I blinked at the other squire until I realized he had made a joke, and I offered him a smile. I guessed humor was how Neville dealt with stress, and it was much better than him freaking out over the fact that we were about to encounter enemies far stronger than us.
“It’s not normally a good idea to wait on an open hill like this,” I said to the others before they could leave the skiff, “but I think we can weather any plasma balls a few Grendels throw our way. The knights should have dealt with the majority of them anyway. Besides, we’ll be able to spot the Ogres or the knights from up here much easier.”
The others nodded their agreement, and we exited the aircraft and took cover behind what remained of the skiff. It was difficult to see beneath the trees because their leaves and branches intersected to form an impenetrable violet canopy broken only by the odd rocky hill. My visor scanned the area with its thermal recognition lens, but there were dozens of objects detected within the vicinity. I presumed they were those feathered lamas or some other beast native to the locale since they weren’t moving to attack us.
Something buzzed in my belt pouch, and I realized it was the comms device Polgar had given me. A quick glance at the time on my prot-belt confirmed that it was 06:00 CUT. I knew I shouldn’t answer the sorcerer now, but he’d threatened Mom the last time I’d spoken to him.
“I’m going to have a look inside the skiff for a sec,” I said.
“What for?” Zac asked, but he didn’t get an answer before I entered the craft.
When I was sure none of the squires would see or hear me, I removed the device from my pouch and flicked it open.
A holo of Polgar materialized, and I didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“I’m busy, sorcerer,” I said. “Can we make this call a little later?”
“Do not order me around, Outlander.” Polgar scowled. “Where are you?”
“I’m inside a skiff,” I said. “And I’m swamped. We’re about to fight some Grendel Ogres, and--”
“What have you discovered?”
I peered out the skiff’s door to check on the others, but it looked like they hadn’t spotted any Ogres or knights yet.
“I believe the Stalwart’s knights are retrieving pieces of King Justinian’s armor from Grendel portals,” I said.
“That would require access to Seraphic portals. How would they--” The sorcerer paused as though he’d revealed too much to me. “You have confirmation of this?”
“We’re at a portal site now. I’ll use my prot-belt to take a snapshot of the item when they retrieve it.” Clearing this portal wasn’t looking likely at the moment, but I strove not to let any hint of doubt seep into my expression.
“A snapshot would be good. Let’s see if you can manage that,” Polgar said with a sarcastic smirk. “Ensure you continue to meet my demands until I arrive in twenty-four hours, or I will find a new home for your mother. I am sure you understand the extent of my imagination, Outlander.”
I attempted to reduce my wrath by filling my lungs and then exhaling through my nostrils. It barely worked, and my next words were laced with anger. “I will do as you ask.”
“Very well. I think I have made myself--”
I remembered the danger I faced when I returned to the Stalwart and interjected before the sorcerer could end the call. “I believe Captain Cross will kill me if I return to the ship.”
“What?” Polgar’s face boiled with rage.
“I made a mistake earlier today.” It was almost twenty-four hours ago when I’d jumped through the portal to this planet, but it felt like days.
“And?” the sorcerer pressed, and his eyes narrowed to black slits.
“I believe Captain Cross will punish me for it,” I continued.
“You will return to that starship, Outlander,” Polgar seethed. “You will ensure the entire cohort of insurrectionist crew members returns with you. Or else I will find the most brutal whorehouse on Dobuni for your mother.”
The call ended, and I was glad I wouldn’t be seeing the sorcerer for at least another day. If I could find some way to make him pay for his threats, I would do so. Maybe Duke Barnes would like to hear how his lackey had threatened me.
But it was a matter for another day.
I disembarked the skiff and joined the others. At first, I was a little surprised when none of them asked what I’d been doing, but they seemed too focused on scanning the surrounding area.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“None yet,” Zac said. “We might have to start making our way through the forest if something doesn’t show up soon.”
The trees to the left of me shifted, and I saw a thermal imprint racing toward the hill. It looked too small to be one of the Ogres, so I suspected it was a Grendel Warrior fallen away from the rest of its pack.
I gripped the rapier and deactivated the thermal detection system with a press of my prot-belt so I could see better in a fight. The figure that burst through the treeline wasn’t a Grendel, but Olav, the berserker knight.
“What the fuck are you fellas doing here?” he asked us after he climbed the hill. He took a step back upon seeing the dead Ogre with its head and arms buried in the skiff’s windscreen.
The rest of the Stalwart’s knights came racing up the hill: Leith the slayer, Moses the shield knight, Flanagan the herald, and Ronan the jump mage brought up the rear. They were all covered in fluorescent blotches of Grendel ichor, and the blood stained their armor and tabards. The jump mage’s robes were tucked into his trousers, and even they were marred with green specks.
“Well, if it isn’t the trouble making squire and his band of merry men.” Flanagan laughed but stopped short as he glimpsed the skiff and its unwelcome passenger.
“Was this the only one?” Moses thrust his sword toward me, demanding an answer.
I shook my head. “There were two more of them.”
“Uhh . . . I don’t normally say this, but we’re in trouble.” Olav sounded a little afraid, and I tried not to think how much shit we were in if even the berserker was unsettled by the presence of two more Ogres.
“We were so close to clearing the portal,” Ronan said as he twisted his hands and whispered an incantation. An image of the portal flickered into view in front of him, matching the purple color of the jump mage’s robes.
“I know a bloody Grendel portal when I see one, and that’s at least a Level Seven,” Olav said.
“How did it change?” the jump mage asked. “It was certainly a Level Five when we arrived at this location.”
“None of that matters now,” Moses muttered as he stared into the trees beneath us like a watchtower. “We have company.”
I spun to face the direction the shield knight pointed. The Ogres must have sighted us because they weren’t moving through the foliage with anything like the stealth they were using before. Trees toppled and snapped as the monsters careened through the thicket.
“If it breathes, it can bleed,” Leith snapped before he nodded at the giant corpse. “These squires and their skiff killed one. You gonna let them outdo us, Olav?”
“No fucking way,” the berserker said as he spun his hatchets in his hands and charged down the hill. “Let’s do some Ogre-slaying, lads!”
The small amount of repairing I’d performed on my hammer before falling asleep on the skiff was enough for one use, so I didn’t wait a moment before striking the hilltop with the weapon. A lightning bolt zigzagged from a few meters above me to smite the earth. The air split in front of me, and the blue creature I’d summoned shot forward.
With the act of summoning, I had minor control over the sprite. It was little more than the influencing of its emotions with my own, so I let my desire to eliminate the Ogres fill me.
The sprite flew over the charging knights as the monsters cleared the treeline.
“Do we go in there?” Nathan replied from beside me, his tone hesitant.
“Not much I can do,” Zac said as he brandished his pistol.
/> I frowned at the knights as they engaged the enemy. The two-headed Ogre swatted my sprite with a single hand, and in an instant the connection between my mind and the summon was severed. The hammer’s rune faded, and I was unable to summon another sprite.
But we couldn’t just stand here while the knights risked their lives.
Then I remembered the amulet I’d looted from Emeric. I would have thirty seconds to wield any item above my class. I ran through the list in my mind while the sounds of battle carried from the foot of the hill.
I could sprint down there and use the two-handed war axe’s ability to make an enemy insane. But I didn’t know how rational the Ogres’ minds were. They could be completely beyond reason, so an armor-piercing strike with the axe might do nothing at all.
Although the ring could leech life from an enemy, I couldn’t see its usefulness in the current circumstance. The prot-belt was only helpful because it contained two runic batteries, and those were of no benefit to me now.
That left the Rutheni knight’s poleaxe.
I didn’t have a better plan, so I attached the hammer to my belt’s magnetons, activated the Overlord’s Heart from my prot-belt, and brandished the poleaxe.
As soon as my palm rune touched the carbon handle, runic power engaged, filling my entire body like a magical vessel. My visor showed a countdown from thirty, and I quickly activated the poleaxe’s rune effect by hitting the dirt with the bases of the weapon.
The air broke, and a portal opened at the foot of the mountain. A Bane Bear roared as it burst out from the rift, and a gust of steam escaped its maw. The intense power of the creature’s mind almost floored me, and I clenched my jaw as I tried to maintain control of the creature.
The two-headed Ogre caught my lightning sprite in its hand and then broke its spine with a squeeze. The sprite screamed before dying, and Olav slashed the giant with his hatchets. The Grendel monster spun with surprising speed to catch the knight in the stomach with its fist. The berserker flew backward but managed to stay on his feet before attacking the Ogre again.
I employed the same tactic I’d used with the lightning sprite by focusing my anger on the Ogres, and the bear surged toward the two enemies. It was half the size of the Grendels, but it belched fiery balls that seared through armor and charred scales.
The knights seemed shaken by the new arrival to the battle and searched for what they must have thought was a Rutheni knight. When they glanced up at the mountain, I waved the shining polearm like a battle flag.
With renewed vigor, the knights joined the Bane Bear in fighting the Ogres.
The visor count reached zero, signalling the end of the amulet’s rune, and the poleaxe’s light dulled in my hands. I fixed it to my rear magnetons again and took up my hammer and Neville’s rapier.
“Let’s get in there,” I said to the Zac and the other squires. “This is our fight, too.”
“I think we have our own problems,” Nathan said as he peered over the opposite side of the hill.
The clicking of Grendel battle cries filled my ears, and I was almost frozen by the familiar sound. The same terrible cacophony had been the only thing I could hear on Tyranus besides the dying screams of my fellow cadets.
Volleys of plasma balls struck my prot-field like stones in a pond, and I shook myself out of fear’s stranglehold. My forcefield held while Zac and the other squires charged the Grendel warriors, and I followed my friends into battle.
My rapier plunged into the scaled skull of the first lizard-man, and my hammer crushed the solar plexus of my second kill. I was surprised at the ease with which I dispatched these enemies, and I realized I’d come a long way since fighting them on Tyranus. If I had been the warrior I was now, I might have saved more of my fellow cadets.
I plowed into the ranks of lizard-men, and my armor was bathed in flowing waves of Grendel blood and ichor. The Grendel talons would have pierced my Common chest armor, but I was skilled enough to parry all of their attacks. None of them were able to penetrate my inner circle because my hammer turned their bones to a pulp while my rapier poked them full of holes.
In minutes, my chest was heaving as I surveyed the mounds of scaled corpses.
“Let’s go help the knights,” I said to the squires through labored breaths.
We sprinted around the foot of the hill until we came to the fight scene. The two Ogres were still alive, but my Bane Bear was lying in a pool of its own molten blood. The other knights were engaged in battle with the giants, and the right head of the two-headed Ogre had been split down the middle like a watermelon. Brain matter from the right skull smeared the other head’s face, and I imagined one of Olav’s hatchets might have caused the damage.
Flanagan was lying with his back to a tree, and I could see a medkit attached to his right leg. The jump mage Ronan was bolstering the medkit with rune magic, but the limb was crushed from the knee down. I doubted it would heal anytime soon, even with an expert medkit empowered by the finest magic. The herald knight seemed unperturbed by the injury, and he was strumming away on his axe-harp as the jump mage chanted.
As we charged into battle with Flanagan’s runesong playing in the background, an energy circulated in my bloodstream. The magic invigorated my muscles and cleared my mind as if I had just awoken from a very restful sleep.
Moses and Leith were fighting the Ogre with the tree club, while Olav harassed the two-headed monster with his hatchets.
Nathan charged toward the giant wielding the tree club, and it turned from the knights to bat him aside like a bothersome insect. The squire slammed into a nearby rock with incredible force, and he didn’t get up.
Richard screamed and rushed the giant that had probably killed his brother, and Neville and I chased after him. All six of us harried the Ogre with our weapons, but the blows glanced off the Grendel’s armored scales.
“You gotta get him in the soft spots!” Moses yelled at us as he plunged his sword into a pink patch of skin beneath the Ogre’s armpits. The monster roared and rammed the butt of his tree trunk down, but the shield knight tumbled away a moment before the weapon would have crushed him.
I activated my speed sequence while shuffling back so I had room for a running start. I sprinted ten meters and then leaped high into the air until I was level with the Ogre’s neck. I spotted a soft pink blotch without scales on the monster’s nape, and I plunged my rapier into the naked tissue as I descended. With the blade buried in the Grendel’s flesh, I hung from the weapon like it was a tree limb thrashing in a tornado.
I must have felt like a burrowing parasite to the Ogre because it dropped its weapon and reached around to grab me. I swung my legs forward, and tried to climb up the hilt of the sword so that I could get away, but I didn’t have to worry; the ogre’s massive biceps prevented it from extending its arm far enough to touch me. My companions used the giant’s preoccupation to target its unarmored flesh, and their attacks cut into the monster’s unprotected pink flesh. The Ogre squealed like a butchered pig before it toppled. I released my hold on the rapier and landed in a crouch.
My muscles throbbed, and my head pounded with exhaustion as I withdrew my weapon from the giant’s corpse. After all the fighting in the last few days, I was about ready to collapse. When I turned to the others, they cheered. I nodded at them and turned to face the other Ogre, but that one had already been felled by Olav.
“So, I killed my Ogre alone, but it took five to slay the second Ogre.” The berserker glanced at Richard and Nathan, who was getting to his feet with no small effort. “Make that seven.”
“Not alone,” Leith said as he wiped his dirks on the grass. “You had Flanagan’s help.”
“We all had Flanagan’s help!” Olav countered.
“I’m talking about before he started playing the runesong,” Leith added.
Olav seemed to consider the slayer for a moment before answering. “But mine had two heads! That should count for at least half an extra Ogre.”
“Will you
two stop bickering?” Moses asked before he addressed the jump mage. “Ronan, is the Grendel portal cleared yet?”
The jump mage summoned another image of the portal area, but the original arcane doorway wasn’t there anymore. In its place was a rift glowing a pure white, and I turned away before it seared an afterimage into my retinas.
“Let’s go,” Olav said with a grunt, seeming still annoyed with whatever number of points he’d been given in the kill count game. The knights followed him through the thicket toward the portal.
I remained behind with the jump mage, the squires, and Zac. Richard was crouched over Nathan, who seemed like he was injured severely from the Ogre’s swat.
“How you holding up?” I asked him.
“I’ve been better,” Nathan said as Ronan approached him and immediately started inspecting his vitals. The jump mage probed Nathan with a glowing finger between reading the images on his visor.
“Can you believe we killed those Ogres?” Neville asked. “And all we were left with was one squire with a few bruises.”
“I’d say I have at least a dozen broken bones,” Nathan corrected. “This chest piece has a biomonitoring function which would normally tell me the exact number, but I think the Ogre broke it when he hit me.”
“Too bad he couldn’t knock some sense into you,” Richard said, and I could tell he was a little annoyed at his brother for charging the Ogre without thinking.
Ronan finished inspecting Nathan. “Nothing is broken except your chest armor. Some significant internal bruising, but you will be fully recovered in no time.” The jump mage turned to face the direction the knights had gone. “We’ll just wait here until the knights return.”
“We’re not waiting here,” I said. With Polgar’s threat resounding in my mind, I was determined to snapshot what the knights retrieved from the cleared portal.
I looked to Zac, and he gave me a nod suggesting he’d accompany me. Nods rippled through the other squires, and we started for the thicket.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Ronan called out. “You can’t leave now.”
Space Knight Page 36