Clear a Path

Xenograg stares up the large craggy hill to the portal at its top. It is the gateway home, but the enemy had gotten here first. His eyes drop to the scores of demons squatting astride the only viable footpath to the summit. Xenograg scowls. One choice is no choice. He resigns himself to the decision.

“Darg!” he barks. The orc strides forward.

“General?” replies Darg. Xenograg turns to look him full in the eyes.

“Clear a path for me,” he commands. Darg blinks…then smiles wickedly. He turns his head and yells out a command in orcish. The entire orc contingent of Xenograg’s warband surges forward to surround Darg and Xenograg. Darg raises a fist in the air, and all thirty-seven orcs bite their own tongues. Darg barks out a string of orders, and the orcs form up for battle.

They are not a barbaric horde but a platoon of soldiers. They are the new breed of Shield Orc: trained, disciplined, and obedient. They make a wedge formation with Darg at its apex. He raises his sword up high, then lowers it to point forward. Without any howls or grunts, the orcs lope forward—to spend their lives as dearly as possible.

Xenograg turns and gestures for the remaining half of the warband to prepare to follow the orcs. Elmö, Xenograg’s equerry, steps up beside his master.

“Lord, what did Darg say to them?”

“He simply said, ‘time to die.'”

“Incredible,” is all Elmö can mutter….

With my fiction writing, I coined a saying: “When a Muse comes upon you, you don’t ask which one.”

In this case, it is Melpomene (tragedy). Again.