Balder took a look around the battlefield, his eyes scanning for survivors: There were none. The only bodies still standing were those impaled on spears, held upright by their killers' weapons

  His whole body hurt but he didn’t have any major wounds, just a few scratches here and there, but he was exhausted.

  His sword and shield suddenly felt heavy, though minutes ago, he had swung them with ease. He let them fall from his grasp.

  The last moonlight was hitting the field, which was reflected of the pools of blood everywhere.

  Balder panicked as he saw the moon slowly disappear behind the mountains.

  “I have to leave,” he whispered to himself, panic clawing at him.

  The blood-soaked earth swallowed his steps, the thick mud sucking at his legs with every movement. He dragged himself forward, passing the bodies of comrades and enemies alike. Guilt pressed heavily on him: he had led these men to their deaths. But another part of him, deeper and quieter, felt a grim solace. They now sat beside their ancestors in the afterlife, freed from this world’s suffering.

  Most of the faces had been made unrecognizable by blood and wounds and the expression of pure agony, they had felt during their last moments which had twisted them to be unrecognisable.

  He finally walked past a face he was able to recognize: Agnarr a friend of his.

  They had fought side by side at the battle’s start, but at some point, Balder had lost sight of him. Now, Agnarr lay dead, his skull split cleanly by a crude orc blade.

  Balder clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. He had always been the weaker fighter, the one who needed protecting. Yet here he stood, alive, while Agnarr and so many others lay dead.

  There was no chance to bury him, or any of the fallen. The bodies of his comrades would rot here, devoured by beasts far from their homeland. The thought twisted Balder’s gut. He despised the idea of leaving them alone, but he had no choice. If it were up to him, he would join them. He would lay down and die here, alongside the men he had failed.

  But his god would not allow it. As a follower of Haburo, the god of war, he couldn’t enter the eternal halls unless he had fulfilled his purpose on earth. He had taken an oath, a mission he could not abandon, no matter how much he longed for death.

  “I will soon see you again”, he said looking at his friend’s dead body.

  He moved on, eventually he found a nearby column under a dead tree which was lit up by the moonlight. The column was about one meter in hight.

  “I won’t find anything better”, he muttered before crawling into it.

  His whole body was now laying in the mixture of mud and blood. He could feel the cold sensation as it got into his clothes, it was disgusting.

  Somewhere in the distance he could hear the death screams of someone. He didn’t need to check for survivors. He could tell that the screams didn’t come from one of his men since there was loud grunting mixed within them.

  Once the voice started screaming out actual words it was only confirmed as the words weren’t of any human language, they were in Orcish.

  He smiled while hearing the beast grunt for help louder and louder as the moon disappeared behind the mountains.

  “Your kind deserves far worse”, he said while smiling.

  He used the last glimpse of moonlight to take a good look at the battlefield, where the red blood of his men was mixed with the black of the orcs blood.

  “Did they serve you well, Haburo?” he asked, his voice barely audible. He looked to the sky, his eyes searching for an answer in the void.

  There was more black blood than red on the field. It was a small comfort, a sign that his men had not died in vain. He felt a flicker of pride in his chest. He had fought alongside them, and they had triumphed over their enemies, even in death.

  All light had now disappeared from the field, leaving only a black void: a new day had begun.

  Once the day had been the time of humanity but now it was their worst nightmare. Once there had been the sun, lighting up the day so plants could grow and humans could see but as of now it was gone.

  Balder, only seventeen years old, had never seen it in his life; the sun had vanished more than four decades before his birth. As of now there were people who refused to believe that it had ever existed.

  Balder wasn’t one of them. But even he found the old stories difficult to believe: tales of green plants, blue skies, and people whose skin wasn’t pale. It all sounded so far from reality, but he had seen paintings of it before.

  The day, which had once been the time of humanity was now the time of beasts far worse than orcs and now that the moon had gone down, they would swarm the field and feast on his comrades' bodies and if he wasn’t careful his too.

  He could still hear the Orcs cries for help which got louder for a very brief moment, then there was a loud screeching scream from the beast and then it was still.

  Balder grabbed a nearby, crude Orc sword that lay nearby. It was the same as the one that had split Agnarr’s skull and probably the skulls of many more of his men too.

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  He was ready for a fight if it had to be, ready to die after a short fight, but apparently the gods had other plans for him. Despite him hearing the beasts moving not even 20 meters away from him and munching on the dead bodies they never found him and as the moon rose again, he was still alive and the field was empty of monsters except the dead Orcs, many of which had large parts of their bodies missing.

  Balder crawled out from the column, his limbs stiff and aching. His clothes were soaked in dried blood and filth, his chainmail fused to his tunic by the thick, foul mixture. His short, brown hair and beard were matted with the same grime.

  He stood in the moonlight, weary but alive.

  All around the battlefield, the remnants of Balder’s company lay scattered, their familiar Armor twisted and broken, their helmets and bracers glinting faintly in the moonlight. He thought bitterly to himself that a salvager would have a field day here.

  He was tired, but he had to leave the fields before the moon would disappear again.

  He now stumbled across the battlefield while his eyes scanned his surroundings, if he was unlucky some of the monsters hadn’t returned to their nests by now.

  He aimlessly wandered around the field for a while until he saw something that made him feel overjoyed: the wooden supply-wagon he and his men had dragged with them before they were attacked by Orcs.

  “Please be there, please be there,” he muttered repeatedly as he sprinted toward the wagon.

  As he reached it, the scene around the wagon painted a grim picture of what had happened. Several orc bodies lay crumpled near the front, their crude weapons scattered around them. Balder could tell they’d tried to drag the wagon away amidst the confusion of battle but hadn’t survived the attempt.

  The many dead Orcs around the two dead men on the left side of the wagon indicated that they had tried to retake it afterwards. The third dead man at the wagons end and the footprints leading up to him indicated, that he had been pushed back after his two comrades had been killed. He had slain many more Orcs at the back of the wagon but had then been killed by an arrow.

  But if the wagons still here there is still hope, Balder thought to himself, even the tarpaulin was still untouched.

  He quickly went to the back of the wagon but just as he wanted to lift the bloodstained tarpaulin, he noticed something weird: just a few metres away laid a dead ghoul which’s stomach had been pierced.

  Ghouls were quick, large, doglike creatures with leathery skin who had no hair and a pointy skull which was filled with razor-sharp teeth. They only came out in the day and this one seemed like its death had been fairly recent.

  He froze, instinctively going quiet as he strained to listen. A faint sound reached him: breathing, coming from inside the wagon.

  Balder wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t explicitly tried to listen to his surroundings. The breathing, although quiet had a squeaking undertone to it, something that he only knew from one race: orcs.

  Without hesitation, Balder thrust his sword into the tarpaulin, but he missed. A shadow darted past him as the orc burst out of hiding, swinging its blade wildly. Balder barely managed to step back in time, avoiding the strike by mere inches.

  He now saw the beast directly: the green skin, the long fangs hanging out of its mouth, the bad posture, the little eyes and the flat but big nose which was responsible for the squeaking sound definitely identified it as a member of its race.

  The Orc wore clothes made of a mixture of animal and human skin. At its belt hang a bunch of human fingers which it had made into a talisman.

  The beast stood five meters away from him, its legs were shaking in anticipation of getting some fresh meat.

  This bastard is strong, Balder thought to himself. He braced himself for the inevitable second strike.

  The orc lunged forward, swinging its blade from the right. Balder deflected the attack with his own weapon, but the sheer force sent him sprawling into the bloody mud.

  As the beast raised its sword for the final strike Balder reacted quickly and grabbed some mud of the ground which he now threw at its face: it hid.

  The beast screamed in confusion and pain but still swung in the direction it believed Balder to be. He rolled to the side just in time and then swung at the beast's arm.

  Balder wasn’t strong but apparently it was enough. He heard bones crack and black blood splattered into his face.

  The beast screamed in pain and took a few steps back during which it tried to get the mud out of its eyes but as it was finished Balder had already stood up again and rammed the sword into the beast's gut.

  Blood now ran into the beast's mouth as it grabbed on to the swords blade and tried to pull it out with force which only led to it cutting open its own hands.

  Balder led the sword go and the Orc fell backwards into the mud: he had slain the beast. Black blood spilt out of the now twitching body of the beast as it clung on to what little life force it still had left and then it stopped.

  He walked back to the wagon while gasping for air.

  “It’s still here... it has to be,” he murmured, turning back to the wagon.

  Frantically, he searched through its contents until his hands found what he’d been looking for: a small linen sack. He ripped the string away and peered inside. The grey, powdery substance was still there:his father’s ashes.

  Balder sank to his knees, clutching the sack tightly. He had promised to take these ashes back to the north, to the homeland his father had fought and died for.

  Balder was the only one out of his four brothers who decided to go along this path, the oldest Ivarr had taken the majority of their fathers host with him and went on his own way.

  The second oldest Hrym had been tasked with holding a nearby castle which their father had captured a few months before his death and Balder hadn’t heard from him since.

  The youngest Ungr had stayed in the north while the rest of his family had gone south ten years ago though to him still being an infant back then.

  Balder had often thought about Ungr lately. Despite him being family he might as well be a stranger since they had no connection other than blood. The last time Balder had seen his younger brother he could still hold him in his arms with ease, what would he think of the family that had left him behind in the north? Would he miss them, or would he hate them?

  “I will have to see”, Balder said to himself while trying to orient himself through the surrounding mountains.

  It took him a while to find one that was familiar to him, the one he finally found was the mountain known as “Shadows peak” a dark and ginormous mountain, that was in the west of the territory he was currently in.

  He took as much bread that he could find in the wagon, fortunately for him Orcs didn’t like it but still it wasn’t much. He emptied out on of the smaller corn sacks on the wagon and put the five loafs of bread he could find in it together with the smaller sack, containing his father's ashes. He wrapped the now full cornsack to his torso with the blood-soaked rope that had previously been used to wrap the tarpaulin to the wagon which he cut in two though to its size. He was now able to comfortably carry the sack on his back.

  He wrapped the other half of the rope around his waist and then took a small axe from the soldier that lay at the back of the wagon. He now tucked the axe under the rope. The last think he took was a drinking pouch made out of leather which was filled with wine.

  He looked at the mountains again: their jagged peaks disappeared into the darkness, looming like the teeth of some great beast waiting to swallow him whole.

  Balder didn’t know of any nearby settlements or towns that he could seek shelter in for the day so he decided to just walk north and hope that he would encounter something along the way.