We need to charge them.
"There's at least a hundred of them. We're not going to charge them."
They'll run. I'm Drynwyn, the fucking sword of Rhydderch Hael. Bigger armies than this have fled, screaming at my fiery approach. Let's go, girlfriend.
I felt the sword prod me in the small of my back as if it was a particularly impatient OAP in the queue at the post office. One that had just spontaneously caught fire. And was screaming for the chance to bathe in the blood of its enemies. Otherwise known as a standard Tuesday morning on Dudley High Street.
"Well, now you’re Drynwyn, the sword of Someone-Who's-Never-Held-a-Fucking-Sword-in-Her-Life. So you need to settle." I felt the flames behind me die back down.
I was worried about the wizard.
Who am I kidding? I was pretty damn concerned about the spearmen, the archers and the horsemen too. But I sensed the most pressing danger was the bearded guy in the flowing robes and the extremely pointy hat.
Drynwyn pushed me again in the back, and I staggered forward one step. All you need to do is hold me in the right direction, and I will fuck them up for you.
"Quit it! They're not going to let me get close enough for you to do anything. There's one path out of here, and it leads straight into the middle of them. I'll be a pincushion before taking more than a few steps: there's not going to be any hacking and slashing. I think I'm going to try to beam us out of here."
I dropped into my artist's studio and tried to flick the page back to the field of the giant purple cock. But nothing happened.
"Why's it not working?"
What are you trying to do?
"From what Merlin said, I should be able to fast-travel back to my last location. It worked when I tried it before: this is how he showed me how to do it."
But there's another cultivator out there.
"So?"
Are you a fucking moron? You can't fast-travel from within another cultivator's aura. That's like qi-travel 101. I'm a fucking sword, and even I know that. There's mould growing on that cheese over there that knows that, and it is shaking its mycelium in disbelief at your ignorance. You are a fucking dullard.
I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose. I was suddenly very aware of how much I'd been relying on Merlin to cheat code my way through things. "As I said, I don't really understand how any of this works. I've only been here a few days. So, no beaming out of fights with cultivators?"
No. But why would you want to flee? Rhydderch never ran away from a fight in his life. Even when naked, surprised in his bed-chamber and with me locked away in storage, he'd still take on six, sometimes seven foes in one go. Oh, the cries and moans from those he bought low.
"But Rhydderch's now dead, and you're my sword. So shut up whilst I think of a plan."
I poked my head out around the wall of the gatehouse to get more of a sense of where things were at. Dick #1 was taking an especial interest in the dragon's body. Dick #2 seemed more involved in setting up a perimeter around the castle. My extremely limited knowledge of military tactics had all been gleaned from the Total War series, but even I knew a competent pincer manoeuvre being prepared when I saw one. If I stepped out onto the path, I'd be exposed to attack from both sides.
For fuck's sake.
Why did I have to come up against competent bad guys? Like, this felt like a good plot moment for me to come up against the Arthurian equivalent of stormtroopers - cool-looking but ultimately useless cannon fodder that I could carve up with limited danger and learn something new about my spiritual journey - and instead, it looked like the deathtroopers had turned up and were going to tear me a new one the second they saw me.
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I watched Dick #1 call the wizard over, and they both looked down at the dragon's body. I couldn't shake the feeling that, despite everything, the cultivator was the biggest of my problems.
If you're that worried about the wizard, throw me at him.
"Excuse me?"
The cultivator. Throw me at him. I'll fuck him up, and when he's dead, you can fast-travel away. Not that I'm on board with the 'flee-like-a-panty-wetting-child' plan, but I'm all about the solutions.
I looked at the wizard. He was several hundred feet away, up the hill and to my right. I'm not saying it was quite magic bullet, second gunmen on the grassy knoll territory, but it was certainly a testing shot.
"I can't throw you that far!"
What the fuck is the matter with you? You're a cultivator. You tore the head off a dragon. You are the motherfucking bearer of Drynwyn! I'm not going to allow you to crap all over my reputation by pissing around hiding in the shadows. Now, in the words of my late lamented bearer: "Get off your knees, strap this on, and brace yourself for something memorable." Throw me at the fucking pointy head!
Reader, I did.
*
"Well, that worked out pretty much as I expected."
As I watched Drynwyn arc through the air, I reflected - slightly too late - on the fact that just because my time training in the cave had massively increased my strength, it did not necessarily mean there had been a commensurate improvement in my physical skills.
Sure, I was now in possession of a cultivator's body who had spent considerable time buffing it up and tempering it with all sorts of natural goodness. And, sure, I had further enhanced that body with God knows how many days of time-looped training and the Qi of an ancient spirit beast.
But, despite all that, I still had the hand-eye coordination and innate athletic skill of Mr Tumble. In fact, I'm doing the Tumblester dirty there. That guy could juggle.
I'd given the 'it's not the size that counts, it's how you use' chat to a plethora of insecure beaus in my time; and even, on rare occasions, might have meant it. And it turned out this homily was as true when throwing flaming swords at wizards as anything else.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I had thrown Drynwyn at the wizard with all the skill of Lenny gently stroking his fiftieth mouse of the day.
Good news: the sword flew through the air like a veritable Exocet missile. I was amazed there wasn't a sonic boom as it streaked from my hand like an arrow of flaming, inevitable death.
Bad news: my appalling aim propelled it at least half a mile to the left of the intended target.
Good news: the throw was so bad no one in the besieging army noticed I did anything at all.
Bad news: I'd just, quite literally, thrown away one of my few remaining advantages.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Drynwyn's voice gradually faded away in my mind as it vanished off and up beyond the horizon. There was a tiny part of me that had always wanted to be good at sports that grinned at that throw. The rest of me, the parts that were keen to avoid immediate death, pounded it into the dirt. Ah, just like being back at school.
Whilst this was going on, the wizard and Dick #1 seemed to be having a very intense conversation, leading to Dick clocking the wizard. Then they both looked my way, and I realised my time was running out.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only person that realised when you found a dead dragon, the next obvious thing was to come and look for its hoard.
I cast around for anything that might help me get out of this hole. My eyes fell on a bunch of other swords lying around on the ground. Drynwyn had insisted it would be disloyal to store any of them on my looter's page.
I picked one up, drew it, and waggled it experimentally. I sensed describing what I was doing as 'waggling' probably demonstrated my precise level of incompetence.
Things were looking bleak.
One thing of which I was sure was that I wasn't going to let myself be captured by the Dicks. They'd made clear the direction in which their appetites lay when it came to prisoners, and, to be frank, I was a smoking hottie. They were not going to get the satisfaction. If I went with Drynwyn's plan and just charged, I reckoned either the archers or the wizard would take me out before I had to think about anything else.
However, for someone who’d recently sought to examine the bumper of a truck whilst it was still moving, I was oddly no longer all that excited to do the mortal coil shuffle off. I kept hearing Ealdgyð talking about different sorts of grief. It felt oddly disrespectful to her for me not to try and get back to my own timeline and fix things with Zizzie. Of course, slightly lower down on my fuck-giving scale, I also idly worried about where Merlin was and what he would do when his last potential apprentice died. It sounded like I was the absolute final option on the table when it came to saving the world.
It was quite a conundrum.
But ... fuck it. Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Even if I wanted them to be.
Brandishing the sword above my head, I stepped out from the shadows and charged the small force.
You live by the meme; you die by the meme.
"For Frodo!!!!" I bellowed.