Chapter Six

Ben Cromwell rode to war under a generic banner. It was a field sable with a sun rising d'or dividing, or to the orcs a bloody black flag with a sun on it. He had gathered to him a set of old mercenaries, men who were perhaps a little too old to be still riding campaigns. Many of them were married and forced back onto the war trails by misfortune rather than design. They were exactly the sort of men Ben Cromwell needed, hard men with something to fight for.

By the time they reached Vaastmark they had been subjected to hours of drills and practices concerning the fighting of greenskins. Nevertheless Ben did not ride them right into the fray. Instead he called upon the Marquis at his castle. The exchange did not go well.

Posing as a random Knight of the grand Mark Ben informed the castle that he was there to collect the bounty on Orc ears, as promised in ancient charter. Even the prematurely aging lord of the demesne could not argue with that law. Nor could he expect to be able to pay it. Which is why Ben let him off with a vague promise of land in lieu. And with that Ben's company rode off, completely ignoring the lady Maquess' invitations to dine.

She was of course livid with her husband and in front of their new daughters and household staff publicly berated him for his wild spending. For once the man managed to find enough spine to tell her to shut up and remind her that his ownership of the march was entirely dependant upon his ability to hold back the green tide.

He had not however banked on the sheer success of the company in question. Time and time again they managed to not only drive the greenskins from their conquered lands but drive them into a trap that utterly destroyed them. Sacks of ears were arriving by the mule train load. And every time he had either to pay up or pass another piece of land into the control of this strange knight. What was worse his own people were joining in. It seemed every man-jack who lived anywhere near the new border was taking up 'scragging' to supplement their income.

By the end of the summer the remaining orcs in the lowlands had taken to slicing their own ears off in an attempt to avoid wholesale slaughter. It didn't work, the riders just took to sending whole faces instead. Lady Abomove of course tried not to pay. That was until her husband presented the alternative, without even the rangers who used to quell the orcs he had barely a handful of men to stop these knights from stealing everything they had. She acquiesced with customary bad grace and a silent vow to get her revenge on him.

The 'Hunt' went on well into autumn and for a while the Marqus feared that even winter would not stop it. By now the 'scraggers' were ranging well into the mountains after their prey, it had simply become far too hard to find the greenskins as they hid in the darkest depths of unpopulated forest lowlands. But relief came in the form of a visit by the mysterious knight who had led the effort.

"I will take the deeds to my land now" the blond young man had said through his muffling scarf, and the Marquis, so long used to obedience had handed it over. Of course the land he handed over was mostly the land that the mercenaries had reclaimed and therefore all but unpopulated but he had to keep the wife happy…. It came as quite a surprise then when the knight accepted the land happily. It was only the following spring that the Marquis found out that the knight in question had paid off those men who had helped hunt with the land, apparently keeping none for himself. Marquess Abomove was livid once more. Rather than leave as her husband had promised these thugs were now setting up homesteads in what had been his land. Homesteads that would not have to pay her coffers any taxes. That they now presented an armed border between the rest of the march and the mountains was completely beside the point to her and her fury at the lost income lasted for weeks.

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And Ben Cromwell returned o the Hall. He arrived during high spring of the year after he had left, and he arrived a more sombre man. He had done his duty and waged a skirmish war of genocide against the greenskins, knowing full well that the ones he fought were the weakest of the mountain tribes, forced into the lowlands because they were weak and had nowhere else to be. But that wasn't what made him sombre, they were orcs and there simply wasn't enough room for their race and that of men on the face of the world. Nor was it that he had put the families of good men into the firing line; they were after all protected by exactly the same riders who had driven out the menace in the first place. No what made him sombre was what he had seen in the house that he had called home.

The walls were holed to make way for large windows, the utilitarian and local furs replaced with imported wall hangings and carpets. The few guards on the walls were dressed in bright colours and carried shiny spears, with less ability than the old stable maid had managed. Worst of all his father, the man who folk used to call the Man-Mountain had run to flab and ill-health. The man been could remember lifting a bench load of people had seemed to struggle to make it to the local pub. Once there the frail, coughing fat man had barely touched his beer.

Ben had also seen the young heiresses. Two golden haired creatures with turned up noses and pretty dresses. One had even cried when she got a spot of mud on her flounces, and Lady Abomove had of course blamed the whole thing on her husband, shaming him in front of a stranger. It had taken all of Ben's willpower not to strike her.

Needless to say he was glad to quit the place, and even gladder to know that with the structures he put in place he would not have to return in a hurry. The sight of the Hall of Scars came to him like a cold compress on a fever. It was then he realised where his home really was, and for the first time since he left the accursed castle he smiled.

A smile that got all the larger when he was practically bowled over by an effusive Catherine. He had just enough time to take in her stunning smile when she buried her face into his mail-clad shoulder and cried. It was then he made another revelation; he was never going to understand women.

Behind her came her father, his friend Jacques, looking no different form the day Ben had left. Reaching around the crying beauty he clasped his former mentor's hand and shook it with real joy.

"Welcome home son" the man replied and it was true.