The Battle of Ebulon (31 page)

Pirjo looked
at her husband, and then spoke to the Orcs again. "The Beloved of
the Goddess is still waiting. Should he go home, because the Orcs
cannot decide who should face him?"

This galvanized the
largest tribe, the Golden Bears into rushing the hilltop. Pelicans
and Cardinals stopped fighting each other to defend against the
greater threat, eight thousand screaming Golden Bear warriors. With
the Golden Bears were packed against the base of the hill, the
Bighorns, nominally Golden Bear allies, decided to backstab them,
and three thousand Bighorns attacked the Golden Bears from
behind.

The priestess in yellow
spoke. "Sister, husband, I make it about half of the tribes
engaged."

The 'Beloved of the
Goddess' inclined his head slightly to indicate ‘Yes’.

The priestess in red
spoke for the first time, "We need to speed things up. The
contractions are closer."

Pirjo sighed.
"I'll try," she whispered. In a louder voice, "Our husband is
getting impatient. We thought that Orc warriors were
honorable.
Will you not supply a warrior to fight the Beloved of the
Goddess?"

Chaos. Three thousand
Squirrel and Raccoon warriors marched from their encampments (in
one case after a quick change of command) to attack the Golden
Bears from behind. Four thousand Deer and the Loon warriors
attacked the Black Bears, wiping them out almost at once. Thousands
of Mockingbird, Bison, and Elk warriors rampaged into the Badger
encampment from the other side, ending up in a pitched battle with
the Deer and Loon warriors when the last Badger warriors went
down.

The Beaver tribe decided
to imitate their namesake, thousands of warriors building traps
across the front and sides of their encampment, to keep the
warriors of the other tribes out.

"That is most of them now
sister," breathed the priestess in yellow quietly. "No, wait. Look
to the rear!"

Five of the smaller
tribes, the Fox, Moose, Roadrunner, Coyote, and Grizzly Bear had
decided to take advantage of the chaos to loot. They were after
women and children mostly.

Orcish rules
were that women and children could be adopted by any tribe. They
often were, because Orcish lives were brutal and short. Adopting
the wives, sons, and daughters of a defeated tribe was one way to
prevent your own from perishing.

In the case of
the Fox tribe, they appeared to be going about it intelligently,
making offers to the women to join them. In the case of the Grizzly
Bears, well, they had a fight on their hands. Orc women may not
have been warriors, but they knew about weapons.

Moose was smart. They'd
been spying on the others, and decided to imitate Fox's success
with bribery. Roadrunner was doing both, depending upon what each
local sub-chief thought was right. Coyote, well, they were so far
to the rear it was hard to tell.

Meanwhile, the
larger tribes kept on fighting, oblivious to what was occurring in
the rear. Only the Beaver tribe realized that a raid was going on,
and they were so upset with everyone else, that they suddenly
decided to up stakes, and leave the battlefield. Of course they
raided every encampment they could on the way out. They were
Orcs.

About a half
hour later, an exhausted Orc warrior in hacked and slashed
armor
staggered up to the gates of Ebulon. He cried out, "I claim
the right of combat with the beloved of the Goddess," then
collapsed flat on his face in the mud and blood at the base of the
wall.

Kanerva let out a little
cry, and a gush of liquid came from beneath her legs.

Pirjo turned to the
captain, who was still leaning against the wall, looking stunned.
"Her water's broken, we must get her home. I think that we've done
enough here today.”

She looked over the
battlefield. “I make that at least twenty thousand dead, and ten
thousand fled. Those fled will take tales of this with them, and
not return. Since we are Kanerva’s midwives, we really can't stay."
She bent over, and gave the captain quick peck on the check. "Good
luck Captain, and the Goddess' Blessings be upon you and your
city."

Then the 'Beloved of the
Goddess' picked up and carried his pregnant wife back through the
whirlpool, his two other wives holding onto his shoulders, the
cat-beast at his side.

This Entry Point features
a character or characters from:

Warrior of
Urbema Trilogy by Wayne Borean

Upcoming.

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Blog:
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Entry point
15 - by Matt Taylor

Commander
Alatearamae of the Ebulonite 7
^th
brigade looked out over the
snowy battlefield, the Orc bodies piled almost as high as the
corpses of her fallen warriors. They had blunted the attack of the
Orcish vanguard but she knew that it wasn't over yet. Her ranks had
been badly mauled and the knowledge that the main Orc force was
still out there gave her pause. She wasn't worried about the Orc
blood running down her spear and onto her hand, she wasn't worried
about the remnants of her fortifications. The only thing on her
mind was what would happen to her kingdom should the invaders
overrun this entry point. Only a warrior knew the crushing silence
of waiting, waiting for contact, waiting for death. A silence
broken only by the sounds of her troops hurriedly trying to rebuild
some defensive gate at their outpost. It was as if time was in slow
motion. A gradual march towards a pre-determined fate that one
would in turns anticipate and fear.

Alatearamae
was snapped from her internal reverie by a sudden sound. Instantly,
she raised her spear, preparing to call her forces into formation
for battle, thinking that it marked the onslaught of the main
Orcish hordes. She stopped herself short however when she
recognised that the unexpected sound was not in fact Orc war drums
but rather an odd singing. The song was almost whimsical, a stark
contrast to the blood soaked environs and was like no battle march
she had ever heard. This peaked her curiosity and she scrambled up
the ladder to the lookout post in hopes of sighting the source of
this strange tune, unsure if it would spell salvation or certain
damnation for her and the remaining troops of the
7
^th
brigade. To her surprise, three strange forms appeared on the
horizon and marched towards her position, continuing their curious
cant.

“
The table is
laid and the feast is prepared.

There's wine and sky
candy for all.

No matter the task that
we have to complete,

for the banquet we answer
the call.”

The commander was
dumbstruck by the forms marching in military formation towards the
outpost. They appeared virtually identical save for their colour.
Each of the three was a corpulent figure with minimal definition
around their features. Virtually just three roughly shaped balloon
men, one in a deep red colour reminiscent of a fine wine, one the
pale yellow of well matured cheese and one the vibrant green of a
fresh celery stick and each carrying a unique weapon. Weapon might
have been a euphemistic term she realised a moment later when she
got a good look. The red figure was carrying what appeared to be a
giant butter knife while the yellow figure was wielding a 4 tined
fork. Rounding out the set was the immense desert spoon carried by
the green figure. She knew that the king had called for help from
the other worlds but this surely could not have been what he had in
mind, could it?

The three arrived at the
entry to the outpost where rocks of various shapes were being piled
up to add some measure of defence for the oncoming onslaught. The
green figure called out with the voice of a Command Sergeant Major
“Kitchen party, HALT!” and the three came to attention. Setting
aside her amazement for a moment, Alatearamae managed to call out
to the three “Stand to and Identify” to which the green individual
took one step forward and proclaimed loudly “I am Celarius, First
kitchen hand of the mighty Pothcroth, most mighty God of cooking.
Salivate at his words mortal. He has heard your cries for help and
while he is unable to attend due to his obligation to oversee the
banquet of the heavens, we have been dispatched to render aid”. The
yellow individual then stepped forward and proclaimed “I am
Edamgouda, second kitchen hand of the mighty Pothcroth”. A second
or two transpired before the third character stepped forward and
bumbingly proclaimed “Indeed, he is Edamgouda, of that I can assure
you.” A blank expression then set in on his face and a long awkward
silence ensued, eventually broken by Alatearamae, growing
impatient, who simply said “And you are...?”. Celarius reached over
and smacked the red character up the back of the head, growling
“She wants your name, not his”. The red character blinked hard and
a look of concentration came across his face. Finally, he managed
to say “Yea. I'm Semillion”, looking over at Celarius as if to make
sure he had his own name right.

“
Stand by to
render honours, I shall be down to greet you presently as commander
of this outpost” Alatearame called out, turning back towards the
ladder. Once on the ground, her principal lieutenant, Nemmin,
appeared at her side displaying a look of consternation. “Seriously
commander? Is this ALL the help we're going to get? We have cooks
enough already and at least ours can remember their own names. We
need soldiers.” The commander barely broke stride as she addressed
her right hand officer “Nemmin, of all people, I would expect you
to have an open mind. You are barely 5 foot tall and weigh no more
than 100lbs, yet are one of the bravest and most skillful warriors
in our kingdom. Besides, any help is better than no help at all”.
Chastised, Nemmin fell into position to his commander's right, 1
pace behind. Despite her strong words of support, Alatearame was
also rather perplexed by this turn of events. Upon approaching the
entryway, she noticed that her troops had stopped work to gawk at
the odd characters that had arrived to render some form of aid,
though at a man, each of them was highly sceptical about the
effectiveness of said aid. “Back to work you lot, we've still got
plenty of the green skinned bastards left to kill”.

Marching right up to
Celarius, Alatearame stood to attention. Completely fearless of
Gods and men, especially those with such odd henchmen, she was
never one to mince words so came straight out and asked “So let me
get this straight. Your God couldn't be bothered coming because he
had some sort of banquet to attend and so he sent you? The
annihilation of our kingdom is less important than some sort of
cosmic buffet?” The three divine kitchenhands looked at each other
in a state of bewilderment until Edamgouda turned to Alatearame and
explained “Well, of course. There's sky candy there. Have you ever
HAD sky candy? It's really good. Tastes like salt water taffy.”
Celarius chimed in “Do you know why sky candy tastes like salt
water taffy?” Alatearame barely managed to conceal her frustrations
and stated a simple “No”. “Neither do we” Semillion jabbered from
behind the other two, having fallen out of formation to look at a
passing butterfly. “It's a mystery that we may never understand and
a question we will seek to answer for all of time” mourned
Celarius.

Alatearame's face dropped
as she began mourning for her once proud kingdom that would surely
be overrun by the Orcish hordes if these three buffoons were all
the help she was going to get. Turning back to address the three,
she showed a battleworn persona that was almost unidentifiable as
the proud Ebulonite commander that she was. “Look. I don't want to
sound unappreciative but we've really got our backs against the
wall here. Our position has been badly mauled already and that was
just the Orc vanguard. I'm down to 30% combat effectiveness. My
fortifications are almost gone and the main force of the horde is
still out there. We've been trying to hold the entry point long
enough for the reinforcements to arrive from the other worlds and
you must understand my concern that the only help we've received is
three kitchenhands. Cooks we have in abundance but we need
Warriors, not snacks. Can the three of you even fight?”

The three shared a
knowing look and in unison, their faces began to sink into their
skulls like a sinkhole and a loud whistle like a kettle began to
come from each of them. Alatearame was not overly impressed. While
annoying, this noise would do nothing to stop the hordes. Moments
later, it was as if small explosions were happening under the skin
of the three and they began to grow and take on a more defined
form. Chiselled muscle structure began appearing on their abdomen
and arms and they were gaining height rapidly. A mysterious
ethereal light encompassed the three, split only by bolts of
lighting that seemed to emanate from within each of them. The
shrill whistle began to change too, sounding as if the shofar had
blown a call to war. The now gargantuan sized divine kitchenhands
began to inspire hope in Alatearame, impressive as their form now
was, but the transformation was not yet complete. An array of pots
and pans began to appear around the three, forming up as armour on
their skin, coming together with the clash of a thousand
broadswords. Large saucepans descended onto each of their heads and
as the dust begins to settle, Alatearame saw the divine
kitchenhands in their new form clearly. Their faces were no longer
round and jolly but rather fierce and intimidating. Their armour
appeared as an impenetrable layer of cookery. Truly, they now
looked like demigods. Strange demigods but demigods nonetheless.
The three each stepped forward in turn and the handle on their
saucepan helmets snapped down over their face as an additional
protection. They were truly a fearsome sight except for Semillion
who was rubbing his face and crying quietly from where his face
guard had smacked him in the nose.