Chapter 3: The Bark Is Charred (-29-)
-29-
Captain Kiosard stood on the volunteer training grounds with a scowl on his face as he stared at the fools training on the grounds.
The place was a joke compared to where the soldiers trained - in both place and people - but it hardly mattered for a motley crew as the volunteers. Scant would turn in for training and they trickled more with each session.
Few volunteers knew how to wield weapons, fewer still knew how to handle ropes. He only hoped the fools could at least throw a flask to save their lives.
He didn't bother imparting them how to best use the rope, if there even was a best. It was sacrilegious enough to allow such untrained, unbridled men to battle.
The damn commanders were all devils for how they treated Kiosard. But they were far worse for sending these volunteers to their deaths.
That darned princess was not faultless in this arrangement. Even if she has no say in what happens after the volunteers reach the barricade.
And Kiosard was no better. Here he stood, a willing bystander, callous and unmoved by the prospect of all the volunteers dying.
Perhaps he was pointedly dismal and sombre, too aged now to change his views.
The casualties decreased considerably with each cycle after the new commander arrived. With all his new tactics and stratagems; the boxes and flasks to name a few. Of course, that led to the bastards adopting new tactics themselves but his had won so far.
Or perhaps it was the stress of being the only friggin captain in the entire sun-forsaken barricade. For both the soldiers and the volunteers, it was Captain Kiosard alone.
And the worst part; they wouldn't promote another to captain. It was Kiosard and Silverveil - the impression the idiot's name gives is accurate - before. Silverveil retired and now it was Kiosard alone.
Each commander had their own little company where they put all they liked inside. Like they were playing house in a friggin war zone. The rest Kiosard was to deal with.
Formally, a captain had two aides - called hands - which led five fingers each, and each finger led a unit.
Kiosard, presently, lost count of how many he led. He stopped counting after the twentieth hand, or was it the thirtieth? Heck, some of his hands had way more than six friggin fingers.
Somehow it worked. That was enough.
'Now.' Kiosard thought as he watched the volunteers.
Some of them were visibly bored and frustrated. They discarded their ropes and headed to the weapons racks.
Kiosard shook his head.
It was the same with all the new volunteers. After a while, they'd drop the ropes and pick up the weapons.
If they spent a short moment thinking about why they were handed the friggin ropes, and not another weapon, it would be more useful than the time they wasted swinging their useless weapons.
Would they even think of why a glass flask would break on a leaf-covered bastard?
Kiosard turned and promptly paced away.
Heartless he may be, he hoped that they would live for a while. Even as stupid as they were.
-
But fortune thought differently. It always did.
As the bells rang, Kiosard fixed a sword on his belt and left his tent. Then made for the northern edge of the barricade.
He stopped when he saw bodies on the street along his path. They were unmoving and lifeless. Their faces were familiar, might be some of the new volunteers.
Kiosard crouched and examined one of the bodies. His right hand clenched an axe and there were two holes on his back. He examined his belt, there were two flasks still hooked. The pitiful fool didn't even have a chance to throw them.
He unhooked the flasks from the belt. As he did, he noticed a figure at a distance to his front. He raised his head and stared at the figure.
Why, it was a bark-covered bastard. As tall as a human if not taller. Standing on leg-like branches that were as high as a human's knee. And two sickle-like protrusions extended from its sides. Its top was frayed and its bark had lines all over it.
The tall-trunk bastards didn't only throw their bark to the city walls, they also threw bark-covered bastards like this. Few landed on plateaus, fewer still in the city, but that was still too many.
Kiosard lifted the axe with one hand and broke a flask on it. The oil covered the axe and dripped on the ground. It wasn't as effective as a flask to their whites, but he was certain it would damn hurt when the axe passed through bark.
He knew they felt pain, and reacted to it the same way any living creature did. In terror.
He heard wind whistle behind him and shielded his back with the axe.
An impact pushed him and he stomped a leg forward to brace himself.
Kiosard turned his head and saw a leaf-covered bastard, which the tall-trunk bastards also threw. Seems fortune was on his side tonight.
The leaf covered bastard - like its name - had branches and leaves covering a white dandelion-like ball. It stood on three vine-like brown branches, and six more hung in the air, four had their sharp tips pointed at him while two had eerie eye-shaped patches.
'Must've been what killed the fools.' Kiosard thought. It was an ambush with the bodies as bait. The smart bastards.
Kiosard unhooked a flask from his belt, holding two in his left hand and the axe in his right. The bark-bastard was to his front while the leaf-bastard behind him.
Silence loomed as none of them moved for a moment.
Then Kiosard twisted and threw the axe to the leaf-bastard as he ran towards it, while the four branches flew to him.
Two stopped the axe while two barreled towards him.
He slid on the stone tiles - the branches missed him - and lobbed a flask at the leaf-bastard.
It dropped the axe on the ground and jumped back to dodge the flask.
Kiosard got up in a crouch and threw a flask as the leaf-bastard jumped, then dove forward to pick up the axe and stood.
The flask burst as it met the leaf-bastard in the air and it screeched as it burned. It screeched the worst blood-curling, bone-chilling, shrill screech Kiosard ever heard. A sound he was familiar with.
As he stood, he twisted and swung the axe to deflect a scythe-like branch descending upon him. Then stepped back and blocked another blow from the right.
He held the axe with two hands as he deflected and blocked blow after blow the bark-bastard swung onto him, and stepped back repeatedly. While the bark-bastard's feet tapped the ground rapidly as he closed the distance.
Then, as another blow aiming for his head descended from his left, Kiosard dove below it and to the side of the bark-bastard. He swung the axe through its feet as he did.
As Kiosard stood, he noticed blood flowing from his waist. The bastard's other scythe must've connected.
He turned to the bark-bastard, whose trunk-like body was leaning with one side of its bottom end on the ground and the other on its feet.
It swung its sinister scythes in the air but Kiosard only smirked. He knew it couldn't move.
He moved sideways as he held his axe in front, and stopped when he faced the bark-bastard's side. The bastard's remaining foot tapped the ground wildly, but it barely turned even with all the tapping.
Kiosard rushed to the bastard and swung his axe. The bark bastard deflected with its scythe.
With its other scythe unable to reach, Kiosard easily overpowered the one to his front, making it flail as he knocked it from side to side.
He knocked it aside as he raised his axe from below to the right and swiftly brought it down to cleave through the handle-branch.
He raised it again and sank the axe through bark and into the whites underneath.
The bark-bastard screeched the same screech the leaf-bastard did. It swung its remaining scythe with wild abandon, but it could not reach Kiosard.
Kiosard planted his foot on the bastard and pulled the axe out, then dropped it on the ground.
He unhooked a wood-oil flask, uncorked it and poured it in the gash.
He threw it aside and sat on the ground. He watched as the flame spread over the bark-bastard, screeching as it burned.
"Didn't break a sweat." Kiosard said as he sat on the tiles, breathing heavily as his chest heaved.
He turned his head to the leaf-bastard. It had already finished burning.
Odd things they were. They burned but left nothing behind, neither smoke nor ash. Save for the rare burningwood pieces here and there.
He slowly got up and stood as the bark-bastard burned and screeched.
He checked his waist, the blood had stopped flowing and the wound had closed.
"Not today, bastards." He had survived, again.
He dusted himself off and left for the northern edge of the barricade.
He could deal with the bodies after he was done with everything. The night was early and there were a lot more things for Kiosard to deal with.
"Can't even catch a break." Kiosard sighed as he ran.