The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The Pit (Pages 1-3)
20:04 Aug 13 2009
Times Read: 758




Hulking shadows loomed and danced in the glow of the massive camp fires now that the last sliver of sunlight had fallen below the tree line. The crackling of the timbers was a comfortingly familiar sound, yet even though the fires burned with a savage ferocity that would have scorched the skin from the bones they could not drown out the feasting of the figures which sat hunched by the fire.



Torren stepped back from the large wooden stakes that served as the bars to the camps cages. Most of the bars were simply small trees with their limbs crudely removed and hammered into the soft earth. Many of them still had the majority of their bark although it was frayed and some had cruel looking barbs where the branches were snapped and torn from the post.



“Looks like they are just about done eating.” said Torren lowering himself down onto the dirt floor of the makeshift cage.



“We’ll wait for them to fall asleep and make a run for the border.” said a youthful voice from the midst of the remaining prisoners.



“Don’t be a fool.” said Torren kicking out at the nearest stake.



“These posts must be driven down the full length of any man here, we aren’t going anywhere tonight.”



“Well then what do you suggest we do, sit here and wait for out turn in the pit, or at the fires.” said the same youthful voice, but now the bravado from before was being replaced with fear.



Torren looked at the assembled prisoners. Most of them wore the uniform of a conscripted pikeman but all of them showed evidence of the savage fighting that had lead them here. Scattered amongst the conscripts were a few men dressed in nothing more than dirty rags, obviously the last survivors of the village that had supplied the lumber for the massive camp fires and the majority of the feast.



Torren was shaken from his thoughts by a tired and ragged voice seated in the furthest corner of the cage.



“Watch your tongue pup least you want it torn from your skull.”



Torren raised a hand to silence the youthful speaker before he could respond.



“We shall not be reduced to fighting amongst ourselves least we miss an opportunity to bring the fight to the enemy.”



Besides thought Torren with a handful of pikeman and even fewer peasants we wouldn’t muster much of a fight for those brutes by the fire. The silence Torren had achieved with his raised hand was met with several patriotic grunts and a single, cold, derisive laugh.



As a single entity the group turned its attention towards the voice. What had at first appeared to them to be a pile of discarded furs unfolded itself from the floor and rose to its feet.



“What childish talk, the talk of heroes and fools.” said the cold voice.



The voice was accompanied by two pin points of light rising up through the darkness until they stood taller than a man. The figure paced back and forth, still laughing disdainfully but always careful to avoid emerging from the shadowy corner. The young man was the first of the group to recover his nerve and he stepped forward and thrust out an arm.



“You expect us to just sit and rot like cowards, like you, you…”



Just then the figure stepped out of the shadows. The glow from the camps fires moving upwards, illuminating long, slender legs wrapped in leather and bound with straps of animal hide. The figures torso was similarly bound in leathers although in the centre of the figures chest was clearly visible the face-pelt of a giant silver wolf.



The group stepped back as the figures face finally crossed the border of the shadows. The face was slender and the figure wore its hair tied back and held in place with small animal bones. The bones entwined in the creatures hair glowed dully in the low light, however it was not those, or the figures matted hair, or its blood splattered clothing that had the assembled men of the empire hypnotized into silence.