Meh, I was bored whilst Job hunting....
The Forsaken stood, watching the ravens circling overhead, there’d be ravens all over Arathi for days, weeks even, diving down on choice morsels like the Gryphons at Hammerfall. Intrinsically, as a creature of death, he should be right alongside such ill attendants of war, but inside as a soldier he just hated them, always had, always would. Noise…Behind him! His fingers tightened on his rifle and he had to stop himself from turning and dropping to a firing crouch as he heard the footsteps behind him, inwardly he chuckled, those reflexes would take a few days to wear off, they always did.
“Defiler, we have brought what you required”.
Karl sighed, turning to the three freshly dead behind him, he doubted any of them had been out of the coffin more than a few months, they still had that slight smell of mould about them that even he found mildly sickening.
“We? It take three of you to carry a flask of damn oil and some water does it?”
One of them, a tall one with –would you believe, maggots still in his eyesocket, spread his hands in placation “Well, no Defiler, but we thought you could tell us how it was out there”.
Karl took the bowl of water, and the oil and shook his head. “No lad”.
“Just, I mean, we saw the casualties come back, and the wounded, were the Dark Ladies forces victorious? Who Won?”
Karl flicked a hand irritably “Go away, or I will tear your faces off and turn them into novelty masks” he growled, but his heart wasn’t really in it, nonetheless, the three backed off, somewhat sullenly, but he was a Deathguard, and such as he were sometimes given dispensation to be aggressive, curt, rude even. Karl reckoned this was one of those times. “And do something about those maggots boy, you sicken me”.
He stacked his rifle by his side as he sat, he’d be damned again if he was going to pantomime out what had happened for some junior test tube jugglers, let them get the story from their Chemists and Apothecaries.
He took out a cleaning rag, and using the oil started to clean his rifle, following the mantra he had drilled into his men as a Lordaeronic officer “First the Kit, then the Man”. He grimaced as he saw a deep nick in the gunbarrel, then chuckled as he remembered the Draenai who had put it there, he wondered idly whether she had made it, or whether she was one of the corpses being contested by the ravens that covered Arathi like a carpet. She’d been a game fighter, that part of him that still respected such hoped that she had gotten away, though not all the tortures at the command of his superiors would ever make him admit such.
And that, when it came down to it, was what always troubled him. He was a good soldier, he was arrogant enough to know that, devoted to King and Country while breathing, and Queen and Country now, he was a damned good soldier, loyal to his comrades, absolutely loyal to his superiors, he just.. he wasn’t sure he was a terribly good Forsaken..
He’d never been religious whilst alive, patriotism filling that fire that took some men when they spoke of the Holy Light, and even now, he just didn’t understand the Forgotten Shadow, he’d cheered and made the appropriate noises when Father Geriand had preached recently, but when it came right down to it, he wasn’t certain how it all applied to him…how such abstract concepts applied to Karl Ulrich von Heldenhammer, thirty five years before the coffin and five out of it, subject of His Majesty king Terenas and now Her Majesty Queen Sylvanas the First and Eternal..
He’d fight the living tooth and nail, because they were the enemy, and that’s what soldiers did, but there was always a nagging worry, when troops were assembled, that the Dark Lady inspecting them would pause in front of him, and see into his soul. Perhaps she did, and she didn’t care. He pictured the incandescent rage that Executor Thornton would display if she knew, and the quiet disappointment of High Executor Anthraxius if he knew, those things to him, were a hundredfold more terrible than any torture, or death.
Try as he might, he just couldn’t….hate them, the living.
Not the way a Good Forsaken was supposed to, not that soul consuming mind gnawing rage that seemed to devour some, or even the unthinking callous disregard that most affected.
His rifle cleaned to his satisfaction, his swords oiled and wiped clean, he turned his attention to himself, washing away the crusted blood and tending the burns and scars he had collected , chuckling as he encountered a painful contusion on the back of his head, where an Alliance mace had hammered consciousness out of him.
And that was a strange thing too. He could understand them taking Sin’dorei prisoners, they at least had something in common with the Alliance, they lived and breathed, but himself and that other forsaken fellow, Naz…why had that happened? Karl had been furious when he came to, disarmed and surrounded, had kicked and bit and punched with his bound hands, roaring and swearing until they had to keep knocking him out every time he came round. He’d hammered on his chest, where he still wore his medals earned as an Alliance officer, screaming at them that they’d get nothing, and might as well kill him before he killed them..
Perhaps it was the medals…perhaps some of them had looked at him, at those medals and thought “There but for the Holy Light go I”. It was something that sometimes amused Karl, had it been Gilneas that fell to the Scourge, or the new Stormwind, would he still have been proudly attired in Alliance colours, urging his men on to bring destruction to the Unliving abominations?
He grinned, of course he would. He’d fight the enemy whoever they were. It’s what soldiers do.
He’d watched them, when he was chained to the walls for that brief incarceration, no more than half an hour or so, as they were watching him, some with barely concealed rage, some with disgust, some with vague interest, and some with pity.
That was what had annoyed him, He knew what he damned well was, he didn’t need fresh faced humans gawking at him, kids who had been in swaddling clothes when he had been fighting Orcs…and wasn’t that an irony, when it came down to it.. He sure as hell didn’t need their pity.
He chuckled as he finished cleaning himself up, picked up his rifle and sighted down it, watching the ravens, the hills, the thick pall of smoke that still lingered over Hammerfall in the distance, from here he could see the corpses, scattered on the roads where comrades had not been able to retrieve them, many wearing Ravens as some ghastly shroud, amongst them too moved other predators, scavenging dogs and vermin. He called to mind the catechism of the Poet Philosopher Junge he’d learnt at school;
“One to kill is murder by law,
and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe
The murder of thousands needs a special name,
War’s glorious art and immortal fame”
He smiled briefly, of course, Junge had also said “Only the dead have seen an end to war”. A sentiment that made Karl chuckle, they should carve that in the stones in the War district in Undercity, the fatalistic Deathguards would surely see the irony.
He felt strangely elated, he realised, probably some mortal vestige of relief, that he was not maimed or dead..truly dead. He had made enemies, he was sure the Worgen guard wouldn’t forget the ungentle kicking Karl had dished out as they escaped, assuming that one survived, he had made friends too, amongst them Naztheron, the other Forsaken who had been a prisoner briefly, he remembered the pair of them scouting across country after the prisonbreak, to run into a patrol of Alliance cavalry, something about the other undead’s off the wall humour had made their desperate situation almost amusing. And then…
Karl twisted his features in consternation, unconsciously lighting a cigar and puffing on it, something about the ritual calming him. If he had made friends and enemies, what about those it was hard to see as either. He recalled the negotiation over Prisoners, how Executor Thornton had taken him and a few guards out to negotiate with the Alliance for an exchange of prisoners. Karl had found himself having to speak Lordaeronic common, or as much as he could dredge from his living days…and a damned Gnome seemed to understand him, either that or the Gnome spoke Orcish enough to get the gist of what he said. A funny little fellow, well, weren’t they all, Gnomes…with a large beard. Something about that still unsettled him. It was harder to regard an enemy as faceless, when you could understand what they said. Of course, Karl would still have shot the half pint midget in a heartbeat had Thornton ordered it, but nonetheless, it was strange. He hoped that that little fellow too, had survived those days of fire, a conflict such that it had seemed to draw the attention of the fabled Deathwing. He remembered seeing an Alliance rider, doubtlessly drunk on glory and heroism, riding a gryphon after the behemoth, shouting a battlecry, probably now ashes and dust, nonetheless, Karl hadn’t been the only one at Hammerfall cheering him on, such a senseless, idiotic and yet glorious death spoke to the soldiers on both sides, he was sure. He knew the Orc next to him had muttered approvingly “Lok’tar Ogar pinkskin.Lok’tar Ogar”.
He laughed bitterly, he was trying to make a sense of it all, when all the poets, philosophers, priests and princes of the world had tried and failed.
It was a war, it needed fighting. That’s what soldiers do.
He picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, straightened his armour and started marching back to Undercity, perhaps he’d fall in with Cide, or Tatts, possibly some other survivors. He grinned as he passed the three junior Apothecaries, all studiously ignoring him.
“You wanted to know whoWon?”
The one with maggots in his eye nodded.
They watched as he laughed bitterly and slowly pointed at the sky, and the tumultuous clouds of ravens.
“Same as every war you idiots…Same as every war.”
He looked at the ravens and spat.
“They did”.
They watched the Deathguard as he marched off, singing in a surprisingly in tune voice, a soldiers song no one was sure whether it was treasonous or not;
“And when he passes from this life
And done with all toil and trifles
He’ll find the land of the glorious dead
Still guarded by Lordaeron Rifles”.
And when he passes from this life
To the shadows of Death he’ll yell
One more soldier reporting sir
I’ve served my time in hell”
All that death, allthat killing, and yet he’d never felt so…alive… for ages.
Perhaps he wasn’t so bad at being Forsaken after all…
Subject: When the Guns fall Silent 
Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:42 am
