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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Buttercup" data-source="post: 1359188" data-attributes="member: 990">Many people were looking at us, but especially at my companion.  One man even asked him where his clothes were.  Further proving his mental instability, he claimed that he was fully dressed.  The guard told him that in many communities he could get thrown in prison for going out in public dressed in less than people sleep in.  My strange companion responded with information about his sleeping habits and attire that should not have been shared with anyone, but keeping Lady Amelia’s words in mind, I ignored his comments, and instead explained to the guard about my companion’s apparent head injury.   I then informed the guard that I was lost, and asked him the name of the community I found myself in.The guard looked at me with growing understanding in his eyes, and, I thought, a trace of pity.  He began to ask us some questions about the storm, and what we had been doing.  I was beginning to get annoyed, since he met every question of mine with one of his own instead of answers.  Finally, he told us to wait, while he got someone who could explain everything to us.  Since I was still a bit winded, waiting was fine with me.  In a few minutes, the guard returned with an elderly man leaning heavily on him for support.  This elder introduced himself as Sir John, and began to talk to my companion.  Further embarrassing himself, my companion continued to talk his crazy talk, but to my surprise, Sir John seemed to understand much of it!  He certainly recognized Cala-Forn-Ya, and mentioned a place called New Jerzee.  He then turned to me and asked for the details of my experiences of the past few hours.Sir John briefly explained that we were no longer in our own worlds, but that we had been “Taken by the Storm” as had he, over 75 years ago.  He said that he would explain the matter more fully later, but that the wolf riders who had chased us were merely the advance guard, and that everyone needed to prepare for the attack which should be coming directly.  He noted that I was already armed, and looked like I could handle myself.  He then turned to my companion, and asked him if he could use any weapons.  To everyone’s surprise, he opened his black bag, and took out an unusual sword with a slightly curved blade.  That wasn’t the only thing unusual about it.  The sword was obviously made of some cheap, shiny metal and was so dull that it wouldn’t cut a butterfly wing.  I almost laughed, but remembering that it is rude to laugh at the weak minded, stopped myself.  Whoever had sold this sword to him had obviously been an unscrupulous merchant—probably a carnival mountebank or some such, I imagined.   The guards brought him some decent clothing, leather armor and a real sword, and then they offered us longbows if we knew how to use them.   I could draw the great bow they gave me, but barely.  My companion said the bow looked different than the ones he had seen before, but seemed to know how to use it, more or less.  Clearly he is stronger than me, because he could draw it more easily.  We were also each given 40 arrows.We mounted the platform behind the palisade, and took our places with the guards.  From our perch, we could see the encampment of the wolf-riders about a mile in the distance, close to the trees.  I thought to myself that it was a good thing I did not come out of the forest where I had intended, for if I had, I would have walked right into their camp.  The guard told me the short people riding the wolves were Gob Lynns.  He explained that they were weaker than the wolves, but much harder to hit since they were small, fast and smarter than their animals.  I determined then, that when the attack began, I would do my best to shoot the wolves.  And so we waited.  And waited.  The guards said that usually their attack came much sooner upon the heels of their outriders, and that this delay was odd, since gob lynns never change their tactics.Finally they began to ride toward us.  There were about 75 of them, and only about 35 of us on the walls.  We waited until they were in range, and the captain gave the command to fire.  Although I am not an archer, I am not so bad with a bow that I shame myself.  Several wolves went down, and one of them was mine!  My companion managed to hit a gob lynn.  Arrows were flying thick and fast, but few wolves fell, and now that they were closer, I could tell that some of them carried two gob lynns.  I sighed, and stretched my back and neck, before taking aim again.  While stretching though, my eye happened to catch some movement down on the ground inside the fort.  I looked and saw to my surprise that five gob lynns were inside, being held off by two men.  As I watched, one of the men fell to a nasty sword thrust.  The stairs down were far away, so without really stopping to think I threw myself off the platform and tumbled into a controlled fall and through it back onto my feet in front of one of the nasty little creatures.  (The platform was only 12 feet high, so this wasn’t as impressive as it sounds.)  Up close, they really were ugly, with pointy teeth, hideous ape noses and splayed legs.  Sadly, mine was a pretty good swordsman too.  He kept dancing away from my blade, but managed to cut me a good one on my left arm.  I managed in spite of the pain to cut him back, and finally felled him.  I then turned my attention to another one.  The only guard on the ground with me was trying to hold off two, but looked like he needed some help.  Now and then an arrow would whiz over my head, but I was too busy to pay attention to anything but the nasty little git in front of me.  I managed to mark him, but then I slipped slightly on the bloody ground and let my guard down.  The creature took quick advantage of my misstep and slashed right through my armor.  The blade bit into my side and I gasped and fell to the ground. Apparently taking me for dead, he turned back to the guard, who was doing amazing things with a sword in each hand.  He was bleeding from several bad wounds, and I couldn’t really see how he was still managing to fight.  Gritting my teeth, I stood back up and stabbed at the back of the closest creature to me that was attacking him.  Unfortunately, I was in such pain that my stroke went wide, serving no purpose but to draw the creature’s attention to me once more.  I feared that I was done for.   Just then, my brain sick companion appeared, sword in hand, and demonstrated that he knew quite well how to use it.  He cut the gob lynn attacking me nearly in two, and then turned to the other one.  Sadly, he was not in time to save the two-sword guard, who took a deep cut to the throat and fell lifeless to the dirt on top of one of the enemy.  Brain-Sick quickly finished off Two-Sword’s murderer, and turned to me to see how serious my injuries were.As it turns out, the fight was over.  All the gob lynns and wolves who hadn’t been killed had run away.  What I wanted to know, though, was how those five got inside the fort?  I wasn’t the only one.  As Sir John and the rest had said, gob lynn tactics never changed.  Except that today they did.  This could only mean trouble.But at the moment, I wasn’t really in any condition to think about gob lynns, or anything else.  I was wounded and bleeding in several places, and I felt like I might collapse soon.  In fact, I felt so bad that I didn’t even notice how filthy I was.  A healer soon saw to me, and after bandaging me up, put me to bed.  There must have been a sleeping draught in the tea he gave me, because I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.</blockquote>

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