Chapter 19: Chapter 18 – A Displeasure to be Made Known

"If you're ready for the battle, give a shout~ Hoo-Rah!

If you're willing to risk death, let me know~ Yes, Sir!

We will march on without fear, for to us death is welcome~

If you're set to risk your life, lead the charge! Hoo-Rah!" - Ptolodeccan battle dirge, sung during charges.

While they ran along the Ptolodeccan soldiers on their charge forward, Aideen can't help but wonder at the soldier's attitude, as they charged while they sang a merry battle dirge, with lyrics that got more and more obscene and ribald as it went on. Laughter and whoops of joy accompanied their charge, which was unlike anything she had witnessed before in her life.

 

Templars under her father or eldest brother's commands usually charged in silence, focused on their task, while militiamen only charged reluctantly, if at all. Soldiers who were eager to charge into battle like these… were a completely new sight to her.

 

Ahead of them the skeletal soldiers already met the Junoran army. The Junorans had their left flank turn to face the new threat, and Aideen could see a wall of pikes set to welcome them from afar.

 

Too bad pikes does jack shit against a rampaging horde of skeletons. Trí, Ceathair, and Llewelyn's Death Knight each carved a path of carnage through the lines of thralls, and the hordes of skeletons behind them rushed into the gaps.

 

Aideen nearly hurled when she finally reached the lines where the Junoran thralls held their ground - and died -, for as far as eyes can see, were corpses strewn haphazardly all over the place, with the occasional broken skeleton here and there.

 

The stench was beyond horrifying, the acrid scent of blood mixed with the disgusting smells of piss and shit, for it was rare for the dead to die cleanly. Aideen frowned in disgust and had to struggle with her stomach when one step accidentally landed on a section of a man's spilled intestines, and they disgorged their disgusting contents on her boots and pants.

 

Not too long after, they too finally met with resistance, as the more numerous Junoran thralls forced the skeleton soldiers to spread themselves thinly. In three areas where Trí, Ceathair, and the Death Knight led the assault, they steadily gained ground, but the assault mostly stalled elsewhere.

 

As if they knew the heavy infantry were coming, the skeleton soldiers before them parted to the side, and opened a section a hundred man wide, which the first two lines of the heavy infantry promptly filled.

 

Since they were on the secondline themselves, Aideen and Diarmuid joined the frontlines, where Diarmuid showed the fruits of his training and quickly led a charge through the enemy lines, with Aideen guarding his back, and heavy infantrymen following them.

 

By now the thought of disgust - or pity over the fate of the Junoran thralls - were long gone from Aideen's mind, as she concentrated on the fight at hand. Her metal staff collapsed a windpipe with a thrust, then swung over to the other side to crush a female thrall's skull and send her brain matter splattering all over the place.

 

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Vitalica Army, by the front lines.

 

"Men, allies have come to our aid, now is the time to strike back!" Yelled Ciarran Fiachna from atop his steed. He and his templars had just returned from a charge when the sudden arrival of a horde of skeletons from Ptolodecca turned the tides. His heart warmed when he noticed the two monstrous undead constructs at the forefront of the charge, for he would have recognized his wife's "pets" anywhere. "Templars! To me! We muster for another charge!"

 

Encouraged by his words, the militiamen on foot, and the templars on their steeds regathered for another charge. Most of the militiamen were left to hold their defense lines, but at least a thousand brave volunteers gathered behind the mounted templars, and cheered loudly as they ran behind the steeds.

 

At the very front of the cavalry wedge, Ciarran gripped his flanged mace and shield tightly, and braced himself as his trained armored warhorse barreled through the line of thralls. The thought that he - and his family - might have ended as one of these slaves had things gone differently revolted him, and he did his best to at least end the thralls in his path painlessly. Heads were smashed as he swung his mace to both sides, and behind him his templar order did the same.

 

As the charge started to stall out, the second wave of cavalry, led by his eldest son Faerghus swooped in from the sides of the wedge and alleviated the pressure from Ciarran's group. Behind them militiamen charged in to clean up those they missed.

 

"Good timing, son," praised Ciarran as Faerghus steered his horse to meet his father. His one-handed axe was wet with blood, and his shield had taken a couple of dents, but he was otherwise in good shape. "You have enough left for a good smite in you?"

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"Yes, father, I do," replied Faerghus. The eldest son of the Fiachnas was a handsome man, with his flaming red wavy hair trimmed to shoulder length and bound in a tight ponytail, while he grew a finely groomed mustache as well. At thirty two this year, he had quite a bit of age difference to his siblings, but they remained close nonetheless.

 

"On me, then, son," said Ciarran as he gathered his mana for an all out strike. Besides him Faerghus did the same, and after a moment they were ready. "You take the right, I'll take the left. Make sure you don't accidentally hit one of the skeletons though."

 

"Rest assured, father," reassured Faerghus. "I will aim carefully."

 

Both men held their hands with open palms facing forward in front of them, and soon a bright beam of light emanated from their hands. Junoran thralls enveloped by the light soon dropped down, like puppets with their string cut, and the beams easily cleared a long, wide path at least a hundred meters deep into the Junoran army. Faerghus had aimed well, and his smite had ended only a couple lines of thralls away from the horde of skeletons that were their allies.

 

Despite their fatigue, they both urged their horses onward, as they raced through the now cleared paths, with the rest of the templars behind them.

 

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Junoran army, field command tent.

 

"What in the name of Tohrmut's bony arse is happening!?" Yelled Stavros Ensurna, personal disciple to the Spirit Servant of Junora and commander of the expedition as he watched the carnage on the battlefield.

 

"It is what it looks like, Stavros," replied Ovelya, his elder sister and second in command for this expedition. They were tasked to regain some of their lands from Vitalica while the nascent nation was under internal turmoil, and the past three days of skirmishes had given them the impression that it was but a matter of time before they succeeded… but then fate played a jest on them. "Ptolodecca is joining the field, and definitely wasn't joking about their so-called alliance with Vitalica."

 

"What the hell is Berah doing!? She said she would scout out Ptolodecca's response, and maybe distract them when she left!?" Yelled the irate necromancer.

 

"Who knows? Her soul hasn't even returned even now, so either she's still busy there… or she might have been captu- hurgh," Ovely's word was suddenly cut off as a wicked bone spike suddenly emerged from her chest, the bloody, transparent spike only visible by the blood that coated it, and behind it Stavros could suddenly feel the presence of a monstrous undead construct.

 

"Shouldn't have… bothered… to join this… shitty expe-" his elder sister's final words were cut off with a sickening crunch of bones breaking as massive bony jaws akin to an alligator's snapped shut from above and crushed her head between them.

 

Stavros just screamed and scrambled out of his tent when he saw the horrifying spider-lizard undead monster that somehow managed to hang upside down from the top of his tent.

Outside his tent, the orderly sight he saw but ten minutes ago when he entered to consult his sister had been replaced by an eerily silent scene of carnage. Here and there, he saw a junior necromancer under his charge run for their lives, only to be run down and murdered in cold blood by therians dressed in all blacks.

 

His gut knotted and cold sweat drenched his back as he recognized those black-dressed Therians as members of the Death's Hand, Ptolodecca's much rumored corps of elite assassins.

 

Stavros tried what he could to avoid attracting any attention to himself, and moved as fast as he dared away from the carnage. The battle and the expedition long banished from his mind, as his only thought left was of survival.

 

He had just made it outside the central encampment when he thought he heard a curious yipping noise, after which darkness covered his vision and he knew no more.

 

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