The camp had been in a hustle and bustle the last few days. There were tents being dismantled and picked up, supplies stored into wagons and shipped off in separate caravans, with soldiers to guard them every mile of the way. The time, it seemed, had come to pull up stakes, for victory and conquest had come to claim the Barrens, and already another land waited beyond to do the same.
Victory, conquest. These were words that once brought much joy for Bhemarg to hear, but they served no such appeal to him today, nor had they for the past few weeks. And with what he had lost, who could blame him?
His mind continuously wandered to the climax of his own ‘victory’. He stood in the heart of the enemy’s territory, surrounded by foes but flanked by comrades. Comrades, who stood beside him and fought as hard and as vigorously as he, who showed their valor and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, and won. A scouting party against a small army, such a scene had all the makings of a song, a ballad; an ode to the righteous fury of the warband. But even so, what should’ve been a victory full of glory was to him a hollow feeling of loss and regret, one that foreshadowed his own loss.
Loss
He could still feel such. He had felt it the day he had awoken after days of being in a coma, his mind a haze of blackness that was stuck in a nightmare. He had finally opened his eyes, but what soon after met his sight, plunged him right back into the abyss, into the nightmare, and he no longer had the luxury of it being a dream.
Loss
Such a word was a foreign thing to the orc, one he had rarely known. But when he did, from battle or otherwise, it awoke in him a fury. A pang of outrage and frustration that made him ireful from head to toe. But its familiarity to him now only brought him shame and disgrace. It made him want to hide away from the world and crash his head into the dirt, repeatedly and without pause, until blood and brain poured out of his skull and brought to him the peaceful reprieve of oblivion. But such was the way of cowardice, the craven’s path, and he was not a craven, not even now.
Loss
The loss of his dreams and ambitions, of his goals; the loss of the saga itself. It all seemed so far away from him once, an unseeable destination across an insurmountable distance. And now, it was staring him straight in the face, and he could not escape its view. It lay out in front of him every time he opened his eyes, every time he reached for a cup of water or moved to salute. He couldn’t help such, it was an instinct to him, one as natural as breathing. But it was now taken from him, lost. And no amount of wishing or praying to the ancestors or the fates would ever bring it back.
Loss
He woke up earlier than most, already out of his tent and moving to get a head start on the day. The supplies were loaded, and the rations given out. All that remained was the journey itself, the trek. He left with one of the early scouting parties, preparing the first of the warband’s efforts to settle into the nearby region of Stonetalon. Out of all those who traveled, he carried the most. Crate upon crate of supplies, ones whose identity he only knew by weight and the sound they made scraping against the wood. Both were unpleasant, both were heavy to bear, but he bore it all the same.
He stared intently ahead of him, doing his best to ignore the glances given his way. He only caught glimpses of what was directed at him: remorse, sympathy, pity. All were as unwelcome to him as they were uncomfortable. The weight was heavy, but he carried on, as such gave him purpose. He was soon ignorant of the glances, of the weight, of all save the goal. He had even forgotten about his own woes for a time, but it was all too brief, as he was also ignorant of the pothole in his path that caught his foot.
He fell unceremoniously and audibly, tasting dirt and blood soon after his chin hit the earth. He shook his head, moving a hand to cusp it and-
Loss
The feeling came back again, instinct serving to remind him once more of what was now lost to him. He stared silently at his right arm, at the stump it now was, severed from mid-forearm up to elbow. It looked to him frail, sullen, weak, incomplete. And such a sight brought to him the same feelings: frailness, sullenness, weakness, and incompleteness. He was without his arm, taken out of desperation to stop the infection of the botani. He was without his weapon Bloodgale, a once imposing greataxe of Blackrock steel that now lay in broken fragments and shards. He was without his hand, his fist; the limb that by its action brought the saga its creation, and now without it… could such even be finished?
Loss after loss after loss, each one whose only justification was that they helped to pay the price of the warband’s victory. A heavy price indeed, he thought; one that pained him now far more than the cuts and scrapes he took from the fall ever could. Such pain numbed the orc to all that was around, every sight, every smell, every sound. But he could vaguely feel the hands of another upon him, and another still moving to pick up the crates that had fallen out of his grip. And then suddenly, he had felt that which had evaded him for so long since he had first lost his arm. Not shame, not disgrace, but outrage.
“GET OFF OF ME!” he roared, shoving away one of the soldiers so hard they fell three strides away from him. His left hand, it seemed, had more strength than he thought. He was soon on his feet, soon after stomping towards the other soldier near the fallen crates, already retreating from his approach and his ireful glare. He looked between them, teeth bared and seething, but he soon after collected a semblance of calm.
“I am not feeble.” He stated, beginning to stack the crates before hoisting them unto his left shoulder “And I am not too weak to do this.”
After adjusting his grip and testing his hold, he turned back to the path ahead, a look of resolve written on his face and engraved into his soul “Pick up the pace, all of you. The warband will have a camp to settle in by the time they arrive.” He strode forward, and after him the rest followed, leading them to the borders of the Barrens and beneath the shadows of Stonetalon Mountains.
Loss
His arm was lost, his weapon broken, and he was no longer whole. But Bhemarg Bloodhair was not lost, nor was he broken. And though he was not whole, he could still fight.
“Lok’tar.” He muttered, picking up the pace. The saga may be halted, but it is far from finished.