Flight of the Damned

Join Brother Humphrey as he defends the very heart of Lochaid from a Beastly attack by the feared and hated Blade-Folk. Written in 64 AS.

 

The Blade-Folk came for Lochaid in the rain. Waynairde’s most northern settlement, the fortress-town has stood atop the feet of the mountains for centuries, spanning a chasm from which a mighty river comes frothing down. Curtain walls fan out from two mighty keeps sat atop the very edges of the ravine, a fortified bridge connecting them. A bronze grate rises out of the waters below, blocking any craft sent down from higher up the mountains, ending several yards underneath the bridge so that it can’t be used to climb up. Be it by land or by water, a Blade-Folk attack is doomed to fail against the might of Lochaid, as attested by it standing untaken despite dozens of raids and sieges.

 

But the Blade-Folk did not come by land or by water this time. They came from the skies.

 

It is, all things considered, a painful irony. The people of Lochaid have taken Watchful Osprey as the totemic embodiment of their ancestry, styling themselves after the bird of prey. The two Wardens of Lochaid, who rule its two parts in lockstep, are even known as the Winged Warden and the Clawed Warden. So for Lochaid to be assailed from the sky… It carried a distinct shock with it; one that went beyond the simple surprise of it all.

 

Thankfully, we Hunters of Fenblith stood with the people of Lochaid.

 

We had, fittingly, come up to Lochaid to discuss a joint effort to fight against the Blade-Folk. The Waynairdians’ northern neighbours have been a problem since even before the Coming of the Beasts, but recently they have become more bold. What little rumours we managed to extract from up north kept mentioning a single name: Hellbringer. This warlord apparently managed to conquer several tribes of Blade-Folk, combining them under his banner, a white cloth stained with bloodied handprints.

 

Upon this news, the Council of Fenblith became worried. A unified Blade-Folk would likely finally turn its full attention on the global network, turning their sporadic raids into all-out conquest.

 

Then several ships were taken by pirates.

 

The loss of valuable cargo – most of all sulphur, Hale Bark, peyote, saltpetre, and Parent Wood – stung. But what truly pushed the Council from worry into alarm was how the survivors described the pirates’ ship. A frightful galleon, its mast hung with the heads of people allowed to turn into bodiless Beasts, a system of bellows forcing a deathly dirge from their breathless mouths. Such horrifying practices could only be the work of the Blade-Folk, and the fact that the ships were taken on routes specifically designed to avoid them proved that they were becoming bolder, going further afield for their plunder and taking more than before.

 

Thus, we were in Lochaid. There were twenty of us. Not four pre-existing squads, but twenty individual Hunters, handpicked by Master Douglas himself. The Council wishes to push back against the Blade-Folk by invading them with a combined force of Iseronians and Waynairdians, with Hunters as the army’s hardened core. It is not a novel idea in and of itself – we have had to fight against outside aggression before –, but using Hunters as an invasion force… That’s new. As such, in order to convince the Wardens of Lochaid – whose town would have to serve as the staging ground for the campaign – that we could actually succeed, we had to prove our skill in combat.

 

That day, we were supposed to give our demonstration in the flatter and more open south-western half of Lochaid. We would have been fighting against twenty hand-picked soldiers, as the local warriors still call themselves, to show that we could best them. However, the night had brought a pouring rain, forcing us to postpone and leaving all twenty of us tense with anticipation and frustration.

 

Then the alarm bells rang, and we got a chance to give a much more realistic demonstration.

 

Ingrained by our training and straining for action, all twenty of us sprang up, grabbing and equipping our gear even faster than usual. Master Douglas was away, meeting with the Wardens in the other half of town, and without our standard squad structure we were less cohesive than usual. But when a Hunter hears an alarm, they rush towards it, with or without their Siblings.

 

We poured outside, the rain ringing on our helmets. I cocked mine slightly backwards so that the rivulets ran down its brim at my back and didn’t block my sight. Casting around, we were trying to judge by the movement of the people of Lochaid where the threat was, but they were milling wildly about, shouting in Waynairdian. Sister Keya, the only Adept among us and thus now our leader, approached me, knowing my parents taught me enough of the language to make myself be understood, and asked me to translate, but the shouts were so garbled by panic, exertion, and the hammering of the rain that I couldn’t make any sense of them.

 

Then we heard the first explosion.

 

It rolled through Lochaid from its very centre: the fortified bridge. Shock rippled through us, but we were running towards the bridge before the blast’s echo had faded. Keya took the lead, telling us to prepare our guns. Thankfully, we were carrying the new percussion muskets, meaning we could largely disregard the rain as we primed our shots.

 

A second explosion rippled through the air. We could not see the bridge from behind the buildings we were running past, but the glow of the blast lit up the sky.

 

It lit up something else, too; right above us.

 

They were largely humanoid, and in a jolt my subconscious offered that they may well have once been the crews of the lost ships, though I would not know how to begin proving it. Their arms were turned into batlike wings, spanning wider than their human arms once had. Their faces writhed with horrid expressions, as if their once human minds were still there, forced to see what their transformed bodies did, birthing a single word into my mind to call these terrible Beasts: Damned. They had bow-legs, looking almost like they were perching on their cargo, which they held with feet turned into nimble paws with long, separate, almost skeletal toes. There was no doubt in my mind that the explosions rocking Lochaid’s bridge were caused by these Beasts dropping casks of gunpowder on it, waterproof fuses lit. But it was not gunpowder the Damned above my Siblings and me were carrying.

 

It was people.

 

I saw the glints of steel as grinning warriors soared overhead. With joyous war cries, they descended upon the streets of Lochaid, let go by their Beastly carriers to land behind us. Swords, axes, and hammers ran with water as they were hefted by Blade-Folk within the very heart of Lochaid.

 

There were only half a dozen of them, and they were unarmoured so as to be lighter to carry, so Keya ordered the five Hunters at the rear to take care of them and catch up when they were done. The howling roar of the charging Blade-Folk was cut short by a salvo of musket fire. I heard only a few dull thuds as my Siblings overwhelmed the injured warriors.

 

Soon, though, more shouts sounded, thickening into a din of battlelust as the Blade-Folk let go of their pent-up excitement at the very end of their stealthy flight. We looked across the skies, and in every street close to the bridge, Damned descended with cackling cargo. We took shots wherever we could, the five Siblings who had stayed to fight catching up and joining their muskets to the assault, but the south-western half of Lochaid was being overrun from above.

 

Meanwhile, explosions continued to sound, bursts of fire pummeling the bridge. The rain made it impossible to properly see the sky across the chasm, but it appeared as if the north-eastern half of town was being avoided by our attackers. The slightly flatter ground and more open streets in this part of Lochaid made landing easier. And by taking out the bridge, the Blade-Folk could bisect the town’s army, allowing them to fight their enemy piecemeal.

 

It was clear, then, that we had to protect the bridge.

 

Keya directed us towards the ravine, having us mount the wall to the left of the keep on this side of the bridge. As we cleared the steps, we got a better look across the chasm, and we saw the Damned were, indeed, much more present in the skies around us than in the north-east. More importantly, though, they were passing over the bridge itself in increasing numbers, placing or dropping their casks and blasting away chunks of masonry.

 

We formed up in three rows, Keya directing us to fire, retreat, reload, and step up in two sets of six and one of seven. This way, we were continuously pouring Starsteel into the Damned, covering the bridge with our salvos. As we began taking down the Beasts, most of their casks followed them into the ravine, disappearing into the foaming depths below. A few, however, – those with fuses a touch too short – exploded in mid-air, rocking us with shockwaves as we fought to keep our muskets straight.

 

But despite this additional strain, our plan was working. Fewer and fewer Damned made it to the bridge, and the cacophony of explosions and cracking stonework was beginning to let up. The Blade-Folk had noticed, though, and Keya soon alerted us to a coming charge.

 

A tangle of Blade-Folk – at least two dozen – were streaming towards the wall, ignoring those Waynairdian defenders who had managed to mobilise towards the bridge to come rushing at us. Thankfully, we had the benefit of a high position that could only be reached by relatively narrow steps, so Keya had only one of the rows of six mount their bayonets and force the savages back down the wall. I was not among them, and I ignored the sounds of battle – the scrapes of blades and handles, the roars and screams and yelps and sobs – behind me as I redoubled my effort on swiftly reloading and firing to make up for the now preoccupied Hunters.

 

Not long after the first charge, however, Keya alerted us to another, this one coming along the wall. Yet more Blade-Folk had mounted the defences further away from the bridge, and they were now running towards us at breakneck speed. I saw one of them stumble, and their kin did not even attempt to avoid them with their trampling feet as they forged their way forwards. Without the benefit of high ground and a narrow approach, this promised to be a much, much harder fight.

 

Desperate to keep muskets shooting at the Damned, Keya quickly picked out the five of us who were reloading and shooting the most effectively to keep up the pressure while ordering the remaining eight of us to get ready to face the oncoming horde. I was among the fighters, and so I fixed my bayonet, made sure my sabre and dagger were ready to be drawn, and prayed to the Smither and Weaver Saints that my armour would hold.

 

We formed up, eight Hunters abreast, and levelled our muskets. When the Blade-Folk were but a few steps away, we pulled our triggers, sending a salvo into their front rank. Bullets tore into them, making the warriors behind the first row stumble as the warriors at the front suddenly dropped.

 

Then we charged.

 

With Fenblith on our lips, we burst forwards, our bayonets ramming into the Blade-Folk in the second row right as they recovered their momentum. A brutal melee ensued, with all eight of us using the range our muskets and bayonets afforded us to the fullest extent.

 

We had a few distinct advantages over the Blade-Folk. Most importantly, we were armoured, whereas they had nothing save their weapons to protect them. Notably, we were somewhat larger than most of them. Combined with the length of our muskets and the short and most of all light weapons the Blade-Folk had been forced to carry, it was very hard for them to get to us. And of course, the very reason we were in Lochaid was that, more than anything, we excelled in hand-to-hand combat.

 

However, the Blade-Folk would not be called the Blade-Folk had they not known how to fight. An untrained eye would probably not have seen it, would have failed to see past the savage nature of this press of roaring warriors, but I saw – in the way they held their weapons, in the efficiency of their movements, in the very way their eyes swept over me – that these were very skilled fighters. Moreover, they fought with a fervour just this side of insane, no doubt inflamed by the imagined favour of their bloodthirsty gods, each of them showing so little fear it bordered on a lack of self-preservation.

 

And, of course, they greatly outnumbered us. Thankfully, the fact the eight of us fully covered the breadth of the wall was preventing the Blade-Folk from attacking each of us with several warriors at once. However, their numbers still meant that we had to fight without pause while their fallen were instantly replaced with fresh fighters.

 

Thus, even with our lifelong training, even with our superior range, even with our fantastic gear, we were beginning to be forced back.

 

One of the Blade-Folk managed to hook my musket’s barrel with his axe, pulling it aside and closing the distance with a thrust at my face with the short sword held in his other hand. I instinctively leant back, the tip of his blade jarring against my gorget so that it jerked against my throat. Had the sword been any longer, it might well have skidded up into my jaw, but I came away unscathed. However, another of the Blade-Folk had grabbed my musket’s barrel as it was forced aside and was now tugging at it while the first closed in, so I was forced to let my weapon go.

 

I took a measured step back while drawing my sabre, aiming the tip at the attacking Blade-Folk with the edge angled up. In the corner of my eye, I saw another Blade-Folk with a hammer clamber onto the parapet and launch herself onto one of my Siblings, the hammer pummeling onto their helmet, but I was forced to ignore it as the man I was facing made to hook my sabre aside with his axe, too. I dipped my blade out of his reach, spun it closely past my body and brought it down on his now undefended shoulder in a vicious cut. I carved him open, then I kicked him into his kin as I once more raised my guard.

 

A woman with two swords stepped up to me, keeping both her sides well protected and her centre conspicuously open. I pretended to take the bait, throwing a thrust at her chest. She immediately pounced, using her right blade to parry while winding up an attack with the left. I, however, circled my blade tip underneath her parry and threw a thrust from her right side. She tried to recover, bringing her blade back out, but I used the curve of my sabre to bring my tip around the back of her sword and towards the side of her chest.

 

Her fearlessness saved her, however, as despite the blade-tip heading for her, she still made the left-handed cut she had been planning all along, forcing me to abandon my thrust and jump back into a guard. She grinned, letting out a harsh laugh that came close to a snarl, and attacked me again, foregoing all defence and simply attacking from two sides at once.

 

There was little I could do but retreat and parry as she made double attack after double attack. She was forcing me backwards, the noise of the battle on the stairs coming up behind me. Then there was another noise behind me, that of a door slamming open, and the Blade-Folk before me stalled, her eyes widening as she gazed up at the biggest man she had ever seen.

 

Master Douglas’s blade hacked past me with so much force I could hear it slashing the air even over the sounds of rain and battle. My opponent tried to stop the blow, but Master Douglas struck through her guard as if it hadn’t been there. He stepped past me, and I looked up at him, and even I was in awe.

 

He was incandescent with the flame of battle, like a raging pillar of black cloth and grey steel. His ruddy beard was split by a gnashing snarl, his eyes boring into his targets as he pushed forwards. His Master-crafted sword – a unique straight-bladed sabre larger than any sword in Fenblith – swung around him with staggering speed. He fought with brutal efficacy, blade whizzing past struggling Hunters to carve through more and more Blade-Folk.

 

Stunned, I looked behind me to see where he had come from. I was just in time to see a gawking guard collect himself as the Clawed Warden, ruler of this side of Lochaid, shouted at him to close and bar the door as she went back into the keep. I looked down the wall and saw the Blade-Folk who had been trying to mount the steps now pressed from behind by soldiers pouring from the keep’s front gate, the Winged Warden among them.

 

With numb amazement, I realised the plan had worked. We had kept enough of the Damned away from the bridge to make it feasible for the north-eastern troops to make it across, Master Douglas and both Wardens among them. The Clawed Warden had led Master Douglas through the keep on this side of the ravine so that he might come to our aid while the Winged Warden led the counter-attack. Now, more and more of us were being freed up, allowing Keya to begin ordering us to rejoin the shooting at the Damned and definitively save the bridge.

 

For a moment, I was convinced it was all but over.

 

Then a mighty horn sounded from above, pushing away all other sounds.

 

As one, the Blade-Folk on the wall retreated, making room, and those on the stairs did their best to quell their own fighting. Confused, I looked up.

 

A massive Damned, much larger than the others, descended from the rain-darkened sky. A banner was stitched into its chest, one of white cloth stained with bloodied handprints. In its claws it held a warrior almost as large as Master Douglas, broadly shouldered and heavily armoured, with a helmet hanging from his belt. He held no weapons, but plates of steel were riveted together atop the backs of his hands and across his fingers, so that as he balled his fists around the mighty horn he was carrying, they were bundles of metal.

 

He said something in his own tongue, prompting the Beast to drop him the final two feet before flying off again. The warrior rose and appraised us, the other Blade-Folk standing a respectful distance behind him, and stopped to stare at Master Douglas. A craggy grin split his boulder-like face, and he said in a gravelly voice managing a passable rendition of Waynairdian: “You’ll do.”

 

He threw his arms wide, the slabs of armour failing to hide the size of his arms. I was convinced this man must be Hellbringer come down to Lochaid, but his next words dashed that conviction across the parapet. “I am Boulderfist, Blade-Chosen among the ranks of Hellbringer, and I have come to earn my place in the lap of Lady Death.” He pointed the horn at Master Douglas. “I believe you, giant, are what I need.”

 

Master Douglas studied the man. “If the Wardens can watch,” he responded, in much more capable Waynairdian.

 

Boulderfist let out a roaring laugh, followed by a hacking cough. He gestured behind him and said something in his own tongue. The Blade-Folk stepped back, making yet more room.

 

Master Douglas, in turn, leaned over the stairs, raising his voice above the remaining sounds of struggle. “Cease your fighting! We have a guest.”

 

After a swift back-and-forth with the confused and agitated Wardens now leading Lochaid’s fighters together, the order to disengage was given, and the fighting parties separated. The surviving Blade-Folk were allowed to join their kin atop the wall, and the Wardens took up positions to watch. The Clawed Warden protested, saying her side of the city needed aid, but then she noticed that the sounds of fighting had receded beyond the wall, too. The horn, apparently, had been the signal to stop all fighting, and the Blade-Folk had obeyed, more and more of them now flocking towards the wall, confused pursuers close behind.

 

Boulderfist handed the horn off to one of his warriors, the man looking wracked by excitement at the privilege.

 

“We are what we are,” he said. “If you die, the horn will sound again, in three short bursts, and the fighting will recommence.” He shrugged as if it was an unavoidable result.

 

“And if you die?” asked Master Douglas.

 

Boulderfist grinned. “Then the horn will be given to you, and if you blow it once – once –, and in one very long burst, my warriors will surrender.”

 

Master Douglas was silent for a few moments. “What are you gaining from this?” He asked. “Either you win, and your warriors are let loose, and they are inevitably cut down by the people of Lochaid and my Hunters, who are much better equipped and are now united, or you lose, and your warriors are made to surrender, and are no doubt executed.”

 

Boulderfist grinned again. “Exactly.”

 

Master Douglas shook his head. “I will never understand you people.”

 

“That’s fine,” said Boulderfist, taking the helmet from his belt and holding it above his head. “All you need to do is fight me,” he said, and he pulled the helmet down.

 

Master Douglas began walking forwards. “I promised my hosts a demonstration,” he said. “Far be it from me to let them down.”

 

As he said that last word, he lunged towards Boulderfist, his long legs giving him shocking range. His thrust went straight towards the Blade-Chosen’s head, but Boulderfist managed to strike it aside with the back of his armoured hand. He closed in with a speed belied by his size and threw a hook at Master Douglas’s inner thigh. The Master Hunter withdrew his leg, taking himself off-balance but pushing off so that as the punch sailed past, he barreled into Boulderfist and initiated a grapple.

 

The Blade-Chosen’s right arm was pinned between the two warriors, and Master Douglas forced Boulderfist’s free arm down so that the only proper punches he could throw would meet his cuirass. If he had pulled his dagger, Master Douglas could have ended the fight right there and then, but he didn’t, evidently wanting to test his strength against the hulking Blade-Chosen.

 

With a groan approaching a roar, Boulderfist freed himself from Master Douglas’s grasp enough to create room for an uppercut. He went for it, forcing the Master Hunter to let go and dance backwards, the punch clipping the brim of his helmet. Boulderfist closed in, but this time Master Douglas side-stepped, throwing a ringing cut with the flat of his blade against the side of the Blade-Chosen’s helmet.

 

Boulderfist shook his head, let out a curse, and came on again, eager to get so close that Master Douglas could not swing his sabre. The Master Hunter had no intention of doing what the Blade-Chosen wanted, though. As he dodged punch after punch and charge after charge, he simultaneously made cut after ringing cut against Boulderfist’s helmeted head, showing his agility and control to the watching Wardens as he disoriented and enraged his opponent.

 

So it went on, exchanges following each other swiftly and eagerly as both men showed incredible endurance, neither of them giving any sign of tiring despite the constant aggressive movement. Master Douglas, however, proved himself to be the more agile, and managed to receive little more than a few grazing punches as he continued to ring his blade across Boulderfist’s armor, shaming the Blade-Chosen until he utterly lost his temper.

 

With a mighty roar, Boulderfist charged again, but this time he purposefully overcommitted, so that when Master Douglas backstepped to dodge it, he was overtaken instead. The Blade-Chosen rammed him backwards towards the parapet, and my Siblings and I yelped to see our Master pushed towards the chasm.

 

Then, with a deftly timed move, Master Douglas set his foot against the parapet, and with an amount of strength even I, a fellow Hunter, could not begin to conceive of, he stopped the forceful push dead in its tracks.

 

Boulderfist was not going to lose this opportunity, however, and he threw his arms around Master Douglas’s waist and began heaving him upwards, threatening to tip him over the edge. Every fibre of my being wanted to come rushing forwards, but I knew I had to stay back, even as the Blade-Folk began shouting triumphant oaths in his own tongue.

 

Master Douglas was not ready to give up, though. He bent his knees, lowering his centre of mass to make Boulderfist’s work harder, while raising his sabre above his head. Then, as the Blade-Chosen continued to push and pull at his waist, the Master Hunter gripped his sabre halfway down the blade with his off-hand, angled the tip downwards, and forced it into the gap between Boulderfist’s helmet and the armor atop his shoulder.

 

The Blade-Chosen’s knees buckled as the blade sank into him. With a wordless moan, he tried to get away, letting Master Douglas go and attempting to duck free of him.

 

In response, Master Douglas forced his weapon further down, the sabre sinking deeper and deeper into Boulderfist as the warrior bucked and thrashed, gave a final spasm, and flopped loosely down.

 

Wordlessly, Master Douglas pulled his sabre free, the blade utterly coated in blood and viscera. He walked over to the Blade-Folk holding the horn, pulled it from the man’s grasp, and set it to his lips.

 

Even the rain fell silent as the Master Hunter who had slain a Blade-Chosen in single combat inhaled as deep as he could.

 

Then a long, drawn out, rumbling hornblow covered Lochaid in victory.

 

Boulderfist was dead.

 

There was a moment of tension in which both we Hunters and the warriors of Lochaid fully expected the Blade-Folk to renege on Boulderfist’s deal and either continue to fight or try to flee. We couldn’t imagine they would willingly put themselves at the mercy of those they had just assaulted, especially after finally making it into the heart of Lochaid.

 

But, evidently, we underestimated the Blade-Folk’s insanity.

 

With a clatter, the first weapon was tossed to the ground. Another clatter soon followed, then another, until the dropping of steel on stone rang across Lochaid like the still falling rain. The Blade-Folk surrendered, accepting their impending deaths.

 

The Damned had stopped coming after Boulderfist’s hornblow, fleeing back into the mountains, the bulk of their number left behind, dead, clogging the river grate with their bodies down in the ravine.

 

The Wardens approached Master Douglas, clearly impressed both by his personal prowess and the Hunters’ collective actions.

 

We were victorious.