Chapter V: A Fortunate Encounter

Week 3, Day 3, Night, Clear

I had receded back down the hill, which took a few minutes, and narrowly managed to avoid tumbling down the damn slope. Once I did, I went back to visit my comrades in the tavern, where I was sure they were setting up.

Clang!

I swung my body towards the source of steel on steel, unsheathing my dagger quickly. The sound was all too familiar.

Clang!

The others came rushing out of the tavern, their weapons unsheathed as well as they met up with me.

"By Tog, what in Good Graces is that?!" Haedyr exclaimed, bringing his shield up in worry.

"Dunno, but it sounds like more fackin' trouble." Dedric remarked with frustration. "Can we get a bloody break around here?"

I witnessed a group of armed and armored individuals make their way up the trail, towards the village. All of them seemed to be forming a large circle around someone, whom I presumed to be a noble and his Lordsguard, men and women dedicated to serving as elite bodyguards to noble persons.

"Oh, bloody hell, what are those things?!" Dedric shouted in panic, pointing at what I could barely make out in the slivers of moonlight to be large, bulky, green-skinned creatures.

"Tog, they're War Orcs." I remarked grimly.

"No, worse." Melina commented. "Rulks."

My fear heightened upon mention of the brutish alpha species of the Orc race. Said to be the strongest form of Orc society, they are significantly worse than War Orcs, who already have a reputation that is so prominent that the very word 'War' has been put in their title.

And by the size of these brutes, it seemed she was correct. Over 7 feet tall, they towered above the retreating group that they seemed to be engaged in combat with. Axes and swords in hand, they were trading blows with the Lordsguard. Both sides were taking casualties, blood splattering over the ground as weapons flew about in a wild manner.

Togdamnit, I'll have to clean this up, I thought in frustration.

"We need to help them." Melina commented. Dedric peered at her as if she were mad.

"You must be jesting." He remarked. She turned deadset eyes towards him.

"It's not out of sympathy for them. If those Rulks defeat the nobleman's entourage…"

She didn't need to finish the sentence. Dedric and Haedyr nodded their heads, as did I.

And yet, as I turned my head back to the little skirmish happening, my anxiety quadrupled as I noticed the pile of human bodies compared to the Rulk corpses. There were four people left, including the nobleman, and more than 5 Rulks left.

"We need to help- now!" I shouted, running over towards the battle, followed closely by my compatriots.

I witnessed yet another Lordsguard fall, struck by a hand axe of a Rulk. The screams of the woman being struck pierced my ears, and for a moment I watched on in shock as she cried in agony, trying to cover the massive amount of blood gushing out of the wound in her side.

"Avon, GET MOVING!"

Melina's shouting jerked me back to reality, but not before the nobleman then had his neck sliced. He gurgled as he tried to cover his bleeding throat, the blood spurting from the opening onto the grass below. The last two Lordsguard looked on in horror as the offending Rulk stepped forward, grabbing him by his hair and hacking the sword into his neck multiple times, decapitating him.

"YOU BASTARD!"

The scream was followed quickly by one of the Lordsguard, who charged forward and slashed their greatsword downwards through the Rulk's arm. The Rulk shouted in pain, dropping its sword and trying to cover its wound, until the Lordsguard thrusted his sword through its stomach, pushing it through with a rage-filled scream.

"Damn it, he's lost it." Melina muttered. "Stay out of his way."

"Pardon?" I inquired nervously. "What cause is there to-"

Schlick!

The sentence never finished, as the Lordsguard yanked the large sword out of the Rulk and immediately swung it around to the next attacking Rulk, lopping off the front part of its face. It fell to the ground, blood staining the grass below.

"Holy shit!" Dedric yelped, backing away from the fight. I looked to Melina, who continued watching with a grim expression.

"I've seen this once before. He's gone into a battle rage. All we can do is wait it out. Either he'll die or kill every last Rulk left."

"And how likely is that?"

"Depends on his fighting ability, but from what I can see-"

The Lordsguard had then shifted his focus to the next Rulk, swinging his sword diagonally downwards, slicing clean through the Rulk's left leg. It roared in agony as it fell to the ground, but was quickly slaughtered by the other Lordsguard, who had come forward with a sword and thrusted it into its skull.

"-That won't seem to be a problem here."

We watched on as the two Lordsguard made quick work of the rest of the Rulks.

Eventually, the raging Lordsguard had begun to slow down, his swings becoming more slack. The other Lordsguard was sobbing as she backed him up, seemingly grieving a loss of some sort.

Once they struck down one of the two Rulks left, the first Lordsguard had fallen to the ground in fatigue, the other falling to one knee. I was alarmed to see the last Rulk storming towards them both, raising its war axe.

"They're in trouble, we need to help!" Dedric shouted, running towards them.

"Wait- Damn it, Dedric!" I reached out towards him, but he had already made his way over. I was about to rush in when something flew past me, whistling through the wind, and piercing the Rulk in the eye. It roared in pain, stumbling backwards as it clawed at the object that had embedded itself in its face.

I looked back at Melina, who was missing the shank from her hands.

"Good throw." I commented. Though this was not the time for facetious thoughts, I had to admit that aroused me somewhat.

"Thanks." She responded simply.

I brought my eyes back to the action, only to see the female Lordsguard thrusting her sword up and into the Rulk's jaw, sending the blade all the way through its skull and out the other side, before falling over in exhaustion. The Rulk fell to its knees, before falling face-first onto the ground, the blade of the embedded sword sliding completely through the back of its head.

Such a gruesome and pathetic death, I thought to myself. I hope I won't have to die face-down in the dirt.

We gathered over at the after-battle scene, where Dedric was leading the exacerbated female Lordsguard to a nearby resting place, and Haedyr tending to the other one.

As I came up to the area, I gagged at the sight of all the gore. Dismemberment, evisceration, decapitation…such morbid scenery.

"We need to bury them." I muttered. I could see Melina nodded her head as well.

I made my way over to the female Lordsguard, who was silently grieving as she lay in the dirt as a corpse would, her unconscious compatriot a few feet away in the same fashion.

Her gaze turned towards me, tears running down her cheeks. Despite our victory in battle, her glimmering eyes shone a grave defeat.

"Please, sir...strike me and my friend down here and now."

I leered back in shock upon hearing these words.

"Why would I commit such an atrocity?! And why are you so downtrodden and grief-stricken? We have won this battle! We get to live to see another day!"

In all fairness, my emotions were high, especially after such a pitched battle, and so I spoke irrationally. I felt myself pulled to the side by Melina, who gave me a look of defined outrage.

"Are you dense, Avon?" She inquired fiercely. Her insult invoked my faint sense of class superiority, and yet not so much so as I expected it to from anyone else.

"W-watch your tongue!" I muttered, confused with myself. Why was I so hesitant? I had no qualms in lecturing others such as Dedric for their crass behavior towards marked nobility such as myself, and yet here I could not muster the courage to stand against this woman.

Nonetheless, she heard my retort, and seemed none too happy about it.

"Who do you think you are? Have you no knowledge of the Lordsguard and their duties?"

Eventually, my humility kicked in, and I chose to bite my tongue and shake my head slightly.

"I recall reading about the Lordsguard when I was younger, but I do not know much beyond a general concept."

Melina sighed, and I was relieved to see her animosity retreat. She folded her arms over one another as she stared at me.

"I'm surprised this 'general concept' doesn't include their most important and sacred duty."

Melina came closer to me, her eyes watching the Lordsguard, whom were still lying in the grass.

"You will find this as a mantra amongst most, if not all Lordsguard you come across. Their entire career, if it wasn't obvious before, is to keep their noble safe, no matter what. You'll find that in the vast majority of situations, a Lordsguard will die before the noble is ever touched. Lordsguard revere their duty as if it were a personal mission handed down by Tog Himself." She explained. "In their eyes, if a noble were to die before their Lordsguard, that guard would be a horrid disgrace to everything they stand for, and their only way of redeeming some form of honor and integrity is to die in battle where their noble perished, as few nobles would want to take on Lordsguard that have failed in their duty and lived."

Melina pointed to the Lordsguard lying in the grass.

"They just failed their one and only mission, of which they've trained for their entire life, and they didn't even die fighting afterwards. Can you see now why they are in such deep despair? This may have been a victory to us, but to them it might as well have been the end of the world."

I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that the long-winded lecture Melina gave me had sucked out most of the sympathy I would have felt for the Lordsguard. Nonetheless, I nodded my head in understanding, and made my way back over to the crippled lass laying in the grass, an idea festering in my mind.

"What is your name, Lordsguard?"

Her eyes opened slightly, peeking up towards me.

"Ka...Karina...Derst…"

"Ms. Derst, your duty cannot yet be shirked." I then offered my hand once more. "We have food and drink back at the derelict tavern. Do not waste all those years of training and combat ability to wither away here because of one crushing failure."

She seemed unresponsive for a few seconds, before finally, weakly lifting one gauntlet up and placing it in my hand. As I attempted to lift her from the ground, I realized how outrageously heavy she was, with all the armor and such.

"Dedric, Haedyr, come help me lift her up."

They came over and did such, taking her off my hands and leading her towards the tavern. I then went to check on the other Lordsguard, who was most definitely unconscious, if not dead.

"Come now, sir. Where one path has closed, another has opened."

A few minutes having passed, we had all gathered within the old tavern, where Melina had shown some sudden skills in cooking, using some of the supplies we had to prepare a stew in an old pot she found. Of course, she made plenty sure to clean as well as she could before putting anything of substance into it.

As more minutes passed, with the stew boiling, I took my time questioning the downtrodden we had invited into our humble abode. I learned quickly the name of the male guard, Henrik Castermeyer, who said he had been paired up alongside Karina. This, I was perplexed by.

"But surely," I started. "If the two Lordsguard were to, say, catch affections for one another, it would affect the duty they are beholden to their prestigious patrons."

Oddly enough, they shook their heads, as if the thought was blasphemous.

"Of course not." Henrik muttered with a dead expression. "Something as meagre as love would definitely not get in the way of our most sacred duty."

"Indeed." Karina followed, slightly more lively than her compatriot. "Lordsguard are put through years of training, since birth-"

"Yeah, I know the- I get the gist of it." I interrupted. If I had to hear another excruciating tale on how thoroughly the Lordsguard were trained, I would lose any bit of sympathy I had left.

"Brew's done." Melina stated, coming back from the pot with steaming bowls of a mixed assortment.

Another round of minutes passed as we silently enjoyed the delectable meal. Melina did much to boost the spirits of the group, charismatic and, albeit, a bit eccentric. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but feel myself more drawn to her with every minute she spoke.

"Henrik, Karina." I spoke, garnering their attention. They set their bowls aside, as did I.

"I'll keep it brief." I stated. "I came from nobility at another estate, in the country of Drakmenis and the Province of Gyrena. My father was the inherent lord of the Sevens Estate. I was being groomed to take over, but only a few weeks ago...Demons with red eyes came, sweeping over the estate and bringing wreckage to everything. I had to flee, and now… I'm here. Attempting to claim this dilapidated place as my own."

I took a deep breath.

"It may tedious, and slow, and there very well may be tragedy along the way, but I plan on rebuilding my broken legacy, no matter the cost. Thus…"

I gestured at them.

"I humbly ask to take you both on as my personal Lordsguard, if you'll see to it."

Their eyes widened, first in confusion, then in shock.

"W..What?!" Henrik stuttered. "Why would you take us as your Lordsguard? We...we failed our last one despicably…"

"I don't understand…" Karina muttered, tears surfacing in her eyes. "...Why are you giving us this opportunity?"

I merely shrugged. "Usually, I-"

The sentence stopped short at my lips. I realized I was about say something very rude.

"...I...noticed...that you both fought to your very best efforts to defend him. If anything, you were clearly too outmatched, even with your capabilities. Even I didn't expect you to survive."

I gestured with an open hand towards them.

"And yet, here you are. Clearly, you were meant to serve your purpose for longer than that. So...do it."

I'll admit, I was not the best at improvised speeches, but it seemed to do the trick nonetheless. In moments, something similar to what Haedyr did, they got up from their seats, pulled out their swords (which, I must confess, scared the bats out of me) and placed the points on the ground, kneeling before me.

"My Lord, we shall not fail our duties a second time, you have our undying word!" Henrik declared.

"We will protect you from all harm, or die doing so!" Karina also declared.

I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that, in that moment, I felt powerful. On top of the three I had recruited to my cause, I now had two official guardsmen that just dedicated their lives to serving me. Albeit, it was more...dramatic than I had expected, but I didn't particularly mind. I really did wonder, however, just how easily things were going in my direction. I didn't think myself to have any particularly special 'charm', but I decided to ruminate over the matter another time.

"That aside, My Lord…" Henrik said, bringing his head up to speak. "If your goal is to rebuild anew from this derelict place, I know of a nearby fortress manned by someone who would be glad to aid in this."

"Oh?"

He got up, followed by Karina. I was starting to see the teacher-student relationship here.

"West of here-" He pointed his finger westwards, beyond the forest. "-You'll find the frozen region, Frezen-"

"What a redundant name." I muttered to myself.

"-And there, Fortress Hershey, where we had spent most of our time training in swordsmanship. If I am correct, the most recent commander was the Captain of the Knights Guard there, Sir Gareth Ruthran. Young, like us, but very ambitious and eager to help, especially with the orders he has."

I nodded slowly. This was all coming together now.

"Very well. Let us rest, then, for tonight. We shall strike out at dawn to reach the fortress."