Pride comes after the Fall

Argand stepped outside. He could still feel the warmth of his woman on him. Her perfume lingered for a while and then the cool air entered his lungs with exhilarating force. It was good to be alive, to eat and drink, to love and to playfully resist the lust for the imminent fight. To his left, in the soft light of the moon he spotted Furbar. He was sitting on a small outcropping that oversaw most of the valley beneath them. He was mending his spear. A soft breeze played with the feathers on the dark shaft. It would rain tomorrow.

“Let it Rain!” Argand thought. “The beasts are too heavy and they will sink in the mud.”

He smiled as he felt the soft touch of Fila’s arms around his chest.

“Impatient as always!” she purred.

Furbar was sharpening his spear point when the two lovers retreated in their tent.

The noise of heavy rain on his abode greeted Argand in the morning. Fila was gone. She was probably meeting with her fianna sisters to prepare their ambush. They had spotted the strange wolfen three days ago and the scouts reported that they would reach the valley this noon. “They would never know what hit them” yawned Argand. With a smile he picked up his axe and shield and stepped into the downpour. Why resist the lust for the imminent fight? The rain struck his body hard and with every drop his head became clearer. He smiled, whirled around and started shouting while walking in a confident trot. “We will teach these beasts a lesson!” he roared. “These seem to be the same twisted wolfen that our brothers lost their lives to. We have a score to settle, my kin!”

The fighters around him smiled, shouted or held their weapons high, all muffled in sight and sound by the strong rain.

Then the flash came. Behind Willow’s Flock, the small group of trees where he used to play as a child, a blue light exploded into a million sparks. The beasts had tricked them!

His thirty warriors were close behind him. The clattering, the roars and the screams came closer with every leap. Through the last part of the Flock they stepped in a large round clearing. In the center of it, where the gathering tent for the fiannas used to be, lay mangled female bodies amongst shreds of leather and broken wooden poles. Most of their sisters were butchered in a terrible wave of violence, the rest were fighting valiantly ten of the dark beasts. There, amongst them, rose the foulest of the fiends, circling his double axe, roaring in glee while slicing through human flesh. He was enormous. His muscles moved with every strike, under his dark short fur. His golden-red neck collar showed a hundred cuts and notches, his flesh had been struck at least as many times, but the imposing creature seemed unstoppable.

Argand and his men charged face in. He cleaved and cut, he struck and kicked and the fight felt endless. His men dropped around him. Two or three for every felled beast it seemed.

“By Danu! Where is Fila?” he thought. Panic tightened its icy grip on him. He couldn’t see his love. Had she fallen?

He struck one of the beasts in the face. His axe struck the strange metallic contraption that was tied on the creature’s lower jaw and the axe sprang out of his hands. The black furred beast dropped and had its place taken by another. Unarmed, Argand bashed into its belly with his shield gripped in both hands. The twisted wolfen fell two steps back only to be impaled through the back by Furbar’s spear.

Argand let his shield-arm drop to his side, a look of confusion and growing anger etched in his face. Behind Furbar stood the only of the beasts left alive. In its huge left hand it held Filas limp body, embracing her head completely with its fingers. In its right was its double axe. Around Argand and his comrade stood no other of his tribe. The children and elders would have many to mourn tonight. And he would join the honored dead.

Zeiren stepped through the trees. He snarled gleefully and thought fondly of his clever jest. He had killed the warrior holding the spear easily but seeing the savage look in the other’s eyes he had understood quickly. He had torn this other’s arms and legs of and left him to bleed. At least he would die looking at his woman’s crushed body.