A Different World: Part 1 - The Siege of Penthorpe Keep - 1. Boar's Head

Commander Skold Gil’eppsie saw the smoke long before they reached the hill. It rose into the sky like an uncoiling black demon pressed up against a bleak grey sky from which snow fell steadily. Another city laid to cinder and ruin by Paladin’s ruthless army no doubt. Skold had led his own dwindling army through a dozen ruined villages within the last three months.

With a cluck of his tongue his mare, Selene, came to a stop, her tail swishing lazily from side to side, her sides heaving. Skold uncapped the deerskin waterbag dangling at his hip from a piece of leather and lifted it to his cracked lips; he was unaware of the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in anticipation. A few drops hit the bottom line of his gums, falling back against his tongue, just enough to awaken his thirst but not to slake it. Some would have cursed the spirits of Valhalla for bad luck but Skold simply let the waterskin fall back down at his side. He was out of water. It was what it was. They’d come across a stream a week ago and camped there for the night - it was there Skold had filled the waterskin.

His second-in-command came up on his left. Her hair was plastered around her, there was a smear of dirt on her forehead and another just underneath the cleft of her chin. Her eyes scanned the top of the massive hill before her, perhaps measuring the distance. The sharp tips of her Elven ears stuck out from locks of silver-blonde hair. Even underneath the grime, she was strikingly beautiful. Skold had the same silver-white hair, high cheekbones, narrow nose and pouty lips which were always twisted in a scowl or bent in a sardonic grin. Though she was taller, one would have to be a fool to look at them and not be able to see they were brother and sister.

“There’s a village just beyond the hill,” said Skold. “I want to clear it before nightfall and camp for the evening.”

“Good. I am exhausted and my thighs are chapped. I am sure we could all use the rest.”

Skold did not reply to his sister’s comment of her chapped thighs; it was irrelevant to him. He turned and glanced back at the remains of his army. When King Yaldon had sent him on the march against Paladin’s army, Skold had commanded eighteen thousand formidably experienced warriors. It was not as many as his father Solomon had commanded but it was still a large army. During his command Solomon had not made it as far into the plague ridden territory that had become Europe. However Skold was under no illusion that he would succeed. Paladin’s plague, the Black Death, had taken many lives - both human and fae alike. Now the current objective was to rendezvous with General Gendimoth Cevna and nineteen thousand other troops at Pen’thorpe Keep. Beyond that, Skold did not think about what possibilities the future might hold. All he knew was he would continue to fight until there was no one standing - until the world was both empty of fae and human alike if it came down to it.

By the time Skold and his troops reached the top of the hill the sky had become a darker grey, the temperature steadily lower. His armor did little to protect him from the merciless winds that blew his shoulder-length hair back from his forehead. He clenched his jaw as he scanned the scene before him, taking everything in.

A wood awning with a plaque nailed to the wood proclaimed the town as Boar’s Head in Hungarian - despite himself Skold couldn’t help but be amused by the name; humans always gave their dwellings the strangest names, as if they’d written a bunch of random words on pieces of paper and pulled them randomly out of a hat. The corpse of a villager hung from the awning, his feet dangling several feet above the ground. A coil of intestine hung from a large gash in his belly. His eyes had been pecked out by birds. His mouth hung open in a silent scream of agony.

Sonja came up on his left, Konstantine (Skold’s third in command) on his right; all three had their swords drawn, eyes scanning the gloom for signs of danger. Skold’s nerves were coiled tight, ready to spring. He’d been caught unaware before and it had cost him much; he wouldn’t be caught unaware again. The snow was stained with splashes of blood; bodies were strewn everywhere like forgotten dolls - many were missing limbs. Just paces away was a severed arm, over there a leg, over here a headless corpse. A group of crows lined the top of a straw-roofed hut, seeming to watch the group as they passed by. Skold felt an involuntary shiver race up his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. There was something unnatural about them - he had no idea what it was but he felt it all the same. His red cape, the cape that marked him as commander, rippled behind him.

Konstantine glanced at Skold with violet eyes that glowed under the darkening sky and let out a low whistle. “ I smell orc shit. This wasn’t the work of Paladin’s soldiers. This was the doing of orcs. Looks like they cleared the place out, left no one standing.”

“They never do, fucking barbarians,” came Sonja’s reply. And then, referring to the human corpses, “I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards.”

Skold didn’t like the idea of orcs having just passed before them. Time was running out. Things weren’t looking good for King Yaldon’s army.

The village was so small there was only a single dirt road that ran through a four-way intersection. In the center of the village was a cobble-stoned well. A wooden bucket dangled over the lip of the well. The spirits of Valhalla bless us, Skold thought. He jumped gracefully off Selene’s mount. A muscle in his right inner thigh seized painfully but his burgeoning thirst overwhelmed the pain. Sonja and Konstantine leaned against the mouth of the well and peeked down. Skold grabbed the wooden crank and lowered the bucket into the dark water beneath. Murmurs and curses of relief sounded around Skold. Skold filled his waterskin, took several long pulls from his waterskin - water sloshed down his chin and the front of his armor but he hardly felt it - and then filled it back up again.

At the east end of the village was a wooden chapel. The wood doors flapped eerily in the wind, blocked from shutting completely by the corpse of a Christian holy man. He tied Selene’s reigns to a post and climbed up the steps to the entrance. The priest’s white tunic was covered in splotches of blood. From what he could see the priest had been stabbed two dozen times. Someone took great joy in killing him, Skold thought. He stooped down long enough to straighten the birettum on the man’s mostly bald head before stepping over him.

There were several rows of pews; some of them had been knocked askew by the chaos that had passed through here. The air smelled both sour and coppery, of blood and decay. A corpse of a young alter boy lay in between the pews; he held a wooden rosary in his limp hands. His eyes were closed. If Skold didn’t know better he would have said the boy was asleep. Another corpse, a nun, rested half-on-half-off the altar, her eyes wide open and glassy. Half a dozen arrows protruded from her back. Dried blood ran down the side of the alter ending in a puddle on the floor.

There was nothing holy inside of this church. Though he was sure these humans had knelt before the holy cross and prayed to their God as Paladin’s army tore through their village slaughtering their people like cattle, it was clear their God had done nothing. If he truly did exist (and Skold wasn’t convinced that He did) then He was cruel and indifferent. But all deities are cruel and indifferent, he thought, no matter the race and culture. It was why Skold didn’t pray, not even to the spirits of Valhalla, for if they did truly exist, then they too were cruel.

Skold sat in the front pew; every muscle groaned in relief. Sonja wasn’t the only one who had chapped legs. For over a year now they’d traveled by horse or on foot and when they weren’t traveling they were fighting. The camps they set up only provided a scant respite from the cold and not even that; Skold could no longer remember the comforts of a real bed, could not remember when he didn’t smell his own sweat and body odor or the body odor of others. Food was scarce and the cold fronts that hovered over everything made agriculture difficult. As if the war and the plague wasn’t enough, the ever spreading influence of Christianity - Catholicism in particular - intensified things: Even as their species was being pushed towards the brink of extinction they squabbled amongst themselves, shouting to be heard. Skold found it all to be amusing. Such was the way of life in these violent dark times when it seemed that the sky would fall. If it did fall Skold would be just as indifferent to it all as he was to the war.

“I knew I would find you in here,” a voice said from behind Skold.

In the blink of an eye Skold was on his feet, sword back in hand, lips pulled back in a snarl. But when he turned it was only Konstantine. Immediately he relaxed, the feral look in his metallic grey eyes gone as quickly as it appeared.

“It is impolite to sneak up on people,” said Skold.

“Since when did you give a fuck about manners?” That grin faded when he looked at the dead altar boy and the nun. “I always know where to find you, even when the place is a stranger to me: always among the shadows and the dead.”

“Did you need something, Konstantine?”

“Sonja wants to know what you want done with the corpses. Do you want us to bury them?”

Skold lifted an eyebrow. “She was unable to find me and ask me that herself?”

“I volunteered to tell you myself, Commander,” said Konstantine. He smiled. “As always.”

“I see. Dig a pit, throw them all in, and burn them. We do not want to leave any plague-ridden bodies behind.”

“Even if they are not infected?”

“Why leave any chances?”

“As you command, sir.” Konstantine began to walk away. Before leaving he stopped once more. “And sir?”

“What?” Skold said wearily.

“Will you be by the tent tonight?”

Skold smirked at the invitation; the curl at the right corner of his lips said he would.

The pit had been dug, the bodies thrown in. Sonja informed Skold there were just under two hundred corpses. Skold stood at the edge of the pit and watched as a soldier whose name he could not remember emptied three barrels of oil into the mass grave. Shadows danced and flickered by the light cast from several burning torches. Skold nodded at the soldiers with the torches and one by one they threw them into the pit.

Within an instant the flames sprung up like a beast who has just been woken from its slumber; it spread across the pit like a plague. Skold brushed through the small crowd that had formed around the circle, heading towards the cluster of tents that had been set up before nightfall. For the moment it was not snowing, though the wind still blew with enough force and chill to lacerate. The moon was a half crescent, filling the black velvety sky with its ghostly light.

Skold glanced at the tower of the church where two sentries stood watch, facing the woods at the western side of Boar’s Head. They saluted him in the elven way, running the palms of their hands against their forehead - two soldiers just showing respect to their captain. Skold nodded, too tired to return the salute. Konstantine was waiting for him, already completely naked. His eyes glimmered from the small light granted by the candles which stood on a wooden chest.

“It took you long enough,” said Konstantine.

“I wanted to make sure no one saw where I was going.”

“What’s the point? Everyone knows about what we do. Your sister definitely knows.”

“Part of the appeal is pretending like no one knows what’s going on between you and I,” Skold said with a teasing smile. He turned his back to Konstantine and stripped out of his armor, stacking each piece neatly by the entrance. His skin seemed to glow with its own source of light. The shape of his body was soft, almost effeminate; the shape of his ribs and hip bones were pronounced against his pale and milky skin. Where his sex organs should have been was a long white surgical scar - his cock and balls were completely gone.

Konstantine was completely still as he greedily drunk in the sight of his commander’s naked body. He said, “I’ve never seen a creature more exquisitely beautiful.”

“So you’ve told me...many times.”

Konstantine spread his arms and Skold went to his embrace; his skin tingled at Konstantine’s touch. His nipples were hard and shriveled from the cold. Konstantine leaned forward to kiss Skold. Before he could Skold stood up again. Konstantine scowled, not bothering to hide his frustration. “What the fuck are you doing? My balls are starting to ache.”

Skold knelt down and blew out the candles. His silver eyes gleamed with a ghostly light. He drifted back to Konstantine and knelt down in front of him.

“Are you ready?” he whispered; his voice sounded like unraveling silk in the dark.

“Yes, may the spirits of Valhalla damn you. Get on with it.”

With that Skold took Konstantine’s entire, throbbing length into his mouth.

Later they laid side by side, Konstantine’s back pressing up against Skold’s back. Skold’s insides were still wet with Konstantine’s seed. There were teeth marks from where Skold had bit into Konstantine’s shoulder when Konstantine came inside him. Skold could feel himself growing more and more drowsy; it wouldn’t be long before sleep took him. It had been days since the last time he’d slept - since anyone had slept. He was vaguely aware that Konstantine was running his fingers through Skold’s hair.

“Sometimes I ask myself why I’m so in love with you,” Konstantine murmured.

“I have no idea.” Skold’s words were slurred. His eyes were focused on the moonlight. “Surely common sense would tell you this arrangement is purely sexual.”

“Perhaps my skull is too thick.”

“Yes perhaps.”

“If only you knew how strong my love is for you.”

“If we were vervolechent I might feel the same way but I don’t.” There is no such person for me, Skold thought. A vervolechent was when two souls became interconnected by Cerbyendeuyng (fate). The connection was sacred, unbreakable.

“I would die for you without hesitation,” said Konstantine. “Without even sparing a thought for my own life.”

“You would die for me if I commanded you to as you would for our king.”

“Fuck the king and fuck your title as commander! I would die for you Skold! I would follow you anywhere.”

Red heat bloomed inside of Skold, something that might have been shame. I wish I could give you what I want but I’m incapable of it, he thought.

“Do you even have a soul?”

“I’ve often wondered the same thing,” Skold murmured. After a moment he added, “I think I lost it the day my father had me castrated.”

Skold awoke from unwelcome dreams - not dreams but memories. Last night he’d dreamed of his mother, Lea.

He’d been in the midst of his adolescent years the day she tried to escape from the quarantine tent. The plague had driven her insane. Almost every night Lea screamed, raving: The dead would come and drag her down to the underworld where she would be subjected to the Ferryman’s endless torture. The plague had turned her skin the color of onyx. Her beautiful silver-blonde hair, the hair Skold and Sonja had inherited from her, had fallen out. He looked nothing like the mother he’d grown up with. She’d sprinted out the tent, her shit-and-vomit-stained white gown flowing out behind her, babbling in the ancient tongue.

Skold, standing sentry outside the tent, didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t hesitate. As he lifted the bow and pulled back the arrow he stopped seeing Lea as his mother. She looked once over her shoulder, at him, silently pleading him to let her go, another thing he couldn’t do. She was a plague victim and the plague she was infected with was extremely contagious.

He would never forget the punctuation the sound made in the air when the arrow pierced through her skull, the tip bursting out between Lea’s eyes, the way the blood spurted out copiously. There was a time when Skold would have felt guilty but he felt nothing - Solomon had already beat the emotion out of him. And Skold reassured himself that he’d done the right thing. He knew not everyone would feel the same. Sonja hated him; his father hated him.

Is that why he had me castrated? Skold thought, sitting up. As a punishment for killing his beloved?

He pushed these unwelcome thoughts away and began to dress, putting on his armor. The red cape flowed down to the middle of his waist. Behind him Konstantine still slumbered, unperturbed.

Skold exited Konstantine’s tent. Boar’s Head was shrouded in fog. To his right a ghostly group of soldiers sat in a circle before a fire. His sister Sonja was not among them; perhaps she was still asleep. He reached the well. Someone had laid a wooden ladle next to the bucket. When he brought the pail back up, water sloshing over the side, he slipped the ladle into the water and brought it up to his lips. Just as he was about to refill his waterskin something snagged the corner of his eye - movement coming from the trees a half mile west of the village. Skold’s hand automatically went to the hilt of his sword.

He stood stock still, waited, and watched.

Something isn’t right, he thought. He sensed danger, could feel it in his bones. It was nearby, perhaps hiding in the snow-topped shelter of the trees. It was a mistake to stop here. We should have kept moving.

Skold turned away from the trees, reluctant to turn his back. He went to the church where Selene, his horse, was still tethered.

Skold clucked his tongue, ran his fingers along her long neck. “How are you, girl?” He clicked his tongue once more then ducked into the church. At the top of the church, the two sentries he put on guard - Errsike and Lucian - passed a waterskin back and forth. Skold waited a beat just to prove to himself what a piss poor job they were doing at the duty he tasked them with, then said, “Sentries.”

They both jumped and cursed at the sound of his voice. Medley splashed down the front of Errsike’s armor. “We didn’t hear you come in, sir,” he said hastily, apologetically. He passed Skold the medley who took a healthy swig from it to be polite. “Scared us half to death.”

Skold barely heard him. He took another sip of the medley. He had his complete focus on the woodland before them with the intensity of a vulture.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Lucian asked.

Skold approached the edge of the tower. Beyond the ledge was a hundred foot drop to the ground. “I thought I saw movement in the trees just a moment ago - when I was by the well.”

Errsike shook his head. “Don’t mean to contradict you, sir, but we’ve been watching those trees all evening and haven’t seen a thing.”

You wouldn’t, would you you thick-head fool, Skold thought, irritated. Not for the first time he wished King Yaldon had armed him with smarter men. He was about to leave the tower, take the wooden stairway back to the sanctuary of the church, when he saw movement coming from the trees again - and this time it was unmistakable.

But by then it was already too late.

Dark, bulky shapes started to charge towards the village. He recognized the dark ash-colored skin, pointy tipped ears, the tusks that protruded from indents around the mouth, and eyes that were so darkly red they were almost black: Orcs, the other half of Paladin’s army. They resembled something from a childhood nightmare, a crossbreed of elf and demon. Since the beginning of the war, Cader’all the orc chieftain and Paladin (King Yaldon’s wayward son) were working to overthrow King Yaldon’s reign and his vision of building a stable union with the humans. The orcs were making short work of the snowy landscape, coming up on Boar’s Head fast. While they were not graceful as elves they made up for it with their endless lust for blood. They were armed with crude looking swords, axes, and maces, all made out of the bone of those they killed. Their armor was old and dented, banged back into shape after every battle.

Arrows arced up from the tops of the trees, raining from the sky. Lucian raised the horn hanging from his belt to his lips (the horn strongly resembled a cornucopia), and blew.

WHOO-WHOO. WHOO-WHOOOOO.

The horn was a call to arms. Be ready to fight, be ready to die.

WHOO-

The horn died, falling from Lucian’s fingers. It spun end over end once before hitting the ground. Lucian turned towards Skold. His eyes bulged in horror. He reached for his captain trying to form words with his mouth. The arrow protruding from his throat wouldn’t let him. Then he almost knocked Skold over as he turned, staggering drunkenly towards the door that would take him to the stairway of the church. Blood trailed behind him, marking his passage.

Skold reached for his father’s shield, where it should have been strapped to his armor just beneath his cape, and then remembered he’d lost it in the last run-in with orcs. All he could do was press himself flat against the wall and duck. He watched helplessly as Errsike stumbled back against the wall, trying to pull several arrows out of his chest with a gauntleted hand now coated in his own blood. When his bottom hit the ground he was dead.

“Fuck,” Skold said.

After what seemed like an eternity the storm of arrows passed. Skold could hear the sounds of screams and curses and growls, the sound of metal banging against metal. It surrounded him like a mist. He gritted his teeth. His muscles were coiled tight. His blood boiled despite the cold. He rose to his feet, sword in hand.

Just then a grappling hook latched itself onto the ledge, followed by a second and then a third. Skold risked a peek. Orcs were climbing up the side of the church, swinging up like monkeys. They’d be on him in seconds. Sure enough, with a howl, one of them launched through the air, dropping towards Skold like an anvil, armed with a mace. A second before the orc could crush him Skold dodge-rolled out the way. He brought his sword up just in time to parry a blow from the orc’s mace. Each blow Skold parried sent tremors of impact up his arms. The orc’s sword moved in savage arcs, muscle and vein bulging visibly underneath its onyx skin.

Skold backed up until his back pressed against the wall. The orc swung the mace at his head once more. Skold ducked. Splinters caught themselves in his hair as the mace made contact with wood. He used the opportunity and drove the sword through the orc’s belly with all his strength. The sharp tip of his blade erupted through the orc’s back, dripping with ichor. The orc shuddered once and died. The mace fell from its hands. Skold planted one booted heel against its armored chest and pushed it off his blade.

Three more orcs clambered onto the roof.

Skold gathered in his will and screamed, “Fe’ri!” A ball of fire exploded from the palm of his hand. Upon impact one of the orcs burst into flame. The orc flailed and kicked helplessly before falling over the edge of the roof. Skold ducked once more and decapitated another with his sword. Another slash and the third went down.

More grunts and curses signified the passage of reinforcements. Skold didn’t have the time or patience to deal with them. He grabbed the horn laying just inches from Lucian’s limp hand, spun around, bolted through the door, and dashed down the stairs three at a time.

Skold burst out of the church - and halted: His beautiful mare, Selene had been slaughtered. She lay in two halves in the snow; her intestines looked as if they were trying to slither out of her body, as if trying to make one last attempt at survival. For the first time in Skold knew how long (days weeks months years?), Skold felt the hot stab of anger. His horse might have been the only thing in his life he loved and she’d been slaughtered like a cow, his beautiful mare who had carried him past many miles, through terrain and battles.

He looked up as one of his men ran past, engulfed in flames, arms flailing through the air, trailing smoke behind him; another was being held down by an orc while another swung a double-sided axe, severing the last of the elf’s legs.

Skold was barely aware of moving. Within the blink of an eye he was behind him. With a sideways slash of the sword he severed the orc-with-the-axe’s hamstrings; a second later its head went rolling across the snow. His partner in crime was hardly able to look up before the tip of Skold’s sword stabbed through the spot in between his eyes, straight into his brain.

“Please, sir,” the elf, barely past her adolescent years, begged. “It hurts so bad. Make it stop-”

Another flick of his wrist and Skold granted her last wish.

After that everything turned into a daze: Skold killed any orc that dared to get in his way. Black orc blood splattered across his face, in his hair, the front of his armor, and the back of his red cape. Eventually he found his sister, Sonja. Three orcs had closed her in a circle. She stood, poised, eyes turning to each one of them without turning her head. She was grinning, daring them to make a move. They did, all at once, a mistake on their part. Within the blink of an eye all three orcs fell into the snow, in a spray of severed limbs and gore.

She saw Skold and came over to him.

“They’re closing in on us from all sides,” she said.

Skold looked around, saw more orcs than he did elves.

“They’re slaughtering us,” she panted.

“I know.” Skold sidestepped a charging orc, slashed his throat, kicked away, all before taking a breath.

“Where the fuck did they come from?”

“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here; we won’t have any troops left if we do.” With that Skold raised the horn to his lips and blew into it. WHOOOO-WHOOO! WHOOOO-WHOOOOO! The horn’s wail cut through the air for all to hear. “Run for the tree!” he screamed. “Run for the trees everyone!”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sonja shouted back at him. “That’s where they came from.”

“It’s better than staying here, waiting to get slaughtered,” Skold said, shoving her towards the view of the trees. “Now do as I say, damn you!”

He screamed “Fe’ri!” and a dozen-and-a-half orcs went flailing through the air, clearing them a path out the village. Grabbing Sonja’s hand, Skold sprinted in that direction, pulling his sister after him. She grumbled and cursed him in the ancient tongue but began to run on her own after a time. Skold didn’t bother to see who else was following him. Either his troops would follow or they wouldn’t.

Twice Skold’s feet almost slipped from underneath him. He could see orcs clinging to the tops of the tree. Every few seconds arrows would fall from the sky but by this time Skold was already past them. He reached the trees before Sonja did. Out of the corner of his eye an orc fired an arrow at him from the branch of a sturdy oak tree. Skold cut the arrow out of the air and flung a ball of fire at the orc with the mutter of a single word. The spiked ball of a flail flashed towards his head. He sidestepped it with the grace of a well practice dancer and rammed the handle of his blade into its face. Sonja finished the kill by grabbing the back of its head and running the blade of her sword against its gullet.

The forest floor rose into a steep hill. Skold had to use one hand to brace himself, the heels of his shoes making imprints in the muddy soil. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been running when he realized the sky was darkening. He simply looked up at one point and saw the glimmer of stars. The trickle of orcs had thinned and stopped altogether. He turned, loing at his sister. Her chest heaved. Over her shoulder he could make out several shapes flitting through the forest’s shadow.

One of them stopped, hunched over, and vomited. He straightened up, wiped his mouth. Long, black braids hung down to his waist. His eyes - orange - glowed like twin balls of flame.

“Are they following us, soldier?” Skold asked him.

“I dunno,” said the soldier. “I stopped keeping track a long time ago.”

“What is your name?”

“Tannis.”

“They caught us with our breeches down - for the second time mind you,” said Sonja. She swore. “How, in the name of the Ferryman’s arse crack, could that happen?”

“I dunno,” Skold said absently; he was thinking about Selene, his mare, layng dead back there in the ghosttown of Boar’s Head. How many troops had he lost today? “I’ve never seen them this organized. “No more chatting. We have to keep going.”

“I don’t...I don’t think I can,” said Sonja.

“Then stay behind and become orc food,” Skold said coldly.

Sonja’s eyes burned with hate. “I hate you, brother. I don’t know why they made you commander. Bloody mistake to make a eunuch commander if you ask me.”

Skold ignored her, turned, and went back to making his way through the underbrush.