were surrounded.
“I just need a moment,” Aven said. “I can use my magic to seal the tunnel, but it will take time to channel the amount of power I need.”
“You’ll have all the time you need, Tempest,” Bryan said, swinging his sword clean through a charging Vulak.
Aven’s soldiers spread around the tunnel’s opening, helping them defend the prince.
CHAPTER 30: SHEILLENE
My name is Sheillene and I am your narrator. I don’t usually tell my tales as if they are about me, but this next part is very important to whom I became. While we travelled through the tunnel, each time I shot an arrow, there was the chance the Vulak could fall on it and break it. I recovered the ones I could and, by necessity, reused them. When we finally emerged from the tunnel, I’d run out of arrows. I slung my bow across my back and drew my sword.
Vulak fear Abvi organization. They didn’t really engage the prince’s soldiers more than stand just outside spear reach. But Marc and Bryan were not Abvi. The Vulak crowded towards them. The irony is that though the Abvi soldiers were highly disciplined, far fewer Vulak would have died if they’d tried to press through them than died trying to take down Marc or Bryan.
I stood with the two large men, but I lost track of Pantros, most of the time. Occasionally, I’d see him lunging among a cluster of Vulak and then darting back to the cover of the Abvi shield wall.
I still maintain that Marc is part ogre, though he vehemently denies it. Still, I am constantly surprised whenever I see him fight. I expect him to chop and hack using brute strength to power through the enemy’s blocks. He does not play that way. Every movement of his swords is a precision dance. No blow he threw was ever blocked by a Vulak. His blades seemed to find a way around every parry or through every opening in his opponents defense.
Bryan, on the other hand, though clearly trained in the art of sword fighting, relied heavily on his mass and strength. I saw him cleave more than one iron shield in half.
Eventually, it seemed the Vulak had learned to fear the three of us. I include myself because while the two giants were killing a Vulak with every heartbeat, I was at least dropping one with every breath. I am exaggerating a little, but we were killing a lot of Vulak. They’d noticed and they stopped pressing toward us.
A Vulak dressed in the most ornate leather armor I’d ever seen stepped forward from their retreating lines. He drew a pair of swords and gestured at Marc. Around us, the battle had paused. I could see some Vulak regrouping and others moving away. I don’t know to this day what that Vulak had hoped to accomplish, though I’ve learned there is a particular vanity among sword fighters who duel so I understand why Marc, surrounded by the enemy, accepted the challenge.
The Vulak screamed an order and every other Vulak in the area backed away, but all kept their eyes on where that Vulak and Marc met on the field. For a moment, the world was silent as the two swordfighters circled, sizing each other up. Vulak are a little bigger than Abvi, but nowhere near Marc’s size. I can only imagine the Vulak was thinking Marc would be lumbering. Just looking at Marc, I would never engage such a being in close combat. That Vulak must have been confident in his swordplay.
As duels go, this one was fast. The Vulak had skill. He was the first warrior I ever saw parry one of Marc’s blows. In fact he parried three. Marc threw five. When the Vulak fell, Marc knelt beside him and said, “You fought bravely; may you be among the warriors in your paradise.”
Bryan poked me with the tip of his sword. I’m sure he didn’t mean to harm me, but that sword is sharp and he did draw blood through the side of my armor. It was little more than a needle prick, but it got my attention. Bryan then pointed off through the ranks of Vulak at a large winged creature moving towards us, pushing, almost herding, a wave of fresh Vulak in our direction.
“Now!” Prince Aven shouted. “Get back in the mine. It’s closing!”
The fresh Vulak were moving too fast and Marc and Bryan insisted on being the last through. I wasn’t about to leave them behind. Five of the Princes guards were still outside the mine with us when the stone around the tunnel flowed together.
“Where I come from, we would call this a bad situation,” Marc said.
Bryan laughed then said, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere where this would be good.”
The prince’s guards gathered close to us. One of them said, “It was an honor fighting at your side, milady and my lords. If we are to die in battle, it honors us to do so in the company of such heroes.”
If we’d had more time, I’d have told them that they were heroes too, but I was focused on the Vulak surging around us. These were more organized and all of the same clan. They were a uniform style of armor and fought in formations.
“We won’t last long if we play this defensive,” Bryan said. “Stick with me, I’m going to be moving around and changing direction. Our only hope is to not let them plan a way to overwhelm us.”
“You’re suggesting we might survive?” Marc asked.
“Well, I will,” Bryan said. “Stick with me and you might also.”
I’ll say this: I am not fond of the idea of actual death. We Abvi don’t die like the other races, we transcend. We believe that death before we achieve the completeness that leads to transcendence is a true end of our souls. I wasn’t one of those who would have been happy to die as long as it was a heroic death. However, I knew Bryan and if anyone would make it out of an army of Vulak alive, it would be him.
Bryan started running towards a unit of Vulak advancing as a shield wall. We were all behind him. Just before he hit the shields, he rolled into a somersault and came to his feet under the bottom edges of the shields, throwing them upward and bowling the Vulak aside. Marc just threw the Vulak he encountered aside. I am not a big person, even for an Abvi, I’m a bit on the wiry side. I just stayed behind Marc and parried any attack that came at us. There weren’t many. The other Abvi advanced in loose formation behind us, but kept up. They did a great job of keeping anyone from closing on our rear flank. Once we were in the middle of the Vulak unit, Bryan started swinging his huge sword. We all took that as the cue to lay into whatever Vulak was near us. For a dozen or so breaths we laid waste to any Vulak within our weapons reach.
“Moving!” Bryan shouted then rushed through a gap in the enemy and hit another unit, pressing into the middle of that unit and tearing through them as if they were stalks of wheat. The rest of us were right at his side, doing the same.
But, stalks of wheat don’t swing back. By the fourth unit of Vulak, somehow none of us had fallen but each of us had at least one bleeding wound and several minor scrapes. Then we found ourselves in a gap in the enemy forces. No Vulak came near us. We weren’t puzzled though, we knew why. Bryan stood in front of a demon.
The creature was half again as tall as him and carried a foul looking axe of black metal.
The demon made a low grunting noise that I recognized as a chuckle. “Foolish creature, your mortal steel cannot harm me or my kind.” The demon swung his axe, and Bryan blocked, severing the haft of the demon’s weapon but the force of the blow also knocked Bryan’s sword away. The creature then swiped at Bryan with his claws, cutting deep into the man’s chest. Bryan stepped up and punched the demon hard, causing it to stagger. Then the demon thrust the remaining haft of his weapon towards Bryan. Bryan grabbed it, yanking it from the demon’s hand. He then spun impaling the demon’s thigh straight through.
“Who’s foolish now?” Bryan asked.
The demon snorted than brought both of his hands down hard on Bryans shoulder. I heard the snap and two bones jutted from Bryans shoulder as he fell to the ground. I assumed he was dead. I saw Bryan’s sword lying on the ground and dove for it. It was heavy. I could lift it, but I wasn’t going to swing it more than once.
Marc had already been charging to join the fight but got there too late to help Bryan. Marc’s swords hit the demon hard enough to cause the demon to flinch, but not hard enough to penetrate the creature’s armor or even scratch the monster’s blood-red skin. The demon stepped up and grabbed Marc around the waist, lifting him into the air.
