The Crown of the Thunder King

CHAPTER FIVE

Fighting soldiers on horseback was hard. Getting them off of the horses was easy.

The two immediately got to work, sprinting from horse to horse and gashing their knobby knees one after the other. Each time, the steed would cry out in distress and either buckle or throw its rider off its back. Adlai dodged a stamping hoof, and in a blur of motion, sliced the shin of the last horse. The bandit on top went flying, tumbling over himself in midair until he landed with a sickening crack onto the ground below.

He jumped back, surveying his and Sanja's handiwork. The marauders were disoriented, but most of them were standing already. It never was that just easy, was it.

Ah, well. It wouldn't be much fun otherwise.

"One dozen, huh?" Adlai said as Sanja leapt back as well. He flashed a grin at his friend. "Want to go six and six?"

"Keep up," was the only reply, and then the black-haired man rushed past him, saber blade arcing in a harbinger of inexorable death.

"There he goes," Adlai sighed. "I guess he really is competitive, after all."

Shrugging, he hurtled in his wake.

Sanja's thin blade moved so quickly that you could barely track its motion. One, two slashes, and a marauder fell. Another three, and his fellow stumbled back, clutching at a gaping wound in his chest and another, parallel one in his neck. Whenever Sanja brought his sword down, a ring of red turned black in the light of the moon spread gracefully through the air, and the semicircle of bandits surrounding him lost another member.

Adlai's opponents were hanging back, just barely out of reach. He dodged one wild swing, then ducked under a spear thrust. With each effortless evade and step forward, he forced his assailants further back.

Come on, Sanja's outdoing me. One of you has to slip up eventually...

A bandit stumbled slightly, a look of shock spread across his face. Adlai, seizing his opportunity, brought his hand up. There went his sword, finally finding purchase in the body of a man who still didn't know what had happened.

The marauder's comrades stared as the corpse crumpled to its knees. With a short jerk, Adlai tugged his backsword free and let it fall. One down.

Despite outnumbering Adlai four-to-one, the bandits didn't seem to want to get close enough to actually engage him. That was a problem. How was he supposed to "keep up" if they wouldn't even let him?

Vaguely, Adlai sensed Sanja whirl past him again, fending three enemies off at once with quick, efficient parries. The saber would slide off one weapon to deflect the next, then make a short jab into the shoulder of the third attacker. Sanja's unparalleled speed protected him from receiving so much as a nick.

"Come on," he taunted his adversaries, flicking the tip of his sword up. "Nothing? There's only one of me."

"You're right."

Adlai's vision shifted to the newcomer as a low voice rang out against the clashing of steel and sound of metal biting into flesh. A fifth man, significantly broader than the other four, shouldered his way through. Wait... Adlai knew that face. It had been in his history book.

"General Verreider?"

"I don't know about 'General' anymore, boy," he rumbled, and drew an unreasonably hefty one-handed sword from his side. "But I am Verreider, yes."

Adlai straightened up and eyed the newcomer. There was no mistaking it. Thick salt-and-pepper fur bristled out from under his shoulder pads and breastplate, and the thick neck that sprouted from the armor gave way to a nicked chin, high cheekbones, and sunken eyes under a heavy brow.