Night Bastards

It was a pitch black night, a night of the new moon, and the only light in the circle of ancient trees was a campfire which illuminated the shadowy figures of the battered and scarred mercenary company that surrounded it. What was once a great company of Sixty mighty warriors was now only twelve.

Ragnar the leader regarded the bivouac with pity. Most sat quietly chowing down on hard tack, beans, and the fatty birds they'd taken earlier in the evening. Young Peter King'sbane was asleep no doubt dreaming of the hooker he was planning to marry once he returned home. What a young fool that lad is for marrying a prostitute. The leader thought as he stroked his graying beard. Ragnar was in his mid fifties with all the war wounds and arthritis that came with it but outside of selling his blade to the highest bidder he had nothing to go back to so he'd fight till he could not anymore. He turned his attention to a slender figure sitting on a rucksack and clutching a gnarled wooden staff in his hands.

The figure was dressed in a dark green cloak and black robes. A pouch was tied to his belt and from beneath his cloak protruded a slender sword hilt. “Ubor,” Ragnar addressed the figure,”What do the flames tell you tonight?”

“They are silent tonight, my lord.”

Ubor was a fire-talker he divined from flames the way others of his ilk gleaned answers from cards and tea leaves. “Bah I'm nobody's lord.” The leader said vehemently. “I'm barely holding this rag tag group together. Face it, Ubor. We don't need your pyre magic to know how badly we screwed the pooch this time.”

This latest assignment was a total disaster. The company had been decimated to its current number and the kingdom they fought for had been conquered leaving them fugitives and without pay. Yes it was a poorly chosen job. Now the mercs were on the edge of utter oblivion.

Ubor, usually wise and eloquent of speech, remained silent for he could not provide verbal salve for the wounded spirit of his leader. “Where is Francis?” Ragnar asked suddenly. “He was supposed to be back from his watch by now.”

A beefy ox of a man by the name of Ruben stood up and hitched his belt & stretched and said, “I’ll find him.”

Ruben wandered into the woods to find the missing watchman. “I can't see horse pucky in this darkness “ he complained.

“Francis, where are you?” he bellowed.

Suddenly he heard movement in the trees above him. He stared up, “Francis is that you? Something warm and wet splashed on his face and multiple plopping sounds pierced the silence. Reuben’s stomach churned with apprehension. He'd killed enough men and been in enough battles to know blood when he felt it. He looked down at his feet and even in the dark he knew he was looking at a very dismembered Francis. Something grabbed him. He fell on his back, swearing and fouly invoking the names of several deities he didn't even believe in. He howled as he was dragged into the forest.

Ragnar and one of his men rushed into the woods from where the hellish commotion had occurred, they lit torches and made haste to the spot where Ruben disappeared. Ragnar cursed when he saw Francis and he used the light of his torch to scrutinize the blood drenched tree in front of him. Shadowy figures seem to flit around in the darkness whispering and chattering. The forms were vague and indiscernible in the limited light.

“We are under siege!” Exclaimed Ragnar. He and his companion retreated back to camp shouting for the others to gather their weapons.

“What’s going on?” asked Peter King'sbane, brandishing his pole axe.

Then the troops saw the shadowy figures barely distinguished in the moonless night. “H-Helheim has been opened in the forest and the damned come to claim us.” stammered Ubor even as he readied himself. The man who'd accompanied Ragnar used his hand to make the holy symbol of his religion and charged forward swinging madly. The sword tore through something solid and a shadow howled in rage. The blade was awash with some kind of blackish blood. “They bleed,” he cried out in bloodthirsty glee just as he was devoured and torn to shreds.

Humongous, a large man of six feet with a facial deformity that was unknown to be congenital or the product of a battle drew from his back a sword made from the lower jaw of some beast almost as large as its slayer. He produced a vial of oil and broke it on the sword letting it run down between the two rows of teeth. He set it on fire and swung it with great ferocity.

Satanic screeching could be heard as the shadows retreated from the fiery blade. This gave way to a new tactic and the sell swords took up torches and swung them about. A new sound was heard that did more to terrify the embattled troopers than the devils. Henry Jenkins had screamed. This was a cause of fright because he'd taken a vow of silence that'd he'd held up since before he joined this group. Whatever the torch light revealed was so heinous that it made Jenkins break his vow by crying out.

The others could see them in the torch light now too: their foes, twisted, demonic travesties of the humanoid form! The fiends—whatever they were—shrank from the firebrands. Saras, the lone female of the group had had quite enough of this ambush. She snapped, finally pushed over the edge of logic and sanity. She whipped out her twin daggers and stabbed blindly at the things in the dark. Vise-like teeth crushed her left arm and ripped it from her body. Her agonized scream was cut short by her head rolling deftly from her body to the ground.

Humongous stood undaunted and undefeated in a circle fire. Ragnar chopped and swung like an enraged bull. Ubor stood poised, lashing out with his staff and the sword, an expensive blade akin to a scimitar. Any others who remained upright and unmaimed gave an account of themselves to the inhumans before them.

Eventually the nightmare ended and the shadowy foes retreated into the dark forest they came from. Of the twelve mercenaries who survived the ill-fated expedition only six remained. Including Ragnar, Ubor, and Humongous. Peter would never marry Julia Primrose. His body was somewhere deep in the forest.

“What were those things?” asked one of the survivors.

Ubor shrugged “Even I have no answers.”

Ragnar spoke, “I do.This very night we fought our kinsmen. Whether they were from this plane or another like us they are cast offs, fatherless beings to whom darkness is our mother. Bastards each of us.”

End