The Dawn of the Raven episode 17 (2 page)

             
Krex saw the toll this was having on his men.  He saw them cowering.  He saw them fearful.  This would not do.  They would not just wait for the human army to reach them.  Sure, the arrows would hit more of them if they stood and rushed in, but it was worth it.  They didn’t look like Gekken right now.  They didn’t look fierce.  They didn’t look strong.  Krex screamed out the order, and the Gekken stood, abandoned all caution, and charged.

             
As the Gekken screamed and rushed towards them, the archers rushed as quickly as they could to reload, but their hands shook, and they struggled to load and aim their bows.  All formation for the Gekken was immediately broken.  Gekken stormed towards the archers who had spread out to fire from the side, and they had no hope of defending themselves.  They were butchered in moments.  The archers in the middle of the field were protected as Raveena, Prince Treyan, and the soldiers they led rushed past them and met the Gekken head on.  The archers on the hill still eagerly showered the Gekken in arrows, but within minutes the platoon Krex had sent attacked them from the trees, slaughtered the soldiers who had been placed there to protect them, and every archer was separated from life and limb.  In their place, the Gekken archers took their position.  They loaded their great bows and fired down on the human soldiers as they met the Gekken horde head on.  The Gekken arrows were large, and their bows great and powerful, and they were able to pierce the armor of many of the humans.  The human archers on the field turned their attention to the Gekken archers and fired up at them, and a great battle began between them.  As they focused on each other, the armies below crashed into each other in a sea of blood.  Limbs were severed, flesh, muscle, and bone cleaved.

              Raveena took notice of the Gekken archers.  She was surprised by their appearance.  She hadn’t prepared for this, and she instantly felt a sense of panic.  The Gekken they’d fought before hadn’t had any archers amongst them.  Some of the Gekken archers held great bows that were made out of thick tree limbs that they bent with their massive strength, bows that stood from the ground to over their heads, that fired giant arrows that hit with such fierce momentum that they could burst through the strongest armor the humans wore.  She watched as one of the arrows burst right through the chest plate of a Kraulian warrior and obliterated him.  For the moment, most of the Gekken archers were focused on the human archers who were firing up at them, but that war would be won by the Gekken, she knew, and once they were free to take aim at the humans undeterred she felt that the tide of the battle would turn against them instantly and fatally.  She looked around, trying to think if there was some way to signal Shyrea.  She screamed for her, but it was no use.  There was no way to distinguish her voice from any other over any sort of distance, what with all the noise on the battlefield.  She screamed out Shyrea’s name at the top of her voice, but there was nothing, and in a moment two Gekken were upon her, and her focus was forced back to fighting for her life.

              Wrathe and his men continued their search.  He was angry that they were missing the great battle, the sounds of which could be heard in the distance.  They’d waited all night for the chance to fight, and now here they were, far from the action.  He wanted to finish this mission with as much haste as possible.  Their search had been fruitless, and he and both of his men were growing tired of it.  He ordered them to spread out, so that they may cover more ground faster.  If they found the source, they would signal one another, and if they found nothing, they would reconvene at a fixed point in half an hour.  One of his men headed northeast of their location, one headed south, and Wrathe himself kept going southeast, towards a spot where the terrain lowered into a ravine.

              Kiella heard footsteps.  She shuddered as she heard him coming down the edge of the ravine.  She looked around her.  There was no hope, was there?  She picked up the bow.  She found a dip in the rocky floor of the cavern, a spot where she could anchor the bow, so that she could bend it back with both hands gripping the top.  She leaned on it with her shoulder, putting as much weight upon it as she could to keep it bent as she loaded an arrow.   She knew she’d probably only get one shot.  She wished she hadn’t given up on it so quickly earlier.  She wished she had practiced.  She saw that it could be done.  Though her ribs screamed out in pain as she strained, she could bend the bow in this fashion.  The trick would be keeping it steady and on point as she loaded it and fired.  And she would have to account for the arrow’s trajectory.  If her ability to bend the bow and to pull back the arrow before firing was so weak, then surely she would have to aim high.  Yet, the strength of the bow was so mighty that she knew that the arrow would travel fast enough that if the target were not too far away she should be able to hit it. 

             
As she struggled with the bow, still trying to figure out how best to use it, she looked up and saw that he was already there, standing twenty meters away, staring at her with a sick grin.

“What is it you plan to accomplish there?” he asked
in his gravelly voice.  He started laughing.  “You think you can load a Gekken bow?  I’m surprised you had the strength to pick it up.  Here, let me show you.”  He started walking towards her, licking his lips and brandishing his blade.  As he approached slowly, confidently, he turned his attention to Shyrea’s body, hidden under the cloak and hood, writhing around.  “What’s this?  What sort of creature have you got in there?  Is that your prisoner?”

             
Kiella fumbled with the bow frantically.  The Gekken was so confident, he was giving her time.  She knew he was right, she had no real chance to kill him, but she had to try.  She aimed as well as she could and fired.  For a moment, she thought it would hit.  She thought she’d aimed true.  It whisked by so close to his head that it may have taken a piece of his ear with it, but it missed.  He turned to her and smiled.  He reached to his ear and found that it was bleeding.

“Well” he snarled in his dark growl, “it looks like I underestimated you.  I’m impressed.  Drop your clothes, bend over, and let me fuck you in the ass and I might decide to let you live before I go and finish killing off the rest of your people.  Maybe I’ll let you live, keep you as a p
et, a little sex slave.  I like you, you’ve got a little fight in you.  But first, I need to know what that is.  I need to know what’s under those robes.”

             
He walked over towards Shyrea and crouched down next to her.  He started to unbind her so he could remove the cloak.  He could feel that the flesh under the cloak was soft.

“Another woman?
  I’ve never fucked a human.  I’ve always wanted to.  I don’t know if it will work.  My cock might be too big for you.  Maybe I should fuck her first, see how it goes, then fuck you?  But hell, I’ve got a war to go fight.  I’ll just tie you both up and come fuck you both later.  If you want, I’ll fuck her first so we can see if she survives it.” 

             
Suddenly, Gekken speech began to emanate from Shyrea’s body.  Wrathe stopped and talked back to it.  It was a Gekken soldier, telling him he was lost in darkness, to please free him immediately.  Wrathe suddenly realized that this was the source of the dark magic.  His eyes grew stern, he gripped his blade but hesitated for an instant.  He warned his comrade that he was about to gut him, and the Gekken in Shyrea, confused and panicked, begged him to stay his blade.  This only made Wrathe hesitate for a split moment, however.  He would complete his task and go about his mission so he could join his others in the fray.

             
Kiella lunged at Wrathe, and shoved the tip of an arrow into his neck.  Wrathe screamed.  He turned, burning with anger, and threw her against the cavern wall.  The arrow had broken off, the tip still lodged in his throat, with dark black blood oozing out.  The shaft of the arrow was sharp where it had broken, and Kiella rushed back at him to stab him with it again as he reached to try to dislodge the tip from his neck.  She stabbed him in the side with it, and again he screamed out.  He slammed her down again and this time Kiella hit her head against the stone floor.  It was not enough to knock her out, but she was dazed, and she couldn’t get up quickly.

             
Wrathe looked at the little human who had wounded him so, and saw that she wouldn’t be rising soon.  He laughed at how much fight she’d had in her.  She’d wounded him fairly severely.  He felt the blood that gushed out from both wounds, and he could feel that his strength was fading.  He wondered if he would even see the battle.  He turned back towards the body on the floor.  He stabbed his blade into the center of the being.  There was a scream.  The body was writhing so much that he knew he hadn’t wounded it severely, the blade had barely gone in before it had moved and it was not a deep wound.  He looked for a better spot to stab it, but as he reached to steady it, the being burst from its bindings and grabbed his wrist to stop his blow.  He’d loosened the bindings enough that the Gekken inside Shyrea’s body, knowing that he was about to be murdered by his fellow soldier, had been able to break free of them while Wrathe was busy with Kiella.  He took Wrathe by surprise and struck him in the temple hard enough to knock him down.  The Gekken inside Shyrea’s body removed the cloak so he could see, and Wrathe was shocked to see such a beautiful young creature coming at him with such ferocity.  The Gekken soldier picked up a rock from the cavern floor and bashed Wrathe’s skull with it.  Shyrea’s body didn’t give the Gekken the normal strength he was accustomed to, so it took many more strikes with the rock to finish him than he would have expected, but he continued to rain them down on him until his face and skull were pummeled beyond recognition.  As soon as Wrathe stopped moving completely, aside from the odd twitch of a finger or toe, the Gekken in Shyrea turned towards the opening of the cavern and tried to rush out.  He had not realized that his feet were still loosely bound, however, and he tripped instantly and knocked his head on the cavern floor.  Shyrea’s body was knocked out.  It wouldn’t matter who or what inhabited her being now for quite a while, as they would be unable to move or do anything as long as her body was unconscious.

             
Kiella was in disbelief.  She’d gathered her senses again just in time to see Shyrea finish crushing the Gekken’s skull into pulp.  When she saw her turn and fall and hit the cavern floor so hard, she rushed to her side.  She turned Shyrea over and saw blood streaming down from her scalp.  It was thick in her gorgeous hair and pooling on the cavern floor.  Kiella checked to make sure she was still breathing, and then did her best to care for her friend’s wound.  She applied pressure to it, and soon it began to clot.  It was not as bad a wound as the blood had at first made it appear.  The blood stopped flowing within minutes.  It was now clotted and clumped all through her gorgeous friend’s hair.  She found the other wound, where Wrathe had stabbed at her, but it was a very slight wound.  A long cut across her side, but one that was so shallow that it had little chance of harming her other than if it were to become infected.  Kiella did her best to clean it, and then kissed her on the forehead and the top of her head and held her tightly in her arms.  She sat on the cold cavern floor cradling her, rocking her, telling her of her love for her, words that she hadn’t yet dared to speak while her friend was conscious, but that she wished so much she could hear now.

             
Tears flowed down her cheeks, but Kiella shook off her fears.  She covered her beautiful friend’s face again with her hood, though being extremely careful to make sure she could breathe properly.  She meticulously bound her hands and feet again.  She laid her friend back in the center of the cavern, and then sat.  She was overwhelmed.  She knew it.  But she also knew that this wasn’t the time to let her emotions run free.  It was only a matter of minutes before she heard footsteps at the top of the ravine again.

              Raveena fought her way towards Prince Treyan.  They’d been separated in the battle, but now she cut her way back to his side.  Gekken approached from all sides, as she’d strayed too far into their midst.  She knew she wouldn’t last long with no one to protect her flank, and she needed to confer with him about directing his troops.  She narrowly evaded blow after blow from the Gekken, as she slashed her way through the sea of blades to return to her lover’s side.  Once she’d reached him, and as soon as there was a momentary break in the Gekken onslaught, she told him of the urgency in quelling the Gekken archers.  Treyan ordered his platoon to retake the hill, though he stayed with Raveena.  They fought again, as before, front to back and side by side, protecting each other so that they were impervious from all sides.  The waves of Gekken who approached them were crushed.  Raveena’s blade was too swift. Deathraken severed their heads from their shoulders, their hands from their wrists, and their feet from their ankles.  Prince Treyan’s blade was equally adept at severing life from limb, and at cleaving through their ribs and sternums and decimating the organs inside.  The difference was that Prince Treyan’s blade was less efficient.  Raveena’s blade was so quick and so precise, she could slice death blows by the second.  Prince Treyan was often forced, with his big heavy blade, to ward off on-comers with his shield while he fought to free his sword from the carcass of his previous foe.

             
Prince Treyan’s platoon rushed up the hill towards the archers.  Half were felled as they made the ascent, but they were stout, strong, fierce soldiers, the greatest the Kraulian army could boast, and the ones who reached the top over-powered most of the archers.  All but one were killed. Mathren, the fiercest of all the Gekken archers, the one whose bow stood the tallest and whose aim was the truest, killed the last of them with an arrow that hit with such force that it split right through his helm, skewering through his brain.  The warrior fell lifeless, and Mathren turned his attention back down to the battle.  It had become clear to him who the greatest threat on the battlefield was.  He’d seen a female warrior cutting through his men like they were nothing.  His eye scanned carefully for her.  He saw her, and he drew his bow.  He hooked the leather strap at its bottom around his foot and anchored it on the ground.  He bent his giant bow back, and loaded his giant arrow.  He smiled as he lined up the shot.  She was so small.  A female so brave, so cunning, so lethal.  He was impressed, but he knew in an instant she would be obliterated.  His massive arrow would cut her in half.  He released the shot, and watched as it flew towards its destiny.