Deathless

Deathless Chapter Nine: Thaedun

Chapter Nine: Thaedun

"Get down here!” Vanya yelled at Sirya, drawing out her weapon. “You two, get your weapons out. Prepare for battle.”

Lindale’s huge battle axe and Risselyn’s longsword flashed in the failing light of the mid afternoon sun as adrenaline pumped through their veins, rejuvenating them. They would need it for the battle to come.

Sirya came up alongside them, her twin daggers clutched in her hands.

“What’s the plan, Vanya?” Sirya asked. “I saw about thirty guys carrying swords and axes with about ten guys with bows at their back.”

“Good, good,” Vanya said, thinking for a moment. “Sirya, I want you to follow the hill to our left around and ambush their archers from behind. After that, get the hell out of there. The rest of us will hold our ground as best we can. Try not to get killed.”

“Got it,” Sirya answered. “Just leave some of these idiots for me, okay?”

“Sure,” Lindale answered, smiling. “Just get back here in one piece.”

Sirya merely smirked, and left to do her job.

“While she kills off the archers, we just need to make sure we don’t die, yeah?” Lindale asked.

“That’s right,” Vanya answered. “Though that may be much more difficult than we think. How are your combat skills, Risselyn?”

“Good enough,” he muttered bitterly.

“Well, we’ll see, about that, then.”

“Just so you know,” Lindale whispered to Risselyn as the bandits drew near. The band of fighters had been treading along at a steady speed before, but they had now spotted the three of them with their weapons drawn, and had quickened their pace. “It would be an awful shame if you were to die. So try not to.”Risselyn smiled for the first time since they’d met him. “You won’t need to worry about that.”

The bandits were nearly upon them now. One-handed war axes and short swords were drawn in their midst, and they were driven by a murderous rage.

The two sides clashed in a storm of steel and iron that was soon met with blood and screams.

Vanya stepped forward with an upward swing, incapacitating the first bandit. Then she spun around, felling another. Lindale decapitated two with one mighty swing of his axe, watering the grass below their feet with hot red blood.

Risselyn, on the other hand, stabbed the first bandit that came at him straight through the head, and cut down another with a clean swing. Stepping forward with his shield, he toppled three more opponents, whom Vanya and Lindale helped to finish off.

“Well, at least he’s good for something,” Lindale muttered as they watched Rissleyn fight his way through the enemy lines, bloodthirsty as a python in the dead of night.

Now these bandits, the self- proclaimed Ragnor Bandits, led by Thaedun Sure- shot, were not a very skilled bunch, and relied on strength in numbers to overwhelm their enemies. Their forces, a mere two hundred fighters, were mostly made up of broke farmers and rebellious teenage thrill seekers.

The bandits surrounded the trio, trying to overwhelm then with sheer numbers. Ten of their number were already gone, with twenty left.

“Archers!” A gruff, gravelly voice called out from the crowd of brigands. “Take ‘em down!”

But no archers were there to be seen, for Sirya, with feet as lithe and quick as a hunter stalking its prey, had brought them all down with a quick slash to their throats.