Sons of Ironstorm - Book 3: New Alliance

Chapter 26: Muraan

"It is said they walk on two legs like humans

but are known to fall to all fours when they wish speed.

They possess the fierceness of their bestial ancestry,

warriors without rival, fear or compunction.

Falling on their enemy like a lion falls on its prey."

- Observations on the Muraan by a pre-Cadremoor Alliance explorer

They were massive, all sinew and muscle. Yet they moved with the grace and speed of their feline ancestors as they exchanged blows with each other almost faster than the eye could follow. Possessing the aspect of humans, with two arms, two legs, a head and a trunk, all in proportion, they stood upright as they warred. But that was where the similarity ended, for no human, man or woman, stood nearly three paces tall, with shoulders like the boom on a ship's sail, arms like battering rams and legs as thick as tree trunks. And perched on top of those shoulders was a shaggy cat's head, complete with whiskers, top mounted ears and fierce muzzle, fangs exposed in silent roars of fury with the heat of battle.

Battling with pace-long blades, reverse-curved like scythes and possessing viciously jagged edges, the Muraan surged back and forth, neither side yielding to the other. Already many of the combatants wore long slashes in heavy leather tunics, scores on the chain link armor beneath and not a few wounds oozed dark red blood. Lawrence's eyebrows rose in interest at that. Though they carried little in their appearance of men, they bled like them; a common link outside possessing two arms and two legs.

His Wielder senses extended to their fullest extent, Lawrence focused on the big cats individually. And quickly discovered they were as individual as humans were, no two alike though, at first, they had looked the same. There, one with a short shorn mane and black and yellow, and flashing yellow eyes like a Chalis tiger, and that one over there tawny like a Scattered Kingdoms lion, with a flowing black mane that swirled with its shuffling and stabbing motions against its opponent, its eyes a fierce green. Yet another was gray, mane as long as the second muraan, yet bound in a tightly woven braid, tied with leather straps to hold it together, eyes a startling blue.

And individual as their appearance was the armor and clothing they wore. Chain mail blended with boiled leather tunics, or jerkins with sewn metal disks. There a thick-armed warrior wore a battered breastplate and steel-backed gauntlets, swinging a heavy longsword at a stocky muraan in scale armor, painted in forest colors for camouflage. The shorter cat replied with a wicked half moon axe possessing a blade nearly as long as its forearm, its bare hands furred and fingered in the same number as a human's, yet lacking visible nails. They were stubby affairs, much like their owner and they held the weapon in a competent yet comfortable two-handed grip.

Even as Lawrence watched, it hooked the taller muraan's sword between the axe's blade and nicked wooden haft, cloth wrapped for grip, and pulled the longsword down enough to hammer the ax's top, pointed like a spear, into the center of its opponent's breastplate. The breastplate rang like a sounded bell yet held, attesting to its strength, garnering only another dent in its already battered convex surface.

Staggered but not downed, the taller muraan recovered and counterattacked, ringing several blows off the ax's edge until it was swept aside by a powerful roundhouse blow. It was now the stocky muraan's turn to take a half step back, suddenly off balance. Then it was nearly driven to its knees by a stiff blow to its helm-covered head, the heavy helmet barely deflecting the longsword aside to prevent the cat receiving a cloven head. Still, a part of its ear, the pair jutting from two ear holes in the helm's upper crest, was sheared off. The muraan chuffed in pained surprise before it recovered itself enough to return to the fray, ax whistling through the air, ignoring the blood now flowing from the severed ear.