They stood in a defilade of wet rock and Mym looked at where her [vengefulness] had led them. Khaz bled from a vertical gash above his eye and its blood stained all down his beard and coat and she couldn't tell where else he bled because his arms and waist and legs and boots were covered in a thick red mud from the disintegrating sandstone. Daraway stood behind him in her steaming cloak holding Cousins between her blackened hands. The girl clutched the sprig of prairie fire and her eyes had gone hollow as if the horrors of the night had driven all mischief out of them. But there was no getting her away from it. They had tried all night. She had led a kid into the middle of a war. There was no getting away.
She looked out at the veterans of the rising front who were lining up for another charge and that's when she saw him.
"Oy," she shouted and pointed at the trees beyond the floodwater's flow. The tall orc was there. She had her [longarm] up and readied and sited a sliver of his chest showing between the wetted trunks and her hammer snapped down and threw the needed spark and the powder hissed. A spout of blue smoke fizzled from the pan.
"Shit," she dropped the weapon from her cheek and felt the sodden cartridge and ejected it and bit another and tasted the damp in its powder and she dipped a finger in her powder horn and all of it was damp. She grabbed Khaz's [longarm] and raised it and tried and it too misfired. "Shit."
A tusker and a female otaur appeared beside the tall orc. He was saying something to them and pointing. Mym followed his outstretched claw and saw the place where floodwaters had carried away a tremendous elven tree and lodged it longways across the draw, its massive tangled root ball on the far side and its heavily burdened crown not so far from their defilade. Water rushed over it in places and a host of orcs gathered around the roots gripped its upright branches and they threaded across it with frightful agility. She looked back at the tall orc and for a moment it seemed he was staring at her, then he started running down the treeline toward the fallen tree.
"Shit," she said again. She tossed Khaz's [longarm] back to him and hauled her pack around and crammed her horn and her [longarm] into it. She threw her shoulders through its straps and swung it onto her back. She seized her [alpenstock] and dug her feet into the earth and said, "On me."
The veterans of the rising front galloped across her path with their longswords aflame and shoulders forward for speed and heads low to whisper encouragement to their mounts but she didn't wait for them to pass, she just ran through and they swore as they steered around her and a man tumbled off his rearing mount and set his jacket blazing with his ether but she didn't stop or slow or look back to see who came and who didn't and she punched through their formation and ran between the line of their charge along the bank of the flooded draw with her feet splashing in its endless waters and she leapt over the debris it had ejected. The veterans cried for murder as they crashed into a pocket of starving orcs and she cut around their melee and heard them plunging one after another into the flood and saw their facedown bodies overtake her in its flow, orcs without heads and men burning in orange flames that spiraled in the wind made by the rushing water. The fallen tree caught the dead in its limbs where they piled one on another like timber in a log drive. Behind her she heard the veterans' war cries turned to screams. On the far side of the flood some orcs moved through the forest and others emerged to despoil the dragoons who had died the night before. One saw her and sprinted to the water's edge to pitch his stolen missiles across one after another and the first caught her in the legs and as she fell she heard the second sail through the space where her head would've been.
Khaz said, "Got ye," and his hands were under her and lifting her.
She heard the [armiger]'s voice raised in command. Down by the fallen tree. For a moment she saw his black helm and white horse between the raised spears and plunging mallets and slicing blades and the limbs that moved them and the limbs that they severed. She looked across the flood. The tall orc ran ahead of her. Still amid the forest. Still surging toward the fallen tree.
"Come on," she said.
Khaz said to Daraway, "Keep that girl tween us."
Mym turned to help and saw Cousins put up a hand as if to reach for hers and then her poncho flew out from her side as if caught in a strange red gust and she fell. Mym heard the hiss of the bullet pass her ear then the deadened strike of it off of the wet sandstone then the terrible crack of the gunshot advancing across the draw. It resounded like faraway thunder rolling forth and before it passed she was already kneeling over the girl and gathering her arms onto her stomach and her head in an elbow and the limp backs of her knees and the blood came freely onto her coat and if there was more blood on the ground she couldn't tell from the rain and the ruddy earth. "Shit," she said. "Shit."
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Cousins clenched the sprig of prairie fire against her side and cried for a mother she didn't have.
The [longarm] cracked again from the forest. Mym put her body between the sound and the girl. A mounted veteran ten yards to her left fell from his horse.
Khaz took her [alpenstock] in his free hand. "Ye got her? Let's go."
The [longarm] cracked again and a roaring of orcs rose from across the water chanting the name of their leader. Daraway urged her on with a flat palm against her shoulder and when she looked back she saw the woman's hood was cast off and her eyes looked out across the flood and glowed red like branding irons. Another shot snapped past but by then they were sprinting along the floodwaters toward the [armiger]. The girl's head bouncing and her jaw slack and her feet swinging free and Mym was sure she had already died. Khaz was before her with an [alpenstock] in each fist cutting a path through orcs and men alike. Daraway's [thrown] heat surged in waves against the back of her neck.
They overtook a woman holding a flaming [sword] who limped badly from a bite to her calf and a gunshot hip. Her blonde hair was tied up in a tight bun for war and how pretty it must have been when it flowed freely in peace. Her hand pressed into her bleeding side and she wheeled suddenly to cleave an orc from neck to navel then she called to them as they passed. They didn't stop. The woman tried to keep up but already she fell behind. Mym called back to her and when she faced forward she saw the tall orc now running alongside the biggest sow she had ever seen. Brown and half blind bearing a [longarm] and a riding crop and a whole cadre ran with them hard and fast toward the base of the fallen tree.
She followed Khaz into the fallen tree's canopy where a score of men and women crouched in brown water amid a dozen dead orcs and breathed hard under patinated breastplates and through the narrow slits of jousting helms. The [armiger] sat on a branch as big around as his body with his [long spear] in hand and his hip's scabbard empty and his [shortarm] in its holster about his chest. His horse wasn't there.
She held Cousins tighter and called, "Oy. Got a wee girl here needin a surgeon. She's been shot."
Those gathered lived for blood and aimed to die in it so none asked what a girl was doing amid a battle in the company of dwarves. The [armiger] nodded to a [knight] and said, "Go Malv," and the [knight] brandished his sword and ran along the fallen tree's length away from the flood, dipping under some branches and leaping over others until he vanished.
The [armiger] looked at Cousins. "Help is coming." Then he noticed Daraway. Mym saw the recognition in his eyes.
Daraway turned to Mym. "Give her to me."
"Help's comin."
"She can't wait for it to arrive. We must take her to it."
"I'll take her."
"Give her to me."
She passed the girl to Daraway and wiped the blood off the front of her coat. That on her trousers had gone cold and had started to stiffen.
"I'll find you," said Daraway. She went after the [knight] and the fallen tree's living twigs snagged her hood then sprang back into place.
Mym took her [alpenstock] from Khaz and he unrolled his pack and drew his powder horn. "Any of ye got dry powder?"
The [armiger] laughed.
A [footman] came up through the branches. "We think that's the last of em sire."
"You are sure this time?"
The flat reports of gunfire popped across the desert and the [footman] knelt beside the [armiger] waiting for them to quit.
"Yes sire. There ain't any more coming outta them trees. There's some pockets still on our side but we've got em pinned up tight."
"And their leader?"
"She's working across now."
The [armiger] stood from his seat on the branch. "We shall signal once she is dealt with. Slay the stragglers and signal archers and artillery and pray the foreman was a better chemist than he was a warrior."
Khaz reached for her. "Ye alright?"
She shook her head. "I wish they'd shot me instead."
"Aye I know yer feelin."
"Quiet there," said the [armiger]. "Make yourselves ready. This is the fight of your life."
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> -1 [Vengefulness]: Her forefathers set the world on fire to retribute one wrong, yet she balked at the suffering of one human child. (8/10)