Chapter 26 The Battle of Warshire #2
Bronwen was panting, wiping a smear of blood out of her eye. She’d received a nasty cut along her forearm, and her chemise was ruined with grime and blood. “If I can find a set that’ll fit me—”
Morfran scanned the yard, squinting at the nearby soldiers and appraising their gear.
“What about hers?” he asked, eyeing the soldier who’d just fallen out a window.
Bronwen hemmed and hawed. “Too tall. Anyone else?”
He pointed his sword at a soldier Theodore had just felled. “His?”
“Too bloody?”
Just then a screech came from behind Morfran, and he spun, blade flying, and skewered a soldier who was seconds from slamming a mace into Bronwen’s head. Morfran and Bronwen stared at each other, wide-eyed, before he gestured to the now-dead woman slumping off his sword. “Hers?”
She shrugged. “Looks just right, actually.”
While she ran off to gear up, Morfran fended off two other men—both looking like they were freshly sprung into battle—and killed an archer by chucking a spear at the annoying git who stood atop a roof.
While they did need a break, what they truly needed to do was reorder, re-form, and use strategy to hold the line. As it was, everything had devolved into chaos, and even when Morfran cried out to re-form, few heeded him.
That was when he saw, perhaps a street away, Reginald fighting one of Ravana’s corrupted knights.
The mercenary was howling, slamming his mace fiercely against the knight’s breastplate.
It dented it inward, staggering the knight back.
But he was quickly pushing forward again, swiping and blocking Reginald’s attacks, moving with swift speed and strength.
Unbeknownst to Reginald, a second knight was running towards the two.
Morfran began staggering in that direction; he’d taken a bad slash to his calf, and his chest wound was starting to flare up in greater pain than before. He’d never make it, and he was too far to alert Reginald. He still couldn’t stop himself from screaming,
“Reginald! Behind you!”
The first knight swung his sword; Reginald caught it, kicked the man in the knee, snarling out a breath—and then the second knight stabbed forward.
Morfran watched as Reginald was pierced through the chest. The mercenary’s eyes widened, his face caught in startled surprise. The first knight then struck him in the throat. His friend fell without noise.
Dead.
The two knights exchanged fist bumps over Reginald’s body. One of them even tossed the other a coin. A bet had been placed on who’d make the killing blow.
Morfran was already swinging at them before he realized what he was doing.
He killed the first without much issue. He’d caught him by surprise, and the knight fell, bleeding from his gut wound, the gold coin falling from his open palm.
The remaining knight before him was clearly not happy that Morfran had killed his buddy.
Back at you! Morfran wanted to scream, but the knight had already launched at him, swinging, slashing, and stomping forward whenever Morfran tried to land a hit. The way the knight moved, with hasty, chopping movements and emotional strokes, reminded him of—
“Knight Kyle?” Morfran questioned, trying to peer through the knight’s helmet slits.
“It’s pronounced Nyle!” Knight Kyle lashed out, ripping off his helmet as if to show Morfran his knightly identity. “Nyle! The K is pronounced like an N! No one ever gets that right!”
“I will never understand names in this kingdom,” Morfran muttered, maneuvering away from a swing and landing a heavy strike on the knight—who took the hit but managed a decently deep slash across the side of Morfran’s rib cage.
Pain flared like he’d been scorched by a line of fire, and he stumbled and tripped over the corpse of the other knight.
Knight Kyle grinned nastily, raising his sword. And that was when a flash of pink drew both of their attention to a spot in the yard.
It was Drezella’s pink cloak. The little girl was darting to and fro, from injured rebel to injured rebel like a small, delicate-winged dragonfly over a moat.
To Morfran’s horror, Knight Kyle realized exactly what she was doing. He abandoned his killing blow against Morfran and began to march on her.
“Drezella,” Morfran coughed out, trying to fight through the pain to rise. “Drezella!”
She was oblivious to the knight advancing on her, occupied with a bleeding rebel lying on the cobblestones.
“Drezella!”
The knight raised his weapon, and Drezella turned slightly, seeing the sun’s reflection glint off the sword, seeing the blade as it fell.
The knight flew off his feet like a cannonball had barreled into him. Morfran’s breath was gone from his lungs, disbelief writhing throughout him as he tried to grasp what he’d just witnessed.
Drezella’s gaze fell towards the direction the projectile had been fired from, fastening on a lone figure just a few feet away. A figure that was hulkingly huge, covered in cuts and bruises from head to toe, and dressed in nothing but a loincloth.
It took Morfran a few seconds to recognize him, mainly because he wasn’t equipped with a seventy-foot-long beard.
Rapunzo. Gone was his long rope of hair.
In its place was a fashionable, trimmed beard not unlike Morfran’s.
Randy the Duck sat atop one shoulder and a massive pack was slung over the other.
He reached into it to pull out a stuffed bear, holding the critter threateningly like a weapon as he glared down at her.
“Little woman,” he growled.
Drezella stared with wide eyes before her gaze fell to his knees, where there were bleeding scuff marks. Slowly, without removing her gaze, she scooped out her Special Paste and gently swept some on the wounds.
Rapunzo blinked as the paste soothed his scratches. He blinked as the evil little woman continued to stare up at him with her big round eyes. Then he frowned as he lifted his healed knee and looked from it to her. “What did you do?”
“I healed you,” she announced.
“You…healed me?”
Drezella nodded with a proud dip of her chin. “That’s what a Fleet Foot Club member does.”
Slowly, he lowered the stuffed bear. “I shall not kill you then, little woman.”
Morfran had reached their side. The instant Rapunzo saw him, his face lit up like a thousand rising suns. “Bosom brother!” He yanked him into a hug that, like last time, nearly popped his eyes from their sockets, only unlike last time, Morfran was smiling, as well.
“It’s good to see you, too, buddy,” Morfran grunted out. “And out of your tower. I like the new trim, by the way.”
“I used the kit you mailed me, the Handsome Devil Beard Grooming Kit 3000!” Rapunzo beamed, releasing him. “Then I thought about what you told me, so I jumped out of the tower—”
“Really? Wasn’t it, like, four stories high?”
“—and ran here, where everyone said you’d be!”
Morfran blinked. “You ran clear from Atlantis 2.0?”
“It was but a light jaunt.”
“You’re inhuman.”
“Then I joined in the fight against Lord Morfran’s men, and ate some jam, and killed that knight there, and met this little woman.” He gestured to Drezella, who was finishing lathering paste on a nearby rebel and helping him rise. “The small ones aren’t evil, I don’t think.”
“Bernard,” said a slight soldier approaching them, then, with a little bit of confusion and a lot of fear, added, “Rapunzo?”
Rapunzo had that stuffed bear cranked back and ready to launch in .03 seconds flat. Morfran blurted, “Wait! It’s just Bronwen!”
Rapunzo lowered his arm, squinting. “Sad Woman?”
Just then an arrow whistled past them all, fired from the City Hall window.
Morfran gritted his teeth, turning to them.
“We need to take hold of that building.” It seemed impossible now.
Many of the rebels were being forced back from their line.
“If we can signal to the others that they’re needed here—”