Solitaire POV: Day 69

Current Wealth: 21 gold 31 silver 14 copper

It was a motte and bailey type castle, and we could tell, just peering at it from afar, that it didn’t hold that many.

The place was small for one thing, too little to fit any more than 100 even at its peak, and there were far too few people shifting around the outside for there to be anywhere near even that amount. I was bad at estimation. Well, no, actually I was excellent at estimation- humans were bad at estimation in general. Still, I was confident we’d not be facing any more than 40 enemies, and definitely not all at once.

On the other hand, a potential max of 40 fucking enemies was a lot for anyone to deal with. Helena seemed more concerned at the prospect than most of us.

“8 each.” She breathed. “We can’t manage that, plate or not, magic or not. We’d best turn back now, while we still can.”

“8 each.” Beam noted. “I can manage that, plate or not.”

The Vitonian glared at him, and I found myself cutting in before either of them could start a doubtlessly irritating argument.

“We don’t need to just waltz over and headbutt one of them.” I noted. “There’s other ways to do this, smarter ways.” They all eyed me, and started thinking of some.

“Stealth is the obvious trick.” Xangô noted. “We attack at night?”

“We won’t be doing much sneaking wearing sixty pounds of metal.” Argar grunted.

That was when Beam piped up.

“I don’t have loud armour, though.” He noted. “Not loud, not heavy, I could scale that wall easy.”

We all turned to it, eying the thing. I made about 15- no, 13- feet. 4 metres in non-caveman measurements. Could he?

Yes, easily. And without risk, too. A 4 metre fall wouldn’t hurt Beam even if he landed face first, the way he was now. We’d grown more than just strong. Powerful.

But should he? That was the more pressing consideration, there was plenty of death waiting for us on the other side of those walls, we could see as much now, and if Beam got surrounded by it all on his own then even he wouldn’t last long.

There was one simple fact that weighed heavier than the others.

“Your armour glows in the dark.” Xangô hissed. “You’d be spotted in 2 seconds flat.”

Beam hesitated, and I could practically see our “brother” about to erupt.

“You are not going up there fucking naked!” He snapped. Beam met his fire, for once, with some of his own. That was when I knew the argument would be a painful one, when his heels dug in, they dug in.

“We don’t have any better ideas.” He snapped. “I can get in, open the doors and save us all the trouble of smashing through, we’ll all be on them faster than they can believe and probably have one dead each before they’re even fighting back.”

It was a lot of speculation, confidently stating facts about variables even I’d be hesitant to make into absolutes. Obviously, it didn’t convince Xangô for an instant.

The back and forth proceeded about as expected, with both sides occasionally gaining some opposition or assistance from one of the other three now just watching it all. Finally, when both Beam and Xangô were becoming tired enough that their barked arguments started to grow more sparse, I finally cut in.

“We can use Beam.” I said at last. “But there’s no reason we need him to be the main crux of this.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

All eyes turned to me, and I elaborated.

“Firstly, I think we can all agree that of the five of us, I alone have the advantage of being given a normal, healthy childhood which imbued me with a proper amount of knowledge in stealth and throat-cutting.”

Argar frowned with the start of a question, and I barged on over it before he could slow the conversation down with any of the usual irrelevancies people liked to bring up when they caught a snippet of how based and awesome my mother was.

“-Which tells me that doing much of anything on that wall is going to be easier said than done without a source of light. Targeting the guards, though, who’ll be holding some…Different matter. So I say we send Beam in to try that instead. Meanwhile…We don’t need to batter the door down.”

I nodded to the fort, demonstrably.

“We can see from here it’s got a door bar, I can judge the height, and Xangô can hit a target within 6 inches at dozens of yards. Give him a few seconds to shoot through the wood and we’ll be able to just force them open ourselves. All we need is a loud enough distraction to keep them from gauging where the gunshots are actually coming from, right?”

We all brainstormed, then turned to Xangô’s spare ammo. He had enough for a good 200 shots, give or take. Even with his rate of fire that did seem a bit…Excessive.

It was night, soon, and near pitch-black even sooner. All of us squatted outside near the fort, all of us kept quiet and eyed the place, awaiting our signal with bated breath and peeled eyes.

Mind you, that was a bit redundant on our part. As far as signals went, this wasn’t one we were particularly at risk of missing. Nor, for that matter, would a mole with tinnitus be.

Something chirped in the night. Something else flapped over our heads. One of the orcs told a joke to his fellow guard, and another laughed at it. Then the explosions went off.

Xangô had long since overcome his puerile, childish aversion to something as silly as gunpowder violently screaming out fire, and he had his gun levelled before we even caught sight of the wispy smoke catching firelight over the fort. His first shot rang out, and I just barely glimpsed splinters flitting away from the wood. Another explosion, barely a second later, this time from an altogether different spot. He fired again, hit a second time.

The rest of us were standing, now, readying ourselves to hit the door. The third shot came almost in time with the third explosion, so synchronised that it almost looked like the tiny flakes of splintered oak were responsible for the roaring noise as they flew from the door. All of us were charging, now, save Xangô. Not roaring, not shouting, not letting out any sound at all except for the scrapes and clatters of steel plate grinding against steel plate. Ten metres separated us from the door. We cleared them in seconds.

Argar was ahead of us, partially by design. HIs shoulder hit the surface like a battering ram, 450lbs of man, 80 lbs of steel, all driven by musculature so strong it would’ve beaten any olympian in earth’s history without the slightest competition. Both doors shuddered, widening a few inches. The rest of us added our momentum onto his and turned those inches into feet.

Inside the courtyard, orcs were running about, arms flailing, eyes wide with confusion. Up close I could make out a few details on them. All were tall, for Redacle, maybe the height of modern humans. They were broad, grey skinned rather than green, thick fleshed and tusked. True to Argar’s word, most wore leathers and wools, clothing more than armour. There were maybe a dozen with us in the courtyard.

A dozen dead men, then.

Beam dropped down onto them from the wall, his armour on, his weapon conjured. He was like a ghost, glowing and pale, missing only a colour-coded horse. He rode in without it, though, and it wasn’t needed for Death to come with him.

One orc turned, too late to keep from losing a leg to one heavy chop. I crashed into its friend before they could encircle mine, bowling the bastard off his feet- we probably weighed about as much, but my magical strength and armour weight gave me more stability by far. From the corner of my eye I saw Argar’s axe flying, taking an arm off at the shoulder, and then 2 of the fuckers were closing in on me. I tossed my weapon at one- a short sword, or long knife depending on who you asked- and kicked the other in the chest. He went down just as his friend recovered, and I tackled the unlucky orc.

First I tried to bite him. I couldn’t, my visor was down. Being the clever lad that I am, I improvised. Smashing the metal into his face, once, twice, three times. Each headbutt came down like a guillotine blade, and by the time I was finished his head resembled…

Well, certainly not a head, that much was sure. I rolled off the corpse, climbing up just in time to catch a hammer across my head.

It was an unlucky blow, breaking one of the latches on my helmet, tearing it free. Unlucky for the orc, that is, because now my head was uncovered, and he was unbalanced from his swing. My gauntleted fist pulverised a big, grey nose and flattened the bastard, then I was on him. My teeth found what was left of his face, taking off lips, cheeks, brows and finally the nose. Truth be told I don’t really remember much of it, only that he stopped struggling about a minute in, and that my face was wet when I next stood up.

Around me, I saw that everyone else had just about finished their killing, too. Argar was pulling his axe out of a split skull, Xangô busy fixing a new box magazine onto the sides of his gun. Beam was nowhere to be seen, and Helena answered my confusion as she rested momentarily against her spear.

“One of them ran inside.” She breathed. “Your brother went after-”

I was running before she finished speaking.