Smoke wafted into her nose, waking up the young child to the distant sounds of chaos. Screams and shouts in the distance frightened her, and the blonde girl hurriedly got up and walked from her room into the house's living room bedecked only in nightclothes. "Mommy, daddy?" She asked, seeing both of her parents emerging from their own room.
"Go back to bed, Yeela," her mother said insistently.
Her father, though, shook his head. "No, something's not right," he said, going to the front door. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Scarcely had he spoken when a panicked shout came from down the very street they lived on. "Orcs! It's a raid!"
"To arms! All men to arms!" Another, more disciplined yell sounded. "They're attacking the harbor!"
Her father reacted instantly and ran towards the small storage closet where he kept his militia equipment. "Take Yeela and get to the basement, now!" He yelled to her mother even as he quickly took out and buckled the lightweight steel mail over his nightclothes.
"You're not going out to fight them?" Her mother asked frantically, even as she turned to bustle over to her young daughter. "The harbor is on the other side of town, let the men there defend it."
"You know I can't abandon them anymore they could abandon us," her father replied, slipping into leather boots and finally taking up his sword. "Now go, and stay safe!" He commanded, rushing to the door and opening it. Outside men rushed from left to right, heading towards the harbor. Her mother called out a wish of luck as her father ran to join them.
An ominous shadow darker than the moonlit night swept over the men in the street then, prompting them to look up just in time to see a fireball descend upon them. Yeela watched in shock as men burned to death within seconds, screaming out their agony. A few continued to scream, left alive but burning, at least until the shape that cast the shadow artfully dropped from the sky to land atop them, crushing the few survivors of the fiery attack with huge, clawed limbs.
"Dragon!" Someone shouted – unnecessarily, as no one on Azeroth could mistake the red-scaled beast for anything but the winged firebreather it was. Several shapes on its back leaped down, resolving themselves into hulking green-skinned figures that towered over the few human militiamen that rushed from nearby to engage them. Yeela's father was amongst this group, and he quickly engaged a brute half again his size.
"Come on, Yeela," her mother said, finally breaking out of the shocked trance she had been in. She tugged hard on the little girl, who remained fixated on the scene of carnage before her. "We need to get-"
Yeela heard no more as her mind fixated only on seeing her father reeling after being pushed off balance. He barely regained his feet before the orc he'd been fighting buried its crudely made axe into the human's back. She screamed. Her mother wailed. The orc saw them, saw them and smiled in a way that burned to the child's very soul; it was a look of bloodlust and hunger. In that moment, she comprehended something that a child should never know as she realized the orc didn't want to just kill her, but to consume her utterly, in every sense of the word.
Uttering a roar, it pulled its axe from the corpse of her father and rushed forward.
Captain Fairmount bolted upright in her bed, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. It took her several moments of looking around the dark chamber that was her sleeping quarters in the main keep before the older woman finally brought her emotions under control. Despite the near-perfect blackness, she managed to reach to a table next to her bed and retrieved a bottle, which she promptly opened. Damned dreams, she thought, taking a swig of the rum. Damned memories.
More of the memories came back unbidden: seeing the orc come close to charging into the house, before a company of dwarf marksmen arrived on their street and filled the air with lead, killing orcs and driving away their dragon; the funeral for her father and all the others who perished in the raid; and the long years of fear before the Horde had been broken and smashed at the end of the Second War.
And hatred. So much hatred cultivated over the years that had finally blossomed when the Orcs escaped their internment and fled across the sea. Fairmount had jumped at Lady Proudmoore's call for an exodus to the west, hoping to run across the Orcs again. Now she was here, now she had power, but despite this, her vengeance remained unsatisfied, blocked by a peace agreement that both Proudmoore and the Orcish warchief, Thrall, seemed dead set on maintaining despite the opposition from within their own peoples.
But here I am, Fairmount thought. All I need to do is provoke a response, a serious response from the Horde or the Alliance, and war will return. She took another swig from the rum bottle. And this time we won't stop until all of those beasts are put down for good. My contacts in Stormwind have assured me of this.
The sudden noise of rapid footsteps coming down the hall startled her, as did the thumping on her door. "Captain Fairmount!" The voice of her young page nearly shouted through the oak. "Captain, the prisoners have escaped!"
"No," Fairmount whispered to herself. The kid knows I'm up to something out here, and the cow, so nice it would be to blame a nobleman's death on the Horde; the only thing nobles care about more than their money is their pride. "Get my gear, Harold!" She called back. "And alert the compound! All soldiers to arms!"
Jacob and Omiya slipped back into the stables to find Toho finishing fastening the riding harness to her venomhide ravasaur, The tauren looked up from her preparations and tensed briefly until she recognized the two figures walking into the building. "Was there trouble?" Toho asked as the pair drew near.
"Just had to subdue a couple of guards the hard way," Jacob replied, and then grunted as he set down the chest he'd been carrying. "Man, your stuff is heavy," he added as he stood upright again and rubbed his lower back.
"It takes a lot of metal to cover eight feet of tauren," Toho said by way of agreement as she moved to the chest and opened it. "Although it seems you are trying to match me in sheer weight of armor," she observed, looking over Jacob while she pulled her mail from the chest.
"Full plate mail is a bit more restricting, but I'll take the protection it offers any day," Jacob replied evenly, smirking lightly at her jest. "Besides, I've trained to fight in it."
"Let us hope that you won't need to," Tohopekaliga replied as she turned and took a few steps back to get clearance. "Do me a favor, Jacob, and take my rifle out of that chest for me while I armor up."
Omiya stepped over from where she had been looking out the cracked open main doors. "I will handle that," she said evenly to the others. "You should load up the kodo with her miscellaneous gear and provisions for the trip."
Jacob nodded. "Aye, makes sense," he replied, and did as asked. All three of them worked quickly at their tasks, and to Jacob it seemed like their escape might very well go off without a hitch.
The sudden clang of a bell being rung on the upper tier of the hold's terrain caused Jacob to freeze, and he closed his eyes and willed himself to refrain from screaming his outrage to the world. "What now?" He asked, looking to Omiya.
"You two must finish your preparations," the priestess replied. "I will go and see if I cannot waylay the others by directing them to another place in the hold, but be quick for there are a lot of soldiers here and few places to hide." With that Omiya turned and slipped out of the stables without giving either of the escapees a chance to reply.
Both Toho and Jacob turned to give each other a questioning look, and the human sighed. "Alright, they're your mounts, so you finalize everything while I go to the gate. Deal?" He asked.
"Deal," Toho replied. "Now hurry."
Captain Fairmount ran down the earthen ramp leading to the lower bailey, followed by two dozen men at arms, and another dozen or so mages, priests, and marksmen to provide support. "Double the guard on the towers! Light all the torches!" Her second-in-command, Jarrin, commanded. "Mages stand ready to port guards!"
We'll get them, Fairmount told herself. We'll get them and maybe find enough reason to finally set the war going. "Try to take them alive," she found herself saying, realizing she had to play her part well this night. "But if they resist you are free to use lethal force."
Grumbles of assent came from the troops behind her, and Fairmount hid a smirk on her face as they reached the lower bailey. Soon enough, though, she saw a figure come from the shadows, and the captain held up a hand to halt her company. "Who goes there?" She demanded.
"Captain Fairmount, thank the Light you're here," said the approaching woman, whom Fairmount recognized as the priestess Omiya. "I saw the prisoners from the jail, they've escaped and have attacked the equipment building!"
Fairmount frowned at that. "That will make dealing with them more difficult," she said, looking towards the indicated building, away from the stables.
"And the men inside are at risk," Omiya added.
"Er, yes, of course," Fairmount replied, realizing she had forgotten about the normal watch. She hid her embarrassment by turning around to address her troops. "First section, form a cordon around the storage building! Third section, deploy in support. Second section, deploy on the perimeter in case they sneak past!"
The troops responded quickly to the orders, prodded as they were by the non-commissioned officers directly in control of each section. They moved swiftly and as relatively silently as they could, given the heavy armor the regular soldiers wore, and Fairmount turned to her immediate subordinate. "Jarrin, take the east side and I'll take the west, make sure nothing gets out unless it's one of ours or dead. We'll storm the building once everyone is in position."
The mage gave Fairmount a questioning look at that. "Captain, you do realize that with the mages at your command there shouldn't be a need for violence? We can just freeze them down if they try to bolt."
Fairmount gave Jarrin a look of anger that startled him. "You will do as I command," she said harshly. "They are enemies of the Alliance and pose a threat to this fortress if they manage to escape. Do your duty and obey my orders, understood?"
Jarrin frowned, but nodded. "Yes, sir," he replied.
"Good," Fairmount said, and then stalked off, leaving Jarrin standing with Omiya without so much as a look back. The latter turned to the mage and raised an eyebrow. "The captain seems rather intense," she observed.
"Aye," Jarrin replied. "I don't see what a scrub from back east and one tauren can do to be a threat to the hold," he added in concern.
"Neither do I, but then I know nothing of such things," Omiya said. "War is not something one studies in the priesthood."
"War?" Jarrin asked, surprised. "Who said anything about war? We're trying to recapture prisoners."
Omyia paused for a moment to pointedly look over the compound, and Jarrin found his eyes following her own vision. Around them, at every tower torches were being lit, guards ran back and forth on the ramparts, and the three sections of Alliance troops continued to take up battle positions around the storage building. "Just two prisoners?" Omiya finally asked, looking back to the mage.
Jarrin found himself unable to say anything to that. Instead, he just moved past the priestess and headed to the position he had been ordered to take.
The enigmatic priestess watched him go, and then quietly smiled to herself.
Two guards stood at the main gate, which was shut and barred as Jacob walked up. I hope this works, he thought briefly as he entered the light cast from one of the lanterns set up to provide the guards light. Both of the armored soldiers – one man and one woman – turned and drew their swords immediately. "Who goes there?" The woman challenged him.
"Your Light-blasted doom if you don't step to on the double!" Jacob roared, his voice projecting in what his trainers back home referred to as a 'command voice.' "Don't you see all the commotion? Go and join the captain's combat team at the upper bailey!"
The voice alone would have drilled fear and worry into any green recruit, which Jacob suspected most of the guards to be. The fact that he had also 'borrowed' a tabard with sergeant's chevrons sewn into it while he had grabbed Toho's things only helped instill an automatic obeisance into the two soldiers in front of him. "Y-yes sir," the woman replied, but then hesitated. "But sir, the gate-"
"Will be safe while I'm here," Jacob replied with a hint of scorn in his voice. "You have your orders, now move it before I reassign you to clearing out the latrines!"
"Yes sir!" Both guards replied, and then ran off without so much as a look back. Jacob watched them go while silently strangling a laugh before it left his throat. Just like back home, he thought briefly before turning to the gate. His bemusement turned to a feeling of helplessness as he got a good look at just how large the heavy wooden doors were. I didn't really get to examine on the way in, he darkly remembered. And it sure as frig didn't have that bar across it; the thing's got to weigh more than I do in full armor.
He was already starting to sweat a little from the exertion of wearing the heavy plate, having lost the full trim of his training by using lighter chain mail for armor since leaving Kul Tiras. Fargo would find that hilarious, Jacob sardonically mused about his father's master-at-arms. He'd laugh and laugh while having me run another twenty laps around the town walls and following on horseback to make sure I didn't stop for a breather.
After some brooding, Jacob finally hit upon an idea. Maybe… Well, she is an engineer, right? With that thought, he turned and ran back for the stables. About halfway there though, he stopped to watch as a rather large group of soldiers began to descend down the ramp linking the two baileys, pausing only when Omiya stepped towards a woman Jacob finally recognized as captain Fairmount. Right, double time, the nobleman thought as he pushed himself forward in a hard run.
Moments later he practically stormed into the stables, and then promptly froze as he saw Tohopekaliga spin on a hoof and snap her rifle up to aim for his head. They both held still for only a moment before Toho lowered the weapon with a frustrated sigh. "Don't do things like that around me," she said.
"Sorry Toho, but there's no time," Jacob said. "The gate's clear, but barred and it's too much for me, and I'm not sure we'd have enough time to see if you and I could do it together, since about half the hold's compliment is marching as we speak."
Toho's eyes widened a bit at that. "Here?"
"No, the equipment building," Jacob replied. "I think Omiya sent them there. Regardless, we need a quick exit, and I recall you are an engineer of a sort."
A wide, almost visceral grin spread along Toho's muzzle at that, and she nodded. "Not just an engineer, but one of the Goblin school," she said.
Jacob blinked for a moment as the memories of his first day with the tauren came to mind. "Oh crap," he uttered. "I just poured oil on the fire elemental, didn't I?"
"Worry about that later," Toho said as she took the reigns of her ravasaur and waved for Jacob to lead the kodo. "For now, there's stuff that needs to be blown up!" She added with girlish glee.
Fairmount watched with concealed satisfaction as her troops flawlessly deployed around the outbuilding. When the war starts, we'll cut the Barrens in half, she smugly thought while waiting for the soldiers to solidify their position. It again pleased her to see that it only took a few moments, and she confidently strode forward as soon as everybody was in position. "Attention in there!" Fairmount called, raising her voice. "Lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up, or we'll storm the place and cut you down!"
A silence fell upon the area, relieved only partially by the sounds of tense breathing and slight movement from the two score persons arrayed in a small area. Fairmount decided to live up to the first half of her family name and gave the prisoners a few long minutes to decide. Come out fighting, she found herself wishing. A nobleman's son trying to slaughter his fellow man to defend a tauren will make the Horde look all kinds of threatening as no one will know the truth, and the unknown makes for a great source of fear.
Sadly – to her – the prisoners did not come out, and so Fairmount turned to the sergeant nearest to her. "Kenon, take four men and go root them out," she ordered.
"Yes sir!" The indicated sergeant replied before he turned to bellow at several soldiers under his command. The group quickly detached itself and dashed forward while several of their fellows sheathed swords and took out crossbows to cover them. Seconds later the sergeant smashed the door to the warehouse apart with his shield and ran in followed by the other men in quick order, and then… nothing.
Fairmount frowned as no sounds of battle came from the building. She was about to order a full-scale attack when the sergeant reappeared in the doorway. "The prisoners aren't here captain!" He shouted. "Just the guards!"
"What?" Fairmount yelled. "Why didn't they reply?"
"They were tied up and unconscious," the sergeant replied. "They're still out of it."
A moment of confusion passed through the assembled soldiers, and Fairmount felt it the most keenly out of them all. "But if they're not here…" She mumbled to herself.
A loud explosion from the main gate caused her to jump, and indeed startled everyone in the fortress. Fairmount whipped around in time to see a cloud of dust blocking her view of the main entrance to Northwatch.
"The gate!" She yelled. "Everyone to the gate!"
Jacob sat up with a groan that soon turned into a hacking cough as he inhaled a bit of pulverized wood and masonry. "Toho?" He called out, straining to peer through the clouds of dust to see if the tauren was all right.
As if in reply, Tohopekaliga sat up abruptly from off to his left. "Ha ha ha haa! BOOM!" She shouted as she raised the dust-covered goggles from her eyes. "I love doing that!"
"You mean nearly killing us?" Jacob asked sardonically.
"No, making things explode!" Toho replied, looking over and giving the human a broad grin. "Isn't if fun?"
For a moment, Jacob had the brief sensation of complete unfamiliarity with the tauren. It's like she's a different person, he thought briefly. He then shook such thoughts from his head as he stood up and turned to inspect the gate. Much to his satisfaction, Toho had blown only one of the huge wooden doors off of its hinges, leaving just enough space for them to move their mounts through, but not so much it left the gate indefensible. Just because the captain's a bad person doesn't mean I want the whole place defenseless.
"Everyone to the gate!" The yell was clear, and Jacob suddenly remembered there were quite a few heavily armed men and women just across the bailey. "Time to go," he said, making a brief sprint to where they had left their mounts. Toho merely grunted an affirmation as her previous glee evaporated and experience and training took over. Determination set in as well, and she ran the few short yards to their waiting escape right after the human.
I'm surprised they didn't bolt, Jacob mused of the pack animals as he reached the kodo and promptly scuttled up into the saddle on its back. I guess Toho must really like her explosions if her animals are used to them. Despite the situation and the disturbing implications of that realization, Jacob smiled a bit as he grabbed the reins and ushered his mount forward. Toho followed him by mere seconds, and soon both animals had squeezed through the opening in the gate. Once through, Jacob reined his kodo back a bit to wait for Toho to pull alongside him. "Where do we go?" He asked.
"North, to Ratchet," Toho said, snapping the reins on her ravasaur to urge it to move faster. Jacob barely had time to do the same with his kodo to keep up. "I know people there," the tauren added as they rode into the night.
Fairmount nearly stumbled over the chunks of wood and stone littering the ground around the gate. She had already stepped through the blasted portion and was the first out beyond the wall, and so was in time to see the two figures moving rapidly northward in the darkness, scarcely illuminated by the smaller of the two moons, the Blue Child, as the White Lady was hours from rising. "Confounded backstabbing Hordesmen!" She raged.
"I thought one was a human?" Jarrin asked as he walked through the gate, following several of the hold's soldiers.
The captain turned and spitted the mage with an evil glare. "I need you to teleport the combat team ahead of them," Fairmount said. "They won't be further than a mile by the time you do it."
"The whole team?" Jarrin asked, shocked. "Captain, teleporting follows the square laws of mathematics. Only the most powerful and talented mages can-"
"Shut it," Fairmount cut him off. "If you can't do the whole team, how many can you teleport?"
Jarrin had to fight off an urge to sigh in frustration before he replied. "As I said, captain, there are certain laws of the arcane at work. I can teleport the whole combat team maybe six hundred feet, or I could teleport you and I halfway across Kalimdor. If you want something practical, I can get you and I and maybe four more about a mile before I expend all my available energy."
Fairmount nodded. "Set it up, then," she said, and then turned to the other soldiers coming out of the gate. "Sergeant Kenon, you and three men with me and Jarrin! Patrolmen mount up and follow the trail north! Everyone else, set defensive watch on the hold until our return!"
Jarrin listened to her give commands for a moment before he resigned himself and started chanting the necessary spell preparations. Even as he did so, however, his thoughts wandered to the words Omiya had spoken to him only a short time ago. Is this how a war starts? He asked himself as the arcane energies began to coalesce around him. If so, shouldn't it be stopped? Can it be stopped?
They didn't slow down until the hold was hidden behind a hill, and even then, they merely let their animals move at a trot instead of a flat run. "Are we still going fast enough?" Jacob asked, concerned.
"If they went straight to their horses, they'd still have to bolt at maximum speed just to get to us," Tohopekaliga explained. "Even then we'd see them coming from a ways away and have time to speed up ourselves, or ever find a place to hide."
"If you say so," Jacob said from the back of the kodo he rode. "How far is it to Ratchet?" He asked while trying to shift his position without falling off of the beast.
"Only about two day's travel," Toho replied. "We'll stop-"
A flash of light came from up ahead, interrupting Toho and startling both rides and animals alike. Both of the mounts stopped of their own accord and attempted to turn and flee and Jacob and Toho each worked to keep their respective animal under control. The huntress managed it easily enough, but Jacob, still relatively unfamiliar with the kodo and weighing considerably more than he was used to in his armor, lost his balance and slid from the saddle, letting out a loud grunt as he hit the ground.
"Jacob!" Toho called as she pulled her ravasaur around to face towards him. Anything else she would have said or done, however, was preempted by a now familiar voice. "Surrender or die!"
Jacob climbed back to his feet slowly and cast his gaze towards where the lights had popped up, and as he expected, six persons from Northwatch were standing in a line across the narrow trail leading north. "Captain Fairmount," Jacob called to the Alliance soldiers as he drew his sword and shield. "What a pleasant surprise. Perhaps next time you could leave a message with the seneschal next time you wish to drop in?"
"Your sarcasm is unappreciated, Vayo," Fairmount replied. "You're in deep now, boy. Aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner is an executable offense!"
Jacob glanced around the area as the captain spoke, and he was happy to see Toho slipping off her ravasaur and hefting her gun. The kodo he'd been riding had wandered off, leaving him no cover save his shield and armor, and Toho looked to be sending her mount off to the side as well. "So what's the penalty for assassination, Fairmount?" Jacob asked.
"You kill me and another will take my place," the captain replied, and Jacob finally got a good bead on which one of the figures was her. "Like Farrik, maybe?" Jacob retorted. When Fairmount didn't reply right away, he pressed on. "Funny, I don't see him around here, even though he seemed pretty important when I met with you in the keep. Oh, that's right," Jacob added, turning up the sarcasm. "He's on the floor of your jail, along with his accomplice and the knives they were going to use to gut me."
One of the figures near Fairmount seemed to turn his head at the captain, who finally spoke. "He was sent to check on the Hordesman prisoner."
"So I take it 'checking' involves murdering prisoners in cold blood and any witnesses to the crime?" Jacob retorted.
"You're just digging yourself a deeper hole, Vayo," Fairmount countered. "Lying won't save you now."
Jacob laughed at that, and the Alliance soldiers seemed to rock back in surprise. "What a typical move by the hypocrite, to lie first and loudly, and then accuse your opponent of lying when he tries to present the truth." The young man shook his head emphatically at that to make sure the gesture was visible to the others in the darkness. "But then, a liar is always caught by his or her web of deceit. You have a mage there - you couldn't have ported here without one – why doesn't he pop back to the hold and see for himself what sort of condition Farrik is in, and more importantly, why he and two others had darkened blades and were visiting the jail with them while out of uniform?"
"Captain," the figure that had moved his head before. "Where is the master-at-arms?"
Fairmount whirled on him in a heartbeat. "Now you listen here Jarrin!" She snapped out, her voice taking on a tone of hysteria. "I give the orders around here, and I ask the questions! Do your duty or I will have you arrested as well!"
This outburst startled the man who'd spoken up, Jacob saw. It also seemed to startle the other men in the formation, and they took a second to glance back before returning their attention to the escapees. Jacob glanced to his side and was unsurprised to see Toho aiming her rifle steadily towards Fairmount. She did seem to notice him looking at her out of the corner of her eye, and she glanced over long enough for Jacob to give her a tiny headshake. She nodded her head once to show her understanding and held her fire, but did not take her aim away from the captain.
Of course while this passed between Jacob and Toho, Jarrin was replying to his commander's outburst. "Captain, as your first officer I have the right and the duty to question any situation I find suspect, and as of late your behavior has grown increasingly suspect. Threatening to arrest me for asking abou-"
Fairmount had had enough, and she slapped him across the face. Jacob winced as, even at a distance of several yards, he could hear the crack of bone as Fairmount's plated fist slammed into unprotected flesh. "I have no time for your games, Jarrin!" She shouted. "I have come too far and done too much to let anyone stop them. Not you, and certainly not some squib and a Hordesman beast!"
At those words Jacob felt something in his mind snap into place, much as they had in the keep. Only now it was more profound as he recognized that he had the whole truth now. "You want a war," he said, barely loud enough to be heard at a distance, yet he could see the shift in Fairmount's stance well enough to know she – and the others with her – heard him. "Firing on merchant ships, harassing and attacking passing travelers, and now trying to kill me, they're all attempts to get one side shooting at the other; you want the Alliance to go back to war with the Horde, don't you?"
"You're damned right I do!" Fairmount shouted. "The Orcs are a stain on the world, a filthy disease that doesn't belong on Azeroth! They pillaged and killed and burned and slaughtered their way across two continents and nearly destroyed all of humanity, all of civilization! And instead of wiping them out, we make peace with them?" She spat at that, and stepped forward, ignoring both the incredulous looks on her soldiers and the injured mage rising behind her. "I don't care what their excuses are, I don't care how many lives it will cost, I won't rest until every single one of them lie dead and broken in the sand and all of their cities and towns are burnt to ash!"
"You're mad!" Jarrin said, his voice a pained garble of its previous self, but still understandable. It must hurt like Hell to talk after being hit like that, Jacob thought as Fairmount again wheeled around to glare at her first officer. "Mad? I saw those greenskinned savages kill my father and burn down half of my town, and now I'm told that we're not to fight them, that we shan't have our revenge? I'm not mad, I'm the most sane person here!"
A moment of stunned silence fell over the area, and Jacob glanced nervously at the soldiers who had come with the two officers, looking for any indication of their loyalties. Unfortunately, the light of Azeroth's smaller moon wasn't quite enough to see the fine details on their otherwise impassive faces, and so the warrior tensed as Fairmount turned around and pointed her sword towards him. "You men take the cow; I'll handle the squib."
"No." The refusal, firm and final, came not from Jarrin, but from one of the armored men who'd come along with him and Fairmount. "The lieutenant is right, captain, in that we have a right to question orders," the man said, turning fully to face his captain and lowering his sword. "We also have a right to refuse orders, and I find yours to be illegal and immoral."
Fairmount seemed stunned as she looked over the other Alliance soldiers, and saw as they, too, lowered their swords one by one. "Sergeant, you will be court-martialed for this," The captain warned in an angry voice.
"I daresay I won't be the only one," the man sarcastically replied.
"Traitors, all of you!" Fairmount yelled, wildly looking about. "I've spent years on this, and I won't let any of you stop me," she added, and then rounded on Jacob, hatred in her eyes. "Especially not some Horde-loving prat!" With that, she dashed forward in a charge and brought her sword up to attack.
Tohopekaliga saw the captain's movement, and despite Jacob's earlier denial, she found no reason to withhold fire now. Fairmount moved quickly, but Toho was an experienced marksman, and it was almost trivial for her to keep the sights over the human's head and pull the trigger on her handcrafted rifle, causing a thunderous boom to break the night. Yet when she blinked her eyes clear of the muzzle flash, Toho was astounded to see that the captain was unharmed, and apparently uninterested in the tauren as she finished her dash and brought her two-handed sword down in an attempt to bisect Jacob. The male warrior deflected this attack with his shield and promptly began to back up but not run, intending to continue the melee fight.
I never miss! At least not on something that close anyway, Tohopekaliga thought, and she quickly dropped her rifle down and began to reload it for another shot. Yet, even as she moved a sudden warm golden glow came from her side and a human hand grabbed her wrist; even through the mail bracers Toho could feel unnatural strength in the grip. Surprised, the huntress looked to her left and saw Omiya standing there, glowing staff in hand. "You cannot kill Fairmount, nor any other Alliance member this night," the priestess said firmly, her voice soft but powerful. "To do so would give the captain what she wants: a Hordesman responsible for Alliance deaths, and an excuse for renewed war. That must not happen, regardless of anything else." Omiya then released Toho's hand and looked over to where the other members of Fairmount's party stood. "Now excuse me while I tend to Jarrin's injury."
The tauren blinked dumbfounded as she watched the priestess move off, trusting Toho not to open fire again. For a brief moment, the huntress felt like betraying that trust, yet Omiya's words rang true, and Toho felt a pang in her chest as she realized she could not help Jacob in his fight. Worriedly, she turned to watch.
His shield rang a second time as Fairmount pressed the attacking, using her momentum to keep Jacob on the defensive. The rage and anger festering in her core fed the captain's strength, and her strikes came quickly and viciously, testing Jacob's guard and more than once finding a way through, leaving his plate armor to absorb the brunt of the blow. Even so, the sheer force pummeled his flesh right through the steel, and the warrior realized he would lose the fight and his life if the current state of affairs continued.
It was one of the few lucid thoughts in young Jacob's mind, as his training ascended to the fore. His shield arm moved more fluidly as he recognized the pattern of moves that Fairmount used against him, and both shield and sword moved out to parry or block her strikes with increasing effectiveness. Despite the urgency of the brutal fight, Jacob kept calm and remained as passive as possible while he continued to give ground.
His patience was finally rewarded, as Fairmount seemed to start to run low on energy. Then she made a mistake and overextended herself on a heavy blow that Jacob parried easily, sending the woman off balance. Seeing his opening, Jacob shifted his stance abruptly and took a step forward, planting his left foot right between Fairmount's own and his arm tensed as he slammed his shield forward, using his change of posture to throw the weight of his entire body behind the blow. Metal clashed upon metal, setting both shield and armored breastplate ringing, and with an audible grunt of surprise and pain Fairmount wheeled back, her arms splaying out as she fought to keep herself on her feet.
Jacob wasn't about to let the captain regain her composure, and he continued moving forward, sweeping his shield out of the way as he brought his sword forward from the parry, swinging it underhand in an arc that intersected the captain's larger weapon in her right hand. In her discombobulated state and poor stance the captain had no recourse as the impact tore the two-handed sword from her grasp and sent it flying behind her. Yet the captain wasn't willing to admit defeat, and she regained her footing enough so that she began to turn and arched her body in preparation to leap away from Jacob and reach for her sword.
Unfortunately for her, the male warrior wasn't through yet, and he turned his sword arm, using the continuing momentum of his disarming swing to accelerate a pirouette to the left. Spinning on the one foot, Jacob once again brought his shield up and drove its curved out shell into Fairmount's back as he finished his turn. Again, the increased momentum helped to improve the sheer force, though it was mitigated somewhat by Jacob's lack of solid footing. Fairmount, however, was already off balance and thus she was shoved forward and downward, slamming into the dirt. Jacob slipped back into a defensive stance as he finished his maneuver, but only a second later he realized it was unnecessary, as Fairmount remained on the ground. Her arms moved, reaching forward for her sword, which had landed a mere foot from her grasp, but she did not advance.
For a brief moment Jacob felt an odd sense of panic as he worried that he had broken the captain's back with his last strike. Then he heard a telltale gasp, and he relaxed a bit as he realized he'd simply knocked the wind out of the belligerent officer. Slowly and calmly, he walked around Fairmount until he reached the captain's weapon, and then kicked it further from her hands and pointed his sword at her ashen face. "It's over, captain," Jacob said simply, not trusting his ability to utter anything more complicated through the adrenaline haze.
"Indeed it is," a voice said from behind, and Jacob looked behind him to see Omiya and the soldiers from the keep walking towards the scene of the fight slowly. He tensed a bit, but relaxed as he saw that the men had their weapons out, but lowered. With them was a man in robes he recognized as the mage Fairmount had backhanded earlier, and Jacob was pleased to see that the priestess had healed him well. It was the mage who had spoken, and it was he who now stepped forward and looked down on Fairmount. "Captain, under my authority as your second in command, I am removing you from your position as commanding officer of Northwatch Hold for your blatant disrespect of orders, laws, and common decency."
"You backstabbing-" Fairmount began, as she had recovered from the stun to her solar plexus. Before she could continue, however, Omiya raised her staff and from it a ray of warm light washed over the captain, who went to sleep almost instantly. "I think we've had enough of her venom for tonight," the priestess wryly commented.
"Quite so," the mage said, and he turned to look over Jacob fully, allowing the latter to recognize him as Jarrin. "Now, what do we do with you and your friend?"
Jacob blinked at that, and then glanced off to the side, where he saw Tohopekaliga walking forward cautiously, her rifle also lowered. "You could always let us go?" Jacob asked irreverently as he turned back to the mage and gave him a wan smile.
Jarrin frowned at that, his eyebrows furrowing. He opened his mouth to say something, but it was Omiya who spoke first. "They really cannot go back to the hold," she said in a concerned tone, causing the others to look to her. "Fairmount and Farrik would not have been able to do what they did for so long if many of the others weren't at least sympathetic to their desires." The golden haired woman nodded towards the two escapees. "Their lives will be in danger of another sinister strike if they return with us."
"And really," Jacob added in a flippant tone. "Our only crime was simply arriving at Northwatch. Well, that and escaping, but really, sitting in a jail is boring when the guards aren't trying to kill you."
A corner of Jarrin's mouth ticked up briefly at that, but he remained serious as he thought for several moments. Finally, he seemed to come to some decision, and he turned to give the armed soldiers behind him a look. In response, they sheathed their swords and slung their shields, and Jarrin nodded as he turned back to face Jacob and Toho. "All right, all right," he said, and then sighed. "We'll tell the others the captain fell as we tried to pursue you and we stopped to make sure she was all right, thus letting you go."
Jacob felt a wave of relief wash over him, and he grinned at the older man. "Thank you."
Jarrin waved him off. "Dealing with the complexities of nobility that would come into play if we kept you is more than enough headache to be rid of you," he said. "We'll just send a report that you claimed to be a noble but we couldn't verify who before you, ah, left."
"And with that, you should get going," Omiya added. "The rest of the keep's offensive troops will reach here soon; you'd best be far away before then."
"You do not have to tell me twice," Toho said as she slung her rifle over a shoulder and turned to head for her ravasaur mount.
"Thank you for all of your help," Jacob said, bowing to both of the leaders who stood before him, before he too ran over to where 'his' kodo had wandered off to. Within minutes, he and Toho were riding north.