Vorclaw, p.14
Vorclaw, page 14
“Do you not fear me, warrior from Vorclaw?” she asked with her lips whispering into his ear. She even dared let the tip of her tongue touch his earlobe. She was attracted to the elf she realised and contemplated how she might make him her concubine. “How will you pay for your crimes against my kingdom?” she asked seductively.
Leif slowly turned his face to meet hers. Again, he was surprised that he was not frightened. “You make me sad, my lady,” he said to her after matching her gaze. “Being a vampire matters not to me. I too am different from those I call my people. However, what saddens me is that I see such beauty hidden behind your teasing play and pointed teeth. I would have loved to have met you before you became so scorned by those of our kind.” Leif then turned his head the left exposing his neck, upper shoulder and necklace. He began to pray to Matronae.
A puzzled look came over Queen Ooktha. Her teasing and vampire powers of persuasion seemed wasted on this handsome elf. Several moments passed as she digested his message. Was he being sincere about her beauty or merely trying to weasel his way out of this? Was he really an outcast like her? Furthermore, she was taken aback by this elven soldier even mentioning her beauty. It had been so long since she had seen or felt the tenderness of one of her own. But she was queen here in this domain and with nearly a dozen arch-goblins staring at the two of them, she could not afford to lose face. At last, she decided Leif’s words were nothing more than pity, and that irritated her. She was a survivor and didn’t need anyone’s pity.
“Do not pity me,” she said in an angered voice grabbing him by the neck. Her strength squeezing hard, making Leif very uncomfortable. “I have turned from our kind long ago and found a new and more powerful home,” she said. And to think she thought to take this elf to her bed. Then she dug down deep onto the skin and necklace of Leif.
To Leif, the next event happened in slow motion. First the warm sensation upon his neck, followed by the powerful force of her grip securing him as she struck. Next, her bottom lip touched his neck and then felt two pin pricks of teeth push onto his skin. What should have been a sensation of warm blood spurting from his neck and searing pain of fangs ripping into his flesh, another sensation was present instead. It was a warm sensation but more like love, like a mother’s love he reasoned.
A brilliant rainbow of colour burst forth from his thin necklace. It was followed by a blinding white-light that radiated from that necklace of his. It repelled that vampire’s mouth and sent Queen Ooktha rearing back in horror and in pain. She stumbled back into Chieftain Blist screaming, sending him reeling back as well. Her face was burned badly; her lips were burnt off! She quickly covered her face as she felt the brilliance that came from Leif’s necklace; it was divine light for sure as her undead skin began to turn to ash!
The blinding light had the arch-goblins on their heels too. Some had arms raised up to shield their eyes, others ducked down into a ball and turned away.
Fearing for her undead life, Queen Ooktha quickly transformed into a great bat and flew away behind her throne and into her private chambers. Smoke trailed behind her as she was still smouldering, even in bat form. Once there, she changed back into her humanoid form and grabbed a crystal decanter filled with blood from a previous victim. She poured it into what remained of her mouth and swallowed, rejuvenating her strength and life force, healing her wounds.
* * * * *
The event was over as soon as Queen Ooktha fled the throne room. The brilliance was gone, and the throne room returned to the candlelight.
“What just happened?” Leif dared to turn and ask Lorez. Leif was now eye level with Lorez. The arch-goblin was seated in rearing position on his behind, not far from he once stood, his mouth agape.
“Kill him!” shouted Blist in the arch-goblin tongue.
None of the arch-goblins actually moved, either fear or shock held them in check. Not Chieftain Blist though, he pulled forth his mighty katana and moved in quickly on Leif. So too did Lorez who got up, pulled forth his scimitar and moved in. Leif, sensed the danger coming, quickly jumped to his feet and backed up, retreating up the throne room steps. His arms were still chained to the bar behind his waist but with the vampire gone, maybe he could take down some of the arch-goblins surrounding him.
“Hold all of you!” shouted Lorez. “Do not touch him, he is my prisoner!”
“Kill that filth, he may have killed your queen!” screamed Blist back at Lorez and all others present.
“No, he is my prisoner and I’m taking this elf to be interrogated!” he announced.
“No, he is to die here and now! And your queen will drink his blood!” argued Blist in a roar.
“We can’t kill him, not, not here, we don’t know what else could happen,” said Lorez. “Let me take him back to Blood-helm and I will bring Queen Ooktha another gift. And I will kill him a safe distance from Skulls-thorpe. You need to worry about the Queen and make sure she survives. I will kill him on the surface,” explained Lorez.
Leif stood there, realising Lorez was defending him although he had no clue what they were saying to each other. Chieftain Blist gritted his yellow teeth and his face began to contort. Leif could see Blist was torn between about what just happened and what Lorez was saying.
Blist finally made a decision about the fate of Leif. “No!” he said calmly, pointing with his large katana. “To the coliseum with this one.”
* * * * *
Located behind her throne room, Queen Ooktha was safe and secure. There were her private chambers. She lay in large red-velvet bed, recovering for hours now. She kept the door locked and would not come out until her face fully recovered. She was healing, the blood of her previous kill that she had bottled, was doing its work.
She lay there troubled, confused, excited! She wasn’t sure if it was her near-death experience or just having conversed with another elf. But why would the encounter excite her?
It had been so long since she had a conversation with another elf, she wondered if it just stirred long lost feelings of a time before she was a vampire. Or was it more of a homesickness that would pass? But she felt, attracted to the one who nearly killed her. “Did he really try to kill me?” she asked aloud to herself sitting up suddenly. “Or was that a defence of that powerful magic necklace? It didn’t activate when our faces touched. Only when I tried to bite,” she reasoned aloud.
Perhaps she might keep Leif alive as her concubine. “Was it because he did not judge me being a vampire? Maybe I’m fascinated because he said he saw beauty in me? Did he really see me as beautiful?”
“No, it was pity I saw pity in his eyes!” she said aloud, remembering the moment before her bite. She grew upset with herself for being captivated by this black-haired elf called Leif. She stood up angry, feeling her face and confirming it has nearly healed.
“I will watch his blood spill in the coliseum.”
* * * * *
“I wish I could help Lord Anthon,” said Chieftain Merka seated from his bone thrown. A female arch-goblin priestess was tending to his bandaged eye. “The one you seek is likely dead at the fangs of our queen. Every victory must have a sacrifice to my queen. You know this.”
Anthon did not respond immediately. He was trying to surmise the repercussions of it all. Anthon knew how fondly his brother cared for the Foehammers and to lose Leif in a battle they all helped stage perpetrate might jeopardise his work in the eastern arch-goblin city of Ironhold. While his elder brother Baltus wanted revenge, Anthon wanted respect and power and to lose Leif may drive his brother mad with anger and endanger his own Shadow Company plans and schemes.
“What value of this elf is to the great Anthon?” inquired Merka.
Anthon responded with a spell which put the room on alert drawing weapons by the arch-goblins present. A quick chant, release of some components and a twist of his fingers and he was gone in a flash.
“Scribe!” shouted Merka. “Take down a message and have it sent to Lorez immediately. I want that elf back!”
* * * * *
Anthon teleported to his prearranged spot, outside Queen Ooktha’s black-domed citadel. He quickly made his way to the large double recessed doors of crimson red, on one door hung the arch-goblin face. Two arch-goblin guards armed with halberds shouted but quickly backed off once the recognised Anthon. The wizard touched his pinky ring on his left hand. The magical properties allowed the wizard to converse in arch-goblin.
“I must see Queen Ooktha or Chieftain Blist at once,” announced the wizard.
Cheers erupted off in the distance.
“Human wizard, her majesty and Chieftain are at the games,” responded one of the guards.
“Take me to them at once!”
Chapter 18
The Coliseum
“Name is Ko-ko, Ko-ko the troll. Pleased to meet you,” said the old smelly troll who outstretched a pointy green and brown hand through the iron bars of a cell. Ko-ko smiled a yellow sharp-toothed grin.
“Don’t you be trying to eat my elf, Ko-ko!” shouted the arch-goblin jailer, aptly named Grim. Grim brought a lit torch to the troll’s outstretched claws. Ko-ko the troll repelled instantly. " Me hates the fire," he remarked to Leif.
“Grim not nice today,” shouted the troll who picked up some straw bedding and threw it at Grim to no real avail.
“I will feed ya soon enough just wait until I’m done with this one!”
It amazed Leif how so many creatures spoke the human language.
“What am I doing here? Where am I?” asked Leif to Grimm.
The noise from above the prison which is where Leif presumed to be was odd. It sounded like cheering.
“You’re in the coliseum, Leif,” came a voice from behind. In the door way made of iron bars stood Lorenz.
“You are to fight for your life, my friend,” said Lorez.
Grim paid them no mind as Leif was secured in chains to the floor. Instead, Grim fed Ko-ko the forearm of some creature.
“We’re friends now, are we?” asked Leif.
Lorez did not know how to answer but after his discussions with Leif aboard the Bloodknuckle, he did feel this soldier was genuine and willing to try for a truce. Additionally, Lorez also saw potential in Leif, or at least his necklace, if his power could damage his Queen, what other devices or means might the elf have to counter Queen Ooktha’s hold on the arch-goblins of Blood-helm.
“Am I to fight you then, Lorez?” asked Leif.
“Hardly,” responded Grim. “You have to fight the pussy-cat first!” he said with a chuckle and motioned for Leif to stand to unbind him.
Lorez heard that statement and now the notions of peace and separation from Queen Ooktha seemed moot.
“I come to wish to say I believe you,” said Lorez as Grim brought Leif thru another set of prison bars in the form of a door. In this area was a weapons rack of swords and bucklers. “I believe you would try to champion a treaty for my kind.”
“Put your hands back through the bars and I will remove your locks. Then pick a weapon and a buckler off the rack and wait by the door,” said Grim.
“And if I refuse?” Leif asked.
“Then the pussy cat will come in here for you.”
“Don’t refuse old Grim, pick your weapons and fight like you did against my kin,” said Lorez.
Leif selected a buckler and sword, followed by a leather helmet.
“It is a shame you send me to my death if you believe me,” stated Leif in a serious tone eyeing Lorez.
“Farewell, elf, and thank you for alerting my soldiers to the kelpiefolk assault,” was all Lorez could muster. He turned and walked off upset for missing an opportunity for his clan.
Leif now stood before a wooden door with cheers and screams of the dying on the other side.
* * * * *
“What do you mean Leif Foehammer is dead?” shouted Colonel Blackpool.
Mimdrid, using the guise of Captain Nigel Newman, stood calmly enough but was hiding his true nervousness. Mimdrid and the Blackpool brothers all put a lot of work into their plans over the last few years and didn’t want it all to come crashing down. Their simple plan to give the arch-goblins an easy victory, show how genuine Colonel Blackpool was in this war and to provide a taste of Vorclaw tactics, did not go according to his designs.
“Seems he was captured and killed, we cannot be sure, but your brother is trying to uncover his whereabouts,” stated Mimdrid dryly. “The plan was not executed properly because Major Titus switched companies. The entire Gold Company was slaughtered. He at least is dead as is Lord Brisbane. However, your soldier’s tactics are far superior than you may realise. The cost of arch-goblin victory decimated their ranks.” That did not brighten his expression as the loss of Leif was extremely unexpected and unfortunate.
In the wake of his wife’s untimely death, Colonel Blackpool’s need for revenge increasingly caused him to value soldiers by what they could do for him both personally and professionally. However, Leif was a Foehammer and beloved by the colonel. He was not sure how to inform Magnus let alone Disa.
“All is not lost for your beloved Foehammer-elf. Anthon might yet retrieve him before arch-goblins foul him,” stated Mimdrid. Secretly Mimdrid hoped just the opposite. He hated Magnus Foehammer from when he first met him, which in Mimdrid’s mind, Magnus’ kin were to be equally hated. Mimdrid even wondered if the elf might return as an undead creature to haunt his family. It was sheer luck that Leif Foehammer was the last remaining soldier standing when Mimdrid arrived on the scene an arch-goblin during the battle. “I will have you know there is no way I could have prevented the loss of Magnus’ son. I didn’t even know he was there,” explained Mimdrid.
“Well, I will have to put my faith in my brother that he lives but if not, then this justifies the training I sent Dru and Bjorn on.”
“I am not following?”
“Leif’s death will motivate them in their training.”
“How so?” asked Mimdrid not catching on.
“They will want to avenge the loss of Leif.”
* * * * *
Leif came through the doors and into the coliseum. The air was thick and warm due to it being surrounded by the thousands of arch-goblins jeering at him from the stands! It was an open ceiling and the pace was lit by torch light and by orange and yellow magical lights. Leif saw Queen Ooktha seated high above in a special boxed balcony draped with sheer black curtains and pillars to match, clearly seating for the elite. Her face healed and black eye makeup smeared across her face like a mask from ear to ear. Leif rationalised it was to make her more menacing. Next to her was that large arch-goblin who tried to kill him earlier.
Leif turned his attention to arena area itself. Stone floor lightly covered in sand to draw up the blood on the floor. And there was evidence of fresh kills marked by blood in the sand. The top of the red walls was ringed with metal fence barbed with spikes pointing downward towards the coliseum floor, to prevent climbing out and into the crowd.
Leif dressed in small shorts, a buckler, and leather helmet closed his eyes and began to pray as his mother taught him. To Matronae, for strength, to take care of his family, who took him in as an orphan and for the soldiers he had lost in ambush. Leif did not ask for revenge; it was not yet in his nature.
Then the door opposite opened and his training from the Academy of Arms took over. The tutelage of his father, Magnus Foehammer, surfaced in his consciousness.
A large feline roar came forth from that dark opening and the crowd of arch-goblins, lizard-goblins and a few other races privy to be in attendance had gone wild with anticipation. It was a bizarre creature to Leif but deadly looking nonetheless. It had the body of an orange tiger without stripes but a long whip-like tail that was constantly twirling in the air; the tail had spikes at the end. The tail was not the oddest thing about the creature. It had the oversized head of a man whose face was covered in orange fur and whose maw was filled with sharp teeth.
The strange feline did not attack Leif but instead used its great claws to try and scamper up the walls to look for a way out but several arch-goblins with pikes forced the creature back to the coliseum floor.
Leif took notice that this strange beast seemed to change positions along the wall once an arch-goblin tried to prod it off the wall. One arch-goblin unknowingly poked the illusion of the tiger-like beast but once the trick was sprung, another arch-goblin was better able to locate the true location of the beast, a few feet away. Leif now had a sense of what he was up against, it must be a mantikhoras.
It was just a few moments before the beast started to fixate on Leif. Leif waved his sword at the beast to keep it at bay and shouted at the thing. The mantikhoras circled around Leif, judging how best to make the kill. The spiked tail went out and nipped Leif in the buckler.
The arch-goblins cheered the beast on.
Leif backed up to the wall but kept moving to his right. The mantikhoras followed suit but kept probing Leif for weaknesses with its wicked tail but Leif’s buckler was up to take the hit. Suddenly the mantikhoras appeared in a spot a few feet away but launched assaults with its tail from its actual position. The crowd again cheered as Leif was hit in the ribs. Leif instinctively shifted back to his left when he felt the spikes hit his torso. He pushed his sword and buckler in downward sweeps to break the connection.
The connection was broken and not a moment too soon as the mantikhoras lunged with four clawed paws open for the kill. The orange beast plunged into the wall but was unharmed from the impact, more surprised. Leif was lucky he realised.
