Gimlet

[Ulric]

82nd of Spring
The Forest

Hurled, the wind’s inky sigh curled by bowed strakes of birches, caressing tender buds as they furled by a press of junipers, lifting to tall, gray conifers and strings of spruce and fir. The plumage of dry leaves rattled like chains. They plunged skyward in sulky, frenzied glee, barked by shreds of a deeper gray. Through this flayed myriad, clung by thick, sticky resin, loomed the turgid glint of water, the molten flush of the city. The crows were quiet, beady eyes prying over the dark, slimy blanket of needles, the snares of thorny briars. There the jut of boulders, like vessels skewing from a listless gulf, encrusted by scraps of purple lichen. They were somnolent, dredged up by lacuna.

Xhyvas’ priest bided under creviced deadfall, hefting his monstrosity of a crossbow with a grimace. The dirt of dreams ruptured by a shiver, strung to sulky purpose. Those layers of plate, scale, and leather formed his cage, binding him the bowels of this peril. The coals of his eyes were hungry, lusting for the trenchant progeny of his vengeance, to gulp from its bitter cup. Their cavity limned by fervency, implacably scored by starkest rendition. They must come, he scowled.

Ulric wouldn’t falter, not when he’d already come so near. He’d left his temple to banish iniquity. He was defiant, laying a gauntlet before the sordid toes of his cast-off god and holding out a beggar’s bowl, imploring butchery. They must perish. That was his zealotry, the inlay of mulish mumblings. The gusts were his scourge, yet he suffered them glibly, thoughts splaying out in glacial slurry. The unclasp of legs, tensing with a jerky creaking, made him gasp.

Harshly, he jerked the fur cloak closer, ventured a glance at empty rocks. “Not much longer,” he lied, prying his lip into the scar of a grin. The enormity of him was rigid, plagued by a priest’s intuition, coupled with the stirrings of doubt. They’d clung to vapid rocks, maudlin in disregard. That sweet, cloying nectar of putrefying cherry fruit already fading. The strewing of pits, like revenants.

Briars swept by on the groaning channel of time, scraping over peeling whorls of bark, shelled over an infestation of termites. The viscera leached from brittle, crinkling folds in puffs of pale powder. The fungi loomed triumphant over this gloom, bristled by the specks of horned beetles.

And yet, he bided. The nether fog, like so many wisps of silk pressing around him in impenetrable camaraderie, rife with damp scent. They draped him, as if unfurling in a nebulous prayer.

Until the crack of sundered twig, the portent of his febrile searching. There was a murmur of joint, the jut of a finger. The metal prods lifted, spanning an immensity of heavy, polished alder, cruel barb probing beyond shelved bristle. The figures writhed, immolated by the pitch-soaked resin of brands carried on high, as if to ward off the embrace of night. The wriggling shadows were legion, dancing with a frenetic, sardonic frenzy. The square shields, spears like an injunction.

Prophecy, then, he glared. He tried to count, but it was already difficult to discern the probing of limb from spindly brambles, the cavity of lunged chests from an immensity of jostling boles. He gave up, casting a glance skyward, to where the crows pocked high, tenuous shelves of conifer. Very well, my raggedy cadre of misfits, he crooned, You’ll gorge on sordid flesh, for by the lays of my steely sermon, there’ll be a reaper’s dawn.

Hiss, recoil. Hurled to bedlam, the quarrel sprouted at the juncture of clavicles, plumbing a rattling, jerking chest.

Soldiers die.

The sag of bones, clanked by chinks of mail, foibled leather. The slide of a dull patina over eyes, man disgorged, bereft, leaving only a bag of flesh.

Ulric’s bellowed intonation rumbled, like a thunder of discord as it melded with the blare of a horn, rough cries erupting from so many throats. The surge of shrieking muscles like liquid fire, the disc of his shield rearing to deflect a hurled spear. Then his maul inscribed over a skull, tugging over cranial ridges to lay bare flaps of scalp, ruddy in the gloom. Their swords probed, but he jostled by the trunks, turning a trenchant blade in a shower of sparks, crushing a knee with deadly, cleaving purpose, bashing shield into snarling face. Then whirling, smashing plated elbow into nasal cavity, crunch, and transposing spike through jaded leer.

They fell away, and he pounced. They were like vermin, infesting the sickly grief of his wrath. Taking up his maul, he brutely shattered caged ribs, digging through folds of mail. Then the deflect of a spear from plate, snaring in scaled joint to skew balance, swiftly balmed by a turn. The rise of heavy boots, making to slam up at the juncture of legs. The ringing of his shield, sturdy under the profane flanging of blades. The maul came up, parting tendons in a ruddy spurt.

They were chaff, except for one. The crux of chanted devilry, the swathed cloak began to lift, revealing jet bands of plate, a blade ripping from scabbard with a hum. The face youthful, though horsey, brow hung by lank, cornsilk locks. The eyes were russet, yet feral. The murk tinged them with malice, like the device on his surcoat. “Careless of you,” murmured the paladin.

“Perish, you cunt,” Ulric spat, darting by the jut of a spear. He crushed his shield into the curve of a spine, the slither of his maul dragging out a calf with reckless brutality.

[Ulric]

Jet flumes fled the flare of a torch, wrapped by a swirl of cinders. They immolated the trunks, daubed by lonely shrieks, the frenzy of whipping limbs. The tilt of metal prongs inscribed a gulf of feral, writhing wraiths over reckless snarls of briar. His maul canted, gnashing at plated carapaces to despoil flesh. It climbed in savage inlay, biting through the slits of a helmet. It plunged, boiling by leathery joints and splinted leather to delve at gray guts, making them leak like greasy eels. Twigs twisted, like bones splitting under deft heel to divulge troves of marrow. The frenzy of blades pealed on the bronzed gong of his shield, as might a spired bell.

Ulric’s molars crushed, lips curled in a snarl. Flanged metal caught on a shelf of plate, scraped and jostled. Unwary of this crossways threat, layers creased and buckled, groan bubbling from chest. Furls of crows rioted. Towed by their discord, legs jerked in uneasy retreat. Harshly, they eluded the iron jaws of a noose, corroded to flecks of brittle, ginger rust. Partly fettered by thorny barbs, he clove around him, crumpling the crest of lofting pauldron, eluding the sweep of a crescent. Fury scabbed his visage, erupted from shaky, sucking chest. His maul incised the leathery flap of an ear, screwing at the ridge of a jaw and cleaving up through the juncture of thighs to trim a pubic beard. Brashly, he teased a bundle of fingers, discarding them like overripe fruit from spasming stem. The drapery of resin only inflamed his rapture, the ironsong like verses in his chest. These were the lays of man, starkly debased by muddy, crying dirge.

Abruptly, inky plate interposed. “Enough,” rasped his cornsilk rival, the edge of a sword shrieking off scales. The lift of towered metal brushed away the maul’s thunder, though it quaked, numbly swaying with the probe of a heel. Then it dragged away, sword clashing against shield. The locking of livid eyes.

And just like that, soldiers die. Ulric chafed a red-flecked jaw over his left pauldron, hefting the shield. There wasn’t a dram of clemency in his glare, only sickly fervor. The reckoning was raging through his chest, and he was recklessly drunk on that crimson nectar. That’s their fate, to lay down rusty souls for a parcel of clipped rhetoric, intoned in faraway chambers, all marbled floors and porcelain spires. That’s the rub. They serve, and exist in bleak cells, lusting for wine, the flesh pits, and the abstraction of freedom from a fate they submit to gladly, despite its fetters. The soldier stays.

The skirt of scales clanked as he stuck the maul adjacent to his thigh, its spike clasped by the dirt. “That’s a fine blade,” he grunted, clasping at a wobbly strap with clumsy gauntlets.

Horsey, sour face twitching, his foe twirled the folded, gray-rippled steel, knocking a pair of heels to discard their muddy crust. “That’s a very oafish thing to do,” sighed Cornsilk, jerking a pointy chin at the maul. “Especially after you’ve decimated my patrol. But when I ponder upon it, you’re just the sort of ruffian that’d try provoking my wroth, aren’t you?” Idly drumming fingers over the hilt of his sword, he forced a chuckle. Maybe displayed that he wasn’t scared, maybe from underlying disquiet. Maybe he'd been jaded by the interlude, the fleshy cowl of one gimlet appearing to droop vaguely in the black-limned tangle of forest. “That was rashly done, but you did suffice for my men. They weren’t difficult to come by, but y’see, I’m bound to endure such a devilishly long wait before I’m entrusted with any more, that I simply can’t countenance your indiscretion. It’d only be a matter of time, anyway. I’ve never understood my superiors to take kindly to this kind of meddling.”

Ulric jerked the strap until the pauldron jostled tensely against his shoulder, then took a firmer grasp on his shield. “That’s their problem,” he growled, crinkled his nose with distaste. “They’re scantly more than windbags, just like you. That’s right, boy, you talk too much.”

Hurling himself by a bundle of creepers, he waltzed away from a scything swing, vaulted off a mossy trunk. There was a snaring of shields, metal shrieking over metal like a swarm of banshees. He jerked forward, crunching his helmet’s rim into the ridges of incisors. They cuffed at molars, reducing pearls to a wreckage of splinters. This raft was quickly drowned by a deluge of crimson.

There was a froth-flecked groan, a stagger from the afflicted. The priest wasn’t finished, though. The joints by his knees creaked as he lowered, though not quickly enough to jostle the sword from tracing over a chink of plate. Then he was squirming like an eel, dragging by his foe. The maul crept over an ankle, dragged it away.

Metal crashed, discordant with an indignant grunt, the tolling of jet-inlaid shield against jet-inlaid boulder. The busted remnants of tooth gnashed together, or sluiced off in the current. Then shreds of a muffled growl, instinct carrying the casings of plate from their leaf-choked blanket. The sparks of fury began to manifest.

Ulric trudged around, biting his lips as a few, meager drops crept from a rip in quilted padding. “You should’ve brought more soldiers, whelp,” he rumbled, red-specked visage twisting in a savage grin. 

[Ulric]

Cornsilk rolled, jerking up woozily. Ruddy spittle swelled inside his jaw like a tamping of tobacco, and he discharged it over the blanket of leaves. Invariably, it bloated again, deluging over lumps of enamel. But there wasn’t anything ginger about the wild swing of his sword.

Ulric refused to relent, not with his foe in a bind. Twigs yanked at his left elbow, but he lanced through their press. Maul darting at nethers, denting the distressed imposition of a rectangular shield. Cornsilk whirled, but Ulric just bristled into a rolling wheel, banging the plunging blade astray with his bulwark. Jarred the surcoat with a lifted heel, he hurled his foe into a trunk. Maul grazed mail with a shower of sparks. The links held, parting and shrieking at the fringes.

Superficial, mostly. 

And he’d already ventured too far.

Ulric shrank as if from a viper, this final cleave having left his right side vulnerable except for its plated casing. Cornsilk jostled at him, a bleary, gaping smirk playing over his jaw. Hurtling from under, the blade skittered over Ulric’s rounded shield. Doing nothing, really. Except laying the ballast of a fiercer assault. Ulric poked with his axe’s spike, but it simply jerked off a plated knee guard, forcing him to recoil again. Cornsilk squarely jostled the immensity of his scutum against Ulric’s left pauldron, horridly swift backswing whizzing by an ear.

But he’d missed.

Clang, the shields smashed together.

Cornsilk dipped behind a trunk, allowing Ulric’s swing gouge to away a lump of the yielding, greenish flesh. Ulric deflected the sword as it jammed at his face, unwilling to suffer an equivalent injury. Moss shifted under his feet, and he reluctantly ceded a few morsels of ground. Cornsilk pressed him, cagey and spitting red. Sword careening off shield, scutum keeling under the bang of the maul. Ulric sliced low, and Cornsilk danced off and went high, pummeling Ulric’s lofted shield and bring up an ineffectual knee that just clattered on his gorget. Tangling, they mixed fluids and curses, the scrape of steel a homily to their deities. Cornsilk jabbed his pommel down on a broad sweep of back, vainly seeking to disengage. Ulric plowing with his shield, lowered shoulder like a joist as it skewed under the juncture of legs swathed by maul. Picking up his foe with a grunt and depositing him on his backside. Axially, his own gravity departed and he spilled over the soggy carpet of needles, rolling heavily as he came up again. 

Just in time for a blade to slam betwixt his shoulder blades.

Going down, the bizarre glow of crepe-paper lanterns fuzzy before his gimlets, he spun on his knees, tumbling further. Gasping, for his lungs had already evacuated in explosive disarray. Impulsively, he kicked out with his heel. Finding an unyielding shin, rolling desperately as the tulwar split open the mossy patch that’d so recently cradled his head. Shyke, he growled, incisors rattling as the rim of a shield crashed over his own bulwark. Flinging out his wrist, he snaggled the maul behind an ankle. Shyke, shyke, shyke. Dread pulsing through his veins, fixing to cripple him. Bowels clasping with sickness.

Ulric yanked with all might, dragging at the ankle so the soldier tumbled. Barely hearing the  shocked grunt, for he rolled until he was kneeling, lurching up with hysteric whirl. Cornsilk’s sword banged on his shield. Scutum smashing high against its metal, propelling the rim into his cheek. Red pearls leaking from the gash it’d left in his skin. Ulric whanged his maul against the hanging skirt of mail, twisting. Hardly crushing, but it did the trick. Cornsilk gasped, going down on a knee with his scutum sagging. Ulric swung his shield, swiping down the screwed, stained visage before abruptly wheeling from the swinging tulwar.

Stopped just behind a trunk, for there wasn’t a pursuit. Three men licking their wounds, appraising. Cornsilk’s jaw lifted finally. “Delmar, your squad’s gone and died like a bunch of rabbits,” he piped. “I’m sorely disappointed.”

Delmar winced. “If we’d sent out scouts, we might’ve avoided all of this,” he groused, chewing on his forked beard. Insignia poking up on his surcoat. Not quite a churl, but decidedly an underling. There was a huge, black bruise on his temple, swelling his right eye to a slit. “It’s no use making this kind of racket.”

“Unfortunate,” gritted Ulric.

Cornsilk ignored him, focusing on Delmar. “It’ll mean heads on spikes, or pickled in jars. I won’t take yours, though. If you fail now, I’d only have to reanimate you from the abyss.”

“Yes, ser.” Delmar hardly looked chastened, for it seemed that he’d already absolved himself of blame. “You ready?”

“Ready enough to finish this cunt.” Cornsilk spat as he unfolded from the leaves, tilting on his sword like an ersatz crutch. “I’m not departing with a grudge.” 

[Ulric]

Ulric lifted his shield’s rim just under his chin and let them come to him. Metal clanking, legs hobbling and grinding like freight wagons. Easy does it, he gritted. Either they’ll bend or they’ll break. Tulwar swung first, jolting against his shield. Maul lashing out, ensuring he’d a span of gloom as a buffer. Ulric swiftly yielded position, stumbling over a parcel of vines. Hurdled over a weevily deadfall also riddled by bulbous fungi, spinning to lift his shield before the skewer intending to make a kebab of his nose.

Harshly, he banged his axe into the rearing scutum. Flitted by a trunk, while resin weeping needles repelled the swinging tulwar from his flank. Petch you, he snarled. Cleaved with his axe, altering its camber so it hooked over the scutum’s lip. 

Grinning, he ripped it away.

Ulric raised his shield to turn the scraping tulwar, urgently trying to veer from the cage of trunks. Cornsilk was spitting before him, quickly making to grasp his blade with both gauntlets. Nearly done, but not quite. Ulric hacked wildly at him, trying to enlarge the gulf betwixt them.

Delmar loomed, the tulwar striking the round shield like a gong. Tendrils of nerve shrieked, flaring and then numbing. Ulric jolted away from him, scuffing over caps of boulder. Conjuring the effigy of a crow plucking jelly from yawning sockets. Puffing and gasping, he turned the tulwar again, vaulting another log. Receding so quickly that the hobbler couldn’t keep up. Finding the way back to where they’d begun.

Cornsilk bellowed, maybe readying himself to counsel greater caution, but this game was ending. Ulric abruptly dug his heels in, making his axe clang against Delmar’s shield. Delmar gasped, tried to recoil but his toes just slopped over marshy soil. Falling, he sliced low. Ulric grimaced as the tulwar shrieked over his greaves, lips screwing up in a snarl as he swung his axe, taking the offending wrist off just over the joint. Swung again, making the soldier’s shield explode in a grapeshot of splinters. Ignoring the squealing yelps. Brutally  bashed his metal shield into a chin, and split the skull with a cleave that further flecked him with gore.

Ulric glared up, his chest rumbling with a feral growl. Cornsilk’s anemic hobble was ending, russet pupils dilated by agony. Pallid like a ghoul, he lifted a smeared chin. Didn’t seem like he’d last much longer. Probably giving up.

Cornsilk didn’t look all that tired, that glower of his infused by a coruscating, profane gleam. “Devil,” he snarled, “May you come to love all that you hate, and hate all that you love. May you-”

Ulric didn’t let him finish, axe shinking against the sword’s hilt. Propelling it from the lank grasp along with spiraling bits of finger. Shield’s rim swiping temple, and before a trace of skin’d pressed over soil, the axe sliced through gristle, vertebrae, and noodly nerves. Cornsilk’s skull slid off before he’d finished that final intonation, rolling over the plinth of a boulder.

“Gormless whelp.” Ulric grated, finally allowing his body to relax. Sore all over, he just desired repose. Luxuriant sheets defied him, though. Trudging over the massacre, he began slitting purses, cutting off earrings and seizing rings. Pondering that his vengeful crusade was all far from over.

“Xhyvas, it just begins.”