Solitaire POV: Day 41

Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper

Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper

So, we were fucked.

Not the nicest realisation to be greeting me upon waking up, but I was always a practical fellow. Better to accept reality for what it is than whinge and bitch about what it ought to be. Even if there’s a lot to whinge about.

Fifty feral, malnourished apeman bastards between us and salvation. Some among them, according to Xangô, packing levels almost comparable to Kratos. We’d been operating on the assumption that there wouldn’t be many humans over level 1 in this conflict, and that had been mistaken. Tragically so.

We sat around planning for a while, while the enemy readied themselves for their attack on the building. It was annoyingly far from any other structures, so jumping onto its roof was out of the question. The floor around here was actually paved, too, which ruled out digging- though I reckon we’d have needed wooden beams and a few weeks for that to be practical either way.

Fighting through them was technically an option, but then, so was stabbing ourselves in the balls, and I didn’t fancy our chances with either.

Now, all of us are fairly clever guys. Even Beam, weirdly enough, when he’s not busy swinging a sword like the juice button ape. It took us some thinking to get a workable plan, but we did. Eventually.

Mind you, that plan was not exactly perfect. Or complex.

We waited until night fell, killing time as Beam practiced trying to replicate the fucking magic sword powers he apparently had and Xangô and I tried to figure out if we had anything similar. No luck on either account. We finally found the skies dark enough for us to make our move, which was honestly more worrisome than relieving. Our move was a crude, risky, terrifying thing. And now we’d used up our last excuse to delay doing it.

I came out first, despite my wounds. Movements sluggish, body aching, but alert enough for what needed doing. I had a knife held tight in one hand and was wrapped in the darkest fabrics we could scrounge up, Now or never.

The enemy were still encircling the building, and I approached one from behind. He was a few yards from either of his friends at best, but light was expensive in primitive worlds like this, and so were decent nutrients. His vision wouldn’t be nearly as good at picking up shapes in darkness than us modern humans. Was that right? I swore I’d remembered it correctly, from some article about pre-industrial society and sleep patterns.

Well, time to bet my life on remembering correctly. I closed in behind him.

My knife found the neck easily enough, always a good place to cut if you want something dead quickly. I pressed it hard against the skin, then rolled it along the outside, cleaving through the carotid, moving to nick the jugular in one motion. Nick, not sever completely. That was annoying, I let the pressure eb too early, probably bought the bastard a few extra seconds of life. I’d have to correct for that next time.

Next time, but not now. Now I focused on leaning in, grabbing him, wrapping an arm tight around his chest and squeezing down on the man’s voice box. Keeping him from making any noise. I held him still, hoisted him back so he couldn’t kick the ground and alert his friends, felt his heartbeat slowing against me as his struggles weakened. Then he was still. I held him a few moments more, to be sure his veins were nice and empty.

Looking around, I could just dimly make out the two men closest to us. Both had their eyes ahead, watching the building, both were upwards of twelve feet away. They would’ve probably still seen me if the moon was out, or the world lit by a modern city’s artificial glow, but for once the world was doing me a favour. Everything was dark enough that even a lifetime of easy carrot access didn’t let my baby blues catch them clearly in the gloom.

I smiled in relief, let out a breath I’d been holding a bit too long, and advanced on the second. He died quicker.

By the time the night was too light to continue, I’d killed eight people, and counted the rest. Forty six left in total, not a bad haul at all. But we wouldn’t get another chance at this. I knew that much the moment the first alarmed cry made its way out across the town of Jhigral.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ugh, people were always so whiny when they got scared. Did it cost so much to shut up? To bite your tongue? To just accept reality for what it was, rather than whinge and bitch about what it ought to be? I wish I could kill more of the simpering, spineless animals.

“Fucking lethal, man!” Beam grinned, slapping me on the back about as hard as a normal person might have, if their fist were a sledgehammer head. It was good to receive, in any case, not least because it meant I was back within arms’ reach of my allies.

We kept an eye on the enemy even while grinning about our victory, and it was Xangô who first noticed the change when it came.

“They’re moving.” He whispered, urgently. “Reorganising.”

They were, we saw. Their circle became tighter, men moving closer together. Structured like that they covered much less ground, and yet they were all a good few metres tighter packed. I wouldn’t be trying another killing with them sitting like that anymore.

Well, that was fine. We had all day to think of something new anyway. The sky continued to lighten as sleep took us, and Beam volunteered for the first watch while we got some shut-eye.

He shook Xangô and me awake not an hour later. We rose to follow his gaze, and saw the enemy were moving again, standing and readying weapons, now. It was fully light out- or as light as it ever got in this shithole- and we could see the weapons clutched tight in all of their arms as they marched on the fortress.

“Fuck.” I noted, dully. It was about the most accurate assessment I could’ve made. Things were about to kick off.

There wasn’t a lot we could do, being honest. Our sole advantage was that the enemy likely wouldn’t expect three people to attack them without backup. Because they’d be slaughtered. Not wanting to bank on achieving a 16 : 1 K/D ratio with that edge alone, we sat and waited for them to finish storming the fort.

Windows, obviously, were the first priority. Great big lump hammers were drawn out from the crowd to smash them in, cracking the wooden panels nailed across them, then splintering them. The glass broke next, and soon enough men were scrambling inside by walking over tarpins thrown down over the jagged openings. We heard fighting and dying ring out, and still we just watched and waited. Because an idea was forming, now.

The enemy was hurrying inside, storming corridors and fighting. They outnumbered our side, but not that much. Maybe four on three, at best, after the losses both took during the skirmish in the Ratpath. So if something delayed a portion of their forces from attacking the interior…

Fuck, it was worth a try, probably. They didn’t seem to have many ranged weapons- perhaps bows were too expensive to trust hired toughs with- so it’d be melee only. We could try to cut and run if things got bad.

‘Probably’, ‘seem’, ‘could’. All uncertainties, all far from a sure bet. And all of them were the closest things we had to a guarantee of winning. I swore, and shared the plan with my friends.

They swore too.

More and more men poured into the building, and though the walls were too thick for us to actually hear anything, we could easily imagine the viciousness panning out inside. We’d been wrapped up in quite a similar fight just yesterday, ourselves. The enemy grew less densely packed around it, as they emptied their ranks through smashed windows, and our moment came closer with every heartbeat.

Then it arrived. The three of us took a second to curse our bad luck, the Veiled Lady, the universe itself and possibly the Roman Empire too. Then we were rushing on ahead, knives in hand and veins clogged with adrenaline.

I took the lead, of course, getting my money’s worth for those Skillpoints spent on Speed. Beam was shortly behind me, and Xangô right on his tail.

We aimed for the centre of the enemy’s ranks, and the back. Smashing into the spine of the crowd, intending to wrench it in half with sheer killing momentum. Well, we had that in spades.

A man turned towards me when I was within a few feet of him, but all he got for it was a dagger blade whipping across his neck. I smashed into the one closest to him and bowled the tiny bastard over, swearing I felt fragile ribs break under the impact as I ploughed into the ranks, then I was slashing and punching in every direction around me. Beam and Xangô reached the melee barely seconds later, helping me beat back an opening. By the time we turned to start our retreat, we’d already killed two men and wounded god knows how many more.

By now, the enemy had figured out we were there. That was unfortunate, as I’m far better at stabbing backs than I am faces, but apparently they weren’t eager to rush us. Our size probably helped with that, and doubtless our kill count was leaving them nice and intimidated, too. I reckon it probably bought us a few more moments of backing off before another big bastard pulled up from the crowd.

He wasn’t as large as Kratos, but he was still about Beam’s height, and slabbed in muscle. He had a big lump hammer held tight, and a look in his eyes that reminded me both of a praying mantis and someone with late stage rabies.

I drew a lot of conclusions very quickly, after that, and landed on a fairly obvious one. If we got swarmed, we’d die. If we ran, they might not chase us, and our employer could still get finished off. We had to keep them tied up. We had to play for time.

I forced myself to take a step forward, held my knife outstretched and snarled with as much courage as I could muster. The savagery? That just came naturally.

“Come on then, just you and me you big fucker, let’s settle this like men!”