NOVEL NEXT Chapter Fifty-Nine – Captain and Commander
From a different perspective...
Her sword danced around her, and four beastmen fell down, various limbs and necessary organs spilling from them with copious amounts of blood.
“So, how long have you been here?” she asked conversationally. He could feel the hum of ki carrying her voice right through the bleats, roars, crash of steel, death cries, battle calls, and other mess, as clear as if they were holding a polite conversation.
His borrowed Hammer smashed up and around, smashing one skull and caving in another chest, crushing the heart. The rebound smashed into a thrusting spear, sending it into the gut of another hapless beastman. His wrist flicked out, and the satyr’s face snapped back with a hammer-sized indent in it.
“About ten and a half years,” He switched languages and called out, “Grod! Trum! On my flanks!”
The older hunters were quick to obey, leading the other members of the tribes in with spears, maces, and morningstars forged from good dwarven steel, and the shields he’d drilled into them. Some of them even wore light mail over their hides and leathers, or had rough greaves on that weren’t too uncomfortable.
They also loomed over the beastmen, as the shortest member of his tribe stood six foot six inches tall, with thick-boned and muscular builds that promised and delivered great power. The tallest of them, War Chief Brog, was over eight feet tall and laying about him with a big Axe no human could have wielded easily, bloodied, berserk, and all the more dangerous for it as he tore into the satyrs, making for the ogres with the senior hunters of the tribe.
He didn’t stop killing, his hammer always in motion. If there wasn’t a skull or chest in reach, he shattered legs, arms, and shoulders, and the hunters behind him were very quick to capitalize on the openings. If the satyrs clustered up in front of him, skulls would crack and brains would flow as he slammed into them with far more strength than they’d expect out of a young caveman.
That wasn’t much of an issue, because the Masked girl was opening the way with some of the damned prettiest swordplay he could imagine, and the beastmen were coming apart all around her.
He also had the distinct impression, by the almost leisurely way she was swinging around, that she was far from putting out her best.
She’s training for us, he thought, and almost rolled his eyes as he grinned.
“Since when do Ancients use Essence?” she called out with a toss of her chin at the brutal hunters behind him.
He grinned more widely, pulverizing the hip of a charging minotaur as it ran by, dropping it right between Grod and Trum, who drove their spears into it without hesitation, making sure it stayed down. You had to look to see the black Tats on their hands, and be aware to feel it in the air around them, making them quicker to dodge.
“Since I opened their first chakra point and Tatted them!” he answered, sliding between two satyrs and slamming one’s skull down, crashing into the spine of the other. “Head left, we really want to kill those ogres.”
She veered left without actually moving her legs, cutting out the legs of a centaur trying to charge past her and spitting a satyr in-and-out with a flick of her wrists. He shifted with her, shouting orders, and excitement grew as the tribe headed for the remaining ogres that the War Chief wasn’t dealing with. Of course, there was also the problem of two hill giants there, hiding under massive shields from the bright bolts sniping down from above, but he didn’t slow down, and they wouldn’t be the first giants he had killed of the Blundergut tribe… but they should be the last.
“Name?” he asked. “I’m-“
“Briggs!” Her head turned, and he blinked as he saw her smile, and the double canines really set off the Whiskers of the Wild. Her hands flicked to show her black nails, and golden hair, blue eyes… and the blue-black showing on her neck and shoulder.
“Sama Rantha!” he blurted out despite himself, staring at the swooping and singing Sword. “Is that Tremble?!”
“Yes!” the Sword called back to him immediately, as she lopped off the thick neck of a frog-headed fellow like removing a dandelion.
“Damn, I am so far behind!” he groused, and vented his ire on more of these hapless Warp-mutants, shattering their lines and sending them tumbling left and right, the spears of his tribe quick to capitalize on their crushed ribs and wrecked pelvises.
“Yeah, I was going to call out a greeting to Endure, what’s up with that?” Sama asked, dancing aside from four spears, chopping them all in half with a swirl, and dropping three of the wielders before tossing the fourth screaming through the air directly onto Trum’s startled spear. They were almost to the ogres, who were trying to batter their way into the solid hedge wall of the layered dwarven pikes, and getting nowhere.
As he watched, sixteen dwarves hopped forward together in perfect unison, and three pikes drove a foot deep into the shoulders and throat of the lead ogre there. The brute reeled backwards, spurting dark crimson blood, and the other dwarves advanced to anchor their lines anew, spitting half a dozen tauren who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. The ogres could see the angry members of his Cliff tribe coming, and were caught between a rock and a hard place.
Sama accelerated, chopping down two terrified satyrs like weeds, Tremble Singing out something dreadful, and jumped into the air towards two ogres.
She smashed into the neckless head of the first one, and he could feel the rush of an impressive amount of ki as she sent it lurching over to the side. She pushed off towards the back of another one trying to forestall the coming pikes with great sweeps of a big, crude axe.
She hit the back of its head, driving it abruptly forwards and directly onto six waiting pikes, with its thick face getting smashed directly onto one of them through the nose. Sama smiled and waved at the startled dwarves there, before sliding down its body and back into the fighting as the surrounding ogres bellowed in deep bass and tried to swat at her, failing miserably.
Briggs watched her reach out, grab a wrist, twist, and eight hundred pounds of pot-bellied hillbilly cannibal flipped right over, rolled twice, and stopped with eight pikes in it rather abruptly.
Wonderful Ocean/Moon form...
He crashed his Hammer against the thick leg of his second ogre, and it came crashing down as he stepped away from its flailing spiked club. Its dull white eyes were staring right at him as his Hammer came up and drove six inches between them, more than hard enough to fling the carcass away from him.
“Hammer-sprite!” blurted out a couple of the nearest ogres, all members of the Nailclub tribe, who knew very, very well who he was. They were torn between charging him in anger and running away in fear... but there wasn’t anywhere left to run.
He feinted a charge, veering aside as they swung at him, and headed for the Blundergut there, who was still keeping its shield up, only a couple bolts sticking out of its thick hide.
Briggs parried the smacking club aside deftly, shocking the heck out of the stinking brute as its club nearly shattered at the impact, and slid in and out, striking and reverse-striking with whiplike speed. Left and right knees shattered like china, suddenly bending backwards as thick bone snapped, and the giant bellowed as it came toppling down helplessly. Briggs’ jump backwards was perfectly measured, its head literally crashed down at his feet, and he caught the shield with one hand as it slammed down, lifting it up just high enough for the hill giant’s yellowed eyes to roll up at him as his Hammer came crashing down on its temple like a piston.
The other surviving hill giant bellowed and charged him. Unfortunately, it took its eyes off Sama to do that, and she slid past it, taking off half its leg as she did. It put forward a foot that was no longer there, and its leg collapsed, sending it tumbling. It lost its grip on its shield as it hit the ground, slid forward, and blinked to find itself almost nose-to-nose with Briggs, who was standing on its fallen shield right in front of it.
Briggs snapped around in a full circle so fast he seemed like a machine, and the inch-thick bone of the giant’s skull wasn’t enough to stop the impact. Neck followed head, drew the body with it, and the giant went sprawling dead two yards away from the impact point.
With the Blunderguts dead, the remaining ogres had no chance. The subchief there was strong, but Grod and Trum’s hunting team ringed it swiftly and effectively, driving in spears and pounding at its legs as it flailed wildly trying to keep them back, and failed. The senior hunters impaled its neck, scissored the broad blades of their spears, and took its head off with savage wrenches of their weapons.
Briggs watched the griffons swoop down on those mutants who were fleeing towards the cliff-dwellings, picking them up and flinging them into one another with bone-crunching impacts. Of course, the women were back there now, with spears of their own they were happy to use, not about to let these invaders into their caves.
He called out names, pointing with his Hammer, bringing up a proper battle line for the hunting teams, organizing their efforts against the smaller tauren. They were quick to run forward and face down any clusters of the bigger ones, delaying them and forcing them into a death battle between the tribe and the remorseless and efficient advance of the dwarven pikes.
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“Tell the dwarves that there’s going to be some elven border Rangers from the south coming along my trail, probably within an hour. Will there be any issues?” I asked him.
I’d run back to the copse where I’d dropped Forge, and Briggs was staring at it with just this side of drool coming out of his mouth. He blinked when he saw Mikle there looking around with great interest, and slapped his forehead in greeting to the Wee Folk when he saw the brownie, who returned it quickly.
“No, the dwarves and elves worked out their borders long ago, and trade information regularly. They haven’t had more than individual disagreements in more than a thousand years. Jackasses are part of any race, after all. One sec.”
He strode over to a bunch of dwarves in full armor nearby, their long Spears retracted down to merely six feet or so now. I noted the respectful demeanor in their eyes as the bloody, battle-wounded kid walked up to them, Hammer covered with the gore of dozens of dead, and they listened to him patiently.
Their almost crystalline eyes glinted as they glanced at me, nodding to him in acknowledgement, a couple turning around to pass on the news.
The dwarves were different than I’d expected. Being short and thick-boned, broad and muscular, they didn’t have a lot of flexibility and range of motion. As such, they actually weren’t using axes and hammers, as I’d been expecting. Spears with enough magic to change their lengths seemed to be the proper weapon for them, and given their power on the battlefield, I totally believed it. For close combat, every single one of them had a punch dagger on their girdle, with a cestus-like backing. Given they were wider across the shoulder than Briggs was, with arms reaching to their knees and large hands, I felt sorry for anything that got close enough to experience those katars punching in at that range.
Of course, to do that, a foe needed to get past those Spears. I’d only seen a few of the dwarves break ranks, and there was no doubt that they were heavy, solid, and could roll and bounce their whole bodies with swift ease. Their spear technique was wrist-snapping quick, precise, and solid. They couldn’t lift their arms far enough to really deliver a good overhand smash, which was needed for hammer and axe work, but given their wrist strength, their spears hit like ballista bolts.
They hadn’t even bothered with shields against this chaff, and I was sure even a giant didn’t really have any chance against them. They could bounce around one and ring him in death, with more than enough reach to do nasty stuff to him.
I found it quite impressive.
Briggs seemed to be well-known and well-liked, with many calling out to him. He was nearly six feet tall, so over a head taller than most of the dwarves. The dwarves’ skin tones were a kind of grayish-brown, an earth tone that would blend into most stones around. Some were of a redder hue, and their armor and insignia were different than the others. Different clans, I assumed. A bit greenish hue here, yellow there, more black on that one, all with different clan signs.
Different runes and words were tumbling through my head, beginning to arrange themselves as my connection with the Akasha flared, and began to draw in the links to every Human who had ever learned the Dwarven language, and by sympathy, the Dwarven Akasha’s desire to be understood.
Their Armor Quality was a minimum of 23, and all of it looked to be enchanted, and most of it pretty old. That was totally understandable, as magical Armor could last for millennia, and so any Armor would be made and passed down for generations. It would be strange if most dwarves did not have magical Armor, based on their Crafting skills, wealth, and the legacies of their forebears. Just having extendable magic Spears on all of them was also pretty damn impressive, but the easy familiarity the Ancients and the dwarves had together showed it wasn’t anything unusual for them.
The arbalesters had nailed in some spikes and come rappelling down the side of the cliffs with ease and skill, most of them joining the meeting and clean-up efforts below.
Tremble was getting all sorts of attention, as a singing Sword flying around and shooting out blasts of vivic flame to clean up all the messes as the bodies were hurled into burning heaps of mistfire was wont to. The vivic mists were billowing out and around everyone’s ankles, giving the area quite the mystical feel, as well as conveniently dealing with the stench and gore.
As for me, I was harvesting.
Ogre hands, hearts, and sinews. Strips of giant hides, hearts, brains, tendons, and sinews. Lots of their blood.
All Rune Chemist harvest items. I also salvaged some skulls, for use as Baneskulls.
Briggs saw what I was doing, and his tribe was soon helping me out with the gory work, the women especially. My Exsanguinating Tube they marveled at, so useful for extracting blood, and we filled up a lot of pottery with Ogre and Hill Giant Blood.
Neanderthals were human, and so spoke the Human tongue, albeit not with the sophistication that Briggs did. They thought I was a little weird, and were definitely very impressed with me, but that didn’t stop them from chatting with me, or watching in disbelief at how fast I would rip the bodies open to get what I wanted out of them… without a drop of blood sticking to me.
Sharing and confirming Potion recipes with them for Giant Strength, Strength, Toughness, and Hill Giant Control was enough to cement my position as a Friend of the Tribe. When I shared about how to create Girdles of Giant Strength and Giant Power, and Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and Ogre Power, and Baneskulls, well, they were ready to make me a member of the tribe!
Their garb was leathers and hides, the latter often with fine embroidery and accented with bone and stones, like a heavier version of some Native American garb. They had a lot of body hair, including the females, and were naturally built much heavier than humans, with longer arms, and a definite cranial ridge, all leading to an ape-like appearance. Their eyes were mostly dark, a few of lighter brown, but Briggs’ pale violet eyes, which probably hinted at ogre blood somewhere back in his ancestry, were definitely standing out.
They were all Sources.
I could feel the gentle burn of life coming off them, washing against my Null. Most weren’t very high Level, just like other Humans, getting to Three and stagnating… but a Three Source got a +3 to Strength, and stacking that on top of their +4 Racial Strength bonus, they were over twice as strong as a normal human, with their strongest members easily as powerful as ogres or giants, despite their gentle demeanors.
Their leaders and best warriors naturally could get quite high in Level as barbarians and stuff..
I was guessing that Briggs was rocking at least a 29 Strength, meaning he was almost as strong naturally as the Girdle made me.
Him and I were going to have a good long talk...