Death After Death-Chapter 370 - Off the Beaten Path (part 3)

It was dark well before they reached the little hamlet of Elem Field, and they smelled the smoke of recently torched homes and fields long before it came into view. As they got closer, Simon smelled the scents of roasted meat too, and though he knew some of that would be farm animals, the corpses started appearing after that, showing where the men of the village had ended up, or at least pieces of them.

While Sir Derinholt had admitted that attacking orcs during the night was a terrible idea, he insisted that waiting for daylight would be even worse. “Not just because of more innocent lives either,” he told Simon. “They can see better than we can in the dark, but right now they’re drunk on victory and completely unafraid, so it’s the best time to sneak up on them.”

Simon didn’t entirely agree with that sentiment, but they put the time to good use discussing exactly how they were going to take advantage of this moment to do a little house cleaning. Though it was Sir Derinholt’s show, they both agreed that picking off targets of opportunity was the best plan. To that end, Simon was planning to rely on his bow where possible. Anyone he could get through the eye or the throat wouldn’t be calling anyone for help, and a shot in the dark was a lot quieter than the clash of steel on steel.

I just wish I could whisper the words of light amplification, he told himself as they slowed in search of their first target. It was a simple spell, but in moments like this, it made all the difference.

He didn’t have that advantage in this life, unfortunately. He didn’t even have a magical blade, though he hoped to fix that problem eventually. What he had was a knight whose sword skills were more than a little rusty, but with luck and strategy on their side, that would be enough.

At least, he thought it would be until they saw the group around the bonfire. There had to be at least eight of them roasting most of a cow on a spit made from a piece of timber. Simon had his doubts then, but they were able to retreat from that group without alerting them, and from there, they found a better target.

Two orcs wasn’t optimal, but when they found them rooting through a burned-down home looking for something, Sir Derinholt immediately made his play. There was no coordination there; he just drew his blade, snuck up on the nearest one as well as he could in armor, and delivered a vicious two-handed thrust through the creature’s chest. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The move was awkward but powerful. Simon followed his lead, though he noted that the man would have been screwed if he didn’t. Sir Derinholt had left himself wide open, and when the other orc noticed and opened his mouth to roar before charging, Simon let loose an arrow that actually went into the monster’s large maw, and through its hard palate, dropping him on the spot.

It was a one-in-a-million shot. He’d hit opponents in the eye, the throat, the heart, and the chest, but never in the mouth before, and he smirked at that, even if it was luck. Did I hit the spine or the brain, he wondered, not that there was time to check. Sir Derinholt didn’t comment either way. He continued on, and Simon joined him; he didn’t need credit. He just needed them to stay undetected for as long as possible.

That worked for a while. Their next two ambushes were one-on-one, and though one of the orcs was able to bellow loudly enough that Simon feared the worst, no one came running by the time they were done standing over the butchered green corpse.

“They fight with each other, too, not just humans,” Sir Derinholt reminded him, calming his rising paranoia. His mind screamed that the orcs would find them soon, and with his heart racing, it was impossible to use his sight to get a sneak peek at where the next monster might be hiding.

Unfortunately, he should have listened to that rising sense of danger and insisted they regroup, because a few minutes later they were attacked, not just by three orcs, but by someone who could wield words of fire.

“Meiren!” Simon heard the word shouted into the night in a voice so rough it barely qualified as language. He might not have been able to see who had used the word of power, but he knew exactly what would happen next.

Sir Derinholt was too far away to warn at that moment. So, Simon sheltered behind his opponent instead, holding his shield low to protect his exposed legs. The orc was broader and taller than Simon, and it blunted the flamethrower’s spray, sending fire around both of them.

It still singed him in places, and left him with the lingering smell of burned hair, but the mage showed no regard for the lives on its side, and catching his opponent on fire gave Simon the opening that he needed to run the orc through.

“We need to regroup,” Simon called out. “We need to—”

“Keep these monsters off me!” Sir Derinholt interrupted him. “That heathen is mine.”

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Simon should have realized that as soon as a truly supernatural threat appeared, they’d be committed. It would have been hard enough to get the knight to retreat under normal circumstances, but now that was impossible, and winning on the current field was just as unlikely.

What started as four orcs was quickly reduced to three, and only two of those were Simon’s responsibility. That might have been doable, but when two more were drawn by the flames, he was fairly sure that would be the end of the run. Still, he brought down one of the ones he faced before two more showed up to replace it.

With that, the battle was truly joined. The hulking green warriors roared with battlelust, and the situation became very precarious for Simon. Two men on one orc was a reasonably fair fight, but three orcs on one was a slaughter waiting to happen, and it took everything he had to match them.

However tough it was for him, though, Sir Derinholt had it harder. The opponent he faced wielded magic, while he had nothing but faith and ferocity to pair against it. It was a bad match.

Simon’s shield caught an ugly hit as he fought defensively. It ate the axe that his enemy was using, but it was trashed in the process. He made lemonade out of those lemons, though, and throat punched the orc that did it with the jagged wooden edge of his shield, losing the object and an opponent in the process.

That bought him enough breathing room to glance at Sir Derinholt, but what he saw wasn’t good news. He was almost to the warlock, but another orc was closing in on them.

“Damn it!” Simon cursed before shouting an unheard warning.

He needed to close the gap and fast, but he still had two opponents, and if he ran, they’d use their longer stride to cut him down. Not for the first time, he considered using a word of power to end this, but he resisted.

There’s always another way, he reminded himself. You can’t use magic for everything.

As his most recent victim slowly drowned in his own blood, Simon used his staggering form as an obstacle to control the flow of battle. Then, when he fell to his knees, Simon used him as a stepping stool to launch a leaping blow that granted him enough height to sink his sword down through the orc’s collarbone to its heart.

It was a great blow that cost him his sword, but he accepted that. He could retrieve it later, if there was a later. As he landed, he pulled his dagger and continued the fight. That got him a kick to his ribs that sent him tumbling and gasping, but even that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

When Simon’s last opponent loomed over him with a club in an overhead grip, he assumed that Simon was done for. Maybe a farmer or a villager would have been, but he’d died far too many times to give up. Instead of despairing, he just rolled to his feet, narrowly avoiding the skull-crushing blow and hamstringing the prick that had tried to brain him.

For a moment, Simon thought about leaving him for later, but when he fell to one knee and cried out in pain, his eye socket was too tempting of a sight. So, Simon left all ten inches of steel buried in the orc’s skull before quickly moving to retrieve his sword. It was only when he knelt to retrieve it, though, that he realized the orc hadn't entirely missed. He’d taken some kind of blow to the head; enough to make blood drip down his face, but for the moment the adrenaline kept the pain entirely at bay, and he only felt a little dizzy.

As he did so, he saw that Sir Derinholt’s opponent was down, but he faced not one new opponent, but two. He wasn’t doing very well either. At this distance, Simon couldn’t see how badly he’d been wounded yet, but from the way he was moving, it was certain that he’d taken a hit or two.

Even as Simon fought through the two orcs between him and the knight, though he knew it was too late. They’d each brought down several, but the Unspoken’s drive to strike down the fire-wielding warlock had overwhelmed the rational part of his mind that would have told him that retreating and finding a better battleground was the right move.

The warlock was dead at Sir Derinholt’s feet, but the knight himself was covered in blood, and most of it was red, not green. Still, he stayed standing, staggering backward a step at a time, and parrying what blows he couldn’t side step as he tried to weather the savagery.

He was unsuccessful, and even as Simon brought their final opponent down, the knight sank to his knees, and then to his ass, before he lay back. He was pale there, and his breaths were quick and shallow. Simon knew neither of those were good signs, but he ignored them as he tried to figure out where exactly the man had been hurt.

That took longer than it should have because of just how much blood there was, but when he found the source, he knew it was over. Sir Derinholt had nearly been gutted in a jagged wound that went under the bottom edge of his breastplate. If Simon tried to take his armor off to get at it, his guts would almost certainly fall out.

“You’re going to be okay,” Simon told him automatically, even though it wasn’t true. There was no fixing this without magic, and he immediately started wrestling with the urge to use magic to save the knight’s life. Sir Derinholt would hate him for it, of course, and it would move back his timeline at least a couple of years, but it was better than letting the knight die. “We can fix this, I’ll…”

Simon trailed off and swallowed hard. He knew what he had to say. Hyakk. It was only a single word, but the word of power felt so strange in his mind after such a long time that he paused uncharacteristically.

“Don’t do it,” the man gasped his final words in Simon’s arms as he bled out. He knew that the White Cloak wasn’t talking about magic, but it was still enough to arrest the word of power before it ever escaped his throat. From those syllables on, Simon was powerless to do anything but listen to the dying man.

“Set your sight aside,” he continued, coughing up blood. “Pretend to be just like everyone else… Find a nice wife and a nice village, like this one. Live a… Live a…” After that, he was gone.

Simon mourned his death, but only for a few minutes. During that time, his heart hardened as the knight’s body cooled. Then, he picked up his sword and moved back into the night. Sir Derinholt’s corpse could wait until morning. Tonight, he had more orcs to kill.