Red Was Her Blood

[Marlboro]

The Blade of Rauxod frowned at the ship captain. "A fortnight?" he repeated back to the man. "Aye, m'lord, an' believe you me it's long for my liking as well." Sir Red had liked to think that he'd rode to Beluaterra upon a storm of his fury; clearly the downside of this was that his fury had absolutely trashed the ship's main -mast, which meant he'd be stuck here far longer than he liked. With a sigh, he dismissed the freeman, then looked again to the chaos in the city. So, Benedicta hadn't been completely addled; he could see the devastation that had been wrought upon Unger from its port, even by the moonlight, and the dark shapes which moved about slaughtering its population. Suppose I should do something about this, he thought. "ARMOR!" he bellowed, before he realized that he'd left his squire at home to guard his brother.

Of course, this didn't alter his needs. Turning on the nearest sailor, he pretended like he'd been talking to him all along. "Armor!" he hissed. "Now." Minutes later, his plate and chain suit was in place, clanking and crashing with each step as he stomped down a gangway that seemed like to snap at the weight of all that steel and nobility. His armor was polished with gold trim, the griffon and stallion rampant of House Marlboro upon his breast. As it was damnably cold here, he'd taken the extra step of throwing an oversized crimson gambeson over the suit, leaving it undone in the front as it couldn't quite close. The sailor he'd pressed into action followed along behind him, bearing great kite shield with the device of Pax Cagila emblazened upon it.

The tall, powerfully-built knight paused at the bottom of the plank, tossing a black waraxe from hand to hand as if it were a child's wooden toy.  He knew that he'd need men, but not where to find them in this unfamiliar place. But he didn't have to go far before the scattered population began to come out of hiding, emboldened by the presence of the ostentatious foreigner. He carefully selected a number of them to follow him further. While they were unarmed, unburied dead lay all over the place, some with fine weapons and armor themselves, so they were quickly relieved of these things in the name of survival of those yet alive.

A lesser man might've been broken by the fact that the pleas he'd callously ignored had been genuine, but Red had been raised by a harsh and impatient father who had beat such habits out of him at a young age. No, Red never cried. He got angry, and then he got even. The paragon of modern military technology stomped towards the broken lines of the Thalmarkins, in the midst of several dozen well-armed and mentally-broken peasants. "Boys!" he cried, "Let's start a riot!" He retrieved his shield from his ersatz squire, and began to bang his axe against it like a slow war drum...

[Marlboro]

Sir Red approached the rearguard of the Thalmarkin unit, and clapped a hand onto the shoulder of what looked like a female soldier. The pot helm shifted as the woman's head spun around on her neck, a skeletal face peering up at the armored knight, fleshless jaw flapping in silent laughter. He recoiled, his gauntlet dropping to the hilt of his axe, when suddenly an eerie howl, unearthly and terrible, rendered the morning asunder. The skeleton's head continued spinning, snapping back front, and the fallen defenders of Unger surged forward, charging the Daimons' assembled ranks.

Undead Horde attack because they are out for blood.

Great, black birds swooped from the skies to join the fray, and the knight almost thought he could recognize the pale-haired wraith leading the charge. "Gods be damned," he muttered, then turned back to his assembled rabble. "Fire, throw, attack to exhaustion!" he bellowed, his enclosed helmet amplifying his words but lending them a tinny distortion at the same time. He turned back to the losing battle, and raised his shield, determined to take down at least one of these sons of whores...

---

"You really are an idiot," the raven-haired woman said later that evening. Sir Red awoke on a bed of straw, covered in bandages. Little thoughts like how did I survive did not occur to him immediately, because naturally he was the only man afield wearing half-inch-thick steel plate, and also something something divine providence. He scowled, sitting up, and noticing immediately that he'd been stripped to his underclothes. "Who in all the hells are you?" Sir Red asked sharply.

"Nobody," said Vilmar. "My name is Nobody."

[Marlboro]

The Knight marched into battle once more, this time along with the Eagles of Hope. The memories of his first skirmish against the Overlord were fresh in his mind, not so much the terrible Horrors but more the vision he'd seen of who had been leading the ranks of undead and other monstrousities against them. He knew it wasn't possible, but he knew that magic and Daimons weren't possible either and here they were.

Clad in superior Cagilan steel, he surrounded himself in the middle of his formation. His men all wore crimson and gold tabards over their own sturdy armor, the crest of House Marlboro hastily stitched onto most of them. They were dirty and ragged, having camped out in the wasted pit of Wailing Wood for nearly a week, and they hadn't seen a single coin since they'd left this city. But they fought bravely, stood their ground. Sir Red admired the caliber of the Thalmarkan fighting man, though he did step in himself when the front rank became shredded, batting aside claws with his great kite shield and delivering swift, businesslike hacks with his axe.

In the end, a clever charge, weaving through broken ranks like thread through the eye of a needle, felled the great monster that called himself the Overlord, and he knew his cousin was avenged. The great host of Horrors dematerialized like mist in the sunlight, and he set his weapon into the ground, followed by his shield. His helmet was next, then his gauntlets, leaving a trail of steel as he simply walked away. His men gathered his belongings, then suddenly broke out in cheers as the runner their leader had sent ahead with the bonds returned with their missing week's pay.

The knight ambled into a ruined tavern, bottles strewn here and there, all the signs of a legendary, desperate bender all over. He walked over to the counter from which an innkeep had once served his patrons, leaned over, and felt around with his bare hand. Retrieving a dusty bottle of aged whisky, he looked around for a glass, found none, and swore before drinking straight from the neck.