NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: The Adventures of the Creeping Bam (BOOK 1: The Job)

CHAPTER THIRTY: ART

How I'm not dead is a baffling mystery to me. When all that shit came tumbling down I didn't even see it coming, all I could concentrate on was Clearwood slouched under it all, clearly unable to move and about to die badly. I don't think I even got close, to be honest. The first crate hit me and I was driven to the floor, part of me was thinking this is a stupid way to store supplies, it's just an accident waiting to happen. It was only a split second before I got cracked in the skull that it occurred to me that actually this was probably a trap of Ashsong's anyway, that he set it up to do just this when he really needed it to. So it's actually performing its function as intended. He probably just intended to kill a whole lot more of us with it.

I have no idea how long I was out, though now I think about it probably not long, it probably just stunned me for a few minutes. In truth I was probably disgustingly lucky, all things considered. I come to trapped, pinned down in near total darkness, a few pinholes of light here and there for me to see from, but it's the smell that rattles me. Cabbage, I think. Some kinda vegetable, anyway. For a few moments I'm stuck fast, and I start to panic. All that thrashing helps in the end though, shifting the shit all over me enough I can start pushing my way out, then I come up gasping and flop out over the chaos of shattered supplies.

Unbelievably, I'm in one piece, nothing broken. My head's throbbing bad, and when I touch it my fingers come away bloody, but the rest of me's largely unmarred, a few nasty gouges here and there but looks like my leather armour meant it wasn't anything like as bad as it could've been. Giving my head a good shake, I look round proper now, getting my head back in the game.

Two big fights going on. Off to the side, Kesla and Min are going off at the Creep big time, and while he might've been impressive at the start of the fight, least what I saw as I was trying to pick myself up after Ashsong's big blast, now he's no great shakes. Krakka's dancing around him, holding his hammer high as it blazes brighter than the sun on a brilliant day, and all the time the Creep's cowering from it, his own defence against Min and Kesla's attacks clumsy and born of desperation. He's holding them off, but only just.

The other fight looks to be the hot one. Oh gods Gael, what the fuck are you doing? She's trying to take Ashsong on with her sword, what the hell is she thinking? Yeah, he looks wounded, but he's still giving good as he gets, and while she now has Shay and Tarrow on her side they look to be taking hits that are putting them down too. I gotta get in there fast.

Problem is, while it ain't a huge amount of ground to cover, this is now treacherous terrain, and it wastes me valuable time trying to cross it without doing myself a further injury. At one point I look up and see Tarrow get faked out and Ashsong takes his head for it, and I almost shout in shock but then Shay beats me to it, her own scream so full of pain and anguish I couldn't match it if I tried. It redoubles my efforts though.

Then Ashsong drives that weird crystal sword right through Gael, the tip coming out through her back so fast that it tears through her cloak before it can pin it out. This time I do howl, and I stop thinking about trying to take care moving forward, so I go down hard when another piece of wood crumples under my foot and I'd shred my knees if they weren't armoured. I drag myself up with a snarl and power through the last of it, and start running the moment I hit open ground again. Just as Shay stabs Ashsong through a great gash in his armoured side that I'm a little goggled by.

I come in under his arm without even slowing my feet, and I'm already prepping my thrust before I've quite dragged the knife from its sheath on my flank, but if it damages the harness on the way out I really don't notice any more than I give a shit. I do what I always do, plunging the knife as far as it'll go into the soft, unprotected flesh of his armpit, then pull free and do it again and one more time for good measure, just like I was taught. I'm so quick I'm already dancing away before he can even react from it, but by now he's already so fucked up it's little more than a coup-de-gras.