Chapter 5: First Blood
The war horns woke me from dreamless sleep.
I was moving before my eyes fully opened—rolling off the pallet, grabbing the sword, running. My feet knew the path to the eastern gap. My mind caught up somewhere along the way.
Four in the morning. Attack from the weak section. They've been watching.
The night exploded with screaming.
Torchlight flickered along the palisade as I reached the gap. Twenty shapes—maybe more—poured through the incomplete section where timber bracing replaced ancient stone. Green skin. Yellow eyes. Weapons that had never known a forge.
Orcs.
My militia was panicking.
"HOLD!" I shoved through the breaking line, grabbing a young farmer by the shoulder before he could run. "SPEARS FORWARD! HOLD THE LINE!"
Halbarad's arrows sang overhead—three orcs dropped before they'd cleared the breach. But more followed. Always more.
A crude axe swung at my head.
I ducked. My sword took the orc across the belly. Hot blood splashed my hands. The creature fell, and another replaced it.
This wasn't like sparring. This wasn't like training. This was chaos and noise and the stench of bowels and the certainty that one mistake meant death.
I killed my second orc with a thrust to the throat.
Keep moving. Don't think. Just survive.
Grimbeorn's hammer materialized beside me, and the world became briefly simpler. Where I blocked and stabbed, he crushed. A skull caved. A ribcage shattered. Orcs who saw him coming turned and ran into our waiting spears.
"LEFT FLANK!" someone screamed.
I spun. Three orcs had circled our line, making for the civilian tents. A woman clutching two children stood frozen in their path.
I ran.
The first orc didn't see me coming. My blade opened its back. The second turned, iron knife slashing—fire bloomed across my forearm—but I was inside its guard before it could recover. Steel through the chest. Twist. Pull.
The third orc looked at its dead companions, looked at me, and fled into the darkness.
Blood dripped from my arm. Mine this time.
"My lord!" The woman stared at me with wide eyes. "You're hurt—"
"Get inside. Stay down."
I turned back toward the battle. The line had held. Barely. Bodies littered the breach—most of them green, thank the powers, but not all.
"They're running!" Halbarad's voice carried over the fading chaos. "Don't pursue! Let them go!"
Sound advice. We didn't have the numbers for a chase.
The adrenaline faded. The pain arrived.
[COMBAT CONCLUDED]
[HOSTILES ELIMINATED: 17]
[HOSTILES ESCAPED: 3]
[FRIENDLY CASUALTIES: 4 KILLED, 7 WOUNDED]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 200 SXP]
[QUEST COMPLETE: SHELTER FROM STORM]
[REWARD: 150 SXP, MORALE STABILIZATION]
Dawn came slow and grey.
I walked among the dead with Thorwen at my side, cataloguing wounds, identifying faces. Four settlers. My settlers. People I'd promised to protect.
Henrick the woodcutter. Throat cut, died fast.
Mara the weaver. Spear through the stomach. Died slow.
Colden the farmer. Sixteen years old. Crushed skull.
Farren.
I stopped.
The man I saved from fever. The first volunteer for the militia. The one who stood up when everyone else was afraid.
He lay near the breach, spear still in his hands. Two dead orcs flanked him. He'd held his position until something bigger than him broke through.
"He fought well," Halbarad said quietly. "Killed three before they got him."
"He shouldn't have needed to fight at all."
"None of them should. But they did. Because of you."
I knelt beside Farren's body. Closed his staring eyes. His widow would need to be told. His children would need someone to explain why their father wasn't coming home.
That task fell to me.
We buried them at midday.
The graves faced east—Dúnedain tradition, Halbarad explained. Toward the sunrise. Toward hope.
I dug alongside everyone else. My wounded arm screamed with every shovelful. I didn't stop.
Farren's widow—Brina—stood silent at the graveside, holding her two children close. The boy was six. The girl was four. Neither of them understood. Neither of them would understand for years.
I promised him they'd never go hungry.
When the graves were filled, I spoke.
The words came from somewhere deep—Dúnedain prayers Halbarad had taught me, mixed with something older. Something that felt right.
"You fell defending what matters. You died protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. The stones remember. The stars remember. We remember."
I meant every word.
[AMON HEN-DÎR — EVENING]
Thorwen stitched my forearm by candlelight.
"You're lucky," she said, threading the needle with practiced hands. "Another inch left and it would have severed the tendon. You'd have lost use of the arm."
"I'll try to dodge better next time."
"You could try not putting yourself in the front line."
"And lead from where, exactly?"
She pulled the thread tight. I sucked air through my teeth.
"You're not a warrior," Thorwen said. "I've seen warriors. My father was one. You're something else—a builder, maybe, or a schemer—but throwing yourself at orcs isn't what you're made for."
"Tell that to the orcs."
"The orcs don't care. They see a man with a sword, they try to kill him. Simple creatures, really." She tied off the stitching and reached for bandages. "You need to stay alive, Aldric. You're the only thing holding this place together. If you die in a raid because you wanted to feel heroic—"
"I wasn't being heroic. I was keeping the line from breaking."
"Same result if you'd died."
I had no answer for that.
She finished bandaging the wound and sat back, studying me with healer's eyes.
"Two weeks minimum before you use that arm for anything strenuous. Infection risk is low—I cleaned it well—but fever watch for the next three days."
"Understood."
"You won't follow those instructions."
"Probably not."
Thorwen almost smiled. Almost.
That night I didn't sleep.
I sat on the watchtower platform, watching the eastern darkness, thinking about Farren. About Mara and Henrick and young Colden. About the choices that led them here, to a ruin in the Weather Hills, fighting orcs for a lord they barely knew.
They trusted me.
The stars wheeled overhead. The same stars I'd watched in films, now blazing above a world where death was real and permanent and came with yellow eyes in the pre-dawn darkness.
They trusted me, and they died.
Somewhere below, Grimbeorn's hammer rang out. He'd barely paused during the battle—grabbed the nearest weapon, crushed whatever got close—then gone straight back to the forge. Some people processed grief through work.
I understood that.
[SYSTEM STATUS]
[SXP: 485/500 TO LEVEL 2]
[SOVEREIGNTY: 12 (+4)]
[MORALE: 58 (RECOVERING)]
[MILITARY REPUTATION: ESTABLISHED]
The numbers told a story. We'd won. We'd proven we could fight. The orcs who escaped would carry word to their tribe—this settlement wasn't easy prey.
But four people had paid for that reputation with their lives.
I looked at my bandaged arm. At the blood still staining my shirt. At the graves fresh-dug in the morning light.
First blood.
Not the last.
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