Unfinished Business

“Sir?”

“I said take your men and charge them from the rear! Which part of my order don’t you understand Lancer?” Inquisitor Leran scowled.

“Well sir, I… erm… I understand sir! As you command sir!” Bernelion saluted. He waited a while and judging by the look on the inquisitor’s face he knew there would be no more orders coming. He knew what to do and he didn’t like it one bit. He turned around slowly, but not to slow, and walked in a proud manner to his men.

“May Merin be with you lad!” Leran prayed under his breath.

Bernelion signaled to Filas and three of his fellow lancers moved away from him to the left. They had nearly made it past the right flank of the orc war band but the tough bit of his orders was still ahead. Their small regiment was capable of dealing with such an amount of orcs without any troubles expected. Therefore he could not understand Leran’s decision to split them up and then send the bigger force to the rear. The inquisitor was left behind with five templars and three musketeers. It made no sense but it was not his place to question his orders.

His men moved around him with great care. Three Thallion scouts were keeping their eyes open to the front. The rest, lancers and musketeers, were more or less moving in a bulk.

Bernelion looked around him. He then looked intensely to his right. They had passed the orcs it seemed. Tillian, one of the scouts, approached him to confirm his suspicion.

“Sir, Bernelion, we are about twenty meters behind them now.” He nodded towards the orc camp, better said towards the place where Bernelion suspected it. He couldn’t see a thing in this nearly massive forest.

“Yeah… erm, very well Tillian. We stop here and we deploy in the usual manner.” Bernelion whispered and signaled his men to stop. They waited for the rest of the scout team to return while they were discussing their movements.

“You, Tillian, will move in with Heril and Gilliam slightly from their right side, so basically back where we came from. Barnabas and Filas will keep to the back with Herrian and his men. You will have to be careful because I will move with the rest in front of you so please don’t shoot our… What the…?” Bernelion looked panicky around him. The sudden screams that interrupted him were to the north of them, meaning behind them and not to the south where the orcs where supposed to be. But the clattering and shouts were to the south and they both came at the same time. “What the hell is going on?”

“Bernelion! Heril and Gilliam, where are they?” Tillian said hastily. The thallions were still not here and these terrible screams to the north did not reassure them.

“Where are they?” screamed Bernelion. The noises around them had multiplied in such a short time. Pleading shouts to the north, fighting sounds to the south. They had to raise their voices to be heard.

“I can’t see a thing!” Tillian cupped his hands around his mouth. “I know that one of the screams is Gilliam. By Merin, what is happening to them? We have to help them Bernelion!”

“No! Tillian, I don’t want to see any of us hurt but we have to evaluate the situation. We don’t know who is fighting to the south!” Bernelion shouted.

“It’s Lerian!” Filas moaned while running back from the south.

“What? What…?” muttered Bernelion. “What do you mean?” Bernelion screamed angrily. He already knew.

“Lerian is fighting the orcs! They didn’t wait!” Filas said with a resigned sigh.

“What do we do?” Herrian the musketeer cried.

“For the Emperor! For Merin!” Bernelion and his men charged the orcs with furious battle cries from the rear.

The battle unfolding before their eyes was in full heat. Leran’s sword was cutting through orcish flesh with cruel but sacred efficiency. The templars around him were protecting him from the sides, back to back whirling in deadly frenzy. Bernelion could see the musketeers reloading at the edge of the clearing, where the orcish camp was set up. Their filthy tents were standing left and right of the fighting men, some of them trampled to the ground now. Bernelion stopped in his tracks while his men ran past him. Bullets were flying over his head hitting with accuracy their mark. Orcs were falling to the ground one after the other.

“No sense!” he murmured. The orcish troops were not as many as reported. Why did Leran lie to him?

Then Leran was hit. Bernelion moaned in surprise. His leader suddenly fell to the ground. The lancer looked around him. Behind him, to his right, just exiting a tent, an orc had fired his crossbow. Bernelion whirled and even though troubled about his commanding officer’s lies he dutifully attacked to avenge the fall of his brother. The orc dropped his crossbow in surprise and barely managed to draw a long knife before Bernelion threw him to the ground with a kick aimed for the belly. His lance, held in both hands, circled in a show off manner over his head and struck down at the orc in the left eye. The fiend moaned and shuddered, then stopped moving. Bernelion smiled but took no pleasure in the kill. It was then that he felt the blow on his back. All that Bernelion managed to do was watch as the ground came up to meet his face and then all was dark.

The worried expressions on his comrades’ faces were quickly replaced by smiles and relieve. The dizziness left his eyes slowly and painfully. He felt the fresh air on his face; he must have lost his helm when he blacked out. He looked around to find it while raising his upper body on his elbows. On his left, to his surprise, lay a dead jackal orc warrior. Now he understood how a single blow could knock him out, for the dead orc’s enormous wooden war hammer lay next to him.

“Bernelion,” Filas smiled worryingly,” Leran wants to see you.”

“Is he all right?” Bernelion rubbed with the fingers of his left hand the part of his nose between his eyes. It didn’t help his aching head.

The silence of his comrades answered his question. Filas looked away hastily. Bernelion could still hear the low sigh that left his dry lips.

“Where is he?” Bernelion slowly stood up and straightened himself. He immediately saw Leran lying some meters away, surrounded by two of his templar brothers. He was stripped of his armor and helm and was now only wearing a light tunic soaked with his lifeblood. The wound on his chest was covered with fabric stripes cut from the shirts of a musketeer it seemed to Bernelion. One of the templars was pressing the wound to still the blood loss but the look on his face betrayed how pointless his actions were. Bernelion fought off a sudden dizziness and rushed to his commanding officer. He kneeled next to him and whispered.

“You wished to see me, sir?”

Leran looked towards him and it seemed for a while as if he could not focus on the source of the whisper. He eyes seemed empty but quickly the strength, for which Leran was known, returned in their expression. He smiled softly and spoke in a broken rough voice.

“Always the soldier!” he laughed shallowly and then coughed in pain. “Damn them, Bernelion! Damn this ignorant, barbarian lot! Curse them! May Merin shroud them in darkness and burn their souls! To die like that!”

“Sir! Please, do not talk like that! All…”

“Oh come on Bernelion! Let a hero have his well deserved rest!” Leran smiled. “I will die and to be fair I do not mind. I killed this bloody monster with my own sword before I fell and that was what I desired for so long.”

Bernelion looked at the templar, who had finally quit pressing the wound and was sitting on his heels next to them. The templar shook his head and looked away in sadness.

“Sir, I don’t understand.” Bernelion asked.

“Well, why should you. Bernelion, the command of these honored brothers passes on to you from now on. Whatever happens please do not hold my brothers that fought at my side against the orcs, responsible for my actions. They just followed their heart and a friend and brother to help him fulfill his last wish.” Leran coughed again. Blood trickled down the left side of his mouth.

Bernelion looked questioningly at the inquisitor.

“Finding and fighting the orcs were not our orders, lad. Behind them lies the real danger.”

“The howls?” Bernelion gasped.

“It is a new breed of wolfen they say. They seem to be more savage, more violent than the ones we have encountered till now. They say they are forming alliances with orcs and goblins all over Aarklash. We were to face these wolfen and hinder them from meeting the orcs. The orcs were never the problem. Their number was pitiful but they were only the ambassadors to their clan, nothing more. They were to meet and forge another of their unholy alliances. But the orcs were led by one of the foulest of their ranks.” Leran coughed. He waited for a second, and then said in a low voice. “Remember my wife, Bernelion? Remember when she died on the way to Cadwallon on her last mission? It wasn’t the dirz as the cadwallonians wanted us to think.” Leran sighed.

“The orcs?” Bernelion gasped. “These orcs?”

Leran looked at him and smiled sadly.

“I was hoping you and your men would take care of these strange wolfen, while I…”

“While you take your revenge? While you fight with a pitiful amount of orcs, I lost two of my men because you never gave us the chance to see what we were facing, to prepare against it! What am I to say to the families of these two men? That they died in honor? Should I desecrate their death further by lying? Just to hide that they died in vain? Just because you wanted your revenge?” Bernelion shouted and jumped up. The entire group turned to him. All discussions stopped and the camp was silent for some moments. Then the roars filled their ears and the breaking of branches tore their attention to the north of the clearing. Out of nowhere it seemed black furred wolfen stormed in the clearing. One of them decapitated Herrian with a single blow of it’s long, broad blade, while running past him. The shouts and screams filled the forest.

Bernelion tried to look at the sky through the thick canopy of the forest branches. He could barely see the glow of the moon. He limped some meters further. He was nearly dragging his right leg behind him through the dry leaves. His now heavily notched sword served him as a cane. He sighed and looked at the faint glow of the moon again. He stood still and thought of his comrades. All fallen because of the ambitions of a revenge maddened leader. But how would he himself have behaved in such a situation? He shook his head and tried to adjust his weight off his wounded leg. It would be a long way to Akkylania on a limp.