555/2/54. The
past few weeks have gone by in a blur. I'm still not quite sure how we
ended up here, so I won't try to explain it. Let me introduce our
current situation. We're manning the walls of Red Castle (Lord Iitee's
home). A scant force of thirty men, including Lord Iitee himself and
King Aranten. Arrayed outside is a blue horde of over four hundred
getting ready to assault this castle.
Why we volunteered to stay here I don't know. Perhaps it was out of a
sense of obligation to repay for our part in the assault on Green
Castle (though if you ask me, our debt was repayed when we found King
Aranten and got him safely back to Red Castle). Perhaps it was out of a
wish to make sure that this region does not become the domain of a
Chaos Lord. More likely it was just plane craziness on our part.
For our part, we tried subterfuge to hide our numbers. Straw dummies,
changing costumes, simulating banter and activity, all designed to make
it look like the castle was fully manned. Timroth and I adopted green
livery, since we were all told to wear uniforms as per the rules of
warfare. Tok and Krelga arrayed themselves in yellow. Tev went au
natural as he is only a dog. Nakaro was still suffering from being
mind-blasted so he was going to be useless in the upcoming battle.
It didn't take long for the Blue to mount an attack. The gate was
assailed by a battering ram while the forward walls were scaled by
ladder-carrying troops. I led a squad of six manning the left wall.
Timroth had another squad on the right wall. Krelga and Tok helped man
the gates while Tev barked and yelped and ran around.
I took down the first blue to climb the wall. But we were soon
overwhelmed by numbers. One of my men went down, followed by another as
I called a retreat back to the castle keep. By then the enemy had
troops inside the compound and the main gate was in danger of breaking.
Tev was down, but Tok dragged him back as we all fell back to the keep.
Red had set up a trap to buy as time. We piled into the keep as the
trap was sprung, firing a score of ballistas at the enemy forces,
killing a few and making the rest fall back to the wall.
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We had already
lost a half dozen men, a fifth of our force. Things
didn't look good. The Gabter commander prepared us to defend the keep.
"We have to hold them long enough for Lord Iitee and King Aranten to
get away!" she exhorted. "If you can't hold them for at least a minute,
at least have the decency to die in place!" So much for Gabter pep
talks.
Krelga and I led a squad of seven holding the left doorway. When blue
attacked I kept busy putting up Dark Walls to keep their archers and
spell casters from hitting our front rank. Krelga and two troopers had
their hands full dealing with two blue officers glowing like lanterns.
Our healer kept trying to keep the front rankers going as one, then
another fell to the two Chaos-enhanced warriors.
Finally though, Krelga got in a skillful strike that mortally wounded
her opponent. He promptly called for Divine Intervention and was turned
into a Torg, a blubbling mass of black ichor with ropy tentacles. It's
fast and deadly, so I was told later. Everybody fell back and it
decided to go attack the blue forces (Torgs are inimical to all and
have no friends), buying us enough time to fall back to the last room.
"I need two volunteers!" yelled out our Gabter captain. Krelga and
another Gabter quickly volunteered to make a last stand to buy the rest
of us time to flee. It was so touching and moving and I wanted to stay
too, but The Voice told me that Krelga would be all right, so I left
with the others. A few minutes later Krelga and the other Gabter
rejoined us, neither one injured or bloodied. Despite persistence
questioning, both of them have remained silent as to what happened back
there.
So ends our glorious defence of Red Castle. When the actual assault
began, we were only able to hold out for half an hour. Still, the
survivors know that it was a hard fought battle that couldn't have been
won by our side. Now as we make camp some miles from the Castle, I can
take a few minutes to write my recollections. Tomorrow we head south to
try to rejoin the Red Army before its big battle. I don't think well
make it, but we are a small and fast party now so maybe we have a
chance. For now I'm just hoping to get a good night's sleep. |