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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4767063" data-attributes="member: 143">I've been incapacitated this week with a bout of stomach flu (nasty business), so I'm a bit behind in my postings. * * * * * Chapter 26Mara had no time to think, only to act. She fell forward, rolling over onto her chest, then onto her back.  Her foot brushed something heavy and she kicked off, coming into a spin even as the ground vibrated with the clang of steel on stone, so loud that it seemed like it must have been scant inches from her ears.  As she pivoted, she lashed out with her longsword.  Again, it was instinct rather than design that guided the blade, and she felt the steel bite on something, heard a grunt of pain, followed by a loud thud and a clatter of metal that she recognized as an armored body striking the floor.She didn’t stop to see what had happened.  She completed her spin and kept going, using her momentum to come up awkwardly to a crouch.  She didn’t bother looking for her short sword, raising her remaining weapon in a guard position.  The hobgoblin was already regaining his feet as well.  He’s faster than me, she thought, parrying a spear thrust that she realized was a probe rather than a serious attack.  She could see the deep dent in the poleyn of iron plate protecting his right knee, and realized she’d gotten in a lucky hit.  He seemed to favor the leg a bit, but the wound certainly didn’t look like it was enough to stop him.  The room had grown quiet around them.  Mara paused, breathing heavily; opposite her, the hobgoblin chief did the same.  Someone groaned beneath her; Mara glanced down to see the soldier from Fallcrest lying there, half-conscious.  At least he was alive; the same could not be said for most of those scattered across the room.  Goblins, hobgoblins, and humans formed uneven mounds where they had fallen.  Blood formed trails across the floor, gathering in pools where the stone dipped.  The stink was ferocious.  She saw the warcaster, standing with his back toward her.  As she watched, he slowly fell over, like a tree being toppled by a lumberjack.  When he landed, his arms splayed out from his sides, Mara could see several arrows jutting from his body, including one that jutted from his left eye, trailing a line of blood down his face like a stream of tears.  Behind him stood the halflings.  All of them bore wounds, and Tarra was supporting Torrin, who clutched a right arm that looked broken, but otherwise all four were intact.  She glanced right.  The balcony was silent.  She could see the divots in the wall behind them where sling bullets had missed; she could only guess at what the ones that had hit had done to hobgoblin bodies.  One of the archers was slumped over the lip of the ledge, his face frozen into a death mask.  Literally; she could see the rime of frost even from here. She glanced left.  Gral was back on his feet, although he leaned heavily on his staff.  There was another human soldier behind him, one of the ones she remembered from the Halfmoon Inn, holding a bow.  Dwellin was already running to help Torrin.  As Tarra handed her brother off to the healer, she took up her sling again and plopped another bullet into its pouch, stepping forward to join Jaron and Rendil. “Looks like you’re the one who’s alone, now,” Mara said.  The warchief’s response was a snarl.  He lunged at Mara, only fractionally slower than he had been before.  She met the attack and deflected it, although once again the spearhead cut her, this time edging her right arm above the greave, almost at her shoulder, clipping a scale hard enough to cut the flesh beneath.  It hurt, but she was feeling the boundless endurance of a trained fighter, minor wounds ignored until the heat of battle was concluded.  She twisted and prepared her counterattack, but the hobgoblin was already disengaging, his goal obvious as he started toward the exit.  Arrows and bullets knifed through the air, but most of them bounced off the hobgoblin’s heavy armor.  Gral stood in the hobgoblin’s path, the battered dwarf looking almost insignificant against the sheer size and strength of the hobgoblin veteran.  But the dwarf held his ground, even when the hobgoblin lowered his spear and surged ahead.  He didn’t get more than a few steps, for as his charge took him past the fallen Carzen Zelos, the semiconscious fighter managed to stick out his foot enough to catch the warchief’s heel, ruining his balance, and sending him toppling forward onto the floor.  The hobgoblin still refused to give up.  He was able to get his feet under him even as more missiles lanced into him, including a bullet that caromed hard off his left arm just above the elbow, and an arrow that stabbed through his right boot into the flesh of his leg.  He almost made it back to standing, but even as he started to turn Mara hit him from behind.  Her sword clanged hard into his neck at the base of his skull.  The blow failed to penetrate through the coif of heavy chain links he wore under his helm, but the impact was still enough to deliver mortal damage.  Somehow, even as his body began to fail, the hobgoblin stayed on his feet; he took one step forward, then another, as his limbs started to stiffen and spasm.  His spear fell from his grasp, and clattered on the floor.  It was Gral who finished it, lifting his staff with obvious effort, driving the tip into the center of the hobgoblin’s breastplate.  The thunderwave tore through his body like a tsunami striking a seaside village, the sound of it echoing off the chamber walls long after the clatter of the hobgoblin hitting the floor had faded.</blockquote>

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