———
Leah's enthusiasm had gotten the best of her. This was dangerous, and an unnecessary delay, but it did provide an excellent excuse for Roman to cut loose.
Roman swung a hammer around him in a reasonable impression of the Mighty Thor, hewing his way through the skeleton's back line.
Mallery's holy smite had brought their numbers down, but the wolves still had the women surrounded.
Roman ran up one of the wolves' snouts, his hammer vaporizing its rider's head. Then he leaped from the wolf's back and dove into a forward flip over the cart towing meager supplies for the captives. He brought the hammer down on the post that served as the central post for the captive's chains.
And with that one blow, he set a dozen humans, dwarves, and gnomes free. He quick-drew and tossed one-handed weapons to several captives in between hammer swings as he kept up the melee with the skeletons. There was a reason he carried an entire armory on his person at all times in this world.
"Stay together! Fight as one! This is your chance for freedom!"
A gnome with a matted beard took his knife to the rope bindings at his companion's legs. Then an older man caught Roman's hand axe and tossed it right into the face of an oncoming shadow wolf.
Roman was the calm center of the storm, moving without doubt, without worry. This fight was not the kind of battle he'd been born for, but it was still Action. And here, he was the hero the scene needed. The hero his team needed.
But for every hero, there was a villain. Or at least an evil lieutenant. The zombie knight caught Roman in its gaze, leveling its sword at the warrior.
All at once, the prisoners were no longer by his side, cowering from the attention of their captor.
"Finish off the skeletons and then help my companions!" Roman shouted as he stalked toward the knight. It had the height advantage, thanks to the steed. But Roman had tricks up his sleeve.
Focusing on his role and that of the knight as his opposite, Roman mentally tossed away his reins, let caution to the wind, and embraced his nature as a Hero. A Warrior.
Roman grinned. Drew his greatsword. And charged.
He cut into the knight's swing, knocking the slash aside. He continued the motion to dodge the shadow-wolf's strike, then cut down into the beast's side, slashing through where its ribs would be. Instead, the blow tore ichor from the creature's form, sizzling on the road.
He pressed his advantage, intercepting the zombie knight's strike. He moved his grip to hold the sword at the hilt and just beyond the halfway point with his other gauntleted hand. He used the leverage to shove the knight's weapon aside and then shoved the blade up and under the undead warrior's breastplate, skewering what remained of its organs.
Roman hauled on the sword and dragged the knight off its dying steed. He let the greatsword drop and replaced it with two long knives. He buried one in the zombie knight's eye socket; the other he used to slit the throat of its steed.
And then he pulled out his hatchet and finished the knight off with several quick hacks to the neck.
Roman wiped coagulated blood off his face and turned his attention to the wolves. To Mallery and Leah. Four of the creatures remained, picking at Mallery and Leah. Mallery's shield had dropped to the ground, the comedienne holding her recently injured arm in close, the mail thick with blood. Leah had gashes along one arm and fought with her off hand.
She's not singing, Roman realized, and saw when she turned that she had been clawed across the mouth as well. Her bardic role had been forgotten. She was still Leah the Comedian, not the Bard. She had skill with a blade, but she wasn't fitting into the story the way she should, even putting aside her brash mistake.
He needed to end this. Now. Before it got worse.
Roman tackled one of the wolves and, with a motion probably too fast to be human, pulled a knife from his sleeve and buried it in the creature's eye.
He rolled off the one wolf and jabbed another with the hammer, forcing it to the ground. Impressively, Leah stepped up and stabbed it in the throat as soon as it was down.
This left just two. They turned, looked at the prisoners, at the three heroes, and then bolted for the woods.
Not so fast, Roman thought.
Roman twisted the handle of his hammer and grabbed the trio of darts hidden in the pommel. He tossed them after one of the fleeing creatures. Two sank into its fur, the poison seeping its way through the beast's blood. It was a demonic beast, but it was enough flesh and blood to collapse thirty feet into the bush.
But one was still fleeing.
"Hey, corpse-breath!" Leah’s voice came out hoarse.
The creature stopped and turned.
Now she was fitting her role.
"Yeah, you! You so much of a coward that you won't stand and fight for your Dark Lord?"
The creature cocked its head in the way of dogs trying to figure out what their humans were saying.
But they didn't need to talk with this thing. They just needed it dead. Roman quick-drew the hatchet and hurled it overhand. The wolf was still fixated on Leah's bardic fascination, and the hatchet took it full in the chest. The creature slumped to the ground.
Roman scanned the road, the brush, and the skies.
"It's done," he said, looking mostly at Leah. "But we need to get off the road as soon as possible to avoid the next patrol. Can you still heal?"
"How did you do that?" Leah asked. "That was completely unreal!"
"Later," Roman said. He could explain later. But it was high time she learned about his origins. "Healing?"
Mallery nodded. She dropped her mace and brought a bloodied hand to the holy symbol. As she touched it, she stood a bit taller, shook a bit less.
She prayed under her breath, and a beam of divine light cut through the clouds to shine upon her, Leah, and Roman.
Roman's gashes and bruises faded. Mallery shook out her injured hand, and the wounds on Leah's face closed to soft pink scars.
"That's all I've got left," the comedienne said, tired.
"Thank you, thank you all," the gnome with the knife said, approaching the group. He wasn't actually young—his beard was too full, his eyes not crinkled with age.
Roman bowed. "And thank you for helping. Our horses are in the woods, but we don't have enough for everyone. We'll need to travel off-road. Is there a town nearby we can take you to?"
The gnome turned to his companions. Their conversation spanned across at least three different languages, only two of which Roman understood at all. There was pointing and shouting, but after most of a minute, the gnome turned back and said, "We'll go to Oldtown. There are many places to hide in the hills."
"How far from here?"
"Two days to the south."
Roman looked over to Mallery and Leah. Mallery had collected her gear, while Leah had gone to the brush, presumably to fetch their horses.
They were bearing southwest, so this wouldn't take them too far out of their way. An acceptable detour. King had said no subplots, but they'd just saved a half-dozen lives, and that was always worthwhile.
He didn't relish the dressing-down Leah would get when King found out about it, though. And Mallery looked pissed. It was one thing to lead the team into battle, but to force a fight against orders, with no notice, and get your teammates injured?
That was something else. Mallery had the better rapport with Leah, so he'd let her handle this.
Instead, he helped the former prisoners repack the supplies from the cart and get ready to hit the off-road.
It'd been nice to have Leah look at him like a real person, to not have to go through the weeks or months of odd looks. Her hastiness had forced his hand. But at least now, he didn't have to hide from a teammate. The prisoners, sure. But they were extras. Lives, yes. But they'd be in and out of the story within a week.
And for all that Leah had endangered Mallery and his life, in the end, they had helped people.
They'd gotten to be heroes.
Chapter Eight
Mea Culpa Maxima
Mallery took point, citing the need to clear her head.
What she really needed was some time to be angry on her own.
They'd nearly gotten killed. Without Roman's Action Hero abilities, Mallery and Leah would be partially digested in the stomachs of infernal wolf-beasts. They’d never get the chance to sip drinks on the beach together, win an Emmy, or grow old together with someone fabulous and brilliant.
Especially since the person responsible for almost getting them killed was the current contender for the role of Mallery's leading lady, the current Plus One in Mallery’s dreams of the future.
Leah stayed with Roman and the prisoners, twenty paces back in the woods. Mallery's horse picked through the underbrush, which was much more slow going than riding on the road, but Roman's call to make themselves scarce was smart. It's like he knew what he was doing, and people should listen to him. People who have too much enthusiasm and not enough experience. People who she thought she could trust and then went flying off the handle.
She could understand wanting to help. Wanting to help is a good thing. A great thing. It's why they do what they do. But you go into a fight like that, you need a plan, a real plan. Not to go off half-cocked and hope to banter and sing your way out of it.
Mallery took a branch off a tree with her mace, then put it away and grabbed her holy symbol.
Staying angry wasn't useful. She picked up a prayer. In Hebrew, but gods could speak every language, so it was all good.
She prayed to Felur and Yahweh for guidance, for help with forgiveness, and for strength. There were bound to be more battles ahead, and she had to know that Leah could be counted on.
It was one thing to date someone unreliable, to have fun.
But when you had to count on them to watch your back in life-or-death situations?
That was something different.
"Mallery!" Leah called, catching up.
Mallery pulled back on the reins to slow her steed. Leah pushed aside branches as she approached. The divine healing had closed Leah's wounds, but the scars remained, or would until Mallery could cast another healing aura when her blessings refreshed. Leah looked worried, guilty, and afraid.
"I wanted to give you some space, but then I got too antsy and needed to come up and apologize. I just talked to Roman and apologized to him, and so now I wanted to say that I'm really sorry for going aggro back there when you and Roman told me not to. It was really reckless and selfish, I totally screwed up. We all got hurt and I'm really sorry."
Mallery let Leah's words sit for a few moments as their horses walked through the woods.
"Thank you for that. I was really scared there before Roman came back. You can't just put all of our lives on the line like that. Not when it's against orders and the odds are so bad. King keeps telling us about initiative and everything, but you can't take that as license to pull a Leeroy Jenkins."
"I know. I just saw those prisoners and couldn't stand by on the sidelines. I'm glad you're all right."
"You're lucky that Felur and me are like this," Mallery said, crossing two fingers.
"Lucky for more than that. Roman was…” Leah shook her head in wonder. “I mean, I’ve never seen someone move like that.”
"We can't count on being that lucky again. Not when the breach is this developed. Okay?"
"I get it. Did missions used to be this hard? It seems like just about every job I've been on has been a special circumstance, something out of the ordinary."
"Some missions are harder than others. You're right that it's been worse the whole time you've been on board. HQ still doesn't have a projection for when the storms will let up, and the ops team still isn't certain that the storms are why the stories have been breaking faster and harder. Maybe it has something to do with the Tall Woman you IDed; maybe she's an externality. There's just a whole lot of unknowns, variables out of reach. All the dangers of live theater and more. Which is why we need to be able to count on one another to follow the script and have one another's back, okay?
"Got it. No more subplots. Hammer, heroes, Night-Lord. That's it."
Mallery nodded.
"Okay. That's all I had to say, so I can let you have the scouting to yourself again if you like. Not sure if this is the kind of situation where we hug it out or where we say our piece and give one another space."
Leah had screwed up, and big time. But it had come from a good place, and she was owning up to her failure. Aside from being perfect, what more could you ask for? And dating a perfect person would get tiresome really fast. "I've found that hugging it out on horseback is not particularly easy. I'm willing to try, but I'm about spent on healing spells."
"Totally. I would fully expect to eat dirt trying to pull something like that. Especially in this brush."
"Can you go back to Roman and ask how long he thinks it will be until we can go back onto the road? Then come back and distract me with something silly. I require grade-A peerless silliness to improve my mood."
Leah's expression brightened by forty watts. She saluted in a wonderfully ridiculous fashion, then guided her horse around a tree and back toward the group.
———
Leah tried to cheer up the former captives and her teammates with some music, practicing the tunes she'd transcribed the night before. This is what bards did, after all. She picked a song of encouragement, one that was supposed to lighten burdens and calm hearts. She had to focus enough that the magical effect just barely cancelled out the stress of effort, but the rest of the party walked a little lighter, shoulders down, expressions relaxed. But when she stopped, her mind went back on the attack, repeating the sight of Mallery on the brink of collapse, the pain of the wolf's claws at her face.
She picked the song up again, hoping to steady herself as well as the captives.
The freed prisoners had scars on their arms, worn faces and feet. But they also had a spark of hope in their eyes, fanned by Leah's song.
After a few songs, the prisoners started to drift off into the meager tents and lean-tos they'd been granted or assembled. Soon, that left just Leah, Mallery, and Roman.
They chatted for a few minutes, about how the detour would impact their path, and what Shirin and King were doing (hopefully avoiding needless fights, unlike Leah).
When she was sure the captives weren't listening, Leah asked, "Okay, so you said later. Now it's later. How did you do all of that? Tapping into the story to awesome when the story needs you to awesome is one thing, but you were practically bullet-timing that fight back there."
Roman took a long breath, the flickering oranges, yellows, and reds of the fire dancing in shadow and light on his face.
"I wasn't born on your Earth. I come from another world. I grew up in the Post-Apocalypse region of Action World, though for me, it was just the Wasteland. I fought, I killed, and I did what was necessary to survive."
Leah looked from Roman to Mallery. She wasn't surprised, wasn't reacting. She already knew. Of course she knew. Why wouldn't she? They were like brother and sister.
"I became a hero of my world. Saved people. As much as I could, and as often. But it took a toll. My life wasn't my own. I wandered from story to story, always a helper figure, never my own man. Until I met King. I was at the end of my rope, running on fumes. And he gave me a way out."
"How long ago was that?" Leah asked.
"Most of ten years. It's a better life. A happier life. But when I'm on-mission, and when the story calls for it, I can call on my original nature, bring the rules of my world with me to another world."
"That is some Campbellian wet-dream Last Action Hero–level wonkiness right here."
Mallery chuckled, and Roman looked up at Leah. For a second, she was expecting rebuke. She'd crossed a line of some sort.
But instead, he smiled. It wasn't the smile of a wolf about to pounce, not the easy smile of a predator like he'd get sometime in a fight. This was just Roman the teammate, not Roman the Acti
on Hero.
"I suppose it is. I try not to depend on it, because who knows when it'll give out? I've never gone back, and HQ can't tell me for sure if and when that ability will give out. Every time, I expect it could be my last. But for now, my magic still works."
"So, I've got about a million questions about how that works, but since you're not a lab rat and this isn't the R&D team, I'll leave it be. Anyway, thank you for what you did. I fucked up bad, and you pulled us out of the fire." Leah stood and offered a hand of thanks. Roman took it and squeezed, looking up at her (not too much, though. Dude was tall.)
"I got first watch," Leah said. Roman assembled his bedside arsenal, and Mallery said her nightly prayers. Leah gave her a kiss goodnight before she crawled into her bedroll.
And then it was just Leah, the fire, and the stars.
She'd gotten caught up in the story, and the whole group had nearly paid for it. She'd carry that guilt with her. She'd acted because it was the right thing to do as a person, even if it was a bad call for a Genrenaut. She couldn't shut one off entirely to be the other. Not yet. And maybe not ever.
But she'd do the job. And now? Now she had skin in the game. Duty and responsibility were fine as motivating forces.
But anger? Guilt? A drive for justice? That was Premium, Nitrous-Oxide-Level Motivation.
And she was ready to burn.
Chapter Nine
Karn-Du
Oldtown had a garrison, but they were mostly occupied in keeping the local population under lockdown. The thing about rural towns was that they were used to being self-sufficient. The King of Fallran knew to leave well enough alone and just accept his taxes. The Night-Lord's hands-on methods were not met well.
Roman, Mallery, and Leah met no resistance as they led the captives around the town into the hills, where they bade farewell. The gnome that had first taken up arms presented Roman with a gift, a small whittled key, a symbol of the freedom they'd provided.
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