Gallow's Pole

[Nym_Gibran]

   

456 NE (10,245 AD) Late Fall

   It has been months of peace and quiet. Since the failed coup at the royal court and the bungled attempt to bring peace between Adanac and Floritine, the boarders have been quiet. The usual stream of raids and counter raids have ceased. But today something has changed.
   A smudge of black smoke rises against the sky as the barest glow of the predawn sun begins to banish the night over the Tennes family estates. A steady rain has been falling all night and shows no sign of stopping. Miles away, well into the uncharted Tennes forest the Lord Nym Gibran is hunting to ease his mind and escape the daily routine of the court....
"Damn rain, you can't hunt in this.", he glances up at the rain still falling above the treetops. "It was a mistake to come out here, the only thing I'll catch tonight is a cold", he says with a sigh. Suddenly his eyes widen and his head swivels left and right, "Something is wrong. I can sense...", the thought trails off as he looks about him. Concentrating, his senses sharpen to a point well beyond human. It's the smell of smoke that first catches his attention. His jaw goes slack and his eyes widen as he sees that the smoke is coming from somewhere in the distance, somewhere near his keep, "no, noooo." he whispers as he begins running towards the smoke.
   The screams of the terrified and the hopeless crying for help reach Nym's heightened ears before he can even lay eyes on the farmlands beyond the edge of the forest. Rain beats down in sheets and the newly risen sun is completely hidden behind an entire sky of dark grey clouds. As he breaks from the tree line in a near panic, his breath coming in ragged gasps, a scene of carnage lays before him. The muddy fields of Tennes are sown with bodies of the dead and dieing. Soldiers, servants, workers, and townsfolk from the village that surrounds the Tennes keep litter the fields; men, women, and children even. His keep is a roaring bonfire and Valmarian soldiers walk about finishing off the dead, violating the women, looting, and carrying off children as slaves. Just hours ago his lands where peaceful and trouble free, it's too much for his mind to take in all at once. The world seems to spin for Nym, his stomach heaves, he goes to his hands and knees, and vomits onto the muddy ground.
   As he regains his bearings and his eyes look up from the ground Nym sights a group of five Florantine officers, only a score of yards away, which are circled around a lone man. Nym recognizes him immediately as one of his personal guard; the man is hog-tied and on his knees, one of the Florantine officers holds his head in both his hands. The lead officer yells at the bound man, "Speak you Adanian trash! Do you have rat dropping for brains? I asked you where your master is. Tell me where the criminal Lord Gibran is!" Slowly the officer pushes his thumbs deep into the helpless man's eye sockets. The bound guard thrashes and screams in pain and terror as he is blinded.
   For half a moment Nym is paralyzed at the brutality of the scene before him and then his screams join the blinded man's, "NOOOO!" Like a spring Nym leaps to his feet, his face twisted in a look of absolute rage. The Valmarians look up in confusion as an arrow sprouts from the lead officer's neck and he topples to the ground with a gurgle. Nym is already fitting another arrow to his hunting bow as they turn and draw clubs, "It's him!"
The young lord is a renowned hunter and accomplished marksmen; he draws the arrow to his cheek with a steady and practiced motion. Another arrow flies from Nym's short bow, catching the lead Florantine in the shoulder and spinning him around, as the Valmarian's begin closing the gap.
   As they near the young lord draws his long-sword with a look of grim determination, "Come heel you dogs!" Nym yells at the approaching Florantine and begins charging towards them holding his sword overhead. The first Officer swings his club in a horizontal arc towards Nym's head meaning to take him alive, But at the last moment Nym tucks himself into a roll bringing himself through the group of officers. He spins as he stands and brings his sword up in a defensive position, as the officers turn, in time to block and hold one of the officers' downward strikes. He continues the spin bringing his heel crashing into the inside of the officer's knee, folding it at a forty five degree angle in a way it was never meant to bend at all. "He will never walk, without a cane, again." Nym thinks to himself as he steps over the fallen man and dismisses him.
   The next Florantine, seeing his compatriot go down, steps back in wariness of the young Adanian lord. But this is a mortal mistake as he bumps into the man behind him who is pushing forward and both stumble just a step. It is all the opening Nym needs, and with a quick strike he opens the man's throat. The officer drops his club and his hands go to his throat as he realizes he has only moments to live. The officer wounded by Nym's arrow begins circling to Nym's left flank hoping to get behind him while Nym is forced to defend himself from the other Florantine officer.
   The officer behind the doomed man seizes the opportunity and kicks the dieing man, with his throat open, in his back sending him colliding into Nym, hindering his sword arm, and staggering Nym back. This is the opportunity the flanking officer had hoped for and he seizes it to land a glancing blow on the young lord, breaking bones in Nym's right shoulder and staggering him back further as he attempts to recover.
   Surrounded and his sword arm numb from the blow to his shoulder, Nym gathers his will to use a punishing telekinetic blow to one of the rushing officers in a desperate bid to buy himself some time to maneuver. But the young lord is inexperienced, and not the battle hardened Anadari master he will one day become; he is not even an apprentice yet on this day. The Florantine officer with the broken knee he had dismissed earlier is within striking range. Nym never even sees the blow from the crippled Florantine officer coming. From the ground the officer swings his club and connects with the back of Nym's leg. Nym yelps in pain, stumbles, and goes to his knee. It is all the opportunity his attackers need to finish him. A telekinetic blast crashes into his chest, picks him up, and hurls him ten feet back; he lands sprawled out in the mud and rain, unconscious.
   He awakes slowly like a drowning swimmer struggling to the surface of a mountain lake; everything takes on a dream like quality. The first of his senses to come back to him is touch. The rain feels good on the back of his head. He can feel a horse beneath him and something rough chafes his neck. Next, words drift in and out to him as someone shouts to be heard over the rain.
   "...for war crimes.... republic of Florintine.... sentenced to battle field justice...by order of Patrick Annis." a groan escapes his throat as he hears those last words and his head rolls in an effort to raise it.
   A loud slap sounds somewhere behind him and suddenly the horse under him surges forward, but something around Nym's neck yanks him from the saddle and holds him in the air. Adrenaline fires through Nym and he bolts back to consciousness. Nym's eyes flutter open and he understands immediately what is happening, a rope noose is hanging him. His hands are tied behind him and the Florantine officers are already riding away secure that they have done their jobs.
   The edges of Nym's vision begin to blacken as if he is falling into a pit very slowly. His legs kick futilely and the noose becomes a ring of pain and fire around his neck as he sways in the rain suspended several feet in the air from a tree not far from where he battled the Florantine officers. Nym can feel his life slipping away as the blackness takes more and more of his vision and his life.
   His thoughts begin to descend into an animalistic and instinctive mind set as he begins to panic. In his last moments of life Nym lashes out with his mental powers unleashing an indiscriminate flurry of telekinetic strikes on everything about him. One of these strikes the branch he is hanging from and a loud crack can be heard. "I have failed my people and I will die here for it", are his last lucid thoughts as hope drains from the young lord and he embraces his death and falls back into unconsciousness.
   The telekinetic strike alone is not enough to break the branch, but the moisture from the rain, and Nym's frantic kicking has strained the branch beyond its breaking point. As the lord hangs there, motionless, consciousness, and dieing, the branch cracks, splinters, and finally breaks. The young Adanian Lord, Nym Gibran falls to the earth; rain falls on his face as he lays in the mud a top the bodies of several of his personal guard that had hanged before him, unconscious but alive.