by Pirateaba
Nope. Pyrite knew they were waiting for him to strike so they could exchange blows. It didn’t matter if they got hit. He knocked aside the blade with his axe’s head, feeling the chill on his hands. Enchanted blades, enchanted armor—
“Withdraw!”
The roar was going up from the Hobs around him and they were scrambling to get back as the Rose Knights cut them down. Pyrite was glad to hear it. Rags was no fool. She’d realized the Hobs would only be slaughtered and now she was bringing in—
Pyrite glanced over his shoulder as the [Knight] thrust at him again. Casually, Pyrite knocked the blade away again; it was easy if you kept backing up. Goblins were drawing back, inviting the Knights into one-versus-hundreds battles in every direction. And the pink knights were taking the offer.
That was bad. Pyrite walked backwards quickly, letting the knight charge towards him. Other Goblins were jabbing at the pink knight from all angles, but he—or she—had clearly decided Pyrite was dying first. The knight ignored the attacks on his armor, beheading a Goblin with a cut to one side.
Pyrite’s eyes narrowed. He slid to one side as the knight lunged and brought his axe down like a hammer on their back.
[Power Strike]! Pyrite hadn’t learned a more advanced Skill, but he had once cleaved through a warhorse’s armor and spine with this blow—
His axe shattered as he struck the Rose Knight. The armored warrior stumbled mid-step and then turned towards Pyrite. The Hob and the Goblins around him stared at the Rose Knight and then backed up. This wasn’t fair at all.
A group of Goblins with pikes charged into the pink knight, holding them off for a few moments. Pyrite backed up again, and saw the battle was going the same way throughout the forest. The Rose Knights were carving their way through the Goblins trying to damage their armor with impunity. It was carnage, and Pyrite felt the fury in his heart rising as he saw his people dying.
Yet the cold part of him still approved. This made sense. How did you destroy an enemy most efficiently? You sent in warriors—you didn’t have to have many—to fight. Warriors the enemy could not harm in any way.
Because of levels. Because they didn’t have enough enchanted weapons or Skills. Or if they did—Pyrite saw one of the Rose Knights raise his shield and it was like a wall the Goblins couldn’t break through. Another was cutting with his battleaxe as if it were light as a feather, and one more had used a Skill that had sent a group of Goblins flying.
They were high-level too. And so Pyrite realized what Rags would do next. What she had to do.
Retreat.
But where could they go? The Rose Knights would harry them, cut them down or aim for her. A group was already cutting towards Rags. And she was pointing—at the [Lady]?
“Ah.”
Pyrite realized what she was doing. Harm the leader if you can’t hurt the soldiers. A rain of crossbow bolts fell like rain from the sky at the unarmored woman. She in turn raised a hand and—
“[Tranquil Skies].”
The bolts and arrows parted in the sky—as did the clouds, in fact. Pyrite, Rags, and the Goblins who had time to look stared as the [Lady] smiled. The bolts rained down around her and her escort, in a huge circle of—of tranquility around her. The clouded sky was blue above her head.
That wasn’t fair. It was ingenious, but not fair. Rags was practically screaming as she ordered a second volley. The [Lady] couldn’t do that twice!
She didn’t have to. As the crossbows raised a second time, one of the Rose Knights roared. For a second he towered over the Goblins, his armor twisting, the gaps in his visor shining with terrible light. He was a monster—every bow and crossbow turned towards him and loosed at once.
The knight took the hail of death without flinching. Pyrite rubbed his eyes and the illusion was gone. But another Knight had begun hammering on their shield, using another Skill which created a target for the Goblins to hit.
They were dominating the battlefield with their Skills. And as a group of Hobs and Redfang warriors charged into the escort around the lady, Pyrite saw the only other unarmored man on the battlefield step forwards.
He was a [Fencer] if the rapier was anything to mark him by. And he was good. The man stabbed five Redfang Warriors through their guards as they charged him at once, and the six pink knights cut down the other Goblins without budging from their place surrounding the [Lady]. She wrinkled her nose as blood fountained into the air.
Death. Pyrite felt it in the air. He looked around—Rags was sitting on her mount, looking stunned. The Carn Wolves and Redfang warriors, her elite, were dueling the Rose Knights now and still, the knights took no damage. They were invincible.
The Goblins had to retreat. Pyrite grunted as the knight who’d been pursuing him broke past the pikes and began cutting towards him. He glanced over his shoulder. Only water behind. The lake would cut their retreat off. Rags would have to run them through the forest, but what if there was a second force waiting? Or what if they had ways to catch up with them? The lake’s waters were turning red as blood ran into them—
Water. Lake. Pyrite blinked and turned as the freezing longsword swept towards his head again. He backed up, then turned and ran.
The knight followed. Pyrite splashed past ranks of Goblins in the water. They’d already been pushed this far? He turned and raised the haft of his broken axe as he stood in stomach-deep water. Predictably, the knight had followed him. His blade was freezing the water around them as he waded towards Pyrite. That was interesting.
And they were clearly not thinking straight. If they had been, they would have realized that the water slowed both Hob and knight. Yet the sword came swinging at Pyrite all the same, and he had to admit—it was dangerous.
Pyrite ducked. The knight cut into the water and was rewarded with an impact at last. Blood spurted up in the water, but the blow hadn’t been decisive, slowed as it had been by the liquid. The knight raised their sword for a final strike—
And Pyrite fountained up out of the water. He body slammed the knight and they crashed into the lake together, underwater. He felt the knight flailing, sensed them trying to get up and reached for their neck.
Flaw. The Rose Knights were strong, but a Hob was still stronger. And in the water, they were slow enough to be caught. Pyrite seized the visored head and felt the Rose Knight twisting. Too late.
Second flaw. Everything had to breathe. Pyrite thrust the head down and then stepped on the struggling body. He ground the knight into the lake’s muddy floor and felt them struggling frantically. All things breathed. Unless they couldn’t.
“Chieftain!”
Pyrite’s deep voice bellowed across the battlefield, turning Goblin heads. He saw Rags turn to him, eyes wide, and then he lifted the rose shield in his hand. The knight was struggling under his feet, but he was standing on them now.
Rags understood at once. She screamed and horns blew; the Goblins retreated as one towards the lake. But now the Rose Knights were determined to stop them. They formed a line of death and marched into the Goblins, cutting them down, aiming at Rags now. Pyrite groaned. They were going for her! And he couldn’t be there to stop them.
He grunted, dove into the water and pushed away a frantic hand. The Rose Knight was still struggling! He—or she—was getting air from somewhere, or they could hold their breath incredibly long. Pyrite surfaced and turned, desperately.
There was only one Goblin who could—where was he? He scanned the battlefield frantically as he put the weakening knight in a headlock underwater.
There. Greybeard was fighting with his old greatsword, laughing as a knight with a battleaxe traded blows with him. But the elderly Hob had dodged every blow. He could—
A dagger stabbed into Pyrite’s side, a blade that froze his innards. He gasped and tore the blade out of the knight’s hand. He refused to let go, though the knight was pounding on his wound.
Stupid. Should have thought of—Pyrite saw the [Lady] turning her head towards him. Greybeard. He had to b
e—oh, of course. Why have [Knights] only specialized in swords? Some had bows, others had spells.
Stupid not to think of it.
—-
“Take down that Hob.”
Bethal pointed, and one of the knights by her side abandoned his weapon to draw the bow on his back. The enchanted bowstring thrummed once, and the Hob who’d manage to down young Lady Welca Vis—a knight-errant in training who Bethal had accepted into her ranks—fell, two arrows in his chest. The Rose Knight surged upwards, searching for her weapons as the Goblins roared and the one on the wolf’s back screamed fury and drove her mount into the lake after him.
“Is young Welca alive? Oh, I see she is.”
Bethal sighed as the knights around her closed ranks once again. The Goblins had given up assailing her; Thomast’s blade and the piles of Goblins’ bodies had proven the futility of it. And the rest of her warriors were too experienced to be lured into the water like that.
“A pity. That Hob looked almost intelligent.”
Thomast turned to her, a hint of reproach in his eyes. Bethal sighed.
“I know. I know. But a monster who kills is…we could fish him out afterwards if Welca lets him live. Or maybe—I say, what’s going on over there?”
She frowned, and pointed to a spot where Goblins were fighting the Knights of the Petal. Almost all of them had retreated, leaving hundreds of dead bodies behind them. But one Goblin hadn’t retreated.
Greybeard had been dueling the Rose Knight with the battleaxe—Sir Kerrig Louis—as soon as he’d crashed into Poisonbite’s formation. He alone hadn’t been cut down, although the battleaxe’s head burned in the open air and Sir Kerrig was a master in using it.
Instead, Greybeard had pushed the Rose Knight back, landing heavy blows on the man’s armor and making it ring. The halt in their advance had drawn the attention of the other Knights of the Petal and they’d come to assist Sir Kerrig in dealing with this troublesome foe.
Now there were six of the Rose Knights surrounding him as Greybeard struck and countered each blow in a whirlwind of steel. The advance of pink halted and Lady Bethal’s eyes widened as she noticed the disturbance.
“Thomast, who is that Goblin?”
The Chevalier had no reply, but his eyes narrowed as he saw Greybeard fighting. The other Goblins stopped too, as the old Goblin dodged two blows and countered three at once, his greatsword flashing in a ringing arc. He twisted, and simultaneously countered one blow and parried another. When he spun and kicked, a Rose Knight was knocked off his feet and into the muck.
“Oh dear.”
Lady Bethal’s eyes widened as she saw the Goblin fight. And not just for that. She saw and sensed the battlefield turning against her.
—-
The Goblins of the Flooded Waters tribe stopped their retreat as Greybeard fought. The sense of desperation, of hopelessness that dragged down their limbs evaporated as more and more of them saw the sight of a Goblin who hadn’t fallen. They pointed and roared, and Rags saw a flicker of victory in the darkness.
It was inspiring. A single Goblin held down eight [Knights], forcing them back, his sword singing through the air as he laughed. Pyrite stood in the water, blood dripping from his wounds. Noears found more lightning and hurled it through the air. Goblins stopped retreating and held their ground. How could they not?
They had seen a hero.
On her Carn Wolf, Rags saw the battlefield shift. She raised her sword and screamed.
“Charge! Charge!”
There was no tactic in her words. Rags simply felt a current, far vaster than the one she could create, sweeping her ahead. And as she kicked her mount forwards, her tribe did the same. Goblins streamed across the muddy ground, shouting. They rushed towards the surprised [Knights], ignoring the enchanted blades, pounding on the enchanted armor.
The momentum had turned against the Humans. They backed up rather than be swarmed, forming a wall of steel around their [Lady]. She glared and pointed. Her voice crackled like lightning across the battlefield.
“Thomast!”
And there he was. The [Duelist] at her side strode forwards, and his blade lashed the air. Goblins fell before they drew close to him and then there was a pause in the fighting.
The battered Rose Knights fell back as Greybeard lowered his sword. He wasn’t panting, but a light sheen of sweat steamed off his body. Thomast raised his rapier and saluted the Goblin. Greybeard grinned and lifted his greatsword.
They leapt forwards as the Humans and Goblins drew back and met in a clash of blades. Only, there was never any true contact of metal meeting metal. The two struck at each other simultaneously and Thomast’s rapier was faster. He flicked the point towards Greybeard’s eyes and the Goblin twisted his head around the blade. He cut—impossibly fast for a sword so large—towards Thomast’s chest and the [Duelist] stepped back, letting the blade pass a fraction of an inch away from his clothes.
And then they danced. There was no other word for it. Rags had seen the Redscar warriors fight, all precision and grace, but the [Duelist] and Greybeard were on another level entirely. Each strike was so quick and fluid, and led into the next. Rags couldn’t imagine herself trying to fight one or the other. She would be dead in the first blow.
But neither one had scored a hit on the other yet. Thomast stepped back, frowning, and then slashed his rapier through the air. There was a good distance between them, but Greybeard twisted his body out of the way. Behind him, a Hob cried out and fell, blood streaming from his chest.
He was cutting the air! Rags’ eyes narrowed as she stared at the Human’s rapier. Now the [Duelist] cut and Greybeard had to close with him or risk the Goblins behind him taking injuries. So he did, in a lunge that took him low across the ground. And Thomast was waiting.
“[Double Cut].”
As he thrust, a silvery blur struck simultaneously, so that it appeared as if Thomast suddenly had two arms in the place of one for a fraction of a second. Both were aimed at Greybeard’s heart and both—missed. The lunging Greybeard vanished, and Thomast turned.
Two Greybeards were standing at his back. They struck simultaneously and the man leapt out of the way, the first ungraceful move to come in the duel. And when he landed, three Greybeards were waiting for him.
Was it an afterimage caused by speed, or a Skill? Rags didn’t know, only that Greybeard had suddenly multiplied. A mirage of the old Goblins cut as Thomast backed up, his flickering rapier now on the defensive, warding off the apparitions.
And then—Thomast lunged forwards, shooting across the ground at what had to have been the true Greybeard, his rapier thrusting. It was a lightning-fast blow. And still Greybeard was ready. His greatsword skated down the length of Thomast’s rapier and gently, oh so gently opened the man’s chest and stomach up in a single strike.
It was elegant and, Rags had to think, intentional. Thomast staggered, turned, and clutched at his chest. Blood streamed from cut arteries and a woman’s voice screamed.
“Thomast!”
Bethal rushed forward and so did the Rose Knights. They formed a wall in front of the grinning Greybeard. Only the tip of the Goblin’s greatsword was bloody. Bethal threw herself across her husband’s chest as a knight knelt, fumbling with a healing potion. She shouted as the knights seized the wounded Chevalier.
“Withdraw! Knights, shield my husband with your lives!”
They were retreating? Rags stared in disbelief, but the fallen man was clearly more important than anything else. The [Lady] stood, her riding dress stained with blood, and her eyes were murderous as she stared at the grinning Greybeard. She tossed her head and spoke in the silence.
“Prepare yourselves, Goblins. Tomorrow I return. Flee before then, or I will come back to crush you.”
Then she turned and hurried away with the Knights of the Petal. The Goblins let them go without another word. The cost of a battle was too high and besides—
There was Greybeard.
—-
He stood in the remains of the battlefield, untouched. Where strong Hobs and veteran Goblins had been cut down like wheat he alone was unscathed. Rags rode over to him and noticed how her Carn Wolf shied away from him, refusing to draw near. So she dismounted and strode over to him.
“Chieftain.”
This time the old Hobgoblin didn’t bow to her. And Rags was sure he shouldn’t. She stared at him, seeing none of the old innocent dementia of age in how he carried himself now. She had never seen an old Goblin. She had no idea Goblins could be old. And now she felt like a fool.
“Who are you?”
He just grinned at her. Greybeard turned, planting his sword in the ground and looked.
“Where is Pyrite?”
The Goblins turned. In an instant, they’d located Pyrite. He was being tended to; Rags had used her best healing potions on him, but the two arrows to his chest had come close to his heart. Only his fat had protected him. He staggered upright as Greybeard walked over.
“Old one.”
“Good thought! Smart. You were always smart. But invincible is invincible, eh? Good that you meet Humans like that now rather than later. There are always warriors like that. Should make you train harder, you lazy dreamer, you!”
Greybeard praised Pyrite, patting him affectionately on the head and shoulders as Pyrite grunted softly. Rags had followed the two; all the Goblins had. She waited until Greybeard had turned to ask again.
“Who are you? You are not…”
“Not Graybeard, Chieftain? Not me? I never said who I was. I am just old Goblin. What is surprising about me knowing how to fight?”
The old Goblin spread his hands innocently. Rags narrowed her eyes, taking in the collection of scars across his body. She was angry at being lied to, and perhaps Greybeard saw it.
If he did, he didn’t care. She opened her mouth a third time and Greybeard laughed. And the laughter consumed words and sound alike. He walked back to his greatsword and turned. All of the Goblins stared at him. And now he was taller.