by Billy Wong
"Yeah, I guess. Like two brothers and a little sister."
"Maybe she'd be the big sister."
"Big sister's back!" Blackbird said, bouncing into view with a huge dead mountain lion on her shoulder. No wounds were visible on it aside from the head being turned nearly backwards. "This should keep us fed for a bit."
Henry playfully poked her nose. "Your speech is really improving. Soon you'll be able to pass for an adult."
"I am an adult. I have grown woman strength."
"You mean you have grown male ape strength."
"Is that thing good to eat?" Andrew asked. "I've never had mountain lion before."
Blackbird pinched the big cat's flank. "It's tough. So it'll make you tough."
"Aaack."
Now that Andrew was getting better, they made preparations to depart the mountain. "That feather cape is too conspicuous," Henry said to Blackbird while they discussed it, making her pout, "you'll need to ditch it when we go. You could hide it somewhere around here out of the rain so you can come back for it. We should be more careful this time and not go into random towns, but try to avoid being seen as much as possible while going straight for the goal."
Andrew spoke. "Maybe we shouldn't all travel together. It could throw them off if they're looking for two men and a woman, but see a man and a woman while the other man is elsewhere instead."
"That seems like a good idea. What do you think, Blackbird? You could stay with Andrew"—to protect him, he left unsaid—"while I take a different route." At her worried look, he added, "Don't worry, I can usually take care of myself." Well, as long as he wasn't in the borderlands or fighting elite church warriors or being ambushed...
She didn't seem convinced. "Why not you two stay together and I follow you?"
"No, Henry's right. Me and him being with each other will more likely draw suspicion than me and you."
"Then I guess I'll play your girlfriend." Andrew laughed uncomfortably.
"It kind of goes without saying, but it's good we have big enough cloaks to hide your arm," Henry said. "Blackbird, can you make a cloak out of hide to conceal that you're toting around that big giant sword?"
"Already doing it. I've thought about leaving here too." Somewhat surprised, he patted her head and she giggled. "When Andrew is stronger, if more hunters come, we should let him test his skills against them too."
After getting so hurt, Henry felt nervous about exposing Andrew to any danger that wasn't absolutely necessary. But his friend replied, "Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. Training can never be one hundred percent representative of the real thing, so I'd like to get an idea of where I stand before going back into the world."
The next time a group of reward seekers showed up, Blackbird felled five of the six nonlethally in instants, leaving Andrew to face the last. Suddenly alone, the man looked bewildered and terrified. Yet he easily parried Andrew's opening slash with his spear, elbowed him to the ground, and stabbed down. Andrew blocked with his buckler, but the impact made him yelp, and sensing weakness the man kicked away his weapon. Blackbird stepped in, knocked the hunter out cold with a nonchalant fist to the side of the head.
Henry sighed. "Take all their weapons and armor and leave them here. They should know not to come back like the others we did that with."
"I couldn't do anything," Andrew said softly, not getting up. His eyes glistened. "The improvement I thought I had made, I was lying to myself. I am useless after all."
Blackbird knelt and hugged him. "No you're not, you just don't have your full strength back yet. It'll get better."
"Yeah? Look at me, can you tell me how I'll ever get my full strength back?"
They delayed leaving for a little while longer. Blackbird tried to train Andrew to compensate for his disability, even tying her own arm behind her back to help her figure out adjustments to make, while Henry encouraged him by showing him he could do most things he had before the injury with a little creativity. He also thought about letting Andrew beat him in armwrestling, but decided giving him confidence through a falsehood would not be wise. He did say one time, after Andrew managed to hold his own longer than usual, "You're getting pretty strong. You could probably beat Blackbird if she was normal."
"I heard that!" she said, and pushed over a boulder into the nearby ravine for emphasis.
Although no more bounty hunters showed up to test it on, Henry and Blackbird soon agreed that Andrew's ability had caught up to how it'd been. It was almost miraculous, but even practicing with the monstrous girl pushed one's limits and facilitated rapid gains. Andrew didn't seem to fully believe it though, for the previous fight had shook him. Still, he said he was fine to go and they got ready. Before they left, Blackbird told the men she was going to hide her cape in an alcove near the skeleton of the giant monster she'd killed and left them for the time being. They were discussing their mutual eagerness to see their other friends again when they heard a noise.
"What's that?" Andrew reached for his sword.
"It sounds like footsteps," Henry replied as it repeated, again and again. And they were much heavier than Blackbird's...
A bearded mammoth of a man, seven and a half feet tall if he was an inch, wearing gold and silver-painted armor and carrying a gargantuan hammer came into view. He strolled over, hardly acknowledging Henry and Andrew with a glance, and sat on a rock beside them. "I t-think that's Rodrick!" Andrew breathed. The church's greatest warrior, and perhaps the most feared on the whole continent. He alone had slaughtered over four hundred men at the Clash of Voices, driving the enemy army to panic.
"Why are you here?" Henry asked, fearful to even talk. If he and Andrew had struggled against Clayton, Rodrick could probably kill both of them in seconds regardless of any improvements. "Have you come to capture us?" In that case, best to surrender now and wait for Blackbird's rescue—if even she dared.
"I may take you back later," the giant said without any emotion. "But that's not the first thing at hand."
"Are you just here to talk like the other man?" Andrew asked hopefully.
"Talk? With you? I think I'd find it uninteresting."
"Then what are you doing here?"
A hint of... excitement? came into Rodrick's voice. "I'm waiting."
Henry blinked. "For what?"
"Waiting for your friend."
Awkward minutes passed as they sat there. Henry and Andrew didn't try to run or fight knowing they had no chance. Rodrick tied them up anyway, probably not wanting them to try and interfere. Eventually they heard Blackbird's spry steps getting closer and closer. Rodrick stood up. "Boys, I got us a special treat! Tonight we get to eat-" She spotted the immense stranger and dropped her dead hare.
"The Archcardinal told me to wait until you came down," Rodrick greeted her, "but I got impatient knowing you had an injured companion and it might take months yet for him to recover." Henry refrained from mentioning they had been about to leave. "I hear there is a she-warrior with impossible strength and speed who shamed one of my junior comrades without effort. You are her, yes?"
"I'm probably the one they're talking about."
"Then show me if you're my equal!" he bellowed, and charged her.
Andrew leaned closer to Henry. "He just wants to measure his cock against Blackbird's? What an idiot."
Blackbird met him. They exchanged several blows evenly, the clashes of their titanic weapons hurting the watchers' ears. Having gotten to know her, Henry still gaped to see it. She was over two feet shorter and literally less than a third of his weight. The head of his hammer looked as large as her torso—how could she possibly stand against him? Yet she did. He telegraphed a big swing which she ducked, but the hammer snapped a tree behind her and it fell on her back. She was bent under the trunk for a moment, then it threw off her and grinned.
"You're as strong as me," she said, her face exuberant at the notion. "I like it!"
"I'm still stronger!" Rodrick roared. After parrying a slash, he kicked her in the sto
mach. It pushed her away, and his hammer swept at her from below. She avoided it by leaning back, slashed at his belly only to have it skid off a thick plate amid sparks. He reversed his hammer and brought it back down. Blackbird blocked with her blade catching the handle and pushed forward, testing their relative strength. They strained hard against each other, the man who looked like he could pop the girl's head like a grape failing to overpower her, but her not able to budge him either.
"She's such a showoff," Andrew said exasperatedly.
Blackbird abandoned trying to win the contest of muscle power and uppercutted Rodrick once, twice, a third time knocking him back. He shook his head, growled and ran at her with a massive overhand punch. To Henry's shock, she didn't try at all to dodge. A sinewy meat-and-bone club the size of her head impacted on her cheek, the way her face warped making him wince.
Her feet didn't even shift. She hit him back, though she had to stand on her tip toes to reach his chin, and he hit her in return. They stood trading punch after punch, crimson droplets flying from their noses, mouths and cuts that opened up on their faces, their weapons apparently forgotten in their other hands. Henry could almost imagine them becoming best friends after this. Blackbird was relishing this too much. She should probably try to end it already without taking more damage and save some of her resilience for future battles.
"You're... really strong," she said, breathing heavily as they paused in their punching. "But I'm still"—she jumped back, raising her sword again—"faster!"
Thank God, Henry thought.
She now wielded her huge sword like he'd never seen before, twirling it like a rapier in front of Rodrick's hammer. He moved his handle to deflect it when she thrust, but predicted wrong as she had altered the trajectory of the blade from where it seemed it should be going. The point drove into Rodrick's chest, but failed to penetrate deeply due to his armor. Still, she pressed forward, driving him before her on the tip of her sword until his back slammed against a boulder. He tried to grab the blade and she whipped it up, slicing open his chin. He lunged swinging the hammer in a great overhead arc. She ducked forward behind it and him, spun and landed a chop that split his backplate. Blood gushed forth. He turned with a scream, grabbed her by the neck and slammed her into the boulder. Repeated punches with the hammer handle in his hand crushed her head against the rock again and again.
Blackbird snapped her legs up, wrapping them around the arm pinning her. She pried free his grip on her neck, swung her body down and sliced his thighs. Finally releasing her leg hold on his arm, she flipped to the ground. He staggered back, started to raise his hammer again. Blackbird shot forward. Blood sprayed everywhere as she cut through Rodrick's breastplate.
But he didn't fall.
He just clutched his hideous wound—a gash most of the way across one side of his ribcage exposing damaged white bone—with a smile while Blackbird, who had run past him, toppled facedown into the dirt.
"What?" Andrew said in a barely audible voice. "What happened?"
Rodrick coughed blood into his hand, but retained his grin. "I moved. No one else could have changed direction after she started that attack, but I did. Couldn't get completely out of the way, but I wasn't cut in half. At the same time, I hit her... full in the face with my hammer. That blow would smash a helmeted man's visor out the back of his skull. She is dead." Henry observed Blackbird's still body and his hands began to shake. Blood pooled under her head, and she did look dead. "Now come with me."
Not knowing what else to do, Henry made to stand. Then there was a sound of movement and he looked in Blackbird's direction again. Though blood covered and dripped from her grossly battered face, even coming out of her ears, she stood up. "Really, you think I'd die from one hit? That was a great exchange, though! Let's go another round or three."
They rushed each other. She seemed to somehow have gotten faster as if the presumed fatal blow had energized her, dancing around him and slashing him again and again. Flaps of flesh hung loose on his frame, and he tottered on his feet. He rallied and got in another cataclysmic hammer blow, this time to her chest. She went hurtling away, flipping over and over through the air while he pursued, but landed in a crouch and dove right back at him. Caught off guard, he took her sword cleanly through his guts.
He still didn't die. He grabbed her head in one hand, slammed her onto the earth, and would have crushed her with his hammer if she didn't kick it away. Weaponless, he pummeled her with his fists, making her body go limp and then jerk without purpose from the force of the hits. She was going to lose, and die, after all...
Rodrick stopped and shook his hand painfully, Blackbird lying motionless under him. "Ah, broke my knuckles." He propped her unconscious body up against his knee to let Henry and Andrew see her ruined face. "She's very strong. I think... she really is my equal."
"Keep... punching," Blackbird whispered somehow. Knowing she would die, she must want to do so as a warrior.
"No, please don't!" Henry screamed. "Please, let her live!" Rodrick lowered her back down and resumed pounding away with his unbroken fist. Blackbird's hands moved slightly, she raised them inches off the ground, but she couldn't fight back...
Inexplicably, she grasped Rodrick about the waist and threw him off herself, reversing their positions so that she was now on top. Henry's jaw dropped in disbelief. It should have been totally impossible what just happened, but she punched down with one fist and then the other, shredding Rodrick's lips, breaking his teeth. "Why did you stop punching me and lift me up?!" she demanded in rage. "I was about to make my comeback, you ruined it!"
He punched her twice from his back, rolling her off him. He pulled her sword out of his gut and tried to impale her, but she sidestepped and grasped his hands over the hilt. "Your hand's broken. So now—you're weaker than me!" She turned the blade downward against his will, then drove it through his foot and twisted. The pain allowed her to wrest the sword from his grasp completely. She stepped back and he fell to one knee. Henry thought she meant to finish him off, but there might no need. Blood poured from his chest, gut, and mouth. He should—indestructible as he'd seemed—be dying.
"I was... wrong," he gasped, spitting red droplets with each word. "You're a... stronger human than me." His ashen, three-quarters dead face split open in a grin. "In that case, let me show you my real power."
Blackbird herself took on a confounded expression at that. "What?!"
Rodrick's smile widened. "Yes."
Chapter 5
Rodrick put his hand to the ground, and Henry stared as his skin went from deathly white to brown. His wounds began to heal, but it soon became apparent they were being filled in not by flesh but earth... or judging from the texture, more like rock. By the time he stood up with no trace of any damage, the rest of him had turned bumpier and more rigid too, so that he looked to be a rough-cut statue of himself.
"I am the first of the new angels," he said, "the Angel of Earth. This is the power granted to those chosen by God."
Andrew's jaw trembled uncontrollably as he sputtered, "I-it can't be... angels are real?"
Though his head was spinning with the implication they might have been opposing God's will all along, Henry tried to keep a pragmatic outlook. "Blackbird, I suggest you run."
"No way! This is the last round." Before Henry could say anything else, she dashed at Rodrick. They exchanged numerous blows, her slashing him many times but not having any lasting effect as the wounds healed rapidly, him getting in heavy punches she shook off. She slipped a hook, threw him over her back and then chopped deep into his chest in the same motion. But even that amazing display barely slowed him down as he kicked her in the mouth and stood again. She hit him with two kicks in the same jump, then tried to cleave through his head while still in midair. He swatted the blade off course and a great uppercut sent her reeling back. He went for his hammer. She ran after and sped past him, her blade going through his arm. It fell with the hammer he had just picked up, and she kicked them far aw
ay. "This isn't so hard."
Rodrick punched her with his remaining hand, then his features grew taut as if in concentration. The stump of his limb bulged, then a whole new arm burst forth to replace the lost one. "I sure wish I could do that..." Andrew muttered.
A noticeable depression had formed in the ground around Rodrick; he must absorb the earth to heal and regenerate himself. Henry shouted so to Blackbird. "I noticed that!" she said right before a rock fist planted itself in her face. She went stiff and toppled backwards onto the dirt.
Henry didn't think she was really knocked out; though the blow looked extremely impactful, he'd seen enough to suspect her playing possum. But when Rodrick walked away to retrieve his hammer and she didn't move at all, he wondered what she was doing. Even Rodrick seemed confused when he got back, and stood over her waiting. After a while, he nudged her with his foot. Still nothing. "Poor girl's out cold," he declared at last.
Andrew's voice became despondent. "She actually lost..."
"That was the straw that broke the camel's back," Henry said, shaking his head.
Rodrick lowered his hammer. "Maybe I shouldn't kill her. She put up more fight than anyone should have, and she's helpless now. I could leave her alive so we can fight another time." He put a hand to his chin. "But if she improves any more, she might win a second fight. I can't lose my place as the number one warrior." He raised the weapon again. "You were beautiful, 'Blackbird.' Rest peacefully." Henry waited to see her head explode like a melon, tears already fighting to escape his eyes.
Blackbird sat up, and the tip of her sword burst out Rodrick's back. "I was testing you to see if you might not really be a bad person, and you failed!"
"Whew," Henry shouted in relief, "you really had us worried there for a moment! But what are you doing stabbing him? That's not going to kill him."
Rodrick tried to tug the sword out of his stomach, but Blackbird held it inside him. "Maybe not. But do you realize why I have my blade sideways inside him?" Rodrick's eyes widened and he shifted his grip on the hammer closer to the head to use it in close quarters, but by then she had jumped up.