Chapter 10 Friday Night Fights #2
He spun around, infuriated. They were losing.
He never lost. He needed to be down there, on the field, fighting with these stupid rebels if they were to take the flag and win the city.
He locked eyes on the sword Bronwen had been left in case she needed it, where it sat sheathed and tethered to the saddle.
But he’d never make that run on foot in time.
He stalked towards Theopold so quickly Bronwen didn’t have the chance to back the horse up. He swung his leg up and around the saddle, squeezing himself in front of her as she squabbled. “What are you doing?!”
“Get off.” He nudged his elbow back at her.
“I don’t think so.” She slipped her dagger against his neck, and he went still.
This close, she smelled like posies. But of course, he was too focused on the blade to think much more about that.
“Are you seriously running away right now? After you’ve doomed us to failure?
What happened to the man who saved our village? ”
Morfran snapped back, “He’s going down there to save your villagers’ butts once again!”
She went quiet.
“Well? Are you going to slit my throat or not? If I’m going to die, at least allow me the decency to die on the battlefield and not when I’m bound like a criminal.”
She then did something that utterly surprised him: cut his wrist bindings with one rough jerk and said, “Let’s go have some fun.”
Morfran hadn’t expected that. He even glanced over his shoulder to catch the look on her face. She was utterly serious, her expression set with resolve.
She mistook his pause for something else. “I swear, if you try to swat me off the horse, I’ll—”
“Hold on tight,” Morfran murmured, then with a kick urged Theopold into a horsey gallop of dire speed.
Her arms squeezed his waist, and it felt as if they were flying down the hill, over the grassy fields leading up to Ferndock’s walls.
It made Morfran long for his beloved horse, Skullthrasher.
Skullthrasher was fast like Theopold, but cooler.
And she also thrashed skulls with her hooves.
Though Morfran doubted Theopold kicked in heads as a special ability, the horse did allow them to reach Team Moose in record time.
Morfran then turned his back towards the Ferndock soldiers and faced Team Moose, many of whom were lying limply on mucky ground the color of eight-day-old flu mucus.
“Get up!” he shouted, and he didn’t need to feign emotion because he was at all moments disgusted and furious at the men. He’d seen many of them open one eye as he rode by. Playing possum indeed.
But he might be able to make something out of this.
A battle was also about its theatrics, after all.
He went on. “Rise up, dead men of the Ferndock marshes! Your women and your children will become servants and slaves to these soldiers if you fail to stand as men before your enemies now. Your loved ones will be conquered and beaten down beneath their boots, and your mortal weakness will be their bane.” He’d urged Theopold into a run along the line that the still-standing Team Moose members were holding, shouting at the weak-willed ones lying on the ground, trying to sound threatening and ominous to everyone.
“Rise! You spent your lives to beat back the Dark Lord’s rule. His men have tormented you with great pleasure for two decades. No more! Get up, dead men, rise and kill these villainous men who keep that loathsome lord’s laws in place. Rise up now!”
Yes, Morfran was being dramatic, but at times histrionics were just what a beaten-back army needed.
And when those playing dead heard his scolding words and were shamed by them, they groaned, rising, shoving themselves up out of the mucky green earth like zombies, shambling to their feet and trying to snag their weapons with mossy mud in their eyes.
He was right. They were simply playing dead. But Bronwen was also right. They looked dead.
He turned back towards the Ferndock soldiers, affecting a grin that he knew was menacing and maniacal, and took delight when he saw that many of them had lowered their swords, that some had already stumbled backwards.
“Don’t tell me they actually believe our men are zombies?” Bronwen whispered to him.
But Morfran knew they did. Years ago, when necromancers still plagued the kingdom, he and his men had encountered too many of the creepy dark artificers who raised one too many dead bodies.
It wore on his soldiers’ minds, the trauma of it forever burned into their memories, and he knew many of them still had nightmares about the war between the dead and the living to this day.
Team Moose, seeing the way the Ferndock soldiers were stunned and nigh about to retreat, plowed forward with roars and screams and mucky, green swords thrust into the sky.
The Ferndock soldiers fled towards the gates. Some even dropped their weapons. Others had perhaps even wet themselves, judging by their mortified terror and the way they waddled backwards.
His work here was done. He urged Theopold onwards, towards a thicket of trees where Team Stink Bug and their explosives were battling against even more soldiers.
Bronwen still seemed stunned that he had effectively convinced the enemy that he was a necromancer—nasty skill, that; he shuddered—who’d just raised an army of the dead. “What just— How did you— I mean, who are you?”
He sat up straighter, pleased that she thought of him as an enigma. Then he wondered why he cared. Then Theopold hit an even muckier patch and slipped, and they both flew off into the mud.
Morfran lay there, feeling as though an ox had stomped on his lungs. From the way Bronwen was lying beside him, he figured she felt much the same.
She wasn’t lying beside him for long, however.
She rolled and was up, running towards Ferndock’s troops with great eagerness.
Of course, she was also running in mud, so her efforts were hampered.
But still, Morfran admired her ability to run at a fully equipped army with nothing but a dagger to defend herself, as well as questioned her sanity.
He’d risen to his feet and was wiping mud off his sleeves when she launched at the nearest soldier. The soldier went down in a blur with a startled oof.
Morfran was clearly as taken aback as the soldier. She’d brought him down with a swoop of her legs and was now straddling him, raising her dagger towards his throat— Wait. Where was her dagger?