Chapter Seven #2
Even though she was a servant of the king sent here to find what was mine, I couldn’t deny how otherworldly her beauty was.
I felt Ellyn nudge my side with her elbow, and when I glanced at my wife, she had a subtle but knowing smirk on her face. It was the same one she’d given me when I first saw Karrida, and I narrowed my eyes at her before attempting to compose myself.
“Hand Aila?” Nuro asked the woman I’d been staring at, who quickly perked up at his direct address.
“Yes, Hand Commander?” she asked in an assertive yet soft-sounding voice.
“You, Hand Braun, and Hand Wyllam will take the north side of the town,” Nuro instructed.
An orc with dark green skin grunted in acknowledgement.
Thick ivory tusks curled out of his large mouth and pressed against the thick black beard that covered half of his wide face.
I guessed he was Braun, and that his parents had the foresight to name him similarly to what he would exude when he was grown.
Beside him, a smaller but no less muscular man also nodded in acknowledgement of their orders. He had a Roman nose, with high cheekbones and a scar on his lips that looked like it had once cut through to the bone, but had sealed over time.
“Hand Petyr, Hand Kryyk, Hand Iro, you three will venture south,” Nuro commanded the remaining Hands. “Giian will take the east with half of the latest recruits, and I will take the west with the remaining men. Report back to the inn with any findings.”
Nuro wasn’t as subtle as he thought he was, and I could feel the tension thickening in the air like a dense smog.
The soldiers entered a slow trot to head to their various posts, and the gate behind them squelched as it began to reclose itself. But before it could fully shut, I spotted something on the hill just outside of town.
It was a figure, and they were holding a bow in their hands.
“What is that?” I asked aloud as I took a protective step forward in front of Ellyn.
The soldiers turned on their horses to see, too, and when they saw the figure’s arrow ignite in a gulf of flame, they withdrew their swords. Metal hissed, and Nuro’s horse reared up with a threatening neigh.
Before any of us could do anything, the figure fired the burning arrow straight toward us. It whistled and spat as it flew through the air, and with the gate closing too slowly, the fiery bolt was going to enter Gladewood.
“Move!” I shouted as I pulled Ellyn and Fang down to the ground, while Alden leaped for the sanctuary of my Gator.
The soldiers yanked their horses out of the way, and the workers ducked for the side of the wall.
The slender missile easily shot through the large gap in the gate and buried itself into the wood of one of the buildings behind us.
Fire almost immediately licked at the wooden frame, and the men who had been working on the wall were quick to panic.
Ellyn shot her hand out from the ground, and a huge torrent of water sprayed from her palm. It snuffed out the fire in one giant wave, but the wood of the house was already charred.
The king’s men stared at her with wide eyes before they glared at the figure still standing on the horizon and nocking another arrow.
“We need that gate to shut!” Alden barked as he ducked his head out of the footwell of my Gator.
“No,” I immediately protested. “We need to stop whoever that is.”
“The proud one is right,” Nuro said as he kept a firm grip on his reins. “We need to nip this in the bud.”
“Proud one?” I muttered to myself with a pissed-off glare in his direction.
“Your wall is made of foliage,” Hand Lieutenant Giian barked. “It will easily burn, and your entire town will be exposed.”
“He’s right,” I said as I walked over to the side-by-side and pulled out my AR. “We have to stop whoever that is before they destroy it.”
I had no choice but to use my gun. Powers were completely out of the question, just like they had been with Shaar.
Elves like Ellyn could get away with using magic in front of the king’s men. Their race had once been able to use and control magic when the Emberstone was still whole, but a human like me? There was no feasible explanation other than that I had possession of the very thing that granted it.
That meant I was left to use my good old-fashioned firearms, since I left my sword at home today.
“What manner of weapon is that?” Nuro asked as he eyed my gun with a suspicious squint of his forest-green eyes.
“It’s not magic,” I quickly dismissed. “But you won’t be familiar with it.”
“Get on,” Nuro said as he offered me his hand. “There’s no time to debate weaponry.”
I huffed and reluctantly grabbed his gloved hand. Then I hoisted myself onto the back of his horse and slung the gun strap over my shoulder to balance its heavy weight.
Aila offered her hand down to Ellyn, who also reluctantly took it and settled herself on the back of the white mare.
The gate, as if sensing the decision spoken aloud, parted again until we had a direct line of sight toward the intruder.
Then, in unison, without so much as a word shared between them, the soldiers charged.
My body surged back and then forward, and I gripped the lip of the saddle behind me to steady myself. No way was I going to cling on to Commander Dickhead.
Fang raced behind us with a feral snarl on his face, and I could hear his growls over the beating of hooves.
The figure had abandoned his fiery arrow, but he was the least of our concern as we charged into the open fields. A troop of men roared as they burst through the treeline of the Mist Woods with an array of weapons raised above their heads.
“Giian, after the marksman!” Nuro bellowed. “The rest of you, with me.”
Giian veered off from our small troop and forced his horse into a sprint after the retreating archer. But Nuro pulled hard on his horse’s reins to steer it toward the bandits running our way.
Then the commander raised his golden blade above his head and roared so loud it felt like my eardrums were about to burst.
“For the king!” he cried out. “Justice shall be delivered by his Hands!”
A chorus of similar battle cries left the other soldiers as they raised their weapons, too. It was so loud and so dominating that even the bandits stumbled in their frantic sprints toward us.
Nuro pointed his sword toward the oncoming brigade, and that was the sign for the others to charge.
Hooves stomped against the earth and made the foundations shudder. The men running toward us faltered again, but they were quick to recompose themselves and let out their own battle cries.
Ellyn and I were sitting idly on the back of the soldiers’ horses, so I glanced over my shoulder at my wife and nodded.
It was a silent signal, but one she thankfully understood.
We both hopped down from the moving horses before they could reach the onslaught. We hit the ground hard, but we had no other choice. We’d both be no good stuck sitting behind the soldiers, and I needed as much free range as I could get if I was going to use my gun.
As I got to my feet and helped Ellyn onto hers, I heard golden swords clash against the steel of the attackers’ various weapons, and I turned to look at the battle.
Our enemies were wielding axes, pikes, greatswords, shortswords, and flails, and judging by the twenty men wielding them with snarls on their faces, we had our work cut out for us.
As the soldiers took on the brunt of the men, either by swinging ?their swords or trampling them down, Ellyn and I turned our sights to the ones the small party weren’t near.
Fang charged alongside the horses and leaped on whoever he could sink his teeth into without getting trampled, too.
Around ten men circled ?around the king’s servants and charged at me and my wife. Ellyn glared at them as they raced toward us, and she swirled her hands in front of her until a fireball burned between her palms.
Their wide-eyed looks of fear were short-lived as Ellyn sent the burning flame barreling into them.
The three that it hit were immediately engulfed in flame, while the others caught the ricochet of hot, molten clumps.
The burning globs ate at the men’s skin as they were hit and sent them straight to their knees.
I left Ellyn to deal with finishing them off, and I turned to the men still running up on my right.
I pulled my gun from my shoulder and aimed down my sights at the closest attacker. All it took was one deep breath, and then I was pulling the trigger.