The Soldier's Tale by Jonathan Moeller

Author:Jonathan Moeller [Moeller, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Epic, Historical, 90 Minutes (44-64 Pages), Literature & Fiction, Arthurian, calliande, morigna, ridmark
Amazon: B015APTT2E
Publisher: Azure Flame Media, LLC
Published: 2015-09-10T23:00:00+00:00

###

Just under an hour later, we rode west, Sir Primus at the head of sixty men-at-arms. For this task, we had a mix of veterans and new recruits, which was a relief. The new lads were shaping up, but the Mhorites were vicious fighters, and I wanted steady men with us. Magistrius Mallister had also been sent, just in case one a Mhorite shaman decided to show his ugly face. As bad as the Kothluuskan orcs were, the shamans of the blood god Mhor were worse, and even the Mhorite warriors were afraid of them.

We rode west along the broad, wide road the dwarves had cut from the foothills. Of old, when the High King had first made alliance with the dwarves, the Three Kingdoms had constructed the road to Castra Durius as a gesture of friendship. It had weathered the centuries with the stubborn defiance of dwarven engineering, and so was still flat and level. The Dux’s men patrolled it often, so the Mhorites usually avoided it, preferring instead to creep through the maze of gullies and valleys in the foothills, even using the caverns of the Deeps to mask their movements. So it seemed safe enough to assume we would not encounter any trouble, but I had been a soldier too long to be an optimist.

The corpses we saw a few hours after leaving Castra Durius proved that correct.

Sir Primus called a halt, and we reined up. A dozen orcish men in leather armor and chain mail lay scattered across the road, all of them dead from sword or axe wounds. Their faces had been tattooed red and marked with ritual scars, giving their features the looks of hideous crimson skulls behind their tusks. The crimson skull was the sigil of Mhor, the old orcish blood god of death and murder, and in his honor the Mhorites carved his symbol into their flesh.

“Looks like there was a sharp fight here, sir,” I said, looking over the corpses.

One of the veteran men-at-arms, a wiry old man named Philip, dropped from his saddle and considered the ground. “I would say about a hundred Mhorites, Sir Primus, maybe a hundred and fifty. It looks as if they ambushed a group of fifty dwarves. Struck from either side of the road.”

“Cowardly, as befits the Mhorites,” said Primus.

“Seems the dwarves had the better of it,” I said. God and the saints, but my head hurt. “I don’t see any dwarven dead.”

“Nor do I, sir,” said Philip. “I think…wait!”

He pointed at the hills rising over the road. Pine trees cloaked the sides of the hills, and a short figure staggered from the trees, weaving back and forth as if drunk. It was a dwarven man, standing just about five feet tall, broad and strong and tough. He wore armor of bronze-colored dwarven steel, a battered shield upon his left arm and a bloody sword in his right fist. His helmet was missing, revealing his gray, granite-colored skin, his black hair and beard, and his eyes like orbs of green marble.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.