Chapter 4
That night the camp was silent, as it had been every night for the past week. A silence pervaded, unbroken by either Rider as they contemplated the days events. They had thought, when finding the dead freshly so, that there was nothing that could even come close to matching the atrocity of it, but the dead weeks old, skin only patches covering old organs, bodies half gone and accompanied by the bodies of carrion birds dead from bloating, all of which still being feasted on by the now fat scavengers, forced them to admit that they might have been wrong. And after a week of investigating the now-ruins of Inzilbêth, they had yet to find a hint of the forces that had perpetrated this act.
They were beginning to think they should just go home.
And that night, like all the nights before, they went to their bed rolls with the scent of death still in their nostrils, images from the course of the day flashing before their closed eyes, haunting them in their dreams. But this night, they were not awakened by the sound of their own screaming, this night, they were awoken by the very Urgals they sought.
The creatures were trying their hardest to be quiet, to their credit, but unfortunately they were still about as loud as rampaging rhinos. Vrael and Ilúdör were awoken when a particularly rowdy pair got in a fight and knocked over a rotting tree, giving them just the warning they needed. In seconds they had their bows and their swords. With the calm only found in veteran fighters when facing a numerically superior foe, they crept into the shadows of their camps with not a spoken word, both communicating with their dragons by unspoken consent, calling to them for help if need be.
Then the Urgals were in the camp, crashing through underbrush, kicking the burning logs of the fire, and, finally reaching the bedrolls of the Riders, theydrew their spears. Screaming war cries to their gods they stabbed what they assumed were the defenseless Riders.
The first few on the right and left edges of the camp fell to sword and arrow before they knew what hit them, and while the next bunch saw it coming, they had their throats slit before they could make a sound. Finally, the sound of falling bodies alerted the main of the group that they had not succeeded in taking the Riders; rather, they had succeeded in falling victim to superior planning.
By then Vrael had fought his way into the center of the Urgals and weapons were drawn. There was a moment of stillness, and the moment stretched to longer than a moment, and it swallowed everything into it, holding them in stasis, waiting for the first move.
That move was Vrael's, breaking the stillness with a feint to the right. The Urgals lunged, but he was gone already, off to the left. Sprinting, he took the next Urgal through the chest then rolled, coming back up behind its partner, who was stabbed by its fellows when they recklessly lunged for Vrael and he got in the way. A slash to the left, a stab to the right, a feint low center and the actual cut high took him past a trio, the last of which's head was still rolling on the ground as he left. In front of him nowwas a powerful looking beast, larger then his fellows by half with full battle armor,battle axe raised. He seemed ready for any attack Vrael could throw at him, except the one he did. Retrieving his thrown sword from the Urgal's eye he used it's dying body as a springboard, launching him into the largest knot of Urgals in the camp.
But now he had fought himself into a trap; surrounded by his foe, he had nowhere to go. They had circled around him and had formed a defensive ring; none making a single aggressive move that would leave them open to his sword. If only one of them would break the circle! But they were intelligent enough to stay, to wait for his move. With no other option, he attacked, but was repulsed. Again he attacked and again they pushed him back. The third time an Urgal lunged just a little too far at him and fell victim to Vrael's sword, but one of its fellowsimmediately stepped up from behind it, filling the circles weakness.Vrael was truly trapped.
At least, until Ilúdör's arrow hit its mark on the largest Urgal in the circle. Using the distraction Vrael used an extremely foolish move, wind milling with his sword, leaving him open to attack after attack but dropping a large number of his foe. Luckily enough the Urgals were terrified by his attackand backed away, clearing the ground around him for Ilúdör to drop in. And drop in he did, although he stumbled a bit when he land on a severed Urgal arm. Together, he and Vrael set off through the Urgals with previously unseen ferocity, sometimes laying low tens at a time, and yet the Urgals kept coming. It was as though something had them more afraid than the prospect of death at the end of the Riders blades.
And that something made itself apparent, when a voice rang out over the cries of battle. "Enough!"
The Urgals immediately fell back, running away, even, a couple times, at the expense of their life. Wiping the blood off his blade on the ratty clothes of one of the felled Urgals, Vrael turned to face his new enemy.
Suddenly it all made sense. The cruelty shown to the dying, the evidence of magic, the organization in the attacks, and the Urgals refusing to give up no matter how many of their kind were slain, pushing onward even though they knew it was to their death.From the shadows of the nearby trees approached two Shades.
