(Mount&Blade AAR) The Saga of Lokus Axehand
This is a story I have written based loosely on my currently character in M&B. Tell me what you think, constructive criticism would be appreciated, but I won't say no to any glowing comments as well.
So without further ado:
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The Saga of Lokus Axehand
Listen to me. I am Marcus Axehand, son of the late Lokus Axehand. I will tell the story of this extraordinary warrior, how he rose through the ranks of the Vaegir army, crushed enemies beneath his heel, and how unfortunately, he was betrayed and thereafter defeated and killed.
Chapter 1 - Now with no raep.
Lokus started life as the son of a veteran soldier, a huscarl in the Nordic army. He was captured after a defeat by the Rhodoks, strapped to a post, then filled with bolts until he would have made a porcupine jealous. All this was witnessed by his son, then 8 years old. The Rhodoks were planning to send Lokus into slavery, and kept him locked in the prison of Grunwalder Castle while cried and screamed and hollered after his dead father.
When he had stopped crying and looked up, Lokus looked at the cell he was in. It was rough stone, as all cells were, and the bars were thick and rusty. The dungeon stank of a mixture of sweat, blood and all other nameless filth. Cockroaches scuttled around the floor, nipping at prisoner's toes and spreading disease from cell to cell. Over the next few weeks, Lokus heard tales of inhumane cruelty to prisoners in this dungeon, and only the torturers ever enjoyed going down here. Every other soldier tried to avoid prison duty as much as possible as the stench was enough to knock out the strongest man. When Lokus was free, he was a healthy 8 year old boy, with long curly hair, the colour of corn during harvest. He was naturally fair, but after weeks and months of malnutrition in the prison, he was pale as a ghost, and unlikely to last much longer. One prisoner took pity on him, and fed Lokus his own meal, eventually starving to death, but keeping the boy alive. All the while Lokus could hardly think of anything else but the execution of his father and the smell of the prison, which clung to your nose like little bugs, never leaving.
Lokus was incarcerated like this for months, until word started spreading of a siege. The Khergits, long time enemies of the Rhodoks, were assaulting the castle walls, and the prisoners gave thanks to their gods as the door was smashed open, and the prison guard fell forward with a black feathered arrow sticking out of the back of his neck. Framed in the doorway stood a Khergit warrior. The prisoners watched as he bent forward, unhooked the keys from the guard's belt, and unlocked the cells.
“Come on.” he said, “Follow me, I have guards outside who will escort you out of the castle. If you wish to live, stay with the guards, the battle is still happening, and it would not do for you to die because you lagged behind.”
The prisoners followed the guards and this warrior until they got to a sally gate far away from the heat of the battle.
“On the other side of this door are horses, enough to have two per horse. We would have spared more, but we need most of them for ourselves.”
One of the prisoners, who Lokus recognised as a veteran archer in the Nord army, said:
“Don't you want to recruit us? Most of us have seen many battles, and many of us haven't even reached our prime.”
“No,” said the warrior. “We would, but most of you are Nords, you have not spent your life in the saddle, and you would slow us down, even if we were to have you on horseback. But thank you for the offer, I'm sure you are all very reliable soldiers, but not what we are looking for.”
The veteran archer was about to protest when a crossbow bolt wedged itself into the mortar above his head and shivered.
“Go!” shouted the warrior, as he threw the archer the keys for the sally gate, and turned with his men to face the Rhodok crossbowmen. The last thing Lokus heard of them as they left through the gate was:
“They found us here, but how? I thought they were busy fighting the main army?”
The prisoners found the horses, and each mounted, two to a horse. Lokus, confused, was left standing, until a grizzled looking man, with a thick beard and scars all over his arms, hoisted the boy up in front of him. Lokus was delusional, and struggled as hard as he could, but the man's grip was strong, and he was held fast.
“Stop struggling, will you? We need to get out of here fast, the Rhodoks have evidently won, and it won't take long for them to realise that the cells are empty after the battle.” This man had evidently been a commander once. The way his voice carried authority left nobody in any doubt of what to do. “Follow me.” And so they rode off into the night, trying to get as far away from the Castle as possible.
They rode through the night, through the next day and didn't properly stop until the next night. Sitting around the campfire, the ex-prisoners swapped stories, and started working out what to do next. They had only had just enough food for themselves and half of the horses. The horses thy couldn't feed were killed and their meat kept as rations. By this time they were entering Nord territory and several of the men were from the nearby villages, so the party was smaller, and thus weaker. Lokus was just settling down to sleep when he saw the grizzled old man walking steadily towards him. Lokus hated this man, and leapt and ran as fast as he could into the forest.
“Lokus!” The man shouted. “Get back here, its not sa-”
Thunk thunk thunk, three arrows lodge themselves deep into his body, and Lokus ran headlong into a stocky short man, powerfully built, and just about to pull back his bow for another shot, when he saw the boy hit him. Grinning, he grabbed Lokus and held his falchion to Lokus' throat, and marched forwards shouting “Wherever you are, don't try to fight back, or I'll slit the boy's throat!”
For an answer, five rocks smashed into the bandit's skull, and he fell without a sound, as Lokus ran as hard as he could away from the men as arrows and rocks soared back and forth. Lokus ran, and ran, and ran, and... tripped. Lying face down on the floor, his body riddled with shock and pain, he barely noticed as a bandit stepped over him and aimed his bow into the back of Lokus' neck, ready for the kill.
Two of the prisoners saw Lokus and ran to him, but seeing the bandit, they stopped dead.
“That's right,” the bandit said, with a strong air of malice “Kill me and this arrow ends this little brat's life, come any closer, and I'll shoot.”
“Be reasonable, damn you, look at him, he's an eight year old boy. You expect people to look on you kindly when they see his head on your spear?”
“Who said I want people to like me? You forget, I'm a bandit, even if people did like me, the day I set down my weapons is the day I hang in the castle courtyard. I don't think so.”
Meanwhile, Lokus had been crawling, and the bandit hadn't noticed. When he did, he shouted with rage and shot at the boy, but only managed to hit his leg. At the same time, the two prisoners attack him and beat the bandit to death with their rocks, then ran to check on Lokus.
“He's not too badly hurt, just get him to Tihr now.” said one, a beast of a man.
“And what are you going to do?” asked the other, a small wiry man, with a once-strong frame but now merely thin due to captivity.
“Fight them of course, just go, or you won't get away.”
The thin man ran, with Lokus other his shoulders, as the giant picked up the dead bandit's weapons and prepared to fight the oncoming horde of brigands. He charged them, and hacked his way through two of them, before being subdued and stabbed to near death. In his last moments, he saw a bandit, about the same size as himself, raise a maul and bring it down for the kill...
The wiry man heard the hammer blow on his friend's skull, and ran all the harder to the horses, meanwhile talking to Lokus, to try and keep him conscious.
“I'm going to get you to a horse. We're all going to have to run. Don't worry about your bedding, we'll be at Tihr before you know it.” Exhausted by fear and tiredness, Lokus slipped into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of slaughter, screaming and dying, and as if on a cycle, the sight of his father being shot again, and again, and again...
Chapter 2
The pub in Reyvadin was doing thriving business. Revellers danced through the night and a nobleman even came in and bought everyone in the tavern a drink. However, a solitary figure sat on a table alone, drinking mug after mug of Vaegir beer, and steadily became more irritated as the night went on. Looking up at the merrily drunken crowd, this man was infuriated. How dare they not let him sulk in peace! He stood up, staggering slightly, picked up a keg of beer, and before anyone could do anything, he smashed it over one man's head, knocking him out instantly. The revelling came to a sudden halt, as the man fell and behind him stood a giant of a man, filled to the eyeballs with beer, and with an expression on his face that didn't suggest friendliness. One man walked up to the giant, and said to him angrily:
“What the hell did you do that for?”
As a response, the giant picked up the man and threw him bodily across the room, where the man hit the wall with a sickening crunch and lay still on the floor. Instead of being intimidated by the giant's actions, half the crowd piled in on him, where he proceeded to swat them away like flies. The other half piled in on the first half and a fully fledged bar fight broke out, with the barman cowering under the bar, praying the soldiers would notice. Tables, stools, mugs, jars, anything throwable was thrown in the chaos of the bar. Suddenly the tavern door smashed open and 20 guards plus their commander stormed in, and arrested everyone in the room, killing anyone who resisted.
The commander walked up to the drunks and asked them
“Who started this fight? Tell me now, or I shall have all of you flogged for breaching the peace. You've already earned yourself a night in the cells as it is. Tell me!”
As one, several of them pointed to the giant-man, still fighting against five soldiers who were unable to capture him.
“Let me deal with this one” said the commander, and he walked up to the giant, removed his helmet put his sword to the giant's throat and said “Stop, or you'll never breathe again.”
The giant was just about to sweep the commander away as he recognised the face that was staring at him with such hate and distaste.
“Lokus?” The first intelligible word the man had spoken all night.
Lokus looked hard at the giant and said to his men “Arrest this man, he is harmless. Give him a cell to himself, I want to talk to him later.”
The giant allowed himself to be restrained and marched off with the other prisoners. Lokus walked up to the bar, looked down at the cowering barman and muttered “fat lot of good you were.” Before walking off, slamming the door behind him.
In the Lord's hall, Lokus reported to King Yaroglek, saying that the fight had been subdued. He asked the King one last question before leaving:
“Your majesty, if I may, one of the prisoners is of great interest to me, may I have permission to talk to him personally?”
“Of course, Lokus, you are free to do what you want with the inmates, just don't kill them”
Laughing half heartedly at the dig, Lokus left the hall, picked up his weapons and armour, and left the city to join his army, camped outside.
This was the life of Lokus Axehand, 12 years after the events at Grunwalder Castle. After becoming an adventurer at 16, Lokus had quickly earned a name for himself as a reliable mercenary, and ruthless soldier. At 18, he left Nord lands and became a mercenary in the employ of the Vaegirs. 2 years later, he took an oath of allegiance to King Yaroglek, and had just been camped outside Reyvadin for a week prior to the bar fight. Now 20, he was a capable commander, ready to make a name for himself as one of Yaroglek's sworn vassals, and perhaps get revenge on the men who executed his father. Walking into the camp, he sat down by the camp fire and talked awhile with his men, recounting the bar fight and his encounter with the giant-man. Talk turned to the events of a year ago, where Lokus had been forced to massacre 40 prisoners in order to escape a Swadian army bearing down on him. Lokus stood up, silencing everyone around the fire.
“I am going to bed. If anyone does not wish to be woken by a bucket of cold water in the morning, I suggest you lot should too. Goodnight, men.” At that, the men steadily left in ones and twos, heading towards the sleeping quarters as Lokus headed towards his own tent, and entered. Closing the tent and undressing himself, he thought about the night's events, and about that man. Lokus was sure he had seen him somewhere before, but where, He couldn't place. As he washed his face, he stared into his water bowl, and saw one after the other, the faces of the prisoners he had killed in cold blood that day. One of them was an eight year old boy, with golden hair, who looked almost identical to Lokus when he was eight. Lokus had been forced to kill the boy too, as any of them could have given information away about their location, but it wasn't easy. Every other night Lokus had dreams about the prisoners, and about his own life as a prisoner. Falling into bed, he pulled the covers over and drifted into an uneasy sleep, filled with dreams of war, pain and death.
The next morning, Lokus was up and at the prisoner cells in Reyvadin before the rest of the army had awoken. He passed the now vaguely sober drunks, and unlocked the cell of the giant man. At once, the man leapt for him, but Lokus simply sidestepped him, drew his sword, grabbed a clump of the man's hair and pressed the tip of his sword lightly into the giant's back. The giant obeyed, and was escorted to another room, which was locked behind him and Lokus on Lokus' orders. Sheathing his sword, Lokus looked into the eyes of a man he knew, yet knew nothing about. Once again, the giant charged at Lokus, but Lokus simply tripped him and drew his sword again, now pointing it into the back of his neck. With one foot on the giant's back, Lokus said to him,
“Now Thorvald, are we going to talk like civilised people or am I going to have to conduct this interview at swordpoint?”
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Originally Posted by Marcus Orentius
