What Price Victory?

Something turned out to be loading the corpses onto the cart and rolling them over to the next hill, then dumping them. This was difficult to do in the dark, and by the time they got back to their campsite, they had lost nearly an hour and a half. They picked up the watch where they had left off, and slept till morning without incident.

The ship was not expected until about ten in the morning. The Group was able to have a leisurely breakfast, and made it to the drop point in plenty of time. Then they sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. At one point the monotony was broken when a couple of lizard riders were sighted on a far hill. But they did not approach, and despite careful watching for a while afterward, they weren't seen again.

Ten in the morning came and went. The Group felt an odd sense of familiarity; this wasn't the first time they had waited at the drop point for someone who didn't show, though last time they were coming in on the boat. No one suggested they give up and go back to the fort, though. A little while later, the ship peeked out from around a bend, and the group watched as it approached, dropped anchor, and began to disgorge men and supplies.

The supplies were loaded onto the cart and a brief introduction was made between the two groups. There were five new men in all: Kypros, Iason, Vastaph, Proston, and Skiron. Once introductions were made, Anthoon stepped forward, raising the stump of his arm.

“Men, I don't know if they explained this to you, but there's a ritual all the new recruits have to go through. Someone has to sacrifice a limb. Last time it was me. Now it's one of you. Figure out who it's going to be.”

The new recruits glanced at each other. A couple of them chuckled uneasily.

“I'm serious. Someone's got to give up an arm.” He reached across with his left hand and drew his broadsword. “Let's get this over with.”

A couple of faces went pale and a couple of hands were reaching over to swordhilts when Sostratos spoke up. “Quit clowning around, Anthoon. You're scaring these guys. You guys, get ready to move, we're already late.”

Sostratos divided the group on either side of the cart and got the men moving. The Group watched with some amusement at the stern faces and determined step of some of the new guys. Most of the new men had weapons and armor; a couple had brought proper packs. One fellow, Kypros, had neither, only a red patterned shirt and a money pouch. He looked over the veterans and approached Laos.

“Hey, I thought we were going to get weapons and armor. It's not dangerous out here right now, is it?”

Laos said it might be.

“Oh. Well, I didn't bring anything, do you guys have some extras I could use? I thought they were going to give us equipment when we joined up!”

Laos gave him his shield and short sword, keeping his bow and spear. Kypros then proceeded to ask questions about where they were going, and what kind of training they were going to get, and how soon they would see combat, until Laos suggested that the first mark of a warrior was knowing how to keep silent when the enemy might hear you. Kypros was silent for three or four minutes before he came back and asked about his new sword and shield. But he did ask in a whisper.

Some of the other new guys tried to talk to Kosmas and Leucas, but neither man felt like chatting about life on the frontier. There was only so much you could explain with talk, and life at Fort South went quite a bit past that.

They walked for a couple of hours, then stopped for a few minutes to rest. Sostratos mentioned to The Group that he didn't want to take the time to stop for lunch proper. No one was going to die from skipping a meal. None of the new soldiers complained.

They returned to the march and the miles crept by. It was about three in the afternoon when Sostratos thought he saw something up on a hilltop. He warned the Group, who helped him keep lookout. Anthoon watched a small silhouette poke up, then go back down below the edge of the hill.

“Sergeant, I think we're going to be attacked.”

As Sostratos shouted orders at the men, getting them ready for combat, the small figure came into full view. It stumped along rapidly on a peg leg, and the group heard a voice, faint, over the wind:

“Eeeeeeaaaaaattttt myyyy sssshiiiiittttt!”

As the little broo shouted at them, other broo came up over the hilltop to stand and regard the group. Our heroes recognized Eat My Shit and the deer-headed sorcerer from their previous battle. There were two more broo carrying bows, a tall one and a shorter one, that the group had not seen before. And finally there was a fearsome ram-headed monster, eight feet tall, kite shield hanging in one hand, a giant axe swinging idly back and forth in the other. The group realized this must be the creature who destroyed Spryos's patrol a few days earlier.

The five broo stared at the ten men. The giant one carrying the axe rumbled something to his fellows. While Laos and Kosmas were stringing their bows, the broo turned and disappeared back down the other side of the hill.

Sostratos and the Group looked at each other. “All the more reason for us to get back before dark,” said Sostratos. “But why don't three of you run up over that hill and see what's ahead. If there's anything bad, don't stay to fight, just run back yelling.”

Kosmas, Laos and Anthoon did that. There was nothing ahead, and the cart and caravan moved slowly forward. Everyone looked from side to side as they proceeded. One of the new guys asked if they shouldn't go fight those things, and was told to shut up. They proceeded on for five minutes, ten, then fifteen, and nothing happened. The men started to relax.

Kypros had edged his way over to Laos and opened his mouth to ask another question when he was interrupted by screaming. Two of the recruits at the back of the caravan were stumbling forward, arrows sticking out of them. On the hill behind them were the broo. The two broo archers were already fitting another arrow to their bows while Eat My Shit gibbered and spun around on his pegleg. The giant and the sorceror simply watched.

However, this time the men had archers of their own. Laos already had his bow strung. He turned about, muttering some words under his breath. In one smooth movement he drew and fired. The arrow sped up onto the hilltop and speared the sorcerer-broo perfectly in the eye. The creature threw up his arms, gave a gargling scream, and fell twitching onto his back.

Sostratos and Kosmas shot off their own arrows as quickly as they could; the two broo with bows returned fire. The oversized broo knelt next to the sorcerer and ignored the arrows falling around him. A couple arrows glanced off his armor; meanwhile one of the men took a flesh wound in the leg as he ran behind the cart for cover. Neither side was able to score any more solid hits.

The axe-wielder shouted at one of the archers, who ran back to the fallen sorcerer. Now there was only one broo archer, while the men had three. No, two--Kosmas tried to dodge an arrow, took it in the arm, and managed to fall on his face as well. The other two men kept shooting and missing. They had only fired a couple more arrows when the sorcerer-broo sat back up. Then stood up. The giant broo gave another gravelly command, and the broo retreated together back over the hill, the last two arrows from the men flying harmlessly over their shoulders.

Laos cursed. The men watched for a minute, ready for a new attack. Nothing happened. Sostratos told a few of the men to keep watch, while the other men healed one another. This proved to be a bumbling process. The puncture wounds could not be cleaned very well. Many of the men knew some healing magic, but most were less than adept at casting it. One would-be healer laid his hands upon Kosmas's arm, cried out, and collapsed in a faint of his own. Eventually, though, all the men were healed, and if a couple of the wounded complained of chills, there was nothing to be done about that on the field.

Posting some men to keep watch, Sostratos decided to take a moment to set up a defensive plan in case they were attacked again. Anthoon questioned the wasted time, given that the plan was little more than “hide behind the cart”, but Sostratos insisted. Once the plan had been drilled a time or two, the group proceeded on, trying to watch the hills a bit more closely than before.

Kosmas looked at Laos. “Didn't I see that broo on the end shoot two arrows at once?” Laos nodded. “Yeah, he was doing some kind of magic to make that happen.” “I'd really like to get some of that myself.” “Oh yeah.”

It was most of an hour before the next attack came. This time, the broo attacked from the side, again popping up over the top of a hill. Only the two archers were visible. (Anthoon, alone of all the men, stood behind the cart and carefully watched the hill on the opposite side.) The men had their bows ready and returned fire. A few ineffective shots were exchanged, then one of the broo was struck in the leg, and they retreated back over the hill.

The men pressed on. A similar ambush took place several minutes later, again with the broo eventually retreating. After another hour, it happened again. Each time, most of the men hid behind the cart while the archers returned fire. Sometimes one of the men would get hit by a lucky shot. The wounds were quickly healed, but bit by bit the men's magical reserves were dwindling. Their only consolation was that the broo must be suffering from the same attrition. At least that is what they told one another.

During one of the attacks, Anthoon asked Sostratos if he thought they should try to rush and overwhelm the monsters, rather than wait to be whittled down a bit at a time. Sostratos gestured over at the recruits crouched behind the cart. “That big broo with the axe? You heard what he did to Spryos's patrol. I can't send these new guys up against that.” Anthoon nodded. That was hard to argue with. But later he would wonder what might have happened if they had seized the moment and charged.

The party continued to make progress, but the daylight was starting to fade. There was about an hour of light left when the broo attacked again, this time from the west, the sun shining behind them.

The men were running out of magic and light. This attack, it seemed they had run out of luck, too. The archer-broo were shooting at the men archers, trying to take them out. Almost immediately, Kosmas took an arrow through the leg which took him down. The arrows kept falling, and Laos and Sostratos were hit soon thereafter. Kosmas had been healed and ran back to face the enemy; Laos pulled the arrow and patched himself up enough to keep shooting, but was still bleeding. Sostratos was badly injured, an arrow stuck deep into the bone of his leg. He could not be healed, much less keep fighting. Anthoon shouted to the recruits, telling one of them to grab Sostratos's bow and quiver. One did, with shaking hands, and ran to the edge of the cart, drawing upon the goat-men as best he could. Other men huddled behind the cart, or ran back and forth between the wounded, or asked to be told what to do. Sostratos was screaming on the ground as he pounded the arrow through his leg with his shield. A man rushed over to try to heal him. Just as his hands touched Sostratos's leg, he shrieked, clapped his hands to his head, and fell over limp.

All of the broo had come up onto the hilltop, those without bows watching the battle. As the shriek echoed up the hill, the oversize broo shouted an order. The archers dropped their bows and drew their swords, and all five broo charged down the hill at the hapless party of men.

The monsters closed quickly. Kosmas and Laos managed to loose a couple more arrows as the broo raced forward, but the only accurate shot glanced off the armor the creature wore. The men had bunched up on either side of the cart, with the Group somehow all on one end and the new men all on the other. The leader of the broo swerved his band away from the Group and toward the confused and terrified recruits. The Group immediately started running around the cart toward the fighting. But as they ran, a wall of darkness slammed into place in front of them, cutting them off from the battle. They heard a horrible scream from one of the men, and Sostratos shouting, “Go around, go around!”

Kosmas and Laos realized they could run around the edge of the darkness, and did so, coming upon the battle behind the broo some seconds later. In desperation or in luck, the recruits had inflicted some casualties. The giant broo had been wounded in the leg, and was crawling around on the ground, swinging the great axe one handed. The sorcerer was up next to the wall of darkness and had also been knocked down, a recruit busily trying to stab him with a spear. Two men were down, but still moving, crawling backward away from that swinging axe. The other three broo were faced off against three men. As our heroes rounded the wall and ran forward, they saw the giant broo reach out and sweep his axe at one of the men still standing. The man fell to the ground, blood spraying from the stump of his leg.

The men ran forward to join the fray. They bore down upon the three broo still standing, flailing away with sword and spear. They dealt out wounds and took none; one of the archer-broo broke ranks and ran, pursued by Anthoon. A recruit speared the other one, and it died where it stood, gargling blood.

Eat My Shit screeched, and started stumping away from the field, chased by a recruit. Kosmas started moving toward the sorcerer on the ground, and Laos turned to face the axe-wielder, now crawling toward him, teeth bared, axe slicing the air in front of him.

The sorcerer broo looked at Kosmas approaching, hissed, and then rolled sideways—right through the wall of darkness. On the other side of the wall, Sostratos helplessly watched him appear, get to his feet, and run away.

Laos watched the monster crawl forward, axe waving. Wincing from his earlier wounds, Laos readied his spear, trying to time his lunge to miss the deadly pendulum blade. He thought he saw his moment. He stabbed. He missed. His spear stuck into the ground. The broo roared and swung his axe. He hit Laos just above the knee, cleaving the limb off cleanly. For a moment, Laos just clung to his spear and looked at where his leg had been. Then he fell to the ground like a stone.

Kosmas had turned back just in time to see this. Enraged, he ran over to the fiend and flailed away with his mace. The monster fell back before his fury, hacking back ineffectually. They flailed clumsily at each other for a moment. Then Kosmas smashed the monster in the arm, shattering it. The evil axe fell down, useless. Kosmas raised his mace, and as the creature looked up at him, brought it down again for the last time.

Kosmas ran to Laos, shouting his name. He saw the stump of Laos's leg, but the bleeding didn’t seem to be too bad. “Healing, we need healing here!” he yelled. He knelt down and turned Laos over onto his back, speaking words of encouragement. But as he saw Laos's face, he drew back in horror. Laos's head hung limp and his eyes rolled sightlessly in his head. It was too late.