On the Maggot-Mills 1301

Shit and blood and vile mixtures of the two clung to his skin. Samuel Axe looked down and laughed. Bile was escaping from the corners of his mouth, he vomited, raw fish and onions to clear his palate.

It wasn’t disgust so much as strenuous exercise that caused the reversal in fortunes of his dinner. Proctors, those cockless tongueless freaks who flecked the bloody air with their stumps for tasters, swung pikes in menacing figure eights as the last of piss ridden Lugdimer ball breakers and the vestige of organized crime fled the scene.

The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas formed an impenetrable wall of crazy flesh and hardened steel. Samuel Axe stood in front of that wall before his knee gave out. He smiled and enjoyed the blissful lack of pain.

Whips and swords and the insincere little daggers with brass knuckle charms scattered the remains of the dead. It was a motley mix, a few low draw crossbows had been employed by the Brownankle against the Leatherback, so Brothers of the Order lay dead and dying, puffs of foamy red blood flowing between their clenched teeth.

The orders had been to battle the Brownankles to their lily white knees and secure the redlains for Eduardo. This had been done, but not without some price.

Samuel Axe dropped the sword that lingered on in his hands and fell backwards, his broken lips parting for the rain that soon fell and washed away the bloodied and scorched earth.
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Nobody was certain what was in the holy water. But holiness alone didn’t do what it did to men. Tiredness melted away, the Proctors laughed and trilled their raspy dirges while the Leatherbacks were on the march.

They saw blood. The vision began to tunnel as they had come into Lugdim. The heart leapt from its ignoble cage and men felt far, far away from what was happening. Pounding feet sent up shockwaves that shook the dust out of the air, Leatherbacks were a purifying force; everything was cleaner after they’d marched by.

Every tendon, every fiber, every last accent of being pulled itself upright and stood to attention, all the men got hard, their dicks waving in the wind that got between the fabric in their pants while they marched. Muscles long atrophied were kicked and beaten by the holy effects of just a bit of that blessed water on their lips.

Proctors, Sam hated Proctors, they gurgled like retarded babies, their tongues lost to fanaticism, their dicks lost to stupidity, their throats ashy and dust swollen from no use. They gurgled and swung their pikes back and forth at one another, a test of skill, and a test of resolve.

The Knight-Master marched at the head, all men behind him, as they came upon the cold gray city of Lugdim.
It had been a simple assignment, find the Brownankles. Kill them all. The most reasonable explanation for the need to destroy every last bit of the Brownankles wasn’t because they were pagans, which they weren’t.

No, it was probably because they had stopped paying their protection racket to Eduardo. Which was fine, not everybody paid their operating fees, but when they killed more than a few of the Phalange, Eduardo’s own insane yet useless personal guardsmen, who had been sent to inspect their coffers, well, that’s when things had gotten interesting.

It didn’t help that the Brownankle v. Phalange street rumble had found itself ending up in the Jewish Quarter, which was mostly burnt to the ground, the little enanos bastards fleeing into the redlains and into the few Jew havens outside of the Quarter, mostly though the little Semitic midgets had become homeless.

Homeless Jews are most definitely more likely to curse you, so when Eduardo woke up one day with the Stiffening Boils climbing up his ass he decided that the only way to placate the Jews, and by extension their insane hemorrhoid inducing god, was to have the Brownankles driven from Lugdim and their intestines to be spread along the redlains.

Men, women, and the more intelligent specimens of children fled before the Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas. The dumber specimens of children were on occasion mistaken for very brash enanos and flung to the sides, their bodies mostly intact, but their spirits broken.

It had been slow going until they’d come to the maggot-mills, an interconnected system of flooded streets that the Brownankles controlled, they shipped freight here and there within the city, stopping to plunder the endless treasures of long flooded basements and airtight water resistant chests, which more often than not held more brandy than most men thought healthy.

Apparently, this was where the Brownankles got most of their money. And for being allowed to sell this particularly exquisite vintage of brandy with no taxes from Lugdim they, the Brownankles, were expected to pay a fee, this minor, almost miniscule fee, paid in full to Eduardo’s coffers, was the only reason that the Brownankles were still allowed to sell their recovered brandy. It was their only protection they had from the Taxman.

Eduardo was a bit slow in realizing their debt.

Now though, now they had no recourse. The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas were honorable men. Honorable men do not take the bobber pound of iron, honorable men prefer a fleshier, more screaming prone form.

It was honorable men who lined up and drew breath that glistened with swords and it was honorable men who swung the wicked whips and it was honorable men who sidled up against the houses of the redlain and gurgled something to the effect of “We shall not be moved.”

It was honorable men who watched the water bubble and brew, like a thousand angry fish lashing out for bread. It was honorable men who paused on the edge of the deep ponds known as the maggot-mills, unable to march further.

It was honorable men who came to realize the terrible sight before them. Like the unending march of seasons, the approach of death and the inevitability of taxes the massive almost bean pods would float up from below the water.

The first one popped up. “Brothers, ho!” A mighty rain of javelins bounced off of the bean pods and Samuel Axe was about to suggest that maybe these weren’t the particular bean pods that brought only death to those who opposed them.

Samuel Axe was fucking wrong. Twenty more popped from the maggot-mills in as many seconds. They were, big. That was the only word that even managed to describe them.

Another rain of javelins and still more popped up.

Bean pods usually don’t hiss. These did. The massive bean pods hissed and their top half popped off, smacking wet and ready on the open yet still mostly stagnant water of the maggot-mills.

Men stood ready, like foolhardy explorers they’d ridden inside these little underwater contraptions and popped up ready for battle. Now the javelins rained down, and arrows sprung back.

The two lines of Brothers directly in front of Samuel screamed and curdled and fell clutching at the massive sucking wounds in their chests, stomachs, and groins. The ones who got hit in the head didn’t even get the dignity of a dramatic death.

Gore sprayed backwards in waves. Proctors gurgled something to the effect of “maybe we should move now” and men moved. They fell back, packed, orderly, efficient, panicked.

The second volley fell at their feet, only a few died. With their shock and awe advantage lost the Brownankles had to paddle closer and closer to fire slow draw crossbows at quick tempered men.

When the Brownankles came ashore, well then they were well and truly screwed. The Poor and Shirtless Knights are a tough breed, called Leatherbacks for a reason. They surged.

And that’s when Samuel saw the gleam of forty arrows pierce the sky. He screamed and his Brothers screamed with him. The slowest ones died as the Leatherbacks plowed into the front lines of the Brownankles.

Samuel out front, that wicked whip curved like a blade made from hurricanes. It danced across the air, part terror, part cane, part spear. He twisted it and found the satisfying crack of head and neck separating to be simply delightful.

He gathered speed. While the cockless rockers known as Proctors gurgled and stabbed to break up enemy formations the Knight-Brothers would spread out, diving into the midst of battle, their whips cutting and keeping the well armed hounds at bay.

Samuel’s sword answered the calls of the more inquisitive, hacking away, stabbing, slashing in desperate strokes as he wheeled around and let them know his anger.

The bolt in his shoulder went unnoticed; he was too busy slicing men in half. Twirls are reserved for dancers, Samuel twirled now, the world he saw before him was a slow moving caricature of itself.

Limbs and the fates of men hung in midair, Proctors skewered victims, one of the Brothers sliced a man’s intestines out with a flick of his wrist and the long untwirling madness that was the whip.

Pivot and stick the landing, Samuel’s blessing made him laugh off the idea of pain or fatigue, when he was done fighting he would fall where he stood, his body too tired to move, and Christ would protect him then.

His sword, his sword was deep in some other man and he lacked a way to fight off this interloper. The whip was too far away and this bastard was real close.

So Samuel grabbed the other man’s balls and clenched with a fury. The other man blacked out and Samuel was quick to crack his neck with a well placed boot.

There it was, his sword was back in his hand, a pile of dead men, all with the little band of gunked up skin around their ankles and wrists, the water of the maggot-mills dyeing their skin.

A call for the regrouping sounded and Samuel tried to walk. His knee would not budge, so Samuel stayed. He stood as the unshakeable pillar that he was, brandishing his wicked whip and his sword with guts hanging from the end, a most dramatic flourish.

He laughed, and then he fell. Samuel Axe collapsed, tired and happy, unconscious in the extreme, but fulfilled.

It was a bonus that he woke up alive, his Brothers tending his wounds.