Sands of Fate I: Blood & Agony

Gray sand stretched before and after all, in every direction, for an incalculable distance. A single set of footprints broke the monotony of the Sands of Fate, a solitary figure drearily pressing forward through the swirling grit. A tall being, shrouded in dark fabric, face obscured by the murky depths of a hood. It ceased its methodical steps and stooped to the shifting ground beneath its bare feet. It sank skeletal, wizened fingers into the grains, and rose again with a full fist.

A steady flow of sand escaped the clutching hand, trickling away until only a few remained. Twitching fingers disposed the rest, returning the, to the sea of dust that glistened beneath he pale gray sun. All but one. That lone grain was pressed carefully to a finger, and held up to the light.

The pale rays shone through it like a prism; a fragmented light of blood and agony, bravery and assured destruction met with a grim smile and a steady heart.

***

The Skori were a fearsome people. With hereditarily large frames, stout musculatures, and a communal society built around their fierce warriors, they were considered by those who opposed them to be the scourge of civilization. Those who assigned them this moniker wanted the Skori to forsake their tents of hide and timber, skӓrs, for houses of stone and mortar, to forget the spirits of the forest, of the bears and wolves, in favor of an invisible man in the sky, and deny themselves of the spoils of conquest to till soil and pay taxes. The Skori would do none of these things, for they were fearsome, fierce, and proud.

Which may explain why what remained of them had not yet conceded. Surrounded by scores of legionnaires, the group of about thirty warriors had no idea that they were the last representatives of their way of life. They held on to a faint hope that help may arrive from any number of the other skӓrholds nearby, as they had sent their signal in smoke to the skies as soon as they had seen the legions on the horizon. They were unaware that the rest of their kin had already met similarly grisly ends. It made little difference, for the Skori relished death in battle almost as much as victory.

Their force was diverse; men and woman fought alongside one another, chests bare and blood-stained, leather loincloths offering them no protection. For the Skori, the only metal it was not cowardly to hide behind was the metal of one’s own weapon. Those varied among them as well. Some bore large axes, others one or two smaller ones. Some wielded immense greatswords that took seemingly otherworldy strength to operate, others quicker blades with vicious curves. There were even youth among them, boys and girls alike with hair not yet upon their bodies, holding firm with the ever-tightening circle of their kin.

The legionnaires opposing them could not be more different from the Skori. Uniform in almost every way, all men, with short, light hair, their bronze chestplates glinting beneath the red sun. Spears poised over the tops of teardrop-shaped shields ready to strike like coiled serpents. Even their steps were taken in union, as their legions closed in on their quarry.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of legionnaires; the Skori now numbered less than twenty. Though, for all their numbers, more legionnaires lay dead on the ground than any of them would have liked, or admitted, or committed to the annals of time, when it was the right moment to tell of the Skori, who they were and how they fell, to their children and grandchildren, soft in the safety of their stone and mortar houses, beneath the watchful eyes of their invisible man in the sky.

The rusty stench of battle would mingle with the putrid fumes of death in this place for days, weeks, perhaps months, so monumental was this slaughter, this extermination. But the Skori were fearsome, fierce, and proud. Around a dozen still stood.

One of them, a man bearing a hefty axe in each hand, splintered a legionnaire’s shield and split his face in the same wicked flurry of motion. When the legionnaire beside the first one responded, he found his spear cleaved and useless, with his skull soon rendered a similar fate. The third legionnaire was smarter than his comrades. He waited for the great monster of a warrior of a warrior to strike first, and drove his spear over the top of the lashing axes, piercing the Skori in his throat, and he fell to the dirt spluttering.

On the other side of the circle of Skori, a woman had vaulted herself onto the back of a legionnaire, digging down-turned short swords into the necks of the legionnaires to his left and to is right, while they attempted to devise a way to kill her without wounding her unwilling mount, who bucked and fought against the vice of her legs like an unbroken stallion with no success, until her blades found his neck, after the line of legionnaires had broken and parted to be clear of her wraith. That alone had provided ample opportunity for the Skori to attack the displaced soldiers where they had bunched up, and still more legionnaires fell beneath their might. As the warrior woman rode her dying steed to the ground, however, the ranks closed upon her. A legionnaire approached just as her arms had shifted to brace herself from her fall, and dropped guard. He buried his flesh into the firm flesh of her left breast, as yet, and forever, unsoftened by the bearing of a child, until it pushed through bone and, finally, pierced her heart. If the penetrating gaze of her fading eyes could have wielded steel, then the Skori would not have fallen that day.

Two remained; man, and woman.

Back to back, they shared the battlefield as they shared their bed, with each of them taking what they needed, the other fluidly bending to aid the others’ cause. The man bore a massive axe, to suit his monstrous stature, a great, double-edged head atop a shaft so formidable it could have been devastatingly wielded in its own right. The long tresses of his black hair shone with sweat and blood and gore, his huge chest heaving air into his lungs every other moment, and more often whenever his axe lunged out to claim another victim.

His woman was less imposing than he, but only in stature. Older than some who had stood and fell that day, as was her man, her naked chest bore the evidence of their any children, who had died that day just as they would. Her hair was dark, her skin a striking mix of tan from the sun and crimson from the carnage; her eyes were the color of her blade, save for the dripping scarlet on the latter, and just as sharp.

Their weapons whirled, sometimes in unison, sometimes in compliment, but always to the same end; the growing pile of dead and dying legionnaires at their feet. Whether it had been a single soldier or a group of them that had mustered the courage to approach the terrifying couple, all had thus far fallen. It was an entire legion that moved against them next; both of them saw their fates plainly.

“Die well, skӓrmate.”

The woman’s voice was rough and dry, void of fear and even resignation; not unlike the low rumble that came from her man in response.

“And I shall, skӓrling. You as well.”

One of the forward rank of the legion was met with the lower haft of the warrior’s axe between his legs, and tasted the blood of his brothers as the woman ran her sword into his mouth, agape with agony. The next was ran through the chest and out the shoulder, the one that followed cleaved from clavicle to pelvis by a mighty axe blow. The legionnaire that followed brought ill luck with him, even in death, for as the woman’s sword ran through his gut and he fell, the metal of the soldier’s chestplate held fast to the blade, and disarmed her. Another legionnaire saw this, and struck as she righted herself, running the blade of his spear from one of her hips to the other, the contents of her abdomen hitting the ground before she did, falling to her knees to die in silence; she was aided in this by a spear that pierced her skull a moment later.

The man bellowed like a bear; not a sound of loss or pain, but an articulation of fury and vengeance. The legionnaire who had killed his woman was rent in half at the waist, two of those behind him fatally slashed across their chests before they could finish marveling at the giant warrior’s grim smile. The legionnaire that moved to close the gap in the rank lost an arm for his trouble, the one after him, his head.

Glistening now with a fresh coat of arterial spray, the man met the coming legionnaires with nit question of what would become of him that day; he did not despair; he would die with honor and be showered with glories in Woodskӓr.

He lost count of how many more fell before he took his first wound, a deep cut to his right bicep that spilt blood down his arm. He paid little heed, and continued his merciless retribution; until he felt a spear in his kidney. He spun quickly, smashing his assailant with his axe shaft before removing his head with the blade. The warrior readied another strike for the next in line, just in time to see a spear erupt through his own chest. He fell, dead before he hit the ground, and still smiling.

It was just as well. There were no Skori left to see the skӓrs burn to make way for tilled earth and houses of stone and mortar. None remained to witness the forests weep, the wolves howl in lament, the bears turn, whimpering, to their winter sleep, months earlier than usual.

There would be no songs of their people, except bawdy ditties composed of their inglorious defeat, of their fearsome men dying in filth, their proud women offering submission before being dispatched, of their backwards ways being crushed beneath the indifferent heel of progress.

The songs would be different in Woodskӓr.

***

But of these songs, the grain of sand said nothing. Perhaps Woodskӓr as merely the delusion of a fearsome, fierce and proud people from a time beyond remembering in a universe beyond reach. Such things did not matter to the robed figure who resumed his trek, secreting that single speck into the recesses of his garment; for what purpose, only he could know.

#doom #metal #fiction #doommetal #blood #agony