NaNoWriMo 2017 - Day 2

Cassidy sliced the spearhead off this poor, piss-stained soldier’s spear. He was the only one nearby who hadn’t immediately fled after she had killed her mother’s cousin. It was a pity that he hadn’t accepted her request. Not unexpected, but still a pity. She had always liked Herrick A bit scrawny, the spearman was probably a few years older than he looked, which would put him in his early twenties, of an age with Cassidy.

“Open your eyes, soldier,” Cassidy finally had to say when he continued to stand before her, frozen in terror.

He opened one eye, just a teensy, tiny slit. He was shaking so badly that his knees were knocking together. “Please don’t turn me into a newt and eat me!” the spearman begged.

“Turn you into a newt?” Cassidy asked. Was there no end to the foolish tales that country lords told their common folk to convince them she was an evil sorceress? “Never mind that nonsense. You duck down here and wait for me. Try not to get shot by any arrows so I can offer you a job. You’re either very brave or very stupid, spearman, and whichever you are I have a place for you. If you want it, that is.”

He sputtered a bit, but there was no more time to waste on him. The archers were regrouping. Cassidy shoved the spearman down and took off at a run along the wall towards the nearest group of archers.

Arrows were clattering harmlessly against her new armor. It was the lightest set yet that Corbus had been able to forge and still be virtually impregnable. She leapt, using her air godstone to boost her up higher so that she could crash into the middle of the archers’ ranks. She spun, her Halcyon blades cutting through their leather armor like butter.

Cassidy’s siege towers were nearing the moat now. No army had ever taken Kilgrey Gap by force, which was no doubt why Baron Helshire had chosen it. The craggy mountains to either side of the castle just inside the mouth of the gap made surrounding it for a siege impossible and the narrow valley turned into a killing ground as archers could rain arrows down on attackers unable to make use of their superior numbers in an assault. That is, if the archers were paying attention to approaching attackers. Cassidy hadn’t seen a single arrow aimed at anyone but her, so Aunt Diana’s plan was working perfectly.

The archers around her were fleeing so she took off down along the wall to scatter the rest of them. Among the next group of frightened bowmen she found the man that had made her new suit of armor necessary.

“Cousin,” Cassidy said to the tall man in front of her. Uthor was as tall as his recently dead father, but not as broad. The archers had all retreated, but just behind Uthor a half dozen men waited in full plate mail with massive hammers instead of swords.

“Warwitch,” he replied. His Halcyon blade glowed bright red in his hand. Uthor’s mission this past year had been to assassinate Cassidy. His last plot had ended with him burning through Cassidy’s helm with his sword and leaving her with an angry red scar all along her left jawline. Uthor raised his blade, a longsword that he wielded in one hand so he could hold a double layered shield in his off hand.

Corbus, this armor had better work, Cassidy thought as she stepped forward to engage the only man who had ever managed to penetrate the armor her mad inventor had engineered for her. Cassidy attacked, swinging one sword at Uthor, which he caught on his unusually thick shield. Her blade began to burn through the steel so he swung his sword around at Cassidy’s side. He was expecting her parry with her other Halcyon blade so that she would be open to his hammer wielders leaping forward to batter her – Uther had learned that anything short of Halcyon steel had no chance of injuring Cassidy so his henchmen used hammers to knock her off balance and expose her to his Halcyon blade.

No doubt to Uthor’s shock and consternation, Cassidy let his blow land on her left side so that she could cleave the head from the nearest unsuspecting henchman who had leapt forward with his hammer raised, not a thought spared for defense. She felt the fire godstone set into her breastplate surge to life. As Corbus had explained to her – at painful length, as he was wont to do whenever he got excited about one of his discoveries – all godstones had two natures: a push action that could be used to flare the element and a pull that condensed it. Aunt Diana had used a water godstone to” push” the water from a nearby river into water vapor and create the fog that had concealed their approach. That same godstone could be used to “pull” water from its liquid state into ice. Almost no one used the pull action of a fire godstone and to Cassidy’s knowledge, no one had ever come up with anything useful to do with a fire pull until now. Fire godstones could be used to push a small flame into a roaring blaze or power the vicious heat of a Halcyon blade. The pull action of a fire godstone could be used to suck the heat out of an object. On the continent it was evidently a popular practice among nobles who had nothing better to do to use a fire pull to cool their soup. Corbus had, in his twisted way of approaching every problem from an utterly foreign perspective, devised a way to set a fire godstone into her armor that would pull away excess heat if she were to become engulfed in flames or attacked with a Halcyon sword.

Corbus’ invention worked and Uthor’s blade clanged harmlessly off her side. Cassidy shoved Uthor back with a blast of air and sliced clean through the arm of one of the hammer wielders. Two henchmen down and four to go. Uthor staggered back, confused by the lack of effect his trusty sword had yielded. His four minions backed up with him and Cassidy couldn’t help but smile. Uthor’s father had been a worthy adversary, but his son was a smarmy little sneak and she would be glad to rid the world of him.

Cassidy charged forward, forcing the hammermen back lest they lose limbs from her quick flurry of slashes. Uthor likely wanted to run, but the first platforms from the siege towers were crashing down behind him so he was stuck between Cassidy and her soldiers. Cassidy pressed her attack, taking advantage of the gap the hammermen had left. Uthor caught her first blow on his shield and parried her offhand strike, but by then she was already slamming her sword down on his shield again. Thick though it was, nothing could last long against a Halcyon blade and it was cleaved in two, leaving Uthor with nothing but his sword and his four frightened henchmen.

“I yield!” Uthor shouted, spreading his arms to the side and sinking to his knees. His minions dropped their hammers and did the same. The heat was draining from Uthor’s blade as he disengaged the godstone in its pommel.

“You would,” Cassidy muttered disgustedly. “Drop your sword. It will make a fine addition to my collection.”

Uthor did as he was told, but then lunged to the side suddenly. A gust of wind hit Cassidy in the chest and she was sent tumbling over the edge of the wall. Whirling, she slammed one of her swords into the stone as she fell. The blade sunk in and she jerked to a stop a little over ten feet down from the top. Above, Uthor and his henchmen had recovered her weapons and were waiting to attack her when she climbed back up.

“That rotten little…” Cassidy grumbled to herself. She should have just cut his head off and be done with it. Oh well, no use crying over murders she could have done. It was time to focus on how she was going to kill Uthor now that she was in this predicament. He would have seen her latest trick of flipping herself around with an air godstone so that was no good. At this point in the battle she could technically wait until her soldiers pouring out of the siege towers finished taking the walls, but that was hardly satisfying. She could climb up the wall, ramming one sword after the other into the wall. It would be slow and that was probably what they were counting on…unless…

Cassidy began to climb, her Halcyon swords allowing her to scale the wall. Uthor and his goons waited eagerly at the top. Just out of reach of their hammers, Cassidy shoved her sword up into the wall at an angle instead of straight in, the point of her sword going up towards where Uthor and company waited. She began to shove the sword to the right, cutting slowly, but surely through the stone. After pulling the sword back out there was an angry gash across the face of the wall.

Uthor might have recognized what I’m about to do if he’d ever bothered to put in a day of honest labor, but if that stuck up rat has ever chopped down a tree in his life I’ll eat my boots, Cassidy thought as she rammed the blade back into the wall, this time at a downward angle. She pushed the blade through the stone until she felt the wall began to creak and groan under the pressure.

Cassidy pushed herself to the side and out of the way as the wedge of stone she had cut slid free and crashed down into the moat below. With a substantial portion of the wall below them gone, gravity took care of Uthor and the remaining hammermen. The wall above her wedge tumbled forward under the weight of the five heavily armored men atop it and Cassidy had the distinct pleasure of hearing Uthor scream like a little girl as he plummeted to his death.