With the situation having escalated from ‘threatening’ to ‘very likely to end in someone’s spleen on display’, ripples of action began to emanate on both sides. Gabriel and his hapless mercenaries, whilst never particularly quick on the uptake, had finally had sufficient exposure to near-death experiences to spot them when they reared their heads. Delayed reactions had come close to costing them on several occasions now, but who ever said you can’t teach old dogs new tricks? So, when Bryce hoisted his axe above his shoulders with that unnervingly familiar bloodlust in his eyes, the mercenaries, for once, were impressively quick on the uptake.

Gabriel ducked back and crouched low, his sword above his head, ready to parry. By stepping back, he also opened Bryce wide up, leaving the bald, barbarous bastard entirely open to Figo and his quiver full of sharp reminders not to pick fights when you are outnumbered. Bryce was a bit more of a natural in the field, though, and experience had tempered him over the years, and taught him not to chase a kill at the risk of becoming one. He saw the danger coming immediately, and, not exactly spoilt for options, strafed to put Gabriel back between himself and Figo. Of course, in doing so, he opened his back wide open to Vish. He justifiably reasoned that was probably the lesser of two evils.

“Ah-ah-ah, blondie. You’ll not get me that way,” Bryce baited Figo from behind the bandy-limbed body of Gabriel.

The fight was almost over before it had begun. A little bit of initiative, a little bit of quick thinking, and no small amount of guts, and the mercenaries’ advantage would be doubled. The opportunity was there for the taking.

Thwack!

The sound echoed more gloriously throughout the thicket of trees than it would have through an amphitheater. The damned audacity of it put a slight dampener on the slow of the battle, and prompted the slightly unconventional response from Bryce of:

“You bloody wally.”

Vish was busy shaking the pins and needles out of his hand, which had come off much worse than Bryce’s skull had for being used as a makeshift bongo.

“Mother fff-, are you wearing a helmet under your skin?” the mind-mapper protested.

“It was a nice try, Vish,” Gabriel soothed the mind-mapper’s ego.

“It’s just, it worked with the goblins, and he looks a bit like a goblin, and, I don’t know, now I’m thinking I kind of peaked at the goblins,” Vish said, sucking and massaging his fingers and his pride.

“You’re holding a fucking sword,” Bryce pointed out in sheer bewilderment.

“I don’t like to get my robes messy,” Vish explained.

Bryce nodded once, then twice, and then whipped his axe around in a whirling arc. The blade was aimed at Vish’s midsection, and would have bisected him if the mind-mapper hadn’t leapt back with a brave, “eep!” The strike wasn’t meant for the mind-mapper though. Bryce followed the swing through a full 270 degrees, until it became a vicious overhead cleave, bearing down directly on Gabriel’s greasy-haired head.

Whether through diligence or negligence, Gabriel had failed to drop his guard during Bryce’s brief exchange with the mind-mapper, and thus was ready with the block when the blow came. And block it Gabriel did. And that was about all Gabriel did. The axe met the resistance of Gabriel’s blade and pushed straight through it, but the strength and speed of the blow had been sapped. This allowed Gabriel ample time to duck his head away, and roll back onto his arse, his arms jelly at his sides.

With Gabriel prone in the dirt, Figo’s line of sight was open once again. It would have been a pretty perfect opportunity for the hunter to fell his former teammate, had Bryce’s new posse not had something to say about that.

Lydia had grown quite used to being one person fighting for five, and had always watched her own back even when she was fighting shield to shield with soldiers she trusted. It was because of this that when Bryce advanced, Lydia risked a glance out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t turn away from her mark, of course, but this moment of inattentiveness was enough to earn her a lick across the cheek from the elf’s halberd.

She couldn’t quite believe it. Lydia hadn’t even seen the attack coming until the blade’s point was close enough to almost cost her an eye. The elf had used her blind spot, rationally enough, but even so she would have expected to see some change in the tension of his body, some shifting of stance, some tautening of muscle. It had been barely a flick of the wrist. Now, already, he was back in exactly the same position he had been before, sentinel and stoic. He was entirely ready. With some regret, Lydia realised she was going to have to entrust the others to her companions. This elf was going to take all of her attention. The best thing she could do now was to make quick work of her enemy, and trust that the others could keep themselves alive until then.

There were sounds of excitement behind her, but Lydia didn’t have time to acknowledge that. With a snarl, the warrioress lunged forward with a heavy, what would have been two-handed, blow (if she’d had two hands). The elf followed the left-handed swing all the way around Lydia’s body, and out of the blade’s reach. Far from retreating, he was allowing her to herd him into the rest of the group. Lydia had a horrible feeling she knew why. Not to play into the elf’s hand again, she stabbed right of his body, into the space he clearly wanted to strafe into, and then swiped left for his head after hitting clean air. The elf reacted as calmly and coolly as if the melee were choreographed. As Lydia’s blade sang for his neck, he stooped into a crouch and thrust his halberd out. It was not at Lydia he aimed, but at Figo.

Figo had been tracking Bryce like a deer in a glade, waiting for an opening that wouldn’t endanger the others. Hubert was on his exposed left, and the elf was clashing with Lydia at his back, but he wagered he had little to fear from the former, and Lydia would buy time enough for them to deal with the latter. When Bryce pummeled his way through Gabriel’s block, the chance he had been waiting for presented itself. He took one quick breath to steady his aim, and then buckled. Figo’s bow and arrow were flung to the floor at Gabriel’s side. The archer had just managed to catch his fall, but he was now on all fours, hands and face in the dirt, with a searing gash pulsing from his left calf. A quick glance over his shoulder was greeted with the retreating image of the elf’s phantom visage. His expressionless face held Figo for long heartbeats even as the elf ducked back under an overhead swing from Lydia. It was a taunt, Figo knew. The hunter could sense the playful, sadistic delight burning within the creature as readily as he could read distress in the gait of a foal. He could sense the elf’s mirth. He could sense the promise of death.

Bling was distraught. Bryce was here. This was a good thing. Bryce was a friend. She clearly remembered that Bryce was a friend. An old friend (she hadn’t seen him for a long time), but a friend. Bryce looked angry at Gabby. Lots of people get angry at Gabby. It was funny to watch. They pecked at each other. They ruffled each other’s feathers. Then it started to feel dangerous. It felt too dangerous for play.

One of the beautiful things about being Kyk was that, although he was no stranger to a full and interesting repertoire of feelings, they tended to only surface one at a time. When Kyk was hungry, he ate. When Kyk was tired, he slept. When Kyk was angry… he killed? Ever since his meeting with the brown-skinned man, things hadn’t seemed as simple to Kyk. He had started doing something that felt very peculiar indeed, perhaps even unhealthy. Kyk had started to ask, ‘why?’. When faced with the mercenaries for the second time, Kyk felt betrayal. He felt that he had opened himself up. He had explored a new side of himself. He had found a person who understood him in a way that he didn’t understand himself. He had found a friend. Then he had been hit in the back of the head with a hatchet. That wasn’t what friends do. He was right to be angry at that. That was fair. Then he asked, ‘Why did they hit me in the back of a head with a hatchet?’. Kyk decided that it was probably because he had attacked them. This made sense. What didn’t make sense was the question that followed that one: ‘Was I right or wrong?’.

After some deliberation, Hubert concluded that it wasn’t petulant for him to stand aside and allow the buffoons to brawl. That juiced up moron, Bryce, had had the audacity to strike him, and would surely be forced to make recompense at a later date, but that was not why he left them to their own devices. It certainly wasn’t that he was scared, either. He was a revolutionary, and revolutionaries were not deterred by a little spilt blood and some strong words. No, he refrained from jousting with these childish cretins because his station demanded it. It would have been beneath him to participate. His father, the uncouth savage that he was, had given him something. Vagalad, The Duke of Gladstone, had given Hubert status. Status, he knew from his books, was not something to be enjoyed, but a responsibility. Yes, it was his responsibility to oversee proceedings and ensure things didn’t get too out of hand. That’s what he would do; he would supervise. That is what he had done when they interrogated the harlots who worked at Chloe’s. They had listened to him then, and they would listen to him now. He was the coordinator, the mastermind. There was no need to sully his calf-skin gloves.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

As is wont to happen when the scent of blood is in the air, everyone scrambled at once.

He couldn’t say why he did it, but Kyk took three big strides forward, and shoved Vish into a bush. He would do his bit, but he couldn’t hurt the mind-mapper. The long-haired one seemed like a reasonable target; he would be killed by the bald man soon anyway.

Bryce didn’t let his axe rest. He’d thought he might want to savour the kill but, faced with the very real prospect of seeing that traitorous pony-haired coward cleft in two, his muscles were acting on their own. His first blow lost some of its bite towards the end, and only knocked Gabriel prone. No matter. Bryce used the weapon’s momentum to ready another strike. He was so caught up in the moment that he almost followed through with it even after the daft-arsed magrain poked his head in the way.

It’s hard to measure degrees of terrifying. When Gabriel saw Bryce raise his axe for yet another strike, one he would unequivocally be incapable of blocking, his already brimming fear levels were somehow able to accommodate a bit more dread. When a tiny-eyed, saucer-faced, orange-scaled face appeared beneath Bryce’s right armpit, preceded by razor sharp claws on long, splayed fingers, Gabriel’s fear meter was reset and replenished with a different and more potent kind of aether defying horror. It was actually a bit of a relief when Bryce yanked the fish-phibian from Gabriel and tossed the sinfully ugly fiend aside. Gabriel placed a hand on his chest, felt his heart bludgeoning itself against his ribcage and thought, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, okay. Good. Yeah, you can go right ahead and chop my head off now.’

“This one’s mine!” Bryce roared as he hoisted Kyk from his long-anticipated kill, “Take care of the others.”

Bryce hated having to micro-manage a fight. He was a frontline man. He always had been. Why couldn’t people just leave him to his business and carry on with theirs?

When Bryce turned back to finish the tough but satisfying job of butchering his former comrade, he let out a long, low growl. This was not the guttural venting of unfettered fury, though, this was a rumble of pure frustration. A familiar redhead was standing over his kill this time, and she was ready to meet iron with iron.

“Don’t you worry, Natasha, I haven’t forgotten about you. I still owe you for signing us up for that shit-show to begin with. But all good things in time. I’ve got business with your brother first. Why don’t you just run along and wait your turn?”

Bling didn’t have a firm grasp of the term ‘condescending prick’, but she could tell when she was regarded as a threat and when she wasn’t. She knew that Bryce was underestimating her, and she planned to change that. Bling straightened her back to an uncomfortable length, particularly given her years of permo-stooping, and stretched her arms to her sides, clutching draping lengths of cloak in each hand. To complete her display, she shook out her hair so that her mane stretched from shoulder to shoulder in one epic, rouge afro. Her ‘feathers’ roused, she looked as large and intimidating as she possibly could. Surely that would ward off the predator.

Bryce looked his once cunning captain up and down, “Is that supposed to be some kind of challenge?”

Bling squawked in the affirmative.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Sadly, Bling still had the wherewithal to be offended by that. She decided that Bryce probably wasn’t going away without a few caws to ward him off. Bling lunged at the sell-sword’s ankles.

It was becoming rapidly apparent to Bryce that something wasn’t quite right with the redhead. She’d been in danger the last time he’d seen her, and he’d honestly thought her dead. Obviously survival came at a cost. PTSD or not, though, she would still pay for leaving him to his death. Well, she would pay as soon as she stood still. Had she always fought so… manically?

Their duel was a close quarters affair, with Bling harassing and haranguing the bigger man on all sides. Bryce’s axe was ill-suited for such combat, and he struggled to create distance enough between them to get in a good swing. In truth, if Bling had correctly identified the danger posed by her old ally, he would have been overpowered and killed in seconds. Past loyalties are an encumbering thing, though, and so Bling sought only to drive Bryce away until such time as his memories caught up with hers.

After a particularly clumsy feint, Bryce was able to catch Bling between the shoulder-blades with the hilt of his axe. It was far from a deadly blow, but it would leave some colourful bruising. More importantly, it allowed him to shunt the redhead towards Kyk, who was ready and waiting with tooth and claw… or overbite and claw.

Bling tried to spin on her heel and lash at Bryce’s back, but the magrain hooked her cloak and tugged her off balance, sending her rolling into some inopportunely placed brambles. She gurgled with rage and tramped the thorny rope-like stalks into the ground in her efforts to regain her footing. Her flailing gave Kyk pause, but he was Kyk, fourth son of Telk the Slow, not any son of Genk the Coward, he wasn’t going to let a few flying swords hold him back. Kyk placed his palms together, and dove for Bling like he was back going for a dip in the sacred River of the Floodplains.

Whilst the others had been scrappily exchanging combatants, Lydia and the elf fenced. Their exchanges were fluid and flawless, with each step and each action carefully measured and considered. There was more waiting and testing of defences then there was an exchange of blows. It was ‘proper’ sword fighting, as Magnus had once called it, not the devastating flurry of brute power that had served Lydia so well in the past. No, she had to go back to basics here. She had to revert to her training. The elf would not forgive a mistake. She knew that to be true. She had to keep her head. Keep her focus. Breathe.

Figo panted as he raised himself onto his knees. He was in a lot of pain, but the wound did not require immediate attention. If he didn’t start helping soon then there would be far worse injuries dished out. He groped around for his bow, drew a fresh arrow, and checked for targets.

“If you throw down your weapons now then we will allow you to live!” Hubert peeped haughtily from the edge of the battlefield.

There was absolutely no throwing down of weapons.

“You need only surrender to the infinite wisdom and mercy of The Order of the Rising Dragon.”

There was definitely no surrendering.

“You are outmatched and out-Ah!”

Hubert’s speech was punctuated with a puncture wound. For want of a better target, and also pleased to shut the pseudo-noble up, Figo had decided to loose his first arrow at Hubert. The archer aimed to incapacitate, rather than kill, all too aware that Vagalad was still their sponsor and only real chance at returning home. It was for this reason that Hubert was fortunate enough to only have an arrow in the thigh to deal with, rather than one in the chest.

Kyk and Bling were tussling like children. There were head-locks, arm bars, elbows being thrown, and all variations of non-lethal force being used. Kyk still had the advantage, and was using it to keep Bling’s blades away from him, disarming her where he could. What he evidently was not doing, was going in for the kill. The reason why, was Vish.

Vish was circling the pair life a referee, making sure they kept their sharpest appendages to themselves, “Come on, Kyk. This isn’t like you, buddy! Remember, it’s us! It’s you, and it’s me! Us against the world, Kyk! Bling, easy, easy, he’s a friend. Friend! He’s just confused.”

They had short attention spans, to be sure, but each time one of them heard their name, they would falter. They trusted the mind-mapper, and if he didn’t want them to kill their opponent then there must be a reason for that. And, sure, the fact that Vish was adding a little mind-mapper style ‘suggestion’ to his pleas may have played a part in stemming their bloodlust, but hey, all’s fair in weird, platonic, inter-species love, and war.

Gabriel had managed to regain his feet, and was in the process of using them to back away from Bryce’s swipes and hacks.

“Come on, you sniveling rat. Stand your ground!” the brawler challenged.

“I’m actually okay over here, thank you!”

“You’re pathetic. You’re fucking nothing. You can’t even swing a sword to save your own life,” Bryce batted the useless weapon from Gabriel’s hand to prove a point.

“I’m more about fostering an air of positive thinking and forgiveness,” Gabriel tried.

“It’s grated on me for years that I suffered because of you. I almost died because of you. I could accept betrayal. I could even understand a knife in the back. But to find myself at the mercy of someone so useless, so feeble,” Bryce shook his head, “that was an insult more than I could bear.”

“Would it help if I told you that I recently threw someone out of a window?”

“And now I’ve come for my revenge and you won’t even raise a sword against me,” Bryce said, frustration glassing his eyes.

An idea visibly formed on Bryce’s face. He took, not two steps forward, but two steps back. Bryce grabbed Vish by the hair, and hauled him back to Gabriel, careful to angle the mind-mapper’s body so that Figo, who seemed to have regained some of his wits, would have to shoot through Vish to get to him.

“Careful, I have a sword!” Vish squeaked.

“Drop it!” Bryce growled back.

“Okay.”

Vish obediently tossed his weapon on the ground and boldly whimpered.

“Pick it up,” Bryce instructed Gabriel, “Go on, pick it up!”

Tentatively, Gabriel took up Vish’s discarded weapon.

“You don’t have to do this, Bryce.”

“Oh-ho, yes I do. Believe me I do,” he said, cricking his neck until every vertebra popped, “I’m going to count to five. That’s how long you have to save your friend. That’s how long you have to prove yourself a man. To prove yourself worthy to die by my axe. Think you can do that Gabriel?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, we’ll find out. On ‘five’ we’ll see whether you’ve balls enough to take a stab at me, or if I’ll be slitting this tosser’s throat.”

“Ah, Bryce, buddy, come on, we go way back! We used to be part of the same crew, man. You and me, remember? Brycey and Vish, going at it together.”

“Oh, I remember you, Vish,” Bryce said, bearing his axe and teeth.

“It would appear you do,” the mind-mapper gulped.

“Bryce,” Gabriel said as calmly as he could muster, “I am deeply, deeply sorry for what happened. If Natasha weren’t in danger, I never would have left you. I would have stayed to help you, just as you did for me.”

Bryce indicated the mind-mapper he held by the hair, “Now’s your chance to prove it. You’ve got a chance to help a teammate now. Kinda poetic, don’t you think?”

“Bryce…”

“One.”

“You don’t want to kill him, Bryce.”

“Two.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to kill me, Bryce!”

“Three.”

“I’m not going to do it, Bryce.”

“Four.”

“Bloody well do it, Gabe!” Vish begged.

“Fffff-”