H.G.T.

Pretty Things:

 

This was the last battle for us. We would win here or be wiped from the earth. I could ask no quarter in the next few minutes, and I would grant none. I spent a few last moments of quiet thinking of my woman, Mora, and our children. I thought of our people starving in our hiding place in the mountains. I thought of my sons growing up in persecution or slavery. Our opponents would deny us our place in the world. I found resolve just as the silence ended. The call came from the front ranks, and we began to march forward. In a few moments we would enter the range of their bows, and we would begin to run.

 

Our leader spurred us on. His voice boomed out in front of us, and as I looked at his broad back I knew I had to do my best to see that he did not die first, or alone, as he led the charge. We saw their archers loose, and the standardman waved the banner in a circle. We broke into a full sprint. In the next few minutes, we might all die, but the waiting, stomach churning waiting was over.

 

We ran forward toward the mailed combatants awaiting us. As we ran, we started a long, ragged war cry set off by the percussion of steel blades against the iron rims of our round shields.

 

Arrows rained down into us as we thundered forward, and soldiers fell around me, but the madness was on us, and we ran on over them. Our cry had become a roar, and the front ranks of the old ones drew close.

Their faces were distinct, their emotions visible. Fear. Doubt. Perhaps resolve. They were small and quick, not what I expected at all from the oppressors, the beasts that held the entire world and left nothing for us. We crashed into them, and the noise took away all other sound. We lost ourselves, the lot of us, in the ring of steel and the roar of throats trying to banish fear.

 

I smashed one, then another to the ground with the great crude claymore I’d been given at my conscription. The little creatures were very fast, but weak. When I’d killed about five, my brothers around me faring no worse, the beasts broke, running. Seeing our victory, we ran behind them, cutting down any that stumbled or turned to fight.

 

In front of us, a cry started up in their language. I did not speak it, but it seemed to be a name. It was taken up by one, taller and straighter then the rest.

 

A cluster of the ones we’d broken took up a position around him. He was dressed in a great silver suit of armor worked to look like one of their strange gods, and as I watched he formed the point of a wedge and marched forward, slaying my brothers to left and the right, felling them like an adult swatting down children or dogs. This was their leader, and where lesser beings would have paused and been cut down, my battle brothers and I surged forward, determined to drown him in our blood, bury him with our flesh.

 

He killed any number of us, and then I found myself up against him. I thought of Mora, thought of the sun rising on the lands we would win if we won here, and I swung my claymore down like a hammer, with all the might I could conjure, letting out a cry that ripped my throat raw. I saw with my eyes, felt with my shoulders, as his upraised shield shattered under my blade, the shattered rim flying free of his silver form with his left hand still attached. I saw my blade continue down into his body, saw his eyes die under his helm. I knew victory.

 

Around us, their lines crumbled with the death of their leader and they were driven into the woods. Perhaps a fourth of them lived, and as I looked around, I saw no more then a fourth of us were dead. We had won the field. There would be a future for my children, a hearth for my wife. No more mountain winters, no more famine and pain.

Everything went white.

 

I came too on my knees with liquid warmth on my thighs. Our chieftain was looking down at me, the shaman beside him. I looked down at a mess of bluish-white ropes covered in blood that coated my belly, my lap. As I made my wide-open killing blow, the alien leader had opened my stomach with his quicksilver blade. He’d killed me like he’d killed my brothers, I’d just taken to long to feel it.

 

The chieftain gripped my shoulder and looked in my eyes.

“There’s nothing we can do for you.”

I looked back at him, reached up and fumbled off my helm. I rolled my head to the side, baring my neck to him as I met his gaze.

“There is one thing,” I said.

He nodded and unlimbered his blade.

 

“Know this,” he said, “You drove the Elf-Lord from the field today. His men had rallied behind him and he would have likely won the day. You put Lochmorien down, and the rest of them lost their stomachs. I will give your wife and children a place in my long hall, and keep them as my own. When the time comes, a son of mine will marry a girl of yours, and they will share our lands.”

I thanked him as he raised his blade. As it came down, bringing darkness with it, I thought of Mora and her last words to me:

“Go, go drive them away from us. Win a place for us in the world, my fighting Urak-hai.”

 

Fan boy note: Yes, I am aware of the actual lifecycle of the Urak-Hai. Don’t be a tool.