The Grey Tower

Terric

Despite everything that had led up to that moment, and despite what was about to follow, Natlya couldn't help but grin--that bright flash of a smile that hadn't been seen since the scene back in the city--at him. And...well, the raised veil was something she found bizarrely attractive. Now wasn't the time to think about such things, but she felt it all the same.

There was a brief moment, deep in the parts of her mind that was not given to her consciousness, that thought maybe it could work after all.

With that, they moved forward and into the town. The map that the village's woman had drawn for them proved accurate, and they were able to find the inn without trouble. She followed his lead, moving like his shadow with the ease that the Warder Yards had driven deeply into them all. There were only three men to be found and they were, indeed, drunk and easily dispatched.

From there, they moved to the house of the mayor. From what they could scout in advance, there were five men in there and most of them were distracted--two were asleep and three were playing cards.

The sleeping ones were found swiftly and taken out without trouble, but the ones playing cards they could spot through the window. They ducked out of the way when one of them turned a head towards them, but then they entered the house once again to take out the next ones, which was made easier when one got up to go out to the outhouse.

Natlya surged ahead, being the nearest, and caught him from behind. He grunted, not loud enough for his racous companions to hear him, and then pressed him into the wall. Her off hand had a dagger in it now and she used that to take him out, quick though not clean, and his arterial spray caught her in the face.

She quietly spit the blood on the floor but didn't let it bother her. She nodded for him to move, and they headed to take out the last two...

Terric

There had not been much fight to be found in either the inn or the mayor’s house, and those two buildings were liberated quickly. From there, they crept up to the lord’s manor. It was the largest house in the town and sat, most imperiously, up on the hill that overlooked everything. Even so, it wasn’t particularly difficult to find shadowy paths and obscuring structures in order to sneak their way up to it.

Slipping silently around the back of the large house, Nat spotted moonlight glinting off the glass of an already open window. It wasn’t an especially hot night, but a little fresh air never hurt anyone...except, of course, the people who were inhabiting the house tonight. Their leaving the window open now made it very easy for Terric and Natlya to slip in, which they did once she nudged him and gestured to the window.

As they slipped inside and her eyes adjusted to the different light, she determined they were in some sort of foyer toward the back of the house. There were two doors in her immediate view--one just ahead and one to her left. The one to her left appeared to lead to the kitchen, while the one in front went to a hallway…

...a hallway that a man, some brigand, happened to be passing by.

That made things pretty simple. They moved toward that door to begin there, but just as Terric moved to engage, Nat saw someone coming through the kitchen. She didn’t want to be split from her aielman, but she knew that she had little choice. She couldn’t allow someone to flank them, which was what would happen if she didn’t cut them off.

She gave them little time to think, but gave herself little time to think either. It worked better when you reacted on instinct, sometimes, let the memory of your muscles do the work. Nat surged ahead, bursting through the door before her enemy could with a series of overhand strikes that held a strength and near brutality that would have seemed impossible for a woman of her size and appearance. However right then, she was not a woman.

Natlya was a Gaidin.

To his credit, the man--armed with a sword of similar size--got his weapon up in time to block each of her strikes, but his eyes showed his surprise as she drove him back into the kitchen. Finally gaining a little distance from her, he brought his sword down into a horizontal sweep towards her midsection. She had to jump back fast lest she be emboweled right there at the table. A moment couldn’t be allowed to pass, and she drove back into him with a strike at his shoulders and neck from her left.

He brought up his sword to block it, but had to lift his arms high to do it and she drove the flat of her foot into his gut. Coughing roughly, he bent over and the last thing he knew was her sword coming for his neck.

Natlya didn’t have time to think too much now either, or even consider going to help Terric, because as she lifted her head, she saw another blackguard enter. This one, however, was a woman. The woman had freakishly bright blond hair and blue eyes that looked surprised to see Nat standing there over the dead, partially decapitated body of her erstwhile cohort.

The Gaidin shrugged a little before rushing at the woman. She shifted back and brought out two shortswords from sheaths at her hips, raising them in a cross to block Nat’s downward strike.

They held like that for a moment, snarling a little at each other. The other woman was a bit taller than Nat, but the redhead had never been one to let size dictate anything. She pressed down in one hard push and then leapt back, breaking the deadlock. Swing and block, strike and parry, they danced around each other until a hard slash from the side. Unexpectedly, however, the other woman twisted away just in time and Nat’s blade caught…

...the wooden post that had been behind her.

“Bloody--” Nat growled in a voice only loud enough to be heard by herself as she realized that she couldn’t pull the sword out fast enough.

The blonde came at her again and Nat had to jump away, abandoning her sword as she dodged her way back toward the stove.

If she was going to make it out of this alive--and she was bloody well going to do so--she had to think fast on her feet. Her hazel eyes glanced around wildly and landed on the stove, seeing a teakettle and a frying pan. With little reason not to, she grabbed them both. They felt wildly different than a sword, but they were still better than nothing as she looked at her opponent once again to see more surprise in those blue eyes.

Nat shrugged. The blonde struck.

The Gaidin lifted the iron pan like a bizarre shield and caught the downward swing of the sword, letting the thing slide right off it. She didn’t intend to let that give an opening, however, so she immediately swung the kettle around from the left. The weight was unfamiliar and her strike not very true, so instead of crushing a skull, it bounced off a shoulder. Still, the blonde grunted with pain, and Nat took that moment to push forward with the pan and force the woman back a step.

Nat brought up the pan for another strike, but the woman ducked. The avoid the sword-like swing of the pan, but wasn’t watching her other side. The metal of the kettle drove in hard, breaking open one side of her face and sending the blonde in a heap to the floor.

Nat stood over her for a moment, making sure that she wasn’t going to be getting back up again any time soon--if ever--and then returned to get her sword free. Putting one foot against the wood and grunting with annoyance, she managed to free her blade and then did a quick sweep of the room to make sure there were no others. Seeing that there weren’t, she left the kitchen.

She returned to the room that they first entered, but there was no sign of Terric now.

As there was only one other door to go through, she moved towards it and through it. She found herself in a hallway, but there was still no sign of her aielman. Where had he gotten to so quickly, she had to wonder, but she couldn’t waste time on the thinking. All she could do was move forward and see what she could find.

What she found was another room, and this one didn’t have Terric in it either. It did have yet one more brigand swinging one more sword at her head. They liked doing that, she determined, but it was their job. As he swung, she ducked. The blade swooped over her head and she came back up, surging her shoulder straight into his side. Hearing the air whoosh out of his lungs, she seized the advantage and stabbed at his midsection.

He knocked her sword to the side, but she flowed with her momentum and spun around fast and hard, coming at him from the other side. Just barely sidestepping, he managed to bring his blade up in an awkward block. She let him enjoy the awkwardness as she pulled her blade back for another hard swing that made him stumble slightly to the side. She turned with him so they were somewhat reversed from where they had been.

Suddenly, she realized there was a mirror just beyond his shoulder. A mirror...that showed another man in the room. Natlya had to guess that his sword was coming for her head, because that’s what all the boys were after these days.

Blade-locked with the first man, she saw his eyes on the man behind her while her own were on him in the mirror. He didn’t seem to notice that she had noticed him, and so she held the lock until the last...possible...moment...and then, just as he was about to stab her from behind, she dropped like a stone, hitting her knees and hearing the surprised grunt from above. There was a second one of those as the second brigand’s blade drove into her compatriot instead of her.

Hot blood fell down on her head, but she shook it off and rolled away, coming back up to her feet with her sword in hand. She wiped the blood from her eyes, keeping her sword in one hand, just before rushing at the second man.

By that moment, he managed to get his sword free of the first’s body just in time to catch her strike. Unfortunate, that. Their swords locked and they got in close. Gritting her teeth, she contemplated her best move...then she grinned a little and winked at him. His dark eyes opened wider with surprise, just before she drove her forehead into his. With a loud, pained curse, he stumbled back and she drove in.

She swung without slowly and without mercy, coming from the left and the right and the left, from high and from low, letting her blade flow from position to position. This one was smart enough to know he was outmatched pretty quickly, but lest he lose his head, he had to keep trying. He brought his blade up again and again, blocking and parrying for all he was worth, but she was driving him back step by step.

They moved like a synchronized dance, but Nat realized that there was just a large table in the middle and they could circle all the way back to the door, where he might be able to escape. She wasn’t keen to let that happen.

She gave him a break when she let up for just a moment, but only to grab a small end table against the wall that she threw into his way. It didn’t hit him, unfortunately, but it blocked his path quite suddenly and forced him into a corner. As she came for him, his eyes showed he knew that he was done.

Instead of fighting to his last breath, however, he went the opposite direction.

The man threw his sword down and held up his hands. Nat growled low in her throat, but she would not kill someone who surrendered…

...she wouldn’t avoid hurting them, however.

Bringing her sword around, she slammed the butt of the hilt hard into his temple. He crumbled to the ground and she tied him with the tablecloth to the massive table. She’d figured out what to do with him later, if he ever regained consciousness in the first place.

As she left the room, she could hear fighting and realized it was coming from the second story, so that was the direction she headed. There were no enemies in her way as she rushed for the main foyer and found a dual-staircase leading up to an open second floor hallway. She couldn’t make out all the figures from down there in the dim light, so she picked a side at random and rushed up because she knew at least that the tallest figure was Terric.

Cresting the top of the stairs, she saw Terric deep in combat with a pair of men...and one coming out of a room down the hall. He was obviously intent to come up behind him and while she was sure he knew it, she wasn’t going to not help him.

Nat cursed again and then ran. Her lithe form jumped from the floor to the railing before the men fighting Terric even knew she was there. One hand on the chandelier conveniently hanging near the railing kept her from plummeting to the floor before as she swung around the scene of combat and landed on the other side, colliding with the man who’d been trying to sneak up on him.

Without having driven her weapon into him as she did, he was able to throw her off. She landed on the tile floor behind his head, but spun and came up on her knees with her weapon already prepared for another go. Seeing that he was still getting to his feet, she took the moment to once more gain hers and enter a guard.

However, the sound of the door behind her made her curse again. She turned enough to see another fighter--a woman--coming up behind her and she knew she had the choice of fighting with her back to the wall or to the top of the other side of the staircase. The man was cutting her off from Terric so for the moment, they were each on their own.

She chose to put her back to the stairs and not block herself in, so long as she didn’t let them push her down them.

They came at her at once. She shifted to the left, gripping her sword in one hand and bringing it up to block the man’s strike. Her wrist trembled slightly as she held it, but she snapped back the elbow of her other arm with only a quick glance to aim for the face. The woman had been close enough to take the hit to the nose and Nat let the rebound from that send her fist into the man’s face.

That hit was glancing, but he coughed. She put both hands on her hilt and pulled her blade back, swinging it around at the woman before coming back to the man. The female brigand was driven back a step just before Nat blocked the man’s sword again. The Gaidin kept their blades locked as she spun slightly and then jumped back.

Nat moved towards the woman, who brought her sword up to lock with Nat’s. In her other hand, she had a dagger. She stabbed at Nat, who just barely managed to block it with her off hand, pushing the thrust to the side and then surging ahead with her bodyweight. Too much and she would go over with her, but she put the woman off balance just enough. Their blades were no longer entwined, and Nat kicked her down the stairs.

She heard the heavy step beside her and threw herself to the side just enough to avoid a piercing strike, although the armor of her upper arm took a hit as the man came for her.

Shifting back another step, she brought her sword up to catch an overhead strike. She gritted her teeth for a moment as they held there, then she pushed her sword in an arc to send his blade further to one side. From that lower point, she brought it up and across, sending it across his unprotected abdomen and dropping his blood to his feet.

He gasped with surprise for a moment, and then fell to his knees.

With that, she looked up to see how Terric was faring...