CHAPTER FIVE—CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY
Baracci came forward, his blade flicking about as he tested Shiro’s responses.
With a sigh, he must have decided Shiro wasn’t worth his time, and ordered his men to kill him.
“Four on one?” Jessamine said. “It’s hardly fair.”
His men said nothing as they advanced on Shiro.
As she disappeared into a swirl of blue haze, the foreigner’s jaws dropped. They glanced about and Baracci grinned, a look of surprise and amusement on his face. “Very interesting,” he said. “I knew these lands had more to offer than sandstone huts and warriors not worth the steel in their blades.
He put his arms out, signaling to his men that he wanted to be the one to fight Shiro after all.
He’s not worried about our forces breaking into the palace, Shiro thought. Which means he’s powerful—can handle himself among many enemies. I should be careful.
Baracci stepped forward, lunged with the point of his sword flicking toward Shiro’s face. With a back-step, Shiro parried the blade away.
Baracci’s grin deepened. “Keep your eyes open for that woman.” He advanced on Shiro again as his men fanned out. With quick thrusts of his wrist in perfect timing of his forward steps, Baracci’s blade came close, but Shiro was careful to keep his distance from this strange fighting style.
Having fought some of their more common soldiers already, he hadn’t yet made up his mind about the fighting styles of these invaders. But this man—this Hulio Baracci—was on a completely different level.
Shiro sensed no aura from him, but something about the man emanated dangerously to him.
Baracci continued advancing on Shiro as he gave ground and moved past Jadu and the dead satrap. The young grand vizier stood, a look of nervousness on his face. Shiro did not take the time to study his reaction, as he was occupied with this leader of the foreign attackers. That—and it would be unwise of him to underestimate this man.
“You are not very aggressive,” Baracci sneered. “Come at me!”
Twirling his scimitar in his wrist, Shiro skirted to the right in a semi-circle as Baracci followed him. “Do you recognize where I am from, invader?”
With a slight look of confusion, Baracci’s lip curled. “As a fighter in alignment with this Abassir empire, you talk a lot instead of fighting.”
“I am curious,” Shiro said.
And if he tells you what you want to hear, Shiro? Jessamine conveyed. What then?
That thin blade came at him and he parried it.
I do not know, he conveyed in response to Jessamine.
You will never know if he’s lying or not.
This man has no reason to lie to me.
Except to toy with you, Shiro. Do not let your guard down.
“Hey!” Baracci said, snapping his fingers.
Shiro blinked.
“If you won’t pay attention to your adversary, I will just have to kill you.”
Spreading his arms, Baracci seemed to make a strange motion in the air—perhaps a summoning of a spell? Then he lowered his hands, a disturbance in the air palpable to Shiro.
It was not natural.
Suddenly Baracci moved, his body travelling through the space between him and Shiro closing in an instant, but he hadn’t come directly at Shiro, instead moving to his left.
With a half pirouette he struck at Shiro, but the isekai arced his blade back his hilt over his shoulder protecting his flank from the lightening-fast attack while simultaneously lurching away.
He’s fast, Shiro!
“I can see that.”
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Pausing for an instant, Baracci shouted, “Be careful! He is speaking to that unseen witch!”
Jessamine had the power to appear and disappear at will, but she could not take physical form without being completely visible. Speaking aloud to her was a mistake, one Shiro made often.
The air moved, the sound of her travel clear in the chamber as a womanly laugh echoed between them. “Right you are,” she said, her body and even the blue smoke that normally accompanied her appearance still concealed.
“I can appear at will.”
Baracci seemed to forget about Shiro as he glanced about, a look of careful shrewdness on his features. He gave an order in his language and his men gathered, moving back to back.
“You are afraid,” Jessamine said, her words a simple statement of fact.
“Come out!” Baracci ordered.
“But why should I do that? Are you not a foreign invader, sent here to kill our satraps and our people?”
While they were distracted, Shiro decided to use this instance to strike. He lunged suddenly, hoping to catch Baracci off guard, but his eyes flicked to Shiro immediately, his sword striking out defensively.
Blads flashing, it took very little time for his men to react along with him, and suddenly Shiro was facing a wall of impenetrable blades, flashing quickly and agilely in defense of their lord.
Shiro jumped back, expecting to find a measure of safety in the distance he put between himself and Baracci’s men, but Baracci closed that distance in no time, his arm moving, his knee bending as his cape fluttered with his movements as if he were screaming toward the ground from a jump on high.
Striking out viciously, both in offense and defense of their attacks, Shiro found himself getting overwhelmed as Baracci’s men formed an enclosing semi-circle.
In a whirl of blue smoke, Jessamine appeared behind them. By the time one of the men turned, she struck him down with one powerful blow to the back.
Baracci jumped away from Shiro, but clearly keeping distance between himself and Jessamine as she looked on at them with a look of hungry bloodlust, the smile on her face even taking Shiro aback.
“Agostine!” one of the men called, the look on his face of worry and horror as their comrade lay crumpled over the tiles, blood pooling under him. “No!”
They looked on at Jessamine with mixtures of fear and hatred.
Snarling, Baracci lashed out at her, but before his blade could strike her, she lifted her knee, her hand touching the flat of her sword that glowed with a golden metallic nature that could only be magic.
She whirled away from him and dissolved into a plume luminous flume.
“Hulio! What is this trickery?” the one woman in their party asked asked. She was tall, lithe, and as dangerous-looking as he was.
Shiro struck out at the man nearing him, his blade flashing along with his opponent’s, but the man gave ground, giving him enough time for the other two to come to his aid.
As they lashed out at Shiro, Jessamine rematerialized.
“Look out!” Baracci called, and flew across the tiles like a hawk to an unsuspecting rodent, but Jessamine saw him coming before he even started moving and recoiled, her leg coming out of the enclosure of her green dress.
She lifted her sword in an aggressive posture, then lunged forward in a whirl that struck Shiro as some kind of a dance, but a dance of deadly swordsmanship.
Baracci met her blade, blocking her attacks as she whirled and flung her hands in multiple graceful trajectories, quickly putting him on the defensive.
As his men closed in to help him, Shiro attacked, lunging forward with his outstretched sword. But he was parried and forced back with a screeching skirl of blades.
Not letting up his attacks, he struck again, his blade flashing forward. But Baracci and his men fought in tandem with one another, each individual member strong in their own right, but aware of the other’s needs as they became apparent.
Together they moved as Jessamine attacked Baracci, his men moving to assist while Shiro struck out at them from behind. But as it stood now, he was only exchanging sword strikes with one of their party.
Jessamine broke off, jumped back and landed several paces away with almost no sound, her back hunched and her left hand extended, fingers curling.
There was something about Jessamine—about her fighting style that Shiro was, up to this point, unaware of—and still confused about even now.
He backed off, giving Baracci and his men space.
With narrowed eyes, he and his men regarded Shiro and Jessamine as Jadu stood watching in the distance, still under the natural blue light of the night shining down from skyhole in the dome above.
“I see you are far more adept than I originally believed,” Baracci said through his teeth. “There is nothing to gain by remaining. Our work is done. We leave!”
“Hulio!” the woman spat. “They killed Agostine. We must avenge him!”
“No.”
“What?”
“He was weak.”
That seemed to shock the woman.
“Enough, De Luca. We are leaving, or stay and die at the hands of this Momori Jinja agent and his Abassir witch!”
Shiro gasped at the words Baracci used to describe him and his cheeks heated instantly. “I am no Momori Jinja!”
Baracci locked eyes with him for a quick moment as he back-stepped toward the exit, his sword swaying in his hand. Though he looked at ease, Shiro knew he could lash out in an attack or defend himself in the blink of an eye.
Shiro took a step forward to pursue, but Jessamine put a hand on his shoulder. “Let them go.”
“They killed the satrap!” Jadu said from behind. “How can you just let them go?!”
Shiro glanced at the grand vizier, but said nothing, despite his agreement with the man. He should attack Baracci and his men, finish them off.
But could they… finish them off?
“Not now,” Jessamine said to Shiro. “Another time, perhaps.”
The invaders had turned their backs to them and disappeared through the the archway as they made their way toward the palace entrance down the stairs.
Shiro breathed in deeply and glanced back at Jadu. “I am sorry. They were more powerful than I had expected. I thought they would have wanted to take the satrap alive.”
“They did,” Jadu said. “Until the Kalushani army arrived to stop them. They rather preferred him dead… than to fail capturing him. Those retched dogs!”
“Shiro,” Jessamine said. “The men… they still need your help.”
He looked at her, the sounds of the outside battle still raging. In the moment, he had forgotten about it completely. With a nod, he said, “Hai.” Then he looked to Jadu. “We must get you to safety.”