[center][h3]Tales of the Lord Quickblade[/h3]
[i]How he came to the Indias with his warriors[/i]

[sub]Written with Kho and Saucer[/sub]
[h1][b]~   ~    ~    ~   ~    ~[/b][/h1][/center]


It was neither in her room, nor in his bedchambers, that the Lord Quickblade’s wife found him in the morn. He was similarly not to be found in the great hall breaking his fast, nor in the stables inspecting some fine new horses and other beasts that another lord had just sent after the two men had finally settled a dispute over the fate of some war-captives. He was not addressing his men in the courtyard, nor meeting the foremost steward by the well, nor taking any of the usual and expected places that the castle’s lord might occupy in the morning. Rather, Quickblade’s wife found him lurking in the shade of a parapet atop the mighty walls of his hill-fortress, those which split the wind and bestowed it the deserved name of Fort Skybreak.

The lord looked out vacantly into the distance, casting his eyes over the village that had cropped up around and beneath his walls, over his demesne. This shielding under his protection stretched as far as the eye could see and then further, to encompass the land tilled by the Renevits and many other hamlet-folk. He gazed into the wildness and infinitude of the beyond, to a place that the eyes could not see and the mind could not grasp.

The heat didn’t help; Itzala had scorched away the clouds, so even this morning was warm. Above the ground in places the air distorted slightly and seemed to simmer from heat alone, as if the dry grass was alchemically generating a sort of substantial fume out of nothingness. 

This broiling air threatened an afternoon that would make the laborers lugubrious in their toils, the children restful when they should have been riotous and gleeful, and the warriors slothful and content when they should have been drilling. This was why Quickblade rested in the shade of the parapet–sweat already started to glisten upon his temples, and soon it ran through his long hair and make his beard stick to his lips.

“Hmph,” Quickblade grunted as his wife greeted him by way of wiping away the sweat on his head.

“O my good lord, why be thee now alone? For what grievance have I these past days been banished from my lord’s side, made as much a foreigner to thy mind as thou has been to thy sleep?”

His retort shocked her. “Men hath gone mad,” he stated with the sort of conviction and demeanor with which one might say, [i]‘that Quickblade doth keep a sharp sword,’[/i] or [i]‘Fort Skybreak hath high walls,’[/i] and went on, “...or perhaps the world meets its end! I took the word of strange and monstrous beasts for bruit at first, yet sith the fourth sighting, my gut has sat unwell.”

Beneath his golden beard, Quickblade’s jaw was clenched. His chiseled face was all hard stony features, like a terracotta effigy, and his brows were furrowed such that they might have resembled the deep rows that those pigmen tillers of distant lands gouge into the earth. 

So Itzala climbed and morn erstwhile passed, with Quickblade staring into the horizon. Within his eyes dwelt an intensity that threatened to set those lands aflame just as surely as the sun’s own baleful glare. His wife rested there beside him, hoping to lend comfort through presence of body if not through word or mind. The reverie was broken only when a lone chariot–that of a courier–raced across the drylands, towards the fortress and its village. Quickblade’s visage did not move, but his eyes traced the cart and its dusty trail as it slowly approached. As it came up to the gate and was admitted after a short time, there were  a few shouts and cries between charioteers and gatemen.

Quickblade waited in his place, as befitted a lord, until one of his retainers came to attend him. “What intelligence cometh alow?”

“Villains!” the soldier reported, “Knaves! Reavers! They come to raze your hinterlands, m’lord!”

There was a flash of distinctive golden steel and, like lightning, the lord’s sword was unsheathed and raised high. “Hark ye!” the shieldlord called out, his booming voice resounding through the courtyard to all his levies assembled around and about, “To arms! Courage! To the field! Battle hath come! Ready mine chariot!”

“Peace, my lord,” his wife suddenly implored, “we heard naught of their count, their bearing, their mien, yet ye would charge out with sore swiftness to meet your foes upon the field!”

And to that, Quickblade spat out, “Fie, woman!” He brusquely shoved her aside, nearly knocking his wife off her feet. “I quoth long agone that none may test the swiftness nor the surety of mine blade–that oath I keep smoothly. Reavers, ha! That be a foe mine blade knoweth well and hath tasted before. Brigands be a pestilence mine arm can solve; not pestilence, not bruity!”

“Ye alow,” the shieldlord boomed to the charioteer who’d come to bear this fortuitous news, “lie not, for your work be not done still. Ye must lead our host to these foes!”

The already wearied man nodded with bitter disappointment muddled with determination. He had hoped for a deserved rest, but the Quickblade was not one to brook argument, objection, or any other manner of dissent.

Especially not when it came from his wife! Still, she nagged at him and tried to caution him with that sagely sort of warning that an old crone might give! “Plain not over thy shieldlord,” he bade her, “for my victory shall be great, and mine return swift. Thou knowst well that there be no throne I favor before the seat of my war-chariot!”

“At least suffer the paint upon thy face and thy horses, that you may go with the gods’ favor,” she implored. And he answered back with a “Hmph!” and yet tolerated her to gather an orange pigment and quickly daub their peoples’ sacred signs: one upon his forehead, and then as the horses were being yoked to the chariots, more upon their sides and foreheads.

And he would hear no more, and soon he was gone, and that was the last that the Quickblade’s wife there ever saw of her shieldlord-husband. 

Between four dozen chariots, each drawn by two horses apiece, nearly all of the shieldlord’s mighty horses had mustered for this counter-raid. Yet he brought just about six-score men-at-arms and levies. None went afoot, they all rode two or three to each chariot, even if some would dismount. When the time came, even those foot-spears would be rested and ready.

In this manner, they rapidly advanced across the shielding, a great cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of their horses and the wheels of their carts rising to herald the host’s coming. But there was no escaping chariots on these dryland flats! The courier led them in the right direction, but soon his guidance became unnecessary, for the plumes of black smoke showed the way to these barbarians.

Quickblade’s gilded sword was still bared, the shieldlord waving it to and fro to direct not just his chariot driver, but the men all around. He left the sheathe back at Fort Skybreak–he had no intention of hiding away the blade until its thirst was whetted!

The marauders betrayed themselves for recreants when they beheld the great approaching dust cloud, witnessed the chariot-carts beyond counting, and promptly turned and fled from the village they’d been plundering. But if they were too cowardly to give battle willingly, at least they were too foolish to hide between the burning hovels and make a fight in the narrow dirt paths where chariots could not so easily maneuver. Flailing his sword about to raise attention over the sound of the thundering chariots, lord Quickblade bellowed out the command for twenty swordsmen to jump off the chariots and make their way to the ruined huts anyway, to relieve the survivors and extirpate any raiders that had stayed behind. Then the rest of them gave chase.

It was a blistering hot afternoon. The sun was watching their triumph with something that might have been cruel glee, so Quickblade tore off his tunic and cast it away. Sweat covered him, and he glistened, but soon enough the dust kicked up by horse-hooves and chariot wheels would coat him, just as it would eventually cover his long-forgotten shirt where it lay abandoned on the yellow grass.

It was not long before they overran the fleeing enemy! Foolishly, the rearmost stragglers of the retreating band turned about to face their foes rather than be cut down from behind, but their disorganized formation could not stand up to the charioteers. There were a few quick exchanges of fire, javelins and arrows shot both from and at the chariots; the shieldlord’s eponymous buckler caught one, but then before his driver could even bring him about to cut down the archer, a second arrow soared from behind Quickblade’s right shoulder to strike down the enemy. The irate lord might have cursed his own man and his well-marked arrow for having robbed him of that kill, but there were foes enough to go around.

[center][img]https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/image/Sintashta-culture.jpg[/img]
[i]Lord Quickblade taking to the field![/i][/center]

One by one, the raiders were trampled, shot, skewered. The first two or three dozen of them were butchered before someone further ahead, presumably their warlord, managed to rally together a body and form some semblance of a battle-line. Quickblade and his charioteers wheeled about, circling around this line. None of these men were [i]true[/i] warriors; the mere tone of their skin said as much. Their darker complexions betrayed their blood as that of swineherds and farmers, the sort of peoples in the outer villages that Quickblade’s own ancestors had conquered generations ago. That was why they were dying so poorly, he realized, that was why they were being trampled like mounds of dirt.


But when Quickblade squinted, he thought he saw one taller than the rest and not so swarthy, a commanding figure with a lordly countenance–there was a horrific scream as javelin pierced horseflesh, and then the sky was spinning and Quickblade was tumbling, the dirt and grass scraping at his exposed flesh. His sword slipped out of his sweat-filled grasp, but its golden metal scintillated in the Hate-God’s brilliance, so Quickblade found and raised it just in time to confront the charge of a bellowing warrior–the very one that had wrecked the chariot with a well-aimed javelin throw. Quickblade’s sword was swift, but his feet had more alacrity still; he danced just out of the way of a spear-thrust. Once, twice, he dodged the metal point to the sides or by leaping back, until the third time he twisted around the spear’s head to close in on his assailant. One brutal overhead slash from Quickblade’s sword met shoulder, tore through clavicle, and cleaved deeply, perhaps deep enough to rip apart the lung. But in any case, a gruesome spurt of blood erupted from the dying, thrashing warrior as Quickblade kicked him down and wrenched his sword free. Covered in dirt and dust and sweat and blood, Quickblade resembled something like a demon out of myth.

With his free sword, he slashed again at the spearman’s throat as a coup de grace, then swiveled his head about in search of his buckler–he’d lost his grip on it too when he fell out of the crashing chariot. As he looked around, he saw the driver of his chariot only just now crawling out from the wreckage in a daze. Before Quickblade could find his shield, or rally to the side of his man there, he was met with a sudden pounding of footsteps from behind. 

He spun about, and beheld another reaver! He tried the same ploy again, to dance around the spear’s tip and then close in, but this was a more skilled warrior than the last. As Quickblade moved to close in, the man both backpedaled and slipped his hands further up the haft of the spear, keeping its point ever in front of the shieldlord. Quickblade hated spears almost as much as he detested those lowly peasants that were wont to wield them. He spat, “Ye favor that loathly husbandman’s tool? Fie!”

He made as though to step forward, and the spearman practically leapt back, but it was only a ploy to create space. Seizing the chance afforded to him by the gap, Quickblade stooped down to snatch up a rock with his left hand, and he hurled the stone straight for the spearman’s chin. The man leaned out of the way, but in so doing he let fall the point of his spear, and then Quickblade was already upon him, for he’d charged in the same motion as throwing the stone. A vicious slash of his blade was followed by a swift stab to the gut, and just like that the Quickblade had felled another man.

[i]Where in the goblins’ hole was his shield?[/i]

Quickblade’s left eye was watering, his vision blurred by dust. He made to wipe it with the back of his left hand, but that just smeared fresh blood over his face and into his brow. One of his chariots wheeled past, the archer riding as passenger in it, firing to fend off any more foes from nearing the shieldlord. But it did not seem that many were even trying; this makeshift stand had already turned into a rout once more. He made his way to his own overturned chariot, seized the driver by the elbow, and roared in the man’s ear, “Up, ere the knaves yonder levant! The score needs be settled!” 

It was already too late. One of his charioteers, recklessly heroic to the point of madness, had been glory-starved enough to drive right for the enemy’s warchief, that lordling that Quickblade had spotted just moments before his own cart had crashed. Yet it seemed that the lone chariot had been overwhelmed, the driver pierced through the chest by a javelin and the rider dragged out and impaled. Even now, the pale-skinned lordling was climbing into the commandeered chariot–for the horses yoked to it had somehow survived all of that unscathed–and making as if to drive away. Blinded as they were by the din and chaos of battle, the rest of Quickblade’s charioteers were circling around elsewhere, apparently not seeing this calumny as it unfolded.

Quickblade would not have it! “Egad!” he cried out, thrusting his reddened sword to point the way, but none of the charioteers heard or saw him.

A whinny from the side roused his attention. The second horse of his chariot was still alive! A streak of madness suddenly entered the shieldlord’s mind. He was about to do what no man had  ever attempted before. There was no time to deal with the fastenings; with a quick slash of his sword, he sheared through the rope that yoked the horse’s harness to the chariot. The smell of wet blood upon the blade upset the animal, but not as much as what happened next. With a great leap, Quickblade threw one of his legs over the animal’s back as it was standing up from where it had been trapped on the ground beside the wreckage. The animal whinnied in outrage and surprise, for men did not sit upon these magnificent animals that pulled their chariots–it had simply never been done before! But this particular horse was of magnificent breeding, a large and mighty creature, that was why the shieldlord had chosen it to pull his favorite chariot. And now that size did more than just win him prestige and awe from onlookers, it enabled the beast to bear his weight, even if it was bucking wildly and trying to throw him from its back. 

With his left hand tangled into and gripping the poor creature’s mane and his right hand grasping his sword with a deathly tightness, Quickblade let out a mighty warcry, and the panicked horse did what panicked horses do–it [i]ran[/i]. It raced forward with the swiftness of the wind. There was a great and heavy load upon its unsaddled back, but there was no heavy chariot weighing it down, and so its charge was swift. It was as if the fighting froze there, in the heart of the field! Around the periphery men still ran and died and fired bows and threw spears, but there in the center, within sight of this mad and terrible shieldlord, ally and enemy alike stared with jaws agape at the sight.

And as the horse thundered forward, it made for the fleeing chariot that bore the enemy’s lord–perhaps it could sense the Quickblade’s indomitable force of will urging it that way, or perhaps the path cleared by that chariot was the only one clear enough for a terrified animal to flee through, or perhaps it saw the two horses yoked to that chariot and wanted to follow the herd. Maybe it was just destiny or the silent working of benign or mischievous beings hidden and working beyond the realm of sight. But either way, Quickblade thundered toward the chariot, quickly overtaking it. None dared impede his charge. And in the last minute, just as they came within a spear’s thrust of the chariot cart and as the horse beneath him reared up one final time, bucking with a strength that would have surely thrown Quickblade from its back, the shieldlord twisted off to jump-fall-crash into the back of the chariot cart. The maddened, blood-covered Quickblade hacked and chopped and cleaved at this lordling that had thought to lead a band of brigands into [i]his[/i] shielding, smiting him with a fury that conjured the image of butchery.

With his victory complete, Quickblade surveyed the routing enemies before him, allowing the horses to pull the reclaimed chariot gently along. The form of his slain adversary was draped over the side, blood dripping from him still and wetting the earth below. The broad-shouldered Quickblade twisted his mouth in distaste at those who fled and harrumphed into his moustaches. What wretched recreants they be, the lot of them. Was it for this that he drove the chariots forth? Was it for this that his birdbrained wife wetted his form and horses with her weird symbols and paints? She had always been an odd one–blessed by the gods, his mother had convinced him, a good luck charm and promise of fair victory. What empty prattle - what charm had he need for against such weak foes? What he needed, in fact - and he felt his pulse quicken with sudden anger - was a strong, healthy heir! The wench had given him nothing but daughters! Daughters! 

He spat to the side, inadvertently getting it all over his felled foe. He kicked the corpse from the chariot in annoyance and finally reined the horses to a halt. He descended and got to cleaning his golden blade with some dirt. Before he was finished, hurried footsteps reached him and a loud voice. “M’lord! M’lord!” Quickblade stood and spotted the running servant emerge from the dust that had been kicked up everywhere and was now like a great blanket billowing over everything. Quickblade frowned suspiciously at the man, who was dressed in his wife’s colours and wore the distinctive braids of the shieldlady’s courier corps. The very idea of a ‘courier corps’ had always struck Quickblade as utter foolishness and a waste of resources, but the woman had insisted on it. They were always to be found in the oddest places, those couriers of hers, and seemed very adept at finding whoever they sought. It had always irked and disturbed him.

And then Quickblade was suddenly awash in a wave of exhaustion, the tribulations of the ride and the chase and the battle having at last caught up to him. Here he was, filthy and wounded and painted red, surrounded by equally ragged men who were trying to take account of their casualties. His ears still rang as though hearing the echoes of the hooves and wheels and clashes of steel, the whistling of arrows–it would not be until night’s cool that his mind could calm and his ears find peace anew. Yet right then and there, this [i]bootless[/i] fool dared approach and shout at him!

“Thou dost remit my rest,” he acknowledged the mummer without bothering to mask the disgust and ire in his tone, to hide that he was dried with rage and toil.

“Forgive me m’lord!” The courier shouted, coming to a halt before the shieldlord. “But I come bearing a most urgent word from her esteemed ladyness, your most ennobled and glorified self’s immaculate spouse; whose immaculateness is but the impoverished reflection of your fuller, greater, truer immaculance, m’lord!” There was no such word as ‘immaculance’ of course, but the dithering fool thought to make up words willy-nilly even as he shouted on. On further observation, there seemed to be something quite odd about the courier - but whatever it was seemed to flit out of sight just as it seemed to become apparent. Quickblade was too tired for such things. “Her supreme ladyness says this m’lord,” and the courier stood up straighter and cleared his throat, “my lord! Oh my lord! Prithee send word of thine good health and sure victory- the gods know well mine heart and know well that it is with great pains I had thee go from my most loving and adoring breast- oh my lord! E’en now I know the tiredness that surely is upon thee when these mine words fall unto thine ears! So forgive my callousness and urgency: as you most bravely fought and grasped victory from the jaws of thine foes, as the recreants they most certainly are did they strike your subjects and plunder their harvests! Oh my lord, ‘tis not for such as I to give thee commands, but I can only beseech thee rush to the aid of your most adoring servants at the ploughlands of Renev!” And so speaking, the courier took a deep breath and stood to attention.

The mazed shieldlord caught perhaps half of that. He’d thrust his sword into the ground and was now leaning upon it, breathing raggedly. Before them, four of his men bore off the lifeless form of one of their own, that man who’d been pulled from his chariot and slain. Elsewhere there were others ransacking and looting the corpses of the enemy, or slaughtering those that yet lived–no prisoners were being taken–and then dragging them about that they could eventually be piled and burned. The killing was done, yet there was yet much to do before it would be time to abandon the field.

Several chariots had also been wrecked or otherwise put in need of repair; one soldier, who bore a lost wheel back to its broken cart, brushed up against the pomp messenger, whether deliberate or by mistake, and caused him to leap away with face twisted in disgust. “Oh fie, fie, fie on you!” The courier declared, reaching into the pockets of his obnoxiously large trousers and emerging with a small pouncet box that he proceeded to raise to his nose. “Have you no mind for the noses of the living, sirrah?” He asked another soldier who was busy dragging a bloodied corpse by. “Oh ‘tis most unseemly to drag such broken bodies, their bladders all emptied and their tongues hanging out, by one of her most illustrious ladyship’s couriers!” He raised the pouncet box to his nose again, waving his other hand before him as if to blow whatever stench he had imagined away. “Fie I say, a thousand times fie on such unmannerly ways! Verily ‘tis an age where good character is slain and at our door are the end of days!”

It was enough to madden a man! Quickblade spat on the insufferable knave. “I contemn thee and thy womanly mannerisms, thy loathsome bemoaning the reaping of a tilt thee didst not see! Thou art a poxy blight upon these eyne! Avaunt!” With a grunt, the shieldlord tore his blade up, freeing it from the earth that it’d pierced. The courier took bounding leaps back at the sight, wiping the spit from his clothes. 

“Oh m’lord, m’lord, m’lord! I’ve spa’en aught but truth! Am I a gloried reaver as you to love the stench of bladders and defecation? I have no heart or nose for such things! Only the mighty and great are like to keep such a fellowship- and I’ve made no claim to mightiness or greatness, no I ha’en’t! Oh m’lord castigate me not my love of rosewater and musk, had I the incenses of all eastriverne lands I would have burned them here to spare you this stench! But I had forgotten that the glorious and great very much love such odors - though by what addlement of mind or sinus that is so I cannot say! Oh m’lord, placate thine blade and forgive your most blathering slave - not for mine own sake, no! But let the memory of your most beloved ladyship intercede for me!” 

What little patience Quickblade possessed was long since expired; it was only his fatigue that had stayed him from living up to his name then. Grasping his sword by the dirty and blood-caked blade, the shieldlord at last struck the courtier across the jaw with its pommel. “Avaunt, I say! Methinks little of thy trite words. Avaunt with thee, mine lady-wife, and the blighted husbandmen of Renev!” Quite displeased at being struck, the courier snapped to attention and drew a twig from his idiotic trousers.

“Well now!” He said, his voice quite unlike before, “aren’t you just the most spoilt, ungenerous, profanatious, unstandable human I’ve ever known! And to cast the barb of your tongue on your own wife too!- who, might I add, is nothing less than a saint!” The man waved his twig about like a lunatic, having become quite unreachable despite Quickblade rushing on and on towards him. “Ickity pickity packity pock! Tickity tockity goes the clock!
Off you’re going for a trot! Run-run-run or you will rot!” And waving his twig with finality, he leapt into the air and was gone with a poof of light that sprinkled everywhere.

With a roar of outrage, Quickblade hurled his infamous golden blade up into the air, towards the retreating and flying courier. But as he looked up, Itzala’s brilliance scorched his eyes. He blinked, squinted, and then was met with the sight and thud of his sword reuniting with Galbar, its tip sinking into the soil. And worse–the scoundrel was nowhere to be seen!

“Meseems that picaroon was some manner of familiar,” Quickblade finally realized aloud, stating the obvious. It was quickly dawning upon the shieldlord that he may have just committed a grave error. “If it should show that meek visage once more, seize its pate! Part head from shoulder! Sith that be what I wast to do next!”

The warriors around him nodded or spoke their words of affirmation, and with that done, a grumbling Quickblade moved to help them with the work that remained. It was exhausting, but as dusk approached, the sickly smell of burnt flesh filled the air as they set fire to the pyre mounds. Their own honored dead were wrapped in what cloth was on hand–mostly the sweat-stained tunics of the survivors and whatever ragged clothes of the enemy hadn’t been covered in filth–and then loaded into the back of the chariots, and then they made to set off for home once more.

Quickblade was terribly thirsty, his waterskin having long since run dry. They’d left hastily and light, having expected to be returned to the fortress in very short order. Fortunately, there was a well in the village that they’d just delivered from the marauders’ wrath. Yet as they urged the horses onward–Quickblade sitting again on his throne of a chariot seat again, for the moment of battle-madness was past him now and he was not so eager to risk his neck mounting a horse again–they did come upon the village where it should have been. Instead, the dryland went on and on, ever onward. They advanced for two hours when the journey should have taken a quarter that time, and still there were no signs of the village, or of civilization at all for that matter!

In the distance was an unfamiliar copse of trees. The shieldlord wondered if it was a thirst-induced hallucination, but he forged a path to it regardless, hoping to find some landmark to regain his bearings. Had he lost his mind in the battle? It was a fool of a lord who became lost within his own shielding, and yet his men were just as befuddled as he!

It was as they’d hoped: in the shade of these trees, which upon closer inspection looked to be of a strange and exotic type, there murmured a small stream. Parched and bloodied still, the shieldlord and his retinue climbed down to rush for the waters that they could bathe and drink; the more merciful and thoughtful of the men unyoked the horses from their chariots that the animals might drink too.

Yet in their stupor of thirst and exhaustion, none in the party had noticed the sigils, the figures, the altars and the talismans situated in the river’s vicinity. Yet again, how could they have? They resembled nothing any of them prayed with, ranging from stacks of river shale to shells of river oysters. Feathers in the trees could have been mistaken for the birds that once wore them. The camouflage was weak, but their senses were weaker. The tranquil sound of the stream, deafened by the slurping of men and animals parched in the sun, coated their ears with cotton. They did not hear the branches break, the leaves rustle, and before that final sip that quenched their thirst for now, more assailants skipped out of the bushes. They ignored the horses’ nervous whinnying, thinking the animals merely impatient for their turn to enter the water’s respite. Hardly a minute passed before they were all surrounded by tall, bipedal frogs armed with spears, staves, and maces of wood and river coral. Their bodies were dressed in jewelry, feathers, scented spices and aromatics on string. Their numbers were many, and their leader stepped forward, a frog whose crown of feathers and gold was nearly as large as his torso. “Who dares?!” he demanded and gestured widely, “I say again, who is it that dares drink from All-Mother’s Duct?!”

The shieldlord had just about finished washing off the spatterings of dried blood that caked his bare torso (at least the front of it!) before the booming voice made him spin about, whipping up his sword from where he’d left it to rest by water’s edge. “Mine own name? Ha! [i][b]Quickblade![/b][/i]” Usually the shieldlord’s reputation preceded him.

But then he beheld the speaker, and his eyes widened at the sight of these monstrous beings–were these the horrors that the rumors had spoken of? They narrowed into a squint as his jaw clenched and his grip on the sword tightened. “I rule Skybreak, and all these lands lay within mine shielding, ‘r close enow to make no matter! I come fresh from the field and mine temper still runneth hot–test me at thy own peril!”

“Insolence, the heretic dog yaps back!” chastised the leader and pointed his shell-tipped spear in Quickblade's direction. “Whoever you are or consider yourself to be, dryskin of Skybreak, your lips have so voraciously molested the Tears of Creation; a thousand egg-spawn to come will be sullied by your salty sweat and filthy beard. As tradition dictates, I will offer you a chance to split your throat yourself and give back the water you stole. Your blood will surely quench the wrath of the All-Source that is certain to come should you leave this place alive.” The croaker's flanking companions drew shell-tipped arrows by the score.

“Yond riv’r be thirsty, say? Then let us slake it!” He backed from the riverside into ankle-deep waters. Quickblade’s own men were confused, eyes darting between their shieldlord and the enemies, but by now they had at least formed rank and made some semblance of a shieldwall.

Quickblade stopped beside a few of the horses that had been brought to drink from the stream. Now even those beasts had their backs to the water, nervously whinnying as they looked at the oncomers. He raised his blade up almost perpendicular to his neck, but when the knaves may have thought he meant to cut his own throat, he instead slapped the nearest horse upon the rear with the flat of his blade. Then he poked the other one with its tip! The panicked animals cried out loudly and thundered away from him, barreling right toward the biggest, loudest, most pomp of all these frog-men. And right in their wake followed a frenzied Quickblade, bellowing like a demon, driving forward his shieldwall of men through the sheer wildness of his charge.

The frog in charge seemed momentarily stunned by the incoming charge, but then skipped high into the air, landing safely in a tree. The warriors closest to him rolled out of the way, and the riff of loosening bowstrings played like an orchestra of murderous harps. From the canopy above, the leader’s voice bellowed, “Spill their blood, honour-guard! Quench the thirst of the All-Source!” The archers were quickly backed up by soaring javelins coming from the woods and the war-croaks of scores of frogmen charging out in zealous frenzy, armed with shell spears and coral dagger-axes and armoured with bark and kelp cloth. 

A flying javelin narrowly missed Quickblade, burying its head into the muddy ground as he twisted out of its way. With his left hand he snatched it back up; with his right, he flagged his sword forward, urging his men to advance and fight their way out of this ambush. The steady clattering of arrows striking the wooden shieldwall sounded almost like a sort of rain. But it was punctuated by the thunder-claps of war: there came the screaming of one of the exposed horses as it was struck by an arrow, and the shieldlord’s back was then painted by yet another spray of blood from somewhere behind him, one of his warriors struck in the throat by an arrow that skirted his shield from the side. 

Through the chaos and the din, Quickblade spotted the great frog up in the trees, and with a grunt, he hurled the stolen javelin right for the croaker’s belly. The croaker chieftain had caught the sight of him at the last minute and managed to dodge to the side so that he wasn’t speared, but the javelin nonetheless sliced along his right lumbar region, leaving a strip that quickly began to ooze white croaker blood. He growled fiercely and swung around underneath the branch before kicking off, becoming a spear-headed rocket diving for Quickblade’s person. A corner of the shieldwall began to cave as croakers utilised all three dimensions to fight, jumping at their adversaries from the front, the side and above. Spears elevated to the skies were lucky to catch maybe one or two overzealous frogs coming down, but those armed with swords and axes found that their strikes would connect only in time for a croaker body to crash into them first. Religious fervour incited the locals to throw all sensibility out of the proverbial window.

Quickblade danced just out the path of the chieftain’s spearpoint, having had time enough to see it coming and knowing that the brute would not be able to change his path in mid-flight. From the very instant that the chieftain handed, Quickblade was all but on top of his slimy skin, grabbing at the spear’s shaft with one hand using the other to hack wildly at the croaker with his sword, bellowing some frenzied cry all the while. Screams and croaks filled the air already; death was all around as both sides took heavy losses in this chaotic melee brawl, the shieldwall all but shattering as the fight devolved into two dozen individual duels between man and croaker. Yet before long, Quickblade was looking down on little more than a pile of green flesh and white goo bespeckled with gold jewels and rainbow feathers. An instant later, the mess was spotted by one of the duelling croakers, who kicked his adversary back and disengaged to a safe distance.

“Misfortune to no end! Dead! Pond-Guru Balhamrajah is dead! Gods’ mercy be with us, for he is no longer! Retreat! Retreat!” As though programmed, the lot of the croakers fell back as quickly as they could, disappearing into the woods around the river stream as quickly as they had arrived. They did not collect their fallen comrades nor their equipment – like leaves taken by the wind, they were gone in a breath. Yet the area still did not feel safe. The fighting may have stopped, but red eyes like orbs of human flesh could still be spotted in between the bushes and trees. Quickblade’s men quickly looted the fallen, friend and enemy alike, divvying up what armor, weapons, and other spoils were to be had. In the chaos a few horses had bolted off, but with their numbers diminished, enough remained yet to pull their chariots.

For his part, Quickblade cut out the grotesquely long tongues of a few choice specimens to keep as trophies. He reckoned his wife and daughters might squirm at the sight of such things, but he never did make it back to Fort Skybreak, for there he stood in the Indias.

They retreated from that accursed river and the wood around it, fearful of another attack from the leaping monsters, and wandered a long time before they encountered any signs of other men.


[hider=The Magnificent Indias]
Remember that mysterious lord QUICKBLADE that Kho’s Renevits alluded to a few times? Here he is!

He speaks in Shakespearean prose (because modernspeak is reserved for peasants, you pleb) and has a well-earned reputation of being a wild and violent man, dismissive of his wife and angry that he only has daughters. He and some of his warriors seem to be of a different sort of folk than the Renevits, probably some lordly caste descended from a different tribe that conquered them a while back.

Anyway, it’s really hot outside and there have been troubling rumors of strange beasts, but Quickblade’s relieved when he hears about some bandits marauding the outskirts of his land–that’s a problem he knows how to solve! He assembles a band of warriors and they ride out on chariots, a bloody battle ensues, and then some strange messenger (who appears to be a sort of fae bound to Quickblade’s wife) comes to call Quickblade back, for the Renevits need help. But Quickblade is tired and blood-crazed and does not much like this messenger, so he whacks the fae and then he and his whole army get forever banished to the Indias in punishment.

He doesn’t understand what just happened though, and when he and his horses and men get really thirsty and lost, they stumble upon a stream and are forced to fight another battle, this time against a band of croakers. The humans barely come out on top thanks to Quickblade slaying the croakers’ chieftain and demoralizing them. With man and croaker now enemies, Quickblade cuts out some croaker tongues for trophies–perhaps an omen of what is to come–and then he and his diminished army runs off, where it’s said they wander for a long time before encountering other people.[/hider]