Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are fighting monsters, serial killers, muggers, ninjas or something like that? I have had those dreams. I think the worst ones like that are those where you unload on your attackers with everything that you have and all your pent up skill and fury does nothing. It doesn’t leave a scratch. The villains in your dream are indestructible and indomitable. Fighting them is futile and you are trapped on a frightening and painful ride until you wake up.
I dearly hoped that we hadn’t just picked that sort of fight. If that proved to be the case, the battle would be frightening and painful, but unlike a dream we would not be waking up when it was all over.
The two orcs we faced looked like hard people. They bore the evidence of many battles etched upon their skin. They must have won those battles as they still drew breath. Neither looked like they were nervous at all. It was just another day at the office for these two. They had always prevailed before so, in their minds at least, why wouldn’t they win this conflict as well? Honestly, that was a really good question. I didn’t doubt that Aleyda could hold her own, but if I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain then she would be outnumbered. Alone, they would likely make short work of her.
Without wasting a word, Aleyda stepped forward to engage with their leader. I squared off against the other orc, the one wielding a battle axe. Thankfully, neither of the orcs were heavily armored. Both wore some sort of boiled leather breastplates but their arms, legs, and head were exposed. Aleyda’s armor seriously outclassed either of theirs even though it had been previously damaged and was weak in spots. I, of course, was wearing no armor at all. Usually that didn’t seem like a huge deal but right now it felt like a mistake.
So, what did I have going for me? What did I have in my bag of tricks? I was likely much more agile, which wouldn’t make a whit of difference when I mistimed a dodge or parry and got smacked. I could heal reasonably fast. I knew how to integrate unarmed attacks with my weapons. Oh, and I could light up like an amazing magical flashlight. That is all I had to throw against my larger, stronger, and much more experienced opponent. I had to hold on until Aleyda finished her opponent. Two on one we could take this guy. One on one I wasn’t nearly as certain.
As often happened to me in battle, I started to get tunnel vision. All of my attention was on my opponent. I mostly paid attention to his middle torso. As Aleyda had drilled into me over and over again, the sternum can’t lie. Everything in melee combat comes down to the core. The core and the legs create the power. Arms, legs, the head, these can all be used to feint. They can lie, but not the sternum. If you can read that part of the body fluently, you are miles ahead. Of course, I wasn’t certain how fluent I actually was. But, if you are going to improve, you have to fight opponents who are better than you.
I slid away from the area where Aleyda had moved forward to meet the leader. I wanted both of us to have room to maneuver without running into each other. Surprisingly, the orc I had picked as my opponent didn’t move with me. Instead, he stayed close to the leader like they were going to double team Aleyda. That was quite smart. It was also something I couldn’t permit to happen. Aleyda saw what was occurring and started backpedaling a little bit to try to gain some room. I reversed course and bounded forward aiming a looping cut at my chosen opponent. Barely moving, he contemptuously parried it with his axe and then spun to face me and began attacking.
He obviously was an adherent to the theory that the best defense is an overwhelming offense because when he started countering me he did not let up. First, he spun towards me and launched a short, cleaving blow at my side. I managed to slip the blow, pulling back out of his reach. But then he started moving forward, always forward. One attack after another rained down on me. There were overhand strikes and chopping blows from the side. He aimed at my arms, my head, my chest and my legs but never at the same point twice in a row. I thought he was setting me up for later in the fight when he strike at the same target on successive blows. I dodged what I could, parried what I couldn’t dodge, and took some damage from attacks that I could neither dodge or parry. The damage I did take, though, at least on the initial exchange, was relatively minor, mostly confined to the soft tissue on my arms and legs. If that was the worst of it I could probably fight for hours and end up no worse for wear at the end of it.
The problem I had was that I was stuck defending. Without risking a grievous wound of some sort, I didn’t know how to take back the initiative and even up the fight. I could see gaps in his style and if I were a more experienced fighter I could probably have taken advantage of those gaps. It was all I could do, though, just to stay alive and avoid taking unnecessary punishment. Yes, friends, although I was a far better warrior than I was when I arrived in this world, I still had a lot to learn.
The orc that Aleyda was fighting was a talker. Even in the midst of battle, he would not shut up with his constant stream of consciousness monologue. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him to understand what he was saying but his grating voice droned on and on in the background. It bothered me more than a little. I wished that Aleyda would just get on with it and silence that voice forever.
My opponent had worked himself into quite a fervor. Every time he swung, he grunted loudly. It reminded me of some tennis matches I had caught on television. Just as I suspected, he started doubling attacks up, striking at the same body part with successive swings. Thankfully, I was ready and those double attacks were easier to defend against than those aimed at different parts of my body. I needed a damn opening. Eventually, I would make a mistake and my defense would fail and I would be out of the fight. I couldn’t let that happen. If it did, it would be a death sentence for Aleyda. If one of us had to die, it needed to be me not her. This was my stupid plan. She was only here because I was here.
The opening, when it came, was a small one. My opponent’s front foot slipped on the thin dirt of the trail. His foot only slid forward a couple of inches but it was enough to make him check his swing. With an instinct born from hours of practice, I immediately launched myself forward and scythed a cutting strike down at the top of his upper right arm with my sword at a forty five degree angle. He was right handed. One of the problems with being left handed and fighting a right handed person was the fact that facing each other, our weapons were always on the same side. That meant it was much more difficult for me to strike at his free arm. He once again managed to parry my cut but due to his lack of balance there was no power behind his parry. His battle axe was driven back into his body but unfortunately the motion was arrested by his armored torso. The bad news was the my attack had not left a mark or done much damage. The good news was that the force of the attack exacerbated his balance issues, sending him stumbling a step to the side.
Taking a page out of his own playbook, I didn’t stop and assess. I didn’t relent. I thrust at his knees trying to keep him unbalanced. The sword I was using wasn’t really designed for thrust attacks. It would work in a pinch, like it did against the wyvern, but it was designed for a more brutal style involving a lot of hacking and slashing. I wasn’t trying to do a lot of damage with the thrust, though. I wanted to make certain to keep the orc off balance so he couldn’t immediately start launching attacks again, keeping me on my back foot. My strike struck true, penetrating slightly into the thigh above his right knee. It didn’t have a ton of force behind it and only the tip pierced his leg but I had wounded him! More importantly, though, his attempt to mitigate the damage by shifting backwards kept him from regaining his composure. For this brief moment, at least, I had control of our duel.
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The background noise continued unabated. Now, instead of the incessant drone of villainous monologue, words were intermittently punctuated by cries of pain. The problem was that I was mentally locked in, fighting for my life, and I couldn’t tell who the cries of pain were coming from.
Shuffling forward again, I chopped at my opponent with a cleaving backhand swing, aiming for his unprotected side. He hadn’t survived as long as he had by being a pushover. Even suffering from imperfect balance, he managed to use his axe to parry my blow. He was starting to regain his balance again. I couldn’t let that happen or else I was likely in for a world of hurt. Stepping towards him once more, I threw a side kick aimed for his legs. With dexterity surprising for his size, he slid backwards out of my reach. I wasn’t done, though. Not by a long shot. I followed up by swinging for the fences, whipping my sword up and then back down in an overhand blow aimed for the crown or his head. He managed to get his axe up to parry in time, holding it at an angle so my attack would slide harmlessly to the side leaving me unbalanced and open for his counter. He wasn’t the only one that had tricks, however. I was much stronger than I looked thanks to my dangerous experiments with essence crystals. My strength was not something he had anticipated. Instead of deflecting my attack, his parry collapsed driving the edge of his axe into the crown of his head and opening up a fairly serious scalp laceration.
I could tell that the strike had rung his bell a little bit because he tried to ward me off with a series of wild swings while he regained his composure. Although I didn’t want to abandon the initiative, I was forced to hop backwards. If any of those swings struck home, I would be in serious trouble.
I realized that the leader’s endless chatter had cut off. That meant one of two things. Either Aleyda had silenced him forever, or she had fallen and I was about to be cut down. I couldn’t take my attention off of my opponent long enough to find out which scenario had come to pass.
Once again, I studied the orc I was dueling. Blood was sheeting down his face partially obscuring his vision. It just made him look more savage, not like he was having any trouble in that department earlier. His wild, warding swings had gained him the time he needed to regain his balance and he was back on the attack. I did everything I could to stay alive. I bobbed and weaved. I parried and dodged. All of this sounds like it was taking a long time but it wasn’t. If you have never been in a fight before you may not know this, but even short fights feel like they last forever. Wired and blasted out of your mind by adrenaline, your heart beating as fast as it can, seconds can feel like minutes and minutes can feel like hours. You try to maintain your balance on a precarious edge, an instant away from victory or oblivion.
That’s why it was such a surprise when Aleyda bounded into view from behind and to the left of my opponent. For a brief moment, I irrationally felt cheated. This was my fight to win or lose. It was my test of skill and courage. That feeling quickly fled and was replaced by relief when her sword chopped into the hip and upper leg of my opponent. I was relieved because she was alive and I had not led her to ruin.
The balance issues the orc had dealt with previously were nothing compared to what he was facing now. He staggered a couple of steps away and tried to spin to face the surprise attack. Unfortunately for him, when he tried to put weight on his injured leg it would not bear it. He went stumbling to the ground. Never one to miss an opening in a fight, Aleyda pounced. Before he could regather himself and get to his feet, he started absorbing attack after attack in his head and shoulder region. After just a few attacks, he lost consciousness, collapsing prone to the ground. His breathing was labored, more gasps and gurgles than normal respiration. Without any hesitation, Aleyda stepped forward and slit his throat, dancing nimbly backward to avoid being painted by his arterial spray. He was not a long time in dying.
I looked around the clearing and spied the orc leader. His arms and legs were riddled with wounds. Surprisingly, he was still shallowly breathing but also completely insensate. It looked like he had collapsed from blood loss. Having watched too many horror movies where the monster, after being seemingly defeated, rises back up reinvigorated, I wandered over to him and put him out of his misery. They I turned to Aleyda.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Were you injured in the fight?” She had a lot of blood on her and I couldn’t tell whether any of it was her own.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I think I hurt my ribs again but this armor is fantastic. The next time I see Sathebeena, I am going to hug her then ask her to repair it.”
“Careful what you wish for,” I said. “She hugged me once and she is very, very strong. If you think your ribs hurt now, wait until she gets hold of you.”
“So, what now?” she asked.
“We aren’t going to be able to hide the evidence that there was a fight here, but we can probably make the bodies disappear. We loot everything we can from Caider and these orcs. We take their weapons and provisions up to Segerick’s people before we rejoin the others. I don’t see a lot of sleep in our immediate futures.”
“I wish Bowen was here,” she said. “He could help us carry all of this crap. It’s going to be a hard climb up the mountain weighed down like we will be.”
“It will be worth it, though,” I replied. “This isn’t quite enough for everyone but it is better than nothing and I was stressing trying to figure out how we would have time to ambush other expeditions like we originally planned.”
“Let’s get to it and head back,” she said.
We regained our company’s treasure from Caider’s corpse. We stripped the provisions, weapons, and even a few small hand tools from the bodies of the orcs. I pocketed all their coinage, which totaled a couple of dozen gold. Then, we dragged the bodies away from the road and out into the forest. We were still far enough up the mountain that I thought something would find them and eat fairly well that evening.
After the run down the mountain, the fight, and all the work to get rid of the bodies, we were exhausted. We sat by the side of the trail, leaning against each other’s backs while we tried to regain our energy.
“Are you sure we have to head back up in the dark,” Aleyda asked.
“I think we can wait until morning. We are really close to our former camp site. Shall we hole up there for a few hours before we head back up?”
“That would be great. I am exhausted. I love this armor but it is quite heavy.”
In a short time, we dragged our plunder to the former campsite. It looked like a lifeless and forlorn clearing now that much of our gear had been packed up and moved out. There were still tents dotting the place but it felt like a ghost town. After washing up a little in the stream, we took turns sleeping a few hours. Thankfully, nobody had bothered packing up our wood supply so there was enough for a fire.
During my watch, I glanced down at Aleyda while she was peacefully sleeping. The light of the campfire danced across her features. She looked fresh-faced and innocent but that innocence was an illusion. She was a fierce warrior and I was so lucky to have found her. She had saved my life more times than I could count and I was not sure I could ever repay that debt.