Cavalry charge

[AEsob]

Just a charge I wrote for one of my Elder Scrolls fanfics on fanfiction.net, it is not really edited.

 

Here we go:

 

"Cavalry..." he drew in a deep breath, and then bellowed: "CHAAAAAARGE!"

The line rumbled, snorted and huffed.

Stallions reared, warriors kicked their horses with spike heeled boots.

He knew this part was coming, but he never wanted to do it.

To kick a dumb creature in the stomach with a spike to drive it towards the very spear she tried with all her might to run away from.

He did it anyway. Fortunately with a battle hardened mount it was more of a jab than a stab.

His mare neighed, reared and then kicked forward, her rider's chainmail clicking in contact with the plate armour below.

And then it began.

The ground quaked as one thousand five hundred horses with warriors seated atop pounded the uneven ground to dust.

Under Kynareth's sky, with Magnus abandoning the mortals in their sports of bloodletting, and hiding behind the clouds shameful of his

creation, and ravens, like the dogs of war cracking Nirn below the hooves of their horses, soared above, preparing for a brand new meal of warm entrails.

Ulf and his men shook the earth, the riders trying their best to keep their beating hearts masked under the thunderous rumbling of fifteen hundred horses madly trampling anything in their way. They raised their shields, prepared their spears, for the line was visible now.

The horses were far more nervous than the murderers seated above, for their primal instinct rose within them.

"What are you doing you fool," it said to them, "run away from the danger, the unknown that is before you, the ones with the pointy things that hurt worse than the riders' jabs."

Yet they ran, for it was all they could do. The herd always stayed together. In rain, in snow, in the dust the metal hooves made, and the tides of blood the horde made.

Their eyes went wide, their ears pricked towards the grunting and the praying line of various coloured blue things before them.

For the riders seated atop, the world slowed down, till there was only a spear, a gap in the wall where an eye was visible, and a single moment.

Ulf stabbed, and the point of his spear tore through the air in that gap, and before the gap closed, through a skull that cracked around steel and through it, into the heart behind the unevenly gambeson whose dying beats reverberated through the wood and into his hand.

In that split second, with his brain throbbing inside his skull, he noticed a curving arrow coming at his gauntleted arm.

He sharply drew it into his chest, and the arrow flew safely over him, and helpfully, not into a rider behind him, but the ground below.

But the wooden spear in his hand splintered into the wounds of the impaled, as he had jerked with far too much force.

And then he heard the screams. One male, the other female.

His hands had taken many lives, two more were but a minor addition to the list whose blood he had spilt with his own two hands, but

even then, he felt, for a second, the bile rising to his throat.

He drew back the bloody, splintered stub that was the spear and threw it at another bandit. And all of this had happened in a split second, so the velocity of his mare crashed against the already weakening shield wall.

When the second volley of the great charge that was his heavy cavalry hit the wall, it had collapsed, with the spears of the bandit army doing nothing but to bounce against the heavily armoured horses, and with another jab of the spiked boot, the horse mercilessly reared.

Ulf's mare, in spirit of her herdmates, before his very eyes, simply kicked a man's face in.

Around him, his cavalry mercilessly slaughtered escaping men and women, trampled over bone, sinew, face, flesh, crotch...sometimes Ulf wondered if the horses, who were supposed to be innocent creations of the gods, were as bloodthirsty and cruel as the hounds of war that rode them.

He shook the thought from his mind.

Ulf drew the axe from the loop on his belt and swung hard.

A wet thump and a scream later, a bandit was being painfully dragged across the field, with an axe buried in her chest and her legs being cut and stabbed and mangled open by Nirn's merciless skin and the weapons and shields discarded by her own comrades.

Ulf used the velocity of his mare to throw her, and in his peripheral vision, he saw a girl, who could not be more than seventeen, with a beautiful face and hair as fair as golden wheat, jump to stab him in the throat. Her blue eyes were widened with anger, and he could see that she was better armed than the bandits he was facing.

She was probably a mercenary, one of those types who were blinded by their youthful idealism and optimism. One of those who left loving parents in some village with promises to return after they had seen the world, maybe earned some riches.

She was a girl who could not have been more than seventeen; maybe she had never even known a man, or a woman for that matter.

And now she never would.

Ulf hit her wrist with his shield, and because the momentum of his mare threw her completely off balance, then his arm rose on its own volition, and he buried the axe in her golden scalp.

She stayed attached to the axe, being dragged across the field filled with dead. Ulf shook the corpse free.

She must have been a beautiful, sweet natured girl with a thirst of the unknown, she was young enough to be his daughter, and yet, yet he killed her.

A man before him was desperately trying to escape the spear that trapped his leg to the ground, but before he could, Ulf trampled him. The sickening crunches, accompanied by the screams of pure, unadulterated agony would haunt him for a while, that Ulf knew.

Then it ended.

And the clouds burst forth in rain, Ulf wondered if it was in shame of the bloody act done below them.

Rain washes everything.

Blood, internal matter, dirt, grime...but can it wash away guilt?

Among the cheers of his men and women for a job well done, Ulf Bloody Beard wondered if he truly had become that name.

Because he knew, deep down, despite his every attempt to deny this, every attempt to escape this, he knew that he enjoyed it.

I look at this stuff, and I realise, as Ziggy and Mokrie might be able to relate, that damn, I have come a long long way.

Remember my early sh*t Mokrie?

Edited September 14, 2016 by AEsob

[Mokrie Dela]

I can't say that I do. I've seen so many stories, and TBH I barely remember what I had for dinner last night.

 

(I'm not actually joking; I had to really think about it then)

 

I also gotta admit I saw "it's not even edited" and my first thought is: "why!?"

 

I'll read this at some point but come on, man, give it an edit at least!!

[AEsob]

I can't say that I do. I've seen so many stories, and TBH I barely remember what I had for dinner last night.

 

(I'm not actually joking; I had to really think about it then)

 

I also gotta admit I saw "it's not even edited" and my first thought is: "why!?"

 

I'll read this at some point but come on, man, give it an edit at least!!

 

Alright man, edit done.