Chaos. I’d completely lost everyone.

  I didn’t need them.

  Blood poured from a cut somewhere on my face. I squinted against it. I felt slick with sweat. Fire raged to my left. To my right, more orcs. Behind me, my dead horse.

  I don’t know how, but not only did they have time to set up a counter-attack, they set up a trap. As soon as we entered the square, mounted orcs flanked us from either side.

  And their mounts could bite.

  I’d luckily been able to retrieve my sword. I wasn’t pretty with Certainty, but the sword was deadly, slicing through orc and warg flesh like, well, their armor was not much protection. So, it tore through them easily. But our entire company was in disarray.

  Bernie had leapt onto the roof. Braelyn was flying around somewhere. Cal had been thrown from his horse too. It was a goddamn mess.

  But they couldn’t touch me.

  Three orcs rushed me. One had a polearm. I sheared through his weapon, then pierced his chest in two rapid strokes. The other two retreated.

  “That’s right!” I screamed. “Get on out of here.”

  “Hold out your hand!” I heard Braelyn call from above me.

  I threw my arm up. A soft hand squeezed mine, and I was yanked into the air.

  Suddenly, I could see the whole battle. Bernie threw daggers from the rooftop in between shots from her crossbow, then disappeared into shadow, only to reappear on an entirely different roof. Rachel stood in front of a large building that may have been the tavern, with Gl’anch and three other scouts. The scouts had their sabers drawn, and a dozen orcs menaced them. Across the street a dozen more fought Captain Nedry and the rest of the company. Cal fought at his side. Berryhop hid behind an overturned cart, loading another vial of acid into her crossbow.

  I tossed out an Invisible spell for berryhop, then a Bubble spell for Cal.

  Then, out of seemingly nowhere, an axe came at us, flying end over end — a very familiar axe. The handle struck Braelyn, and we both plummeted to the ground.

  I grabbed her, hit the ground, and rolled. My head spun, and I fought for breath. When I came to, I still held her, but someone else stood above me.

  “Aw, baby boi,” Helena said, “you really aren’t very good at this.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked lamely. I used a casting of Heal Light Wounds, and felt Braelyn stir in my arms.

  Helena had her hands on her hips, freshly bleached blonde hair in twin tails streaming behind her. Her armor gleamed in the firelight, and her red lips quirked into a smile.

  “Seeing what you’re made of,” she said. “Right now I’m thinking… estás mierda.”

  Then she pulled a hand axe out of her belt, and lifted it for a terrible blow.

  Rachel lunged forward, and pierced a gap between her breastplate and pauldron with her rapier. Helena cursed, and exploded into green mist, appearing next to her greataxe many yards away.

  Rachel dissolved into multicolored sparks, and followed her. She slashed her cheek open.

  “Leave my friends alone!” she yelled.

  “Stop chasing me!” Helena yelled back.

  I picked up Braelyn and ran, sliding behind the ranks of scouts that held the line, and depositing the woman there. I stood just in time to meet the next charge of orcs.

  I screamed a war cry and spun Certainty in an arc, separating a head from its shoulders. An orc ducked behind my swing, blocked the counter swing with his shield, and tried to bullrush me. I stood my ground, and brought the pommel of my sword down hard, stunning him, then kicked him to the ground.

  An arrow pierced my neck. No time to worry about that.

  Had I not had this belt and sword, that would have gone very differently. The scouts rushed in behind me, and in moments the orcs were falling back again.

  I saw Rachel chase Helena back behind the line of fire, one teleporting first, then the other following. She had Helena on the back foot.

  A dark outline appeared in a patch of shadow next to me that elongated into the form of Bernadette. She rushed to my side. In two smooth movements, she snapped the head of the arrow, then ripped it from my neck. I cursed and put a hand on the wound.

  She put her hand on my shoulder, and I felt healing magic surge into me. I put my hand back on my sword.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Our whole plan for how to approach this fight had completely fallen apart. I wasn’t supposed to be on the front lines like this. I was the healer. We had to do better.

  “Crulga is headed this way,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “You’ll know him when you see him.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Suddenly the line of orcs across from us parted, and the biggest orc I’ve ever seen — and they were not people known for their small stature — walked past the line.

  Like the others, he wore an intricate brigandine, decorated with uniform strips of leather that wrapped diagonally around him, but his was adorned with small silver medallions at the top of each strip. Unlike his peers, he wore no armor on his arms, laying bare his massive biceps. Scars, seemingly ritualistic, crisscrossed his skin. His hair lay long, pleated, and bound with beads and feathers, down his back.

  “And so it seems that the Promised Heroes have come, just like she said,” he spoke, his voice pleasingly musical, but deep.

  The rage, the fury at the indignity of what they’d done held back my voice. I moved my sword down in a fool’s guard, and waited.

  He twirled first his strange, forward curving scimitar, then his axe. Then he threw them into the ground.

  “We’ve come to stop you,” I finally said. What a silly thing to say. What, was this a Saturday Morning Cartoon?

  “There is no stopping this,” he said. “The horn sounds, and the Mountain People will forge the Axe that clears the brush from the Small Rivers. This happens with, or without me.”

  “I vote without,” I stated.

  “Of course. Let me say goodbye to those I love.”

  I just nodded.

  This was a bad idea. I wasn’t good at fighting. But the alternative was to get more of these scouts killed.

  Crulga turned to his men, and spoke to them quietly. Off beyond them, Rachel held the handle of her rapier in one hand, and onto the blade of her rapier through and through a gap in Helena’s armor with the other. The armored woman growled in rage, and frustration, cursed in Spanish, but couldn’t seem to move.

  “This won’t stop me!” Helena yelled.

  “Sit down,” Rachel said, yanking her to her knees.

  I looked back to the orcs. Crulga grabbed the face of one of his men, and kissed him passionately. Then he walked back to his weapons, and picked them up.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  He seemed so normal, not some snarling savage. He just seemed like a guy, like Gl’anch, or G’nash. His face held no anger at his fate, just acceptance. And I felt the anger fade for a moment. Then something in the home to my left gave way, and it collapsed, sending a plume of debris into the air, and I felt some of my rage return.

  “Are you ready?” he asked in return.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He ran at me, roaring a terrifying war cry. I felt my knees buckle a bit, but I gripped my sword tighter, shifted my stance into the plowman's guard.

  Quick aside about longsword guards and fencing: each sword had a ‘strong’ portion of leverage near the hilt, and a ‘weak’ section of leverage at the tip of the sword. When parrying another’s weapon, you wanted to parry weak to weak, strong to strong, or strong to weak. You don’t want to parry with the weak section of your sword against the strong of theirs, because that leads you to being controlled by them, instead of controlling them. You can’t overcome their strong position, even with much greater strength.

  The mechanics of leverage were just too great. And even then I wasn’t sure I was stronger than this guy.

  His weapons were shorter than mine, giving me the advantage with reach, but him a greater portion of his weapon that was ‘strong’ against mine. This is why often, a dagger is used to parry in the off hand, because you had the reach advantage of a sword with one hand, and the leverage advantage of a short weapon in the other.

  My opponent had a very long reach with his arms. I couldn’t be assured that my much longer weapon would give me too much of an advantage in this duel. Or at least, not one he couldn’t overcome with his greater experience.

  In this duel, I could not afford to mess up, and couldn’t assume I had any advantage, even with my sword and belt. My plowman’s stance was close to my body, defensive, yet with good offensive potential. It was balanced, ready for whatever he’d throw at me.

  “Not today,” I said. I felt the healing surge through my body. I had to be ready.

  Then he glowed red, and time slowed to a crawl, and still he ran with terrifying speed. At the last moment, he fell to his knees, and slid the rest of the way, striking out with both of his weapons high at my neck, and low at my legs.

  I wasn’t expecting that. I had just enough time to react.

  I couldn’t change stance in time. And my legs were wide open to his low strike. I hoped my greaves were able to protect me from the axe. I parried his upper strike, the sword.

  The axe hit the top of my greave, bit into my flesh, and I felt my knee bend in a direction it was not supposed to go. No matter. I shoved the pommel of my sword right into his face, once, twice. He rolled backward, leg flying up and kicking the handle of my sword.

  The sword twisted in my hands. I held on. But when he stood, I had to struggle to get my sword back into alignment.

  And just in time too. His reach was so much longer than anyone I’d ever fought. I parried his next two strikes in rapid succession. I couldn’t trust my front leg, so I pushed off the backfoot to lunge at him. He easily danced back out of reach, and parried the weak tip of my sword with little trouble.

  We’d both gotten a hit off. I could tell he was dazed, but I also knew that my leg was absolutely fucked. I couldn’t capitalize ‘til I felt confident in my leg.

  “Zach,” I said to myself. “I need you.”

  I felt my leg stitch together. I didn’t test it. I didn’t want him to know that I’d healed it.

  I waited for him to come back to me. He circled me in a low stance, and I turned to keep him in front of me. He kept parrying my cuts, and directing shots at my hands, but I was able to get them to bounce off quillons. Each shot sent tremors through my fingers.

  My hands shifted my sword into a low guard, the fool’s guard. This kept my hands away from him, and kept a good defensive posture.

  I waited for my moment.

  There!

  He stepped forward and sent two shots at my face. I stepped backward and shot my sword at his exposed arm. The scars on his arm glowed, and my sword bounced off like It’d tried to stab a sheet of metal.

  I backpedaled wildly. This couldn’t be it. I couldn’t let him kill me.

  He swiped at me methodically, and I parried wildly, my guard climbing higher and higher to match his posture. If I didn’t do something soon, he’d have my head.

  I shifted into the low guard again.

  He leapt into the air.

  This was my chance.

  I lunged upward off my healed leg, and the point of my sword pierced his armor and buried itself into his chest. I followed his momentum over and behind me, spinning, then slammed him into the ground. I felt my sword plunge into the cobblestone under him.

  I pinned him. He was still alive, somehow.

  I stumbled back.

  Everyone watched as he struggled for breath, the sword comically straight in the air. Then he spoke.

  “Don’t just stand there. I can’t. I need my axe. My axe.”

  I looked around. The orcs stood stone faced, but for one, who cried openly. The scouts all had a myriad of emotions. Gl’anch held a hand over his mouth.

  Where had his axe gone?

  Then I saw it there against a piece of rubble. I retrieved it, then walked to Grulga.

  I placed the axe in his hand, and wrapped his fingers around it.

  He closed his eyes and said, “do it.”

  I pulled a knife from my belt, and slit his throat.