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Chapter 17: The Fire King Returns

 
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:02 pm    Post subject: Chapter 17: The Fire King Returns Reply with quote

The story so far: You are Lodevar, the leader of a rebellion of sheephead slaves against their masters, the Bullroar minotaurs. The Bullroars are invading your island base – six warships have landed on the beach and a hundred more are on the sea nearby. Your people were defending the island from the cliff-tops and behind barricades; but when you and your advisor Nelectitus took over one of the docked Bullroar ships and set it on fire, your people emerged from the barricades and are trying to retake the beach.

At the end of the last chapter, you decided to try to raise or cut the anchor, then sail the ship into one of the other Bullroar ships.


You struggle to stand on the pitching deck. Where’s the anchor? The cackling of Nelectitus is carried by the wind again, from the stern of the ship.

You make your way back, and Nelectitus is turning a crank attached to a coil of chain – raising the anchor. But as you watch, a huge Bullroar soldier mounts the deck behind him, and lifts his battleaxe two-handed.

“Look out!” you yell, lunging forward. Nelectitus leaps to the side like a spider, landing on all fours. The battleaxe crashes onto the anchor chain. Sparks fly and the chain breaks, dropping the anchor and setting the ship free.

The ship lurches and you fall to your knees. The Bullroar staggers but keeps his balance, and takes another swing at Nelectitus. Nelectitus rolls out of the way and the axe smashes into the wooden deck and comes up quickly for another swing.

You get up and charge in, trying to catch the Bullroar while he’s looking at Nelectitus. But he easily knocks aside your sword with his shield. He holds his battleaxe one-handed now – it’s a huge double-bladed weapon three feet long that most men could barely lift, but with his great shoulders and arms he swings it at you fast and easy as a knife.

You jump behind a small post with a wheel on it, and the axe whistles past. The Bullroar snarls, showing his teeth through the smoky air.

Nelectitus scampers behind you. You keep the wooden post between you and the Bullroar, and stab at him around it to keep him at bay. But with two massive strokes he hacks the bottom of the post, then slams into it with his shield. The post splinters and falls over, leaving you facing him on the open deck, shieldless and unarmored. He raises his axe.

Suddenly Nelectitus flies past you, running crouched and low, and stamps his hoof on the Bullroar’s foot. The Bullroar laughs, casually lifts his boot and pins Nelectitus under it, and then, with his shield blocking you, aims another axe-swing at Nelectitus’s head. You can tell that this one won’t miss.

But the ship lurches again, tossed by the wind and waves, and the Bullroar slips and crashes to his knees. It’s like a mountain has fallen – he struggles to lift his great bulk. Sensing your chance, you leap forward and strike at his neck. Your sword cuts under his helmet, through the links of mail and leather and into his neck. Blood spurts and the Bullroar bellows, but his neck is so thick the wound isn’t fatal.

He rises to one knee, struggling to bring his shield to bear. You slash down again, this time at his weapon-hand. The armor there is lighter, and you cut through it and sever tendon and bone. He screams and drops his axe.

You hold your sword forward. You expect him to back off, and you’re already starting to think about how you might get past his shield, when suddenly he launches himself at you, horns lowered, jaws wide open, roaring like a lion.

For a split second, you hesitate. But then you put your faith in the Makers, and drive your sword straight at him. It cuts through his breastplate with a great crack, through his leather padding and clothing, into his bone and heart, and through the armor on the other side. His dying body falls on you like a great wet stone, burying you.

With a great effort you roll him away. Your sword is lodged tight in his body. Smoke billows by and you cough – the sails and deck are fully afire now.

Nelectitus helps you up. “The water! Into the water!” he says urgently.

“No! The ship – we’ve got to turn it, sail it into the others.”

He looks at you like you’re crazy.

“Where’s the wheel?” you say, stumbling around. “How do I steer?”

He picks up a wooden wheel from the wreckage of the post splintered by the Bullroar. “Here it is! Should we go this way? Should we go that way?” he says, giggling, turning the wheel left and right, attached to nothing.

The ship lurches again, and a piece of burning rigging falls onto your arm. You knock it away. “All right,” you say. “Into the water.”

Nelectitus grabs your hand, and together you jump off of the burning ship and into the sea.

You’ve never been much of a swimmer, and amidst the wind and surf and burning debris, the best you can do is to keep your head above water as the waves carry you toward shore. Bullroar soldiers are all over the shallows; you try to swim to the side, but powerful hands grab you and drag you onto the beach, throwing you face-down into the sand. You hear sounds of battle up the beach as your people have stormed down from the barricades, but here there are nothing but Bullroars. A host of them surrounds you – broad-shouldered, red-eyed, fingers flexing around their battleaxes.

A heavy boot steps on your back and a mailed hand pulls your head up by the hair. “This is the thing that set the ship on fire,” says the Bullroar on top of you.

They bend in closer, so close you can smell their bull’s breath. “What is it?” one asks, disgusted. “It’s not a sheephead.”

Another, who holds himself like a commander, looks you in the eye. “It’s their King,” he says flatly. “Kill it.”

The Bullroars murmur to themselves, pleased at having such a high-profile captive. You struggle to twist away, but there are too many and too strong. Three of them sit on you, keeping your body shoved into the sand, while one raises an axe. At least I die free, you think. That much the Makers give.

But the axe never falls. Instead, a battle-scream and a rush like thunder sounds outside the circle. The Bullroars turn, as slowly and stupidly as cattle, as a wave of sheepheads smashes into them.

Your people charge into the Bullroars full-speed with lowered heads, their great curved horns knocking the Bullroars backwards to be trampled underfoot. A few Bullroars swing their axes and hold their ground in the initial charge, but as the rush of sheepheads passes them by they’re quickly surrounded, and fall under the wild spears and clubs of the rams.

The Bullroars on top of you are knocked away, and you’re pulled to standing, face to face with Philos – your youngest and most daring captain. There is a moment of astonishment, and then suddenly he cries out and embraces you. Then there are shouts all around, as the sheepheads hoist you up. “Akina! Akina!” they cry. “The Fire King!”

From the shoulders of the sheepheads, you look out on a sea of war. Waves of your people have charged through the Bullroar lines across the beach, smashing their formations and dividing their strength. Meanwhile, in the harbor, by a fortunate wind the ship you set on fire has drifted toward another ship and set it aflame as well. Bullroars rush back and forth trying to put out the fire and get the other four ships out of harm’s way.

But back on the beach, you can see that the sheepheads’ wild charge put them in a dangerous situation. They’ve gone past the Bullroar lines, leaving the enemy behind them and their flanks exposed. And after charging through and smashing their heads against the Bullroar’s heavy armor, the sheepheads’ energy is wearing thin. The ones in front stagger or sway with exhaustion as they swing their clubs and spears against the Bullroar.

Your people have never needed you more than now. Cries of “Akina! The Fire King!” surround you as you rush among your people encouraging them, reviving them like the water of a cold mountain stream brings life to a weary traveler. Someone hands you a weapon – a mace, a great leaded ball on a stick – and you wade into the battle, swinging it wildly with both hands, smashing Bullroar helmets and crushing bone wherever you go, driving the enemy around the battlefield.

But the Bullroars are tough and discliplined. Now that they’ve recovered from the initial attack, they re-form into squares, protected from all sides. When you charge into them, you meet a wall of shields. Your weapons bounce off and the Bullroars hold their ground.

And as your attacks fail, the Bullroars press their advantage, closing in with shield, axe, and knife. Without the momentum of the charge, your people are outmatched – the Bullroars have better training, better weapons, better armor, and, you realize belatedly, there are more of them. A few sheepheads escape back to the barricades, but most are trapped in the middle of the beach, in an circle ever-shrinking as the great Bull axes cut you down one by one.

You pray to the Makers for aid, but the axe-blows only fall the more furious. One grazes your head. Blood runs down your hair and you fall back, stunned. The Bulls roar with victory and close in.

But for the second time today you hear the rumble of thunder, the sound of hundreds of feet rushing to battle. A new wave is coming! The sheepheads on the cliff-tops, led by Haman, your second-in-command, have run down to the beach to your rescue.

Once more the sheepheads crash upon the battlefront like a wave, and once more the Bullroar lines break. Now both numbers and momentum are on your side. With their formations broken again, the Bullroars struggle back, trying to slow your advance, retreating to their last line of defense – the sea.

There, waist-deep in water, they make their stand. With the surf rolling in and their backs to the burning ships, you fight them with clubs or knives or even bare hands as your weapons are lodged in enemy bodies or slip into the sea. Neither you nor the Bullroars love water: your people fight best on hillsides, and the Bullroars’ home is underground. But though the fighting is clumsy for both sides here, the Bullroars’ weight and armor is a greater disadvantage, for the water soaks into their armor padding and their heavy boots get stuck in the mud. They fight best on stone and in formation; finally your people have broken them apart and forced them into a place where they are helpless, bellowing impotently like great rhinos stuck in quicksand.

Four of their ships are still there, and a few of the Bullroars begin to reboard, ready to sail away in defeat. But just then another ship sails into the harbor around the burning wrecks, its red sail raised, brimming with a hundred fresh Bullroar soldiers ready to fight.

But you’re ready too. “To me!” you yell to a company of your people, as you charge to meet the ship. “To Akina! The Fire King!” come the shouts in response. By the time the first soldiers hit the water you’re there, smashing your huge mace against Bullroar shields as your people stab them with spears. Your attack is so fierce that soon the new Bullroars from the ship are as hapless as the old, struggling in the deep water, unable to form a shield wall, lost in the water now red with their own blood.

But behind this ship sails another, with another hundred Bullroars. “Haman!” you yell, but he doesn’t need the warning. Your second-in-command meets the second ship as you did the first, slaying the Bullroars as they enter the water, keeping them from touching land or each other.

But a third ship sails in behind the second, and a fourth behind the third. Other captains meet them, but your forces are stretched thin now, and the Bullroars are taking heart from their reinforcements. They’re starting to come together, slowly and clumsily, locking one shield next to another. As soon as there are enough of them in formation, they’ll be able to push you back on land, where they’ll have the advantage again.

You look past the ships to the edge of the harbor. Four more ships are sailing in. There’s no way you can hold the beach now. Your only chance is to make a last stand at the barricades. You open your mouth to shout the order to retreat, but close it again at a strange and wonderful sight.

A huge whale, hundreds of feet long, breaches the water in front of the lead ship, leaping into the air and crashing onto the bow. The ship capsizes, throwing its soldiers into the sea and taking on water. Meanwhile, two of the other ships pitch back and forth frenetically as though attacked from the undersea, and then they too sink. The fourth ship starts to sail away, but the whale resurfaces and crashes into it, sinking it outright. Within minutes, all four of the ships are sunk, with all hands lost.

The Bullroars see this too, and glance nervously over their shoulders as they try to keep up the fight. Meanwhile, beyond the harbor, the same thing is happening to the rest of the Bullroar fleet. Everywhere, red ships are going under: sinking from underwater attacks, being overwhelmed by great sea creatures or merfolk, or dragged under by whirlpools. The merfolk army is attacking for real now, and even a Bullroar fleet of a hundred ships is helpless against it.

Then into the harbor they come: hundreds, maybe thousands of merfolk, heads and toros breaking the surface, silver tridents and fish-scale armor gleaming in the sun, swimming even into the shallows where your battle still rages, where the merfolk never dared come before. A fresh army, swimming easily through the same sea which holds the Bullroars stuck and struggling.

It’s the last straw. Before the merfolk even reach them the Bullroars surrender: first one by one, then company by company, the soldiers give up their axes and let themselves be led onto the beach to be bound. As the last few holdouts are overwhelmed, shouts of victory go up from the sheepheads. “Akina! The Fire King!” they call, and you’re hoisted once more above their heads, the sheepheads crowding around to touch you or be touched.

Now your captains come to you, and you jump down and embrace them: first Haman, your right hand, who kept your people together when you were gone, then Philos, Drogan, all the others – you’re hugging them and laughing, deliriously happy together, the harsh words of your parting forgotten.

But there are a few captains missing, and when you ask about them, the mood turns somber. You lift your eyes along the beach to see sheephead bodies, broken and bloodied, stretched out on the sand. Not everyone made it to the victory party.

“Your Majesty,” says Haman. “Would you speak with the wounded?”

But when you see the dead and dying, panic grips you. “Lalomea!” you cry, pushing past your people and splashing toward the merfolk. You told her to stay safe. Had she?

You look over the legions of merfolk soldiers, their silver helmets poking above the water, until you see her. She sees you at the same time, and swims swiftly toward you, almost knocking you over as you embrace waist-deep in water, the waves crashing over you as you kiss her pale skin, her green hair, her eyes and cheeks moist with seawater. She is safe.

“What happened?” you ask.

“It was Lewellyn,” she says, beaming. “He faced down Leviathan again, and took command. They’re all talking about it.”

A brief tinge of jealousy passes through you, but you quickly put it out of your mind. You and Lewellyn are allies, and he’s just saved your life. Then you hear a call, “Lodevar! Lalomea!” and he’s there, splashing up out of the water among the merfolk.

You laugh and run to him, the new Fish King who just faced down Leviathan and on whose authority the ninety Bullroar ships were sunk. He looks different now, older and more mature. He’s a true King now: there’s nothing left of the nervous pampered prince that you found only a few days ago. You laugh and embrace him.

*

Three days later you say goodbye to Lewellyn. He’s got his own battles to fight – he’s a rebel too now, against his father – and your course is now clear.

The Bullroars had pulled nearly all their seaside troops out for the attack; with their defeat, the whole Outer Coast of Kria is now open for the taking. Some of your captains have already set sail on the captured ships and begun the liberation, killing or driving off small garrisons of Bullroars and freeing the sheephead slaves. Kria’s Inner Cities are still firmly under Bullroar control, but all the outer lands, nearly half of Kria, will soon be free. And you know that even in places your army can’t reach, word of your victory and the new country will spread, and like a cool breeze bring hope to all your enslaved people.

Some of your people will remain on Freehom, but you’re needed in Kria. Your people will soon have their land back, but your enemies aren’t defeated yet, and your young kingdom will need all the energy and wisdom of its King to help it survive.

As your last act before parting, you and Lewellyn pledge friendship and alliance. You can’t help in his war, and he can’t help much in yours, but though you’re fighting in different places against different enemies, just knowing that Lewellyn is struggling in his own way for the same things makes you hopeful for the future.

After Lewellyn leaves, you walk out onto the cliffs of Freehome, and look up at the Earth, the home of the Makers. They’ve been with you through all of this, ever since months ago when you rose up against your Bullroar overseers at the mines, or even before that, when you were a fifteen year old field slave and looked up at the stars, and realized that one day you would be free. You’ve felt them all along, and you feel them now. “Thank you,” you murmur under your breath. And you stay with them silently for several minutes.

Your thoughts are interrupted by the slow, deliberate approach of Haman. “King Akina,” he says, “your ship is ready.”

You turn and smile. “Let’s go, my friend. We’ve got work to do.”

The End (for now)

Thanks to everyone who played in “The Ram” through its seventeen months and seventeen chapters. The storygame is on hiatus and will not be back until a few more stories of the Wheel have been told.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

COOL! Love it! Great ending! Very Happy
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well done Key! I can see from your writing why you are so well regarded on this site, not just seen as a dictator. Very Happy
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 2:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, Whoop and Very Happy

A great double ending with much scope for continuing the story.

I didn't join this one at the beginning (I arrived at Chapter 7), but I saw a fair amount of it unfolding. Truly a great story.

I didn't spot a technicality in this one so I leave with just my usual.


Happy Writing. Smile
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm... Trademarks.
Mine's the opposite to Smee's: I use it only in MY SGs. And he uses his in everyone else's... :o
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, I finished this one up first, but popped over to Fish That Walked to get the whole picture and get the 'writer's perspective' out of my system - I comment on this as a reader only.

I was not here in the beginning of The Ram, but once I found it and read what was the current chapter at the time, I was so eager to make an informed post about it that I only read the summaries that began the former chapters to cross-reference where it was then. Of course, long since then I have gone back and filled in the gaps, and this storygame has been one of the most satisfying stories I have had the pleasure of reading.

I did not even really mind that it was a short story as much as I did with Archers Flight, because I read that all in one go. With The Ram, I had to wait with everyone else to get the next chapter, and because of the time involved, combined with the content-rich writing in all of your work, it seemed as epic as any novel.

Like you touch on in the ending, Lodevar has been through alot of changes in a short time, from slave to King, and it was unique to be with him for at least some of them. I think of all things though, I most enjoyed the one thing that never changed; his unwavering determination to win his people's freedom without compromise. As people we are so often unsure of ourselves, no matter how much we try to fool ourselves and each other, that characters who never question thier course are some of the most inspiring of all. Sure he may have questioned his methods or choices from time to time, but deep down where it counts he knew what he was born to do, and never strayed from that path.

I am sad to see him go, but also cheered by the thought that this is still only the beginning.
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Sector 17 -- Rebuilding... ... ...

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter
And because it is my heart."  -- Stephen Crane
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 2:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That was... beautiful. Wink Didn't know you still actually went here... I thought cruel eld had snoweth white locks apon thy raven hair, palsied thy limbs and enfeebled and dulled thy mind from its usual sharp self, before consigning thee to a miserable grave in thy bed... I was mistaken. Laughing
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 3:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I echo many of the sentiments already expressed here. This storygame has been fun to play, and fits ever-so-nicely into the Wheel. I look forward to what is now in store.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 10:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Some of your people will remain on Freehom


Just pointing out the small typo...I couldn't help it. Wink

I remember that the first day I came here, I read through the first six chapters of the ram. I kept reading, even after my parents were shouting at me to come to dinner. I think it was the ram that hooked me on to here. And if it weren't because of the ram, I wouldn't have started writing stories, and how different my life would be now! So basically, I owe the Ram a lot. I'm sad to see him go, now that the action really starts again, but I'm looking forward to seeing him again when all the makers-people meet each other. Well, lets see what the next wheel story is about!
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks everybody for the wonderful comments. It's sometimes been hard to find the time and write this storygame, and I haven't gotten the chapters out as often as I liked, but it was your feedback, and your creativity and your willingness to immerse yourself in the story that kept me going.

It's been great to create this story with you, and I'm looking forward to many more.

Smile
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

*narrows eyes suspiciously* Why don't you have over 4000 F now, pray tell? Is there any shady dealings, with stoats or lotuses or animals of all kinds? Hmm? Kangaroo mice? Surprised
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hyperion, don't be so suspicious. Thanks Key.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 11:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wonderful ending, Key. I am sorry that I just got to it at this late of the month. Looks there is still a lot of scope to continue the story from any perspective.
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