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FG, Ch 97
🕑 Added 2024-08-12 13:32:28 +0000 UTCMarcus wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when his burning hand touched the Hakka carts at the back of the Prince’scamp. Indeed, as the Tigran Pipers stalked forward and slit the throats of the half-asleep men who had been stationed to guard them, he gulped down a sense of palpable anxiety.
Now was not the time for doubt. Mari and Hialjia’s lives were both at stake.
So as the last guard fell he and a detachment of the Pipers hurried across the Yokun camp’s rear gate and took up positions around their tents, slaying any soldiers who had retired for the night. Their beastly gargles were droned out by the furious combat their Prince, in his hubris, had agreed to.
Alright, Marcus quickly telepathed when the coast was clear. Four of you to each cart.The rest of you, stand back! As soon as the first volley goes off, we charge and finish off any resistance that remains.
Marcus approached the grim looking Hakka carts with Marvin and his small detachment, each of them warily handling one of the four devices with extra caution. Marcus couldn’t help but note the similarities between these wheeled boxes of death and the Korean Hatchadevice used frequently in that nation’s early modern era. The makeup of the propelled rockets was even of a similar design – each one a long cylindrical tube cast in what looked like brass, and inscribed with scrawlings Marcus couldn’t quite make out. From the way the rockets had been handled with such reverence by their handlers, he assumed the script to be passages from some Yokun religious text.
Each cart contained no more than fifteen rockets each, and as he and his team hefted them and brought them to bear against the Northern palisade where the duel was being performed, he couldn’t help but wonder why their enemies had not launched more than a few missiles during their bombardment stages of their siege.
“I guess we can count ourselves lucky,” Marcus murmured to Marvin as the rest of the teams got into their firing positions as silently as they could, heaving their carts with them. “They could have done a lot more damage than they did.”
“Eh the Yokun Masters love their God of Flame too much,” Marvin replied with a wipe of his sweaty brow. “Wastin’ his ‘Holy Fire’ is seen as a great crime to them – even on the battlefield.”
Marcus couldn’t help but smirk. “Then I get to destroy a Prince’s army and insult a God all in one evening.”
And though his hand suddenly burned as he uttered these words, it didn’t stop him from executing the last stage of their initial assault: he walked among each of the cart bearers and slowly lit each and every one of the rockets with flashes of his Gloomraav lightning.
The Pipers watched in awe as the green light mingled with that of the rocket’s fuses, and the carts began to buckle under the weight of such raging, deadly cargo about to burst forth in a wave of total devastation.
Alright, Marcus said as he ran back to cover. Let them have it!
The world then vanished in a haze of lambent green.
…
Nagoya watched the grin of the Tauron spread across its bull-face with a sense that the creature might have simply succumbed to insanity. He would have simply finished her off if he didn’t feel the intense heat radiate from his camp, and the ground itself begin to rumble as though the ratmen of the Under were about to spring up at their feet.
He turned, finding the eyes of young Canjung locked on his as the Karja came to the same realization he did in that moment.
“Canjung…”
The Prince’s next words were obliterated in the explosion that rocketed through the Northern palisade, sending the men on the walls flying as the holy flames of Hakka clung to them, tearing clean through their armor and biting at their skin and muscles. Those on the watchtowers tried warning the other below but didn’t even manage a single screech before their positions were engulfed in the all-consuming inferno that vaporized wooden wall and soldier alike, so that the whole camp began to picture of sudden pyrophoric death – with the explosion being of such intensity that even the Prince could not look upon its radiance.
“My Prince!”
The voice was that of Canjung’s, and Nagoya next felt himself thrown to the ground just out of the way of the Tauron’s descending horns. He felt the soft soil of the Arasaka literally melt as his head bumped against it, and looked to see the entire camp engulfed in nothing but smoke and screaming warriors.
He watched the men who had been beside him – his Kherja honor-guard – now reduced to shambling zombies of themselves – their scales melting off with every agonizing step they took in the world of pain that had erupted at their backs. Those soldiers who had not been hit by the blast soon found themselves in the path of the charging Tauron, her axe swaying through the air in a deadly arc that trailed the liquid fire with it, searing clean through the flesh of three of his men at once.
The screams were constant and sharp. All around him he saw nothing the men of his Clan suffering in the wake of their own weapons discharge. Only then did he see the truth: that was it. The Hakka carts had been discharged entirely. It was the only weapon capable of such untold destruction.
“M-my lord…”
The Prince jumped up as the initial shock of the attack ran through him, eyes lighting on the charred face of his Kherja that had just saved his life.
“Canjung!” he cried. “Fool boy. The life of one old lizard is not worth that of the young, no matter his station. Can you stand?”
The boy coughed out a chunk of his scales, and snarled at the sight of devastation that had so overcome their camp.
“I breathe, my Lord,” he said. “That is enough.”
A general battlecry then tore through the white blanket of smoke that covered the patch of burned ground where the camp once stood. Screams of Keji-Saiof all shapes: Tigrans, humans, and even a few traitors to their own race. They streamed like dark shadows through the smoke and finished off any of the Zhurkin who were left. The remnants of the Kherja, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.
“Damn slaves!” Canjung roared like a bestial terror. “They deceived us! They lay in wait, turning the Hakka against us as an honorable duel was prosecuted in the name of Holy Akira! Have they no shame or humility, even in the face of the Gods themselves!?”
“You cannot teach a beast to live as a man,” the Prince replied calmly. “We are born in the shape of our souls. Some can never be tamed.”
Both Yokun rose and unsheathed their weapons as a wave of slaves then came at them. They saw the numbers on their necks. They heard the screams of premature triumph that belted from their throats.
“It would be prudent to retreat, would it not, Sire?”
Prince Nagoya grinned a grin more snake-like than Canjung had ever seen. In that moment, he knew this was the man who had defeated more foes to Yokun-kind than any who had gone before or would ever rise again.
“Do you recall the speech I gave to you about vengeance, young Canjung?”
“I do, my Lord.”
“Disregard it. Now is the time for righteous anger.”
The blades of the two Yokun then flashed strong and clear against the white world of terror, hacking through fur and limbs with shouts and yelps of pure fury. Their katanas shone with at least three shades of blood as they cut through the groups of screaming Tigran and humans who ran at them, and those Keji-Sai ‘Pipers’ soon began to realize exactly who they were dealing with, now.
As they came to the very last slaves and were about to put them to their swords, they suddenly retreated in good order – strangely swift and deliberate, as though they had received some order from the blank air itself.
“Cowards!” Canjung roared, stepping forward into the broken camp center, where there was nothing but splinters of wood and the bodies of the dead and dying left. “Where are you!? Face your deaths with some honor!”
The Prince had to admit his swelling pride in watching the young warrior then intercept the strike of a thrusting Tigran and quickly redirecting her blow to slit her furry throat. His blade carried pieces of the creature’s tendons with it as he swiped it through the air and screamed for more of his enemies to come and find him.
Instead, he and his Prince were met by other survivors of the madness: the five Zhurkin who had come to deliverthe hulking beast and the Pale One with them.
“Idiots!” Canjung roared at them, stepping close to take a swipe at their shaking legs and burnt armor. “You led those cretins to us!”
“Peace, Brother!” the helmeted leader begged, offering Canjung his sword in supplication. “We did not know! We – they must have had an exit, somehow! We thought it best to bring the Pale Lady before you no matter wha-“
“Fools!” Canjung roared. “The bastard Keji-Sai wanted to be caught!”
The Kherja raised his blade to strike down his kneeling brother. But his arm was stopped by the blade of his Prince.
“Canjung,” Nagoya said. “Did you suddenly retire from the service of Kherja?”
“N-no, my Lor-“
“Then save your fury for the true enemy. This battle may have caught us by surprise, but as long as we breathe, it is not over.”
Another battlecry then came at the last Yokun of the Hitogi force from all angles, each lizardman turning to see the horde of slaves ready to descend on them from the dark shadows beyond their ashen camp.
Canjung and Nagoya braced themselves. Surrounded they might have been, but the enemy was distinctively out-classed.
“I will serve you till my dying breath, Prince Nagoya!” Canjung roared as he bellowed a challenge to all the waiting slaves.
“I would be honored to have you beside me to the end, Canjung,” the Prince replied, his blade a haze of whirring black against the blanket of ash and soot. “Zhurkin, are you with us?”
The Prince felt movement at his back before he had time to turn and behold what happened next: Canjung fell beside him, his eyes wide and face splattered with his purple blood. At his neck, a dagger had been embedded and twisted cruelly, stopping the Kherja from even flailing out in pain before his life was ended.
Behind the boy stood his assassin – the Zhurkin who had once stood supplicant before them both.
Only now, he looked upon them with a very different set of eyes.
And with his helmet discarded, Nagoya saw the fur-coated face that had always been concealed beneath.
“Smart kid,” Karliah hissed. “A shame he chose the wrong side.”
