• PM To Join • They Came Before Dawn

[Max]

"Is it hard for you?" Belial's voice raised just above the Cylus wind while she dug. "Looking around at all the trouble this village's gone through?"

"Why?" Max asked tensely. She wrenched the snow-laden shovel from the ground and hurled the white mass behind her. Since Kasoria gave his orders she'd been working on this little foxhole and she could nearly stand in it without being seen.

"Oh, y'know..." Belial folded his arms and glanced around the smoking remains of the lighthouse Rorom's people tried to erect. 'Cause..."

"My Immortal?"

"Well..."

"I don't know how it makes me feel." Maxine jammed the shovel into the hard snow with more emphasis. "I don't feel particularly good about people dying over a fuckin' lookout tower with a torch at the top, no." This time the tossed snow pile nearly hit the archer, and he had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit by the debris. Belial cursed when his false leg sunk through the ground a few inches. Max tossed the shovel out of the hole. "There's a reason they call her 'Fickle One', Bell. I can figure her out about as well as I can figure out myself."

"I do reckon you are a mess."

"Gee, thanks."

"Slip of the tongue!" Belial grinned at her. "Cold makes me bitter. Makes a leg I don't have ache. Besides, I had the deal sealed with that gorgeous little lass before Highmark started barking, so."

"Yeah, yeah," Max rolled her eyes as she hoisted herself out of the hole. She peered down to admire her work. It was just deep enough to conceal her position, but not so deep she couldn't escape it in a hurry. "Just get those extra torches lit before we settle in for watch. Highmark wanted our part of camp looking extra inviting, and I want the light over there to draw attention away from my spot here."

"Aye, aye, Olivia."

"Ophelia, and you know that." The sweat on her brow was cooling rapidly in the frigid conditions of Havardr. "Keep being smart instead of sharing the work, and that pretty lass you wanted to bag'll be over a spit instead."

Belial snickered but stalked back toward where The Band planned to rest their heads with a mind about torches. Ever since Max was wholly outed as an Immortal-marked, Belial had saddled her with contempt. He was never as bad or overt as Vaul. His spite toward her had eased up considerably, especially during the time Kasoria abandoned them to sort himself and Maxine stepped up in his place by the Highmark's own design. The view of the carnage Chrien had wreaked here had apparently stirred up old feelings. Maxine didn't blame him completely. The scene had stirred something ambiguous inside of her too.

By the time the last of the feasting and pleasantries were over, The Band was ready and the Delegation was smartly secured. Maxine had settled back into her freezing foxhole with a belly of Havardr slop staving her hunger and pungent rum keeping her warm. She always volunteered for first watch. In the beginning it was to win favor as the new boot in their squadron. Now it just made sense given her night-owl lifestyle for so many arcs, which was adopted for more reason than any one.

Maxine wrapped her cloak tight around her body and kept watch over the southern expanse of the modest village. Belial found what little high ground he could nearby and concealed himself the best he could.

It was hard for her, even wearing Ophelia's face, not to imagine how much more enjoyable the passing of this frigid time would be if she had the luxury of drugs to abuse. Instead her mind went wild. She thought of Yaralon and the unfinished business she would need to return to complete. That, of course, was all Chrien's will and that turned her toward thoughts of the brutality the Sea Bitch rained down here. Like an undisciplined puppy on a leash, she kept demanding her mind pull back from thoughts of the future and what she might be forced to confront in the next town. Fighting those intrusive thoughts became such an exhausting endeavor that the silhouette she spied was grimly a relief.

Am I seeing things?

It was a fair question. A mind that begged to be occupied could imagine all sorts of things. The white expanse was a boring back drop, too. The nature of a Cylus night made confirmation even more challenging. Yet this was not the deepest darkness Max had beheld. She oriented herself to the southern horizon and toggled her vision to the forefront, abandoning reliance on her ears that had become a sounding board for the howling wind and roaring sea. Then she waited.

Ah. There.

She saw it again. This time she was sure. A white fox had dared to jog across the open snow. It was pretty thing. She had never seen one before, and the sight of it brought a smile to her face.

The little fox seemed completely unbothered in its simple little life. It buried its nose in the snow and tossed some of it around. Max assumed it was looking for some hibernating creature to surprise. It pranced around some more, snuffling and swishing its tail. She was lost in the simplicity of this creature's life for some time. It didn't seem to know it was being watched either and somehow that made the moment all the more magical to behold. The fox pause with one of his feet raised in the air. Its head turned behind, further to the south, and then it suddenly darted away from her view as fast as it could.

Maxine's gladius quietly slid from its sheath.

[Rorom]

Rorom was trying to sleep, while resting in his tub. A necessity demanded of the elemental spark that had taken refuge in him, or else it'd harry him to the point of getting no restful sleep. He was cordoned off in his Yurt from where Dana was sleeping. Not for modesty or privacy. Such concepts were rarely experienced on a ship or in a small village. It was more a nod to civilized living and affording the girl a space that was her own. In a few bits, Rorom still wasn't sleeping. He saw the auburn hair of Malmada duck under the entrance to their dwelling, and into his corner. She looked at him with a smile, as he sat there, resting in the salt water.

"Alright?" Rorom looked up at her.

"I wanted to check on you. You only just returned..."

"The Sea Witch barely bothered with me. Saw fit to teach me a new trick, however." Rorom grudgingly remembered how she'd delayed his return by showing him how to cocoon himself in a healing chrysalis. And another ounce of his soul went to the bestial spark. "Gods damn her."

"Want to talk about it?" Malmada asked, taking a seat by a nearby stool.

Rorom thought about it, but this wasn't really the time for heart to hearts. He needed rest, as he was setting off himself to Ishallr in the morning. "No. Not now."

"But you haven't dismissed me."

"Yer just got here. And I've nowhere to go and nothing to do cept sleep." Rorom grumbled, as he shifted in his watery tub. "At any rate..."

"Did you hear that?" Malmada suddenly perked up. She craned her head to get a better sense of the sounds outside.

"What?" Rorom tried to listen, but couldn't hear anything unusual.

"I heard movement outside...."

Sighing to himself, Rorom rose from the tub abruptly. "Might be some of the crew have gotten into the emergency cache for some rum that isn't watered down. I'll take a look."

He threw on some clothes, trousers, shirt, boots and gloves. Almost as an after thought, he grabbed his spear and javelins, to toss over his shoulder in their quiver. Might do to intimidate the salty bastards for disturbing Havardr's precious supplies.

Not a moment had he stepped out of the yurt, than a whistling sound assaulted his ears, and a sudden splash of precipitation. A small watery shield deflected the blow dart, and then another.

Rorom looked to one of the crewmen he'd taken on for their whaling operation, and he fell to a blow dart in the next moment. Rorom then felt more than heard the footfalls against the earth. His eyes turned toward the south, and he shouted. "Aurok! Rally the village, we're under attack!"

The element of surprise had been deprived of the tribals, but they still had Havardr with its breeches down. It'd take more than leadership to get ready and repel them.

He embraced the element of air And leapt, albeit clumsily into the air as it took him over the brush, and toward the embankment where he could take cover, and protect the one that had been downed by a poison dart.

His eyes searched the gloom for the glint of obsidian and flint blades, narrowing at the southern bank of the river, while giving some cover to the fallen Havardreen.

[Kasoria]

It was a matter of logic, and understanding, which so much of tactics truly was. Knowing what needed to be done, how to accomplish it, and factor your enemy's actions into the plan. Once you had these three variables, all that was left was the strength to carry out the plan.

Strength, and patience... and cold blood. To sit in the shadows and listen to men die. Women scream. Children cry. To hear the sound of rushing feet across snow and dirt, the sight of obsidian and flint weapons glinting like the eyes of jackals. It wasn't enough to know, to understand, or have a plan. What really mattered, was waiting until the most opportune moment to put that plan into motion.

That moment had not yet arrived. And around him, the people who had fed and warmed him and his friends died.

It will not be for nothing.

Kasoria knew that was true, but he doubted Rorom would agree.

Next to him, a boulder grunted and Kasoria shook his head. They were both cold after breaks crouching in the shadow of an even larger boulder. Under the blankets they'd bought, they'd been slowing flexing and massaging their limbs, not wanting them to seize up when the time came. They'd not spoken, exhaling their foggy air under the cover so it would not give them away. They'd been so still and quiet that curious, questing beasts had sniffled around them in the night.

Vaul had hissed only once, and felt Kasoria's sharp eyes on him a heartbeat later. Still scowling at the little fox who'd tried to take a nibble, he resumed his impression of a distinctly ugly statue, and remembered his orders.

No noise. No words.

It was into that deep, depthless time of night where the previous day and the new morning were blurred together. When everything seemed to be asleep or at least lulled, save for the most ravenous or restless. The darkness was so absolute that beyond the smattering of torches in the village, the whole world seemed to have vanished. Only the sparse light from the cloud-smeared moon gave some hint as to the moors and wastes and distant hills. Anything could be moving beyond there, and as it turned out...

The two men watched the handful of furry things rush past them. Towards the village. As if spooked but so badly they'd take their chances with that place of fire and hungry humans rather than the safety of their blasted heaths. Something else was out there, that had claimed that darkness now and the animals knew not to risk themselves in it. The two men did not twitch or even stiffen as they watched them emerge from the darkness.

Hooded, cloaked figures. Hissing in a language that sounds like hawks tearing prey. Weapons primitive as those buried in ancient caves next to warriors and huntsmen who first tread the world in times so old they had no name. They moved in a quick, careful stoop. Watchful of the ground, minimizing the crunch of their feet on snow and bare earth. They came from the south, as Rorom had thought. There were many of them, and he could smell the dried blood under their nail and hear the grumble of hunger in their brief, whispered words.

The fires of the village, the looming hull of the ship... taken together with the biting, killing cold, it was too much for them. They needed to hunt. They needed to fill the larder.

Under their blankets, Kasoria and Vaul unsheathed their weapons. Kasoria wordlessly summoned his Sparks, and layers of Abrogative energy started to form just above the surface of his skin. The other two, younger and eager, swept up through his blood and into his thoughts. Waiting to be unleashed as needed. Next to him, Vaul gripped mace and hatchet and that was all. No magic for him, no sorcerous power. Not that he ever needed it.

This was the moment, wasn't it? The moment. The time-

No. Not yet.

They let the cannibals flit past them. Ignored and unseen. Disciplined but eager, aching to take warm, unwilling flesh between their teeth. The mass of skinned pelts and black blades and slouching primitives flowed past them, towards Havardr. They watched them go, leaving them behind, becoming their unseen rearguard... and then the commotion started.

Kasoria frowned briefly at the whistling noises. Darts. Blowguns. Like in Rhakros. Nothing his Shields wouldn't stop, but Vaul grunted in annoyance at the revelation. He'd have to be careful. A few dozen yards away, they heard something scrape and a new shadow grew from the side of another boulder. Raand's bald head gleamed for a half-trill, then his hood covered it again. Kasoria could almost feel his eyes on him, begging for the order. Kasoria waited. He listened. He steeled himself and beat down the urge to charge and reave and slaughter and revel in the confusion and slaughter of these fallen humans.

But he didn't. Not until he heard two new sounds, that told him the moment was night. The first was the twang-whip of arrows flitting through the air. Every time, followed by a gurgle or a scream or just a muted shunk of metal and wood piercing flesh. Belly. That meant Maxine, too.

The second was far less subtle, and came from further in the village. He knew a clutch of the raiders, at least, would make straight for the boat. Too rich a prize, loaded with meat, to be left for later. A more methodical attack might have dealt with the village first, cleared the land, made sure the flanks were closed. But these creatures, human was they were... they had cunning, and some tactics, but they were hungry. And as they stormed up the gangplank, they drooled and whooped and cackled and-

Everyone in Havardr heard the roar. Everyone still sleeping was woken by it. Kasoria and Vaul smiled to themselves.

Mikiros truly was the heart of The Band. He was, in many ways, the soul least marred. He had more capacity for empathy and compassion. He was a killer because life had forced him onto a hard path, but he never lost himself to the cruelty so many of his kind had. He still, Kasoria thought, believed in... more. He was at least open to the possibility. Foolish men had see the giant act friendly, an incon grous sight given his scars and armor and bulk, and assumed he was simple because of it. Just a dumb beast, equipped for war and herded into battle.

Kasoria almost felt sorry for those men. They were not at Rhakros. They never heard foriegn tongues babble and scream when Mikiros struck their lines. One word in particular, hounding him, sticking to his hide as the siege raged.

Beast. Beast. Beast.

He was the last line between the Etzori delegation and the cannibals, and their half-mad victory shouts turned to agonized terror as the giant leaped from the deck and into them, laying about with sword and heater shield and crushing and cleaving and kicking and breaking and roaring-

Kasoria roared back, in a tongue that no-one save the Etzori would understand. Then he exploded from under his camouflage, gladius and dagger in hand, running for the back of the raiding party. They were all the way into the bag now, not just climbing into it. The way south was shut to them. The village would rouse, and the cannibals would find blooded mercenaries and waiting defenders and magic and a complete lack of mercy waiting for them. They would break them, and they would run... but there would no nowhere to run. Save back to him... and the one order he'd given to The Band.

"I want one not dead. Kill all others."

[Max]

Maxine stilled her anxious body where she crouched in her snowy foxhole. Her darkening eyes followed the silhouettes with faintly glistening weapons in their ghoulish hands as they slunk toward the ripe village. She pressed her lips into a hard line and reminded herself of her orders as they passed her unaware. Somewhere Chrien surely smirked, watching her blessed spectate passively as the cannibals passed their line unfettered to begin their sinister raid on a village already so deeply marred

You could end it right here.

She tightened her grip on her gladius.

Stir a gale. Call the twisters or the fog.

That would be the end of her ruse as Ophelia if she used the boons of her blessing. She would be outed as a devout to Chrien in a village recently ravaged by her whims. Worse, it was likely the display to follow would firmly match her wretched reputation and any hope for anonymity would be lost. All would know in short time that Maxine had returned…but wasn’t letting this slaughter happen to even one villager much worse?

In a moment you could disrupt what organization they have and start cutting them down before they blood their first blade.

The muscles in her legs were tense, prepared to launch her from this foxhole toward the rear of this primitive vanguard. She grit her teeth against the cold and the chill that shook her. Kasoria’s orders were on her mind. Then the scream of the first victim fell upon her ears. She closed her eyes.

Fuck.

It was too late now. The moment for anything good and right had passed her once again. She opened her eyes and the moment for those raised for cruelty and apathy began. Belial already notched his arrow on his string. He raised from his position at the same time she emerged from hiding. She moved at a half speed quicker than the stalking killers entering the torchlight in number.

The arrow plunged through the neck of one savage carrying his spear. He hit the snow, clawing at his neck and gurgling. His battle buddy beside him turned in time to feel Maxine’s gladius bury itself in his guts. Understanding came only after she gave the sword a vicious twist and tore it free again. Two bodies bled into the freezing snow, blood steaming upon the pure white ground into the icy air, when Kasoria’s new command echoed in the sky.

Maxine didn’t worry about accounting for the survivor now. She was already in the thick of it, hacking and swinging her steel against flint and obsidian, thinning the tribal number while the earlier arrivals flitted between tents. A roar near the ship signaled Miki’s join to the fray. Her heart thundered in her chest and she let out a cry as she parried a makeshift short sword and raced her edge along the wielder’s throat.

The Delegation was safely far from both the southern border and the bulk of where the local population resided. They gathered in the very ship they arrived on. The giant, tongueless mercenary served as their protector and he emerged from his staging point to defend the representatives of his land with vigor. He was perhaps their only man but he was not alone.

”Gooood!”

Maith, the very good Barghest, had remained secreted inside the vessel, too. He had his commands to guard the ship from intruders and he remained a steadfast guardian behind the gentle giant he came to enjoy. Although Maith, or Good, hadn’t the heart for killing he was an impressive presence. Should a single savage sneak by the behemoth member of The Band, they would find the snarling fangs of Maxine’s companion waiting for them as the final line of defense.

The cannibals seemed confused by their turn of luck. The sleeping village had turned on them and they found a trap sprung. First Havardreen bodies collapsed to their darts and now their own were bleeding to death in their place. Hungry and surprised, the cannibals were caught between the question of pushing their assault or defending themselves. Their organization broke. Some engaged The Band while the rest was married to sacking the village.

She didn’t know if Kasoria’s plan was the morally right one. All she knew was every swing of her sword that brought death was a mercy compared to the fate to be suffered by the last tribesman standing.

[Rorom]

It might’ve seemed suspicious to any other than Rorom that the band led by Kasoria had been anything other than flatfooted by the appearance by the cannibal tribals from the Northern Scaltoth. A more suspicious person might suspect these strange foreign people to be in league with either Chrien, the pirates, or the savages. Yet Rorom knew better. The people from Etzos were good, they were not here to plunder, but had partaken of their food and company in good faith. So it did come as some surprise when the trap was sprung, and the Etzori, and the entire village converged to entrap the damned savages.

His warning and rousing to action, therefore, was as tears in a torrential downpour. All Rorom had to do, then, was to join the fight. Which he did, bearing his javelins with a mastery hard earned on the open seas, against beasts great and small.

He hefted a javelin, and kissed it with the lightness and speed of wind. The missile flew straight and true, into the skull of a savage wielding a bone sword, trying to hack at the guard of a staff-wielding villager. The javelin scored straight through the back of his head and out his mouth, sputtering blood through the exit like some hellish vomit.

Rorom looked to see where the enemies were concentrating, and skirted the edge of the central surrounding action around the ones in the center of the village, hunting for food and bodies to take back as captives for their rituals.

Blow darts flew, and many of these that would’ve hit Rorom instead were flicked off by the water guardian that was his kin. Yet there were more deadly weapons than the blow darts, which were likely poisoned. There were men and women wielding swords and axes of flint, bone, obsidian. Some with steel stolen from some adventuresome individual delving where they shouldn’t perhaps.

He just about was warned from behind by a push of wind, when one of these warriors accosted him. Rorom side stepped narrowly a vertical cut by this flint axe, and brought his own two-handed spear to bear, backpedaling to create distance while fending them off.

The savage was poorly trained, a youngling, but determined to have his cut of flesh out of this village. Hunger could make a warrior act in erratic ways, so Rorom understood as a hunter himself. The blade came high on him, and Rorom ducked under it, bracing his spear to allow the savage to impale himself on it. It took a moment to extract the weapon, and then drive it home into his neck to dispatch him.

Rorom saw savages boarding the boat, and rushed along with a few volunteers from Almund that he waved onwards to assist. They all bore hunting weapons and implements mostly, but they would work for this purpose, in boarding action.

Rorom and the volunteers from Almund, now Harvardeens chased them down the pier, readying themselves to drive them into the icy cold waters of the bay.

Rorom stopped short of the pier, and began channeling some ether into the waters around the structure. With a little bit of elemental manipulation, he made the waters underneath them to bubble and roar beneath them. This gave them pause, and a delay long enough for some more volunteers to join up at the pier, while the bulk of Etzori fighters and villagers who stood with them circled the main bulk of them around the village grounds.

Rorom took the opportunity, of the savages on the piers’ flatfootedness to launch another javelin, this one hitting the largest of the tribals in the chest. A gout of blood erupted from him, and he went down. Several of his fellows begagn immediately reacting, and lifted wicker shields, to thwart any further attacks of that kind. Then they began making their way down toward the shores of Havardr, leaving the people on the ships for now…

[Kasoria]

The villagers didn't need any encouragement, and Kasoria's order wasn't for them. He knew that once the roar struck them, the crash of blood in their ears, the lightning sizzling through their shaking hands as they hacked and thrust and killed and died, they would barely hear anything five feet away. Their world would shrink down to the tiny arena of them, their enemy, and the ground they stood on. That was what set his men apart: they could think larger, see the angles, not allow themselves to slide back into that primitive part of their brains that shut out all interference in the name of survival.

The Band didn't need to do that. They didn't fear the horror around them; they were the horror.

Mikiros proved that wit every swing of his sword, every bellow from his frothing mouth coming with specks of blood and spittle. His short beard was already soaked with both, shield crashing out to pulverize and pulp, sword severing and slashing. The gaggle of cannibals that tried to storm the gangplank crashed against him like a stone, and fell apart like waves of meat and bone and blood. Behind them, Rorom's people were eating up their rear, hemming them in, driving pelt-swaddled savages to hurl themselves into the icy water rather than fight on two fronts.

Javelins followed them into the surf anyway. Harpooning them like ugly, malformed fish. Bodies bobbed back up, floating like rotten icebergs, blood black under the moon spreading across the water.

No. They wouldn't be listening. But he right people would.

Raand and Vaul hurled themselves at the rear of the cannibals, so arrogant they'd not even bothered with a rearguard. They'd assumed the villagers had been spent and terrified and their new visitors from the sea weren't fighters. They were paying for that now. The sound of Mikiros roaring and Good snarling and Rorom and his people fighting and Belial's arrows flying... all of it seemed to strike them dumb for a moment. This wasn't the plan. Kasoria could almost read the thought in their half-human eyes, backward and uncouth yet alive with low cunning.

He had just long enough to smile in satisfaction at the sight. Then they were among them and-

-Shadowslayer hacked left and backhanded right and two heads rolled across the frozen dirt. Other men turned at the sound of bone crunching and the closest got Traitor's Blade hissing across his throat, opening it up to the bone. Those were the gifts, the rewards of his plan working, the rest came alive and bought their weapons to bear-

For all the good it did them.

-flint and stone and pilfered iron slammed against armor invisible and unbreakable. Infused with ether and ability he'd been honing for years, their blows didn't just fail, they rebounded back as he seeped Backlash into his Abrogative armor. The heads of axes and spears shattered; swords broke. Men recoiled in horror and Kasoria was no knight to wait for them to pull another blade. The black gladius, crackling with lightning from pommel to tip, thrust out and cleaved through bone and wicker armor like they were naught but dry leaves. Men died around him, a perfect radius of blood and severed limbs and twitching bodies, and once he had a moment-

-to see where Vaul and Raand had gone, triangulate where they were in relation to him, work out in the space of two heartbeats how fared the battle-

-he threw out his arms and a blast of wind exploded from his fists, knocking down the handful of men in front of them. Long-since inured to his displays of magic, Raand and Vaul didn't question their fortune. Kopis and mace came up and down and back and forth on insensible, helpless pillagers, then moved on. The three of them had already gutted most of the main force, and now the ones that had raced ahead were starting to run back, desperate to flee the wrath of Rorom and Maxine and Havardr itself.

TINK

A dart clinked against his armor, and by where it landed and the oil-smear ripple it left just above his clothes, Kasoria's eyes snapped to the shooter. A young one, softer-handed, gawping in shock and he tried to remember how to jam a dart down into a pipe. He parried a spear thrust from a howling killer, chopping the spear, then tangling the man's arms up in his own, a painful lock of his joints that enabled him to be moved around-

-like a shield-

-the raider grunted and then started to froth and shake. Kasoria heard a cry of despair as the younger cannibal realized what he'd done, but he kept holding the man up for now. Advanced with him in front, until he was close enough to let the convulsing man fall away and the shooter was just in front of him-

TOOF

-Sovereign stopping the envenomed little projectile three inches in front of his face with a flicker of a thought. The shooter didn't balk, or break, Kasoria had to give him that. This close, he knew he wouldn't get another reload. Instead he tossed the blowpipe at Kasoria, who swayed away from the desperate throw, went for his dagger instead and-

-he couldn't, he was stuck, the air around him was so thick and hard and a shadow fell over him and now, now he started to break as he heard-

"You'll do."

Something hard and fast hit him just above the ear, and the chaos of the raid became nothing but echoing darkness.

[Max]

Maxine entered the light of the village with her sword dripping a trail behind her in the pure snow. The blood spattered across her clothes and face was warm, oddly welcome against the icy air of the Havardr coast. She wore this earned war paint while she hunted for more cannibals. A shadow emerged from her flank and she planted a foot, leaning back as she turned her head to lock onto it while a dart whizzed by her eyes. She frowned and watched the short woman, ritually scarred across her cheeks, gnash her teeth in frustration. Maxine turned and dashed for her.

The cannibal was happy to meet her quarry. A bone dagger pulled, the feral human hissed in a language Maxine did not understand as the distance between them shortened to nothing. The savage was a thin, nimble thing. She dodged Maxine's initial swings like a squirrel between the snapping jaws of the arctic wolf that fled earlier. Her counter with the dagger was caught at the wrist and a leg sweep put the wild thing on her back. Maxine knelt on top of her chest, still controlling the flailing wrist holding the dagger. The savage rocked her body violently and teeth searched for one of Maxine's arms.

"You little bitch," Max admonished at the sight of the rotten teeth and head lurching for her flesh.

The Rusalka fed the starving demon steel. She watched with macabre awe as the cannibal chewed on the icy metal blade. Blood poured from the corners of the mouth and still the woman did not stop, like some rabid dog. Maxine grimaced and punched her blade through the flesh out of mouth, liberating it with a lateral pull. The wild woman ceased her hunt when the gladius buried through the socket of her eye. The twang of a bowstring echoed behind her. She turned from her kill to see Belial whistling while he followed behind at distance, picking the savages off with such skill it forced the survivors deeper into the ambush. He gave Maxine a wink as he passed her by.

She abandoned her latest kill to get ahead of the archer again where she belonged. A couple times she followed foot prints into tents to slay the errand savage who was mid-murder or hiding, and then she was out in the torchlight again. A cannibal laid in her path to the ship. An older man with graying, long hair and a beard so unkept it made him look more like a thing of nature than human. His back was bare despite the climate and an arrow pierced his back. She could hear him wheezing before she reached him. Her gladius plunged through his back, between his ribs, into the heart. He wheezed no more.

"MMMRAAAAH!"

Maxine ducked in time to avoid the body that flew overhead and through the canvas of a tent nearby. She straightened back up cautiously to find Mikiros on the deck of the Etzori ship, heartily standing his ground with a heaving chest. A couple cannibals stood shaking before him with their rudimentary weapons, glancing at one another like a pair of primitive humans suddenly regretting picking a fight with a cave bear. Maxine smirked at the sight. She broke into a jog and started her own butchery, crossing the gangplank to sandwich the remaining cannibals on the ship.

"Watch it!"

It was Belial's voice form below. Max leaned to miss another blow dart, and cursed again her inability to nullify their existence with a summoned gale. Belial loosed his arrow and it blew through both cheeks of the offender. The savage held his face and fell to the ground, scampering before turning to face again.

"That's what you get for not aiming at the big target, show off!" Max shouted back to him.

Belial scoffed and raised the bow again. He felt the feathers on his face and loosed his arrow dead-on. The savage fell backward with the arrow shaft sticking out of his flesh, dead center. Belial placed another arrow on his string, but not before he briefly gave Max the middle finger. She smiled and went back to her business. Miki already skewered one of the two cannibals on the end of his sword, lifting the man off his feet, before shucking him off the edge of the deck into the icy waters below. His partner gave a desperate cry that was silenced by the gladius that blasted through his gut.

"Good?" Max asked Miki when she was beside him on the deck.

"Goooood!" Maith howled from below.

"No," Max laughed quieltly. "Not you...but good."

She turned to see Miki's toothy grin. All was well enough considering their reality it seemed. Belial jogged up the gang plank to occupy this new high ground. Maxine, in turn, returned to the village. They hit this ambush fast and hard with callousness. Surely there was straggler or two. So she became a wraith between the tents, stalking between the light of torches and lanterns and the shadow of this Cylus dark.

[Rorom]

Rorom watched as the savages quit the piers in a hope that the icy waters might hold some degree of safety from the missiles and javelins that were hitting them from the shore. It was a vain hope, however. Rorom beckoned to the elements of water and air, almost melding them but not quite to the point of refinement. Merely creating enough aeration in the water to make their efforts to swim to the top of the surface after diving in a hopeless effort. Almost as hopeless as attempting to take flight by flapping one's arms.

As far as he knew, though the savages wore some strange clothing, they weren't wearing wings on their arms.

"Stay out of the waters lads and lasses!" Rorom said, as he intensified the dancing of air and water in the aerated waters below the pier.

He furrowed his brow as he held his spear to guard any retreat the savages cordoned off at the pier to find their way back off of it. Meanwhile, Parleg Fancy was swinging and thrusting his great sword this way and that, warding any of the savages from the boat itself along with the Etzori who were so bloodied by their fighting that they became almost indistinguishable, if it weren't for the alien and off-putting mannerisms of the cannibals in combat.

Rorom felt a headache rising in his temples, as he maintained the quickening of the water, until he felt all of the air leave the lungs of the savages below the surface, signalled to him by a calling of the water itself. Then he released the dancing, causing the water to become dense again, crushing the effort of the savages to take breath and filling their lungs with excrutiating rivulets of water into their mouths and airways.

They would be dead, or near enough as made them unfit for combat if they dragged themselves out of the drink.

Rorom knelt by the ground, bracing his spear to intercept any savages running off the piers, while the rest of the village defenders went about their business. He felt the expenditure of ether very deeply, more than he had before. He'd never had cause to use so much of it in past days, save for when he defended them as Breachfang during Chrien's assault.

He was largely useless now to the battle, at least physically, except as a braced spear against the enemy's retreat. Parleg, the big lotharro continued driving savages that had infiltrated the ship, along with the rest of the defenders.

[Kasoria]

Raid turned to ambush turned to skirmish turned to slaughter in the time it took to eat an apple. And not a large one, either.

Some of the older raiders were no strangers to defeat. It was inevitable, unless you solely preyed upon those utterly incapable of fighting back, and out in this desolate place, everything could fight back. Sometimes the villagers or the travelers rallied and they had to melt into the dark or the snow, dragging their dead with them (no sense wasting meat, after all). Maybe one or two of them could remember when a sellsword or knight was among the unlucky herd. Those were bad days. The cannibal tribes were ferocious and hardened by their land, but they were not trained fighters. Up against a far-lander with grit and cold blood married to a decade or so in a fighting company, well... they avoided those herds. The losses weren't worth it.

Never before had this tribe come into contact with The Band. But by that point, all those old raiders, those gnarled and veteran reavers, were dead.

Kasoria watched what was left break and scatter like water exploding away from a stone tossed in a pond. They'd tried a fighting retreat before, realizing quickly that their targets tonight would not break nor be taken. The Band were butchering them up close and at range. Rorom was turning the sea against them, and those not drowned were skewered by vengeful fishermen as they choked. The wrath of Havardr was upon them, too, not just his little parcel of seasoned killers. Inspired by their brutality in the most productive way, they had hurled the bloody-toothed monster back into the night, into the snow, into the icy water.

Now the predators were bolting like rabbits, and his wolves would not let them get to their holes.

"No! No no no-"

Kasoria's gladius lashed out with almost casual grace and cut the kneeling man's throat to the bone. Strange, that no matter how distant the land, men always knew that word. Like how they knew shaking or nodding their heads. It was some shared quirk of humanity, he guessed. The twin exclamations, one for acceptance and eagerness, the other for denial and negativity. Or in this case, pleading. The raider had an arrow through his leg and was bloodied about his shoulder and chest. A villager had likely gored him before he'd broke free and ran; he doubted his men would have let him escape so easily.

Hoped not, anyway. Professional pride and all.

He was moving on before the body toppled, while the sobbing, choking, gushing savage had finished spewing into the snow. He saw shadows gasp and jerk as Belial's arrows caught them in mid-run. Raand and Vaul chased down others, hurrying from place to place, like sheep dogs keeping the back door to a paddock closed. A few raiders tried to run suicidally through the whole village, seeking the wastes beyond it to the north. They didn't get far. Now the sound of battle... well, conflict, were fading. Now there were just groans and pleas in tongues he did not know... and the last few bits of business.

"Sound off!"

One by one, The Band answered him. Their name, followed by either "good" or if they were injured, in Ith'ession. Kasoria cleaned his blades and listened, still as marble. Miki had a cut on his leg. Raand maybe broke a finger. But nothing serious, and where was-

His heart raced a little until Maxine called out. Then it calmed.

She's not a child, old man.

Twin shades loomed out of the shadows, spattered and panting like old jackals. Kasoria looked between Raand and Vaul, voice quick and orders concise.

"That wee cunt I twatted earlier? Bring him t'the square. F'youse can find another one alive, bring 'im, too. Had an idea uv' what t'do, now I got a better one."

Raand cocked his head to one side. Vaul just frowned. Kasoria smiled back, patient as a lizard.

"Gonna make a point. Bring the kid, an' one more, if yeh can. F'not... make sure the rest're dead."

They nodded and set off to their task. Kasoria sheathed his steel and started walking back towards the blaze of lights that made the village. Towards those figures capering and cheering by torches, shot through with the thrill of victory over monstrous fiends. As he approached one or two even clapped him on the back, and he heard his name raised in cheer. The Band and Kasoria, who had helped them beat the cannibals. Heroes all. Kasoria sighed to himself as he got to the square, finding Rorom and Maxine among the throng of celebrating visitors.

He smiled, but it was a thing almost regretful. Resigned to the ugly future he had to ensure unfolded.

Once you see what it takes to ward off men like this, you won't think us heroes. Not at all.