A Fall of Snow (Season Finale 3/12/19)

A gentle flurry of snow settles on Danton’s outstretched hand, the pure white flakes painted orange by the strange, mystical light.
“Pretty” he thinks, running his tongue over cracked lips and wincing as it catches on a broken tooth. He looks down to where his legs lie in the frozen mud, a few feet from where his stomach ends in a red ruin. He frowns sleepily at the blood pooling on the ground.
“Well. That’s something at least.”
Four hours earlier
A frigid wind gnaws at Danton’s bones, finding its way between the joints in his field plate and sending shivers down his spine. He sets his jaw to stop his teeth rattling. The line is eerily quiet, beside the low moan of the wind. Saddle leathers creak, horses huff and stamp in the frost, but otherwise the soldiers beneath the walls of Zot Goran wait in silence.
He didn’t eat this morning - hadn’t had the stomach for it - and is starting to regret the decision. His stomach churns, but he breathes deep and forces his hands to stillness on the reigns.
The temperature is dropping quickly, in spite of the morning sun that filters through the leaden clouds. In the shadow of the capitals outer wall, his breath makes ghosts before him. Already his helmet’s faceguard is rimed with frost.
Beside him, Kamar sits in the saddle of her gargantuan destrier, a coil of thick chain piled over the pommel. The huge woman looks impassive, as though she were waiting to be served at the Ettin instead of for several thousand tons of homicidal maniac to crest the hill in front of them.
He undoes the chinstrap to pull off his helm, leans over in his saddle and vomits onto the ground. The Aerotaur next to him dodges the torrent of bile with a nimbleness belying her size. Kamar reaches over, patting him roughly on the shoulder.
“Every time. Eyes up, Chunks. Boss is here.”
He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, looking up in time to see a figure in ornate red and black plate halt before the assembled Order forces. He sits atop an enormous silver stag, it’s luminous pelt largely hidden under black-lacquered scales. Clustered around him are several of his closest companions. A step behind the stag, Baine stands like a boulder, a huge maul held in one armoured fist as though it were a butter knife. A blue Arakokra Danton hasn’t met before flits around in the background, and Danton’s eye keeps sliding off another figure. Ah, the Assassin, Traavor. How can someone be simultaneously terrifying and superhumanly bland?
Then there is Sunday. Danton shivers again, but not from the cold. The diminutive tiefling makes him want to run screaming. She can dress herself in all the roses she wants - he was around after the Green Tide. He knows what she’s capable of. Besides - she’s not the only Phlegethan in Kantas. He knows that her old moniker “Lady” was more than just affectation.
















Danton looks over to his left. The Aerotaur from earlier is staring at him with glassy eyes. Someone has split her from shoulder to hip like a piece of kindling. Must have been a while ago, because there’s no blood on the snow around the corpse.
He closes his eyes for a moment, a strange warmth starting to fill his body. Suddenly, they snap open. He’s been here before, on the wall. Someone must be-
No. There’s no one there, no one anywhere near. For a moment he thought- but no. He yawns, shrugging his shoulders to get comfortable on the frozen ground, and casting a blurred gaze over the battlefield.
“Gods, what a mess.”
This is not a battlefield. It’s a slaughterhouse. The ground has been churned to mud and then refrozen. Corpses of giants, elves, K’ul Gorans. Thankfully he can’t see any of the Order. He’s pretty sure he saw Kamar get back up after that boulder crushed her horse.
He blinks to clear his eyes. It’s getting harder to keep them open. Maybe if he rested them just for a moment…
Four Hours Earlier
They arrive all at once, heads appearing over the nearest hill and just continuing to grow until the figures seem to blot out the sun. With them comes a wind, and an icy fog that fills the valley till Danton can barely see the ears of his horse. Over the howling gale, the heavy footfalls of their foes can be heard, lumbering toward them.
And then, they charge.
Madness. Faces and bodies appear from the icy fog and vanish again, boulders tear the limbs from men and horses, animals and people scream. Danton ducks on instinct, feeling something huge pass over his head. A hill giant lumbers out of the frozen chaos. To his right, Kamar hefts the end of her Daisycutter - the long spiked chain meant to tangle and trip their giant foes. She tosses one end to Danton, who hooks the ring end over the pommel of his saddle, and the huge half-Orc kicks her horse forward into a gallop. Hugging the stallions neck, she tears around the giant’s thick legs, riding literal circles around the dim witted creature, her horse effortlessly leaping the chain as she passes Danton. The giant roars as the barbed chain bites into its naked shins. It slams its club into the icy ground, spinning to try and catch the armoured woman, but only succeeds in tangling itself tighter. Then Kamar is beside him, a wild glint in her eye. The maniac is actually enjoying this.
“Split!”
They turn their horses and gallop out in an arc, hooves scrabbling on the frosty ground. The giant roars, then its legs go and it slams into the ground. They loop back, unhooking the Daisycutters and Kamar breaks a lance off in its eye.
She draws her sword, turning the horse just as a boulder the size of a man slams it. Danton loses sight of her as another giant lumbers out of the mist, this one clad in black iron and wielding a sword three times the length of a man.
“Ah. Fuck.”
The Present
“Boss. I’ve found him.”
Red turns, allowing herself a sigh at the tone of Tam’s voice. She makes her way to where the wiry man stands over what’s left of Danton, ignoring the dull ache in her left arm. The Phleg looks pale, cold.
“Look at the blood. Can’t be long gone.”
Tam’s voice is quiet, full of self recrimination and a tiny spark of hope. It’s a dangerous combination. Red stamps on it.
“He’s in bits, Tam. Even the boss couldn’t fix that.”
The young man looks like he’s going to argue, then stops, spitting on the snow. Red lays a hand on his shoulder and nods to Danton’s body.
“Come on. Let’s take him home.”
She turns and walks back to where the Order has gathered. They stand in a circle around two other bodies, weapons drawn as a mark of respect to the dead. Tam lays the two halves of Danton’s corpse next to each other on the frozen ground. Beside him, Cob’s chest has caved in, chunks of frozen boulder still embedded in the crater. By contrast, the third figure looks remarkably peaceful. Sweet’s pale face could be sleeping, sandy hair pulled back from her face and bound with a simple leather cord. Her eyes are closed and if her skin looks a little paler, a little colder, we’ll - hasn’t some thoughtless bastard laid her out on the frozen earth?
As Red’s eyes drift down from the elfin features, she clenches her fists - well, fist; her left arm ends at the elbow, shorn through by a frost giant’s axe and now roughly bound and cauterised. Just below the gorget, Sweet’s cuirass has been punched clean through with a hole the size of an orange. The enormous javelin tore right through the tempered steel and out the other side, killing her almost instantly and carrying her from the saddle. Red had found her twenty yards from the remains of her crotchety grey mare, pinned to the icy ground by fifteen feet of black iron. It had taken four of them half an hour to pull the damned thing free. Now she lay there, forever silent on the mud that drank her life so greedily.
She hears a thunder of hooves, turning as a blur of silver and black skids to a halt. Varis slides from the back of the great stag, taking in the scene as he strides toward the bodies.
“How long?” he asks, kneeling beside Sweet and pulling something from the pouch at his hip.
“An hour, give or take.”
The half elven man stops. For a moment he is still, eyes closed. In the pale sunlight, his cheeks glisten, though whether from tears or sweat is hard to say. Then he sighs, standing and looking around the circle of soldiers.
“It’s over. K’ul Goran is safe. Let’s go home.”
He bends, scooping Sweet up delicately like a sleeping child, and begins to walk slowly towards the gates of the city. Red nods to the others, and they gather their fallen, following the silent figure into the fading winter light.