The battle, for all it`s intensity, all its death and destruction stopped that instant.
Garath Gor the giant of the northern tribes held a young man in his arms. The man was dying, blood slipped onto the mudded floor.
Men of both sides looked on as Garath Gor paused in his killing. His crimson axe had hewn down scores of men this day. The blade and the wielder, had tasted blood for years, and yet a small tear ran down the giants cheek. A tear so small only the dying man in his arms could see it, this making it all the more real.
The stark realization to a beast of a man - a conquerer of men and lands - that war had found horror in a frozen heart.
It is said that Garath Gor was not a mortal man. He had risen through the clan system of the northern tribes with brains and his considerable brawn. He had become war chief on his twentieth birthday, it was then that he decided to find out what he could about the southern states and the palace of Indiun.
The palace of Indiun was the political capital of the lands of Tyramac. Tyramac a seething populace with peace in their heart and battle hardened shields on their arms. Induin and the combined southern states had ruled all from the southern sea to the mountains of the north. However, try as they might they could not tame the Northern tribes, and little did they know of the beast they had let in.
Garath had moved down the lands with a small band of soldiers, all without weapons, his silken tongue calling for peace and trade in the rich ores of the north.
With his lies eaten by the greedy senate, he was welcomed into the Induin palace and the talks.
All this time plans were being made and spies being planted, the northern tribe had domination to organize.
It did not all go smoothly for - like these things tend to - love attacked Garath and his cold heart. A slave girl called Sable caught him like a fish on a hook. She was not much over 19 years, yet her hidden power and fearlessness held Garath captive. He fell deeply in love.
Over the three years he amassed great knowledge and even made the odd friend, but Sable was his one desire. They had become lovers much to the disgust of her owner a rich duke, by the name of Berrymass the 4th. He was a powerful man in the political sense but he was a small man. Better with the stylus than the sword.
Berrymass made it his job to find out Garath for what he was, by any means necessary. So one dark day the story unfolded.
Sable was sick, she knew what it was, the feeling only a expectant mother can describe. That knowing of a life taking hold inside. More worried her than sickness, what if Berryman was to find out, she knew the baby was Garath`s.
What was she to do? she pondered. . . When a door to her room smashed open, and her world fell apart.
Berryman stood there with a smile, almost demonic in it`s intensity. In his left hand he held the head of one of Garaths aides. Gore spilt to the floor and glazed eyes looked at nothing but death. Garath had been found out and all were being put to the death. Berryman grabbed Sable and was about to kill her when she pleaded to him. She said that she held his baby, feeling the burn of the lie to the pit of her stomach, she sobbed herself to sleep.
Garath had realized his plan was in jepordy, but he had to take Sable. He arrived late at night under the cover of darkness to get her. Guards saw Garath. He slipped a blade deep into the neck of the first guard and spun round and broke the neck of another. As fate would have it a third guard saw the commotion and bellowed for help.
"Garath my sweet, you must go. My heart burns to be with you but I hold your child, we would never make it back to the northern tribes." Sable spoke in her light melodic voice and Garath almost fell to his knees. He couldnt even speak words had left with his very soul. "Please Garath," she pleaded,"Go back and rescue us when you can for now I will keep our child safe and wait for your return." With a teary goodbye Garath jumped from a window into the palace moat, he swam to the opposite bank and made his way north on a horse.
Twenty long years had past, and now Garath Gor had lead the Tribes south one step at a time. Blood, sweat and death followed the man south to his love and his child. The one desire pushing him on, spurring his heart to beat was the one thing that led to his doom.
The battle, for all it`s intensity, all its death and destruction stopped that instant.
Garath Gor the giant of the northern tribes held a young man in his arms. The man was dying, blood slipped onto the mudded floor.
The tear dropped to the floor. Silent, not a Sound. The Southern soldiers were so in awe of the Garath Gor legend and they were unsure as to why he had stopped killing.
One of the southern soldiers spoke, "He has killed Berryman the 5th."
Garath Gor died, his heart had stopped the instant he looked at the young face of the soildier he killed, he did not hear the soldier state who he had killed. He was looking into his own face, his own blood fed the worms this day. One of the things he fought all these years for he killed with one stroke of his blade. One sweep he killed himself and the northern nation. For he was the driving force to the uprising. His giant body held his son close, yet it was an hour before anyone moved to him, unsure whether he was dead.
A dagger was clutched in the dead hand of his son with blood seeping along its hilt. The hilt was guildered in the jewels of the Berryman, it had pierced the heart of Garath Gor, and yet a dead smile was etched on the giants lips, a smile that almost seemed like pride, for a man lost to war had been killed by his son.
The final part of a sad story - A lady who seemed to age years in a few days, had sat by an open window, that led to a moat for twenty years. When she had heard the news of the battle and the strange way it had ended, she had quietly told the maid to leave.
Sable Berryman, was never seen again, yet on the eve of the battle - where she lost everything. It is said if the moon hits the moat water just right you may see a Ghostly lady figure looking North.
Subject: The greatest warrior - By Optimas 
Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:25 am
