By Tim Chipping

Bellowing and braying, the beast herd with an urgency born of fear, force-marched onwards into the gathering gloom of a winters’ dusk. The ground where they passed, even though dusted with snow and hardened with frost, was churned into a morass of mud and slush by a hundred pairs of iron hard hooves intent on travelling south westward with as much speed as they could muster. The cause of the herd’s fear suddenly threw back his head and, raising his right arm in the hand of which was grasped a brutal mace of huge proportions, brought the beastmen to a shuddering halt, earthen clods and ice shards thrown into the air about them.

“Quiet!” The harshness and violent intent conveyed by the Wargore’s order demanded instant obedience. He turned his head, the features resembling those of both bullock and mountain goat but with a cruelty of eye suggesting something more than his bestial origins. He now looked back the way the herd had come, all senses seemingly electrically aware for the remotest sound or slightest movement.

“Khazgor.” The Wargore inhaled deeply of the crisp winter air. “A scent. Not human.”

The beast called Khazgor also breathed in cold night air. He thrust aloft the strangely twisted braystaff he held in his left hand, the bones and shells strung upon it rattling and chinking. With eyes closed, he stayed motionless until the unrest of the herd around him began to increase.

“No, Morgor. Nothing,” the Brayshaman rasped.

The logging settlement of Miv was small, nothing more than a huddle of stinking cabins clinging to wooded slopes offering the barest shelter from the harshness of winter. It’s location had been chosen for two reasons; the close proximity of the river, which not only gave fresh water but also a means of transporting the logs downstream and the trees, which in this region, grew to an enormity and quality of timber rarely seen.

Closing the cabin door behind him, Carbov the camp taskmaster pulled his fleece jerkin tighter about himself as he noticed fresh snow had fallen during the night. Looking towards the river, the first signs of daylight streaked the sky. Smoke began to rise from cabin chimneys as the inhabitants of Miv rekindled cooking fires and set about their early morning tasks. Long wisps of mist, like outstretched searching fingers, drifted up from the river to weave amongst the trees casting a sense of miasma to the scene. Carbov gave an involuntary shudder, a fearful iciness suddenly gripping his spine. He stopped a few paces from the cabin, his instincts all at once urging him to retrace his steps and fetch his weapons.

“This ain’t right,” he muttered under his breath. “Something ain’t right.”

The words hardly out of his mouth, a chorus of shouts from the direction of the river now broke the early morning stillness.

“The water detail!” The unease Carbov had felt now turned to panic. The shouting had turned into screams and the clash of weaponry, steel against steel, like so many cracked bells, rang out through the mist shrouded trees and was coming nearer. Carbov made to turn for his cabin as guttural bellows and nasal brays, wild and animalistic in nature, replaced the last of the human screams.

The snort of hot breath hit Carbov’s face as he spun on his heels, the overpowering stench like rotting vegetation causing him to retch uncontrollably. In disbelief he starred, wide eyed with terror, into the face of his doom; the eyes of deep cruelty, ridged horns tipped with spikes of iron, the ears flat amidst a shock of matted silver grey hair, the thin lips curled back in the mocking semblance of a grin exposing browning canines. All these brief last seconds, a low fluttering resonance seemed to emanate from somewhere near by. Morgor’s mace ended the huge arc it had described through the frozen air. Like an egg shell, Carbov’s skull instantly crumpled upon impact.

The horses were amongst the herd with such sudden swiftness that many of the foul beasts were skewered by spears or trampled under hoof before they realised they had been assailed. Cloaks of grey billowed behind the riders as Findor

Findor Silverbark, Wood Elf noble of the Lost Kindred, led his glade riders towards yet more of the abominable children of chaos. A huge battle torn wargore stood amongst a group of the beasts bellowing his rage at them to hold fast and fight. Guiding his mount with his knees, Findor secured his spear in it’s sling and lifted the finely crafted elven bow over his head from off his back. Intuitively, their instincts battle honed to act without verbal commands, the glade riders followed their noble’s lead. As one, the Grey Elves loosed their lethal steel tipped rain of death at the unsuspecting herd.

Morgor realised too late the elven attack. Gors and Ungors writhed in the crimson stained snow around him, white fletched arrows bristling from neck, head, torso and limb. He had allowed himself to be distracted by his fury with Khazgor. The wargor now recognised the scent he had briefly caught on the breeze the previous night; elf kind, but mixed with an unfamiliar earthiness. This unfamiliarity, and his trust in the brayshaman, had proven his undoing. Those few beasts remaining standing now turned and fled. The elven steeds swept onwards, the exultant yells of their rider’s giving voice to the joy of the hunt.

“Prove powers, Khazgor, or I rip in two,” Morgor growled turning on the shaman. He stood with Khazgor amid the dead of the herd, glade riders banking to his left and right in pursuit of the fleeing beasts. Towards him, out of the mist, three of the elven riders now cantered at breakneck speed, spears lowered. Khazgor began to utter strange guttural words and to shake the braystaff causing the shells and bones to rattle. Morgor readied to meet the approaching riders, shifting his grip on the huge mace and hefting up his oak and iron war shield to a more comfortable position. As he looked, the fast approaching elves seemed to flicker and distort as though he were viewing them through a heat haze. A foul smelling inky smoke began to materialise around the wargore and his shaman, echoing, demonic neighing filling their ears. Through the black fog, Morgor could just make out the elven riders, no more than a dozen yards away, whipping their arms back to hurl their spears like javelins. Then the darkness had closed around him leaving the image of the three arcing spears in his mind’s eye. A nauseous vertigo gripped his stomach as the sensation of ascending at great speed assaulted all his senses.

Findor Silverbark realised the spears had been thrown too late. The elven missiles, finely balanced and lethal, disappeared into the deepness of the shadow, eddies of spinning vapour marking their wake. For an instant, the black cloud seemed to resemble the thrown back head of a whinnying, hellish steed before dissipating into the brittle winter air. Findor turned to one of his companions as he eased his steed to a stand still.