by S. R. Witt
Havelock pulled back on his reins and steered the horse toward the rest of the group. “I hope you’re right, buddy. I’d hate to lose her. And, just between you and me, Indira’s not going to be thrilled if someone gets killed before we reach this temple of yours.”
“Nobody’s going to get—”
Havelock flew from his saddle, leaving behind a blue streak of curses I swear I could see hanging in the air as he flew back and crashed into the snow. His horse screamed and bolted, but not before an arrow as thick as my thumb and as long as my arm bounced off its saddle’s horn.
Suddenly, the air was full of those bolts. They screamed toward us, hissing as they sank into the snow all around our horses’ hooves.
My horse tried to bolt, and it took every ounce of strength I had to hang on to its reins. An arrow hissed past my shoulder, and another passed so close to my knee its fletching raked across my armor. A third missile scored my horse’s shoulder before deflecting off its saddle and disappearing into the blowing snow.
I let the horse have its head, and hung on as it hauled ass away from the rest of the group. I scanned the area around us but saw nothing but snow and the occasional drifting shadow.
“Ambush!” I shouted and wheeled my horse around.
My warning was a little late.
Havelock was on the ground with a thick arrow jutting from his shoulder. Bastion had flung himself out of his saddle and stood over the fallen gnome with his shield in one hand and his blazing sword in the other. I wanted to tell him to put the sword away, or at least extinguish its flame, because it stood out like a beacon in the gathering gloom.
There wasn’t time to yell anything, though, before our attackers came at me.
A hooded figure on a sable horse burst through the blowing snow and swung a morning star at my face.
I’d expected goblins. Instead, it was the Hoaldites who’d tracked us down.
I hunched low to avoid the attack and spurred my horse forward, drawing my stiletto in my right hand.
The morning star glanced off my shoulder, ripping open the leather armor there, but doing no real damage. It threw me off balance, but not enough to save my attacker.
I hooked my arm around his waist as we collided. This close, his morning star was of no use, but my dagger became deadly effective. Once, twice, I punched the blade up into gap behind the Templar’s breastplate. My thin weapon vanished into his armpit, slipped between his ribs, and punched a hole in his lung.
The Templar and I were tangled together, my arm around his waist, our faces close enough for me to smell the blood on his breath. Our horses circled one another, blunt teeth snapping at the air as their eyes rolled in their sockets.
The Templar gave up trying to hit me with the morning star and switched to pummeling my spine with his elbow. Rather than take the beating, I threw my weight back and ripped him out of his saddle.
Bad choice. The Hoaldite caught my cloak with his free hand and dragged me down into the snow alongside him.
Clad head to toe in heavy armor, the Templar crashed down on top of me. Spikes on his pauldrons punctured the leather armor in my thigh, skewering my leg muscle and spraying the crushed snow beneath us with a thick layer of red Saint juice.
CRITICAL WOUND!
15 hit points damage!
STATUS EFFECTS
PINNED: Unable to move until the impaling opponent is removed.
BLEEDING: Your injury caused minor bleeding. You will suffer 1 damage per round. (Duration: 10 rounds)
Left leg crippled!
No one can hurt you as well as you hurt yourself. I hoped Cringer could fix this nasty wound, or the whole trip was going to be wasted.
The Templar tried to pull himself free of my impaled leg, but I was having none of that. I hooked my good leg around his head and twisted to pull his helm to the side. A pale sliver of exposed flesh stood out between the stark metal surfaces of his armor, and I plunged my stiletto into his throat.
VERBOSE COMBAT MESSAGING ONWEAPON (PIERCING, 1H) SKILL CHECK:
Dexterity (15) + Skill (2) + d100 (82) - Precise Attack (-40) = 59
vs
Dexterity (12) - Dodge (0 Pinned) + d100 (20) = 32
Skill Check Result = 27
Degree of Success = 2
(Stiletto Piercing Damage (10) x Degree of Success (2)) + Dexterity (15) = 35 points of damage - Templar Heavy Plate Armor (0, avoided by Precise Attack) = 35 Total Damage
Attack Time: 5 seconds
Stamina Cost: 1
SUCCESS! You have improved your mastery of the Weapon (1H Piercing) skill. (Rank 3)
BRACERS OF THE STRIKING SERPENT ACTIVATED!
SUCCESSFUL ATTACK!
Damage 20 Health!
Opponent Bleeding (5/round, 10 round duration)
You have improved your mastery of the Weapon (1H Piercing) skill. (Rank 4)
The Templar’s health dropped to 0, and his blood sprayed across my face and chest in a sticky fountain.
The pain from my leg forced me back into the snow and squeezed a long, whimpering gasp from me. The dead Templar’s weight held me in place and drove the spikes deeper into my leg. A trio of blood drops appeared in my UI next to my hit point totals, telling me I was bleeding out faster by the moment.
I’d killed my opponent, but my dumbass move had killed me, too.
The pain pushed me in and out of consciousness. Every time I faded out and then back, I expected to be my last.
A towering black shadow emerged from the snow, and for a moment I thought I was done. If another Templar found me, it would take him all of two seconds to stick a sword through my neck and be done with it.
Instead of a religious zealot with murder in mind, I was greeted by a flare of blue flames and my brother’s grinning face. Blood dripped from his chin and plastered his hair to his forehead. Whether it was his, or one of his enemies, I couldn’t tell. And I didn’t care since it didn’t seem to bother him. “You going to lay there all day, or are you going to contribute to this fight?”
“Leg,” I gasped. “Pinned.”
Bastion frowned at that. He bent and grabbed the Templar by the collar of his breastplate, and flipped the dead man away as if he weighed no more than a ragdoll. Pain roared through my leg, blinding me with a crashing wave of raw agony. My health bar diminished to a narrow sliver of red, and my vision shrank to a black tunnel with a pale light at its end.
“Priest,” I wheezed. “I’m bleeding.”
A horse’s hooves crashed near my head, spraying my face with slush.
“Get away from my brother,” Bastion roared. He leaped over me with his sword raised high to engage the newly arrived foe.
With my vision blurred and my leg crippled, the best I could do was drag myself away from the fight, one agonized foot at a time.
The Templar whipped his morning star at Bastion’s skull, but my brother was faster. He pivoted on his right leg, smashed his shield into the Templar’s horse’s face, and slashed his longsword across the morning star’s haft. Blue sparks flew in every direction, and the spiked weapon slid past Bastion’s face with inches to spare.
Bastion didn’t try to recover his balance from his swing, but turned into it, throwing his body weight around in a stable arc. He lashed out with his leading leg, throwing a brutal kick that smashed the horse’s left front knee. The mount screamed as its leg folded the wrong way, and it crashed to the earth.
The Templar howled as his horse crushed his leg into the snow. The horse struggled, but couldn’t get to its feet, and the Templar roared in pain as his mount further mangled his broken leg.
Bastion stepped forward to end the holy man’s life, but the Templar wasn’t done fighting. He swept his morning star into Bastion’s calf, ripping away the greaves protecting his shin and gouging a bloody chunk from the muscle beneath.
Already committed to his stride Bastion couldn’t maintain his balance, and his leg crumpled beneath him. He fell to his knees and had to catch himself on one
hand as he raised his longsword in desperate defense. He’d landed next to the Templar, and Bastion’s sword was out of position to defend him from the brutal uppercut his opponent threw at his chin.
Bastion sagged, and his arms went limp. The fire from his longsword guttered and died, and he collapsed onto his face into the snow. A quick glance at his health bar told me he wasn’t dead, but the little stars swirling around it also said he was stunned and helpless.
And his opponent wasn’t.
The Templar crushed his struggling horse’s skull with his morning star and dragged himself out from beneath its steaming bulk. He crawled through the bloodstained snow, morning star on his shoulder, the remains of his crippled leg dragging behind him like a knotted rag. He stopped next to Bastion and balanced on his one good knee. Then he hoisted his morning star overhead.
My instincts for self-preservation told me to lay still and pretend I was already dead. But my heart wouldn’t let me just lie there while this asshole smashed my big brother like a bug. “Hey,” I shouted.
The Templar turned his attention from my brother to me, his weapon poised for the killing blow.
“Your turn is coming,” he growled.
Fuck you, I thought and flung my dagger. It tumbled, end over end, spinning faster and faster as it flew through the falling snow.
If I missed, Bastion was a dead man. And I’d be next.
The Templar’s eyes widened, but he was in no position to avoid my desperate attack.
The stiletto disappeared under the edge of his helm and above his gorget, sinking to the hilt through the ridged tube of his trachea.
The weight of the Templar’s morning star was too much for his dead body to balance. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he toppled into a puddle of blood next to his horse.
Blood pumped out of my leg, and my health dropped so low I wasn’t sure there was anything left in the tank.
Off to my right, the snow evaporated in a bloom of scarlet fire, proving that Indira was still on her feet. Someone shouted in panic, and someone else howled in pain, which had to be good for my side, right?
Bastion groaned and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He groped in the snow for his sword, then looked up as another flash of fire lit up the night. “Is that what I think it was?”
“Our wizard blowing the shit out of something? I think so,” I said. I pointed toward the dead Templar. “Bring me the dagger out of that guy’s neck?”
Bastion slid through the snow and retrieved my weapon. He crawled over and returned the weapon to me. “You threw that thing at him?”
I nodded and cleaned the stiletto on the snow before shoving it back into its sheath. “Asshole was going to kill you. Didn’t leave me a lot of options with my leg busted and all.”
My brother looked impressed. He patted me on the arm. “You're turning into a regular ninja. Thanks for saving my hide.”
Another squirt of blood lowered my health bar to the point where there wasn’t even a sliver of red left in it. The bar itself flashed black, then white, then black again. That wasn’t good. “Where’s our priest?”
Bastion pointed in the direction of the fireball. “He was with Indira last time I saw him. We need to get over there.”
A quick look at our crippled legs drew rueful chuckles from us both. “We aren’t going anywhere like this.”
My stupid horse appeared out of the gloom, head nudging the corpses littering the ground as if looking for a handout. I raised my voice in a cheerful lilt. “Here, stupid fucking horse, here boy.”
At least my horse had returned. Bastion’s was still out there somewhere, having fled the battle like a beast with some common sense.
The horse nickered its approval and trotted over to us. I grabbed its reins and dragged myself up onto my feet. “Guess we’re riding double,” I said to Bastion.
Bastion eased the dead Templar off my leg, then lifted me into the saddle. He dragged his sorry ass onto the horse’s back, then wrapped his arms around me to take the reins. “Hang on,” he said and spurred the horse toward the last fireball we’d seen.
Things did not look good for Indira. Cringer poured magic into her, keeping her on her feet as she flung bolt after bolt of swirling flame at her enemies. Fiery darts writhed like burning serpents around the Templars’ hands and eyes but didn’t do any real damage. They were distracting and annoying, but they weren’t going to stop the two men from killing her.
Bastion and I were too far away to save her and weren’t in any condition to do shit about the situation even if we were. Bastion couldn’t swing his sword without slicing off my head or another important body part, and I was on death’s door. Only one person could help Indira.
“Fight!” Bastion cried. “Cringer! fight!”
The dwarf shook his head and focused on healing Indira. One of the Templar’s morning stars tore a chunk out of the magus’ arm, but the dwarf replaced it with a concentrated flow of raw mana.
Despite Cringer’s heroic healing, the blow threw Indira off balance and sent her stumbling away from the dwarf. He raised his hands defensively and closed his eyes.
Little bastard wasn’t kidding. He wouldn’t fight even if his life depended on it.
One of the Templars raised his morning star over his shoulder like a batter teeing up for a homerun derby.
“I’m sorry,” Cringer said and bowed his head.
A small figure exploded through the gloom. A high-pitched war cry split the night, and the Templars recoiled in shock.
Havelock had arrived.
The gnome leaped into the air. His left foot landed on Cringer’s bowed head, and he launched himself off the dwarf’s skull. Havelock’s short sword scythed through the darkness and crashed into the Templar’s wrists.
The morning star sailed off into to the snow, the Templar’s hands still wrapped around its haft in a white-knuckled death grip. The Templar fell back, arm upraised in disbelief as blood pumped from the stumps of his forearm.
Havelock didn’t waste a second watching his foe collapse. The instant his feet touched the ground, the diminutive warrior whirled his short sword around in a tight circle that cleaved through the second Templar’s armor and spilled his steaming entrails into the snow.
Indira recovered and raised both hands at the Templar amputee, broiling his face with a focused jet of blue flame.
A gargling scream erupted from the Templar, who collapsed as the fire and superheated air destroyed his larynx and scoured his lungs. His arms and legs twisted into a fetal position as he twitched out his last moments in the snow with black smoke leaking from his charred lips.
Havelock put the man out of his misery with a well-placed sword stroke that sent his head tumbling away. For a moment, no one said anything. We stared at one another and the dead bodies scattered around us.
“Hey,” I said, breaking the silence with a weak gasp. “Cringer, you think you could take a look at this?”
Then, like the hero I am, I fell out of the saddle and passed out in the snow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Cringer woke me up with a mouthful of dirty snow and a couple of quick slaps across the cheeks. I came spluttering up out of the darkness with both hands flailing at the air and the rest of my adventuring team laughing at me. It wasn’t very dignified, and it wasn’t very much fun, but at least I was alive and my leg no longer felt like a bunch of little demons with burning pitchforks having a hoe-down in my thigh.
The dwarf eyeballed me for a moment, then slapped me on the shoulder hard enough that my health bar threatened to drop. “Wasn’t sure you were going to make it back, kid. Never fixed someone who’d bled out, before.”
“Thanks for the assist, man. I thought I was gone for sure.”
Mercy helped me back to my feet, which I found touching in a surprisingly sincere fashion, and led me over to the small campfire someone had started on a patch of ground they’d swept free of snow. “You look better.”
My ey
es narrowed as I gave her a head-to-toe. She looked none the worse for wear, other than shivering from the cold despite her heavy cloak. The weather was wearing on her, and no matter how tough the dragonborn wanted us to think she was, her tolerance for hanging out in the snow was coming to an end. I had to marvel at the sadistic nature of the dev who would knowingly consign a cold-blooded creature to the wintry hell that was Frosthold.
What an asshole.
Despite how happy I was to see Mercy still on her feet, there was one burning question I needed her to answer. “Where were you when this all went down?”
Everyone looked at me like I was a jerk for asking such an insensitive question. Apparently, I’d missed something while I was busy being, you know, kinda dead.
Mercy frowned at my rude manners and shoved a stick of beef jerky at me. “I was leading the rest of the Templars around in a big circle so they wouldn’t kill you. Most of them followed me away from you guys, but they split up, and I couldn’t get them all off your trail.
The fact there were more Templars than the ones we’d killed made my heart lurch to a stop. My eyes darted toward the darkness surrounding our camp. “Are there more out there? Are they going to come wandering into our camp now that they see the smoke from it?”
Mercy shook her head at me, and her frown deepened. If the scales between her eyes could’ve wrinkled, they would have. She fished around in the leather pouch at her hip and pulled out a tangled fistful of heavy golden chains. She shoved them at me, and I opened my hands. Mercy dropped the chains into my cupped palms with a wry grin. “Not anymore.”
