Howl of the Tundra (Mature, LadyJ and Haseo)

“The wind is hard today”, commented one of the guards to the town of Yesme as he pulled his fur cloak tighter around his body as he stood at the gates of the small town. His companion, a tall man with a long flowing beard, nodded and snorted.

“’Dem Barbarians sure’n be havin’ a bleedin’ ‘ard time in this weather”, the man said through broken yellow teeth. His companion grimaced at the sight of the man’s torn mouth, before looking out across the rolling tundra with an uneasy feeling. Of late there had been more and more monsters attacking wandering travelers, most notably the yetis.

“Look at it, Bethor”, said the man. “It stretches on forever, this wildness. This… forsaken cold! Why did the King send us to this Gods Forsaken place?!”

Bethor laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder, answering, “Because we’re lowly foot soldiers, Hector. We do what we’re told. when we’re told. how we’re told.” Hector shook his head slowly and started to walk away, until he saw something moving along the tundra line. The shape was distinctly man astride a horse, and a large man and horse at that. As he drew closer and closer, Bethor and Hector both looked at each other with concern. They had seen this man before they knew, and they were never happy to see him.

As he drew closer, they began to make out the defining points of him, seeing his large frame shrouded in armor wrought of hide and fur, with the distinct wolf head across his shoulder and the hilt of a large sword peeking over that same shoulder, also sheathed in fur.

He pulled his large, red haired steed to a halt, and tilted his head to the side, raising his square jawed face to stare up at the two guards with dark eyes as they marched along the side of the wall that surrounded the city. The guards returned the stare, though much less forcefully than the painted face of the barbarian.

“What business do you have in Yesme, Rothgar?”, shouted Hector down to the barbarian.

Rothgar called back up in a deep and strong voice, “I come for warmth and drink.”

“You’ll not find much of either for your kind here”, came Bethor’s call down to the barbarian, who simply pulled back his lips and snarled.

“Don’t mind him, Rothgar”, said Hector, “Go on in.” Raising the gates, Hector allowed the large barbarian to enter the town, and enter he did, his long brown hair waving in a fierce wind that froze Hector and Bethor to the bone.

Several hours later, Rothgar was in the local town tavern, Muddy Boots. The barbarian sat near the bar, tightening the straps of his fur boots. Most of the populace kept their distance from the barbarian, giving him the space he’d earned in the great Yeti siege of 344. The large barbarian took a large drink of his ale, gulping it down while some of it spilled over the sides of his large tankard, spilling onto his fur covered chest.

The bartender looked over at the drinking barbarian and cleared his throat. Rothgar looked over to the man and slammed his tankard, startling a few patrons behind him.

“Help!”, shouted a voice from the doorway. “Bandits! They’re attacking the town!” Rothgar looked over his shoulder at the man, whose face was bloody and an arrow stuck from his shoulder. Grunting, the barbarian rose from his seat as many of the patrons rushed out, grabbing their swords hanging at their sides. These were frontiersmen, who had lived for much of their lives in the dangerous tundra, and had still managed to carve out an existence for themselves.

Rothgar, however, was a man of the wild, who lived amongst yetis and wolves. He feared nothing, and no one but the gods. A wild grin spread over his features as he drew his broadsword, rushing out of the tavern with the others.

Beside the door, a slim-framed humanoid supped from a large mug of heated mead, a heavy hood of thick wolves' fur concealing the person's features, the person's long braided locks dripping with melted ice the only personal characteristic, and even they were hard to tell what colour they were, snow still encrusting them.

But as soon as the injured man cried for aide, heads snapping up, on alert, it was clear that the person was actually a woman. A rather stern-looking woman, with glowing, bright blue-gold eyes. She stood slowly, letting the others rush out, stampeding out like caribou. She waited until the stragglers scrambled out, before following, reaching under her cloak, and pulling out a small looking two-headed ax. But as she walked outside, she grabbed under the ax-heads and pulled them apart, until the ax was almost as long as she was tall. She twisted the ax-heads to lock them in place, and the ax started to hum and growl, snarling wolves etched into both ax-heads, their eyes gleaming as soon as the ax was locked into place.

The woman, known as Teifra, pushed her hood back slightly, looking around Yesme, her lupine stare darting around judging where the majority of the fighting is. She wrinkles her nose, clearly in distaste, before moving towards the battle, gripping her strange ax carefully, the silver-black metal flashing in the frozen sunlight. Her eyes fixated on the fighting men.

Rothgar may have been one of the last out of the tavern, but he was the first to hit the crashing waves of bandits. Swinging a powerful left hook, he knocked one of the bandits aside, swatting him easily with his barbaric, godly strength. Spinning around, he brought his broadsword down against the sword of one of the bandits. The other man brought his blade up, hoping to block the fury of the barbarian with his blade and hopefully counterattack, but what he found was the broadsword of the barbarian smashing through his sword, shattering it, and then he knew only blackness.

Rothgar let out a mighty roar and leaped away from his latest kill, picking up the next bandit up by his neck and throwing him aside easily as though he’d picked up a sack of potatoes.

He felt a sudden pain in his shoulder, and rather than look at the arrow that had sunk deep into his shoulder, he rushed at the offending archer, charging with a cry to the gods as he raised his blade.

The archer was too stunned and fearful to react to the charge until it was too late, bringing up his bow hoping to slow the barbarian. But the man charged right through his defenses with a straight punch that crushed the man’s nose to his face, nearly taking his head from his shoulders.

The guards of the town backed far away from the mighty Rothgar, their eyes wide as they wared the barbarian who had come crunching through the two dozen strong bandits, wading right into the middle of their numbers and swatting them aside, or slashing through their weapons with his mighty broadsword.

Teifra set off at a trot, pulling her hood tight over her head, protectively. Her eyes narrowed watching the melee, watching the guards back off because of the wild barbarian. She snorted and moved past them, with a snarl as they tried to stop her.

“Iffen I can't watch me head whilst a bloody berserker runs 'round, then I damn well don't deserve to have one!” She snapped, her voice low and growly, her accent strong, before gripping her ax under both heads, and suddenly charged with a strangely wolf-like howl, plowing the bandits in front of her. A feral grin spread over her face, most of the bandits were interested in defeating the huge giant of a man in the middle... they hardly noticed the small lupine female that suddenly swung her ax hither and thither, cutting in arms, sides, backs, stomachs, and legs.

It wasn't too long before Teifra's gray wolf-cloak was covered in blood and bile from the attacking bandits. A bandit swung his sword wildly, towards her face, and she had to back up with a yelp, earning a cut along her nose and cheek...

The bandit grinned a bit, seeing the bright red blood dripping down her dusky and snow-burnt face. But the smirk faded when she met his eyes. It was like staring into the eyes of a wolf... or death... both of them seeking his life. Both of them making him wet his trousers before one of the ax heads buried it-self into his chest cavity. The wolf etching absorbed his lifeblood, making the ax seem to glow red. She snorted again before spinning the war-ax out of the corpse, spraying blood and shards of bone with it. The wolf-like woman straightened, looking around... between the warriors, the barbarian, and her-self... there were barely enough bandits to flee... let alone fight.

Teifra grunted, and shouldered her strange ax, glancing among the fallen without pity in her intense gaze. She kicked over a bandit's body, his face showing he was maybe ten, his eyes wide in the shock of death, disemboweled, and covered with snow and blood, but her eyes never flickered. She grabbed the dead boy's coin purse, nodding slightly, and moved to the next corpse, looking for anything of value.

“H-hey! You shouldn't do that!” One of the cowardly guard yelled at her, finally coming out of hiding. She continued her search, without looking up at him,

“Why'ot? They ain't going tah need it where'ver they end up.” She said coldly, crouching down to carefully pull a necklace off one corpse. She examined it with a critical eye, then dropped it with a growl.

“Well... they... its not right for a woman to scavenge bodies!” He suddenly pointed out, looking rather pleased with him-self over the comment. Teifra snorted, this time in amusement, a soft, humorless chuckle escaping her as she bent down, pulling a corpse's head up, by the hair. It was a woman, one of her eyes missing, clearly having been covered with a patch before the scuffle, scars covering her paling features,

“These woulda scavenged yer corpse, and tha corpse of every man, woman, and infant in tha settlement. Me now... I figger they dun need it, and I do, so, 's fair game.” The guard stared at her, then at the corpse she had manhandled, before walking away, looking pale. She smirked to her-self, frowning when she tasted her own blood, and touched a hand to her bleeding face.

“Damn lucky bastard...” She growled to her-self ripping off a corpse's shirt before rubbing it into the snow. After it was wet, she used the shirt to wipe off the blood, but didn't press the shirt against the wound, to make it stop bleeding. Instead, after she had wiped her face clean, she reached within a pouch at her side, and pulled out a strange looking canister, opening it, and smearing what ever was inside it along the wound. The bleeding soon stopped, and the ointment turned white with the cold and whatever else might be in it. She put the canister back into her pouch, before stretching, glancing over her blood-stained clothes and armor. She glanced around, finding another money pouch, and grumbled,

“This is tah pay fer the cleaning... fucking bastards....” She said, before turning back towards the tavern.