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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Stormclouds and Chariots, part 1

Aawoooom! went the call of the sentry's horn. Aawoooom! it went as he blew again from atop the hill that overlooked the viking village. Aawoooom! sounded the horn a third time, signalling an approaching enemy.

"They come! The legions of Rome are upon us!" The sentry repeated his call again and again from his vantage point. His voice echoed down through the huts in the viking village, and the women and children scrambled to hide within the buildings. Armed with their axes, swords and warhammers, the viking men rushed to the top of the hill to join the sentry. They were all thick and burly men, most adorned with full beards. They wore light armor and large fur clothes along with helmets from which horns protruded. They gathered, over a hundred men in all.

And they peered down at what the sentry had warned them of.

And they knew they were not enough.

Gathered on the field below were thousands of Roman legionnaires, armed with lances and short-swords, armored with the strongest chestplates that could be made, their helmets' red-haired crests blowing in the wind. Some were mounted on horses and chariots, others were armed with bows and arrows.

The front line of the army parted in the center, and a warrior, nine feet tall and holding a sword as big as a man in each hand, stepped forth. He wore armor of gold and his muscles glistened in the waning sunlight. His eyes burned black and red above a jet-black-bearded face and a ghostly pair of huge and unholy black hounds circled hungrily about his feet.

"Heed your watchman's warning, barbarians," the warrior called out in a voice like scarping iron and smoke, "for Rome has come for your lands. And they have brought their gods with them."

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