The steppes stretched ahead of Bann like an emerald green sea rippled with undulating hills until the grassy waves of the prairie broke upon the far distant mountains of the Shrouded Mountains. Like an island in the midst of the vast green ocean, the host had set up camp to await the arrival of their allies. The young barbarian was standing on the tallest of the hills surrounding the camp, keeping an eye to the horizon for the approach of more warbands seeking to join the host.
Gunnar Long Arm had been busy, thought Bann, as he watched a cloud of dust to the east that signalled the approach of more troops marching towards the encampment. The warhost had already been joined by a few hundred warriors from the Shield Wall troll families; Bann had never seen a troll before and was fascinated by their appearance. They were tall - an adult troll tended to be at least seven feet tall, most were eight feet or taller. Their skin was smooth and grey, like river-polished granite, except for a smattering of darker patches that checkered their upper arms and shoulders, and every troll rippled with muscles. The only hair on their bodies was a metallic shock of color on top of their heads that was either shaved, cut very short, or spiked into fantastic shapes. Their faces were humanoid but for two huge incisors on their lower jaws that matched the metallic colour of their hair and gave them a pronounced underbite and a perpetually grim expression.
They walked with a lumbering gait, each heavy footfall hinting at an immense weight and power. None of the large humanoids wore a stitch of clothing or armour, their skin supposedly being as tough as stone, and Bann had learned that they paid no heed to the northern cold because their flesh was not heated by warm blood in the same way most other species were. The male trolls strode about the camp like behemoths carved from the very mountain they called home, their exposed strange, heavy, blunt cocks swinging proudly between their legs. Their huge endowments had made them quite popular among the female warriors of the gathered races despite the stoic silence they carried themselves with. The troll women were no less imposing - there was seemingly no height difference between the sexes, nor in the weight of muscle they carried. They had a striking beauty despite the alien cast to their features and their pronounced musculature and voluptuous curves lent them a statuesque quality that amplified their imposing presence.
A flock of harpies had joined the warhost as well. They were all female, with humanoid torsos, arms, faces and upper legs, but from the knee down their legs were digitigrade and birdlike, ending in prehensile talons. Each harpy had a magnificent pair of wings sprouting from their shoulder blades and they delighted in their ability to fly, finding employ as messengers and merchants across the north. Harpies were popular visitors to almost any settlement not just because of the jobs they performed but because, thanks the the peculiarity of their biology, they could be impregnated by almost any male - another harpy hatching from the egg that was subsequently laid. Due to this unique physiology, harpies were happy to breed with anyone, as Bann had happily experienced a year ago when his village had last played host to the aerial visitors. The newly arrived feathered comrades quickly settled in and found a niche for themselves within the warhost.
Bann heard the sound of galloping hooves behind him and turned to see the centaur filly Cress running up the hill towards him. He had not been the only liaison picked by Lisbet; the young queen had introduced him to three others on the day the warhost had departed. The small group consisted of Freida, an imposing, brown furred veteran minotaur warrior from the Von Danz herd (who weren't members of the Northern Alliance but had a pact with the clans nonetheless), Jord, a lean, scarred centaur stallion with a dappled grey hide, and Cress, a cheerful, young centaur spear maiden. Jord had gone with Lisbet when she departed and Freida had travelled west to link up with her herd-warriors as they marched to join the host, leaving Cress and Bann as the Queen's designated messengers in the army.
A warrior of the Rolling Rock herd, Cress was the same age as Bann. She was good with a bow and beyond good with a spear, at least according to the ceaseless tales of boar and deer hunts she rambled on about. She had very pale white skin that contrasted sharply with the pitch black glossy coat of her lower body. Her long black hair framed her thin face and pointed chin nicely when it wasn't blowing into her eyes in the prairie breeze. Cress was a talker and happily filled their marching hours with endless chatter, gossip and tall tales and, while Bann was not the most talkative individual and certainly appreciated a little quiet time now and then, he found it difficult not to become friends with the gregarious filly.
"There you are!" exclaimed the centaur by way of greeting. "Came to tell you that Freida and her herd-warriors just got into camp. Pretty impressive looking bunch if you ask me. Big folk, them minotaurs. Should see the crossbows some of em are carrying - you'd think they'd need a cart to drag that stuff about but they're just strolling about with what's pretty much a siege weapon over their shoulders. Those bulls are huge! And the cows aren't small either. Hard to believe they grow em that big just by eating veggies! Can you imagine not eating meat? I'd waste away, I bet. And you miss out on hunting! I'll bet them bulls are hung though, vegetarian or not. Hard to say, though, cos they don't walk around naked like the stone-folk. Gotta see if I can take a peek one of these-"
"How many warriors did she bring?" interrupted Bann. It was the only way to speak with Cress. If you didn't interrupt her the young warrior tended to keep on with her stream of consciousness interminably.
"Oh, there was probably about three hundred of em, but supposedly there's another few hundred coming from the Von Bothe herd," said Cress. "Let's see, with the trolls and harpies that brings us up to about three thousand, maybe a few more. There's probably at least a thousand gobbos over there, though."
The centaur nodded her head in the direction of the approaching dust cloud and Bann knew she was right. The approaching warband hailed from the Bolenduntz tribe and goblin warbands were never small. By the time the warhost reached the Shrouded Mountains it would number at least four thousand strong, and Gunnar had mentioned he expected another few thousand warriors of the orc and goblin tribes to join them once they were far enough south. Drasich and the free cities would be facing an army of almost ten thousand warriors.
"Looks like they're still at least an hour away," said the filly, unlacing her leather jerkin. "I think I know how we can kill some time..."
That night, the camp was a sea of rowdy joviality. Bann wound his way through a maze of tents and campfires, attempting to get back to the large tent he shared with the other messengers. Cress tottered along beside him, occasionally peeling off to fill her mug from the nearest available barrel. The young barbarian had a few drinks in him already, but had held back knowing he had to write a dispatch for Queen Lisbet to update her on the status of the warhost.
He was a little worried about writing the report, not just because he wasn't really a dab hand with charcoal and paper but because the young queen had set another task for him before she left and he still had yet to produce anything worthwhile with regards to it. On the eve of her departure, Lisbet had taken Cress and Bann aside and had confided that she worried about the mysterious nature of the shaman that Gunnar Long Arm relied so much on. She had asked the two young warriors to find out as much as they could, but had placed much of the responsibility on Bann, as centaurs, their physiology being what it was, were not the most stealthy of spies. Although he had been with the warhost for almost a week, he still had found no opportunity to even see what the mysterious shaman looked like. Gunnar visited his advisor's wagon almost every night, but the wagon was always guarded by a few veteran fighters and the shaman never seemed to emerge.
Bann was mulling the problem over as he and Cress reached the liaisons' tent. Freida gave the pair a wave as they neared the small campfire outside the tent. The hazel furred minotaur cow was leaning against a large barrel beside a grey furred bull. A few sheaves of corn were roasting on the nearby flames.
"Vill you join us for a drink?" asked Freida in her accented speech.
"You guys go ahead," replied Bann. "I've got some work to do."
