Thursday, August 6, 2009

Berserker Part 48

Marhault watched in impotent rage from the walls as the ambush was sprung on the caravan. He was going to have the grasses cleared to provide an open killing field, but he didn’t think that they would’ve been able to organize an evacuation effort so soon, thus he had let it slide. Then that northerner woman came to beg on her friends’ behalf. With her beautiful blue eyes and silver tongue, normally he would’ve had such men killed and comandeered the caravan anyway. He had actually let her leave whenever it suited her! He kicked himself for his weakness time and again.

“Should we help them?”, inquired his second, gesturing at the distant group with his bow.

“I wish we could”, Marhault returned. “But they’re not in arrow range”.

“What about our catapults sir?”, the grizzled old man asked anxiously. “Or perhaps we could bolster them with a few more men?”

Marhault turned his smoldering anger on the man who normally passed for his best friend. “Do you truly believe that you could fire a hunk of stone at a distance of at least a mile, while accurately hitting the enemy that stand just a few feet away from our own?”, he asked acidly

“Then we could send in more men, sir”, the man insisted.

“True”, Marhault conceded, his anger quickly cooling into something closer to a depressive gloom. “But I doubt that is the full size of the army that the scout mentioned. Also he said there were Gnolls and I see none in that mass”.

“Its a mile distant sir”, the old man said skeptically. “How can you tell from here?”.

“Trust me”, he responded wearily. “If we open our gates or abandon our posts, we will be overun as well”. As he spoke a page ran up to them, his face red with exertion.

“My Lord!”, he puffed. “The eastern wall is under attack, men are falling in droves by poison arrows!”

Sighing deeply, he adressed his friend. “See?”

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