Richard Baker - Swordmage

A bolt of crimson lightning struck the knot of Vaasans from the side, tearing through the swordsmen. The Warlock Knight parried the spell with an arcane defense of his own, but several of his guards were down, smoke rising from their burned armor. Geran glanced to his right and saw the tiefling Sarth leading a counterattack from that side of the line. The sorcerer threw bolts of fire and blasts of thunder with reckless abandon, burning down the Bloody Skulls. “Back to Thar with you, vile ones!” he shouted between spells. “There is no victory here for you today!”

It was just the opportunity he was looking for. While the Vaasans turned their attention to Sarth and his barrage of spells, Geran scrambled across the blackened overgrowth and embers of the dike’s face, dodging past battling orcs and Hulburgans. He reached the Vaasans and cut down one of the mage’s bodyguards with a single thrust between the shoulder blades. His old mentor, Daried, would not have approved, but this was no contest of skill and honor; this was a fight for survival.

The Vaasan mage blasted Sarth off his feet with a spell that made the ground under the tiefling’s feet slam upward as if struck from below by the hammer of some subterranean titan. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw Geran lunging at him. The Warlock Knight snarled an arcane word and threw up a shield of dazzling blue light that stopped Geran’s point as firmly as if he’d tried to drive his sword into a granite wall. Then he leveled his staff at Geran and hurled an unseen thunderclap back at the swordmage, but Geran deflected the blast with a word in Elvish and a flick of his swordpoint.

“You follow the elven ways!” the mage snarled in frustration.

Geran did not reply, but instead attacked again, trying to find his way around the Vaasan’s magical defense. His enchanted blade rang and shivered as he struck at the edges of the glowing blue haze protecting the Warlock Knight. He managed to slip the point around the edge and give the Vaasan a nasty cut to the meat of his left arm; the mage cursed in pain and jumped back a step, but he missed his footing and tumbled down the earthwork, rolling to the foot of the hill. Geran started after him, but several rampaging ogres suddenly swarmed up the embankment in front of him, momentarily hiding the Vaasan mage from him. Geran evaded them, but when he looked again the Vaasan was gone. He’d fled the scene or simply been swept away in the tide of battle.

The orcs around him raised a ferocious cheer, and Geran looked up. A large banner waved in the air nearby, a square of mustard yellow marked with the image of a crimson, dripping skull. Below the banner he saw a knot of big orc warriors dressed in fine black mail, each with a painted skull over the heart… and in the center, an orc who wore armor of black plate. That must be Mhurren, Geran realized. The chief of the Bloody Skulls must have tired of watching his assaults stall on the tangled embankment of Lendon’s Dike. He meant to lead his warriors to victory.

The swordmage ran over to the human soldiers nearest him, a number of battered and exhausted Shieldsworn. The soldiers of Hulburg had nothing left to give, but he had to ask it of them anyway. “The banner!” he shouted to them. “We’re going to take the banner! Follow me, lads!”

The Shieldsworn soldiers raised a strong cry and surged toward the orc banner, sliding down the embankment after Geran. A huge, grossly fat ogre strode up to meet him and smashed a hammer with a head the size of an ale barrel down at him, but Geran leaped aside. The monster raised its mighty weapon for another swing, but the swordmage darted in close to its crooked legs and sliced out its hamstring with one long cut. The creature bellowed and fell, its arms flailing, but Geran pressed forward. “To me!” he shouted.

A few yards away he heard another rallying cry-Kara darted into the fray from the other side, cutting her way closer to the banner at the head of another small band of Hulburgans. She had her bow in hand, and its deadly song floated over the roars and shouts of the fighting. She shot down two of the warlord’s Skull Guards, each with an arrow in the heart, and then retreated before a sudden rush from the others, allowing her soldiers to meet them blade to blade. A moment later she threaded her way back into the fight and shot again, killing the orc who carried the standard. The banner wavered and began to fall before another of the Skull Guards seized it from its dying bearer and raised it aloft again.

“Hulburg is mine, you spellscarred slut!” Mhurren roared. “You defy me for the last time!” He leaped for Kara with a heavy fighting spear in hand. She calmly nocked her arrow and drew, taking aim at the eye-slit of his visor-only to be roughly jostled aside at the last moment by one of the Skull Guards, who smashed his Shieldsworn foe out of the way and nearly took her arm off at the shoulder with his whistling axe. Kara jumped back and stumbled to the ground.

Mhurren roared in triumph and raised his spear for the killing thrust, but then Geran shouldered his way past the Skull Guard in his way and leaped at the warlord. Mhurren whirled with catlike speed to meet Geran’s attack, catching the swordstroke on his shield and responding with a furious fusillade of overhand spear-thrusts, stabbing again and again for Geran’s heart. The swordmage parried the first, twisted away from the second, parried the third, but then Mhurren stepped close and slammed his shield into Geran’s right side. The warlord had a small spike on the boss of the shield, and it punched a deep wound in Geran’s shoulder. Geran staggered back, losing his blade from fingers that suddenly went weak as water, and he gasped desperately for breath. “So much for Hulburg’s champions!” the warlord gloated.

He lunged for Geran’s belly, and the swordmage twisted aside once more and caught the spear-shaft just behind the head with his left hand. Mhurren bared his fangs and tried to wrench his weapon back, but Geran kept on his feet and followed Mhurren around, staying away from the shield-spike and the spearhead both. The orc warlord was as strong as an ox, and he was much fresher than Geran; he was going to get his weapon back, and soon. In desperation, Geran released the spearhead and used the heel of his left hand to strike a sudden blow up at the bottom of the half-orc’s helm. The visor jammed up a couple of inches and momentarily covered Mhurren’s eyes, blinding him so that Geran could leap free, but not before a wild slash with the heavy war spear laid open his right thigh.

“Damn you!” Mhurren snarled in rage. He reached up to pull his visor back into place-

— and Kara’s bow sang again.

The visor Geran had knocked two inches out of place had given her the mark she needed. Her arrow took Mhurren just under the line of his jaw, plunging through his throat to pierce the back of his neck. The warlord gaped silently, dark blood foaming over his chin. He fumbled at the arrow, and then he sank to the ground and fell still.

“The warlord has fallen!” one of the Skull Guards cried out in Orcish. “Mhurren is dead!”

The orcs nearby turned to look, disengaging from scores of personal duels, and an eerie hush descended over the battlefield around the fallen warchief-a hush that slowly spread as news of Mhurren’s death spread through the horde. All along the dike, the orcs and their allies slowed their surge, looking uncertainly toward the center where their king’s banner no longer flew. Two of the remaining Skull Guards stooped by Mhurren’s body and hoisted the fallen chief up on their shoulders; more orcs came to help carry him, and the small knot of warriors retreated from the breach. Geran, Kara, and the Shieldsworn standing close backed off slowly and let the orcs carry away their chief. More of the Bloody Skulls to each side began to disengage, glaring at the defenders of Hulburg and shaking their spears in anger.