Fury's Fall

Well, it looks like I've gone through my backlog, and my muse appears to be sleeping off the exhaustion...

This one be a stand-alone I wrote ages back. Don't expect any recurring characters. Or even a return to the setting...

Anyway, Intellectual property of myself, Jared G. Juckiewicz

Warnings of Graphic Violence from the very start. Don't ask how I was feeling when I wrote this. Really don't...

Why he had done what he had was a mystery. He had strode into the fort through the open gates, and as the sentry's at the gate asked his business, he slid a long knife from under his cloak. As he stepped forward, he rammed up under the chin of the one on his right, then tore it forward and out of the front of the skull, a show of prodigious strength. He stepped with his right foot, pivoting round to the left, angling the dagger to punch its tip right between the other sentry's eyes. As he withdrew his dagger, a flick of the wrist sent it flying into the throat of one the men lounging in the courtyard, only now beginning to respond. Even as they rushed to fetch weapons from the racks lining the courtyard, or began to draw blades from scabbards, he was moving. He strode forward, right handing gripping the sword hilt at his belt, and as he drew the blade, three feet of bevelled steel with a hand-and-a-half grip, he swung it right, holding it two handed, and twisting his torso to put his whole weight behind the blow, he lopped of the head of a guard. The backswing batted a blade aside, and the sword came up again, cleaving the luckless soldier from groin to navel. A spin, the blade held steady, punched the pommel into a third mans face, staggering, and the stranger moved again, twisting aside and parrying where he had to, until he had room to manouver.
A soldier swung a longsword overhand towards his head, and he caught the blow on his blade, right hand on the hilt, left now bracing the blade. A swift kick to the midsection knocked him back, and as the pressure eased on his blade, his left moved to the cross-guard, gripping it tight, and ramming the blade into the chest of his next assailant. There was a crack most would considering sickening as the ribs broke, the blade slicing effortlessly through the vitals beneath. Unfortuneatly, for the stranger, his blade stuck, and rather than waste time pulling it out, he let go, ducking back to dodge the axe clumsily swinging in his direction. As he straightened again, he twisted to avoid a spear, and grabbing the haft with both hands, he wrenched it from its owners grip, embedding the point as far as the wings in the poor axe-wielders gut. As soon as it was torn free, it was twirling with him, over his head, striking everywhere at once it seemed. The first of the forts defenders to think to time a lunge for just after the spear had passed took its butt to his chest with enough force to send him flying back to slam against the fortress wall.
By this point, any other man would have at least been scratched, especially unarmoured as the stranger was. They certainly would have had a worried look in their eyes, what with a dozen warriors in the courtyard itself, and a score charging onto the ramparts with bows and crossbows, but he did not. He had yet to even make a sound, every blow struck in complete silence, disconcerting for his foes to say the least. And a single glance at his face, the lips curled back, baring the teeth in a feral grin, eyes glinting with a predators yellow. As his foes stepped back a space, to avoid the twirling spear, he reset his grip, and with two strides, flung it, not even watching its flight, instead stooping to lift a pair of hand axes from the slain on the ground. The spear flew straight and true, impaling one of the archers and pinning him to the wooden palisade. Meanwhile the axe in the left rose and fell, hooking a warclub wide and into the ground, whilst the right-handed blade rose in a backhanded swing, severing the wrists holding the weapon. Continuing the upward swing the axe in his right buried itself in the armpit of a warrior beginning his strike, whilst the left fell to sever a leg just above the ankle.
Sadly, the blade in the soldiers armpit didn't throw his aim off enough, and his sword glanced of the strangers arm, laying the flesh bare. Now he made noise. A roar of fury answered the blow, as he spun, blood flying from his wound, his left axe hooking the back of a neck, driving its owner to the ground, even as the right cut deep into a mans side, mangling the kidney. As those foes fell, the one simply dragged to the ground treated to neck-snapping stomp, he readied to face the next. The next didn't arrive. His foes in the courtyard were drawing back, as the warriors on the walltops took aim. The stranger didn't even blink, rushing straight at his remaining foes, even as the archers loosed. Arrows and Quarrels pierced him in many places, the force of the blows knocking him to his knees, from whence he rolled onto his back. The commander of the fort approached him, as blood poured from the many wounds, and his grip tightened on his stolen blades. Crouching beside him the commander asked "Why." The stranger gasped out five words. "I Die A Warriors Death." And as the last word left his mouth, he died, taking the secret of why to his death.
He was buried without ceremony, unshriven, in unconsecrated ground and an unmarked grave, but the memory of his final actions, seemingly senseless as they were, would last. And in time, perhaps they did some good. For when foes appeared again on the border, and the forts of the watch fell on accounts of negligience, the fort at Fury's Fall held, it's forces mantained in constant readiness, in memory of the attack of the one they had came to call simply Fury.