The Battle for Eclano, Conclusion

Unwilling to miss out on the slaughter, Captain Kroll shouted, “Right lads! Let’s get ‘em!” And led his axemen into the flank of the desperately isolated crossbowmen on the hill.

The fight was short and bloody, so much that it was over before Kroll even felt it had begin. It was observed from a distance by the goblins, who had turned around to see how the real battle was faring.

As the last of the crossbowmen was cut down, Kroll and his crew found themselves at the crest of the hill, looking down on the enemy’s ogres down below.

Kroll, though he did not show any sign of it to his men, felt disgust, even embarrassment, that fellow ogres would demean themselves so much as to serve as mercenaries for a human lord, receiving pay and eating salted beef instead of taking plunder and eating raw and bloody flesh.

As the last of the sand trolls left the battlefield (by the time they halted they had forgotten they had been fighting) Volker’s blunderbuss company had also noticed the leadbelchers, but despite the urge to do so, neither they nor Van Baas’s dwindling regiment managed to charge the brutes.

The sakers targeted the ogres with their chain shot, both overshooting, and one reaching the dwarf crossbows behind to kill two. Meanwhile, Admiral Volker remained locked in combat with the mercenary Lord Girseack Irongrim, finding out just how difficult it could be to find a chink in dwarven armour! He was thankful of his own protection, in the form of a magical talisman he always carried with him, for there was a moment when without its charming influence he was sure he would have been grievously injured, if not killed. The pirates and warriors around these two fared little better, and despite the Sartosans’ greater numbers, the dwarfs stood their ground.

Deciding that Kroll and his crew were the greater danger, the leadbelchers turned to present the muzzles of their pieces at them.

Kroll let out a laugh, for he was not scared of their carried cannons, and although many of his crew would undoubtedly perish should they charge, nevertheless he fully intended to do so.

Upon the other side of the field of battle, the Harbour Guard handgunners joined the swordsmen in moving back towards the city, although the wizard with them stepped away intending some more mischief before he too retired.

The last surviving company of pistoliers, concealed by the yard and the church, where also in the process of exiting the battlefield, as were the crew of the organ gun up ahead.

But the crossbowmen in the middle of the field, both the local standing force and the mercenary dwarfs, lingered, slaying another six of Captain Van Baas’s crew. The captain was beginning to lose his patience, for his crew’s role in the battle had so far to have been a magnet for missiles, which meant there were hardly any left standing!

“Captain,” shouted his bosun, Moukib Brahimi. “Let’s get to fighting before there’s none of us left, eh?”

“Aye!” said Van Baas, pointing at the leadbelchers who had just turned their back on him. “Let’s start with them.”

With that, at last, his surviving crew began moving at a pace forwards.

As the leadbelchers fired a blast at Kroll’s crew, much of which buried itself in the grassy slope leading up to them, Volker noticed the dwarven lord seemed to be tiring.

Using an unnaturally precise lash from his enchanted whip as a distraction, coiling the thane’s arm and yanking it aside, he swung his cutlass deftly between Irongrim’s helmet and gorget, cutting his head clean off! With two more their own also killed, even the stout hearted dwarfs lost the will to fight, and so turned to flee. They were cut down by their longer-legged pursuers, however, and Volker and his crew found themselves in combat with the ogres!

So thwarted in his intention to take on the ogres himself, Kroll surveyed the ground below the hill-top and decided he would break off from his crew and take on the dwarven crossbows by himself.

But he stumbled a little  as he descended down the slippery grass of the slope towards them, which gave the dwarfs time to flee away out of his reach, streaming through the militia crossbowmen and out the other side.

Kroll cursed, as it seemed he was not going to get to grips properly with any enemy of note at all that day.

The Portomaggioran ogres had quite the opposite problem, for now Captain Van Baas led his crew in a charge against their rear, while Volker’s blunderbuss company came in on their flank, s0 that they were surrounded by attackers on three sides!

The wizard Arcabar saw his chance of harming the foe slipping out of his grasp, and thus somewhat foolishly attempted hastily to conjure a magical flame cage about the enemy’s harbour guard swordsmen.

Too hastily, for although the spell was brought into being, killing two of the enemy, he allowed the etheric energies to swirl beyond his control, causing an explosion of etheric heat to burst from him, sclding his arm and killing four of the handgunners with him (torn apart by a combination of the magical heat and the explosions of their powder flasks and pieces)!

Captain Fark commanded his goblins to shift over so that the gunners could sight the foe better …

… allowing the swivels to so severely maul the militia crossbowmen that they broke and fled away. Kroll cursed again. Would no-one stand their ground against him? Then he laughed as he saw a chainshot kill no less than seven of the fleeing dwarfs, leaving but one lone survivor reeling in confusion! He laughed even louder when another shot, this time plain old roundshot, took the enemy wizards’ head clean off!

Now came a moment that all who witnessed would remember for the rest of their days.

Admiral Volker, his blood well and truly up, lashed so cruelly with his enchanted cat o’ nine tails, that he killed two of the enemy ogres before anyone else could land a blow. Stunned himself at what he had achieved, he stood panting with exhaustion as the rest of the pirates hacked the last ogre down brutally and quickly.

And so ended the fighting at Eclano. Lord Nero led the last of his garrison force away, shouting orders for all to make haste, back to the safety of the city walls, with the organ gun and last few pistoliers in tow, leaving Eclano to be plundered by the celebratory Sartosans.

And the tales most often recounted during the drunken revels of the next few days was that of Admiral Volker’s whip: pinning a dwarven lord’s arm to allow the removel of his head, then so viciously slicing the leathery flesh of the enemy brutes that not one but two fell dead to its attentions! It was close to the time that the Sartosan fleet voted regarding whether to have a new admiral, but what with these stories and the glut of loot taken from Eclano and Scalea, it seemed the outcome was certain. Admiral Volker was becomind a legend in his own lifetime!

In this hour of need in Portomaggiore, where was Lord Alessio? It seemed that the VMC commander, General Valckenburgh, was not the only defender of a realm to have been absent when the pirates came. Or perhaps, more accurately, that Admiral Volker was a proven expert at targeting his cruel raids just when a realm was at its weakest – itself another reason that he should be re-elected as the fleet’s commander.