Game What are you doing right now?

Committing murder.. or is retribution more acceptable?

Paste:

Silence hung in the air like a physical thing, as if the forest on and above the embankment sensed something of note was about to transpire. Beyond the distant sound of water trickling over rocks at the valley bottom, the only other sound was two sets of feel walking along the well-made road. The road ahead stretched for almost seventy paces then veered away to her right where Pharone lost sight of it behind the outcropping of rock. She increased her pace according to how close she could sense the group approaching were away from where she was intending that surprise favoured her when they became aware of her presence. To a bystander, it might look like an unprovoked and murderous attack but that same bystander did not have the advantage Pharone did; the men’s thoughts told her they were seeking to pillage, plunder, rape and murder. They should have no cause to complain if they encounter someone else seeking to murder as they have the same intentions. As Pharone and Læiknarr approached the corner, Pharone slowed and quietly slipped her pack from her back, laid it carefully to one side, unhooked her helmet from her belt and put it on then reached for her shield so Læiknarr dropped his pack with hers and followed.

“They aren’t soldiers, Læiknarr. These are more of Gong’s farmer-warriors.” Pharone mentioned in hushed tones and sensed his concern. “Just follow me and kill the ones I miss.”

“You can count on me.” Læiknarr’s smile seemed forced onto his mouth and his tone did not sound unconvincing.

Quietly and slowly, Pharone slipped her blade from its scabbard, hefted it once to secure her ideal grip then patiently waited and let her ears tell her when the time to make her presence known was nigh. Without warning, Pharone stepped around the corner and delivered a brutal downwards slash that opened the first man’s torso up from shoulder to hip. With no loss of her momentum forwards, her backhand removed the next in line’s left leg above the knee and with another pace, again, slashed murderously down cutting through ribs and sending entrails spilling in bloodied-tangled loops. Her shield took the next man under the jaw, shattering teeth, breaking both the jawbone and his neck, and this man also hit the ground dead. The group was only now starting to react to her surprise appearance and although the next man ducked her sword, she got her shield under him and catapulted the startled man over her shoulder where Læiknarr finished him off with a sure thrust to the heart. The very act of rising to throw the man gave her the impetus to impale the next man in the chest, as she pirouetted past, letting the momentum turn her, she added a slashed throat to the man’s injuries.

The next in line had a lance that he had manage to lower into a threatening position in spite of the fear that was surging in his soul. His timorous jab at her was met with her shield and before he could blink, her golden and blood-besmirched blade opened up his chest like he was a beef carcass on a butcher’s block. Still maintaining her forward momentum, the power of that blow continued her turn and with another pace, slammed the flat of her shield into the next man, crushing his face and flinging him out of her way. A feint with the shield at the next man was followed by a murderous blow to the man’s shoulder that cut a hand-span into his chest. He too fell fountaining torrents of blood everywhere and that was enough for the next in line to throw his sword away, drop to his knees and surrender. Pharone took his head as she glided past, bringing her shield up, the rim catching a man’s upper arm and breaking it causing the sword it held to fly from now-useless fingers. The backhand she threw that removed his left leg dropped him screaming to the ground and broke the wills of a few of those remaining.

Continuing her turn, again she caught the next man under the chin with the rim of her shield as he was attempting to pull his sword and sent him crashing over onto his back. The continuation of the turn brought her sword whistling around to impact the next man under the arm and opening his ribcage up on a spray of blood that splattered the man behind him. He threw a viscous cut at her head but she just raised her shield a little, took the blow effortlessly then a brutal down-cut removed his arm above the elbow, the return strike gashing his left leg then another down-swinging slash split his back open as he turned and stumbled away. Raising her foot, she placed it on his rump and pushed him staggering and screaming into the next man, knocking him off-balance and making the blow that clove his skull a simple matter of timing. Raising her shield caught the next man’s sword-thrust, deflecting it above her shoulder, her counter-cut passing beneath her shield and gutting the man like a fish. The next man was backing away, holding his sword up and making threatening jabbing motions and Pharone almost felt sorry for him as her forehand cut clean through his sword blade a finger-span from the hilt before her backhand returned to sever his throat.

The men behind attempted to surrender but that word did not exist in Pharone’s world. Mercy was the privilege of the Gods. His head rolled to the feet of the two remaining and both turned to run but with the slight advantage her forward momentum gave, she was able to deliver a well-timed slash to the man on the right’s back. It wounded him badly but the follow through also clipped the man on the left’s right triceps muscle and blood began pouring from the wound. The man on the right ran on a few steps, but his stride became erratic, he stumbled and that was his undoing. Another slash from her blade cut deeper, shattering a vertebrae and severing his spine and he too went down on his face and died. Læiknarr thought for a moment, Pharone had lost it when her shield dropped from her arm but instantly realised, she was trading defence for speed. The wound on the other man’s arm was slowing him not that it would have mattered; Pharone could have retained her shield and only taken a dozen more strides to catch him. He stumbled, then stumbled again, landing on both knees and his good arm and peered back to see if that golden devil of death was after him only to throw himself on his back in stark terror as Pharone loomed above him. All he could do was to cross his arms in front of his face and beg for mercy but he died with her sword in his chest and her stare into his eyes from up close as his life fled.

Læiknarr was no stranger to brutal death but her utterly callous-seeming attitude was taking it further than he ever would have. “No prisoners, no mercy,” he mumbled as he approached her.

“I’ll just lock them in prison then.” Pharone replied brusquely. “You’ll learn to trust me one day.”

“You could have just let those last couple go you know. They’d thrown their weapons away and weren’t the threat a group of them was.” Læiknarr suggested.

Pharone indicated the man she was kneeling beside then made a deliberate show of rising to her feet and slowly wobbling and withdrawing her sword from the man’s chest creating all sorts of sucking and gurgling noises to emanate from the corpse. “He raped and murdered an eight year old girl yesterday, just a few miles from here. I will give the family his head. It may be some comfort to know the man who took life from them also had his life taken.”

‘Of course’, Læiknarr thought, ‘she read his thoughts.’ He knew she could do it and had lived for weeks with her doing it to him but he had never considered that she could use it to create that sort of deadly ambush. From first stroke to last, he doubted it has lasted thirty seconds; she went through them like a farmer harvesting wheat with a scythe. Every move she made flowed into the next move, never losing the momentum of the advance or the objective attacking decisively and was it not for the sprays of blood and the fallen, Pharone made it look like a simple training exercise. “I’m sorry, Pharone. I simply forgot; it happened so fast.”

How she knew where to go was a mystery to Læiknarr but he followed along, even though the normal sight of her backpack and those buttocks and legs below it was as a rule rather pleasing, the pale head with the wide-staring eyes dangling from her left hand by the hair tended to dampen his ardour somewhat. Sometime later, Pharone stopped several times in the space of a mile then turned off down a laneway only to arrive at the door of a small but neatly tended farm house, paused for a moment then knocked. A middle-aged man’s face looked out, eyes red from tears and sorrow etching tracks across his face and in his grief, the so very unusual appearance of the pair hardly drew his notice. By rote, as manners dictate, he spoke almost without thought and offered a nod of the head as a bow. “May blessings fall upon you.”

Pharone bowed and on rising, she too spoke, gently but firmly as well. “I offer no blessings.” The man’s face suddenly seemed to darken a little which is what Pharone intended, to break into his grief and have him aware. “Instead, I offer solace.” With that, she held up her gruesome trophy. “He who took precious life from you has had his life taken from him. He will hurt no more children.” With that said, she bowed, sat the head on the top step of the man’s house, bowed once more, turned and strode away before the man realised what she had said and done. Pharone nodded to Læiknarr when she re-joined him, “Come, walk with me, Læiknarr.”

End Paste:

Today's effort. :)

Ls x
 
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