Always Walk Forward

by Billy Wong

  "We should wait until night to approach," Cordy said.

  Sam knew she was the experienced one, but asked, "Even at night, won't we be spotted easily crossing that open space?"

  "We would be if that's what we did. But I'm thinking to circle around on that slope, come down to their side and hit them."

  Examining the steep slope to the right Cordy indicated, it looked like it would be hard to keep one's balance going down it. Yet it did seem a much better idea for the purposes of stealth than running across the ground at their targets. "Hit them hard and fast, don't take any prisoners?"

  "Actually, I think we should try not to kill them yet in case we don't find Eli here and stand to face consequences for our actions. The ones out here, hopefully we can subdue and tie up somewhere."

  "Can Giorg make a weapon other than a sword, then?" Vincent asked.

  "I can. It's the rest of you who will have to worry about not taking their lives with lethal weapons."

  "We'll manage," Cordy said. "Since I doubt you're well versed in hitting with the flat of a blade, Sam, axehandle and hand to hand attacks. Vincent, strike limbs with the mace or bash with your shield. As for me, well, I'm an expert."

  Darkness fell, and they moved just behind the crest of the slope towards the structure. They got as close as they could without being seen and waited. When the Paladins became engrossed in conversation with one another, none of them looking up, Cordy said, "You guys take the ones who are nearer. I've got the far one."

  "Magic of creation, give me arms," Giorg whispered. His familiar shield and armor appeared, but instead of the sword, a golden cudgel filled his hand.

  They tiptoed down the slope with Cordy in the lead and Giorg second, Sam's teeth clenched while she lightly waved her arms for balance. She slipped and almost fell once, but Vincent caught her and she smiled back at him. They reached the bottom and crept towards the guards. Cordy was almost within arm's reach of the closest one's back when the far man, and only one facing towards them, spotted something amiss. "Hey, who's-"

  Cordy darted around the closest guard and hurled her halberd into the speaker's thigh. He yelped and grabbed his leg, then Cordy snapped his head back with a kick, laying him out flat. The other two Paladins glanced around in search of foes. Giorg swung his cudgel at one's helmeted head, but he blocked grunting with an armored forearm. "Magic of creation, give me ice!" A melon-sized ball of ice materialized in front of the anjeli's shield hand before flying into the Paladin's stomach. Unprepared for such an attack, he dropped to his hands and knees with the wind knocked out of him. Giorg brought the cudgel down on the back of his helm, stilling him.

  Sam and Vincent doubled up on the last guard. He parried a mace strike from Vincent and started to call for help, only to be cut off as Sam swept his legs out from under him. She tried to bash him in the face with her haft. He caught it, but then Vincent's kick turned his head to the side. Freeing her axe from his loosened grip, Sam smashed the handle into his temple and put him to sleep.

  "That was relatively easy," Vincent said, looking surprised.

  "They were off guard. If the ones inside see us coming, it'll be tougher." Cordy grinned. "But probably not that much, for me." It could be considered arrogance, but Sam liked Cordy's attitude. If nothing else, it helped to reassure them.

  They dragged the Paladins off to the side of the structure and tied them up together. Just in case they might make enough noise to be heard from inside, they gagged them too. They tried the metal door in front. Locked. They checked the prisoners for a key and found none. "What do you think?" Sam asked Cordy.

  "When they changed shifts before, we saw the first set of guards return inside only after the second opened the door. So maybe they can only enter when their relief lets them."

  "So we have to wait until the shift changes again?" Vincent pouted. "That's going to take a while."

  In her sweet voice, Cordy teased, "Patience is a virtue... Besides, if we take out another set of guards that'll be three less to trouble us inside."

  They hid to the side of the portal. At midnight, they heard the clank of the bolt being opened. When a head emerged from within, Cordy grabbed it and banged it into the wall. The Paladin slumped down senseless while his companions stared. They turned to run back inside. "Magic of creation, give me oil!" All of a sudden wetness shone on the floor, and they slipped and crashed to their butts. Cordy's running kick knocked one out, though she slid clumsily on the oil for a ways after. Sam's axehandle took care of the last.

  "Oil?" Vincent mused. "That was unexpected."

  Giorg shrugged. "It is useful for cleansing my body, so conjuring it is not unfamiliar to me."

  They bound the second group of guards. "Three more down," Sam said happily. They were making good progress. "I wonder how many can be in this small building?"

  Cordy opened the next door shortly ahead, and they gazed upon a staircase leading down. "Might be more than you thought. This isn't the whole base, just the entrance. The bulk of it must be underground."

  Her optimism faded a touch. "At least most of them should be sleeping right now," she said more to convince herself.

  "I wouldn't be so sure. This kind of operation, could well be that as much of their work is done at night as day."

  They descended the stairs into a chamber with rough stone walls in comparison to the ones above. Despite being underground the place was already well lit enough by lamps on the walls, so there was no need for torches. Cordy slowly opened the one door they saw, and they peeked into a large dining room. Sam's body tensed. Six men sat eating at long wooden tables, the time of night apparently inconsequential. They were unarmored, but still carried weapons. "What now?" Vincent asked, keeping his voice down. "There's no way we'll be able to take that many without making a ruckus. Should we wait for some to leave?"

  "We don't know if more will replace them," Cordy said. "But if you're learning the value of patience, then let's exercise it." After a while, two finished dining and left. Four remained. "Still a little risky, but this might not be a bad time to strike. Shall we?"

  "Farthest one yours again?"

  "Seems right. Wait, that one's almost done with his soup. When he gets up and turns to leave, then go."

  The man with a thick red beard in question finished his bowl, wiped at his whiskers and rose. When he showed them his back, they rushed in. Giorg's club hammered into the back of his skull, pitching him onto a bench he tumbled limply off, while Cordy dashed past him. She hurled her halberd into a man's thigh again, ran up onto a table and jumped off. Looping her arm around his neck in midair, she bore him down driving his head into the floor and knocked him insensate.

  It went less smoothly for Sam and Vincent. The men they attacked saw them coming, stood and warded off their blows while the long-jawed one facing Sam shouted, "Intruders, help, help!" Sam slashed rapidly attempting to break through his guard before remembering she wasn't supposed to kill him. She kicked at his knee, but he intercepted it with a downward shield bash to her knee and she wound up being the one who stumbled from a hurt leg. He raised his sword over her—but she could still injure without killing. She sliced her blade across the front of both his ankles. He squealed and stepped back, and she rose to tackle him. Pushing the bigger man across the room, she hooked a foot behind one of his to trip him. She landed on top, rained down punches to the face. Cursing, he caught her wrists. She headbutted him once, twice, a third time, rendering him limp with his blood smeared upon her forehead.

  "That wasn't exactly quiet," Cordy commented.

  "Hopefully nobody else was close enough to hear. Is Vincent's-"

  "Already taken care of," he said, "well before yours." His opponent lay motionless at his feet, prominent gut jutting into the air. "Admittedly, Giorg helped."

  "Are we going to tie them up too?"

  Cordy's reply was a bit odd. "Hold his mouth."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. Hold his mouth and don't let him make a sound."<
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  Sam restrained his head with an arm around the throat and covered his mouth with the other hand, not sure where this was going. Cordy had said they weren't going to kill the men so she couldn't be planning to execute him, but what... She pulled the man's foot slightly off the ground, then, still holding it in the air, stomped on his shin. The pain of his leg snapping woke him, and he screamed—or it would have been a scream if Sam hadn't muffled it with her hand over his mouth. Then he passed out.

  "You broke his leg?" Sam asked incredulously. Because his features weren't masked by a helm, she had seen them contort in anguish, making his pain seem more real. It made her feel kind of ill.

  Cordy waved an arm towards the walls. "Look around, there are multiple doors leading into this room. Tying up the ones down here won't be enough if somebody finds and frees them. Heck, I should have done the same to those up top since a friend of theirs could get around us, but it'd waste too much time to go back for that."

  "For someone trying to avoid killing, that's kind of brutal."

  "Don't feel bad, they'll heal up more or less with a few months of rest. Besides, do you have that much love lost for the Paladins?"

  She scoffed. "No. It's just a little icky."

  "That's how being practical is sometimes." She went around repeating the leg-breaking treatment on the other downed men. Two remained unconscious through it; when the last woke and failed to pass out after, she put him out with a kick.

  Cordy picked one of the three doors leading from the room at random and opened it, but then shut it again. "This goes into a hallway that splits in two directions right away, so let's check the other ones to see if they go to simpler spaces we can clear first."

  A strong smell of grease came from behind another door. They opened it to reveal as expected an empty kitchen, which proved to be a dead end. A large pot of soup rested on a counter, still steaming. Presuming it would be safe given the Paladins had been eating it, Sam ran over and slurped some up from the ladle. "Are you serious?" Vincent asked.

  "We haven't gotten to eat properly prepared food in a long time, so why not when we have a chance?" She carried a spoonful over to him. "You can try some too, if you want." He didn't refrain from doing so.

  "I suppose you don't think much of my cooking," Cordy said.

  "You're a soldier. Soldiers can't cook, by your standards a half decent meal is a gourmet feast."

  "Maybe... but you do realize the Paladins are much the same?"

  Sam smiled. "I guess that's true, but the soup still tastes better than what we usually have. They probably just have more ingredients to make it with."

  They tried the third door. It too led into a long hallway, but one which for now only ran in a single direction. "We should go this way first," Giorg suggested.

  Cordy agreed, and they proceeded. As they went down it, low sounds from behind the door at the end reached Sam's ears. At first she didn't know what they were, but then she realized it to be snoring. They slowed down further. Cordy eased open the door, and they peeked inside to see over two dozen cots, eleven of them filled by a sleeping man. "Maybe we should leave this alone," Sam said.

  "Huh?" Cordy asked. "This is a perfect chance to break all their legs."

  Vincent blinked at her. "Are you serious?"

  "Why not? They're asleep, completely vulnerable, and from the looks of things this is almost half their force. Adding in the ones we already beat, if we disable them there should only be a few left."

  "Even so, there are a lot of them..."

  "How much resistance do you think they'll put up? The ones who wake up before being disabled will still be disoriented. I can probably break some of their legs even before knocking them out."

  Sam still had her doubts about barging into a room with eleven enemies, but supposed Cordy was their tactical leader and it couldn't be helped. They entered the room, each sneaking up next to a slumbering Paladin. At the knight's signal, Vincent, Giorg, and Cordy herself assaulted a leg, while Sam with her axe waited for her man to be woken by the commotion and put him back to sleep with her haft. Cordy and Giorg quickly knocked out the men whose legs they'd rendered useless, while Vincent had a bit more difficulty as his victim managed to groggily grapple him. The other seven Paladins woke, and Sam froze with trepidation.

  She needn't have. As Cordy predicted, the just-awakened warriors couldn't defend themselves very well, and what followed was a slaughter—well, minus the death. Cordy ran from man to man, mangling legs and knocking them senseless with abandon. She swiftly took out three on her own, while Giorg flattened two and Sam got one. Vincent finally beat his hobbled foe into submission with his shield, then Giorg snapped the last man's leg with his bludgeon and Sam's axehandle separated him from consciousness.

  "What did I tell you?" Cordy winked. "Easy work."

  Sam wasn't completely confident in the wisdom of her actions. "There were quite a few screams just now. Anyone else in this base probably knows we're here."

  "Yeah, you may be right. But judging from the number of beds, there should only be a handful more. It'll be an even fight, aside from any traps or surprises they have in store." The last part was what worried Sam.

  "There is also the possibility there are more sleeping quarters somewhere," Vincent put in.

  Cordy looked less sure of herself now, forehead crinkling with worry. "That's relatively unlikely. But if anything, if we are attacked by a lot of enemies, I'll take responsibility. We can use the narrow passages to our advantage—I'll stand in a door and hold them off, while Giorg picks away at their back ranks."

  "And us?" Sam asked.

  "You and Vincent just do what you can. Throw things when you see an opening, or step in if I'm forced back."

  They headed back towards the dining room, keeping in mind their plan in the event they encountered heavy opposition. Sam realized they probably wouldn't be able to get away with sticking to knockouts and broken legs if that happened, and might well have to kill. Instead of trying to deny that, she steeled herself for it. The organization they strove against had plenty of blood on its hands, and whatever they intended to do with Eli would no doubt be harmful to someone. If this was to be the first place where her axe need spill human blood, so be it.

  Yes. Walk the path of destruction with me.

  Returning to the door they had avoided before, Cordy opened it. To the right was one door before a dead end, to the left a right turn in the hall and a door beyond if one went past it. They tried the right door first—a packed storage room, full of crates and barrels. Nothing of interest for them. Passing the bend in the hall, they approached the far left door. The stink that drifted from it already told them what it was. They peeked into the cramped lavatory to confirm the obvious and moved on, taking the turn towards a final portal. Cordy held her halberd at the ready, seeming more tense than when she approached previous doors. "Be prepared. I have a bit of a feeling..."

  Sam gripped her axe tighter. Cordy pulled the door partway open, then suddenly swung her halberd. She smacked two crossbow bolts out of the air; a third got past her, but deflected off Vincent's angled shield. A fourth flew past Sam's head, struck the wall behind and clattered to the floor. They looked through the door to see four Paladins holding just-fired crossbows, the gray haired leader who had taken Eli behind them. Though they hadn't had time to don their armor, the quartet had managed to put on their helmets—looking somewhat comical in their incomplete gear.

  "You dare to invade us?" the leader spat. "Who do you think you are to-" He seemed to recognize Cordy and frowned. "Oh. It's you."

  "It's me all right! Leland, is it? You Paladins have gotten away with too much for way too long! Now it's time to pay up, understand?"

  "You fool. This base is defended by twenty six stout warriors. However you managed to come this far, you have no chance of getting back."

  Cordy furrowed her brow as if calculating something. "Twenty six, huh?" She grinned. "If that's correct, we've already taken care of th
e rest and you five are the only ones left."

  "W-what?" one of the Paladins said, his fear palpable through the helm meant to hide any such weakness. "She has to be bluffing, no way they..."

  "I'm not above a bluff, but I'm not. Lady Cordy makes lambs out of you wolves with the truth this time."

  Leland sneered. "You won't get away with this. The Lord Paladin-"

  "Will be exposed just like the rest of you! I'm the one who won't get away? I'm the halberd of justice, and you're about to get chopped down to size." Cordy broke into song, making Sam and Vincent gawk. Giorg just looked bemused. "It's time to face the pain, you Paladins have no shame, but you messed with the wrong lord's love, now his daughter's come to strike you from above-"

  "Above?" Sam asked.

  "Well, we did come from above ground to get here." She continued. "We will strip away your authority, and put your future in jeopardy... Now enough singing, time to beat the self-importance out of you!"

  Cordy charged, and the Paladins dropped their crossbows to draw melee weapons. The two in front raised axe and sword to meet her. She shattered the axehead with a fierce blow, ducked aside from a sword slash. Her thundering kick to the breastplate threw the swordsman back into a comrade behind him. They clanged down together, limbs tangled amid their heavy armor. What a beast... for the moment it seemed like she might not need the others' help at all. Nonetheless Sam started forward, Drugamor's presence in the back of her mind urging her towards violence. The axeman thrust his haft, only shards of the head still attached, at Cordy's face. She leaned out of the way, grabbed his arm and flipped him over herself to land in front of Sam. Sam kicked him in the face as he sat up, lifted her axe high. This was a war in the name of justice, and-