Private Tales End This Way

[Elliot Aldmar]

WEST OF ALLIRIA​

Through the rain and the mist of the early gray morning, the company rode. Twenty men strong, damp cloaks on their backs, their horses trotting through the mud of the road, yet they were of high spirits. Their contract was easy money, easy money. Find a group of deserters from the Allirian Guard, and kill them.

They did not know that the company's very own forward scout, cousin to one of the deserters, had sold them out.

Just ahead, a hamlet. The mercenaries talked among themselves.

"Goddamn, I can't wait to get out of this fuckin' rain."

"What's the matter, you don't like it when the gods piss on ya?"

"Hell, you think I'm Jarrod? I'm not into that."

"My man Jarrod here survived the fiercest yellow rainstorms from those lovely ladies' nether-regions."

"That why he's the stankiest man in the company?"

"You know that goes to Davies. Hey Davies! How many times you shit on your heels now?"

"Latrine, three. Me, zero. Oh, and go fuck yourself."

"Count yourself blessed, Davies," said Elliot Aldmar. "The gods are giving you a much needed bath."

"Shouldn't you be in a cave somewhere, drow?"

"Then who's going to teach you how to aim? Jarrod's girls?" Elliot teased his fellow bowman.

"Ha! Then he'll always be able to hit the enemy square in the face!"

The whole company burst out laughing, and they rode into the hamlet. Elliot missed the name of the place, but it wouldn't matter much. Grunner's Grimhounds (Captain Grunner was quite unduly proud of himself for such a name for his company) wouldn't be here long. The hamlet was one of many small towns built up along the roads leading to and from Alliria, a small collection of homes, surrounded by fields, with quaint shops and a small inn and tavern for travelers. The Grimhounds wouldn't wait out the rain here; just stop for a warm meal, maybe grab some provisions, and then mount up and follow the trail of the deserters.

No one was outside on the muddy road. Which wasn't surprising. But it was also perfect for the deserters--none of the mercenaries would see any of the nervous villagers, would know of the ambush they were walking into.

Until it was too late.

At the head of the mounted company, the pointman stiffened sharply, then teetered to one side and toppled out of his saddle and fell down dead to the mud, one foot still stuck in a stirrup. None even heard the arrow being loosed over the sound of the pouring rain. The forward scout beside him acted surprised.

Captain Grunner, a couple horses behind the fallen pointman, said, "What the fuck?"

A rock from a sling clanged into the Captain's helm, knocking him temporarily senseless, and a hail of arrows and crossbow shots from both sides of the street opened up on the company. Window shutters and doors from all around them had burst open and from those dark interiors of the homes their assailants harried them with their projectiles. The forward scout who had betrayed the company went riding off hurriedly down the street.

"AMBUSH! It's a fuckin' ambush!"

Chaos and blurring motion. The mercenaries were in disarray and their Captain clung disoriented to his horse's neck and men abandoned their mounts and jumped to the slog of mud and scrambled to retreat from the open road. Davies's horse reared in fear and it slipped on the mud and fell backward and crushed the man by falling atop him. Deserters emerged from the houses they'd hidden within and engaged the mercenaries in close combat, with men from both sides slipping and sliding across the mud and tripping over each other and collapsing atop each other in tangled sprawls. Jarrod was dragged down by four men, and though he wore full plate armor, they buried his face into the mud and held him there as he kicked and struggled and soon his lungs filled with mud and he drowned in it and his kicking ceased.

Elliot, his armor covered in mud and his face covered in mud and his white hair made brown by the same, had hurried to the rear of the column. He'd stabbed one deserter on his way, and he did not know if, in all of the clamor and all of the dirty melee, his retreat had been seen or not by any others.

He kicked open the door of a small general store right at the edge of town, where the company had passed into the hamlet only moments ago, laughing and riding and with all being well. His muddy boots slid hard on the wooden floor and Elliot went stumbling haphazardly down onto his face and there on the floor he left a filthy shadow of mud.

He rolled over onto his back. In a flash, his Black Bow was in hand and arrow nocked and pointed toward the open door.

He breathed heavily, fiercely, through his nose. In. Out. In. Out.

The pouring rain outside. The blanket of serene white clouds laid over the sky and the thin mist hanging lazily in the air. The distant, final shouts and screams from the ambush. The open door swayed a little from the wind. Swayed inward. Creaking. Swayed outward. Creaking. A small roll of thunder, far away.

Elliot's wide, alert eyes on the open doorway. Only a vague awareness that there were a few others in the general store.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She had taken poorly, which was not unexpected. It was, however, inconvenient and exceptionally unpleasant.

Her flight from Alliria - if it could be called such - had been uneventful, her passage marked by none. She had cleared the part of the city she had been born and raised in that first night, and been to the outskirts scarcely a day later, keeping to the less traveled ways as she saw then. She spent the time trying not to consider the anguish her parents would feel, finding her letter atop her pillow. She couldn't think on it too much, else she would find herself wandering back to the comfortable life she had been living.

Comfortable. A prison, a prison with silk sheets and everything she could want handed to her. Everything except her freedom to choose her own way forward. Mother clung to some sad hope of a future for her daughter, as did Father.

The truth was...there would be no future. Grand ambitions were all for naught; the rattle in her chest warned her the the fleeting nature of life. Even if she seemed hale now, that could change any time. Any time, without warning.

Instead of dwelling on it, Raea - once Elena - forced a smile onto her face. Even when she did not feel it, she still forced herself to smile. The world had enough troubles without bearing hers as well; the bitterness of a life cut short would only sour what remained, and she wished to try - to try with all her might - to make that remainder illuminating. To her, to those she met.

Unspoken, the desire to create some legacy burned bright. A thing reserved for the old...burned in her heart.

Five days out of Alliria, sticking to the back roads, the rain began. Seven days out, Raea felt the first stirrings of fever, and by the morning of the eighth, stumbling into the little hamlet along the traders route, Raea was forced to halt and take a room in the local inn. There, racked by fevers and the delirious dreams they brought with them - nightmares that made her twist under sheets that seemed as parchment - she lie as the wintry weather rolled over the high plains.

***

A door creaked open.

It was early of a morning, and the first time that she had stirred from her restless slumber since she had taken the room the day before, and an unhealthy smell of sickness tainted the air. The shadowy shape in the doorway wrinkled its indistinct nose, and shut the door behind as they went.

The girl lying under the covers, joints aching as if packed full of broken glass, stared at the ceiling in misery. Her chest rattled with every breath, but strangely she was not bereft of her strength this day. Just as well, since the commotion earlier that morning had roused her. Down the hall, towards the front of the inn; the sound of breaking crockery and shouting, the cry of pain. On its own, she might have dismissed it as a dispute between the owners of the inn...

...but the disturbance had been more than here. Out a window, she had seen others, armed and clearly up to no good, moving about.

A fog filled her head, but not enough to dull her wits completely. Bandits, else some other kind of scofflaws, had invaded the town. To what end, she was uncertain; there had been no carousing, no jubilant celebration at their good fortune. Only brooding silence, and an insistence that the denizens of the town remain quiet, and indoors. They had not bothered her, of course; she had been indisposed by her own problems.

Staring at the ceiling, alone with her thoughts. Somewhere outside, muted by the falling rain, angry screaming that cut off abruptly. Within the inn, hushed whispering. Something was clearly very wrong, and she was irritated that she had slept through some vital thing. With many a stifled groan, the girl pulled herself from bed.

***

Creeping down a hallway was a terribly difficult thing to do in a dress, and even moreso when everything hurt like blazes. It was not only the sound of her own footsteps and clothing that were a concern, but the constant threat that a stab of pain might make her gasp at an inopportune moment.

The scene before her was clear as day, though her mind struggled to keep up with it. The common area of the inn - if it could even be called that - was clear of people. Well, mostly clear; the owners of the establishment, husband and wife, sat against a wall in a a corner. The man was indignant looking, while his was was pale with fear. The reason was quite clear: the man standing near the window at the front of the room, a cocked crossbow in hand. The shutters were only open far enough for him to see a narrow view of the street outside. The room was gloomy and dark, only a single lamp lit on a table in the middle.

The steel on her hip burned. It was out of place given her attire; trousers and shirt were away for washing with a local laundress, so all she had was a dress, ankle length skirts more cumbersome than she was willing to admit. The drab color belied the fine quality, but a dress was nothing to be caught in a fight in.

As she had often told herself, today was as good a day to die as any other. Maybe it would hurt less than her current misery; all she wished for was to make some positive change in the world with her passing. Better than dying in bed, after all.

She stepped from the hall, and started to cross the room, intent on...what? exactly? The owners of the inn both looked up in alarm at her arrival in their common room, the woman shaking her head in negation. Raea ignored them. She was intent on the fellow...

...until the coughing hit. The harsh, wet sound was impossible to hide, and for a moment she was lost to the pain of it. She couldn't help staggering against a table, holding herself up by sheer force of will. She didn't even see the deserter spin, crossbow trained on her in an instant. Blood and snot spattered on the table and floor in front of her, an evil smell wafting from the worst of it.

Eventually it passed.

"You gonna answer me, girl, or am I gonna have to stick a bolt in you?" This was coming from the deserter, his hard face completely and utterly devoid of compassion. Or emotion outside of anger. Raea struggled to stand aright again, trying to catch her breath. She raised a warding hand, speechless for the moment, but the point of the bolt never wavered.

"She's been here, and down since yesterday," the woman offered with a tremor of fear in her voice. "Sick. Weather turned on her while she was on the road, reckon, and-"

"Shut yer gob," the man with the crossbow said. "She can answer herself. She a big girl, ya?" There was a mean light in his eyes. No surprise there; given that he had imprisoned the rightful owners of this place in their own home, she could expect no less.

"Just....traveling," she managed at last. She felt - and looked - as though she was only held up by the chair she was leaning against. Not entirely true, but near enough for the moment. "What...what was the question again?"

"Dim, or acting it?" He spit to one side. "The fuck you doing out here? All you lot are supposed to stay in your rooms."

"Didn't...get that message," she said honestly.

He opened his mouth to say something cruel, likely, but outside a scream cut through the air. As suddenly as that, the fellow was turned back toward the window, and he began to utter oath after foul oath under his breath, "Don't fucking move, girl," he said. Slammed the shutters open, took aim at something, and fired.

Raea moved. She did not move particularly fast, and she had to fight stumbling on her skirts and from the awkwardness of her joints, but she moved nonetheless. Darting was not a good adjective, but close enough; she closed the distance between the man in the leathers even as he turned away from the window to reload his weapon. The look of surprise, and then rage on his face was comical to her for some reason.

She reached for the rapier at her hip, but the fellow was faster than she was, swung his discharged blow like a club and caught her across her shoulder as she turned into it to save her head from that blow. The explosion of pain was not really worth it, and she crashed into a table with her blade mostly drawn. The fellow reached for his own blade at his own hip. Rather than pick herself up from the shattered chair she'd landed on, she simply thrust at him from a recumbent position. It should not have worked, but rage and haste had made the fellow careless. That, and perhaps, the presumption that she was harmless.

The tip of the thin bladed weapon pierced his armor like a hot knife through butter, and however pained she was, however she labored to draw a proper breath, her aim was as true as ever. All those long hours spent with an instructor honing a skill that was more hobby than anything - back in better days, before things turned south - were paying off here.

Bright red blood flooded his mouth, drowned out his scream so that little more than a gurgle emerged. His lifeblood splashed over her as he clutched at the blade transfixing his heart, tearing his own hands to shreds trying to pluck the blade free.

He was dead before he hit the ground. His weight bore her weapon to the ground with him, and for a long moment she simple lay on the ground, gasping for breath with the hilt in her hand, the basket the only thing keeping it from crushing that delicate hand under his weight. In their corner, the owners of the inn sat, stunned.

And then got up.

Raea felt someone slipping hands under her armpits and lifting her up, and she offered no resistance. She did not release her grip on her blade, and it was with some difficulty that, once she came to her senses, the owners and herself managed to pull it from the locking flesh of the cadaver.

"You shouldn't have done that," the man said. There was some concern in his voice - and maybe later that would grow into fear or anger. Right now, though, he seemed happy enough. "The others, they will come-"

"Listen," Raea said. Paused to regain some composure. "Fighting. Someone is fighting back," she said, not knowing the full context of the situation any better than they. It wasn't as though the deserters were forthcoming with what they were doing and why.

"You shouldn't worry about that," the nameless woman said. Raea shook off their hands, and struggled back to her feet. "You've done more than you should," she added.

"Got to help them," Raea mumbled mostly to herself. The side she had been struck with the crossbow was starting to ache like blazes, but she ignored the pain. It wasn't her first rodeo, ignoring things that hurt. Hell, that was a matter of every day, to one degree or another. "You can stay...here, if you like. But...," she continued and put her blade back where it belonged. With a look of distaste, she knelt - carefully - to pick through the dead deserters body, and pulled a heavy bladed knife and the sheath for it off him. This she added to her own kit, and stood again using the help of the chair next to her. "If we don't, they will kill everyone," she said. Wasn't very sure of that, but then, she also believed the pitched battle was between the occupants of the village and the invaders.

The woman was wringing her hands, but the man shook his head. "You're a fool. Can barely stand. Don't owe anyone anything. You'll die, out there," he said.

Blood soaking the front of her dress, disheveled and knotted hair, face the color of ashes, she turned to look at the owner of the inn with solemn eyes. "Know," she said shortly. She headed towards the door outside, where the fighting sounded utterly mad, and paused at the door. "Sometimes....you have to pick your place," she said cryptically, and then ducked out the door into the rain. Took off running towards the mercantile, where her other things had been sent for cleaning. She needed to get out of this dress, into something more suitable.

Cold water sending shivers through a fever-racked frame, she didn't notice the two men tear off after her from one of the other houses. The melee down the road was winding down, bodies lying in the street like discarded puppets. She didn't have time to think of that just then; she was just interested in getting off the street.

One foot in front of the other. The general store, then...everything else.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Sploshes of rainwater puddles and the slick slapping of mud. Someone was coming.

"Do you aim to kill us?" came a taut, worried whisper of a woman from somewhere behind Elliot. One of the cowering villagers in the store. Elliot made a curt shushing noise with his tongue against his teeth, and neither he nor she nor any of the others said anything more.

A woman, wearing a bloodied dress, emerged hurriedly into the general store. From the cowering villagers came a couple small yelps of surprise. Elliot almost loosed his arrow and shot the woman, the very tips of his fingers just barely coiling back and catching the bowstring and stopping the arrow from sailing in flight, even if it advanced along the bow half an inch. So far as Elliot could tell from what he had seen, and from what he understood of the deserters' composition, they were all men.

He drew in a sharp breath, pinched his eyes shut for a moment, and uttered a low curse to himself. He had come that close to making a mistake, to having a lapse in discipline from the intensity of the moment, that could have costed both of them their lives. Both of them, because it entirely possible that he could find himself ill-prepared if--

A man in a chain hauberk and gambeson, armed with a shortsword, crashed through the open doorway not so long after the woman in the dress entered. Elliot loosed the arrow and it flew and penetrated the mask of the chain coif he wore and the man's muddy boots slipped on the floor as his head rocked back and he went down hard, his head smacking the floor before his heels. THUMP. THUMP-THUMP, the sound of his skull and his boots hitting the wood.

The second man chasing the woman entered, vaulting over his fallen companion, by some miracle not slipping when he landed, and he lunged for Raea, axe in hand.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Running is a mistake. Running is a mistake. Running is a mistake...

The line circled through her head over and over as she made her way through the rain, trying with little success to ignore the icy water running down her back, between her breasts, down her legs. It was unpleasant but it was not by any stretch of the imagination the worst thing she was blessed with that moment.

She couldn't breath. The pain was nothing, the cold was nothing, everything meant nothing to her as she bolted into the room, stumbling and falling. The man chasing her could have cut her down, and it would not have mattered one whit to her. She could not breath.

She hit the ground even as Elliot put an arrow into the first of the assailants she did not even know was following hers' face, and the force of hitting the floor drove a thick wad of bloody mucus from her lungs. She sucked a ragged lungful of air in, then then broke off into a coughing fit. Rolled over, saw the axe-wielding mercenary assaulting her, and her blood-shot eyes widened in horror; still struggling to regain her breath after the ill-advised marathon, she managed to get the liberated knife out of its sheath only just in time to deflect the downward stroke enough so that instead of splitting her skull or her chest - do me a favor! - it just bit into the floor and sliced into her shoulder.

It was not a bad wound, but it bled. It still registered low on her priority list at the moment.

She kicked off of the fallen swordsman, rolling maladroitly to one side, cursing raggedly all the way. "Leave me....alone," she managed raggedly round a stray cough or two. She should have been able to pop up. If she were healthy she might have been.

Instead, she kicked the bastard right in the fork, as hard as her slight build would allow. Chain or no, leather or no, the effect was immediately; the man folded up on her foot, and she scuttled away, still not aware of the others in here. She left a smear of blood behind her, her breath rattling loud enough for all to hear.

Outside, angry shouts rose.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

She had a weapon. Saved herself with it. Bought time. In the immediacy of combat there was no time for clarifying questions. They shared a foe, and that was what mattered.

Elliot got up from the floor and into a squat. He tore off his heavy, mud-coated cloak, and reached back for an arrow from his quiver. Pulled one out as the woman's kick made the deserter flinch and seize up and clutch at his nethers with his free hand. Kneeling, Elliot nocked the arrow and pulled back the string.

He whistled. Curt, low, and sharp.

It caught the deserter's attention and he glanced in Elliot's direction. Elliot shot him through the opening of his coif and the man's legs got tangled in those of his fellow deserter as he fell, swinging him toward one of the shelves and he smacked his head, his arm, and his chest into it and with a clatter he and a rain of assorted goods came crashing down to the floor.

Outside the rain was steady, its patter against the wooden roof of the store, against the glass of its storefront window, in the mud of the road, all constant. Outside, indistinct shouts. Elliot couldn't tell if there were any of Grunner's Grimhounds still left alive or not.

"Was that...all of them?" said the cautious storekeeper, an elderly man. From the earnest and hopeful way he had spoken, it was difficult to say if he meant all of the deserters, or just those who might be coming into the general store.

Maybe there was time. Maybe there was not. Regardless, even if neither Elliot nor the woman in the bloodsoaked dress had been seen by more than these two deserters, when the battle outside was over and the deserters began policing up their own, they would come looking. They might just be in the mood to plunder the general store whether or not they truly cared about their comrades.

Elliot stood and stepped over the two bodies and quickly, quietly, closed the store's front door. He dragged the first body over to the door, then dumped the second on top, making an impromptu barricade.

He turned. Got a look at the woman in the dress. He walked briskly toward her, squatted down close. Her breathing was peculiar--to Elliot it sounded almost as if she'd been stabbed through the chest, through her lungs.

"Is that your blood?" he asked of her dress. He had seen the axe clip her shoulder, thought he had seen her cough and blood come out, but he was unsure of the true extent of her injuries.

And she was the only one around here who had a weapon, and the will to wield it.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"...all of them?"

As suddenly as that, Raea became aware of the others round her. Before, the pounding of the blood in her ears and the lack of breath had drowned out all but the most immediate of problems, but now that the most immediate problems both had feathered shafts sticking from their faces, she could address the other things.

With slightly wild eyes, she took in her surrounds. Her back was pressed to a table with a square base that held a variety of livestock tack on it. Her blood was smeared across the white paint, and rolled down her back in a thin stream. The pain of that wound paled in comparison to the other hurts, of course. Every third or fourth breath came with a rattling cough that brought more foulness into her mouth, turned her stomach a touch.

The man that knelt before her was strange to her. She barked a short laugh at her own thought, was rewarded with another short fit of coughing. Of course he was a stranger. She was here, too. "Some," she managed after a moment. The lassitude in her limbs was fading, finally, and although her pale skin still held a bluish cast to it, she struggled to sit up. She still held the bloody knife tightly in her hand. "Mostly...mostly some...some bastard at the...the inn's," she managed, panting and struggling not to hack and cough any more. A part of her felt liberated to use such uncouth language without being chastised for it.

She struggled to her feet, neither asking for help nor taking it if offered. Looked like hell, felt like hell...but felt more alive than she had in years. Not entirely certain of whether that was a good thing or bad, yet, but an improvement over lying abed for days or weeks. Waiting. Waiting.

She could deal with pain. Had dealt with it for long years.

Leaning heavily against the table, dripping a little blood on the floor and spitting the foul slime she coughed up onto the floor, careless of the scandalized look the people at the back gave at that, she shook her head. "More of them? Must...must stop this." Shivering, looking at the floor with eyes squeezed shut. "People here don't...they don't deserve this."

After a moment, she managed to straighten, to compose herself a little better. She thrust the heavy knife back into its sheath, check to make sure the rapier was still in place at her waist. Her skirts dragged at her like lead weights, sodden with water as they were, and after a moment standing there, shivering and with cold water running down her body, she struggled to shed the clothes, pulling the sodden clothing over her head. "Need my shirt...and...," she said, but was too muffled by her disrobing for the rest to be understood.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Some bastard at the inn's. Good. One less deserter, and the woman wasn't tethered to a slow expiring through grievous exsanguination. The villagers of the hamlet were willing to place themselves at the mercies (more likely, predations) of the deserters, but Elliot was not. This woman was not. And there they were bound by circumstance.

Though not as injured as her dress made her appear to be, the woman nevertheless had a harsh cough. The rain, the cold winds, perhaps, conspired to make her ill. Or her adrenaline masked the true extent of her injuries. But so long as her ability to wield that rapier did not lag behind her spirit, she could fight.

Elliot stood when she stood. Briefly glanced back toward the front door and the storefront window--no sight nor sound of other deserters. Yet.

She leaned heavily on a nearby table, and at the sight Elliot reconsidered her capacity to fight. She coughed up blood. Blood and mucus, it seemed. It was as if both of his guesses concerning her coughs were correct. Yet what she said following belayed her haggard appearance and posture.

"Stop this," Elliot repeated lowly. As inviting as the prospect of earning all of the coin for the Grimhounds' contract was, of putting all of that currency toward his own goals, Elliot reckoned that the risk far outweighed the reward. Was it possible? Maybe, with the flawless execution of ambush tactics and turning the copious mud to their advantage. But...

Need my shirt...and...

The storekeeper, invigorated by something he could do and the small little sense of normalcy from Raea's request, said quickly, "Oh, oh, oh, yes. Yes, your shirt, your clothes, of course." And he set about to collect them from behind his counter.

Elliot, as the woman was pulling her clothes up over her head, reached over and took hold and helped pull the skirt up and loose, freeing her face from behind the veil of the sodden garment. He looked her in the eye, a close inspection. His tone was level and firm.

"You're coughing up blood and phlegm. You have trouble standing. Tell me the truth, not what you want: can you fight?"

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Stripped practically naked in front of strangers, she did not appear to care. The cold raised gooseflesh across her skin, and she shivered where she stood, waiting for the storekeeper to bring her her garments. Glassy eyes, blue-tinted lips compressed in a line as she considered the question, wrapping her free arm round herself to try to keep some of her body heat in.

"Don't know," she said finally. Shook her head, gave a low, raspy laugh that carried with it a fair measure of pain. "Does not matter, no choice. Even if...if I had a choice..." She shook her head again, trying to dispel the cobwebs. "I still wouldn't turn away." The image on a man and a woman cowering on the floor of their own place as a single man held them hostage in their own home. The thought of others being imposed upon similarly.

It made her angry. It reminded her of the tales of horror from the Shallows, where the destitute were taken of advantage of by those with the will and the strength to do so.

The shopkeeper returned with her clothes, and she snatched them from him as though he were a thief. Tottering a bit, she managed to get the legs on, and then worked the shirt over her head. A little steadier, a little better now that she wasn't soaked to the bone and freezing. Well, not as much anyway.

She carefully bent over and retrieved the delicate rapier and the heavy knife. She considered Elliot's bow, but knew even if she found one she neither had the strength to draw nor the skill to hit anything if she did. Her breathing was not much better, but the coloring in her lips had turned an ashy pale instead of blue, at least. Regardless of her apparent illness, she straightened and fought off the chills by sheer force of will.

She could push through it. Though she hurt badly at that very moment, she had found something that she could lean on: a cause.

"Raea," she said in a clipped voice. "Raea Stormcrow," she added. Adventuress extraordinaire, slayer of bandits, traveler of about forty miles. "Odds not good," she said suddenly. "What to do?" No matter what. She would not abandon these people no matter what.

Today was as good a day to die as any other.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Don't know. It was the most honest answer she could have given. She'd killed or injured "the bastard" at the inn, injured the second deserter who'd come into the general store, and she may or may not be able to keep up that momentum.

To this Elliot gave a slow, affirming nod. The storekeeper, looking somewhat bashful from the woman's state of dress, came by with her clothes and offered them to her with his head bowed and eyes averted. Elliot watched in a perfunctory manner as she donned more battle-ready attire, thinking further on what she'd said.

She wouldn't turn away. It seemed to him a suicidal notion, given the circumstances. A faulty application of one's commitment, for presumably she would have felt this way even if he wasn't here and thus the chances for victory made better. For Elliot, if the situation turned heavily out of his favor, it would do no good and would fail to serve his ethic if he stayed. Knowing the distinction between bravery and foolhardiness was instructive indeed.

Yet there remained a fair enough chance for Elliot to finish the contract and to secure those resources without seeing them split amongst the Grimhounds. The deserters, from what Elliot had been able to tell, had shed most of their distinctive armor and identifying markings and clothing--all the better to travel faster and to be more inconspicuous. It left them vulnerable, even if they had the advantage of numbers. They were all from the same unit (they'd hung their commanding officer before escaping Alliria), and so they worked well together, but the mist and the rain and the mud and the hamlet itself could be used against them. Yes. A fair enough chance.

And the woman, Raea, looked less likely to perish from cold and fever.

"Elliot Aldmar." He held his Bow in one hand and placed the other on her shoulder, small bits of mud from his gloves sticking to her shirt. He kept his voice low, to make it difficult for the storekeeper and the other villagers to hear him properly, "Listen, we can fight, but if fortune turns against us, we're gone. Fighting a lost battle won't win anyone anything."

If your enemy was insurmountable in a certain time and place, disengage. Come back, if you can, with some form of advantage. Such was Elliot's way of evening the scales of strength.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She nodded at his given name, offered a smile through gritted teeth. Push through, she just had to push through. The dull ache from an axe through flesh? Someone else's problem. The stabbing pain in her chest? No big deal. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would be true.

"Fighting a lost battle isn't fruitless," she said. The way she said it could have been taken many ways, and that was just as well. As far as she was concerned, she had been fighting a losing battle for six years. All the fighting would not change the outcome, for her at least. Fighting here might allow one or two to escape.

She did not press it, though. Elliot was not some foolhardy, altruistic fool. No, that was her place in the world. She could spend her life like it was a coin and she would lose relatively little in that trade. It was someone else to gain, not her.

"I c-cannot wield a b-bow," she said, biting back on the chills some more. She wouldn't give in. She found some cloth on a shelf, a bolt of something to be used for a purpose other than what she did - cutting a piece free with the knife, shoving it up and under the collar of her shirt, stuffing it into the cut there. Her blood had already stained her shirt. "I have to...have to fight up close. No strength to draw," she said. "Couldn't hit the broad side of a mule-drawn wagon anyway."

With a grimace, she moved away from anything to catch herself. Push her way through. Outside, the cold rain continued to fall in sheets and the sounds of fighting had died down almost in their entirety. "Need a plan. Need the lay of the land," she said. They needed to know what and where so they could decide the how and when.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot checked the pouch of bone dust on his belt as Raea fashioned a makeshift bandage for her wound. He already knew that it was wet, but that didn't matter. A sufficient amount. Good. He didn't lose much, if any, after his tumbles in the mud during his escape from the ambush.

He might well need as much magic as he had. The woman Raea was far more committed to seeing the hamlet rid of the deserters than Elliot. Admirable. He didn't know if she was from here (doubtful) or if she knew someone here whose life was in peril (possible), but committed to the task she was. Her conviction had at least done the feat of overturning Elliot's gut instinct, which was to run and abandon the contract, thinking it lost beyond a reasonable chance.

She had to fight up close, she said. So long as her illness didn't get the better of her at a crucial moment, it would do. One close, one ranged, between the two of them--they could certainly work with it.

Elliot roughly brushed some mud-matted hair back from the side of his face, behind his shoulders. "I was with the dead mercenaries out there." He nodded jerked his head back toward the barricaded door. "Contracted to kill these men who've taken the town. They're deserters from the Allirian Guard, all from the same unit. The count we received was twenty-one deserters in total, and that's accurate. Take away the two men here, one I killed on the way here, the bastard from the inn, that's seventeen. Maybe less if the Grimhounds took some with them, but likely not more. Seventeen."

Elliot quickly turned his attention to the storekeeper. "Hey."

The storekeeper flinched behind his counter, as did the few other villagers holed up in the general store. "Y-Yes?"

"What's the layout of this hamlet like?"

"We just...just really have the one road through town. Just the one road."

"Everything's built up along this road?"

"Everything. Mostly. Y-Yes. Maybe a house or two off the path, but yes. Mostly."

Elliot reached back with his free hand and touched the tip of each arrow in his quiver, getting a quick count. He looked to Raea as he did so. Said, "We can't take them all at once. That's for certain."

The first workings of the plan she'd mentioned, being batted back and forth between them.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Spitting thick, foul-tasting slime onto the storekeeper's blood=spattered floor, she nodded at the words. Fighting to push the pain aside - the same old war, merely the next battle in the campaign, she pressed a hand to her temple.

"Not at once," she agreed thickly.

She was the daughter of merchants. Well to do merchants, to be sure, but not warriors. No military might in the family, no adventurer extraordinaire, no brothers regaling all with tales of derring-do. Just the sickly, slowly dying daughter of merchants. Elliot was by and large far more qualified to come up with some kind of sensible, well thought out plan. He did not, yet.

"Narrow spaces between houses," she said suddenly, harsh rattle in the back of her throat. "Saw them when I...when I came in. One can hold for a time. The other..." She paled a bit at a particularly vicious stab of pain, soldiered on. A distraction. "A distraction," she said aloud. "You, with your bow..."

She could run through the streets and perhaps draw some of them. A simple plan - attract some, lead them into a narrow alley where she could turn and face them one at a time, while Elliot cut them down from behind and from on high. It would only work one time, of course...but they would not be expecting some villein woman to offer any resistance. She wasn't even the least ashamed to take advantage of any advantages she could.

Life and death and all. To see these people could carry on after was a worthy enough foal.

"Only work once," she said with some confidence forced in there. "Maybe take five, six. More, maybe."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Those narrow spaces off of the muddy main road would have to suffice. With fortune's favor, they'd be able to draw only a portion of the remaining deserters.

You, with your bow...

He caught her meaning intuitively. "I'll have your back. Just hold them." Rapiers, Elliot found, were underestimated quite often by others of the mercenary trade. The same probably held true for run-of-the-mill guardsmen, and likely anyone impressed by the sheer size and bulk of a weapon rather than its actual functionality. The rapier was a superb defensive (let alone offensive) tool, even discounting the possible underestimation from the deserters, and Raea could hold a fair number of them at bay in the narrow alleys.

Enough time to shoot them in the back. And then...

"I know some necromancy," Elliot said, point blank. Reactions to this often varied, but the dire nature of the situation might alleviate the news, should the woman have reservations about it. "Those five or six go down, I'll even the odds against the rest."

Summoning Skeletal Warriors, and having the time to get them armed and ready before the other deserters could do anything about it, would help tremendously. A Corpse Explosion, being as they were in the middle of a hamlet, would be a last resort. But in either case, it all depended on the success of their initial ambush. Raea was right. It would only work once.

Another steady roll of thunder some few miles distant rattled the front window of the shop.

"Hey, where's the backdoor?" Elliot called to the storekeeper.

The storekeeper poked his head up from behind the counter. Pointed vaguely off to one corner of the store where a short hall lead away, then worked up the nerve to say, "Oh, oh, it's this way. F-Follow me."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Magic.

She had always felt that she should be able to tap that primal power herself, but despite the best tutors money could by, the arcane arts had ever eluded her. Always, at the back of her mind, she felt that it was somehow wrong that she shouldn't be able to. Not all who dwelt upon the land could use such talents, but whenever someone called upon the aether...

...something within her resonated. She had mentioned it before, but none had been able to determine why, anymore than they could teach her to shift a single leaf via sorcery.

She nodded once. She held reservations about the darker arts, as they were perceived...but now was not the time to comment on them. A soldiers tools were what they were; a sword was no less a tool of death than the risen bones of a defeated foe. A crooked smile crossed her face, sickly in nature; was she little more than risen bones herself? More truth to that statement, even in her head as it was.

The weight of this plan, then, settled on her shoulders. For a brief moment she questioned herself, that she was up to this. Some small trace of it must have shown on her face, but she shook her head and banished the doubts. The cold, the running, the wet. The fighting. All of it was necessary.

"There is n-no need to fear us," she said as she stood straighter, and moved to towards the door at the back. "Wait....wait until we have their a-attention, and then...rally the others...," she said. She did not expect any aid from the villagers. But the offer had to be made, every motion made. Every step of the dance followed through.

The sound of rain drumming on the roof made her shiver. "Well?" She said of Elliot, steeling herself for the icy cold to come.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot followed after the storekeeper, the hall he led him and Raea down terminating with the backdoor. The storekeeper lifted up the door bar, paused for a moment to consider what Raea had said.

"Yes. Yes, of course." The tone in which the storekeeper had spoken didn't inspire much confidence in Elliot. Somehow it was balanced on a tight rope of indecipherability, wherein it seemed equally plausible that he would rally the villagers and not. Best not to count them in.

The storekeeper pulled open the door for them, a rush of the rainstorm's cold air flowing into the hallway and biting at Elliot's exposed skin and damp clothes. The rain was falling steadily outside, the mist obscuring things beyond a stone's throw in a hazy veil of white.

Well?

"Let's go." Elliot took one step, his next destined to cross the threshold of the portal and step outside onto the wet ground. But he stopped. Turned suddenly and placed a hand on Raea's shoulder and leaned a touch down and in, saying, "Don't be a hero."

He let it linger for a moment. The woman had drive--that was indisputable. She knew what she wanted to do, and she wasn't going to let anything stop her. The problem that she, and indeed all who challenged the adversities laid before them by fortune and circumstance, had to content with was that the world did not conform to one's will. One's grasp extended or receded by many factors. Raea's sickness, exacerbated by the cold and likely soon by the slippery mud, threatened to leave her even more overmatched against the deserters. And Elliot didn't want to see her dying a death which amounted to nothing. If things went wrong, he could only hope a misbegotten ideal didn't lead her into an early--fruitless--grave.

He gestured his head toward the open doorway.

Then went outside. And, with the skill of a man who surely employed such maneuvers in the past, he scaled the side of the general store and caught hold of the rooftop and pulled himself up, saying as he did, "I'll be above, trailing you," and adding before leaping across to the adjacent house, "On your mark."

And with that he all but disappeared. Keeping low, and his movements covert.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Don't be a hero. She blinked at the familiar touch, but did not recoil from it. Instead, she looked into his eyes. Dark jade reflected the light blue of his eyes in their glassy surface, conveyed a sense of determination that beggared belief. Somewhere in that look, resignation and bone-deep weariness swam alongside that determination.

"Not to w-worry," she said in low tones. "No one would mistake me f-for a h-hero." No rancor, no despair in the tone - only the simplest and plainest of truths.

He lead the way and she followed, stepping out into the cold when every fiber of her being cried out against subjecting herself to more misery. Misery earned in protecting people she did not know, who would not thank her with any real zeal and would forget her five minutes after she left. Elliot immediately scaled a wall - a feat she had to not gape at, given the rain-slick surface involved - as though walking down a hallway. She merely nodded at his words in acknowledgement. There were no words she could offer that would change anything, and so she did not waste her precious breath and energy saying anything at all.

Saying the words of the plan and execution were two very different things. Standing there outside the door, shivering as cold water penetrated and soaked her clothes and ran down hot skin, she wondered - briefly - if this was a mistake.

No accolades. No thanks. In fact, no help from those she sought to aid. On the surface, it was a fools errand, a complete waste of her strength. Of her life, come to it; she had so little of it left that every second that she burned was precious beyond imagining. But what of they? The words whispered through her mind, but the answer was there alongside it. One of the reasons she had gone forth into the world in the first place.

To give someone else a chance that I was not given, of course. There was a little bitterness in her thoughts, but rather than allow that to twist her intentions into something borne of ugly intentions, she forced a smile on her face. There was no one there to see it, but that didn't matter.

She left the alley shortly thereafter, trying to keep the shivering to a minimum. In the street, the detritus of a one-sided battle lie in the open for all to see; street churned to thick mud stained red and less pleasant colors but spilled blood and bile. Bodies twisted in death, limbs broken, severed, mutilated. She was no military woman, no general, no gifted tactician, but even she could read the flow of the fight.

She almost missed the pair of man moving through the street turning over dead men, picking over their persons to loot the bodies. Obviously, the deserters had few scruples about much of anything.

"Hey!" One of the pair stood suddenly, head snapping towards the motion that was herself. She froze in place, partly out of a desire to lure the man into chasing her, and partly out of real fear. There were things that could be done to her that were worse than being killed, after all; eighteen men with no scruples could get up to some pretty awful things given the chance. "What do you think you are doi-" he began, then cut off with a muffled curse as she turned and ran, pelting down the street.

"Jahr, get the damned bitch," the original looter snapped, and his companion shot to his feet, letting the body he had been picking over slop into the mud. The pair started after her, shouting for her to stop - which she ignored.

She belted along, aware of the pursuit behind her. Things were working like the plan she had lined out, right until she foolishly looked back to see how far her pursuit was. When she looked ahead again, another had stepped out of a building, looking straight at her; she tried to dart round him, but the slick mud betrayed her and instead of dodging she slipped and landed hard in the sticky, foul smelling muck of the street. The upside was she took the deserter out at the knees.

He grabbed her and tried to pin her while the others were on their way, confusion and surprise still large on his face. Raea was not going to have any of that, though; she planted a muddy fist in his face, and then drive a knee into his groin. Rolled away when his grip went loose. Smeared with mud, colder than ever, she slipped and struggled to get to her feet and pelted away again, a couple buildings down and then into a narrow alley while the trio she had enticed yelled after her in growing rage. She spun round towards the back of the alley, and drew the thin blade from her hips, and stood breathing heavy, crackling breaths and struggling to keep from coughing up her other lung.

Trouble came, according to plan.

More or less.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Rain-slicked rooftops. As treacherous, if not more so, than the muddy dirt paths below. Elliot had to move carefully, test out his footing before each jump. And on top of this the requirement to do so when no one was looking.

Because if he could see them, they could see him.

From his vantage, Elliot saw the bulk of the deserters still lingering around the site of the ambush. A couple were applying meager first aid to the wounded, more were looting the Grimhounds' baggage cart. There was a distant shout of "Be quick about it," and several of the deserters peeled off in differing directions up and down the main road of the hamlet.

Moments later, Elliot heard the sharp call of "Hey!" nearby, just beyond the next house over, some slapping of boots treading through mud and puddles. That was her, and she'd gotten the attention of a few of them. Elliot peeked from around the tilted angle of a rooftop and saw that the other deserters around the ambush sight were none too troubled about a couple of their comrades dashing off. Likely they thought it to be villagers disobeying their orders. And why wouldn't they think that? The mercenary company sent to kill them were all dead at their feet.

But if the sound of battle or death carried to them, Raea's words would come true. Only once, this chance.

Elliot prepared for and made the jump to the next house, his left foot slipping from the edge and Elliot having to throw himself and his weight forward onto the rooftop to keep from falling. Recovered, he crossed along the house's roof to look down into the alley below.

Raea, smeared now with as much mud as Elliot himself, had her rapier drawn and was facing down three men, one closer than the other two. Elliot dipped his fingers into his pouch of bone dust and drew an arrow from his quiver, one specially-treated, and nocked it. He stood and drew it back and infused it with a touch of necromancy, the tip primed with a light swirl of dark green and black.

He loosed the arrow and in flight it transformed into a thick shaft of Bone and punctured through the mail coif of the last man of the trio, the man with the Bone now protruding from his face thrown to the ground by the force of impact.

Elliot dropped down from the roof--such that the other deserters by the ambush site didn't see him standing up there so blatantly.

Jahr wheeled around. Looked back to Raea and trusted in his other companion to handle the waif. And to Elliot he yelled, "You motherfucker!" He drew his shortsword as Elliot drew another arrow.

And Jahr charged.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She ignored the fellow on the ground as much as the one that had turned to face Elliot. Heaving for breath, she had her own problem to face - problems, manifold and all deadly dangerous.

The fellow grinned at her unpleasantly, then advanced and drew the heavier short sword. The fellow was in leather armor, and walked with the casual saunter of someone battle-hardened and utterly confident in their abilities. The young woman offered him a sickly grin, mud-spattered cheeks gleaming in the light. The mud was washing off, thankfully; unfortunately, the water was colder and it got everywhere.

"Put that thing down girl," the fellow said conversationally. Confidence in every syllable. Raea grimaced, spat a mouthful of foulness to one side. "Your friend won't be alive much longer, but I'll let you live if you cooperate." The nasty grin on his face left little to the imagination on what he meant.

On the bright side, if this doesn't work I won't have to suffer through that, ran through her head. She started coughing - this time meant as a cover and an unfortunately bad decision as it triggered the real deal - and then the man stepped forward quickly to disarm her. She only just managed to avoid being disarmed by dancing maladroitly back, suppressing the coughing viciously - so hard she wanted to vomit. Painfully too.

And then she raised the blade. The deserter looked at her, shrugged, and raised his weapon as well.

Before the crippling illness had set in, she had been trained by the finest that money could buy in her chosen hobby. Obviously, her parents had not been particularly pleased that she was keep on fencing and sword play more than other more...suitable pastimes, but they denied her little in her life. Raea was good with the little sword in her hands. It was well that such was the case; against opponents stronger and more versed in combat and with the particular...handicap, shall we say...she needed every ounce of skill.

But not for this fool. Overconfidence was ever an enemy to one self, after all.

He stepped in to swing at her with the flat of his blade, still not seeing her as a real threat; she awkwardly danced back, leaving an inch between her and his blade, before stepping in and delivering neat and precise cuts to his left leg and sword arm. The leather parted under the razor edge, and the flesh below it no less.

The fellow cried out in pain and surprise, loud enough that any could hear it. He went to step back, still shocked that the 'waif' had teeth, and she stepped forward and almost lazily skewered him. Just below the breastbone and the left, a clean, textbook lunge.

The scofflaw was dead before she stepped back, heart neatly cut in two.

Panting, Raea looked for Elliot and the other. Elsewhere, shouts of alarm rose from the others.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot pulled back the bowstring and loosed a snapshot at his oncoming opponent.

And, by sheer luck more than skill, Jahr reflexively swung his sword in an arc before himself and actually deflected the arrow while it was in mid-flight. Both Elliot and Jahr paused, glancing together at the arrow that'd smacked against the alley wall and come to rest in a shallow puddle on the ground. Then they locked eyes again.

"Nice move," Elliot said.

"Thanks," Jahr said, awe at his own fluke of fortune still lingering.

Recovering, Jahr rushed to close the few paces distance left between them. Swung. Elliot ducked under the swing and came up behind Jahr. Jahr turned and Elliot flung his Bow into Jahr's face, and the man grunted as his head rocked back. A wild swipe from the deserter. Elliot had to jerk his chest back to avoid it, nearly loosing his footing in the mud as he did so. His left dagger he drew from its sheath and aimed it to catch Jahr's follow-up slash in the crossguard. That familiar little clang of metal. Elliot snapped hold of Jahr's wrist and twisted and slid a foot behind Jahr's heel and with a turn drove him down to the ground. A splash of muddy water splattered about the alley.

Elliot had fallen with him, on top of him. There was a brief struggle, the two men rolling about in the mud. Jahr's shortsword went flying from the scuffle and clattered against the alley wall, joining the deflected arrow in the same puddle shortly after. Then Jahr let out a sharp and brief cry, his kicking legs going rigidly straight for a moment, and then slack.

Elliot sat up, his back arched, face skyward as rain pelted it, visible breath puffing out in small white clouds from his mouth. His long hair dangled and fresh mud dripped from it.

He pulled the dagger out from Jahr's chin and wiped it clean and sheathed it. Stood. And looked back toward Raea. His eyes flicked downward to the dead man before her and then back up.

"Good work."

He stooped and secured his Bow and retreated further into the alley, coming up alongside Raea. With his free hand he thumbed open his pouch of bone dust and dipped his fingers into it. The shouts from the other deserters were clear--they'd heard the fighting going on.

"I'll need a moment to raise and arm their skeletons."

As that black and green glow began to manifest around his free hand, Elliot smirked and let out a grunt of a laugh.

"I don't think the townsfolk will be joining us."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She shook her head in negation at the praise; she did not think it was good work. Just necessary work. She did not, she had realized not long after leaving home, enjoy killing people. Did not enjoy hurting people, if it came to it. But she was not completely naive, either; she might not be worldly in the way most adventurers might be, but she had still been daughter to a very wealthy merchant.

She knew how cruel the world could be. She just didn't think most offenses deserved the pointed answer she could deliver.

"I w-will stand v-v-," she began, shivering from cold. She shook her head as if clearing away some offending thought, or something that was obstructing her ability to speak. "-vigil," she finally managed. The tip of her rapier dipped low, ruddy water running along the razor edge. "We...we do what we c-c-can," she said simply, looking away, back toward the street.

She did not have to wait long for the first one to come round the corner of the alley. A thick-bodied fellow also wearing boiled leather, he didn't do more than took a quick glance at the body that Elliot had dropped. He saw the frail woman standing in his way, shivering and with a blade held low. That was all he needed to see; his sword was out and his brain was off.

She caught the overhand blow and deflected it expertly, sidestepping as he struck the ground. Her balance was off, her posture incorrect - she would have been scolded by her trainer. Didn't matter, though, because despite the fact that there were already dead bodies present, overconfidence was once again her greatest weapon. A quick flick of the wrist, and she severed the tendons keeping his sword hand closed; the shriek of pain and shock cut through the air a moment before her blade cut through his throat.

"D-d-do what you....what you need," she said. The sound of a half dozen voices rising in anger came from round the alley. She didn't need to say that their time was running out.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Cold seeped into Elliot's muscles, escorted in by the rain and mud dampening his exposed arms, his face. His cloak he'd thrown off back at the general store, without it he'd little to shield him from the harshness of this particularly frigid, storming day. But, he was not alone. Raea was already shivering by the time his hands, his arms, his chin started to do the same. Already an illness had afflicted her, the likely result of exposure.

Yet here she still stood. Tough woman.

Elliot cast the spell and the skeleton of the man who'd earlier harried Raea burst out of the corpse, slowly coming to rise, joints locking together with near invisible tethers of necromantic magic. He bid the Warrior to reach down and arm itself with the slain man's sword.

Another deserter, first to investigate the sound of battle, came around the corner. Raea engaged. And the man, having spent years as a guard, alternatively lazing about and breaking up drunken brawls most likely, had his career culminate in a blade across his throat. Perhaps he'd thought that his experience would easily overshadow a sickly woman. He was wrong, and to Elliot it was satisfying to watch, the very same satisfaction and appreciation one might feel for a lion making a kill.

D-d-do what you....what you need.

Elliot pulled more bone dust from his pouch and raised another Skeletal Warrior, this one from the man whom he'd shot with the Bone Arrow. More dust. Another Warrior from Jahr. And then lastly from the freshly slain man. Four Skeletal Warriors in total.

And there ought to be thirteen deserters left. Things were looking better, but they ought not start celebrating yet.

Elliot walked up beside Raea. "We should fall back. Somewhere I can stage the Skeletons for an ambush. Catch them off--"

An arrow slammed into Elliot's chest, buried into his armor, and he went down hard into the mud.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Some lessons had to be learned the hard way, it seemed. One soldier stood at a distance from them, down the alley and out in the street. Raea had not seen him any more than Elliot had, and the thock! of an arrow slamming into his armor and the wet sound of her unexpected ally going down in the mud caught her completely off guard. She took a step back, eyes wide. She was near the back of the alley, where it opened into the green place between the woods and the village, where the back windows of the little buildings looked on to wilderness. All she had to do was step round the other side - her eyes had zeroed in on the bowman, saw him reaching over his shoulder to draw another arrow, saw him knock it - and that was just what she did.

Dumb luck saved her.

Stepped back out of line of sight of the bowman - unable to do anything for Elliot until she herself could reassess the situation - and stepped on a patch of slick mud. She went down hard enough to drive the breath and a flood of foul-tasting phlegm and pus from her lungs so that the ichor splattered against the side of the building. She also managed to avoid getting cut in half by a soldier that had snuck round the far side of the building to take her from the rear.

What followed was a frantic ten seconds of trying to turn aside attack after attack while prone on the ground and choking to death on her own lungs. There was no way to stay every single attack; blood flew as she missed a parry, coughing hard. The blade of her opponent sliced into her off arm, peeling flesh back to the shallow bone. A scream of pain fit neatly into the staccato coughing, and she managed to kick herself away from the threat leaving a trail of blood in the mud behind her.

The same slick patch that saved her once, saved her again. The assailant - a lithe, blade-slender man now that she could see through her tears - slipped and fell against the wall. She managed to get to her feet, struggling to breath, struggling to master the agonizing pain of the coughing to which the arm was less than a footnote to.

Blood dripped. She had barely got to her feet when he regained his footing, and came again. Unlike her other opponents, this fellow was keenly aware of the dead, whatever Elliot had done to them, and was intent on cutting her down before Elliot could regain his feet and his senses.

It was clear from the outset she was outmatched. She turned one stroke, but the impact was frightfully strong. For a moment she though her weapon would bend or break against his, but she managed to catch and lock his blade on the next stroke, the jarring impact painful in her wounded arm.

The contest of strength was grossly one-sided. One handed, he easily pushed her back, forced the blade closer as though she wasn't even vying against him. In a last ditch effort, a mouthful of hot lung-content splattered in his face, and with a roar of rage he physically shoved her off her feet to land in the mud.

She was going to die right here, and knew it. She had no eye for Elliot or the bowman out there; she only had attention for the reaper that wiped the foulness from his eyes and advanced on her. She struggled to get to her feet again.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot couldn't breathe. Down on the muddy ground, his mouth was open, eyes wide, his abdominal muscles spasmed--tiny false starts to a number of failed movements. At last the tightness in his chest relented, and he stole a few ragged gasps of air.

He saw Raea retreating from the kill zone, the narrow funnel made by the alley which had made both himself and her and into prime targets for the archer. Good. That only left exposed him, flat to the earth, and perhaps two of his Skeletal Warriors, terrible targets for a bow.

His hand, stiff and unresponsive at first, searched along his belt for his pouch of bone dust. His fingers trembled with weakness born from the impact of the arrow and the creeping cold. But he needed to be quick. Fortune could bless a subsequent arrow.

Elliot's fingers touched the soggy bone dust, and he cast the spell he had in mind: his Spectral Shroud. A thin white mist, much like the visible breath of anyone who exhaled outside on this frigid day, came into being around, thin clouds slowly snaking around his person. He stood in one quick, sudden motion. The zip of an arrow, close to ear. But the projectile was deflected away by the Shroud, thudding into the alley wall. Elliot scrambled back down the alley out of the line of sight.

He hurried, mindful of the slippery ground, and his Skeletal Warriors marched in his wake. Still the arrow was embedded in his chestpiece. No pain nor wet warmth in his chest though, so it had not penetrated all the way through. Good. The fortune of the exchange between himself and the archer had cut both ways.

Raea. He heard her scream. Her cough.

She was out of the alley, along the periphery of the hamlet where civilization abruptly stopped on one side and wilderness took over on the other. There. Down on the ground. And, as it so happened, the same slick of mud which had felled her, felled her assailant, now felled Elliot as well. He took one step toward aiding her and his leading foot slid out from underneath him and down he went, repainted with fresh shades of brown. Elliot crawled the rest of the way, the arrow stuck in his armor snapping in two during the effort. The Skeletons following him stepped through the mud with a preternatural balance.

And Elliot, with his Bow again discarded, snatched one of the assailant's ankles and drove a dagger into the back of his leg. A holler of pain and surprise, and the deserter went down as well. He turned and was intent on fighting back against Elliot, but the Skeletal Warriors surrounded the fallen deserter as Elliot held his leg, and the undead all repeatedly drove their swords down into the man with ruthless precision and cold lack of mercy.

The deserter slain, Elliot sheathed his dagger and acquired his bow and crawled over toward Raea. Rose up into a crouch. Saw the splotches of red mixed in the coat of mud on her person.

"You're injured," he said. "How bad is it?" With all the muck, only Raea truly knew the extent of her wounds.

Elsewhere, closer to the main road through the hamlet, alarmed shouts. Hollered curses echoing. The faint ring of metal on metal.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

The fortunes of war were harsh. Raea did not now those fortunes as well as did Elliot, but there was little to be done about that. She was young, sheltered, and would never be able to gain that worldly knowledge in any case.

Still, the brutal, cold precision of the animated dead was not something she wished to look upon. She managed to get away without being splattered with any more gore. All she could do was look away, stunned at the wild oscillations of fate - victory to near death and back again so swiftly it made her stomach lurch to consider it.

His words roused her. It might have been a split second or hours since she came to a rest, seated in the filthy with cold water running down her shivering body. Her head snapped up, glassy eyes slow to focus on him as she tried to comprehend the question. Blinked, and looked to the arm. The flow of blood was not life threatening on its own, and it didn't hurt. Didn't hurt at all, actually - a fact that shocked her. She slowly held the wounded left arm up, and the falling rain washed away the thin mud until the cut was clear to see, across the width of her arm. She didn't want to pull it apart to see how deep it was.

"I'll live," she mumbled, chest heaving as she sat. For getting into a fight she was ill prepared to deal with, it was a minor injury and things could have gone worse. It was likely to fester - yet more sickness to deal with, later - but later was better than dead right now. "You?" She gestured with the good arm at the broken haft of an arrow still embedded in his armor. Was easy to figure he must have been fine, as blood wasn't in evidence anywhere and none of it foaming at his mouth.

She offered her good arm to him, hoping to get some help getting to her feet.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"My armor served its purpose," Elliot reassured her. He himself was relieved to see that the blood amounted to little more than a flesh wound. The fight wasn't over, and all each of them had was the other. No manner of higher ideal nor material gain truly mattered during a fight--all of it washed to the shore in the turbulent tides of battle. What mattered lay in the moment. What brought you closer to victory, what edged you nearer to defeat. Who was with you, who was against you.

Raea was with him, he with her.

He reached down and clasped a free hand to her wrist, pulling her up onto her feet. Sure-footing kept him from toppling over. Here a momentary marvel at how impactful the mud had been: the Grimhounds would've taken some losses in the initial ambush, but ultimately would have prevailed over the deserters had it not been for the unfavorable ground. The mud had both helped and worked against Elliot and Raea in this past hour. These deserters had chosen their battle well, Elliot had to give them that.

Elliot cocked his head then, hearing the shouts and sounds of battle from elsewhere in the hamlet. He considered it for a moment. Then glanced over to Raea.

"The villagers. They joined the fight," he said, impressed, but still with a slight air of doubt, as if he couldn't quite believe it just yet. Who else could it be, though?

Elliot did a quick count on the remaining arrows in his quiver by touching each of their fletchings with his free hand, and said as he did this, "They'll all be killed if we don't get over there."

* * * * *​

Tavish, the ringleader of the deserters, the man who'd strung the noose around their late commanding officer's neck, stood by the baggage cart of the Grimhound mercenaries. Bodies littered the muddy main road of the hamlet: the mercs, a couple of his boys, and a few of these uppity villagers who decided they just didn't want to listen.

Tavish held both of his swords out to his sides, flourished both of them, flaunting his prowess to the remaining armed villagers. He was a veteran of a few foreign wars and boarding actions on pirate ships, and the amount of combat he'd seen earned him the respect of the men who now followed him.

"Throw down your weapons and get back inside!" Tavish shouted to the cowed villagers. They had come at them fiercely enough, wounded one of the deserters even, but now had lost heart, keeping their distance and trading uneasy looks with their fellows.

"You won't like it if I have to tell you again."

Raea Stormcrow