After many days of felling trees and building a place for the contest, the day of the duel is upon them all. Fenris and a new acquiantance, Erik the Ranger, accompany the paladin, Sir Apollo to the tournament field of Baron Notfelde. The rest of the party remains behind at the Church of Beredall.
The lord charges a silver bit to all who would attend. Greasy merchants sell skewered rodents and serve river-chilled beer. The savory meats and sweet intoxicants help the crowd grow restless. It is largely made of goblinkind, anyway. Yes, a few of the human serfs are there, but they seem to be reluctantly attending, and visibly nervous. Fenris and Erik, more or less, blend-in with the riff raff, but not without attracting some attention from a half-man, half-goblin who follows them through the crowd. They are forced to silence him permanently beneath the stands of the hastily constructed field of melee.
The baron's man presents a velvet lined box to Apollo who prays for wisdom and is granted the faculty to detect poison, which he does on both blades. Apollo nonetheless chooses one to do battle with, trusting his God to save him from any evil machinations.
The melee itself is very short. The baron has his off-hand bound to Apollo's in the style of the goblin hordes. The two men circle warily and the baron strikes like four adders, while Apollo attempts to pull him off balance and overbear the man by sheer size and mass. The knights efforts fail as the baron stabs, again and again. Apollo's faith does save him from poison, but the bloodletting is too much. Round by round, the knight's cuts go from four to eight to twelves to sixteen and higher. It isn't long before he swoons and must ask for quarter.
The baron sneers and grants the knight the right to live, but he is not without wounds of his own and retires quickly from the field of battle, taking the paladins arms and armor, as wagered. The goblinkind are restless, however, and were not easily sated by the battle. First, they are out by day and this makes them surly. Second, their bloodlust is apparently in peak form. Suddenly, the crowd itself is violent. The battle is supposed to be over, but it is sure to be every man and goblin for himself.
In the end, Erik falls in the unruly crowd. An already gravely wounded Apollo is also killed. Only Fenris and Apollo's faithful squire make it back to the Church at Beredall with words of the horror they have seen.
Sir Snow and Fr. Brendan make haste to the lord's manor and petition him for the body of their fallen friends. He permits them and proudly shows the armor of their fallen comrade on display. By use of his holy faculties, Fr. Brendan realizes that the baron lies about not using magic in the battle, which Snow's proficiency at law informs makes the duel illegally conducted. Nevertheless, the party returns to the Church with the bodies of the fallen and make plans for the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment