Amashanae - Book 1

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  ”Someone is coming!”, Strutto screamed at the top of his lungs with his best commander-assertive voice, and at the very moment he finished his sentence Amashanae swept down from the darkness on her horse towards him. His eyes barely registered a fierce figure with burning eyes hurtling towards him and then he saw a quick flash of steel and felt a thump on his breast, and then he was already flat on the ground with knees giving in. Shaken, bawling incoherently and without realizing that he was doing it he instantly stood up again, but quickly quieted down when he looked down on his shiny armour and noticed there was a deep wound on his chest gushing red blood over his garments. He had been wounded. This can’t be real, he thought, unable to decipher what had happened and dumbstruck. He raised his gaze just in time to see another horse emerging from the night and another flash if steel, but that was the last thing he ever saw, although the fuzzy image lingered in his mind for a good while still before all the life had drained away from his body.

  The attack into the camp caused a temporary pandemonium among the goblins, but as they soon realized there were but two assailants, they rapidly picked up their courage. Promptly they arranged a surprisingly effective formation, gathering together to cover all sides, and begun laughing at the attackers in their hacking voices. Their leader had been hewn down, but for this group of brutes the loss was less than tremendous, rather a thing to revel in for many of them. And after all it seemed they had the upper hand and strength in numbers. Amashanae had halted her horse and dismounted a few dozen paces afar, and in the very last shreds of light still lingering on the horizon and the glare of campfires crackling around them the goblins watched her hold her blade in front of her and stare at the goblins with utmost hatred. The mixture of the almost black sky and the ambient color of the fires made her eyes seem ablaze with green gold. Juara appeared beside her with his horse, pulling in the reins and regarding the pack of goblins gathered together in an echelon more or less arranged with a worried eye, but did not dismount.

  ”So, ye just couldn’t wait me, couldn’t ye?”, he asked resentfully, looking down at the elf. Amashanae gave him a look from under her eyebrows and said nothing. Sinister growls began echoing around the camp as the goblins begun to get the grasp of the situation, and the defensive formation of perhaps forty or so goblins broke and they begun to spread out in small groups, immediately attempting to surround the enemy. They still begun their approach carefully, keeping their distance at first, for they felt a certain insecurity among their lines. It was quite unheard of that only two fighters would attack a group this big, and even their simple brains suggested there might be reinforcements about. This might be a setup.

  “I think I killed their leader already, at least assuming from the amount of junk he was carrying”, Amashanae said. “That should slow them down for a bit”

  ”Oh, ye killed? I think he was still very much alive when I skewered him”, Juara retorted, pretending to be annoyed. He finally jumped down and stepped next to Amashanae, and just as he did, the first – or the bravest – of the goblins initiated its attack.

  “And besides”, he yelled while he quickly jumped forth to meet the goblin before it had expected a contact and chopped its right hand off. The goblin’s eyes begun to dilate with pain but Juara had already finished it with a cut across its throat and returned to Amashanae “They don’t seem too slowed down to me!”

  That was when all hell seemed to break loose and the goblins begun to charge at them from most all directions at once. Amashanae finally broke her pose and lifted her blade in defense when the first two goblins started their rush towards her. The first of the pair wielded a huge axe that it swung in a large arc towards her head as the other ran after it and seemed to point its sword at her feet. She calmly swung her torso back to avoid the axe and pressed her foot on its handle as it fell down in a curve and jumped up making a perfect somersault over the goblin’s head while smashing its face with her sword. Then she was already falling back down and crouched almost on her knees and launched back up on a rebound, kicking the other goblin and breaking its jaw. The goblin staggered backwards and gave out a cry, dropping its weapon, and Amashanae brought the handle of her blade down, crushing its skull. There was already another one charging behind her, and she lifted the sword back up again over her shoulder and wheeled to the side, sinking the blade between its ribs with a crash right up to the collar. Instead of pulling it out again she just pushed the blade to the side using her momentum and her torso as leverage, ripping through the green flesh and getting sprinkled with black blood and whirled around just in time to face yet another goblin with its weapon poised to run her through. She barely avoided the blade as she dove down to the attacker’s feet and rolled on her back, kicking the feet from under the goblin who fell forward, right onto the axe of its companion cutting down where Amashanae had been a split second before. She let her momentum take her forward and managed to get out of the way of the attackers for a fleeing moment and stood up again as the goblins retreated, unable to see their intended victim for the moment. A few paces away Juara had only two goblins attacking him just then, and as he dispatched them with mighty sweeps of his sword that left the other goblin headless and the other hewn clear in two from neck to groin, he looked at Amashanae in awe and wonder. How perfectly she moves. His dreaming was cut off before it began, when he sensed a spear whizzing in the air towards his head. He flipped his torso around and to the side, instinctively guiding the deadly projectile to the side with the side of his sword. Already his other hand arose to meet the attacker, and the spear-wielding goblin soon had its dead companion’s battle axe buried deep in its grimy face with an audible crunch of bones crushing under the blade as it virtually split in half. Its momentum pushed Juara out of balance and he had to let go of the axe, stepping to the left and trying to regain his footing and failed. His knee buckled under the strain and he fell on the ground, his back up and unable to fend for himself for a second. Another goblin was on him at once, with a club swinging forward at Juara’s head and a victorious cry already parting from its foul, gaping feeding-hole, but still Juara managed to fling himself to the side just enough so that the club buried itself in the broken soil with a cruel thud an inch from his face. Juara clenched his teeth, feeling a burning pain on his side and knee, but his body was pumping his blood full of the magic of battle, easing his pain and giving him extraordinary strength. He let his body fall on the ground on his good side and brought his legs up like lightning, pushing against the ground with his back and kicked the goblin to its fat stomach with mighty force. The creature was stopped on its tracks and when it tried to catch its breath, Amashanae’s blade already penetrated its side and it fell like a log.

  “Any chance that you need some help?”, she asked casually.

  ”So, ye just had to come and ruin my kill?” Juara retorted and pushed himself up, thankful for a little pause in the fight. He felt his flank with his free hand and sighed, partially for pain, partially for the relief that it was not warm. There was no blood - at least not a lot - but a couple of his ribs had certainly been broken.

  ”I do not understand this…they have a weird strategy in that they are not attacking us all at once”, Amashanae whispered to Juara and kept looking around her shoulders to see if there were any goblins attacking them right now. But the attack had subsided for now, the goblins regrouping and screaming curses at them in their foul language.

  “Well, we must be lucky then, because there would be no change for us if they all attacked us at once”, Juara said, trying to stare down a pack of goblins growling and grumbling about ten feet away, shaking their weapons. “I was thinking…” but suddenly changed the subject. ”Damned! Asaryen is here – she has come after us. Why can not she understand the situation?” Juara cursed again and lifted his head, trying to see if the girl was somewhere to be seen.

  ”What! How would you know that?” Amashanae asked, astonished.

  “Trahur”
r />   She queried him no further. Of course the creature had told Juara. But it was not the right time to worry about that. What mattered right now was that they were not only surrounded by a pack of bloodthirsty goblins, but also Asaryen was coming towards them and into the hands of their enemies. They would need to look after her now as well as fight for their lives. And it was proving there might be more than enough trouble with that.

  “We need to figure out some sort of a plan, soon!” she said and threw a glance to Juara, who kept an eye at the raging goblins.

  “Start planning, then”, he said in a very cool voice, without changing the direction of his glance, “Because they’ve just changed their tactics!”

  A thirty-head horde of goblins attacked the duo with a terrifying roar and a clatter of their armour and weapons, with eyes bulging from the fervor and anticipation of the battle.

  ”Quick! Back against back!” Juara shouted his fighting plans to Amashanae. Standing back to back was a well-proven method for fighting two against more. It enabled both warriors to cover each other’s backsides and minimize overlapping attacks. However, under these circumstances the odds seemed quite overwhelming, and Juara felt a cold chill burrow deep in his bones and stay there. There were so many of them, a veritable wall of green flesh and pure rage that seemed to fall upon them like a mossy brick wall. The first goblin reached them, and as they were charging as a tight group, it had no possibility to stop and avoid Juara’s blade. Juara easily deflected the goblin’s axe-like weapon and in a smooth movement let his sword penetrate its uncovered belly. The goblins came in such a tight bunch that it in fact also skewered the goblin behind the first as well.

  ”Ha! See that?”, he shouted as he put all his weight behind his sword and waved it to the side, pulling the dying goblins on the sword with it, just in time to swing them in the way of the next axe swooshing toward his head from the left. The axe met with the head of the goblin on his sword and a thick splash of dark liquid flew over Juara’s head as he kneeled and pulled the sword from the corpse, barely missing a swinging blade over his head from the right. Idiots, he thought to himself as the latest attack ended up in the teeth of the attacker on the left they’re killing each other coming all at once. But Amashanae did not hear or see him, as she was quite busy herself. For some reason ­– perhaps the ancient blade she waved had seemed fearsome – the goblins had chosen to amass an even larger group to attack her. Or perhaps they wanted to exploit what they regarded the weakest link. Amashanae managed to block the first attack, and much like Juara, in the rush she managed to trip the goblin over and throw it against its companion, pushing its short sword in its side. The goblin let out a surprised cry before it learned what it feels like to have cold steel pushed through one’s head. The next one falling over with its blade raised she had no time to retract the blade, so she extended her leg, kicking it sharply in the groin, and as it doubled over, dropping the blade, she ripped a nasty wound in its face with the cross-guard of her sword’s hilt. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Juara catching two goblin axes simultaneously with the forte of his swords and pushing them back while kicking the other. But there were more and more goblins just inches away, ready to run them over. Right then she heard Asaryen yell.

  ”Amashanae!”

  She turned her head for just a split second, but it was enough to let her guard down a little, and she received a mighty blow of a goblin club over her head. Luckily it did not come straight down as it would have certainly split her skull, and she did not quite lose her consciousness. However it was enough for her to lose her balance and her feet gave out under her and her sword slid from her grip. Between the legs of the goblins rushing toward her she saw as if through a haze how they grabbed Asaryen by a tree and slammed her down on the ground by her hands.

  Juara was in deep trouble as well, and he knew it all too well. He lost his balance avoiding an axe falling over his head, and was pushed hard from the front before he could lift his sword. He fell in a wide arch, helpless to change his balance and hit the sand with an audible thump, with a goblin immediately over him and a dagger pushing towards his face. He dropped the useless sword and crossed his hands in a quick move, breaking the goblin’s wrist and the dagger fell. But there was another one there too, and it did not even bother with weapons – it simply jumped over him and proceeded to strangle him, spewing incomprehensible curses and saliva from its stinkhole of a mouth. Juara tried to resist, but there was a goblin on top of his other hand and the wound in his side ate away all the strength from his other arm. He could only hit the goblin’s face with it, but with not much strength. The goblin’s eyes bulged with the glee of victory and Juara felt his energy drain. Is this how it ends? He felt his grip on life slip and prepared to meet his maker, already letting go, when he suddenly heard that something was growling – something other than a goblin. The goblin over him eased its grip a little as it stared at something behind Juara, and it had a blank, unbelieving expression on its face. The next thing Juara knew was that there were green goblin bodies thrown over his head in a shower of dark black blood and from out of nowhere blades smashed against the face of the goblin over him, ripping away flesh and bone in horrific gashes that basically evaporated its features, followed by a familiar-looking boot that kicked the body back five feet like a rag doll.

  ”By the god of two skies, what the…” Juara begun and then his gaze reached the end of the blades whizzing in the air. They ended in wrists – Amashanae’s wrists. And then they were just hands again, dripping blood. He squeezed his eyes in disbelief. The goblins had ceased their attack, even taken some steps backward and just stood there, stricken with surprise. Juara managed to get up in a sitting position, his wound burning and his throat feeling like it had been crushed in a vice, but he hardly registered all these pains as he looked up at Amashanae standing legs wide, breathing heavily with her head down and hair on her face, hands curled into fists and hanging far from her body, like a pugilist standing in a boxing ring. And those blades jutting from her wrists aimed at the ground, black with goblin blood. Juara could hardly see her eyes between her wild hair, but her eyes blazed even through the veil, depicting a fury that caused a chill run through Juara’s body. Suddenly he knew he would survive. Calm before a storm he had time to think, and then he sat watching as finally one of the goblins let a cry and assaulted Amanashae, leaping at her with a dagger and a mace in hand. Amashanae stepped forward to meet the attacker, faster than Juara could imagine, caught the goblin in midair with both her hands, backs of the hands together and thrust the her hands – or blades? – clear through the goblin’s lower chest, for a split second holding it in the air over her. Then she brought her hands down to sides, ripping the goblin in half and spreading its innards over the bloodied sands. And after that she did not stop for a split second as Juara watched the scene.

  It was a complete goblin massacre. All the goblins either turned on her, forgetting Juara and Asaryen, or fled cowering in panic, but it was all to no avail. Amashanae slaughtered goblins without pity like a skilled butcher gutting a fresh kill, letting blood and splitting bones with movements that looked more like a hurricane blowing than a flesh-and-blood creature moving on the battlefield. The goblins did not stand a chance. Juara slowly got up, as if in a dream, and regarded the scene in awe. This was not the Amashanae he knew. She was covered in blood and most of the goblins were already running to get away, but she kept ripping them open like sacks of waste and seemingly being everywhere at once, until the sands were caked with thick blood all around them.

  Juara just looked, for very soon there were hardly any goblins left alive, and even all of those had been badly wounded and incapable. When the goblins had been dispatched, Amashanae approached him.

  ”Amashanae, are ye all right...” he had time to say, before he felt a magnificent kick in his jaw that nearly broke the bone, and he fell down like a chopped tree, eyes blazing with stars and flashing colors. And Amashanae was already on top of him,
her hands on his throat, ready to rip his neck in shreds. He felt something hard around his skin, cutting the skin and forcing the air out of his windpipe. But right then there was a loud shriek, and Amashanae froze.

  ”Hey!” Asaryen screamed with a breaking voice that lacked no volume. ”What are you doing?” she yelled, hands flailing helplessly. She almost punched Amashanae, whose gaze still had not left Juara’s eyes, in the face. Time stood still for what seemed an eternity as Amashanae only stared a golden stare like a statue and Juara felt his consciousness fade away. Then Amashanae suddenly let go. Juara coughed and curled as Amashanae proceeded to finish off the rest of the goblins left alive. She did not seem to be content with simply killing them either, as she kept running her blades through their green bodies regardless of whether they were already dead. The smell of thick goblin blood on the sand mixed with the smell of guts and excrement as she moved through the field, slaughtering the already slaughtered as well as the wounded. She slashed across the dead and living faces, pulverizing the features of the goblins and cutting off heads in frenzy, until the ground was thick with blood and bits of flesh like the floor of a slaughterhouse. The others stared at her savage process with horror in their eyes.

  ”What...what is it with her?” Asaryen asked Juara, totally shaken and almost out of her mind from exhaustion and fear.

  ”I have no idea”, Juara replied as she helped him get up once again. ”But I think it’s best if we just stand out of the way”

  Once there were no more goblins to finish off, Amashanae began to calm down. She kept turning on her heels, shoulders down and ready like a tortured cheetah, breathing heavily like a dragon in labor. Then, all of a sudden, the fire in her eyes dwindled, and she fell down as if all her nerves had collapsed at once, and lay flat on the bloody ground, motionless as if dead. Asaryen ran to her at once and Juara limped after her, spitting blood and wheezing.

  ”Is she...”, started Asaryen.

  ”No, she seems to be breathing”

  ”We should try and help her...but...she…tried to take your life! What was it?” Asaryen stared at Juara with a bewildered, puzzled and desperate expression on her pretty round face. Juara sighed and fell down on the ground, exhausted.

  ”It was not Amashanae” he said between heavy breaths.

  ”What do you mean?” Asaryen asked, now looking even more puzzled.

  ”Forget about it. We should carry her out of here” Juara said, taking a sip from a small vial he had produced from somewhere in his clothes. “Just let me catch my breath. This will help a little.” He rubbed his neck and felt a few ragged cuts on the skin, but luckily not too deep. He managed to get up and with Asaryen they lifted up Amashanae’s surprisingly light body, and they succeeded to get her up between them. Juara’s face was contorted with pain as his wounds protested under the strain.

  ”But...what did happen?”, Asaryen again asked. She tried to gaze upon the battlefield, but the darkness between the campfires already subsiding protected her from the horrid sight of mutilated goblin corpses.

  ”We shall find out later. Now we must be on our way. I can not stand this smell of death anymore”, Juara said. They started towards the edge of the woods with Amashanae between them. ”Get the horses and our gear. I’ll hold her. We’ll get her safe somewhere and I’ll be back later to see if the goblins carried anything of value for us. Right now we must get to safety. Trahur, lead the way.” At the edge of the forest a small creature slipped into the dark.

  Obediently Asaryen walked to the horses, managed to get the reins and talked the panicked animals down until they seemed a little more relaxed. Then she walked them towards the woods, where Juara still stood with Amashanae on his arms. Asaryen looked at Juara, but saw no help for understanding what had happened in his tired eyes, and more on survival instinct than careful planning they fled into the dark woods.