

[Peregrine]

A shift in the battle caught Aseir's attention. The gates had been opened, but the flow of soldiers was moving the wrong way... And a few men were trying against impossible odds to close it again. Time to even those odds, he thought as he lit and drew back a signal arrow...

 

"All archers, hit that gate force!" he yelled as he release the arrow to land right in the middle of the attacking mob. The four hundred arrows that followed it tore the attacking group apart.

[MDRud216]

Arrows flew, swords clanged, the battle was at its climax, a turning point. A mercanery pulled with all his strength on the lever, consequently locking the gears into place that allowed 4 ton counterweghts to fall, pulling the gate shut and smashing all invaders in its way. The mercenary fell down over the battlements with his murderers blade still in him.

 

As one the entire invading force just stopped and looked around. Inside the fortress walls the invaders were trapped amidst a mob of refugees and the archers above with their bowstrings drawn.

 

Those on the outside, pinned against the wall and an advancing line of pikes.

 

It was over, so many lives and the sweat, the blood and the rage had just ended. For a moment the only sound was the exhausted gasps and panting of nearly every soldier and the ambient crying of a child from somewhere in the mob of refugees.

 

Quarian stood for his first time in a while and yelled: "take prisoners! kill all who resist..."

 

All that was left of the armada that attacked the grand city of Galor was less than 300 men, and they were divided by a 35 foot high wall. Those inside the fortress were arrested immediatly and easily by the soldiers, a sum of 48 had been inside and all were taken peacfully. A tension rose in the air once again, those on the outside became restless and Quarian feered a last stand. Even men outnumbered 4 to 1 can acheive victory against their foes if they are determined...

[Peregrine]

Too far away and too busy with more important concerns, Aseir never heard Quarian's orders. And events inside the fortress were out of his sight. The surrender and victory were hidden from him, his only view of the battle was of the still dangerous mob outside. So his archers continuted to fire, targeting any active threats they could find.

 

And even if he had heard, he would have ignored the orders anyway. For the destruction of the city and the countless innocent victims, there could be only one punishment. The archers carried out Aseir's "no quarter" order with deadly efficiency. By the time the last archers stopped firing, not a single invader stood outside the fortress.

 

Finally, Aseir and his men could relax. The battle had been won, their desperate gamble had paid off. Aseir leaned back in his saddle and felt some of the fatigue leave him. Around him, his men lowered their weapons and began a slow advance into the fortress to claim their victory. Blue and gray flags were hung from the points of raised pikes as they approached. The battle flags had been lost far back along with their bearers, and the soldiers saw it as a point of pride to replace them. Flanked by a pair of flag bearers, Aseir rode ahead of the main group and through the gate to meet the defenders inside.

[MDRud216]

Aseir was met by not a proud and dilegent army, but rather a mob of dirty refugees, many were women holding babies that were covered in a ash dust from the burning homes. Children looked out on the army that stood in the entrance to the fortress with envy, and confusion. In front of these onlookers countless corpses lied in pools of their own blood, Aseir notes a small child, not more than seven summers old knealing by his fallen mother, her mouth locked in the scream from the point of death.

 

Being led into the keep he sees another dirty and depressed group leading prisoners into the hall. From the battlements the last forty archers crawled down the latters and stood with the victors. From amongst them Quarian emerged and confronted Aseir with a stern apearence. The only visible hint of his agony was the dirty, blood-stained cloth wrap bound tightly around his shoulder.

 

"thankyou..."

[Shadow of the Fallen]

Thrin could hardly stand.. He pulled his blade from the soldier he had most recently slain as the call to take prisoners was made. He fell to a knee.

 

The adrenaline rush had kept him going for a long time through that battle, the anger pushing him the rest of the way.. Now the fatigue of it all was crushing. He braced himself against his sword blade.

 

Darkness was creeping in on his sight. He was bitterly holding on, trying to stay awake... But at last he failed. He past out on the rampart right before the man he had just killed.

 

A nearby archer came in to help, thinking Thrin to be injured. Looking him over the man noticed Thrin only to be sleeping. He remembered again how he had fought to hold the men on the ladders off. The dead men killed by his blades were strewn around him, frayed by the fury.

 

Sighing, the archer reluctantly decided to move Thrin to a more suitable resting spot. A bed perhaps.

 

It took three men to get Thrin in the door way to the soldiers quarters, as his body was almost ridged in his sleep. When they set him down, exausted from the long trip, he rolled comfortably in his sleep, gathering the blankets around himself. One of the soldiers commented that he looked like a child sleeping there, they wouldn't have been surprised if he had started sucking his thumb.