Iltaran Family/Flesh and Bone
Stripped to the waist and sitting on a camp stool, Askarn flinched irritably as the healer fussed over his injury. Nearby the bloodied bandages that had just been cut off lay discarded on the dirt floor. During the melee a blow from a heavy mace had opened up the badly healed old wound on his left shoulder. Despite that he had still been able to rally his troops after the battle and send out orders to his knights to retreat, but though he was not bedridden the pain itself remained, merely adding to an already foul mood. When Savio Varak of Fronen had proposed the campaign it had seemed a mere mopping up operation. After all, they all believed the power of the Undead had been broken in Qual. The scouts had reported no sight of the walking corpses. Even the first attack on Fronen and Melhed’s camp had been made by less than two hundred of them.
Now their early confidence seemed foolish at best. This was no human army that they faced. There was no need for supplies, or training or even recruits; just bones and corpses. And whilst the Order of the Golden Feather demanded that the bodies of the dead be burnt to prevent their Shards remaining trapped in this world, there was no shortage of corpses. Whatever unholy sorcery that animated them had been hard at work. As dawn broke, Askarn had found his army facing a fully fledged undead horde, nearly one and a half thousand strong.
Most of Old Grehk’s cavalry and archers were still in Gemke and with them the main edge a human Marshal had against the living dead. The infantry had drawn itself up in a shield wall; the flats of swords and war hammers beating rhythmically against shield faces as the soldiers flung battle cries and curses at the abominations that shambled forwards in eerie silence. Most of the Grehkians had fought undead before in skirmishes, but this was something else altogether. Askarn and his household troops had deployed at the centre of the line of battle as was custom; the Royal Banner flying proudly over their formation. Idly Askarn reached his right hand up to the stylised feather of iron that hung around his neck and ran a finger over it, feeling the grooves in the metal.
A paltry few arrows had flown over their heads, then the human warriors began their march forwards. Only when the opposing forces were a few yards apart did the actual charge begin, the human force crashing into the implacable undead. Battle was no place for finesse, just a mass of shoving and hacking, shields slammed into opponents to drive them back, the fallen trampled underfoot. Many of the clumsy weapons carried by the dead barely dented mail and plate, but they fought savagely and blows that would have killed a man were shrugged off. They held their own for a short time, but numbers told and once the front line was broken in one place, the battle was over.
A sudden pang from his wound ended Askarn’s ruminations and brought an angry, but ineffectual, snarl from the royal patient. Without even appearing to notice the outburst his physician simply continued the work; leaving the King to fume silently.
