I balanced both feet on the metal platform and focused on my expendable skeletons at the back while recalling what Isu had told me about the weapon. Using the kusarigama’s vampiric power, I pulled the skeletons’ strength out of their bodies and channeled it through the weapon just as the first of the cavalrymen smashed into my wedge of Crusaders and tower shields.
I whipped the chain end of the kusarigama around in a long arc as I aimed it at a rider to my left. The bone chain slammed into his chest, and it was as if a jolt of lightning passed through my body and exited via the chain. The horse and rider exploded from the impact in a cloud of blood and gore. Their body parts sprayed through the air with such immense force that they knocked over two other horses and riders.
Behind me, the skeletons I’d drawn the strength from exploded in showers of bone shards. This weapon was capable of striking with immense power, but that power came at a cost. I’d have to be careful with how I used it.
Before I could draw any more strength from my undead troops and channel it through the kusarigama, a charging horseman lunged his spear at me. I jumped, dodging the lunge, and buried the blade end of the kusarigama in his head as he galloped past me.
The black metal sliced through his steel helmet and his skull as if they were made of wet paper, and it was so sharp that it didn’t even get stuck in his head. It simply stayed in my hand, while his momentum carried him on with the halves of his split-open head falling onto either shoulder as his body dropped from the saddle, lifeless.
Damn, whatever this black metal was, it was incredibly sharp and strong. I didn’t need any magic to improve this part of the weapon.
Two more riders attacked me simultaneously. I fended off the first one’s spear with the bladed section of the kusarigama before I dodged the second man’s spear thrust with a deft swiveling of my hips. Then, I drew on the strength of two more skeletons, but this time, I stopped myself before I absorbed all of their undead energy.
I channeled their strength through the chain and whipped it in a wide arc across both riders’ heads. It smashed into their heads with the force of a battle-axe swung by a northern barbarian, and both men were flung off their horses, skulls crushed.
Ahead of me, Fang broke through the ranks of the horsemen and charged straight at the infantrymen’s shield wall. They tried to hold fast, but the biggest men in the world with the strongest shields couldn’t have stopped my lizard. He smashed through the shield wall, sending men flying and tumbling. He caught an airborne man in his huge jaws and clamped them shut, crushing the soldier’s ribcage with a sickening crack.
I fought off riders with both hands while Elyse was facing down a charging cavalryman. She used her ethereal ropes like a lasso, one she hurled and looped over the rider’s body before he reached her, flinging him off the horse and slamming him with brutal force into a nearby tree. She looped the rope of light from her left hand through the horse’s reins, tugging on them to slow the animal down. Then, moving with acrobatic agility that I didn’t realize she possessed, she sprinted alongside the running horse and leaped up into the saddle. In a flash, her mace was in her hand, glowing.
She galloped through the mass of cavalrymen, fending off their attacks with her mace, and pulled up to a halt in a beam of sunlight shining through the tree cover. She yelled her words of power, and in the blink of an eye, her entire body was covered head to toe in a gleaming suit of golden plate armor, and her mace had become a huge two-handed weapon. As a rider wheeled around and charged at her with his spear leveled, she aimed her mace at him and blasted out a torrent of white fire, turning both rider and horse to ashes.
“A mighty strike!” Rami yelled from astride a horse she’d managed to capture.
The enjarta snatched a spear from a rider before she impaled him with it. She tore through the ranks of cavalrymen, and they were unable to avoid her stabs and thrusts as she carved through them. Isu was on foot, laughing maniacally as she dodged the soldiers’ attacks and blew her corrosive clouds of yellow acid mist onto them before dispatching them with her dagger.
Sarge, my skeleton who wielded the former Paladin’s huge golden greatsword, was leading a group of skeletons into the fight. They crashed into the broken mass of infantrymen, who were still reeling from Fang’s ferocious attack.
Standing atop Captain Jandor’s shield and whirling my kusarigama around me in a tornado of death, I laughed as I flung cavalrymen from their horses left and right. My skeletons’ power gifted my weapon the potency of a giant’s stone club.
In its sheath on my hip, Grave Oath buzzed time and time again as soul after soul was sucked into it via my own kills and the kills of everyone else in my party. With each kill we made, with every new soul, I grew more powerful, and so did my undead troops. It was like piling fresh tinder onto an already-roaring bonfire.
The burly soldier watched helplessly on horseback as we butchered his men and decimated his small army. I caught eyes with him and smiled. Still mounted, he snarled and charged at me, his spear aimed at my chest. I deflected the blow with ease, then somersaulted over him as he raced past me. I landed on the back of his horse, right behind him. Before he could react, I hooked
