Dark Flower III, Ch. 11: Of Pawns and Queens.

[Mikayla]

Dark Flower, Book III

Chapter 11: Of Pawns and Queens.

Sheyreiza brought Lolth’s blessing down on the head of a short, stout fiendish orc. The blow ended in a sickening crack and a spray of green flesh, red blood and gray brain-matter. As the dying tanarukk dropped, Sheyreiza looked about for another opponent but saw none left to fight. Here and there drow were finishing off disabled tanarukka, bandaging wounds, reloading crossbows or simply dying. At their feet were piles of the dead; mostly tanarukka, but more than a few drow also. Sheyreiza kept her morningstar ready and walked among the corpses. The bodies were thickest right in the center of the gate where the huge iron doors had been breached and the drow had made their stand. Sheyreiza had never thought she would see the doors breached; indeed, she never thought she would see someone actually make war upon her city.

The war in Ched Nasad had begun like most drow wars, with the expenditure of lesser races. Tanarukka of Khannyr Vhok’s Scourged Legion attacked the city through the Brotherhood-guarded western portal that opened onto the common bazaar. The first assault caught the city defenders unprepared and the demon-blooded orcs sacked the merchant stalls of those too slow or too stubborn to escape into the higher layers. The tanarukka victory was short lived, however, as Zhennu Orbb responded in force. Naturally the Brotherhood led the counter-attack, avenging their fallen and driving the Scourged Legion back into the Underdark wilds. Unfortunately Vholk’s brutish Legion was far from finished; the attack had just been a preliminary probe. A second assault followed a cycle later. Sheyreiza and her murder-team had reinforced the Brotherhood warriors at the beleaguered western gate. Her murder-team was small but it was a very powerful fighting force, perfect for holding a small choke-point like the western portal against fodder like the tanarukka Legion who relied upon numerical advantage for victory.

The Legion’s slavering, axe-wielding, fiendish orcs came at Ched Nasad’s wall in waves. Over the last twelve hours Sheyreiza had lost count of how many assault waves there had been. The first waves were repulsed by the archers on the wall and in the towers but each subsequent assault gained in strength and grew closer to the wall like ocean waves climbing a beach with a rising tide. Eventually the iron gates were sundered and the tanarukka met the drow in a vicious, merciless and bloody melee. This was where Sheyreiza’s murder-team shined; the western portal was only wide enough for perhaps four or five tanarukka or drow to stand abreast and her murder team could completely plug the hole with their deadly blades. The tanarukka thugs simply tried to force the choke-point with straight forward axe work and brute strength, but the skill of Sheyreiza’s murder team was too great for the monsters to overcome; the scout Phaerun moved gracefully through the battle, slicing throats and hamstrings; the Selvetarm worshipping judicator-in-training Vedo, with his great sword, shouted to his bloodthirsty god as he removed tanarukka heads; the priestess Faerylene, kept her comrades alive with spells in between slaying enemy with her bow; and of course, the high-priestess, Sheyreiza, was right in the center of it all, fighting in eerie silence as she brought down tanarukk after tanarukk with her flaming morningstar. She danced back and forth between giant axes that fell around her like rain, skipping harmlessly off her enchanted armor or missing her altogether. She found the rhythm of the fight and got lost in it; feint, dodge, set, strike - again and again and again, varying the exact order to fit the moment. She paid little attention to her murder team – they would be fools to count upon her to close their wounds. The high priestess was a slayer, not a healer, and she expended her prayer spells to enhance her death dealing, not to keep the weak alive.

As the repeated assault waves failed to push into the city, the fiendish orcs realized that they could not break Sheyreiza’s line through skill of arms. Of course, what they lacked in skill they made up for in numbers. The next waves simply tried to force the gate by pushing through the drow heedless of the dark-elves deadly expertise. The murder-team was used to being out numbered but the shear weight of the tanarukka assaults was pressing them hard. Sheyreiza needed a way to break up the tanarukka formations, and the tanarukka provided the very means to do this. Some of the tanarukka had been petrified by spells during the earlier waves so Sheyreiza had their heads knocked off and their stone bodies placed in the gap where the iron gates once stood. Around these improvised stone posts the drow piled a wall of dead orc bodies. When the next wave came the fiendish orcs found the drow fighting from behind a most macabre fortification. The orcs immediately set about tearing down the bodies comprising the wall, but this gave the drow time to slay them with arrow and spell. Even as one body was pulled from the fortification, another fresh one would joined it on the ground. Irregular gaps formed through which the tanarukka threaded, only to meet the blades of Sheyreiza’s team. When the assault receded, the wall of bodies was rebuilt.

As successful as the drow had been, they were still losing. Bit by bit the murder-team’s bolts, spells, potions and wands were being depleted. Their wounds were accumulating and their fatigue grew. The Brotherhood forces fighting alongside them were in even worse shape; the commoner soldiers of the fighting fraternity did not have the same resources that Sheyreiza’s nobles did. Many of the Brotherhood’s warriors were already dead and almost all of those left alive were sorely injured. Sheyreiza cycled the wounded from the gate to the wall and towers. The most serious of the walking-wounded took positions where they could use crossbows, while the least seriously wounded were placed in the gap to melee along side her murder-team. Periodically she sent runners to Zhennu Orbb for reinforcements but the reply was always the same; no reinforcements were available. It seemed that the enemy was making coordinated attacks at differeing points around the city and the Yathtallar-A’ni wanted to conserve her troops to deal with the inevitable break-through, wherever it might occur. To strengthen her diminishing numbers, Sheyreiza began pressing anyone she could find into service; ready or not, those who passed by the western gate became part of the defense.

As the hours passed, rumors began to circulate that the tanarukka had broken through elsewhere in the city. The tired, wounded troops began to worry about attacks from the rear. Sheyreiza was also worried and so she sent Phaerun out scouting. Though the city was under attack from different directions, Phaerun saw no sign of tanarukka through the rest of the nearby layers. More hours passed and more assaults were repulsed.

Sheyreiza’s eyelids fluttered as she rested against the stone wall of the western gate. Something moved in the abandoned bazaar to the east. She hefted her morningstar and called out to her defenders to turn but the alarm was short lived; the approaching movement was a column of brotherhood warriors come to relieve the gate. It had been almost an entire cycle since Sheyreiza’s team had taken charge of the defense and had met the first wave with volleys of crossbow bolts. Once satisfied the reinforcements were who they said they were, she turned over charge of the portal to the fresh looking Brotherhood captain without ceremony.

Her bloody, wounded, exhausted murder-team limped through an eerily quiet bazaar; fire-blackened doorways looked out upon collapsed stalls. Bodies were strewn about the streets being devoured by hungry rats and insects. The city’s defenders had been too busy holding off the second attack to clean up after the first. Wearily, Sheyreiza led her team back up through Ched Nasad’s layers to Qu’ellar Auvryndar. She dismissed her troops and headed towards the Matron’s throne room to report upon the battle. In the Matron’s antechamber she found the house arch-mage Celuldor. The normally cool and detached wizard was clearly anxious and highly agitated. Sheyreiza greeted him but he walked passed her, pausing only long enough to give her the most perfunctory of bows due a high priestess. “My apologies Yathtallar, but I must go.” He said quickly.

Sheryeiza turned as he walked past. “To where?”

“I cannot discuss the mission at this time, Yathtallar, all I can say is that I go at the Matron’s command.” He looked Sheyreiza in the eye. “Shadows cloak you sister.” And with that, Celuldor walked out.

“And you brother.” She replied quietly after he was gone. Fatique madeher eyes burn and she rubbed her face; her hands came away bloody and grimy. She realized she had not washed since the battle, but she knew the report was more important than her appearance, or at least she hoped it was.

Shyntlara was waiting for her in the throne room and Sheyreiza made her report dutifully. Shyntlara expressed some agitation at the Yathtallar A’ni’s willingness to sacrifice Sheyreiza’s murder-team of Auvryndar nobles to conserve Zhennu Orbb’s strength, but there was nothing to be done about that now. Shyntlara dismissed Sheyreiza, but before she left Sheyreiza asked about Celuldor’s mission.

“You will know soon enough.” Shyntlara replied ominously. “Now leave me.”

Sheyreiza knew better than to disobey or press the issue. She left the Matron’s chambers, found a servant, and ordered a hot bath drawn. The opening battle of the war was over, at least as far as Sheyreiza and her team were concerned. It had not been a defeat but Sheyreiza had a hard time thinking of it as a victory. Though the Scourged Legion had not sacked the city, they had done much more damage than Sheyreiza would have ever thought possible. A month ago the concept of orcs, even fiendish orcs, posing a serious threat to the City of Shimmering Webs would have been ludicrous. Now, however, in light of Lolth’s silence and the recent slave revolt, Kaanyr Vholk’s legion had become a serious threat, especially when coupled with Qu’ellar Melarn on the inside. Melarn had not made a move yet, but in war as in Savva, one moved and sacrificed the least valuable pieces first. That thought did not give Sheyreiza much comfort as she washed the blood, gore and grime off her skin – had her team not been among the first pieces engaged? Did that not mean she was a pawn?

In the steaming tub she looked over her long, lithe body. It was bruised, though the bruises were hard to see, and it was exhausted. It was, however, the body of a female drow, decorated from toe to throat with tattoos of webbing and spiders denoting her faith in Lolth. It was the body of a high priestess; it was not the body of a pawn, or at least it was not supposed to be. The thought of how she was used angered her and had she not been so fatigued, Auvryndar slaves probably would have lost their lives assuaging that anger. A thought came to Sheyreiza in the midst of her muted rage, rising up like a vision through the steam of the bath. A pawn is the weakest of all pieces in the great game of Savva – but it is also the only one that can cross the web-board and become a Valsharess, a Queen - it just has to survive the crossing. Of course, for a pawn to become a new Valsharess, the old Valsharess must have already been taken off the board. With that thought in mind, Sheyreiza set herself to finding a way across the treacherous field that was the future; and to finding a way to ensure the old Valsharess would not be around when Sheyreiza made it to the other side...

[Zakharra]

Awsome, Mik.

[Cayssan]

Mik - still manages to make the ap'os'trap'he elves interesting.
Don't stop.

[Mikayla]

Cays!!!! Nice to see you around hun. What have you been up to? By the way, the above story, though the most recent I have written, is from months ago - much has happened since then, including Shey getting her own noble house of which she is now the Matron Mother. Anyway, come back to us hun, stick around and play awhile!

[Dorn]

Prawns and Queens.
Sounds like Sydney.