It seemed she wasn’t going to reveal anything more.
“I think it’s time for me to suck a few more souls into my dagger,” I whispered to Elyse.
“And it’s time for me to exert my God-given authority as the true Bishop of Erst.”
I felt a heat on my sides and looked down to see her hands glowing with golden light again.
“I’m havin’ the first romp with the Yengish slut!” yelled the ugly soldier with the battle-axe. “You lot can bloody well have sloppy seconds!”
“You ready?” I whispered to Elyse.
“Oh, yes, I’m ready alright.”
“Good. Let’s mete out some justice. Some sweet, violent justice.”
Chapter Eight
The second we broke into a charge, the girl in black attacked the soldiers. I didn’t know if the sound of Fang crashing through the undergrowth was a catalyst for her actions, or whether it was just perfect timing, but at that instant, she darted forward with astounding speed and agility and buried her left sai in the closest soldier’s eye socket, the one who’d just said he’d be taking her first. He got a taste of her all right, 12 inches of solid steel through his cranium, courtesy of the girl.
Before this soldier had even fallen to the ground, she backflipped and then cartwheeled to the side. The,n she somersaulted over the soldier with the flail. After landing just behind him, she spun on her heel and punched her sai through his neck. He stumbled forward, dropping his weapon and grabbing futilely at the solid steel rod-blade that had impaled his throat.
At this point, Elyse and I entered the fray, and I laughed aloud at the looks on the soldiers’ faces when they saw us charging out of the woods on Fang’s back. I even saw dark, wet stains spreading across the crotch areas of a couple of the soldiers’ tabards. Those poor, stupid fuckers.
Their day was about to take a turn for the worse.
The nearest soldier didn’t even try to put up a fight; he shrieked like a teenage girl, dropped his sword, and turned to run. He only managed to get three steps away before Fang lunged at him with gaping jaws and slurped up the unfortunate thug like an overripe peach.
Two soldiers tried to sprint past Fang’s flank as he was wolfing down their comrade. Fang may have been an oversized lizard, but he wasn’t stupid. He saw them trying to flee, and, without ever looking up from his meal, smashed his long tail into them with a vicious lash. The men were killed instantly by the brutal force of the blow before they were hurled a good 20 feet through the air.
I jumped off Fang’s back. I wasn’t going to let him and the mysterious girl in black—who by now had picked up the dead soldier’s flail and was using it with blinding speed to simultaneously fight off two soldiers—have all the fun. I needed to snatch up some souls for Grave Oath before they were all gone if I was going to get more than just that taste of Isu I had the night before.
As my skeletons converged on the soldiers, Elyse made her way to the ground after me, her hands glowing brightly. A tall soldier, figuring Elyse was an easy target, barreled at her with his spear leveled. She showed not even a sliver of fear, and with a shout, she blasted two beams of golden light from her hands.
The first ray hit the spear, causing it to explode in a cloud of splinters in the soldier’s hands. The next one blasted past him but then whipped back around and spun itself around him like a rope. I remembered seeing this ethereal rope trick of hers before. This time, though, she used the man on the end of the rope of light like a giant flail, swinging his body through the air and smashing it into another soldier, sending him flying from the crunching impact. Then, in a glorious display of violence, she hurled the man high into the air, stretching her rope taut, and whipped him down headfirst into the ground, immediately turning his head to mush and breaking his neck.
“What was that you said to me earlier about rejecting violence?” I asked with a grin. “It wasn’t exactly necessary to create that bloody spectacle just to neutralize the threat that poor soldier posed.”
I didn’t wait for her answer. Two soldiers—one lanky, the other short and chubby—charged, converging diagonally on me from two sides. Thinking fast, I feinted with Grave Oath at the short soldier, who jumped back to avoid the attack, and then flipped the dagger into my left hand and parried a cut from the tall bastard. When the short guy then lunged at me with his sword, I turned the blow but deliberately left my upper-left side wide open, pretending to half turn to deal with the tall soldier’s next attack. As I knew he would, the short guy aimed a vicious but clumsy slash at my neck. In a flash, I dropped like a stone to the ground, doing the splits, and grabbed a fistful of the tall guy’s tabard, yanking him forward. He caught the full brunt of his friend’s hacking attack, which almost took his head off.
As the dying man staggered back, I stabbed Grave Oath backward over my shoulder into his belly to suck out his soul, and then, before the short guy could recover from the shock of accidentally hacking his buddy’s head off, I flicked two throwing stars—one with each hand—into each of his eyes.
He screamed and dropped his blade, howling and clutching at his eyes as the necrotic enchantment, now doubled in intensity, spread grave rot across his face and head in seconds. While he was floundering and screaming, I sprang up onto my feet and spun around to pluck Grave Oath from the now-dead soldier’s belly. I was just in time to see my chief skeleton,
