18 – Mad Dog

I vaulted the fence to shouts and curses from the gathered men, more of them taking aim with those strange repeating crossbows of theirs. I kept running at them, bolts whistling and flying wide of me. All the while I felt the familiar sensation of my heart thudding in my ears, the mad thrill of combat wrapping its arms around me like an old lover.

There you are a voice said in the back of my mind. A voice so much like my own, and yet simultaneously completely alien. The voice of a thing rather than a man. Are you finally done pretending? Have you grown tired of this absurd farce?

No, certainly not.

Don’t be a fool. You’re not a man, and you’re no farmer. You’re the Bloody Wight. So act like it.

For a moment, as my fist shattered the iron-banded shield of one man before me, obliterating the arm holding it in the process, I felt heat flicker over my body. An ember that tried to spark a flame, to forge my old armour anew.

But I knew that if I did that, if I drew out that much power… I had no idea if I’d be able to stop myself. When I became the Wight, armoured in my own pain and rage, my rationality died away, as if any decent emotions I had were walled off from me.

It had taken years of grinding warfare for me to feel some measure of sanity again. And I dreaded to think I wouldn’t be able to turn it off again, if I gave into that temptation.

And, of course, there was the risk of that surge of magicka serving as a beacon to Novos, even across an entire ocean.

I snuffed the thoughts. I didn’t need the armour.

A sword caught me in the shoulder and shattered against my flesh without leaving so much as a mark. I kicked the swordsman and sent him screaming into a nearby tree, the sound of snapping bones echoing across the plain.

I heard the click of another crossbow behind me, but the shot never came. A shadow leapt from the darkness, teeth gleaming in the moonlight, and I was shocked to see a snarling shape tear the throat from the marksman, wrestling him to the ground.

“Smoke!” I said, shocked. And a little heartened by his intervention, I would admit. It was… nice to know you had someone in your corner.

But seeing Smoke in motion, I was shocked at how fast he was. He darted between men, bounding with enough speed to dodge their bolts, and the slashes of their blades. And any man who got too close was swiftly brought down either by talons that ripped through their leathers like cheap cloth, or pounced and flattened by his great weight.

Boy wasn’t fully grown yet, but he was far stronger than a normal man.

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Through it all, as Smoke and I tore through the bandits one by one, Inumi stood idle and rested his weight on the shaft of his halberd. He looked almost bored, and certainly had no care for the fate of his men. I had known officers like that in Novos’ army, among the worst breed of bastard he had in his employ.

Leave it to a bandit leader to embody the same evils.

He’d get his, but… even at a glance I could tell that he was a cut above those underlings of his.