"Where evil and wickedness shows its face, beat it like a drum!," Alarant de Lereyne chanted. His regiment followed up with a chorus of voices. "So that their kind may know of your coming and feel fear!"
"Strike at the heart of their formation and break them!" Alarant ordered and lifted his shield in the air. Around and behind him, his regiment of knights shouted in confirmation, their voices gaining an eerie quality from their armour they wore. It chilled Alarant still, even years later.
"Formation seems like a strong word." Gardt shouted over the thunder of their mounts' charge. The horn that the village had heard hung from a leather cord over Gardt's shoulder.
"Not now, Gardt," Alarant replied to his lieutenant, though he had to keep his humour from his tone.
Alarant raised his voice again and lowered his shield. "For Emperor Jessari!" The necrophages were so close now that he could see the yellows of their eyes.
The knights met them at the edge of the fields. The necrophage footmen, even though such a title was too generous for the ghoulish creatures, were either spit on the lances of the knights or crushed under the armoured forms of their mounts. One creature managed to evade both and leapt at Alarant, only for the lord's hammer to crack its skull. The drones that remained over the town curved around and headed for the melee where the knights were chopping into the mass of ghouls like they were harvesting wheat in the fields. The massive flying insects bore down on the knights, striking some with their mandibles and lifting others from their seats. Gardt was picked up with the mandibles of one of the drones and taken from his mount. The riding creature displayed no recognition of the event and simply continued biting and thrashing at the ghouls. With a shout, Gardt grabbed hold of the mandible and swung his sword, first cracking the chitin above the creature's face with his pommel, then ending its disgusting life with a thrust through its face. It died instantly and began plummeting from the air to crash into the mass of ghouls below, knight and all. When Gardt's shining armour erupted from the press of necrophages a heartbeat later, Alarant was not surprised. His second in command had ever been a dependable knight and fighter.
The charge of the knights broke the necrophages quickly and they routed, instinctively dropping to fours like wild animals, the knights attacking at their heels to drive the rout. A massive creature, several times the height of the ghouls and larger even than their flying drones, stood above the mass. It let out a shrill cry, a demented thing between the sounds of a grasshopper and the cry of a goat. At the horrible sound the ghouls slowed and turned, striking back at the knights that hounded them.
Again, the company of knights slammed into the horde of ghouls, though this time the massive creature stood on the line of battle. Four powerful legs plated with chitin lifted a muscular torso and arms strong enough to heft a battle-axe. For a head it had a mess of eyes and mandibles like the drones, but Alarant saw in them a glint that the drones lacked. Only where it stood did the line of ghouls hold, for the rest buckled and fled or were slaughtered. As even the centre of the line collapsed, the giant was surrounded by knights trying to impale it with their lances. One knight got too close and was struck by the battle-axe, his armour sundered to the sound of tearing metal. But by then it was too late for the giant, for the attack left it open and 6 lances struck at it. 2 were repelled by the chitin armour, but the remaining 4 pierced its hide. It cried out and retaliated, but a knight caught the axe-blade on their shield. More lances struck, and it let out another cry and collapsed to the ground.
With the collapse of their leader, the ghoul horde broke in earnest and they fled. Gardt barked an order and they reformed their regiment, facing outwards towards the fleeing monsters. Behind their lines, Alarant and Gardt were looking at the giant necrophage from a lance's distance. It was still alive and breathing despite nearly a dozen spear-wounds.
"Ser Alarant, I have never seen a creature like this, before or after." Gardt said. Alarant understood what event he referred to.
"Neither have I, Ser Gardt." He replied, then raised his voice and turned to his ryders. "Make sure to hold the creature but try not to hurt it further. We will take it to Calimdar." The necrophages had been a plague on Auriga even before the Calamity, but the years where the Amber Lords had lain dormant must have emboldened some change in the creatures.
Alarant dismounted and turned to the young human girl. He was glad that she was alive and well. They had made it in time.
"You can rest now, young one. There is no danger." He said and held out his hand.
The girl looked at his hand and returned his gaze but did not take it. She seemed just as terrified of him and his knights as she had been of the ghouls.
"Gardt, gather some men and ensure the ghouls are truly scattered, then make ready to leave." Alarant said and rose to his feet.
Gardt saluted and singled out some of the other riders before mounting up and chasing the ghouls. Alarant informed the remaining knights to remain ready, then approached the walls. It saddened him that so many found their new forms so frightening, but that was no reason to aggravate their fear with numbers.
"My knights will see to it that your village is safe!" He shouted, hoping that they would understand his speech. "In return, I wish to speak to your leader!"
Several of the sentries on the wall looked to a woman in their midst, who then offered Alarant a long glare. She shouted an order and the gates of the town began to open, a cluster of militia exiting as soon as the gates were wide enough. The young girl gave Alarant a wide berth as she ran for the opening gates of the village. Her parents burst out ahead of the militia group and embraced their child in hugs and tears.
A woman, in her early 30s by Alarant's estimate, moved to stand before him. Her escorts kept a healthy distance from him, but she seemed unfazed.
"What do you want?" The woman said. Her eyes were fixed on his face, or mask as it were, and she kept a hand on the hilt of a sword.
"I simply wish to speak." Alarant said and spread his arms in a diplomatic gesture. It was the truth, and he stood his hands behind his back, keeping well away from the weapon strapped to his belt.
"Speak, then." The woman said, then glanced behind her. A crowd of onlookers had gathered just outside of the open gate. "I trust our workers can return to the fields? Raiders come and go, but the harvest must still come in."
"They are not my fields, there is no need to ask." Alarant said. The woman waved the crowd forward to much cheering. Alarant waited patiently as the villagers streamed past him and into the fields beyond. It would take them some time to clear out the bodies of the ghouls, and the knight-captain hoped that his ryders had not trampled too much of the harvest. Most of them had been knights their whole lives, and the concept of a farmhand's plight was not often on their minds.
"Well?" The woman said.
"Alarant de Lereyne, Knight-Captain of the city of Calimdar. With whom do I have the honour of speaking?" He said.
"My name is Lyriana, daughter of Joalor. If I have a title, I suppose it's captain of the town militia." Lyriana's eyes glanced back towards the walls. A group of villagers were shifting another ghoul onto a pile they were building close to the village walls. "For how much that is worth." She said.
"Why are they piling the bodies in such a fashion?" Alarant asked. The pile was growing higher as the villagers worked.
"We need to burn the bodies before they begin to stink." Lyriana explained.
"But why right next to the village?"
"It still stinks, but it has a different effect. The scent of rotting meat draws the ghouls and their kind. Burning meat, on the other hand, repels them. Keeps the village safer, if at least for a little while." Lyriana said,
Lyriana made a fist with one hand and brought it to her chest then bowed. "Auriga willing, long enough to bring in the harvest."
Alarant waited until she stood up again. "I realise it may seem simple and everyday to you, but my people have been removed from the world for some time and our knowledge of it is outdated."
With a wave he indicated the growing pyre. "We require new knowledge, so we can make Auriga safe from their scourge, yet again."
"Anything you can tell us of these creatures might save a life." Alarant continued when Captain Lyriana did not respond. The woman was staring at him, her hand idly running over the handle of her sword.
A pair of villagers had drifted over while the captain deliberated. It took Alarant a moment to recognise them as the parents that had rushed to the child his men had saved. Before Captain Lyriana could admonish them, the parents were at Alarant's side to shake his hand.
"Thank you!" The man said.
"We cannot thank you enough." The woman said, her other arm around the shoulders of her child. The child looked much happier next to her parents, though a shade of fear passed over her as she looked at Alarant.
"There is no need to thank me," Alarant said and accepted their handshake, "I have a daughter of my own, I understand how it is. As a knight, and more importantly a father, I could never stand idly by when a child is in danger."
"You have a daughter?" Lyriana said, the confusion clear in her voice.
"Aye, her name is Anna. She is my pride and joy." Alarant said.
"Captain Lyriana, don't keep our guest out here in the dirt. He saved our village, and my Periko as well." The woman said to the captain in a scolding tone.
For a moment, Lyriana's eyes shifted away from Alarant. He noted that they became much softer when the woman talked to her fellow villagers than when they looked at him.
Gardt was waiting outside the gates with the rest of the knights when Alarant returned. He had talked with any villager that would come and had learned much about the state of the valley and beyond. When the talks were up, Lyriana had ordered some of her guards to escort him from the village of Ariana's Bend, as it was called. The villagers were much calmer around him as he walked the streets to the gate than when he had arrived, though how much of that was from his impending departure from their lives, he could not say.
"Welcome back, sir." Gardt said and bowed slightly in his saddle.
"Thank you, Gardt. I trust your hunt went well?" Alarant stepped onto his own mount. The creature made no discernible movement or reaction to his return. They were very dependable mounts and fierce in battle, but of personality and warmth they had little to offer.
"A flock of the ghouls ran into an old abandoned vineyard a short ride away. Rigabel suffered a wounding but that pack managed little else before we put them down. Beyond that we found nothing beyond some scattered stragglers desperate to flee." Gardt said.
"What did you do with their remains?"
Emotion and subtlety were difficult to read and convey with their new bodies, but Alarant could see that his question surprised his subordinate.
"Their remains? Forgive me, sir, but they are vile ghouls. I see little reason for burial. Let the carrion take what they will." Gardt said.
"I want you to send some of your men back to the site of the battle and make sure the bodies are burnt. I will explain why on the road home." Alarant said, then stood up in his saddle.
"The rest of us, we ride for Calimdar." He shouted. The men cheered back. The hulking necrophage in their captivity was an important lead in their new understanding of these creatures, and Alarant would not risk the ghouls returning to free or silence it.