As he did so, a spell came in from the side and disrupted his cloak of air. He brought down his mace, but before it connected, his blow was stopped by an upraised sword as suddenly the armored imp was standing in front of him. Somehow the imp had the speed to get between him and the wizard and the strength to catch his heavy blow without being blasted to the earth.
The wizard was startled by the imp’s abrupt movements and when he looked up and saw the eight-foot-tall 600-pound ogre standing over him, he yelped and fell to the ground. “We miscalculated!”
Fist pulled in more of Quickening’s magic and brought the mace back down with two blurringly quick blows. The imp moved his sword just as quickly and parried each one.
Fist was dumbfounded. It was frustrating enough that the imp had disrupted his cloaking spell, something that was difficult for even a well-trained magic user. But this was the first time he had come up against someone that could match his speed and strength.
“Strong imp,” he said.
“Master Fist, named ogre wizard,” said the imp with a sharp-toothed grin. “I am Belfae of house Yen. You’re my chore for the day.”
Deathclaw waited until Fist acted before he turned to face the half-elf advancing on him with her sword and dagger. He drew Star from its sheath. At this time of day, its powers were low, but each cut would still sting. “You smell like the archer that attacked us on the river. Are you as unwise as her?”
“I watched the whole thing from the shore!” she said and Deathclaw realized that this woman had a vision device similar to the one that the archer had worn clipped to her belt. “You hunted her down and mauled her like an animal!”
She came at him, swinging her sword with her dominant hand. Deathclaw parried her swing and leapt back to avoid the thrust of her dagger.
Deathclaw came back at her with multiple thrusts of his own sword, that she expertly parried aside. “Yes. Your friend shot at us and I was forced to kill her. Do you wish to die as well?”
“Lana was my sister!” she shouted and went into a frenzied series of strikes, mainly using her sword to tie up his weapon so that she could get in close and bring her dagger to bear.
Her aggression kept Deathclaw on the defensive, forcing him to contort his body to avoid being skewered. She backed him towards the edge of the road and the trees. He waited until he had the proper opening and parried her sword aside, then spun and avoided a thrust of her dagger as he brought his tail around. The barb tore a long gash in her leather armor, but did not pierce the mail shirt she wore beneath it.
Deathclaw felt no guilt for killing this woman’s sibling, but he understood the nature of her pain. “If you do not wish to die like she did, tell me who hired you,” he hissed.
“Silence, monster,” she growled and came back at him.
She was good. Deathclaw had not been so harried by a single combatant in quite some time. The raptoid smiled.
Lenui hopped down from Albert’s back and the warhorse smartly trotted away from the fighting as the old dwarf faced his old foe. He hefted his favorite hammer in his hand. It had a long handle and its head was shaped for use at the forge, with two fire-blackened and blunt sides. The hammer was covered in runes that gave it the power to impact with double the force of any blow. “You remember Buster, Vern?”
It had been decades since his last run-in with Vern and Lenui had proven himself the better fighter that day. Their battle had been over the rights to a blacksmith shop in Dremald. Lenui’s hammer had knocked Vern unconscious and he had been dragged away by friends and put on a wagon headed out of town.
Vern snorted as if the reminder meant nothing to him. But he placed his helmet on his head. It was an open-faced helmet with the crest of the Earthpeeler family embossed over his forehead. The crest was square and in the center were the crossed forms of two pickaxes over an anvil.
He pointed his axe at Lenui. “Yer gonna put your forge hammer up against Cutter? ’Specially when all yer wearin’ is leather armor?”
“’Course you named yer axe ‘Cutter’,” Lenui said and spat with disgust. “You ain’t got no gad-flamed imagination, Vern. There’s a thousand axes and swords named Cutter out there in the Known Lands.”
Both dwarves paused briefly in their confrontation as Rufus bounded past them and into the trees with Sir Edge on his back. They collided with the three brutes and were met with loud shouts and the sounds of heavy blows and snapping branches.
“Our advantage is broken!” shouted the wizard from the ground as Fist and the imp struggled over him. “We should retreat.”
“Shaddup, Ghazardblast, you yellow-livered nose-dripper! We ain’t goin’ nowhere!” Vern yelled back. His lips twisted as he focused back on Lenui. “Well, this Cutter is gonna be the one that takes off yer ugly tin-sniffin’ head!”
“Ha! Go ahead’n try, you brick-arsed, belly-baster!” Lenui said and came at him.
Vern had been right thinking that Lenui’s hammer fighting style was at a bit of a disadvantage against a fighter with a double-bladed battle axe. Normally, he’d want a shield in his off hand. Lenui settled for grabbing one of the smaller throwing hammers off of his belt. He called them his ‘Buster Juniors’ and each one of them had the same kind of enchantment that Buster did.
Lenui rushed at Vern and met the dwarf’s axe swing with Buster. The head of the hammer struck the blade of Vern’s axe with an ear-splitting ring as the weapon’s magic doubled the force of the impact. It was a testament to Vern’s skill at enchanting his weapon that the blade didn’t crack.
The weapons rebounded from each other and Lenui brought his other weapon across. The head of Buster Junior struck Vern’s helmet with a ringing force that sent the dwarf staggering and knocked his helmet askew.
“Am I getting’ through to you, you tar-eared, limp-whistled, fraud?” Lenui barked.
Vern adjusted his helmet and shook his head as he regained his balance. “I ain’t the fraud, you numb-brained, lack-whit who forgot how to forge years ago. I bet yer daddy won’t even look at you!”
“He just came by to see his grandkids last year, you droolin’ cheek-sneaker who dyes his mustache!” Lenui charged at him and Vern swung his axe to meet him.
Lenui brought Buster down again, but this time Vern angled the blade so that the hammer just knocked the axe aside. He then reversed the motion, swinging with the other side of the blade. Lenui tried to parry it with Buster Junior, but he didn’t get enough force behind the blow. The axe knocked the smaller hammer aside and struck Lenui in the side, doubling the dwarf over. Lenui grunted and dropped Buster Junior.
“And that’s how I kill you, Firegobbler!” Vern said with a laugh. “You and yer sissified leather armor.”
Lenui wheezed. “Damn.” Then he chuckled and grabbed Vern’s wrist with his freed hand. “Didn’t you know that my wife’s the best dag-gum leather-runer in the blasted Known Lands? This stuff’s as good as plate, idjit!”
He head-butted Vern in the face, knocking the dwarf a step back, then brought Buster down on top of his helmet. The hammer hit with another loud ring and Lenui let go of Vern’s axe. He pushed the stunned dwarf back and swung Buster again, this time striking Vern in the side of the helmet.
The dwarf’s head was rocked violently to the side and he dropped to his knees and collapsed.
The fearful wizard that Vern had called ‘Ghazardblast’ saw his boss fall and shouted, “Belfae, we’re leaving!”
The old man pulled something out of his robes that looked like a gray brick inscribed with intricate runes. He threw it on the ground and began to send elemental energies into it.
The brick shook and rose about six feet into the air. As it did so, another set of bricks appeared at either side of it, and then another and another, joining together and curving towards the ground to form an archway. The runes on the brick glowed and the air inside the archway shimmered and turned black.
“Now, Belfae!” the wizard shouted.
“What about the others?”
the imp said, but the wizard simply leapt into the blackness of the archway.
Cursing, the imp barreled his shoulder into Fist to knock the ogre back, then used his speed to dart away. He ran to Vern’s unconscious form and, as easily as if the bulky dwarf was a child, threw him over his shoulder and bolted for the wizard’s impromptu portal.
Fist rushed towards him and swung his mace in a mighty blow, but the imp dodged to the side. Quickening missed Belfae and struck Vern’s back, denting in the dwarf’s magically reinforced platemail. The imp staggered under the weight of the blow, but made it to the archway.
Lenui refused to let him get away so easily. He pulled another one of his Buster Juniors off of his belt and threw it. The hammer spun, and a burst of air rocketed it towards the imp. The imp and Vern passed into the darkness just before it struck. The hammer disappeared, but Lenui was certain he heard a distant thud.
“Bastards!” shouted the assassin that Deathclaw was fighting. She tried to break away from the fight and follow them, but couldn’t. She knew that the moment she tried to run, Deathclaw would run her through. “Don’t you leave me!”
No sooner had the words left her lips than the portal trembled. The glowing runes on the keystone brick flickered and died. The archway collapsed to the ground and the runed brick broke upon impact.
“WHAAT?” shouted a trio of voices from the trees and there was a heavy thud.
Rufus hurtled out of the trees as if thrown and Lenui caught a glimpse of his surprised and bloodied face as the rogue horse struck the ground and tumbled. Deathclaw and the assassin had to jump apart to avoid being struck.
“Ready yourselves!” shouted Sir Edge as he backed out of the trees. He was only clutching his right sword.
Walking out of the trees towards him came three of the largest orcs Lenui had ever seen. Each of them was nearly eight feet tall. One of them had Edge’s left sword sticking out of its chest. It didn’t seem to notice.
“They left us behind?” the three of them said in unison.
Chapter Eighteen
Sir Edge –Negotiations
They’re warwielders! Edge sent through the bond as he backed out of the trees and onto the road. Big ones with magic clubs!
Warwielders were the highest form of the goblinoid races. It was widely known that one out of every ten goblin births produced a gorc and one out of every ten gorc births produced an orc. But few people knew that after many generations of purebred orc offspring came a new type of orc. Warwielders were bigger and stronger than their already formidable brethren, but they were rarely seen outside of the orc city of Khulbath in Khalpany.
Edge had faced and killed several of their kind over the years, but these were special. Their bodies were covered in tattooed runes that enhanced their bodies in various ways and there was some kind of spirit magic connection between them. The moment that he and Rufus had attacked them, they had acted in perfect coordination, fending off Edge’s strikes.
He still couldn’t believe how easily they had handled Rufus, beating him senseless and throwing him through the trees like that. Not only that, but Peace was still stuck in one of them. It had seemed immune to the sword’s magic. Edge had felt nothing when stabbing that particular orc. The blade had penetrated its body and spirit but it was as if the soul inside the creature hadn’t been an orc at all.
“Ready yourselves!” he yelled aloud and transmitted to Fist and Deathclaw all he knew about these monsters.
The three huge orcs pushed their way through the trees and followed Edge onto the road. They were the height of ogres, each of them almost as tall as Fist, and though they weren’t as muscular as he was, their forms were impressive. They wore little in the way of armor, just chainmail breeches and boots.
“They left us behind?” the three of them asked in unison. Their voices sounded hurt.
The warwielder on the right, a bald pinch-faced orc with dark green mottled skin, hefted a huge runed club onto his shoulder and looked at the others. “What do we do, brothers?”
“I don’t know, Chester,” the other two said together.
The one in the middle placed the head of his matching club onto the ground and leaned on the handle. He was slightly shorter than the others, had braided black hair, and wore a yellow vest. “We were hired to fight, but Ghazard did leave us. That’s against the terms of our deal. Never leave a living member of the party behind.”
“And I got stabbed,” said the rightmost one of them, a light green-skinned brute with gold rings piercing his nose, lips and ears. He gestured to the sword that was protruding from his chest. Blood was dribbling down the blade and dripping onto the ground. “This weird sword actually got through my skin.” It spoke oddly, pronouncing sword with a hard w. “It’s a real bad wound.”
While the warwielders spoke, Fist rushed to Rufus’s side and began healing him. It’s not too bad, he told Edge with relief. He’s just concussed and a little bruised up.
Rufus got to his feet and shook his head. He focused a determined look on the three orcs. “Ooh. Ouch.”
“Just pull the sword out, Delvin,” said the orc that the others had called Chester. “Your chest will heal, and you can stab him back with it.”
“But if I pull the sword out I might bleed to death before it heals,” Delvin argued.
The centermost warwielder disagreed. “You can’t just leave the sword in there.”
“What are you fools arguing about?” shouted the half-elf assassin. Her continued battle with Deathclaw was a fierce one. Her face was twisted with rage as she fended off the raptoid’s sword blows and pressed forward with attacks of her own. “Fight! Kill ’em all! That’s what we hired you for!”
“The lady’s got a point, Evastus,” said Delvin and Chester to the centermost warwielder.
“What she says don’t matter because she’s not the one that hired us,” said Evastus.
Fist and Rufus spread out to either side of Edge. Fist sent electricity arcing across his mace. Rufus grew until he was ten feet tall at the shoulders. They were ready to attack on his signal.
The three orcs each held out a hand. “Hold on. We don’t know if we’re fighting yet,” they said in unison.
“Yes, you do! Fight!” cried the female assassin.
“Hey, I think I know who these three are,” said Lenny. The dwarf had walked away from the crumbled remains of the brick archway and now stood at Edge’s side. He called out to the warwielders. “You folks the Bash Brothers?”
“Yes,” they replied.
Lenny raised a bushy eyebrow and leaned in closer to Edge. He tried to lower his voice, but the dwarf never had been good at whispering. “Big time mercenaries in Khalpany. A merchant I know hired ’em once to guard an ore shipment. I thought he was exaggerating when he described them, but he said they was worth every gold piece. I didn’t think they was still in business, though. I heard that two of the brothers died.”
The warwielders overheard the not so quiet dwarf and sent frowns his way. “People keep telling us that,” said Chester. “But we’re still alive, see?”
“Yeah,” said Delvin, moving his hand under Edge’s sword to poke a thumb at his chest. “Still tickin’ away.”
Edge was pretty sure they were lying. At least partially. A theory about their natures had already formed in his mind, but he chose not to voice it just yet. There might be an opportunity to talk the orcs down.
“Excuse me. Bash Brothers?” he said, and they looked his way. “We’ll fight you if that’s what you want, but I’d rather not. How about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” they asked.
“If you answer a few questions, my ogre friend will heal your wound and we’ll let you go free,” Edge offered. He couldn’t do it himself. Peace wasn’t making a connection he could use.
“Hmm,” said the three orcs.
“An ogre’s gonna heal Delvin?” said Chester, cracking a smile.
Evastus elbowed him, “Ghazard did say he was a mast
er wizard, remember?”
Are you sure that letting them roam free is a good idea? Fist asked through the bond. What if they leave here and go terrorize a farm or something?
One problem at a time, Edge replied.
“I don’t know,” said Delvin, looking to his two brothers. “We don’t have to make this deal. Ghazard will fix this wound for me when he comes back for us.”
“Are you certain he’s coming back for you?” Edge asked. “After all, he did leave you behind for dead.” He held out his left hand and showed them the rune on his palm. “I’ve been named at the Bowl of Souls and so has Fist. You can trust our word over that wizard’s.”
Evastus nodded. “The man’s got a point. Even if Ghazard is comin’ back for us, who knows how long it’ll take him to set up another of his portals way out this way?”
“What are you talking to them for?” shouted the half elf. She was bleeding from several shallow wounds but was still holding Deathclaw back. “Just fight already!”
“Fist,” Edge said, and the ogre pointed at the woman. Thick cords of air magic formed around the assassin and wrapped around her limbs, binding her tightly. She cried out in anger and fell to the ground. Fist forced a gag of air into her mouth.
Deathclaw’s shoulders slumped and he put his sword away. He nudged the squirming attacker with his foot. “I was enjoying that fight.”
The Bash Brothers didn’t seem concerned about her defeat. “What questions do you got?” asked Evastus.
“First of all, who hired you to attack us?” Edge asked.
They looked at each other, then looked back at him. “Not sure,” they said together.
Then Chester nudged Evastus and the orc with the braided hair added, “I guess Ghazard’s the one who hired us. We’ve done each other favors in the past and we work with him a lot. He showed up earlier today and said he had a job for us. Didn’t say who hired him, but Ghazard let that dwarf Vern boss him around all day, so we think it’s probably the dwarf.”
Sir Edge Page 20
