Swords and Scales | Part 2
In case you missed it, read the first part here.
To the left, one of the armored saurians threw himself impetuously toward Natrix, lunging his spear while covering his flank with the shield and hissing a war cry.
Unfazed, the mysterious warrior of the desert kingdoms let the point of the weapon pierce him in the right side, or so he let the enemy perceive. In truth, the spear went through his cloak only, remaining enveloped by it as Natrix shed the garment and slipped along the lizard’s right side.
In the miscalculated dash, the lizard ended up with one knee on the ground, at the mercy of the human’s counterattack, which obviously came from the opposite side of the shield.
With his cloak removed, Natrix made a fine display of the impressive arsenal he carried: daggers, knives and throwing skewers, a curved kopesh sword secured to his side, and even a sort of chain wrapped around his left forearm. But it was again the bow that he used against the enemy, unleashing his last arrow within a very short distance. Straight into the reptile’s neck, between the scales of the lower jaw, which were softer and more yielding than the rest of the body.
The saurian took the blow and struggled back to his feet, gurgling arterial blood from his wound and mouth. He tried to strike the human again and again, but Natrix was too agile, while the beast’s movements were gradually slowing.
Finally, the Snake Kingdom’s mercenary decided to stop playing with the lizard; he drew his sword and slashed deep into the animal’s throat and carotid artery, cutting in two even the arrow from before.
With a thud and a choked groan, the dying opponent crumbled to the ground.
The other saurian was dealing with the twins, attacking and twirling his spear like a true man-at-arms.
Kara had no longer been able to reload her crossbow, and Inka was waiting for the best opportunity to employ her whip once more. They were now both fighting with their kopis swords with horse-head-shaped handles, identical like their owners.
Agile and snappy as desert foxes, they countered their opponent’s wider reach with skillful dodges, guarding themselves with the metal of their swords when necessary. But to win the duel, sooner or later they would have to go on the attack, ideally before the lizard’s lunges succeeded in their intent to pierce their ribcages.
No words were needed to decree a course of action; the sisters had been spending their entire lives together, and each one knew how to interpret the other’s thinking. Inka shot Kara a glance and gave an imperceptible nod, to which she responded with a similar assenting gesture.
Kara took a step back as the twin set off at the charge but, at the last moment, Inka dashed to the side, executing a masterful feint. The lizard man focused his attention on her and readied himself to plunge his spear, while Kara positioned herself behind him to catch him by surprise.
The fighters attacked the beast at the same time, confident that at least one of them would succeed. They had not considered the special feature their opponent possessed, compared to the typical human lancer: a strong scaly tail.
The saurian swiveled his shield in time and parried Inka’s slash, snapped his tail, and struck Kara squarely in the face, halting her attack before it could even begin.
With a bloodthirsty growl, the lizard lunged a second blow, which Inka barely managed to deflect with her sword, followed by a third from under the shield that finally reached its target: the tip of the spear attempted to thrust into the mercenary’s left shin, but the metal cover did its job and she got away with a cut along the outside of her calf, which instead was protected by molded leather.
Inka fell to her knees and contracted her face into a pained expression, her opponent prepared to finish her off.
At that sight, Kara flushed with anger, clutched the handle of the kopis with both hands, and let out a war cry in the native language of the Desert. She swung down the razor-sharp short sword with all her might and sliced cleanly through the reptile’s tail, making him scream in pain, jaws open to the sky.
Inka took advantage of the situation and sprang back to her feet, simultaneously vibrating an upward strike, cutting the wooden shaft of the spear in two and thus disarming her opponent.
As she was figuring out the best spot to pierce or circumvent his armor, she saw Kara emerge from behind the lizard man’s back, clinging to the straps of his cuirass, repeatedly plunging her sword between the saurian’s shoulders.
Strike after strike, shout after shout, Kara was covering her entire figure in shiny bloody streaks, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Finally, Inka decided to drive her kopis into the animal’s right flank, behind the front plate.
Like a hog torn apart by the craziest Master Butcher of the Empire, the second armored saurian collapsed lifelessly to the ground.
“Calm down, it’s just a little scratch,” Inka commented, showing her the side of her leg.
Kara caressed her face as she walked past, leaving a couple of bloody smears on her cheek.
Now Ulrich’s entire group could focus on the toughest opponent of the day.
Natrix didn’t feel quite comfortable in an open confrontation with such an opponent. He would have preferred to use wit and subterfuge instead of brute force, but given their current situation, he might as well try to make himself useful.
He rotated his right wrist and the hand holding the sword a couple of times, then attacked the enemy, however without success. The reptile intercepted the strike and sent Natrix, butt to the ground, while Ulrich parried the subsequent halberd blow with his sword, saving his skin at the last moment.
Under normal circumstances, the warrior native of the Bear Kingdom towered over whatever opponent he might come up against, but not this time.
“Fassstidious…” commented the leader. All of his underlings had kicked the bucket, while he still hadn’t managed to kill that human. And now more of them were coming to back him up.
“We have to immobilize, or at least thwart, that damned axe,” said Inka, uncoiling her whip and letting it extend across the ground.
She stretched out her arms, charged the blow, and delivered a precise whiplash that made the leather cord wrap around the wood of the hilt, between the weapon and the reptile’s hand.
Intent on blocking the beast’s offensive motions, Inka instead ended up being tossed hither and thither by his impetuosity, while he hardly felt that additional weight, as he dueled relentlessly with Ulrich.
Kara stepped forward and tried to cut the halberd in two, but the shaft turned out to be much thicker and stronger than the spear of the previous saurian.
The pack leader turned toward the woman and retaliated by stretching his neck forward, attempting to bite her with his sharp teeth, and Kara narrowly avoided being brutally decapitated.
“We need tower shields and a dozen more men,” she complained, looking around for something useful.
Natrix came back on the offensive, with a strategy more congenial to his skills: he unwound the chain he wore around his left forearm and hooked one end to the bottom of his sword’s handle. He then began to twirl in the air the other end, fitted with a spiky, metal weight. And that sword-with-chain was not even the most extravagant instrument of death his colleagues had seen him wield.
By releasing his arm in a forward motion, he was able to strike the saurian with the weight, retract the gimmicky tool toward himself and then repeat the move.
Although it had a smaller effective range than Inka’s whip, it was still enough to keep Natrix at a distance from the reptile’s attacks; however, his scales were so strong that the repeated blows to his head and torso only managed to vex him and increase his fury.
Thus, Natrix decided to lend Inka some support; her idea of immobilizing the saurian’s weapon was a good one, but she had no hope of succeeding on her own. The warrior of the Snake Kingdom threw the chain in the direction of the lizard’s clawed hands and let the weight make it wrap around one of the creature’s wrists, then he pulled hard toward himself.
With two humans yanking him here and there, the beast began to falter and, for the first time, Ulrich could shift from a defensive to an offensive posture. Striking the axe and the armor with his greatsword, he began to drive the saurian backward, toward the area of the camp designated for meal consumption. From just nearby, Kara returned to the fight, dragging behind a wooden bench, while her twin gave her a questioning glance.
“Tower shield!” shouted the woman of the Desert, charging the reptile’s side and impacting him with full force, choking the breath in his throat. The beast let loose a sort of wrathful groan; Inka took advantage of the stalemate moment and sprinted forward. She fastened a volute of the whip around one of the bench legs and pulled toward herself to gain leverage, and prevent the lizard man from pushing away the improvised shield.
Natrix assessed her moves, and he too assisted in ensnaring the opponent, looping the chain around his neck and pulling outward as well.
The forked tongue sticking out of his jaws, bloodshot yellow eyes, and increasingly limited movements, the saurian prepared to put all his energy into getting those pesky bugs off his back… When Ulrich Xarke rejoined the fray.
Taking advantage of his crew’s teamwork, he took a few seconds to prepare for a charge, and plunged the two-handed greatsword into the enemy’s chest. Finally free to unleash his fury, the northern warrior breached the wood of the bench, the metal of the armor, and the scales of the monstrous reptile, causing him to roar in pain for the first time since he had emerged from his egg.
Ulrich pushed the sword even deeper, also letting out a war cry. Natrix pulled his chain down and used the kopesh blade to slice open a gash in the saurian’s ankle just above the heel, an area impossible to cover with armor because of the anatomical conformation of those reptilian feet.
Between the loss of the use of one limb and Ulrich’s overwhelming advance, the beast collapsed to the ground on his back, letting the halberd slip from his hand, and spitting out copious streams of blood. He reached out an arm to claw at the head of the man above him, but succeeded only in scratching the metal of the helmet. Ulrich promptly drew his greatsword and used it to slice cleanly through the arm sticking out from behind the bench.
The beast then attempted to strike the twins with his tail, but they had become accustomed to that kind of attack; Kara let the tip of her sword plunge into the tail, immobilizing it, and Inka severed it away from the enemy’s body.
Lastly, Natrix looped a third round of chain around the reptile, this time in the middle of his mouth, in the manner of a horse bit. He then leveraged the full weight of his body to crush, strangle, and immobilize his opponent.
“I suggest you stop fighting, mate!” thundered Ulrich’s husky voice, his sword tip tucked between the reptile’s jaw and jawbone until it grazed the palate. “Your raiding and pillaging ends here.”
The saurian took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles, defeated.
“At least until his arms, legs, and tail grow back,” Natrix commented cynically.
“He’s learned his lesson, hasn’t he?”
“Why ssstop now?” he hissed, surprised by the fact that they had not slaughtered him immediately.
“The Court has sent us here not only to flush you out and clear these woods, but also to obtain some information… Last night you decided to take a nice little stroll through town, didn’t you? Well, this time you have bit off more than you can chew!”
“Wouldn’t you know it, if you didn’t put in a reference to bites,” muttered Natrix, making sure the chain was still firmly clutched between the reptile’s jaws.
“Not only have you gone all the way into the heart of Dalswol, you even got in league with a bunch of murderous bastards,” Ulrich continued. “Let me tell you something, the nobles tend to be very hard on people who decide to make an attempt on their lives, whether human or fetid animal.”
“I know not what you ssspeak.”
“We already know that someone hired you to cover their backs during their escape from the village, after having attacked that fancy prince… You’d better tell us the whole story.”
“Death, I do not fear, hit your sword, thin-ssskin,” declared the saurian, spitting blood, an inextinguishable glimmer of hatred and defiance animated his yellow eyes.
Ulrich raised his voice even higher. “I said that we need this information, so spit it out! Or I’ll make you spit your teeth out!” He swapped his sword to his left hand and clenched his metal-covered right fist directly in front of the reptilian’s face.
“If I may, chief,” interjected Natrix with a mellifluous voice. “Threats don’t work with this kind of clientele, whereas I know perfectly well how to make them talk.”
“He’s all yours,” sneered the northern man.
Natrix stuck the chained kopesh in the ground and set about displaying one of his many talents: interrogation.
“Lend me this for a moment.” Natrix reached out a hand and pulled from his belt the wooden stick that Ulrich had sharpened just to pass the time, before setting out to attack the reptilian outpost.
“You have a hundred weapons on you, strung all over the place, and you take away the little twig I so lovingly sharpened?”
“I prefer not to soil my blades unnecessarily.”
Ulrich responded with a grunt of disapproval.
“Do me a favor, keep his head tilted to the side, nice and still,” Natrix resumed. “And his remaining limbs, too.”
The other three distributed their weights on the upturned bench and tightened their grips on the chains and various ropes.
“Apparently the scales of lizard men are impenetrable, right? But we know that this is not the case, otherwise it would be impossible to rip and puncture their flesh… Likewise, the apparent absence of fear and sense of pain that these creatures display does not represent reality.”
“Always calm and quiet, then when he has the opportunity to be macabre he becomes an encyclopedic roll,” Kara ironized.
Unhurriedly, the Snake’s mercenary knelt beside the saurian’s big head and placed the palm of one hand around the area corresponding to a human temple.
“See this plate, which is different from the others, circular in shape? It protects their ear,” he continued, drumming with the tip of the wooden stick. “It stands apart from the others, made to be able to open and close inward, to increase auditory perception or the level of protection during a fight, depending on the situation. So it rests on a special muscle and tendon that, unfortunately for our big fellow here, are very easy to flex.”
Natrix pushed down on the tip of the little wood, and the ear plate moved without resistance.
“Stop, now.”
The mercenary ignored him. “And even more unluckily for him, the flesh that makes up the inside of lizard men’s ears constitutes one of the most delicate and sensitive parts of their anatomy.” He slipped the stick between the plates, twisted it vertically, and pierced the saurian’s eardrum by just a couple of millimeters.
The prisoner let out an angry wail and tried to free himself from the humans’ grasp, but immediately stopped struggling and stiffened every muscle in his body, as his every slightest movement resulted in flashes of extreme pain.
“Should I go deeper?” asked Natrix, rhetorically.
“No.”
“I can’t hear you well, I must have something in my ear,” he mocked, before digging down another millimeter or two.
“NO! Ssshush it, bassstard, now.”
“His tongue is getting more and more twisted, I guess my method is bothering him considerably,” commented the man from the Snake.
“Let’s see if it was enough to loosen it up instead, let me try again,” Ulrich said, approaching the reptile’s tilted head. “Let’s start from the very beginning… At some point you decide to establish yourself in this hidden nest in the woods of the Imperial Island. When did all this happen?”
“Passsing four moons.”
“Good, that’s the way I like you… For four moons you were quiet, living off hunting, building your camp… Until a human came to visit and requested your mercenary services.”
“Yesss,” the reptile finally conceded, dark blood dripping from his chained jaws.
“Ask him what his name was,” the northern man intervened.
“I don’t think he’s very understanding of the human concept of given names…. What did he look like?”
“He was sssmall.”
“Thank you very much, even Ulrich is small next to this one!” commented Inka.
“Hair on hisss head, not hair on hisss face. He had a cut on his mouth.”
“Good. And then what? Did he recruit you for a job?”
“He left weapons and food. Promisssed much more when job done. I met in his ssshelter.”
“Shelter? A safe house? Where?”
“From crosssroads outside thin-ssskins’ city, follow tip of tallest sign, human refuge was abandoned, now their refuge. Sssmell of human’s food.”
“Nice work, Nat.” Ulrich patted him on the shoulder, and the stick wobbled inside the reptile’s ear.
The saurian also wavered from the pain, but, to his relief, a moment later Natrix withdrew the armed hand; the interrogation was over.
However, the respite was only momentary; Ulrich got to his feet and raised his sword’s long blade to the sky.
“I should have be hunter, not bandit…. I guesss Mom was wrong.”
Declared the lizard as his last words, and the northern man lowered his arms, slicing off his head in one blow.
Natrix recoiled backward, retrieving his chained sword. His commander’s weapon had passed a little too close to his nose for his liking.
The twins breathed a sigh of relief: another mission completed successfully and without any casualties. Even without the presence of that guy… The teammate who had not been able to join them in this battle, because he was already engaged in one of his mysterious special assignments. Then again, one could hardly say no to a request from Duke Zarkon.
“Time to gather up our things and be off,” said Inka, winding her whip. “And go get cleaned up,” she added, shooting a glance at her sister’s face and armor, still covered in reptilian blood.
Ulrich bent down to grab the colossus’ severed head, lifted it up so that he was staring straight into his dead eyes, and grimaced to show him his teeth in response.
“What are you up to?” asked Inka.
“Gathering my things, Kara,” replied the leader.
“I’m Inka! Do you want to take that with you as a keepsake?”
“It would be a nice trophy, but… no, I just want to show it to the Imperial soldiers. Let those wimps see, for once, what the real fighters of this damn Empire have to deal with! I mean, have you seen the size of this giant head?” snickered Ulrich noisily.
Inka shook her own head. “You, on the other hand, a big man, and acting like a child.”
“Slender, handsome men, on the other hand…” said Natrix with a mocking smirk.
“Children, them too,” sentenced Kara, nipping in the bud any attempt by the comrade-in-arms to act smart.
She nevertheless put an arm around his shoulders and together they headed toward the village of Dalswol, the other two team-mates just behind them. At least for the time being, they could enjoy a period of quiet and well-deserved rest, but the shadow of a disastrous crisis was looming on the horizon. The Imperial Knights would make good use of the information that the mercenaries had managed to wrest from the enemy commander, and within this new conflict, the endeavors of Ulrich and his group of deadly fighters were only just beginning.
Thanks for reading
And stay tuned for new adventures!
