They should have seen it coming. A day of no bloodshed usually meant double would flow the next. Yet still they were caught unaware. Because of the morning fog, the scouts spotted the air raid with little time to spare. The alarm bells screamed and officers sprinted up and down the halls, dragging soldiers from their hammocks.
When Westel threw open the door to his squad’s quarters, half were wrestling into their gear. “What have I told you lot about always wearing your armor!?” He growled, grabbing his bow and quiver of red-feathered arrows. Quiver at his back and bow in hand, West turned on the group, surveying them quickly.
“Edanna, with the rest of the healers.”
The priestess scurried away without question.
“Matero, Alvaris go up top and man the flak cannons.”
After a sharp “Yes sir!” they both hurried away as well.
Westel turned onto the battle mage, frowning. “With the windriders, Isais. Take out as many of those damned gyrocopters as you can. And any Alliance paratroopers you see best be dead when they hit the ground.”
The mage nodded and strode off with long, quick strides. That left Westel with Caloneth.
The paladin was of the few already outfitted in his armor, standing at attention, eyes alert. He was probably the only other one awake when the raid had been spotted. “Where am I headed, Captain?”
West resisted a sigh. What could Cal do? He had no talent with the cannons or with a gun even, he’d be useless up on a windrider, and Westel didn’t even trust him to hold his own on the ground fighting Alliance. But he couldn’t do nothing. Deciding to stall, Westel beckoned Caloneth to follow him as he moved quickly from their quarters and to the main room of the barracks.
“I need you to…” To what? All he could possibly do was fight, Westel supposed. He turned and pointed outside where the battle had already begun. “Move quickly, don’t stay in one place for very long or you’ll get shot and–” Westel stopped short as a flicker of orange caught his eye. “…and put out those fires. We can’t have the place burning down. Help any wounded that you can. Go!”
Cal hesitated, but only for a moment before sprinting outside. Westel followed soon after, searching for higher ground. Looking straight up the entire time would only get him a sword in the back. Westel zig-zagged across the base, ripping arrows from Alliance he had felled not a moment before. Once he had taken a small dirt hill–his only source of high ground–Westel focused on the paratroopers that drifted down from the copters.
At least four more Alliance soldiers lay dead by Westel’s aim when the gyrocopter came crashing down. The distant shout of “Look out!” was his only warning, and Westel didn’t question it. He dove forward a mere second before the flying machine smashed into the earth right where he had been standing. Cursing, Westel swiped away a trickle of blood where a piece of broken propeller had sliced into his cheek.
The ground obviously was not an option. West stood, his eyes falling on the barracks’ roof where snipers and the flak cannons were typically perched. Good enough, he decided, leaping over the body of a gnome pilot and racing back to the giant stone and metal building.
“Captain!”
Westel stumbled to a halt, turning as Caloneth came bounding up to him. He noted that Cal’s torso was scarlet with blood.
“Cal! Are you–”
“It’s not mine,” Cal interjected quickly. “Where are you going?”
Westel scowled, pointed up to the barracks, and promptly continued on his way.
“Wait! You can’t!” Cried Cal, reaching for Westel’s arm.
The Ranger-Captain shook him off. “It is not for you to tell me where I can and cannot go, soldier.” There was no time to stop and argue, so Westel ignored Cal’s continued protests as he followed him inside and up the stairs.
“Three cannons are already down!” Shouted Cal. “The goblin mechanics won’t even come up here to fix them.” He was still saying something else, gesturing to the blood on his front, when a large explosion sounded, shaking the building’s foundations. Caloneth was barely able to keep his feet, even as Westel continued his two steps at a time strides.
“I’ll be shooting arrows, so that matters little.” Westel threw open the heavy metal door, stopping short as bullets whizzed by. When it appeared that the coast was clear he made to duck out onto the roof, but Cal took hold of his arm.
“They’re focusing their fire power on anyone up here, Captain! You can’t shoot from up here!”
Westel glared and wrenched him arm away. Stupid paladin, he seethed. Cal may have been scared of those flying machines, but Westel was determined to take them all out. “I’ll be fine,” he waved Caloneth away, “get back to helping with the wounded.”
He darted out onto the roof, climbed up onto a high ledge, and looked out over the base. Several gyrocopters lay destroyed on the ground, but there were still a few whirring around, shooting Horde soldiers down where they stood. An explosive arrow nocked, Westel took aim, unaware of the fresh wave of copters coming in from the east.
With every paratrooper that slumped forward with an arrow in his chest, Westel shouted off a number. The copter that he took out with a barrage of exploding shots counted for two.
The bullets rained down at ‘six’.
Two blazed by, their heat burning his ear. The third grazed the side of his head as he turned to face the oncoming copters, and sent him reeling backwards. Desperately, Westel tried to stay upright; his bow dropped from his hand in his attempt to grab on to something. As his feet went out from under him, his fingers finally clung to a hard, metallic something that wrapped tightly around his hand and pulled.
Now Westel was falling forward. Another bullet pierced his chain mail and bit into his backside; West’s cry of pain was cut short when gravity slammed him face first into the metal floor. Air fled his lungs and blood filled his mouth, hot and bitter. Before Westel could even think to catch his breath, a heavy weight was thrown on top of him.
His head ached, his tongue throbbed, and his ass blazed with pain as the large paladin lay on of him, a plate metal shield against the continued spray of bullets. Westel could hear them ping against the floor and the ledge, but Cal had managed to wedge them tight against the ledge wall and away from the line of fire. The only problem was while those copters were in the air, they’d take both men down the moment they moved out into the open.
“West? Westel? You alive?”
Wes tried to respond, but talking was difficult with the hole he had bitten into his tongue. He just grunted instead and wiggled the fingers of his free hand that weren’t trapped under Cal’s weight.
Caloneth sighed with relief. “Good…I saw you get hit in the head and I…I wasn’t sure I just..” He trailed off, pressing closer as a gyrocopter flew over them, a little too close for comfort. A moment later he relaxed again, but remained silent.
Westel could hear snipers and flak cannons firing from the ground and the surrounding guard towers. From the sounds of it, four more copters were downed. By West’s count, that left two more. It seemed like the remaining pilots were busy with the Horde soldiers on the ground and in the air, so Cal took the opportunity. He stood and crouched by Westel, bringing the Ranger Captain’s arm around his immense shoulders. Slowly Caloneth worked West to his feet, though much of his weight depended on his older brother.
“Easy now, we’re just going to take this nice and–Shit!” He dropped his arm from around Westel, and West echoed his curse as he crumpled to the ground, at the feet of an Alliance soldier.
The human was about as broad as Caloneth, if not broader, clad in the blue and white of Stormwind and wielding an ugly iron blade. He wasted no time in attacking Cal, hacking at the paladin in a fury. Caloneth staggered backwards as the sword’s edge swept mere centimeters away from his person with each strike. Finally he was able to draw his own sword, lifting it to meet one of the human’s wild swings. They stood locked this way for a moment, brute strengths pushing on each other until finally it was the human who had to fall back.
As the warrior struggled to regain his balance, Cal seemed to remember he had more than a sword at his disposal. He drew in a deep breath, his hands aglow with a white light. With a howl the warrior lunged and Cal thrust his palm out, a surge of Light sending the warrior sprawling. This was where Cal succeeded, with his opponent on the ground. Blinding Light enveloped his sword as he thrust down, through the warrior’s plate and into his chest.
All the while Westel stared, incredulous. Where the fuck had this Caloneth been in every other battle? Cal caught the look and smiled sheepishly as he wrenched his sword back up and returned it to its sheath.
“I stood by and let one brother die already,” he explained, stooping to help Westel back to his feet, “I’m not about to make the same mistake with the other.”
West said nothing, his swollen tongue throbbing painfully. Cal didn’t seem to mind though as he half-dragged the wounded Ranger from the roof.
***
At the sight of Westel’s bloodied mouth, the healers had feared internal bleeding until Westel showed them his bitten tongue. With that revelation he was bumped near the bottom of the priorities list, given a stiff cot to lay on and some quick bandaging while they dealt with the more dire injuries.
When the healers did finally get to him, most of his wounds were swiftly taken care of. The Light knitted his tongue back together and healed the small wound at the side of his head, with no evidence that he’d ever been hit. With a delicate touch a priestess mended his sprained and broken fingers, injured in his fall from the ledge.
His ass was the problem.
Cal laughed out loud when an elderly, wrinkled orc drew the curtain back and wordlessly pulled Westel’s leggings down past his knees, baring his swollen and bloodied buttocks. Before the healers could do any of their healing, the bullet had to be extracted. Westel was given some whiskey and a strip of leather to bite. This was an orcish war base after all, there was no knocking a patient out for a tiny bullet.
“Bet you wish your wife was here,” sniggered Cal, who had not left his little brother’s side since dragging him into the infirmary.
Westel scowled and grumbled, “Hardly.” He winced as the orc unkindly cleaned the wound.
Caloneth tilted his head curiously. “What? Is she not terribly sympathetic?”
“No no, she would be.” West mumbled around the leather strip. “And she’d be all sorts of worried and she would have given these healers– ouch!” He bit into the leather again, screwing his eyes shut.
“Relax,” grunted the orc.
“How can I fucking relax when you’re digging a bloody bullet out of my ass?” Westel snarled back.
The orc responded by digging deeper, earning a cry of pain from Westel.
Caloneth scowled and stepped towards the old orc. “If you aren’t going to numb the pain, go easy.” He glared down at the wrinkled green shaman who cursed him and went back to work, but gentler this time.
“….She would have given these healers hell for not seeing to me quicker,” continued Westel.
“Huh…that must be nice.” Cal folded his arms over his chest, looking around their small, curtained off space.
“I’m sure your wife would do the same for you.” West grimaced, fingers curling into the cot’s sheets as the orc prodded around for the bullet.
Cal scoffed. “Not likely. Perhaps she’d pay them off to get me healed up quicker.”
Westel tried to get a good look at his brother’s expression, but found himself blinded by pain as the orc slowly drew the bullet from his flesh. West bit fiercely down on the strip of leather in his mouth, his shoulders heaving with labored breaths even after the projectile had been extracted. He whimpered when the orc gave his rear a rough pat.
“Healers will see you soon.”
The orc left and the brothers were left alone. Wincing, West lifted up to pull the sheets over his waist and laid back down.
Cal sighed. “I know you may not think so, but you lucked out when Dess left you that day. You’d be in my position, with a wife who probably could not care less if you returned home in a box.” He thought on this for a moment. “In fact, she’d probably have fun playing the grieving widow for a while.” Cal shook his head and sat in a chair beside Westel’s cot. “Meanwhile you’ve a wife who is beautiful and cares enough to fret over even the smallest wounds.”
Westel furrowed his brow. If he was honest with himself, he had not thought much of Dess and Cal’s betrayals in many years. And he certainly would not change things, if given the opportunity. He had a family now; he had an adoring wife and beautiful daughters. The life Cal had created for himself paled in comparison it seemed, if what he said was true.
A priestess strode in and unceremoniously pulled the sheets away from Westel’s backside once again. All business she pressed her hands to the wound, channeling the Light into Westel’s torn flesh. While never painful, Westel always considered magical healing to be an uncomfortable process as his body was forced to heal and knit back together at an unnatural rate. It was over in a few seconds, however, and the priestess replaced the sheets.
“Rest here over night,” she ordered in a clipped tone. Stern eyes moved onto Caloneth. “You should leave your Captain to rest for now. You may visit again in the morning.”
Cal nodded, “Just another minute and I will be out of the way.” The priestess narrowed her eyes at him, lips pursed as if she tasted something sour, but she did not protest, simply turning to leave them.
Westel chuckled softly. “And I thought Mel was a strict nurse.” He shook his head and shifted to get more comfortable on the cot. “You know…my wife’s told me she wishes to meet you. Perhaps next time she sneaks on base I’ll introduce the two of you.”
Cal smiled softly at that as he got to his feet. “That would be nice.”
“On one condition.” Westel lifted his left hand, holding up his index finger.
“Yes?”
“You don’t tell her about this incident. Any of it. She will have an absolute fit.”
Cal chortled and clapped Westel on the shoulder. “It stays between you and me, I promise.” The sour faced nurse paused by the curtain, staring at Cal. He laughed again and bid Westel goodnight.
Sighing, Westel closed his eyes as a familiar, loving presence drifted through his mind. He smiled softly as Astoreth greeted him from far off, and as she inquired about his day he glossed over some of the details.