Project Empress 029

[Chapter 6 continued and finished] 

The commander smiled, his brow furrowed, head shaking. “You killed a good man down there, little mouse, you will have to fetch a good price and work off the debt you owe him and his family”, he said strolling leisurely towards Cara. His sword was now resting lightly on his right shoulder.

“Family…”, Cara said. 

“Yep, wife, three children, two girls, one boy.” He looked at her, seeking to peer deep into her eyes. “Who will now grow up alone”, he said as he continued circling her. 

‘No…’, Cara thought, her eyes narrowing, ‘Not a circle, a spiral…’; to test her idea she moved away a bit, and he subtly followed her, very slowly closing the distance between them. Cara tried not to grimace when she noticed. 

“I didn’t kill him”, Cara said. 

“You did not? You did not help your murderer friend over there?”, he said his expression relaxing, while inching another bit forward. 

“I am strictly opposed to murder”, Cara said, wincing a bit remembering how she did actually help Elisa kill the pirate.

The pirate commander’s beaming smile returned to his face. “Wonderful, then we have something in common. You seem to be a smart girl. Why don’t you just give up. You’ll take no damage. Fetch a really good price and get sold as a high class slave. Win-win.” Again, the pirate moved closer, moving to her left flank, where her reach wasn’t as far, being left handed. 

“Hmmm…”, said Cara, stopping in her motion, watching Commander von Brecksbach from the corner of her eye as he moved into her left flank. Her sword with the hilt still close to her left shoulder, the tip pointing high into the air. ‘One more step aaaand…’

She let the tip of her sword fall to the left, as the pirate rushed forwards with a slash from above. “I decline”, she said as she drove the point of her sword towards her foe. Following her sword she drew it high to her left, her blade catching the attack of the pirate. 

At first, the force and weight of her opponent´s strike was close to overwhelming her, pushing the weak, front half of her sword, easily away. But as Walter had taught her, she trusted in her art and moved forward. As she did, the pirate´s blade slipped down her own into its strong, making the point of her sword snap back into the direction of the commanders face. 

With a “Whoa!” and eyes suddenly wide open the pirate commander closely evaded the tip smashing into his face. “Looks like the kitty has some claws.”

“This kitty has a sword”, Cara corrected him, swinging her sword around to attack the pirate’s arms with a raising slash, which he blocked. Cara kept pushing, moving the point around the block of her enemy, again seeking out his face. ‘If I can keep this up,’ she thought, ‘I can win…’

The problem was that the pirate commander had no intention of letting her have the initiative. As soon as he found a gap in her attack pattern he instantly pushed into it. First he went after her arms; as she blocked those attacks he instantly shifted towards her face. Now it was Cara who was on the back foot, guarding against the direct attacks as well the traps they often represented. 

While she had managed to trick the pirate commander once into walking into the reach of her sword, he did not underestimate her again, using his reach and skill to his advantage. 

Cara couldn’t close the gap between them having trouble with his strange style, which somehow could shift the direction from which the attacks came with confusing speed and force. Sometimes it seemed that the point of her opponent´s sword hat teleported to a new position, or the blade was moving in way that should be impossible for a straight piece of steel. 

 

Von Brecksbach’s expression had changed. From his wide grin, now he was calm and concentrated, carefully pushing Cara, wearing her down. Whenever he saw weakness in her defence he instantly pushed against it. 

Cara herself was surprised that she was still holding on. The lessons of Nat and Walter who had taught her to “think with the strong” and “let it just move to cover her” had been more effective than all her time under master Manfred.

And yet, she could not see a way out of this situation. She just couldn’t reach von Brecksbach. 

This became painfully clear when she tried to push forward again, to regain some initiative, when a secondary strike from the pirate commander struck her right forearm. She felt the blade push through the muscle, strike her ulna and make it bend inward slightly. The pain was instant and almost overwhelming, driving the air out of her lungs. For a moment, her body wanted to stop everything, cold sweat suddenly covering her entire body, making her grip slippery. 

‘No time…’, Cara thought, still trying to remember how to breathe in again, when the point of her opponent´s sword flashed past her defence towards her face. She moved her sword almost too late. The tip of von Brecksbach’s sword broke her skin, scratching it from her eyebrow all the way up to her hairline above her temple. Blood instantly started pouring over her right eye.  

Cara inhaled, the man in front of her coming back into focus. Pain and panic clawed at her, she pushed those back. 

‘Not now.’ The sword that had scraped her face was still moving past her. She was still alive and conscious. In front of her Commander von Brecksbach stood wide open, moving towards her arms extended. 

 As Walter said: “In combat, as long as you can, you keep fighting.”

‘I can go a bit further’, Cara thought as she crouched down, almost buckling. Gritting her teeth she held her position; her sword free again, she realigned her sword with the forearms of the pirate commander, while pushing herself forward, shifting her body to the right.  Now she was crouched under him, her blade held high behind her head, connecting von Brecksbach’s arms. Standing in a position not unlike someone chopping wood. She rose again, pushing the pirate up, following up with a motion just like chopping wood. Throwing the commanders arms forward and down. 

The pirate lost his balance, his whole body twisting to one side while almost falling flat on his face.

Cara wanted to follow that with a rising strike towards the pirate’s throat to throw him completely to the ground. Once he was prone it would be easy to just stab him until he lost the will to go on. For some reason though, night fell over the whole scene all of a sudden. ‘But the sun is still up…’, Cara wondered.

“Little ingot!”, Cara heard a somewhat familiar voice shouting, “You can rest later!”

‘Elisa?’, Cara forced the light back into her mind. 

In front of her the form of the pirate commander coalesced back into focus. Von Brecksbach was recovering quickly. A fierce murderous glint in his eyes. His sword, still hanging slack by his side, suddenly flew up towards Cara. Jean D’Arc, her own weapon, immediately moved up to intercept the attack, as if the sword had a will of its own. When it blocked the pirate’s strike, Cara felt the impact in her entire body. 

Von Brecksbach wasn’t finished. Pulling his sword high again, he started raining a flurry of blows down on Cara. From up above, form the left, the right. All Cara could do was try to stay behind her sword as well as she could. In the background she could make out Elisa starting to sprint in their direction. But she was still so incredibly far away. 

‘I just need to survive a bit longer…’, Cara thought. She almost slipped on something when walking back. She looked down. ‘Oh… my blood’, she thought and was shocked back into the fight when the tip of von Brecksbach’s sword narrowly missed her nose. The added adrenaline pulled her back into full consciousness. Von Brecksbach was now hammering strikes from his right and left into Cara to simply break past her defences. ‘He is wide open in the middle´, Cara thought. After she had blocked another strike and von Brecksbach withdrew his sword to launch his next attack, Cara jumped forward, almost slipping on her blood again, stabilising her fall by burying the tip over her sword in the pirate commanders solar plexus. ‘Armour!’, Cara thought. The moment she made contact she felt the resistance of something hard. Still, von Brecksbach’s eyes grew wide because of the form of the unexpected strike, staggering a few steps backwards before catching himself. The fire in his eyes reigniting. 

“I think I am going to smash away some more from your price for…”, he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he gasped, eyes wide again stumbling forwards. Behind him Elisa’s sword staff clattered onto the deck. 

“Now, little ingot. Strike!”, Elisa shouted.

And Cara struck, swinging her sword with the full force of her motion, into the side of von Brecksbach’s neck, pushing her sword with her entire weight and following through with all the power that her legs still had left.  

Von Brecksbach fell side ways head first onto the deck. His head hitting the ground so far that it rebounded, meeting Cara’s second strike part way being smashed into the floor once more. The head and all the rest of the commander stopped moving. 

“Yessss!”, Elisa shouted. She was now standing over the sack that held her weapons, where she pulled out two awn sickles, which instead of smooth edges had serrated ones. “Run closer to the wall, so that the snipers can’t see you. We are almost done, we now just have to get rid of the rest of the pirates. 

“Yeah, that’s right you piles of recrement!”, she shouted, something very close to madness clouding her eyes. “Your commander is down. Now its time to harvest the rest of you.”

“The rest of them…?”, Cara croaked. Her exhaustion, the pain and blood loss were catching up on her. But no matter. She had to go on. So she turned around, moving close to the wall leading to the next deck, trying to keep an eye out for any more marksmen. As she looked up, she noticed that a new sun had appeared in the sky and then another and another. She looked around confused. Golden spheres of light where filling the sky around her. Those weren’t new suns… those were…

“Unknown pirate vessel, this is the holy fleet of Datlem, put down your weapons, surrender and repent your sins, or face heavenly retribution.”

“Heh…”, Cara said as she leaned on the wall, slowly sliding down the wall into a sitting position.