The Ghost's Crusade

Chapter I: Drystan

"Next wave of wall fodder incoming, Drys!"

Taking a moment to wonder exactly where their quarry had found enough coin to hire so many sellswords, Drystan parried the next strike wide with the flat of his blade and let his enemy's weight drive it and its bearer straight into the mud-plaster wall behind him. Directly ahead of him and only a few more feet further into the alleyway, the Enkiri who had called out the warning met the reinforcements she spoke of head-on. A cacophony of sharp cracks echoed through the midnight air as she beat, punched, and kicked her way through mercenary after mercenary. It was nearly impossible to follow her movements, a ceaseless torrent of carefully aimed strikes all flowing effortlessly from one into the next like those of a dancer wheeling about to an unheard melody in the key of wholesale slaughter.

Reinforcements or not, it was a pitched battle, and the two of them were the winning side.

With a grunt of effort Drystan slammed his opponent in the face with the back of his armored gauntlet and let the poor sod hit the ground with a pulped nose, stomping rather mercilessly on his neck as he headed further into the alley. He took off after his friend, coming up short as a much larger man with a double-bladed ax attempted to cleave his skull in two. Darting underneath the man's overextended reach, he pivoted on his foot and slid to the side just as the chipped edge of the ax fell. Shipping his dagger up and over his enemy's arms he drove the point home through the bottom of the chin where his facemask left his throat exposed.

Leaving the axman and his dagger where they fell he kicked aside the next foolhardy swordstrike and drew his own blade upwards across the man's unarmored chest. With his opponent split from hip to shoulder he continued to stalk forward nearly unhindered. Two more men met similar fates when they thought they would gain the upper hand and attack at the same time. He simply waited a beat and parried the furthest man's blade into the other's lunging leg, then thrust his sword through the exposed side of the fool still standing upright. Both fell, one never to get up again and the other would be lucky not to bleed out in the street.

Drystan could easily see they were hoping to overwhelm them by sheer numbers and it wasn't working out for them all that well. Numbers meant nothing in an alleyway; it was just a bottleneck keeping the two of them from facing any more than three or four assailants at a time. He and the Enkiri fought alone and without anyone behind them to alter their rhythm. Their enemy would always have more of their kind pressing them forward into their waiting swords, making them stumble and misstep their way straight into their blades.

If they managed to flank them, it would be a problem. But as Drystan methodically cut down every fool who came against him he had been keeping one eye on the alley's mouth. There was nothing behind them but a line of dead or dying mercenaries. The steel-upon-steel cacophony had not even roused the people living in the buildings around them to come out and see what was being so violently slaughtered just on the other side of their walls.

He pulled up short as a man in linked chain armor went flying across his path and watched with amusement as the unfortunate bastard slammed side-first into the opposite wall, feet splayed awkwardly above his head. A second later he was followed by another man in a rather fancily lacquered breastplate, though the elaborate knotted designs were somewhat marred now that there was a sharpened stick of black wood jutting from the center of his chest. He sputtered up crimson droplets from his ruptured heart, then collapsed unmoving on top of his comrade.

Drystan strode forward to stand side-by-side with the Enkiri as she rubbed the side of her face with the back of her sleeve, ridding it of an annoying drip of sweat mixed with the enemy's blood. Though Akkali was regarded as tall among her own people, the crown of her head only reached level with his nose when she was not crouched down awaiting an attack. Many and dead were the fools who underestimated her because of it, though; she had been handing out cracked skulls and perforated organs long before he had been able to catch up with her. In fact it had been the trail of bodies she had left in her wake from their meeting point that let him know both that they had been sold out by their informant and where exactly the man was running to so he could join the chase.