Call to Pay
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:45 pm
“Call to pay!”
The gruff voice holds your attention, but only for an instant.
Your breath is visible in the cold air, a testament to your life in stark contrast with this frozen forest and the death that surounds you.
Sitting in the snow, you stare at your hands. Your ears still ring from the clash of metal.
A bit louder this time.
“Call to pay!!”
Your head lifts but your gaze remains fixed on your gauntlets, you flex and release your fingers, they shake and your eyes lift to survey the snow field.
Crows and wolves… soon.
“Call to pay lads!!!”
The throatcutters pick their way moving from body to body. Always slight men… releasing the fallen foe from this place forever with one quick move of their blade.
The local soldiers are carted off by priests, the foe dispatched by the shortblade and burned in heaps… but us…
“Those can stand do so now or ye’ll get no pay!”
Us… we sellswords. They don’t pay if ye can’t stand to meet them, so they leave us lay where we fall, wounded or dead. You’ve experienced this firsthand… knocked senseless by a glancing blow of a greataxe a few seasons back.
You slowly pull off your gauntlets and examine fingers caked in dried blood.
Lifting yourself off the bloodspattered snow you move numbly towards the paymaster… sensations of being under coldwater.
He drops a small sack into your shaking hands and spits near enough to make you glance up. His face is a blur... just as the last few hours have been.
Stumbling away… one last look about the field.
The memories so very recent… the fear… the pain… the exhaustion… the distance.
A hundred heroes created on this day, but not you.
The gruff voice holds your attention, but only for an instant.
Your breath is visible in the cold air, a testament to your life in stark contrast with this frozen forest and the death that surounds you.
Sitting in the snow, you stare at your hands. Your ears still ring from the clash of metal.
A bit louder this time.
“Call to pay!!”
Your head lifts but your gaze remains fixed on your gauntlets, you flex and release your fingers, they shake and your eyes lift to survey the snow field.
Crows and wolves… soon.
“Call to pay lads!!!”
The throatcutters pick their way moving from body to body. Always slight men… releasing the fallen foe from this place forever with one quick move of their blade.
The local soldiers are carted off by priests, the foe dispatched by the shortblade and burned in heaps… but us…
“Those can stand do so now or ye’ll get no pay!”
Us… we sellswords. They don’t pay if ye can’t stand to meet them, so they leave us lay where we fall, wounded or dead. You’ve experienced this firsthand… knocked senseless by a glancing blow of a greataxe a few seasons back.
You slowly pull off your gauntlets and examine fingers caked in dried blood.
Lifting yourself off the bloodspattered snow you move numbly towards the paymaster… sensations of being under coldwater.
He drops a small sack into your shaking hands and spits near enough to make you glance up. His face is a blur... just as the last few hours have been.
Stumbling away… one last look about the field.
The memories so very recent… the fear… the pain… the exhaustion… the distance.
A hundred heroes created on this day, but not you.
