Descent
[northwestern Mal Motsha -- just south of the bend in the great river]
The grey skies let loose their cool droplets, a hundred thousand well-guarded secrets: tiny orbs of precious water suddenly relinquished to the world. Over and over, without cease. We are here! they seemed to shout as they impacted. We are life, and now -- we bring that life to you!
Water struck earth and was absorbed into the soft, worked soil. It fell against green stalks and leaves and clung to them, dully glistening and trembling as the light breeze threatened to break its tenuous hold. And it fell upon the stony face of the lone orc who walked through this storm. It clanged against his massive armor and pummeled the broad, crested shield he wore slung across his back. It dripped off the helmet he carried under his arm, and it pooled in the large depressions his footsteps left in the tender earth.
Tender. It will be difficult to grow accustomed to a land that yields so readily to flesh, the orc thought. So many things about this place were unfamiliar to him. The abundant plant life, for one. The warmth in the air, and the generosity of the heavens when it came to spilling their precious secrets. The mountains of his homeland, rising now far behind him to the east, were made of rock and stone that would crush a thousand mortal bones before deigning to display the slightest crack. The air was crisp and the skies clear; storms were short and violent, not like these lazy, meandering rains that had been plaguing his travels ever since he had cleared the forest and swung his march southwest to hug the shores of the great river. Not for the first time, a scornful expression played across his face.
Why was he trudging through this soaked land, anyway? Was it not wrong to abandon his tribe, his clan? Was it not sinful to turn his back on the peaks, to cast his gaze away from the exalted heights so close to Sky, and instead plod ever downward, spurning the highest intentions of the Earthgod himself? Under what sun were his actions not an affront to all his kin?
His kin. They were, of course, his purpose in all this madness. His father had warned him against such a foolish and blasphemous course, but his stubbornness was hereditary, dooming any such warning to fall on deaf ears. And for the son of the clan Warplanner to flaunt the old wisdom such? The offense was multiplied many times. Journeying far from home, beyond the sacred peaks, and to what end?
"To live in the mudlands, as a worm?" his father had spat at him, shaking and snarling with rage boiling over. Raätalagk had drawn himself up at this, had struck his most imposing figure.
"To show that it can be done," he returned evenly, though his voice too shook with emotion, both anger and suppressed fear. "That the failure of the uprising did not cause these mountains to become our prison. That all the land, all the rock and soil and mud of Oruk's body, all of it is ours!"
Raätalagk snarled softly as he relived the memory, his lips rising to reveal his tusks in the typical orcish way. There was a kind of laughter in that snarl, one that bore not mirth, but merely release. His father and all those he knew were now far behind him.
"Something funny, orc?" The voice had a hostile tinge to it; that combined with its relative proximity immediately alerted Raätalagk to a very important fact: he had been careless.
The source of the voice stood about 40 feet ahead of him. There were plenty of hills around to allow a careful brigand to conceal their presence from a traveller for quite some time. Especially an unwary traveller. A quick visual sweep of the area revealed two more figures in the distance, cresting hills on Raätalagk's flanks and approaching at a light jog. Purposeful, but not exactly hurrying. Not a good sign. Raätalagk slowed his footsteps and came to a halt, fixing his gaze on the man in front of him.
"You'd better answer when spoken to, orc." He rolled the word around in his mouth lazily, his lips curling back as if tasting something rotten. Raätalagk did not like the confidence he heard in this man's voice, for it spoke of experience. He was human, that much was certain, but he did not have the look of the mud-people; he stood with purpose and carried his burdens easily, not at all like the decrepit slaves his clan had sometimes dragged back to their mountain home. Those that had survived the journey -- the fittest among them, no doubt -- had truly resembled the worms his father spoke of.
"Looks to me," the man continued, gesturing to Raätalagk and sweeping his hand to indicate the path he had travelled, "looks like you've been traipsing through my farm, here." A parody of a grin spread across his features. "Causing all sorts of damage. See, that's just not how civilized folk behave, 'round these parts." He spat. "But you wouldn't know much about that, would you?" His grin melted into a sneer, and the murderous twinkle in his eyes, present from the outset, gained full prominence. He raised his voice. "A raider, then? That doesn't surprise me, not one bit."
Raätalagk took another quick survey of his surroundings. This man was no farmer, that much he already knew, but it gave him the opportunity to reevaluate the positions of the two flankers. They'd converge in less than a minute, half that if they broke into full-out runs. He returned his steely gaze to the man in front of him. There wasn't much time.
"I have no stake in your farm," he intoned darkly, his deep and gravelly voice well-proportioned to his stature, "but I will leave you bleeding in the dirt unless you step aside right now."
The deathly serious tone of his voice gave the man pause, but only for a moment. In a flash twin blades appeared in his hands, a clear signal to the other two figures, who likewise drew their weapons and began to charge.
With a low grunt, Raätalagk began his charge as well, the helmet he had been carrying hitting the ground with a dull, wet thud as he reached to his back to unsheathe his massive broadsword, the sheer size of the weapon enough to strike fear into any but the most stalwart foe. He came upon his opponent with near-supernatural force, like a landslide. With a practiced motion, he seamlessly merged the sweep of the sword with his own momentum, curving the blade upward at the last moment to catch the man with its tip, just under his left arm, the energy of the follow-through proceeding to slice his chest open from shoulder to shoulder. He crumpled with a gurgling whimper cut short by the wet slap of his body hitting the mud.
Raätalagk had no time to savour his victory, however, for the other two were already upon him. He whirled about just in time to catch a throwing axe in his hip, the keen blade slicing through a gap in his armor, spilling hot blood. The other one came in low, cutting in with her longsword and then immediately reversing to try for a hamstring. At the last moment, he shuffled back a step and brought his broadsword crushing down to knock her blade away. But she followed up with a quick left hook that hit him square in the jaw and left him blinking to try and clear his vision.
A second axe twirled through the air, this one aimed at his neck, but with a quick spin he managed to intercept it with the shield that was strapped to his back. Following the momentum of his turn, he brought his sword curving around in another great arc, aiming to take off the head of his nearest attacker. But again the agile woman ducked under the swing and jabbed him in the face, hitting him squarely in the eye, a blow that was sure to cause swelling within moments and force the eye shut.
She then took two quick steps back, positioning herself to score a hit with her blade rather than just her fists. But that was a mistake -- Raätalagk had been anticipating that very maneuver and was more than ready for it. With a quick leap he followed the woman backwards, hands raised and clasped over his head, striking her hard with the pommel of his sword right on the crest of her skull. For a few seconds the stunned woman simply stood, rooted to the spot, the force of the hit having rattled her brain and reverberated down her spine. Those few seconds spelled her doom: with a fluid motion, Raätalagk stepped back and then pushed in, driving his greatsword tip-first into her neck, the breadth of the blade nearly severing the head entirely.
Frantically then, he attempted to reposition himself to face the last remaining attacker. But the man had vanished, and in the split second of confusion that followed his whereabouts became all too clear: from behind, a long, jagged knife slipped through an opening in Raätalagk's armor, cutting deep into his flesh and likely puncturing his lung.
Acting on instinct alone, Raätalagk called upon his remaining strength to throw himself backwards, a move that caught the man entirely unawares. With a crash and the distinctive crunch of bone, the two landed in a tangled heap, though the attacker received the brunt of the impact, with the heavily armored 300-pound mountain orc atop him. He tried to squirm free from the hulking mass, but with a heave Raätalagk lifted himself a foot off the ground only to let himself crash back down again. The squirming continued, weaker and more desperately, and so he repeated the motion, slamming his full weight against the man a third time. He roared a murderous roar and did it again, then again. A sixth time. Then a seventh, until the squirming had ceased.
In the silence that followed the steady sound of rain drumming on armor reasserted itself. Wincing and retching, for he was very badly injured, Raätalagk picked himself up, sparing a long look at the bloody mess he had left underneath. Then, in silence, he trudged back heavily and painfully to the spot where he had been intercepted, stooped low, and recovered his helmet. With slow, excruciating steps, he left the gruesome scene behind him, resuming his march as the life-bringing rains continued to blanket the earth with their secrets.
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Descent
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