Tales From the Desert Rain

[Occhidiangela]

Mad Cows and Greizmen


The broad shouldered man looked back at the five wagons strung out behind his, barely visible through the roiling dust raised by hooves and wheels. He nodded to himself, satisfied that they were in place, and then returned his gaze to the late morning haze settling onto the horizon. He reached up to his nose, absently rearranging the bandanna strung across the lower half of his face to filter out dust and the ever present sand flies. The wagon kept trundling slowly forward, its cargo of smoked and salted beef acting like a magnet for every insect within throwing distance.

“Looks like the last ridge is just ahead. We’ll be drinking Atma’s swill by sundown, Corporal,” remarked Sergeant Sarisa from her perch on the right side of the wagon’s bench seat. He glanced over at the tall, steel-eyed, blonde-haired woman and grunted his acknowledgement. Somehow, after the cool climate of Westmarch and the barrels of Kingsport Red that Pygmy's Platoon had consumed for a fortnight, Atma’s wine cellar did not inspire any compelling interest for his palate, nor for his thirst.

“Ya know, Sarge,” he growled, “This could become a habit, trucking beef over the desert sands to Lut Gholein." He spat a few grains of sand from his lips. "With the East settling down,” he continued, “I get the feeling that trade will be picking up and the meat market reopening its doors on the west side of town. I’m thinking that we ought to load more barrels of ale and fewer sides of beef on our next beef run, what with the thirsts that sailors develop in the passage from Kurast or Kingsport to Lut Gholein. More profit for less work, to my view.” He paused, to let a blossoming idea coalesce in his mind. “With the war winding down, I figure Jerhyn will follow through on his old threat to cancel the contract with Greiz, and we'll be looking for work again.” He snorted. “I’ve done dumber things than haul beef and beer to them as wants it.”

Sergeant Sarisa turned her head to regard him with a thoughtful stare. “What's this, you're getting out of the mercenary business, Corporal? After Sergeant Pygmy lobbied so hard to have you promoted again? Methinks you’ve been out in the sun too long, or you got a few too many whacks on the head with a halberd during our little scrap with those steers.” She focused once again, with genuine concern, on the raw red scar that ran from the top of the Corporal’s head to his left eyebrow, still marveling at the strength of skull and helm that had kept the halberd stroke from penetrating into his brain. She reached up and subtly adjusted the brim of her large, floppy straw hat and chuckled dryly. “The day you stop sticking your lance into things will be the day I go swimming in the River of Flame.” Then she started, aware of her own bawdy pun. “Well, your weapon anyway.” She cackled again at her second unintentional pun in a row.

Uncharacteristically, the large man did not rise to the bait and his typical off color retort. He merely grunted again and clamped his jaw shut. The Sergeant blinked, and then looked away, a slight blush coloring her sun and wind burned cheeks as her widening eyes betrayed enlightenment slowly dawning. She slapped her left thigh with a gloved hand and barked out a short laugh.

“It’s Adelia, isn’t it Occhi!" Throwing her head back, she let out a loud hoot. "You still hope to set up house with that harem girl in Lut Gholein. By the Light, no wonder you’ve been such a mule’s blanket this whole campaign. You lost your heart to that little slip of a dancer!” She returned her attention to him and watched his eyes narrow and his neck muscles tense. “And, just like a love struck recruit, you think she’s been waiting for you all by her lonesome these past two months . . .” Shaking her head and returning her gaze to the horizon, she muttered something under her breath about a whip, falling silent as once again the Corporal clamped his jaw further shut and stared morosely ahead to the approaching ridge, the last one they would crest before they would be able to glimpse the spires of Lut Gholein.

Adelia’s dubious lyoalty aside, Corporal Occhi D’Merc of the Legion of Greiz thought back and grimly wondered who of sane mind would ever march for pay again after the madness of the battle at the Cow King’s Corral . . .



Pygmy’s platoon had arrived at the old stockade in a subdued mood, having just paid their respects at the grave of their old combat engineer. Charis Greizman’s heart had apparently stopped one night. He had been found in his tent at the construction site of the block house he was building for the Earl of Redfallow in the northern hills of Ensteig. The simple etching on the head stone, behind which stood, forever inanimate, yet another of the eccentric engineer’s mechanical men, had told them all they needed to know. The wiry, white haired genius had died before his time, in his sleep, doing what he loved to do most: build things. Arrival at the Rogue's camp had done little to raise their spirits; the stockade they entered bore scant resemblance to their one time bivouac during the Demon Wars.

Gone was Gheed, all of his wagons and most of the tents, and gone too were Charsi and Kashya, to the Rogue Citadel with the most of the surviving rogue scouts. All that remained within the still standing wooden walls were a few rotted crates and Akara’s tent. Akara herself had returned to the Rogue’s war camp, the loser of a vicious internal political struggle within the Sisterhood that had arisen after reclaiming their Monastery. Every defeat creates a scapegoat, and Akara had filled that role to her great disappointment. Her only company seemed to be the chickens she still raised, and, judging by the few mules and other visible equipment, a rogue or two who still remained loyal to the one time High Priestess of the Sisters of the Sightless Eye. She had greeted their return with a weary smile and as warm a welcome as an empty camp could offer.

It was Akara who had given Sergeant Pygmy the key to their finding their enemy's base. She had briefed him the morning following their arrival.

“Sergeant, since you left and since Andariel fell, demons have been fleeing to the northeast. I, and the few scouts who remained loyal, traced their movements along some ley lines into Ensteig. There appear to be travel points other than those the Horadrim constructed. Their pattern is similar to the portal you used to relieve the Siege of Tristram.” She had walked toward the still warm fire pit, raised her staff, and slammed it down to the ground ten feet south of the stone circle. “Here is where the ley lines meet. And here is where we can open the portal to strike at the source of the Demon Cows.” Sergeant Pygmy had sworn an oath, and Sarisa spat in disgust.

It was Xan who had broken the silence.

“Akara,” queried the Amazon of Philios, “Do you mean to tell us that Deckard Cain stood here for weeks while we fought demon hordes and never once mentioned, or ever detected, the existence of this path to the infernal corral? For all his noise about being the last of the Horadrim, he sure seems to have been blind to magic.” Picking up her pike, she sauntered over to Akara and set the butt of her weapon next to the Priestess' staff. “It’s about time someone did something about this. And of course, since we have been paid in advance,” she continued with a wide grin, “I suppose sooner is better than later. How do we get there?”

Akara had reached under the folds of her robe and produced a wooden leg, a blue covered book, and a small golden cube. Opening the cube, she had shoved the leg and the book into it and slammed the lid shut while the mercenaries looked at one another in confusion. Their expressions all told the same tale: the priestess had lost it during her eviction from the Monastery. Her voice had turned melancholy as she addressed them.

“This leg of an innocent victim of Andariel is the link to the ley line.” She had used her index and middle fingers to press two small studs on the golden cube. “I can open this pathway only rarely. The last time we tried to scout the Bovine King’s stronghold, none of the five rogues came back. Only Basanti remains with me, and her cousin Gwinni. Neither will dare the portal. I called for help from the Citadel, but the Sisters have inflicted The Silence upon me. Khanduras is a broken kingdom, and the King of Westmarch cares not to answer my messages. You are my last hope.”

Legionnaire Sasqaat had reached out to pat Akara on the shoulder in a consoling manner. “The King got your messages, Priestess. ‘Twas he who hired Greiz to sort this out. Hence, our arrival. Your efforts have paid off.” He smiled warmly, then backed away suddenly, as did Xan, when the air started to shimmer as a glowing red portal appeared out of the air behind Akara’s staff. Sergeant Pygmy stepped forward, in front of the now stabilizing red portal, and motioned to Sarisa and Xan, both of whom stepped back into ranks. He faced his platoon, giving them a short nod before barking out the expected commands.

“Platoon, fall in!’’

Twelve Legionnaires quickly arranged themselves into two ranks.

“Platoon, ready . . . Pikes!”

Twelve Pikes raised up, then lowered their tips just above parallel to the ground.

“Platoon, forward, march! To the demon’s lair . . . again!”

“DEATH TO THE DEMON COWS!!” shouted twelve throats in unison.
"And revenge for Charis Greizman!” screamed Shattershaft, overcome with the enthusiasm of the moment.

Down into the red portal marched the platoon. They emerged into . . . madness.

They had erupted, still in formation, from the red portal into a field bordered and sectioned off with stone walls. Typical to a large cow pasture, hundreds of cows occupied the area. Unlike the denizens of a typical cow pasture, these cows stood on their hind legs and held halberds in their front hooves. The hooves had grown demon claws with opposable thumbs, it seemed. The visual shock of seeing cows wielding weapons was not, however, what unsettled the Legionnaires.

Most disconcerting was the piercing red glare in the cow’ eyes. The intelligent, malevolent stares were reinforced as the cows, in random groupings, staggered forward bellowing their inane warcry, a peaen that embodied the hatred of all things human:

“Moo moo moo, moo moo, moo!” It was enough to drive a warrior mad.

But the Legion were not as other warriors, and had been to madness and back in their pursuit of the Lord of Destruction. With a great cry of their own, led by Shattershaft’s sharp scream of defiance, the platoon bellowed “DIE, DIE, TIME TO DIE!” and charged forward into the first pack of cows.

OcchiD’Merc shook his head again to clear the memory of the bloody melee. Their pikes had churned forward into exposed cow bellies again and again. Of tactics there were few, on either side, just brute force and the advantage of reach afforded by the pikes. Down slammed the halberds, and forward drove the pikes: inexorable, sharp, and merciless. Jemali fell, only to be dragged to his feet by Ilzan and healed by Sasqaat. Chalan fell, as did Shattershaft, but they too were picked up, their wounds bandaged on the run as the tight formation of legionnaires drove yet again into walking sides of beef. The smell of blood and manure mixed with the sharp aroma of sweat and fear to create a nauseatingly sweet stench.

The unarmored bovine bodies piled up, and still more cows surged forward, their inane cries and red stares combining to create the surreal nightmare of a walking slaughterhouse. Sasqaat had remarked aloud, during a withdrawal from an attack on their right flank: “Hell can’t be any worse than this!”

At last they arrived, drenched in bovine gore and bone weary, to face a massive wooden stockade. Nothing moved, save their chests as they paused to breathe, and a few hundred clouds of flies attracted to the piles of freshly killed corpses. Then a demonic scream had rent the air.

“You will never again make a bull into a steer for your dinner! Die, Beefeaters, die! MOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Out from the corral stampeded two dozen cows led by an enormous bull wielding a poleaxe. Bolts of lightning shot from his horns and fire erupted from his nostrils as he led twenty tons of beef in a thundering charge.

“Set for charge!” barked Sergeant Pygmy. Twelve pike butts were slammed into the damp earth. Twelve pike heads lowered to accept the charge.

It almost worked as planned.

They were overrun and their line broken in a sickening crash of splintering wood and the accompanying chorus of demonic screams as every pike head found a home in an exposed gullet. The final hand-to-hoof melee began in earnest with their line shattered, their bodies further broken and bloodied, and their last reserves of energy long spent.

The images were etched into Occhi’s memory like letters in stone blocks, and no amount of Kingsport Red could wash it away. Light knows, he had tried that, and generous doses of the fire whiskey of Scosglen.

He saw it all again:

Sergeant Sarisa drawing a sword and leaping astride a bovine champion’s back, her two handed stroke plunging deep before he had bucked her off and sent her flying into the stockade wall, where she fell stunned. Sasqaat and Ilzan fighting with broken pikes against three cows, frantically blocking the halberd blows as they were driven toward a stone wall. Shattershaft charging into that skirmish, wielding a fence rail like a lance, and bowling two bovines over as he skewered a third. Xan and Pygmy, back to back, their warforks still intact, blocking halberd blows and jabbing and striking at a small pack of cows.

He saw himself pulling Jemali's wounded body from the ground and lowering his shoulder as he charged into the Cow King’s side with no weapon but a broken halberd shaft, knocking that regent off his feet. The blast of lightning, the falling head of a helberd, and the smell of his own burning flesh were the last things that registered before darkness fell.

He never saw the final encounter where Sasqaat charged over Pygmy’s bleeding body at the Cow King and impaled the demon with a half-length of pike shaft. OcchiD’Merc had lain unconscious for three days, the Cow King’s final halberd blow having driven his helm into his skull with a sickening crack.

He had awakened in the dark, lying stiff and sore next to the fire at Akara’s camp, to the sound of a woman’s cries. Staggering to his feet and reeling with dizziness, he had limped painfully toward the lone standing tent where the sounds of distress gained in pitch. He had torn through the tent flap and tripped over a bent composite bow, falling with a crash onto a cot where two bodies were tied together in knots beneath a coarse woolen blanket. The urgent cries had stopped abruptly, to be replaced by two cursing voices, one male and one female.

“Get out of here you big lummox, this isn’t your tent!” screamed Bisanti as she struggled to keep the blanket between herself and the air.

“The slit trench is the other way, dirt for brains!” bellowed FrugalMerc as he threw the crushed cot aside and tried to scramble back under the blanket.

OcchiD’Merc had rolled back out of the tent and stumbled back to the fire, dazed and confused.

Madness still reigned, or so it had seemed. It was not until the next day, while he was working to skin and quarter the carcasses of the slain cows, that Akara had told him of Basanti’s betrothal to FrugalMerc and the Legionnaire’s retirement to his recently founded cattle ranch.

=================

The Corporal returned from his memories to the dusty trail in front of him. It had taken two long weeks to smoke, salt, and pack the beef which they were now driving toward the Sparkling City. The bloody butcher's work and nightly drunken binges had been necessary for them all to recover both their health and their sanity. What awaited them, he was sure, was a new future. His premonition was that Greiz’ Legion had done its work and would be disbanded. The ill will between Jehryn and Greiz almost guaranteed that. He tried once again to imagine living with Adelia in the flat just down the street from Elzix’ tavern, running a beef and beer caravan once per month. The pictures of that future remained fuzzy and dim, though if this lack of focus came from his own sense of foreboding, or from the halberd blow to his head, he did not know. Perhaps he did not want to.

The wagon crested the ridge and he saw, dimly through the haze, the tall spires and the great palace dome of Lut Gholein as he had so many months before when he had answered Greiz’ recruiting bill. He noticed the Sergeant gazing wistfully at the ships’ masts that were once more filling the great harbor. He looked back to make sure the wagon train was keeping up, and once again was satisfied with the result. Sarisa surprised him by turning to him, a tear forming in her right eye.

Her voice trembled and cracked as she spoke.

“The ships have returned, Corporal. The ships from my home Islands. Can’t you see their banners?” She turned and pointed, but her eyes had always been keener than his, so he could only guess at what she saw so far away at the tops of those tall masts. “I can go see my nephews again, and my aunt." She choked back a sob. "And my father’s grave.”

She breathed deeply and slowly got control of herself, the short lapse suppressed under a sergeant’s gruff reserve. After a moment of silence, the veteran campaigner returned, offering a comradely grin to her fellow veteran.

“But before I sail, I think, maybe we should all gather once more at Atma’s, and drain a keg together. The whole platoon. What say you to that, Corporal Occhi D’Merc?”

She was surprised to see a grin steal across the big man's features. Staring straight ahead, he snapped the reins to coax the animals forward, then dug the fingers of his left hand into his belt pouch to produce a small earthen flask. Lifting it to his lips, he pulled out the cork with his teeth and spat it over his left shoulder. Still staring straight ahead, he tilted his head back and poured a generous slug of amber liquid down his throat, then reached across his body to hand her the flask. He glanced slightly to his right, to make eye contact with her, and winked. “Scosglen smokey malt whiskey, the last of the vintage barrel we found in Harragoth. ‘Twas thinking you’d honor me by finishing it, Sarge.” She took the flask eagerly.

“Anyways, Sarge,” he continued in a casual tone, “Whatever happens, happens. If we get turned out of the barracks, I have a flat where you can park your gear until your ship sails, Adelia or no Adelia.” His grin turned into a smile as she tilted her head back and raised the flask to her lips. His smile broadened as she drained it with two vigorous gulps. Breathing out and then quickly in to savor the flavor, she lifted the flask over her head and flung it to the ground where it shattered on a rock. She turned to him and returned his smile with her own broad grin, then she winked. Together they tilted their heads back and raised their right arms, then shouted at the top of their lungs:

“FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF THE LEGION!!””

Behind them, over the creaking of the wheels, they heard the cry go up in each succeeding wagon, its energy lifting their spirits as they headed down the trail and into their uncertain future . . .