by Billy Wong
Soon sloppily painted banners came into view over brutish faces. Rose's eyes narrowed at their number, which told her only a fraction of the attackers had stayed behind to occupy Yibal while the vast majority pursued its residents. With such odds against them, a lot of human blood was bound to be spilled today. Still, Rose intended to minimize that as much as she could.
Allowing their fires to continue burning and release their telltale smoke into the air, most of the humans retreated into the nearby hardwood forest, leaving only a small group in the camp to mitigate the enemy's suspicion. Of course, that bunch would be in grave danger between when they engaged and when their allies relieved them with a surprise attack on the monsters' flank, and thus Rose and Frild were naturally included among them. Finn and Amber too wanted to stay with Rose, but she was too worried for her daughter to allow that, and insisted they remain hidden among the trees until everyone joined the fight.
Though she'd seen much larger armies before, Rose swallowed nonetheless at the disparity in size between the two forces. Reminding herself she'd faced much worse odds both as an individual and part of an army, she steeled herself for the rush of the enemy, who charged the camp with its improvised barricade of sharpened sticks like a pack of wolves falling upon a wounded doe. But this doe fought back.
First to come were stunted, wrinkled goblins who weaved between stakes with simian dexterity only to meet Rose's huge broadsword. It hewed the life from them two or more at a time, each stroke unimpeded by flesh and bone until it finished its vicious arc. In the first minute she killed over a dozen of the four-foot tall humanoids. Then a member of a more familiar monster race came against her, an ogre half again her height wielding a club studded with crude iron knobs.
While not quite the same as the creatures she'd slaughtered by the hundreds during one of her most tragic battles when she lost her friend Julie, it was close enough. Rage overtook her for a moment so that she did not even bother with her sword, but struck out with her fist to crush its windpipe and left it choking to death. A pack of four goblins rushed her from the side. She swept her blade through their ranks. All but one died instantly, it too likely fatally wounded with an arm severed above the elbow.
Non-humanoid creatures came against her—a thick white worm twice the size of a horse that she slit open as she dashed past it; a four-horned bull with razor teeth she felled with a downward blow from her shield rim; a bat-winged canine she killed by grabbing the back of its neck and snapping it with a bare hand; and more which offered themselves up as if sacrificing themselves to keep her from their masters for all they challenged her. Wading through the thick of the enemy mass like she always did, hits did land on her body, but her armor largely protected her from harm, and with an undeniable thrill she slew beasts with near impunity. After minutes a tremendous shadow fell over her, and she looked up to see something she'd never expected.
Was that really a dragon among the creatures under Dark Justice's control? But being human mages who'd ascended to a greater form, dragons did not possess lesser intellects like most of this bunch, and tended to be independent. And taking a close look, this was no real dragon.
Many of the details were correct—leathery wings, scales like steel shields, thick tail, long neck, maw full of swordlike teeth—but Rose felt none of the preternatural fear associated with a hostile dragon, nor sensed any magical power emanating from it. Still, the flying icy-blue lizard was more than big enough. As its forty-foot body crashed down where she'd stood a moment ago, Rose came up from her roll chanting a powerful spell.
Sure she'd beaten bigger without magic, but she wasn't about to take any more chances than she absolutely had to with her children's lives on the line. The beast opened its mouth and she threw an exploding fireball down its throat, sending it into its death spasms. Glancing around, she couldn't help a slight smile at the way the battle was proceeding. Though greatly outnumbered, her allies had thrown the enemy into disarray with their flank assault, and right now felled monsters in droves while suffering few casualties of their own. Frild seemed to be everywhere at once, killing things left and right with righteous rage and appearing nearly as unstoppable as Rose. At this rate, they'd have plenty of fight left for saving Tirrn!
Sparing a look for how her family fared, she cringed to see several arrows sticking out of Amber's chest and shoulders, but reassured herself her daughter was still okay. She showed no signs of slowing down from the little holes in her body, and the way she laid about herself downing foe after foe made Rose's heart swell with pride. Of course Finn was just fine, doing much the same as her only using a mace instead of sword and without magic.
Nonetheless, she couldn't help but share the fear so plain on Jacob's face. As one of the Yibal men fell dying from an arrow to the throat right in front of him, he turned a shade paler and froze in place. Rose hurried to his side and tried to escort him away from the battle, fighting off the monstrous swarm that flowed after them in search of easy prey. At the edge of their mass of allies, however, Jacob shook off his paralysis and said, "I'm okay, Mom. Get back in there!"
"You sure?" If his will failed him and left him open to attack again, she might not be there to save him...
He nodded though his hand still trembled just a hint. "Yeah. Go check on Amber, she just took a bad one while you were rescuing me..."
Her heart about ready to burst with terror, Rose turned and ran for Amber's last known position. She hissed as she saw the number of monsters that barred her way, and realized she wouldn't be able to reach her daughter nearly as soon as she wished. Gods, let her be all right!
#
Amber winced while she charged the goblin crossbowman who had just shot her, the bolt buried up to the feathers between her ribs. Damn, it hurt! The pain just from breathing made her want to vomit, and she yearned so bad to get her hands on the monster who'd done this to her and hack the life from its wretched body. But there were more goblins in her way. She screamed as she laid about herself with weakening fury, growing steadily more faint as frothy blood pumped out around the shaft.
What she didn't understand was why her father hadn't saved her from the numerous wounds she'd already taken. Wasn't he supposed to be looking out for her? Good thing she was built in the mold of her mother, or she might already have fallen helpless if not already dead. She cleared the path one goblin at a time to her crossbow-wielding foe, whose grin faded as it shot at her again and again to no avail now, agile as she was. But though she forced herself to keep moving, she felt close to collapse... would that first bolt end up being all it took to finish her?
Single-mindedly dogging the creature that had unexpectedly inflicted such a grievous wound, Amber reeled when a heavy impact to her side knocked her stumbling to her left. Turning her head to see what'd happened, she realized she'd been blindsided again. A long spear protruded from between her bottom rib and her hip, deeply lodged inside her body. Her strength fading, she stumbled to face the ogre that had struck her and now stepped in for the kill, waving a huge warhammer.
Surprising it with the fight she still had left, she dodged its swing and spilled its guts all over her feet, but could not move quickly enough to avoid being buried underneath its body. Amber attempted to push the corpse off, but the pain of her injuries which its fall onto her had added to hampered her. Where was her dad? Suddenly she glimpsed him high above, grappling with a massive dragonlike reptile that had snatched him into the air, and knew he couldn't be blamed for leaving her alone. But who was going to help her?
Then Jacob was at her side, pale as an albino and carefully rolling the ogre off her. "Amber! Are you all right? Say something!"
Though blood welling up disturbingly in her mouth, she replied, "Calm down, I'll be okay." She tried to stand and found it difficult. "Help me up."
"You need help."
Amber nearly passed out, her vision flickering as she lurched to her feet with her brother's aid, and holding onto his shoulder for support conceded, "You're right
. Where's Mom?"
He didn't answer, and she realized he was staring frozen at the bloody drool leaking from her mouth. What the hell? Not that she didn't feel a little scared for her life herself, but she was the one who was hurt! Amber started to raise a numbing hand to slap him out of his trance, but then his body jerked and his eyes widened. His legs gave out and he slid to the dirt, revealing the crossbow bolt in his back and his cackling shooter behind him. The same goblin who'd shot Amber.
Angrily, she began towards it, but stumbled and fell to her knees. How could she be so weak... The goblin calmly reloaded. Looking around for something to throw, she spotted Jacob's dropped crossbow, picked it up and loosed at the goblin. The bolt pierced its shoulder, knocking it off the human corpse it'd been using for an archery platform and out of view. It probably wasn't dead, but hopefully would be out of commission for now; Amber didn't have strength or time to do more. She grabbed hold of Jacob's arms and committed to dragging him out of harm's way, her own dark blood spilling onto the snowy ground.
#
Rose grunted as the mammoth troll's fist sent her flying onto a pile of monstrous corpses, and it raised a stone axe for the kill. She rolled beneath a deadly chop which might have sheared through even her heavy plate, came up and stabbed into the troll's throat. Black blood rained over her, making her cover her eyes. Then she heard a choked female voice, heartwrenchingly wracked with pain. "Mom! Help!"
As she turned to see to her daughter's plight, a huge thrown rock hit the distracted Rose in the chest and knocked her to the ground again. She grimaced when the next troll twice her height attempted to stomp on her head, only to bring its foot down hard on her raised shield. Pushing back despite the ache in her arm, she sent the troll backwards a step. She scrambled to her feet, ducked an overzealous swing of its club and severed its spine with a deep cut into the back. Looking in the direction of Amber's voice, she found an even more disturbing sight than she'd imagined.
Yes, Amber lay bleeding on her belly about a dozen yards from Rose, a spear imbedded in her side, a thick trail of blood behind her, and crimson runnels streaming from her mouth. But though badly injured, she still crawled with determination towards Rose, and appeared characteristically clear-headed and energetic despite her condition. She would probably be all right. It was what she dragged behind her that threatened to make Rose break down in panic. The still, silent form of Jacob.
Running to her son, she all but ignored Amber, but her courageous daughter didn't mind, her own foremost concern being for Jacob. "Is he going to be okay?" the wounded girl asked.
It took her a terrifying moment to find his pulse. "He's alive, at least. What happened?"
"A goblin shot him in the back, while he was frozen..."
"Frozen?" No... maybe she shouldn't have let him go back into the battle.
"He saw me hurt, and he just stopped—save him, Mom!"
Rolling him over to find the wound, she saw how bad it was. The crossbow bolt had buried itself in the middle of his back, and she feared it might have damaged his spinal cord—which she would not be able to heal. Chanting a spell as quickly as she could, she pulled the shaft out and put her hand to the hole. She concentrated hard to mend the damage she could, focus on slowing the bleeding by repairing blood vessels. Finally she felt she'd done enough to keep him out of mortal danger, though he was still unconscious, and turned to Amber. "Okay, he'll live. How are you?"
"I think I've got a punctured lung," she said with a bloody breath that confirmed it. "Also, the spear in my side is making me really nauseous."
Rose saw the spearhead had disappeared fully into the terrible wound. "Like mother like daughter. You're tough as nails, but we really ought to get you some better armor."
To her slight surprise, Amber nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Hurry up and treat me before I die."
Gladly noting that considering her vigor, it seem unlikely she would die anytime soon, Rose gripped the spear and asked, "It's not barbed, is it?"
"No, I don't think so."
"This is going to hurt like hell."
"I know. It has to be done eventually, doesn't it?"
Sharing a look of respect with her daughter, Rose gave the spear a light tug to make sure it wasn't barbed, which would bode poorly for Amber should it be ripped out. Finding it moved without great difficulty, she drew it out. Amber shrieked and curled up in a fetal ball, reminding Rose of the many times she'd suffered such agony, but quickly recovered and indicated the crossbow bolt in her chest. Because the shaft had broken, leaving only a tiny bit sticking out, Rose had to remove Amber's mail before she could painstakingly fish it out.
"Crap, it's cold!" Amber complained. She hugged herself, shivering miserably in her thin undershirt which provided little defense against the northern air.
"It'll just be a second..." After removing the arrowhead, Rose used magic to seal the surface of the gushing wounds at great cost in fatigue to herself. "Okay, that should save you some blood," she said, panting. "But you still have internal damage. Maybe you should sit out the rest of this?"
With a wink, Amber asked, "Would you?"
"No..."
"Not even without magical healing!" her daughter added, and correctly at that.
Rose patted her shoulder. "Okay, you can come back to the fight. But only after you get Jacob to safety with the other wounded."
"Sure, Mom." Amber hefted Jacob onto her shoulder despite the injuries she still bore and limped away. Shaking off her own tiredness, Rose stood and turned back to the battle, just in time for Finn to fall out of the sky and land in a smoking heap before her.
"How long have you been fighting up there?!" she wondered as her husband rose, undaunted by the fall or his burns.
Finn chuckled. "Longer than you've ever been, I bet."
"Who knows? I never count."
Sobering, he asked, "Are the kids okay?"
Rose frowned while the two began to wade again through the enemy ranks side by side. "They'll live. But I don't know what we're going to do with Jacob. He froze again when Amber got wounded."
"Stupid boy."
Softly, she said, "Come on, Finn, take it easy on him. It's not tough to understand him being terrified when his family gets hurt. It scares me too."
He took a goblin's head clean off with his mace and shook his head. "We all get scared, even Amber I'm sure. But we deal with it and he doesn't. Last time it almost cost us Amber's life, and today his own."
True, and Jacob had also frozen briefly when a stranger fell before him. It wasn't just his kin's suffering that could incapacitate him at the wrongest of times. "So what are we going to do?"
They battered down a hulking white ape they caught between their weapons and Finn proposed with a mirthless laugh, "Maybe we should let him stay with the noncombatants next time."
Except they couldn't be sure the intended noncombatants wouldn't be attacked themselves where they stayed... "Or maybe he could hang back with the medics."
"You know, I'm starting to regret bringing the kids here."
Rose raised an eyebrow between sword strokes. "Even Amber?"
"Well, no. Just Jacob."
What were they all doing here, anyway? Fighting in a war wasn't exactly an ideal family activity. Amber had convinced them they didn't have much of a better choice, but perhaps she was wrong. "Maybe we should let the kids go home where Amber can watch Jacob's back, while we stay here."
Finn let out an exasperated sigh. "Do you always have to change your mind after the fact?"
"Well, when you see something's not working, isn't it nice to try and change?"
"Whatever, we'll discuss this later. Let's just finish killing these monsters, alright?"
"Fine." Crushing the skull of an ogre she'd brought to its knees with a jumping shield bash forceful enough to numb her own arm, Rose spun away from another's pike thrust and fought on.
#
"Who would've thought his first battle against Dark Justice's forces would be
his last?" Amber said sadly as Frild's body was carried past, a crossbow bolt in his eye. "He was so enthusiastic to fight them, and did so well until..." Had he been felled by the same goblin that wounded her and Jacob? Probably not, but if so, that goblin had done a hell of a day's work.
The humans had won, driving the surviving monsters into disorganized flight after killing the majority, but it certainly hadn't been easy. Their initial momentum had faltered when Frild, the Yibal warriors' leader and champion, had gone down with shocking suddenness, shot through the eye in the midst of enjoying the butchery he wrought. Good thing Rose and Finn had been there to rally the remaining plainsfolk before the monsters could collect themselves enough to take advantage. More than two-thirds of their allies lived in spite of the terrible odds against them. Of those hundred or so, however, only about half were ready to fight again, this time for Tirrn should the monsters be attacking there too. Though that town had its own warriors, it would definitely be a rough fight if the enemy force was anything like the one just defeated.
Jacob had just awakened while his sister sat by his bedside inside the healers' tent. Despite appearances, his wounds were closer to completely healed than hers, since there was no organ damage. "Amber..? You're okay!"
"Of course I'm okay," she said insincerely. She still hurt inside, a lot. "It was just a couple of scratches." In reality she had been afraid she wouldn't make it, but was now growing more confident in the incredible fortitude she'd inherited from her mother. Though she'd been taken two potentially fatal wounds, she had been able to keep going until she dragged her brother to safety, and couldn't help feeling proud.
But she would've preferred if she hadn't needed to him at all, and demanded, "Corn Cob, why'd you have to stand there like an idiot and let yourself get shot just because I was hurt?"
"I thought you were going to die... I was so scared, sis! I couldn't bear the thought of losing you."