Chapter One: A Shadow Rising

"This war is for fools, but since you fools have taken everything from me the least I can do is return the favor."

The war was nearing its end, it had to be, both sides had taken massive losses in battle’s that stretched the home land. Captain Cartol had called his men together the night before to express this exact thought, months of bloodied noses in skirmish after skirmish had left the band of warriors disheartened. In the muddy pit of ground in the fields of a local farmer they all sat and listened with great intrest to his every word. Cartol warned the men not to lose their edge, not to lose their focus until word had been brought to them from the commanders. The message was too late, the moment the men stepped from the meeting the word spread and before long wide spread celebration was under way.

This was not the first mistake for Cartol, his regiment of soldiers had lost more battles than they had won and only by the grace of the Source were they alive at all. He had led them to far into enemy territory just weeks before and they had been forced to flee for their lives taking shelter in a ravine where they found a hollow below a large boulder. Still the men had stood by him, often he would lead them into trouble but the men also knew that he had a knack for getting them out of it. None of them were sure whether it was his faith or just plain luck that had delivered them from being killed to a man on so many occasions but all of them had taken notice of the irony.

Soldiers cheered long into the night with fires blazing and all the worries of the war and its terrible cost put away in the backs of their minds for just one blissful moment. As the wisps of dawn stretched out over the distant mountains the many fires were nothing but glowing embers in the camp. Soldiers were sleeping in tents, on blankets stretched out near the dying fires and the first sound any of them heard that morning was the unmistakable scream of a man dying.

If not for the horror of the scene playing out before them Captain Cartol would have been proud of his men, they were up and fighting within seconds. Sadly the Captain could no longer see his men for the screams his men had heard were the screams of their leader, his luck had finally run out. Chaos had ensued as the sound of steel ringed out, each man fought alone against uneven numbers in an effort to survive the onslaught of violence. Slowly the break neck pace settled into the familiar battle of wills, each fight was now a game in which the moves were pre determined and the winners and losers were determined by who made the first mistake.

Though the men of Cartol’s regiment never knew this but that morning they faced a group who had earned a terrible reputation, they fought toe to toe with the queens most feared band of murderers. Cartol had twenty men in his regiment and only nineteen remained, they faced thirty two of the merciless Black Guard, eight of them had looped behind the camp and had set fire to the home of the farmer, its inhabitants had been thrown from the window of their bedroom their fall broken with sickening thuds where they laid unmoving.

Their numbers were dwindling, Jerrod had fought through to the central camp fire and had called for his men to make their way to him. Together they fought their circle slowly shrinking as their numbers fell one by one. One of the George twins fell his neck smashed by the axe of a large brute, his brother I could never tell whether it had been Herl or Oten roared in despair and charged killing the axe wielder and dragging three others to the ground where he slammed his sword down on them until he himself was cut down.

Simar fell to his knee’s a sword jutting out of his chest, even as he fell he grabbed the sword by the hilt to drag it from the wielders hands. The Black Guard member looked at him in shock trying to comprehend the effort he had just seen and then he looked down and saw the ground rising up fast to meet him. The grass was cool and damp in the morning air and he felt that it was a wonderful time to lie in the grass and watch the clouds.

The fire cracked and hissed as Jerrod and a young man I never learned the name of stood alone facing the remaining three Black Guard. A smell of burning flesh hung in the air moved by the swishing movements of the soldiers blades, one of the Black Guard’s dead had worn a cloak and when he fell it had caught fire. The young soldier stabbed out with his short sword and cut a deep gash in the Black Guard furthest to his left, the soldier lashed out at him and Jerrod took the opening to cut off the out stretched arm. Before either Jerrod or the young soldier could react in defense of the move both Black Guard blades drove into the young man and he died without a sound. As the arm that he had cut into fell Jerrod noticed two things, the first was that though there was no arm to lift the sword it had not fallen to the ground, and the second was that he was now alone versus two Black Guard.

Jerrod felt a wave of despair steal his strength and he stumbled slightly looking up into the eyes of the remaining soldiers. Suprisingly they were not looking back at him, their eyes had wandered over his shoulder back towards the house. Jerrod wasn’t going to let a perfectly good opportunity to pass him by, he lunged stabbing the first higher in the chest than he had hoped. His blade slipped up the chest bone of the soldier slicing him sixteen inches before breaking clear and exploding up into his throat. As the soldier fell Jerrod felt his sword slip from his grasp, he had expected a stabbing thrust not a slip and he hadn’t been close enough to follow the blade in.

Jerrod rolled to his left immediately away from the Black Guard, he thought of the axe waiting in his tent and as he ran leaping over bodies of men he searched for the familiar red tent. It was there only thirty paces away, but for some reason he was running so slow that it seemed almost impossible that he would get there before the soldiers were on him. He didn’t hear their footsteps though, then again he couldn’t hear anything other than a roaring sound that had grown inside his head. The tent was only ten feet away and he could see just past the flap of the door a small glint of steel from the handle of the axe. He lunged through into the tent and felt a deep pain in his side, he rolled through the dive and slammed into the trunk beside his bed. He looked at his side to see what had caused him to fall so heavily and saw the answer to the riddle of the sword not hitting the ground with the arm he had severed, it didn’t fall because it had already found its home.

The realization of what had happened came back to him like a dream from years ago had just awoken inside of him. The three soldiers had rushed in but only one had stabbed out at him, in that instant the blade had pierced his side. The blade must have been incredibly sharp Jerrod thought for he hadn’t felt a thing and it had gone straight through him. A scream brought him back to the present, someone outside had screamed out in pain only for an instant before it had been cut off suddenly. He tried to get up to look outside of the tents flap but the weight of his armor was too much and for some reason it was suddenly amazingly bright outside, so much so that he had trouble looking through the open flap of the tent. A small sting of pain came to him from his side and he groaned, it had roused him just before he had drifted into a blissful sleep.

Footsteps were coming he could hear the splash of muddy ground and heavy breathing just outside the tent. He had to get up, had to move….he needed his axe! Jerrod gave a great heave and sat upright the axe blade was only a couple feet away and he reached for it. Suddenly the world shifted under him a moment ago he was looking right at the axe and reaching out and somehow now he was face down in the mud. He had to get up…..get the axe...maybe they won’t see me if I don’t move….I’ll just..lay….here.

It could have been minutes or seconds, it could have been hours for all Jerrod knew. He remembered pain and darkness and the distant sound of a voice. The voice was booming out, echoing but not losing any strength, the word was jumbled though.  BREATHE! The scream was primal, the voice shaking with an undefinable power that couldn’t be denied. He had to breathe but how could he, he was dead, he knew he was dead but somehow he had to find a way to draw a breath. The first breath Jerrod drew brought forth a scream as the pain came anew to him, pulsing in great waves of sharp agonizing pain.

The voice again rang through the air “There you go, breathe, get some air.” Jerrod looked around to see a man kneeling beside him a bloody sword in hand. As the blurry lines of his figure came into focus the first thing anyone would have noticed was the simple fact that he was massive. Jerrod himself a born in a family of hard working laborers was considered a large man but the figure kneeling in front of him enveloped the small tent in its entirety.  His arms were corded and his veins were pulsing from exerted effort. His hair was short nearly to the scalp and his eyes were sharp shades of green that seemed to shift with the light. “I do not know wounds, you were stabbed in your side with this sword” the massive man spoke as he raised the bloody sword.

Author's Note

The story is developing well, I have taken some time off of writing to work through the networking and relationships within the story. This has truly helped me to keep moving forward by understanding the characters much better which helps me avoid writers block.