Authors: Gareth K Pengelly
“Guards! Defend your stations!”
Screams and war cries abounded as the battle was joined, the climbing Khrdas leaping the walls as they reached the top and charging into the midst of the defenders, striking with precision and skill with their daggers and razor-clad forearms.
The two new recruits stood, unsure of themselves, as Poland flew into battle to aid his men, but their indecision was cut short as a black-clad figure vaulted over the wall behind them, rising slowly and menacingly into a practiced martial crouch.
Marlyn took his bow with trembling hands, ready to fire an arrow, but fumbled, dropping his ammunition to the floor. Daveth was beside him, calmer, weapon already aimed.
He let fly, but their foe leant to one side, almost casually, the arrow brushing past and clattering harmlessly off the wall behind him.
The Khrda chuckled.
“Too slow.”
Like lightning he grabbed a small metal star from his waist and brought his leather-clad arm up, sending the weapon flying unerringly towards them.
Daveth, ever cocky, leant to one side in the manner of the Khrda, the star just nicking him on the neck, barely drawing even a bead of blood.
“Hah!” He gloated. “Seems like you’re… too slow… as…”
“Daveth!”
His legs went from under him as he fell to the floor, shuddering violently in the midst of some horrific seizure and Marlyn dropped to his side, bow cast away despite the danger, helpless horror wracking his face as he held his friend.
Finally he lay still, foam flecking the edge of his mouth, eyes lifeless and staring.
Tears streamed from Marlyn’s face as the impossibility of the situation failed to register in his head.
Daveth.
His friend since he could remember. They’d done everything together.
And now he was gone. One tiny nick, not even a shaving cut.
He looked up, face a mask of confusion and loss, to the Khrda who still stood, watching the moment with interest.
“Venomberry,” shrugged the Khrda by way of explanation and Marlyn felt a burning rage rising up inside him at the nonchalance of the man’s words. The loss of his friend’s life, so young, his whole journey still left to walk, a woman to find and marry, children to raise. All of it meant nothing to this stranger who had so casually taken it all away.
Marlyn roared as he surged to his feet, hand finding the hilt of his guard-issue short sword.
“You will pay for this!”
The Khrda’s eyes shone with amusement through his leather mask.
“Not by your hand, whelp.”
“No, by mine.”
A firm hand shoved Marlyn aside and the stern form of Sergeant Poland limped past, sabre in hand.
The Khrda laughed, the tone sibilant and mocking, ludicrously out of place amidst the sounds of slaughter and dying.
“Oh yes, for what a stripling can’t handle, surely a cripple can.”
The old man smiled, humourlessly.
“You mean this?” He pointed to his weak leg. “That’s nothing. I could beat an insolent brat like you with one arm, never mind one leg.”
The assassin roared and charged, dagger in each hand.
A shower of sparks as Poland deflected the flurry of blows with expert parries, before slowly forcing his foe backwards, step by step, the speed and strength of his ripostes and the reach of his weapon taking the Khrda by surprise.
The assassin, seeing that he’d underestimated his foe, span low, one leg kicking out to sweep his opponent off balance, but the veteran sergeant saw it coming, raising his foot to avoid the trip, bringing his fist round in an arc to connect with the Khrda’s masked face as he came back up.
The fist connected with the crack of a broken nose and the assassin fell backwards in an effort to keep his distance.
A brief pause in the combat, as the Khrda wiped the blood from his face.
Poland stood, proud and resolute, sabre-arm held out straight ahead despite the burning in his aged chest, the acid in his fatiguing limbs.
His opponent smiled, seeing the strain the pace of the fight was placing on the silver-haired warrior.
“I can go on like this all day, old man.”
The Sergeant smiled back, lowering his sword.
“Not today.”
The assassin frowned in confusion, before the creak of wood and cord caused him to freeze. He turned, slowly, to find the point of a strung arrow between his eyes.
“This is for Daveth, you bastard.”
The Khrda’s corpse fell to the ground with a thud and Marlyn looked up at his sergeant with a smile of grim triumph, but it soon evaporated.
Poland turned and backed away, closer to his recruit, sword arm now held, once more, in a defensive stance.
The Khrdas approached, slowly, from a rampart strewn with gore.
Of the brave defenders, there were none left. The only casualty amongst the enemy, that of the lone assassin cornered by Marlyn and his sergeant.
Poland’s voice was hushed and urgent as he glanced sidelong at his guardsman.
“The door behind us,” he hissed. “To the Gatehouse. Tell them to fall back, to tell the Lord what he faces.”
“But…”
“The walls are lost, but go now and the Keep may hold, leastways for a while.”
Marlyn gaped, his mouth opening and closing like his namesake, but the sergeant brooked no argument.
“Go, I’ll hold them off while you make a break for it.”
Marlyn nodded, before stammering a quick “Good luck, sir.”
He turned and bolted for the thick, iron-banded door.
The shrill whistle of poisoned throwing stars chased him, but the ting of metal on metal told him that his sergeant had dashed them from the air with his sabre, saving his young life yet again.
With one last look at his brave commander, the recruit slammed the heavy door shut, bolting it fast from the inside.
***
Memphias walked forwards, ignoring the sergeant who stood with his sword raised, his attention instead on the fallen Khrda that lay on the cool stone floor, a steady trickle of blood flowing free from the arrow that stuck out, almost comically, from between his eyes.
“Lando,” he spoke quietly, not out of grief but merely interest.
The Khrda had been young, cocksure and reckless. No great loss.
He turned back to the guardsman that stood watching, unwilling to give up, for he knew he wouldn’t be spared, but also unwilling to rush headlong to his fate.
“Quite the skill you must have, to hold your own against poor Lando like that. I would have been interested to see the outcome had your young friend not been there to aid you.”
The sergeant didn’t deign to respond.
Memphias’ eyes narrowed as he took in the details of the old man’s face.
“I know you…” he told the man, his voice low as he wracked his memory. “Didn’t you approach us? Why, it must have been thirty years ago…”
“It was,” nodded the veteran. “I can see I’ve not aged as well as you.”
The Khrda laughed.
“Why did we refuse you, remind me? You must have been quite swordsman in your youth.”
The sergeant patted his leg.
“Ah. Well that’s too bad. To be a Khrda is to pursue perfection in the art of killing. Anything that holds you back from that, be it a gammy leg, or,” he gestured at the corpse of his fallen soldier, “be it overconfidence, means you can never rank with the best of us.”
The Tuladorian sergeant raised an eyebrow.
“Aye? And you have none of these disadvantages, I presume? You have achieved perfection?”
Memphias smiled.
“Indeed.”
“Hmph. Now
that’s
overconfidence.”
Memphias laughed, holding his black-gloved hands out to his side to show that he was wielding no weapons.
“Please, try me.”
The sergeant needed no encouragement, seizing the opportunity to charge the man, hoping to extract at least some vengeance from his predicament.
His silver sabre flashed out, left, right, weaving a web of death that only a skilled duellist equally armed could hope to survive, but the Khrda simply leaned, this way, that way, his feet shuffling as though in some ballroom dance of the Merchant Coast, evading every stroke as though he saw it coming a mile off.
Finally, Memphias grew bored with the play, disappointed with himself for letting things drag on so long, catching the blade of the sword between his spiked vambraces and snapping it in two, before punching the sergeant in the stomach, causing him to buckle over, then grasping the man about the throat in a headlock, the cruel barbs of his armour pricking his throat and causing tiny beads of blood to well up.
“You did your duty bravely,” he told the struggling man, “but this is where it ends. Just think, if not for that leg of yours, you might have been on the winning side today. Ah well, we cannot choose the hand that’s dealt us, eh sarge?”
The grizzled man struggled on his knees, knowing his time was done, choosing his last words carefully.
“There are only two types of sarge…”
The Khrdas never got to find out what they were.
***
Bounding down the stone stairs two at a time, Marlyn burst into the guardroom next to the gatehouse, gazing about in abject disbelief at the men he saw lounging, oiling their weapons.
An officer, Sergeant Ranclif, if he remembered right, glanced over at the trooper as he struggled to regain his breath, a hand of cards kept close to his chest.
“Hah! Poland sent you for a glass-hammer, trooper?”
The gathered guardsmen chuckled at their sergeant’s words, before Marlyn exploded, causing them to start.
“Are you… are you all
mad?
” he gasped in genuine exasperation.
The sergeant rose, to his feet, laying his cards down, forgotten on the table. It was a losing hand, anyway.
“Best have a good reason for that little outburst, recruit…”
Marlyn stalked up to him, face serious.
“We’re under attack! The walls are lost!”
The sergeant frowned, suspicious as the men began to mutter amongst themselves, gathering weapons in readiness.
“Attack? We heard no alarm…”
The youth went to retort, then paused, thinking. There hadn’t been an alarm; they’d been cut down too fast to raise it.