“You idiots,” he hissed. “We would’ve been rich men by now, with our cocks still wet from all the young peasant pussy, if we’d have turned east when I told you to! There were villages ripe for raiding there, but you numbskulls wanted more. We should have gone raiding in the east like I said. This isn’t my fault, it’s yours. Your greed led us this way, not mine.”
“I’ve had enough of your fucking whining, you diseased whore’s discharge!” roared the last soldier.
All I could do was watch, amused, as the men turned on each other. Four surrounded the leader, and they started going at it with their weapons. To the leader’s credit, he didn’t try to run or beg for his life, and he was a half-decent swordsman. Two of the mutineers were dead before they’d even completed their attacks, and he faced the next two with steely eyes and a grim-set jaw.
“Come on, you traitorous pig-fuckers,” he snarled. “Try me, just try me!”
“Their souls should be yours,” Isu whispered to me as the men fought.
I shrugged. “I figure five souls is a fair price to pay for watching something so entertaining.”
The remaining two soldiers charged at the leader with a roar. With a flurry of cuts, lunges, parries, and slashes, he fought them off. Eventually, he lopped one’s head off before running the other through. Then, panting and leaning on his sword, he turned to face me.
“Now that those clowns are taken care of,” he gasped, “you and I can dance, Soultaker. You’ll probably kill me, but fuck it, I’ll see if I can at least take off one of your arms on the way out.”
“I like your attitude,” I said as he and I began to circle each other, “and from what I’ve just seen, you actually know how to handle a sword. Let’s make this contest a little more even.”
I tossed my weapons to the ground and prepared to fight him bare-handed.
“I can respect that,” the leader growled. “Maybe you’re not as much of an asshole as the rumors make you out to be.”
“Oh, I’m much more of an asshole than you can imagine.”
He charged at me with a roar, his guard low, and attempted a rapid stab at my belly, which I figured was just a feint. It was, and had I jumped back to avoid it, the upswing he followed with would have opened my throat from ear to ear. Instead, I merely swiveled my hips and leaned back, the upswing whistling past my throat, missing it by only an inch or two. He followed with a downward diagonal cut aimed at my collarbone, which, if it had connected, probably would have passed through my entire torso and diced me like a carrot.
It didn’t connect because I dived forward, grabbed him around the waist with my left arm and under the inner thigh of his left leg with my right, and hurled him over my shoulder. He flipped through the air and crashed hard to the ground, grunting. Somehow, he retained a grip on his sword and struggled to his feet, breathing hard and keeping the point aimed at me so that I couldn’t close in and finish him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rami watching me intently. As an enjarta, she was a master of unarmed combat, so I figured she’d be interested in what moves I could pull off.
“Don’t worry, Rami,” I whispered to myself. “I’ve got a whole bag of tricks I can pull moves from.”
At the Assassin’s Guild in Targon, we’d spent countless hours training in the arts of unarmed combat under the direction a grandmaster. Combined with all the unarmed combat training I’d done in my knightly training as a youngun, I could hold my own in bare-handed combat.
The leader took a quick horizontal swipe at my head, but I ducked under the cut, dropped down onto my left hand with my left arm totally straight and vertical, keeping my body horizontal. In this position, I delivered a lightning-fast double-footed kick to the leader’s midriff, sending him staggering back.
He charged at me again, but his technique was getting sloppy now that desperation was kicking in. He aimed a wild downward chop at my head, but I dropped to the ground and rolled to the side. At the end of this maneuver, I hooked my legs through his ankles and brought him crashing to the ground.
This time, he dropped his sword, and I sprang to my feet and kicked it away from him. He managed to stagger to his feet and was about to attack me with his fists when a huge shape came flying out of the corner of my vision. I jumped back just as the massive barbarian smashed into the leader, taking him down with a flying tackle.
Chapter Eleven
The barbarian roared gutturally and positioned himself on top of the last surviving soldier, pinning the man’s arms down. The pinned man struggled futilely as the barbarian proceeded to turn his head into pulp with his huge fists, raining down blow after hammer-like blow onto the man’s skull until it popped like an overripe pumpkin.
“You want to sell Drok?” the barbarian yelled. “Nobody sell Drok. Nobody make Drok slave. Now Drok eat your brain!”
Then, sure enough, the barbarian shoved his meaty paws into the gruesome crimson and white mess that used to be the leader’s head, dug out a fistful of slimy gray brain, and shoved it into his mouth, making slurping sounds as he ate it.
“By the Lord of Light, I think I’m going to be sick,” Elyse gasped, running off to the bushes with one hand covering her mouth and the other holding her stomach.
“Which one of you women let this big bastard loose?” I yelled.
“I thought it might be amusing to see what he was capable of,” Isu answered.
I turned and saw her standing next to the tree where
