V3Ch25-Esmerelda
“So, you didn’t actually explain what your plan was, Lieutenant,” Baldwin observed. “Unless you know it?”
The revenant looked from Mariella to Kistana, and the catgirl gave him a simple, nonchalant shake of her head.
“Do we even need a plan?” Kistana asked. “We’ll just kill them all in a straight fight, I imagine. Weren’t you the most powerful one Tybalt sent on this last attack? The only issue was underestimating the threat, right? But look around you.” She gestured at the various fighters around them, from the mummies - a majority of the old Beastkings accompanied them - to the catfolk monks and archers who she had hand-selected.
“This is a more elite force,” the revenant acknowledged through gritted teeth. “But I hoped our leader would have more of a plan than- ”
“I do,” Mariella said coolly. “The plan isn’t to just walk up and face them head on like the force we lost.”
Baldwin scowled but said nothing. He could tell the words were meant as a personal rebuke, which felt unfair. But Mariella was leading this expedition, and she was also the master’s pregnant fiancee, so getting into an argument with her would obviously do him no good. He still wasn’t quite certain how he had gone from assessing Sir Damek’s value to the undead army to seemingly on some sort of probation being supervised by the fire mage.
“What are we doing, then?” Kistana asked lightly. “So I can tell my tribesmen.”
“It’s pretty simple. We’re going to steal the bandits’ tactics. Use surprise and the terrain to our advantage…”
They took most of the day walking to the mountain and getting close to the location where Baldwin’s expedition had scaled it. Then the revenant tried to get them closer to the rough space where the bandit camp was located.
As the sun set, Mariella set up shifts to keep watch and gave orders that everyone eat their rations cold. Hopefully the bandits would not have seen them coming, and giving away their location and presence with smoke would certainly be counterproductive.
“Baldwin, you’ll go with Edwig through the mountain until you find where the bandit camp is, then scout it without being seen and report back to us with what you find.”
He nodded. That made sense.
The trip underground was boring. It took an hour to get up the mountain propelled by only the chthonic mage’s power against gravity. But at least they made it. The revenant eventually found where he had been nearly killed, looked around and took in the layout of the bandit’s hideout thoroughly, and ensured he would be able to give every critical detail to the former Lieutenant when he met back up with her.
***
Meanwhile, at ground level, Mariella was taking a quick inventory of the respective skills of those under her command.
It was mostly what she had expected, the standard kit for monks, archers, huntsmasters, and chthonic mages.
Kistana had one change of note, but even that was prospective.
“I have instructed the monks among our number that if they level and gain a skill selection during the fighting, the Healing Hands skill would be a valuable one to have,” the catgirl said, looking pleased with herself.
“Right, you said that was something your tribal culture was against, before, didn’t you?” Mariella slowly recalled.
“It is. But since the Beastking himself placed them under my command, they’ll have to suck it up and get with the times, I guess,” Kistana said. Her expression wasn’t quite a smile - there was too much bitterness to it for that - but she at least looked like she felt vindicated.
“Of course he did,” Mariella replied. “You were more useful in the fight with the dragon than any other catfolk besides the old kings.”
Kistana frowned and shook her head.
“I still can’t kill a dragon, though,” she muttered.
You can’t eat an elephant in one bite either, Mariella thought. Give it time. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
“None of us could,” the fire mage said after a moment. “Including Tybalt and Dero. But you did more to protect him than almost anyone.”
“Almost anyone,” Kistana agreed.
I guess that was the wrong choice of words.
It was true, though. The two of them were falling behind in terms of usefulness. At least falling out of the top tier of Tybalt’s army, with Dero, the Beastkings, and Tybalt’s continuous creation of more powerful undead.
No one surpassed Mariella in physical destructive power with her flames, yet - but Tybalt had some sort of draconic flame power he had copied from his opponent in that fight, so maybe he had overtaken her in that regard.
She shook her head.
“Focus on the things that only you and a few others can do,” the fire mage said. “That’s what I’m doing. Slaughtering bandits is an area of expertise for former Kingdom soldiers.”
As is destroying a place so that no one else can inhabit it again…
***
It was almost morning by the time Baldwin and Edwig returned.
“We found the bandits’ camp,” the revenant said impatiently. “What next?”
“Now we wait,” Mariella said.
“What?”
“We attack tonight.”
“Weren’t you under some time pressure or something from Tybalt?”
“I’m not going to rush into something to meet an artificial deadline,” she replied. “We will go tonight.”
She gave him a look as if dismissing him.
The revenant shook his head and walked off. He got one of the huntsmasters, who could create solid weapons with their aura, to make him a crimson halberd, and he spent most of the day practicing with it. He was going to kill that female warrior this time. She wouldn’t have a reach advantage now. Even if this wasn’t the weapon he was most used to, it was close enough to a spear for his comfort.
The others mostly focused on remaining hidden and rested. They slept in shifts. Clearly the fire mage meant what she’d said about attacking that night.
Just after sunset, Ecbert, one of the other chthonic mages, came and grabbed him.
“I need you to guide me and my group up the mountain,” he said.
Right. Edwig, the other one, already knows the way.
Baldwin and all the huntsmasters gathered around Ecbert at the same time that Edwig, Rickert, Ethelstan, and Alfred each gathered a handful of the catfolk monks and archers to them.
Even with all of them working, this will take half the night, Baldwin thought.
But it was possible.
Then the five chthonic mages took their twenty-five passengers under the mountain.
They traveled for hours through the soil until Ecbert dropped Baldwin and the huntsmasters off near the mountaintop, a relatively large flat area around fifty feet directly above the bandits’ base. The other chthonic mages discharged their passengers, and then they were back moving down through the mountain.
The catfolk, huntsmasters, and Baldwin were left alone to await the arrival of the other half of their force.
A few hours later, when the darkness was at its deepest, the ground shook slightly by Baldwin’s foot. That was the only sign he needed to know to move. Then the remainder of the catfolk, the chthonic mages, and the Lieutenant were joined with them again.
The revenant couldn’t help smiling.
Those bandits are fucked now.
“Everyone knows what to do,” the Lieutenant said in a low voice. It wasn’t quite a question.
Quietly, the members of the small, elite force moved to their places. The catfolk stepped closer to the edge of the mountainside.
Two chthonic mages moved alongside them, while one took the fire mage underground and the other two stood alongside Baldwin and the catfolk monks.
***
“Fire! Run! Fire everywhere!”
Esmerelda woke to shouting and the smell of smoke.
“Wha - What’s happening?” she muttered sleepily. She pushed herself up off of the ground and saw an inferno around her. “What in Kur!”
She shot up in a flash, instantly awake, dagger drawn from its place always at her side. She waved it… at no one.
As the last surviving leader of the band, she took pride of place and slept in the largest of the small number of naturally formed caves by their hideout. Her space was deeper and slightly more out of the way, so she had a further off view of what was happening than most others.
Now she looked out. Everything that had been the bandits’ camp was lit in orange flickering light.
In the distance, she saw her men, her subordinates, running around screaming. Most of them weren’t even trying to put out the fires, she recognized.
They were fleeing.
Cowards, she thought. Why do you always run? That’s no way to win a fight. Where can you even go from here?
She quickly and quietly donned her armor and picked up her glaive from where it lay by her side. She saw a large shape run by the entrance of the cave - her horse, its saddle on fire.
Damn it!
She rushed out, her breastplate barely buckled on, dagger stuck in her belt rather than properly secured at her side. She held her glaive in her hand, her fingers just a couple of inches below the end of the blade, not a good grip at all for fighting, but she was in a rush.
She needed that horse, both to fight more easily against whoever was attacking their camp and to be seen and followed by her bandits, who barely obeyed orders at the best of times.
Esmerelda reached the cave entrance and spotted her horse just in time to see it buckle with a pained whinny, falling in a heap to the ground. She darted to the side, her subordinates’ panic forgotten, focused only on the animal. Then she saw it. A long line of red streaming down the left side of the beast.
And she saw the man who had inflicted the wound.
“You!” she snarled.
He grinned and waved at her. The man who had led the attack on their camp the other day. The force they had defeated. The man she had believed she’d killed.
Well, part of her had believed that. Another part had suspected that, like some of the others they had destroyed, he was actually undead.
Now he seemed to confirm that by returning intact. She felt a visceral fear and horror at the prospect of facing something she did not fully understand, that only wore the appearance of a man like a flesh suit.
Like any noble born girl, she’d had the same religious education, and she had learned to fear that which the gods Vika and Astara had not created as the workings of vile demons or evil gods.
But she pressed that fear to the side now.
This grinning, waving, triumphant undead had sliced open her horse, and it lay whimpering, wounded on the ground in a growing puddle of its own blood.
“Sugar,” she muttered. She’d had that horse since she was a little girl. She had named her for her love of sugar cubes. The mare was the only thing Esmerelda still had from her old life besides the equipment she had desperately maintained. And the training that she had kept up with equal fervor.
“What was that?” the undead asked, putting a hand to one ear. “Couldn’t hear you. Were you saying ‘Surrender?’ Because I’m sure we could find plenty of positions for you to occupy.”
The implication almost passed her by. Almost. She was already angry enough. Those words set her over the edge.
“I said I’ll kill you!” she roared.
Esmerelda shifted into her proper stance for fighting unmounted in an instant, then lunged, swinging her glaive swiftly to catch him off guard.
The undead man caught the head of her weapon on one of his own in an instant and redirected it, almost stabbing the blade of her weapon into the ground before she twisted it away.
What the-
She had barely seen he was holding anything in the flickering light. She could still hardly see it in the orange glow. Was that weapon made out of some sort of red metal?
Halberd. I don’t have a reach advantage anymore. But I think he’s still slower.
They both stabbed at each other, she aiming at his body, he aiming at her throat. She barely dodged, and her own motion to get out of the way of his tip took hers off target so that he only had to step lightly to the side to avoid it.
Right, he doesn’t have to worry about getting hit, she recognized. He’s entirely focused on doing damage.
She made herself more aware of the surrounding situation again. There were men and women, seemingly appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, beating her bandits to a pulp with bare hands and feet or clubs. Some of them lay dead on the ground already with arrows sticking out of them from head to toe. As she observed, one of the enemies seemed to vanish into a rock face like it was mere illusion. She didn’t have time to test out what was happening or form an evidence-based theory.
Whoever this was had no interest in a fair fight, not after what had happened to the last of them.
We’re at every disadvantage possible… but there’s no retreat from here.
She glared at the cocky undead, still grinning at her with its mockery of human mirth as if already gloating.
I’ll take you with me!
Esmerelda charged again.
She and the undead man exchanged a furious series of blows. It was disconcerting, fighting someone who already knew her moves.
She still landed far more cuts and stabs than he did across torso, arms, legs, and even a long gash on the side of his face. She knew she needed to whittle him down. An undead needed no vital organs except the head and neck, and he was on guard enough to stop her from severing that. He did have health that could be diminished, though.
But the blows he landed were aimed carefully. A graze across her neck, slices across both her arms, and a stab into one of her thighs when she was careless for a moment. He avoided the areas covered by her armor. Unlike the undead, injuries slowed Esmerelda down.
I was hoping to save some mana to fight whoever is leading this attack - it’s obviously not him - but I have no choice. I’ll have to burn the mana and waste the weapon, too…
The undead swung at her again, and Esmerelda managed to let go of her glaive and grab the halberd’s point in her left hand. She winced as the sharp edge cut into her palm. The undead’s grin broadened.
And at the same moment, she hefted her glaive in her other hand like a lance.
Spiraling Stab!
In the second when the undead was stuck more or less still by the fact that she held his weapon in her hand, she threw the glaive like a javelin. The tip spun as the shaft flew, both the rotation and the forward motion propelled by mana.
The undead tried to throw himself out of the way, but a hair too slow.
It caught him through the middle, and the force of the attack slammed him into a rock face and then drilled deeper into the stone.
Yes!
She had pinned him.
She drew the dagger from her belt as the undead tried to jerk himself free, already forcing his body along the shaft. She would separate his head from his body before he could get any freedom of motion.
For the first time since the fight started, she smiled.
Then there was a terrible sound of metal splintering, and a coppery odor filled the air. Esmerelda tried to take another step forward, and she realized her legs weren’t obeying her.
She looked down to see what was wrong, and that was when the pain hit her. The horrible, shattering pain.
“No… No way. I…”
There was a huge, crimson shaft - from a ballista or something - sticking out of her stomach.
Hurts so much…
She tilted her head to face the undead again and caught him with a wide grin, gloating again.
I’ll still kill you…
Esmerelda forced herself to take another step. And another.
A second arrow shattered the center of her chest. She lost all feeling in her legs and began to collapse. Right as she began to fall, a third arrow struck and she could tell from the sheer agony on the left side that it must have obliterated her heart.
Everything was pain. At least it wasn’t that gloating, leering undead who had killed her. It was… whoever had armed him.
There was muttering around her as the life left her body.
“I wanted to kill her,” said the undead.
“She was pretty strong, huh?” said a female voice, slightly bored.
“We proved we could win against their superior numbers. That’s what matters.” Another female voice, calm and apparently satisfied.
“I only wanted to live… my own life.” Esmerelda muttered the words to no one. At least no one seemed to pay any heed.
Then she knew nothing.