by Krpoun, RW
Janna hooked the Direbreed’s spear in the curved side-blades of her partisan and jerked the weapon to the side, throwing the goat-headed creature off-balance; stepping in, she slammed the iron rim of her shield between the thing’s slanted amber eyes with enough force to send it to its knees, stunned. A shake to rid the partisan of the spear, followed by a short thrust and another positive adjustment was made to the odds they faced. Carefully breathing through her mouth to ensure that she got as much air as possible, keeping her eyes moving and her feet squarely planted, the sweat pouring beneath her breast-and-back plates, muscles yelling at the demands being placed upon them, Janna was feeling extremely alive and was very nearly enjoying herself.
The silver bar was scarlet now, a transformation that was a staple in every fight. Wielding a great sword meant two hands on the hilt and no shield; it was a very difficult weapon to master, not so much the blade as the fear accompanying fighting without a shield to hide behind, but master it Robin had. The key to it, as he was often given to pontificating about when he had had a drink or three, was timing and momentum, facets he now demonstrated as he neatly sidestepped a mace’s swing and disemboweled its wielder before the creature could recover, letting the force of the blow jerk him off balance, a shift he turned into a staggering charge of four steps which ended with a Direbreed impaled upon the five-foot, richly engraved (under the clotting blood) blade. Behind him Nuilia made sure that those Direbreed who were on the ground did not get back up again.
It never failed to amaze Arian how much of a difference having a plan and a bit of organization made in a fight like this. Four landing amongst eleven with the odd crossbow quarrel from above should have been very long odds, but the Direbreed were stumbling about tripping over each other while the Badgers operated in two neat killing machines, Janna and Robin going into them like a pair of water-driven mill saws while he and Nuilia saw to it that no one came at them from behind. He had split one Direbreed’s skull as he came off the stone arch at the onset of the festivities and mauled another which had staggered off in the confusion; after that he had just followed behind Janna and given those she had knocked down the obligatory chop to the neck or a quick thrust to the chest to make sure that they were good Direbreed: i.e., dead. Then it was over, Janna and Robin suddenly spinning around like a pair of homicidal tops, looking for more prey while Arian gave a gagging Direbreed who was staggering away from the Silver Eagle with its bowels in its hands a full-armed swing that half decapitated it.
“Is that the lot?” Janna gasped, red-faced and sweating, trying to count the twitching corpses.
“Dead or run off,” Nuilia scrubbed blood from her face.
“Movement to the east, they’re coming,” Robin yelled, backing up with Moonblade at the rest position. The Direbreed on the other side of the bridge had rallied and were coming for the only attackers they could see, the four Badgers of Group Two. “Back up and give Rolf some room to work.” By withdrawing to the west the four put the corpses of the Direbreed between them and their attackers, allowing them to back up in the heat of the fight without the fear of stumbling over a cadaver.
As soon as she had created the ramp the Advocate had stepped across to the other side of the bridge, pointed to a central spot amongst the sleeping beastmen, and murmured a short invocation. Immediately a flow of mist poured out from the floor where she had pointed, the cold air fountaining up in a yard-high mushroom before spreading out across the floor. As the first screams and shouts of Group Two’s attack echoed behind and below her and Starr’s bow sang to her right Bridget repeated the spell at another spot and then pulled her staff sling from the back of her belt, planning to save her remaining magical energies for Healing after the battle.
As she slipped a lead ball into her weapon’s pouch, she surveyed the scene below her: in the growing blanket of mist the Direbreed were springing to their feet and snatching up arms, a few of the creatures swiftly shrugging into their armor, ready for battle but somewhat confused over where the battle was, their confusion amplified by the steadily-building mist and the fact that Starr, who was mechanically wielding her bow with expert precision, had cut down both section-leaders even as Bridget was finishing her second mist-calling.
In the slave pen Durek quieted the excited slaves and waited for the right moment; the east side of the bridge was filled with raging howls, screams from victims of Starr’s archery, and the deep bellows of the Champion, who was standing erect on the platform trying to rally his forces. The sound of steel on steel and cries of pain were echoing from the west side of the bridge even as the mist thickened to hide what was transpiring over there. The attack was only a minute underway, but the Captain knew that the Badgers were committed beyond any recall, and all that remained was to launch their last surprise.
The moment came seconds later: the Draktaur, having drowned out his follower’s shrieks and cries in order to get their attention, leapt from the platform and motioned with his axe towards the west slave pen; in the thinning mist, harried by arrows and slung bullets from the bridge, the Direbreed sorted themselves out and began to trot towards the sounds of fighting, which were rapidly dying out. Durek jerked the chain from the door and kicked it open, which was what Kroh had been watching for; at a soft-voiced command, the Waybrother and eight of the burliest slaves heaved on the rope with all their might and weight.
The slack in the rope tore through the reels of the block and tackle until the line stretched taut and creaking; overhead dust spurted from the unfastened joints, the timbers groaning at the sudden pressure and then howled as the first movement dragged them across the tops of the iron bars, spitting splinters as they went. With a sullen double-jerk the western third of the platform bucked and then like a fence post being dragged from muddy ground by a team of mules the cross timbers slid screeching and chip-spraying towards the block and tackle, and, as they came off the supporting bars and beams, crashing to the ground in an explosion of planks, support beams, iron bars, chests, bags, packs, armor, weapons, and howling Black Dwarves.
About a dozen feet of the platform at the west end caved in, bringing a half-dozen Fortren with it as it collapsed; Durek found himself only three feet from a stunned Black Dwarf who had apparently been in the act of fastening down his chainmail tunic when the floor literally dropped away beneath his feet. Wasting no time, the Badger Captain shot the Fortren square in the forehead, discarded his crossbow, and leapt through the sagging doorway followed closely by his four Badgers as the slaves poured out through the collapsed end of the pen.
Kroh and Trellan fired at the same time, only to see their quarrels shatter harmlessly against the gray-green armor of the Draktaur, the attack only serving to draw the beast’s attention. Durek and Gabriella took advantage of the surprise and confusion their appearance created to charge into the Direbreed; the dark woman stove in the skull of one beast-man with her long war hammer while Durek disemboweled another. Behind them the slaves and the Fortren were a howling, fighting mob.
About a dozen Direbreed raced out from the mist to make the first assault on Group Two; the four waiting Badgers could hear the Draktaur and the echoed crash of the slave pen collapsing, but could see nothing of it through the swirling fog that now engulfed most of the east side of the cavern. Rolf dropped one attacker as the Badgers hastily went back-to back and met the charge as best they could. Instantly the western cavern rang with the crash of weapons and the cry of battle.
Slapping a quarrel in place, Rolf threw the weapon to his shoulder and took aim, sending the bolt squarely into the center back of a hulking Direbreed who had had a cow of some sort for a host; the creature thrashed madly about the floor, desperately trying to reach the source of the pain even as the life left its unnatural flesh. Bridget had joined him in trying to cover the four Badgers while Starr fired in support of Durek and his group, but the Direbreed’s numbers were beginning to tell: the two pairs of Badgers were being forced further and further from each other. Kicking his boot into
the stirrup, the half-Orc began to cock the weapon and then hesitated; below, Arian suddenly spun away from the Silver Eagle and crumbled to the dirt, a savage blow having sent him sprawling. Undaunted, Janna parried a sword while planting her partisan’s blade deep into a wolf-faced Direbreed, only to have the dying creature seize the weapon in both clawed hands in what was literally a death-grip. The sword wielder immediately lashed out, smashing the polearm’s shaft as the mace-bearing Direbreed who had downed Arian closed.
Discarding the crossbow Rolf seized his axe and vaulted the railing-chain to hang from the bottom of the bridge as Janna rammed the jagged point of her partisan-shaft into the mace-armed beast-man’s face and lurched backwards, blocking with her shield and drawing her broadsword. Dropping to the dirt below, Rolf hit and rolled, coming to his feet with a mildly sprained ankle and a very real conviction that he was going to die. He took consolation in the fact that if he did fall here, at least he would not really be dying in Gradrek Heleth. Below it, but at least not in it.
A Direbreed had caught Janna’s shield, while another had pinned her broadsword against the children’s pen with both of its hand axes; a third, the one the Silver Eagle had bloodied with her broken shaft, was dancing behind the struggling trio with its mace held at the ready, trying to find an a clear shot at the Badger. It turned to see who was coming up behind it as the edge of Rolf’s axe caught it at the juncture of neck and shoulder, ripping in until the creature’s head hung back against its left shoulder blade by a thick twist of muscle. Ripping his weapon free, the thin half-Orc kicked the dying foe aside and planted his axe in the lower back of the Direbreed who had Janna’s sword-arm pinned; before the beast-man gripping her shield could adapt to the sudden reverse in the fortunes of battle, the Silver Eagle had smashed the pommel of her sword into his left eye socket, crushing the amber orb, and then kicked him squarely in the knee, the savage pain sending the beast-man staggering back, blinded. Free, Janna darted forward and cut him down before he could recover.
His breath was coming in red-hot gasps and his shoulders were beginning to complain from the strain, but Robin was no novice to battle and refused to let the annoyances distract him from the job at hand. There were too many Direbreed, just as he had predicted: despite the covering fire from the bridge he and Nuilia were forced away from Janna and Arian, and were being pressed ever harder on every side. Slapping aside a spear-point, he lunged in, the superb balance of his great sword catching his foe by surprise, a surprise which ended with its life. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a slung bullet blast into a Direbreed’s skull, splattering Nuilia with the rank green material that filled Direbreed brain pans, a lucky shot by Bridget, a luckier shot for the Badgers on the ground. A few more like that, he hoped as he parried an axe-stroke, and they might actually survive this mess.
Johann Helbrit had never seen anything like the battle he found himself in, although he had become somewhat inured to radical changes to his world over the last few weeks. A hardy young man in his mid-twenties Johann had completed a full course of schooling and even a year at a University before a lack of funds drove him into the business world. He had secured the position as clerk with a wealthy grain-buyer and had accompanied his employer about the Empire until an opportunity arose to become a buyer for a fur consortium. While making the rounds of the trading posts on the Ward this fall he and his two clerks had been captured by a Dark Star raiding party, and ended up as slaves deep in the earth with grinding labor the basis of their days and a violent death his only future.
Or at least until the voice had called softly from the depths of the barred crevice. Now he found himself charging into the ruins of the west end of the slave pens armed with a length of iron bar and the hope that he might just have a second chance at life.
They had done well in the first rush, hacking and beating to death the four stunned Dwarves lying in the wreckage while losing only one of their number, a Human whose name Johann had never learned, to a desperate dagger-thrust from a dying Black Dwarf which had opened the great blood-vessel in the man’s leg. Then crossbows had sounded above them and two of their number dropped, shot clean through, while two armored Fortren leapt from the still-standing portion of the platform and waded into them, mattocks flying.
The Dwarves cut down an Orc and two Humans before a big Orc who called himself Geranneth leapt in and planted a ten-pound sledge in the face of one of the short warriors before dropping with a crossbow quarrel in his chest. Some of the slaves bolted at that point, for Geranneth had been a pen boss of sorts, the fighting will of the slaves as a whole. Johann was too desperate to run, being keenly aware that there was no place to run to; he had no idea where they were or how to get to the sunlight above. Grabbing a sack of cornmeal that was part of the supplies stored on the platform, he swung the bag around his head twice for momentum and let fly, expecting to be shot down at any moment. The other armored Dwarf had just finished killing the only one of Johann’s clerks who had survived the trip into this stone hell when the bag slammed into his mail-covered chest and burst, blinding the Fortren.
Snatching up his iron bar, Johann leapt forward, swinging it in a massive overhand stroke that numbed his arms to the elbows and bent the bar into a smooth saber-curve when it impacted with the rounded dome of the Black Dwarf’s iron cap. Slowly the gnarled, clean-shaved Dwarf toppled to the floor, eyes rolled back into his head. Dropping the warped bar, Johann leapt upon the stunned foe and ripped the long dirk from the hated engineer’s hip, plunging the keen blade into the sweaty skin showing between the leather collar of the armored tunic and the back of the dented metal cap.
Staggering to his feet, Johann looked around to find the last two Dwarves were out of the fight, cut down by the archer on the bridge. Whispering an incoherent prayer of thanks, the young man began to scramble amongst the wreckage for a weapon. He wasn’t out of this pit yet, but the Void followers weren’t going to put him back into a cage, not alive anyway.
Durek’s little company had cut off the second wave of Direbreed from following the dozen or so who had charged off towards the fighting, and in seconds the east side of the cavern was engulfed in melee. The press was hot and heavy for a few moments as Kroh and Trellan discarded their crossbows and threw themselves into the fray against the disorganized Direbreed. Then a Orc armed with a war mattock roared in from the flank and cut down two beastmen and badly wounded a third before a mace ended his charge and his life, taking considerable pressure off the Badgers. As he ducked a maul’s swing, however, the Captain could see the Draktaur bearing down on them and knew in his heart that the fight was only beginning.
Spinning her sling, Bridget studied the swirling remnants of her mists for another safe target. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure racing across the dirt from the direction of the north pen and instinctively cast at him. As the lead bullet shattered the runner’s chest, killing him instantly, she realized she had slain a fleeing slave.
Shifting her focus from the north, wrecked, slave pens where she had silenced the two Fortren who had made it to the crossbow rack (and whose mail tunics had cost her seven bodkin-pointed arrows) Starr saw the Champion’s bulk stalking through the fading mist towards Durek’s beleaguered section, swinging its massive axe in one mutated arm, muscles as large as her head flexing across the armored limb. Plucking her enchanted arrow from its separate pocket on the side of her nearly empty quiver, the little Lanthrell nocked it and spit the command word through a stone-dry mouth. She had seen it shrug aside the bolts from Kroh’s and Trellan’s crossbows, but the arrows created by this shaft would be enchanted in their own right. As the arrow leapt from her bow it flashed into six shafts which ripped into the Draktaur’s armored lower flank, the arrows punching through Void-blessed metal and leathery hide to rip into the soft flesh beneath, the force of the impact and the strength of the Void in the mutated flesh destroying the projectiles even as they wounded.
Roaring in pain, surprise, and fury, the Champion plucked a
metal disk from its side and hurled it at the diminutive Badger, who instinctively threw herself flat, amazed that the six shafts had only enraged it. The disk missed her by three feet, slamming into the planks that formed the tread way of the bridge and shearing apart one of the structure’s framework chains. The impact threw the bridge sideways, the resulting backlash jarring loose one of the javelins which anchored the tightening ropes, which sent the bridge see-sawing and dislodging the second javelin, thus intensifying the bucking motion.
Bridget had been spinning her staff sling for a cast when the disk struck the bridge, knocking her off balance, inertia thrusting her towards the west; moments later the planks beneath her feet began to thrash as the ropes which had drawn the slack from the chains came loose. Only a desperate grab at a vertical support chain saved the advocate from pitching head-first off the west side of the bridge; swinging on the chain like a dancer pivoting from a polished pole, she managed to get her other hand onto the rusting links as her momentum carried her over the low rail-chain, losing her staff sling in the process.
Gasping at the pain in her shoulders as they took her full weight, Bridget slid down several links on the chain as the bridge gyrated, ripping up the palms of her finger-less gloves and splintering several nails. As the bridge’s motion became less violent she swung her feet over the rail-chain and dropped gratefully to the filthy planks, heart hammering and her breath coming in desperate gasps as if she had just run a mile while carrying a full pack.
A Direbreed spun away from Moonblade, blood fountaining from its throat; Robin gave a croaking laugh and backpedaled, turning to face the goat-horned beast-man coming up on his left, one of the last still on its feet in this part of the cavern. With horrifying suddenness his left foot slipped on the blade of a discarded sword, throwing him off-balance. For just an instant Moonblade wavered as the bearded swordsman fought for his balance, but an instant was all the Direbreed needed, slapping the enchanted blade aside with a small axe while lunging in with a mace, the spiked head of which slammed into the side of the Badger’s steel helm. Blackness swam before Robin’s eyes and a roaring filled his ears; he vaguely felt the impact of the dirt floor as he fell, his right hand still loosely gripping Moonblade, the leverage of the great sword’s blade digging into the soil turning him to land on his back.
