The troll staggers to a halt and salutes sloppily, "There's someone climbing the mountain!"
You look at Akinos and see his head already turned, eyes meeting yours, "It's as I thought." you say, "And if whatever it is climbs alone…"
"Then it thinks it can match itself against whatever it finds at the peak." Akinos continues, "We knew there was some unknown warrior among the centaur, this merely confirms it, I don't see how the plan changes."
There are grim nods all round and you order the troll to start finding things to throw down at the figure if possible, hoping to stall them somewhat. You have absolutely nothing to send back up the peak apart from two solitary trolls, all the elders are busy with their ritual, an interruption of which could be catastrophic, and everyone else is down here with you. You briefly consider sending Akinos but you need him here not charging off down hunting someone, for all you know that could be the enemy's very strategy!
The troll tiredly sets back off up the mountain and you enter a time of agitated calm. The centaur are still attacking but they're doing so slowly, just as tired as you are, but also ineffective in their assaults due to your alterations to the ground. You switch out fighters as the battle goes on into the morning, then early afternoon, allowing at least some reprieve, whereas the centaur observe no such practice and you find yourself destroying one band after another, equine corpses forming disgusting piles in the stone path, the hooves of their living brethren slipping on the foulness mixing and running down the path. You see more than one of them step into a hole or crack and a dozen broken ankles, it's almost pathetic how they limp toward you.
The Kolkar are a savage people, lacking even the meanest discipline, but utterly devoted to their duty. It's amazing, they simply keep coming, keep dying. One great chief approaches you alone, half a spear clutched in his hand, picking his way over his comrades, stopping occasionally to touch the hair of one or another in a way that's almost tender. His arm is missing, his bandages crude and bloodstained, clearly injured earlier in the day. Yet even now he approaches again, face pale but eyes burning, throwing himself into the shieldwall, dying instantly yet managing to thrust his spear into the heart of one warrior as he dies.
Your arms raise, your blade rises, then falls, a falling star, a falling sun, hewing down again and again till you feel a constant burn in your shoulders. You'd killed before, back at Sen'jin, then again at Thunder Ridge against Darkstorm's forces. This eclipsed it all and you slew again and again, Baneshadow's sword growing heavy in your hands as you slaughter the centaur as they stumble over a wall of corpses. Whether it's the dark glory of the battle or the closeness of the elements this day your blade burns all day, never leaving your hand long enough to extinguish itself.
"A Blade, a Blade!"
Your sword cleaves the head of another chief, then strikes down, cutting the arm from one of his bondsmen as the fires rise within you. This is truly battle, the sort of battle you'd longed for to test yourself and bring honour to your clan, the sort of battle your father would be proud to see you in.
"A Burning Blade!"
Akinos is there to be sure, but your clan cheer for you! They cheer your blade!
The ground shakes as if in salute and you grin, brining your sword down again, strength filling you as you kill again.
You spin to feel another foe, already within your guard, calling up the power and-
It's Scorn.
The older orc's hand is on your shoulder and you find yourself standing amidst dead centaur, far from your line.
"Back you go boy." the sergeant says softly.
The line opens and closes around you in an embrace, your clan saluting with bloody fists on bloody breasts.
You find your council beside you and a skin of water thrust into your hand.
"How many now?" someone asks as you close your eyes and drink, then splash some water on your face, blood soaking into your hair.
"Hundreds." someone else replies.
"Perhaps a quarter." This time it's Akinos. "Two hundred below, one over the side, two more here in the path… Perhaps more, there are many dead..."
Five hundred centaur! That was more than some clans had members let along fighting forces. It was likely more than most human settlements along the Merchants Coast, likely more than their warriors certainly. If you could lead a hundred to kill five enemies each what more could you do.
You'd step away from the group to peer over the cliff edge and see centaur bodies strewn below. Whenever they've tried to charge your lines they're forced to occupy the right angle of the road and you've been able to push them off the cliff by advancing your own line. Centaur corpses are strewn about on the mountainside, as Akinos said, at least a hundred, some moving, trying to drag their broken bodies to some safety, but more lie still.
There's a lull in the fighting as the sun passes noon and you count your dead too. You've taken loses of course, but so far they've been light. Sarilus has been able to counter the centaur enchantment and your superior discipline, tactics and positioning have meant only a few of your clan have fallen, though almost all are now injured to various degrees. Still though, once again the large numbers of centaur dead merely belay their greater numbers and you're only just about managing to match them in terms of proportion of dead, for including those who fell below a quarter of your own forces are dead or dying.
The trolls come down again one at a time, sometimes bearing supplies, sometimes merely acting as runners to tell the progress of various issues. The elders have created their totem of horror and the trolls report the bloodhaze of the peak growing ever more angry, winds whipping about the summit like vicious hounds, spurred on by the black speech of the warlocks as they chant their invitation to the Ur'zul, beckoning it closer. The dark figure still climbs, slowly, traversing the bare face of rock, apparently evading the sun by means of several long chimneys in the north face.
It's their latest report that has you the most worried though:
"Dey be gatherin' an da plain." said one troll, shaking his head.
The sentry explains that the centaur are still sending forces against you but that they're now forming a large ring and galloping all around it, apparently in an effort to throw up dust and obscure your vision of their activities. It's a tactic you didn't expect for them and you wonder what they're doing.
Akinos is in close conference with Sarilus and they both approach you soon after the troll departs, "Something's going on, I can feel the earth moving." the blademaster says, looking at you seriously.
Indeed there's been several tremors this day. You didn't exactly know who or what had created them, but you already knew the elders of the Burning Blade had spent years in this place manipulating the elements for their own desires and perhaps this was the result.
"The enemy magic has changed, I can feel it in the leylines." Sarilus confirms, "It's something big, possibly something to counter what the warlocks are doing."
You look up, the red haze has begun to creep down the mountain, shrouding most of the peak and even beginning to cut off your own view of the plains below. You look toward your mentor.
"I can hit them." Akinos says, "But whether I can stop whatever it is they're up to is another matter. Even if I fought with all the longing for death they do I have no idea what they're up to."
"I don't think we have a choice." you remark, trying to pierce the gloom through will alone, "If they're trying something we have to try and stop it and you're the only one who can even attempt it."
There was no chance of you breaking out and meeting the centaur in open battle in some attempt at disrupting their ritual there, but a Blademaster of the Burning Blade can walk on wind and dance on fire, Akinos can do it.
"Kill their shaman, kill their leaders, draw them away or burn their tents. If you can get back here afterward all the better, if not do what you can down there. We'll move back up the path to the third position, I think this has just become a race…"
With a solemn nod Akinos turns, sword drawn, sprinting toward the ledge and with one bound leaping into the red mist, rapidly falling from sight as he rides the mountain gusts down into the heart of the Kolkar.
The plot thickens!
