The savage priest's reward

Mohr was not one to admit it, but Sosir’s drive and competence had been a decisive factor in his horde. His own taskmasters would beat and bully underlings depending on whether they could do so easily, rather than keeping discipline. Strong but stubborn underlings would stronghand taskmasters and competent but weak scouts would find themselves bullied into being footstools. 

Rather than forcing each other to wear protective vests or keeping their catchpoles in order, their gung-ho attitude would see them rely on their own scales, spikes and claws.

The few scouts that still did their jobs freely brought Mohr unreliable information. Reports from lo-wards ranged from floating rocks, endless bridges and sense-less, immeasurable houses, to saline marshes and impenetrable woodland.

What was worse was that the wives of his horde were getting irritated with the uncertainty, arguing that they had gained enough and had to enjoy their spoils.

Dir-wards the reports were certain though, endless woodland seemed the norm. They fought some skirmishes there, but the tribe of tiger grendels were resilient and gave little so far. Mohr knew a softer land of norns would exist in the other direction despite the confusing reports. And he needed a decisive win.

He no longer trusted his scouts. The reports of mysterious and alien constructions proved fully untrue. When he marched his bands through the canopy of thorns they had grown accustomed to they eventually found the foliage shrinking to more common sizes. Thorns made way for branches and needles replaced by simple, juicy leaves. The odorous ooze left behind for more and more salty water. Branches still stood twisted and turned, but the swampy forest was a surmountable hindrance.

Snakes, eerie fish and other, stranger things lurked in the water. Many times did these threats halt their advancement, wooden gangways were swiftly constructed so they could move on.

Mohr had always felt superior to his underlings. He considered none his equal, merely future rivals at best. So too had he thought of his late father. Their kin had, to the old beasts best of knowledge, come from a far off land. Sent away from it by a stronger opponent, his ancestors had travelled for a long time through mountains and valleys. Forgoing an easy land to keep themselves strong through adversity, and safe through the protection of a hostile land, they had eventually settled in the thorned marshes. He scoffed at their lack of ambition. He would return his kind to their ancestral home, wherever that might be, and rule all in between.

The mangrove forest stretched out over many miles. Appearing both more open than the thorned forests and more closed because of deep pools, their march was a slow one. Because of the undrinkable water they needed to maintain a supply line as well. Mohr was still the biggest bully of his tribe, but nagging voices and irritations suggested more and more to go home. 

Scraggly, multi-tiered edifices stood silently, unreachable in the steamy distance. These structures were only seen sometimes, and teetered on an odd threeway of appearing natural, unnatural and artificial in their black stone and almost regular form…

His troops were frightened. They had never seen things this big in their chaotic little lives, and Mohr himself felt happy they never neared the mountainous things. That evening they camped near a grand pond. One boon of the briny flats was its great offering of savory foods. Every pool they had found, be it large or small, had been filled with simple zander fish. The sand banks they found here and there had rocklice buried under the salt encrusted sands, and these banquets, though uncooked, made for manageable grendels.

However, the strangeness of the land and the length of the supply line gave increasing unrest. He needed some change or sign is his favour, something that came his way soon enough.

The great pond had easily traveled shores, but this stretched the line of his horde thin. As they finally advanced consistently all seemed well enough, until Mohr heard his men shriek from the back. Out in the water, just a few meters off the beach in the hazy fog something sits. Taller than two trees and wide as a house the thing dumbly stared at the frightened grendels. 

“BORLUND GAH FISH”

It thundered over the shivering grendels, deep and booming the voice was heard and felt in their bones. Somewhere in the line someone puked in the water, but no one took their eyes off the giant beast. 

Mohr noticed the giant’s vacant gaze, the indifference in its pose and the limpness in the swaying tentacles. This creature was a harmless idiot. The fear of his peers however hatched a plan.

The grendels looked a little more confident, and brash tones and jokes were thrown around again. A sacrificial platform was built for that ancient “god” of the salty marsh. The rickety construct doubled as a stop in the supply line, stabilising it. The army halted long enough to set up a fishing organisation to keep Borlund satisfied, and a night of voracious feasting under the idiotic gaze of the stinking, silty giant concreted it as a benevolent god, and Mohr as a faithful priest warlord.

With the grendels truly convinced of divine guidance and sound spoils, they steadily marched on. Within two days their roads of struggle and strapped together wood reached the open reeds of the delta, and mere hours after that did they stand in the waving green expanses between rising ridges. Their mirth was great once they reached the first settlement along the broad river, but their disappointment equally so when it turned out to be ruined husks of homes. The fields lay fallow and no creature or critter could be found.

After the first followed more, and after a day of long travel and such lackluster spoils, morale certainly dropped. The bannered tower where once generations of unwoken norns had been interred marked their camp for the night, and the colourfully cloaked spire once more inspired the greedy piety in them.

This want drove them early in the morning towards the town of the weavers, the largest hamlet in the bramboo vales and visible from far away with its pale houses and colorful banners flapping in the easy wind.

Mohr was not a newlyhatched. He had sent out scouts to circle the town. His prey were no grendels, but he considered whom he had learned the strategy from. They did not return on the agreed hour, and he suspected they never would. A wiser general would have retreated and have found a more defensive position but this was not in his nature. 

The rough band of spiked grendels was set up for a frontal assault and marched towards the town. They soon learned the roads had been sabotaged and the muddy fields made walking slow. Making their way up to the tall fence surrounding the town they had expected to climb over, despite the spikes on top. An expectation proven to be false when furry faces peeked out from behind the spikes and pelted them with darts and stones.

The damp morning was the stage for a drawn out skirmish. The slingers and blowpipes the norns used were barely strong enough to cut the grendels’ course vests and hide, and the mancatchers and spikes got in the way when climbing up the wall. Neither party could break this stalemate, and attrition seemed the only eventual breaker. It did, until scaled creatures stepped on the wall. Faces contorted and frozen into dire wooden howls, and stony talons on their arms, the norns seemed elated when they arrived.

Teeth, nail, spike and spear appeared useless against the newcomers, yet they tore through Mohrs men as if they were mere stingers. The same panic that moments earlier creeped up on the defending norns now held a strong grip on the Grendels. Though the scaled creatures were few, the ranks of the attackers were soon thinned and broken. Mohr himself fought madly. A dream of power was slipping through his fists and he was not having it. 

Purely by brute and blunt force he slayed one of the scaled creatured. Looking up from his opponent he saw he stood alone. His underlings had jumped over the battlements while he faught on top of the narrow wall. He locked eyes with one scaled creature, somewhat taller than the rest. Dark tufts of fur peeked out from under the scales and a hateful gaze of recognition burned down from the armored sentinel. The realisation that he was alone now awakened the coward in him, and he too went over.

Quietly, decimated, the broken army marches back through the saline marsh. The rickety walkways still hold, but Mohr’s grip on his grendels feels decidedly weaker. The dark cloud of mutiny hangs over them, yet in his anger he did not notice.

They reached the grand pool in a few uneasy days of brewing discontent and silent traveling. Surrounded by decoration, hanged with flower strings and leaves sat the great, plump, dumb god Borlund. A large platter of stacked fish and seafood was offered before him while the offering grendels danced their awkward steps.

Briskly the fuming Mohr walked up to the dais with the food, placed his claws on the platter and shoved the whole stack into the briny water below. A look of either endless patience or absolute slowness came over Borlund. 

“Simple, idiot animal!” Mohr shouted. “We die out there and you sit here fed and plump like a hatchling! What use are you? Fat beast, forget fish, forget crabs, I should boil you in your soupy pond and feed my people with you!”

Mohrs apparent heresy shocked the grendels. They had thought of a mutiny, their faith in his leadership low, but never expected such blatant blasphemy from their high priest.

Mohr seemed to open his jaws to utter more profanity, yet remained still. His shoulders sagged and his gaze glazed over in the same way Borlund’s did. Borlund simply sat there contently in his briny, oily and warm pool. A grendel more brave than the other shook Mohr a little, but no light shone behind the watery eyes.

Mohr was a fish. He had been a little silver zanderfish for as long as he knew. A little moment of floaty confusion faded, and he saw a great maelstrom of the most diverse fish and endless oceans before him. He wanted to be part of that immense gathering.

At the heart of the maelstrom sat Borlund, as he always did, regardless of where he was seen. There he sat, gayly, paternally, and very well fed.