“Really?” He turned his glare away from me and onto Mahrai. “What about your loyalty to the Straight Path?”
“I’m loyal to myself, first and foremost. Anything else can only follow on from that. You would do well to remember it, Targin.”
She turned, strode away, and vanished from view down the back of the building.
“Get back here!” Targin shouted after her. “I’m not done with you. I demand your presence!”
But the only ones listening were the soldiers, me, and Kegohr. The soldiers’ eyes darted around as if worried that making eye contact might give away their treasonous thoughts. Despite the numbers against us, I grinned at their discomfort.
Targin turned his attention back to us. He was red-faced, and one cheek was twitching. He pulled out a mace and swung it about with jerky, impatient movements.
“Is all well in paradise?” I called to him. “Girlfriend troubles, perhaps?”
“I am going to destroy you, you fucking piece of foreign filth. You and that disgusting Wild you’ve brought with you.”
He whistled, a shrill sound that echoed around the low ground between the mountainside and the abandoned village.
More troops emerged, running out of the houses and appearing from beneath the dunes with Hidden Burrow technique. They circled to our left and right, staying wide out of reach. I looked back, but our path of retreat was cut off by bow-armed scouts.
The infantry moved in, weapons at the ready. Those in front of us looked more comfortable now that they had backup. They advanced again to form part of a rapidly tightening ring. Kegohr and I stood walled in, facing a row of blades and mace heads in every direction.
“You wanted to draw them out,” Kegohr said. “Looks like it worked.”
“It did.” I allowed Vigor to flood my internal channels and prepared myself for a fight against overwhelming odds.
Chapter Twelve
I’d been in some tight spots over the past year, but two of us facing an entire army was taking things to extremes.
“Any bright ideas to get out of this?” Kegor asked.
“Go back in time and make some better life choices,” I said.
“You got some sort of time Augmenting hidden in among the rest?”
“Not last time I checked, no.” Kegohr’s words did remind me of the orb I’d seen the Russians use back on Earth, and I would have spent some time wondering exactly where it might be, but now wasn’t the best situation for idle thoughts.
“Then I reckon we’ll need a better plan.”
Fire flashed as Kegohr summoned a Flame Shield on his left arm. I dug into my own dwindling reserves of Vigor and sent it running down my water channels. It flowed, cool and soothing, through my body and out of my skin. Frozen Armor formed in plates across my body. This seemed like a time to focus on defense over attack, so I created smooth plates designed to deflect blows instead of the spiked plates I’d sometimes used to inflict brutal attacks against particularly heinous opponents. The armor was a familiar friend, protective and comforting.
With the water magic in place, I stowed the trident away and summoned a Flame Shield, much like Kegohr’s. I figured that our best chance was to go heavily defensive and hold off the army as long as possible until the others arrived. They couldn’t be far away now, and they’d certainly help even the odds a little.
The soldiers in front of us looked more confident now that reinforcements had joined them. With the might of Hyng’ohr closing on all sides, they must have thought that we were doomed. What they weren’t considering was how much carnage we could cause on the way down, or how badly that might go for them as individuals. They were about to learn that the hard way.
“Remember that shield trick from the training yard?” I asked Kegohr.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
“Aim high. Let’s make it hard for them to see what’s going on.”
We raised our shields and stamped our feet in unison. A wave of fire shot out from each of our shields, rushing toward the enemy at head height. None of the soldiers had shields, so the most they could do was to raise their weapons—little protection against a burst of flames. Some attempted to use Ground Strike to block our attacks, but their techniques were too slow. The fire flashed brightly as it scorched faces and left many of them temporarily blinded.
Still, the enemies behind the blinded ones charged. But we charged to meet them.
We hit the enemy like a pair of bowling balls hitting a set of pins. Soldiers who hadn’t even seen us coming were scattered, some falling to the ground, others stumbling back. Kegohr roared as the Spirit of the Wildfire rushed through him. He swung his mace, and half a dozen Hyng’ohr soldiers went flying through the air, knocking down others behind them.
I slashed the Sundered Heart in wide arcs, and blood sprayed across the dirt as a dozen enemies were felled in a single attack.
Some enemies were already recovering as they blinked away the aftermath of the fire flash. They formed up beside their comrades, while more came around behind them from the flanks. Behind us and to the sides, the others were closing in.
I sent up a palisade of Plank Pillars that closed us off from the enemies. At my feet were dozens of bloody corpses, but the wooden wall would protect us for a time.
“You’re next move?” Kegohr asked me.
Before I could answer, a fierce shout sounded from the left. The crack of breaking stone echoed around the whole of the sand-sunken village.
Over the dunes charged Ganyir, clad in his full plate armor. He carried no weapon but wore massive steel gauntlets on both hands. He bellowed in rage as he thundered toward the Hyng’ohr army. He rode the sand like some sort of surfer without a board, and the dirt beneath him was a mighty wave. It rippled and undulated as he rocketed toward the army.
Behind him came the rebel elements of the
