FN: Before I start thanks to Reiko x 3 for her review of chapter 6, and don't wory there will be plenty of Mathiu in this story.
Book one: For want of a rune.
Chapter seven: Impressing allies.
Getting to the castle that would become their new base required a boat. And getting a boat was difficult since the Emperor had ordered that all boats were suppose to stay docked and no one was willing to break the law in a time when people were being left to die by the most protracted form of dehydration imaginable. Most of the time the Prophets of Destruction laughed at challenges that other people described as 'difficult' and went on to do them without even breaking a sweat.
This time they cursed at the problem, and a few beads of sweat migrated from brow to floor, but they accomplished it all the same. As James was adjusting the ships rigging his conscience got the better of him. "That wasn't a very nice thing to do Alex, that last throw was clearly a piss even if you did roll three sixes." Alexander was behind the ships wheel and shrugged. "It was a piss all right James, I was getting pissed off at the way I was pissing money down the drain with those two chiselers just so that they would give us a ride on their boat instead of being willing to take a lump sum like good reasonable, bribable people."
Alexander's last throw of that dice in that run down inn's basement was probably well on its way to becoming the stuff of Chinciron legend. After losing several rounds, and seeing his opponent roll a pair snake eyes and a five thus presenting him with the prospect of another three futile throws of the dice, Alexander's mood (never very good to begin with) had headed downwards like the temperature during a blizzard.
He had promptly picked up the dice, rattled them once, and then not so much roll or throw, as simply hurl them. They hit the bottom of the bowl and not so much bounced as richoched out like shrapnel from an explosion. They slammed into the face of Alexander's opponent and were reduced to a cloud of dust in the process. The gambler collapsed on the cold floor leaving Alexander starring down at him, and quite clearly seeing the three small weights inside the dice, not to mention another trio of dice that until he lost the ability to form cognitive thoughts, had been craftily concealing in his sleave.
Alexander had looked at them for a moment, and then he had made his decision about how to handle the situation. He quite calmly picked up the Chinciron bowl, and slammed it down hard over the head of the gambler's partner. Then he proceeded to calmly ask someone in the room to point him toward the gamblers' ship since he'd hate to simultaneously inconvenience someone innocent and let cheaters prosper by commandeering the wrong vessel.
Several people had pointed out the right ship and they had lifted anchor before its rightful owners could wake up and rouse themselves to anger over Alexander's refusal to play their crooked game. So all in all, despite James' butterflies over the exact way in which they'd come to posses their current mode of transportation, they were making good time towards their goal. "We're gonna give this thing back, right?" Alexander shot not James, but Cal a look from behind the wheel.
One of Cal's many jobs as Beta Male was that whenever the Alpha Wolf wanted to rest and didn't even feel like opening his eyes and jaws to nip at the flanks of the Omega Wolf who wanted to play, the Beta was wolf was suppose to come dashing up and chase the Omega off. This could be done either with the usual mock animosity of a pair of carnivores who had no intention of eating each other, or with the very real animosity of a Beta who had wanted to get some sleep of his own but sadly being a Beta, had to put the Alpha's needs before his own.
In either case, there were times that Cal acting a conversational shield between Alexander and James who was just as undisputedly the Omega as Alexander was the Alpha. Cal rose to the task this time with his usual magnificent blend of grouchiness, practicality, and sarcasm. "Of course we're going to give the boat back to them. Once we get the castle the first thing we'll do is sail this thing right back and after we do that we'll have magically developed the ability to swim out to the castle without a boat."
James' face fell and his ears drooped. "Sorry, it just.. well you know it's never right to take stuff from the civvies, even if they were trying to cheat us. I mean isn't trying to cheat the soldiers a long standing civvy tradition?" Cal of course put more effort into ducking the boon with the sudden shift of wind then answering James' question though he eventually got around to both. "Of course it is James, as I'm sure Devi would be glad to tell you its called contract negotiation.
But we're mercenaries not hoars, just because they're willing to pay us doesn't mean we have to lay there and take it while they fuck us over. Besides, it makes boss look good if he projects an aura that he can't be snookered in gambling because it will naturally make people believe that he can't be fooled in combat either. So we keep the fact that he ended up hurling the dice like that only because otherwise he would have burst a blood vessel to ourselves.
We'll give this boat back approximately around the time that we no longer need it and those two are men ask for it back." The Alpha opened a single eye and let a long toung roll out adding to the conversation. "And they appologize for trying to play me like a fool." Of course if the Alpha Female was not always afforded the same amount of respect as her counterpart, she certainty could take some liberties with her mate that none of the others would dare as Florence threw a few words of her own into the conversation. "And worse yet, succeeding at it."
--
When Mathiu arrived at the castle there were no obvious corpses laying around, but the air still smelled slightly of bloodshed and the water near the castle had seemed to have the slightest tint of purple to its coloring and several fishes hanging around nearer the surface then normal. The ships owners quickly threw out the traditional plank for him to walk across to solid ground.
Just because Mathiu was a Silverberg, prosperous and in possession of influential family ties did not mean that people had to like helping him break the law, it just meant that they in fact did have to help him. He had been able to see Alexander waiting for him well before the ship docked, though he refrained from offering Mathiu any sort of help when it came to disembarking. Mathiu for his part refrained from needing any sort of help, after all be they a general, corporal, or anything in between a person's ability to influence their troops was tied to their bearing.
Thus every Silverberg learned from an early age how to be sure footed regardless of situation, they could walk across a standard length plank onto or off a ship without ever allowing themselves to stick their hands out to the side as less coordinated men did, they could walk across an iced over river and never once slip, or worse yet put their weight down in such a way as to break through the ice, and they could even ride a horse off of a ship across a pair of ordinary planks laid side by side without difficulty.
Odessa had gotten similar lessons to those Mathiu had, though they focused less on horse riding and more on being able to do such things in the delicate shoes that proper laddies wore which tended to give very bad traction. "I take it since your still standing none of the monsters still are?" The moment Mathiu took his foot off the plank it was pulled back and the ship that had brought him headed back out to open waters. Alexander shook his head as he cast his eyes towards the towering castle that for all abandonment still seemed to be in pretty good shape structurally. "We've swept this place clean except for one, we saved it to send a message."
Mathiu's eyebrows twitched slightly. "To my understanding the traditional 'kill one to put fear in the hearts of the others' technique doesn't exactly work on monsters, and isn't the one you kill to send the message suppose to be the first to die rather then the last?" Alexander held out his hands and a moment and from the shadow he cast upon one of the castle's rocky walls emerged Mirri Catwarrior. "We're not sending a message to the monsters, we're sending one to you.
If we're going to be working together it makes sense for you to have a certain hands on understanding of what me and my men can accomplish. The one monster we have left 'alive' is a zombie dragon." Mathiu gulped audibly, zombified humans were on the whole more powerful than ordinary humans through a combination of sheer refusal to simply lay down and die and greater strength.
So therefore a zombie dragon zombie be stronger than a normal dragon, and who would want to pick a fight with a dragon? Alexander Diamondclaw and his Prophets of Destruction apparently. "Mirri is going to be the one who takes care of the dragon which we've got corralled in one of the upper levels of the castle, and to make sure there's a good show for her to give you, James..."
James Firecat scampered out of one of the castle's door a floor above them, and then jumped down. "Firecat present neck to Catwarrior, and if I have to give you any further instructions then... I can't seem to come up with a threat of appropriate magnitude to rival the sheer level idiocy the need for further instructions would require."
James stood there as straight as a tree and Mathiu couldn't help but notice that Mirri sank her fangs into a pair of small pink circles of flesh on the back of James' throat that were surrounded by fur, as if those two spot found themselves repeatedly being punctured. Mirri nursed contentedly for a while but then finally broke the contact and licked up a couple more stray drops of blood on her throat. "Ahh that's the stuff, 100 pure male virgin blood, never diluted by laying in congress with a living partner. Stuff makes me practically dizzy with power."
True enough, it was an odd sight but given her extremely pale skin it was fairly easy to see Mirri's own neck veins pumping vigorously with the blood she had just acquired. James on the other hand seemed to be dizzy with something other than power, though he remained on his feet offered Mirri a quick wink. "Hey you know what they say, once you've had feline it's the taste for which you're always ready to recline. Speaking of recline, I'm gonna go line down for a bit, kay Alex?" Alexander dismiss James with another quick hand motion. The nay-kobold scampered off back into the castle and Alexander followed him at first, though while James headed for a side door, Alexander went for the stairs upwards.
"Oh and Mathiu you may feel free to observe Mirri's actions at a reasonably close distance without any sort of fear for your person. Though Mirri will be doing the actual fighting, I won't be farther than Masamune's length from your side to insure if the dragon for some reason takes into its extraordinarily small and rotten brain to attack you instead of her I will stand ready to defend you."
Mathiu didn't doubt that, only very foolish commanders squandered precious resources like the services of a Silverberg, and it was equally clear that Alexander was anything but very foolish. But then even if Alexander Diamondclaw was the greatest general to ever lead men into he battle, but he was still constrained by such necessities as being in only one place at any one time. That was why he had so many run ins with the Silverberg family, he was a mercenary after all and rarely had the kind of hands on knowledge a particular territory that a Silverberg living there would have.
All that said, Mathiu, still wished that Alexander could have found a better measuring stick then the length of his sword. "And of course needless to say if she should require it you will be there to assist your subordinate and I had best make for the rooms exit which I hope will be standing equally close to." Mirri rather then Alexander was leading the way upstairs, which allowed Alexander to easily fix a glare at the back of her head. "If after drinking James' blood she still needs my help... well I would only need to be a hair bit more vicious a man then I actually am to feel that she should disserve to be left to bare the results of her own monumental failures since this task should be well within her skill.
But after all her faithful, intelligent, and creative, years of service, I suppose anyone disserves a second chance if they have a colossally incompetent day. The Prophets of Destruction have a simple motto on such issues, if you don't protect yourself before you worry about protecting others then very soon you'll need protection of your own.
Even James is quite capable of grasping the point. We look after each other on the battlefield, but none of us should expect the others to need or be free to give help. Self reliance is the most essential of essentials." At which point Mirri threw in what sounded like one of countless colourful ways of shortening an important lesson down to a terse witticism. "There's no 'we' in 'killed' only 'I' and 'killed' is a two way word."
Sure enough Mathiu had grasped the simple fact by their actions at his village, that none of the Prophets of Destruction were to be taken lightly. Yes they had posed the advantage of attacking enemies from behind, and enemies who were not expecting to be attacked which was quite a hefty advantage in fact. But the warning lay not in what they had done, but how they had done it, they had butchered enemy soldiers like it was an ordinary part of the day: wake up, eat breakfast, and kill a couple people before lunch.
Most soldiers except the very brutish or the very experienced shy away from killing enemy soldiers in anything other then pitched combat when it was kill or be killed. It was bad tactics of course, if you killed an enemy soldier by slitting his throat while he sleeped, poisoning his drink, or shot him with an arrow while he was relieving himself, he was just as dead as if you met in a grand melee and if you did in cold blood he would have no chance to hurt you.
But as Mathiu had learned at an early age, frequently all that was considered "right" and "good" lay directly at odds with what was expedient militarily. So the true challenge lay in being both a decent tactician on the battlefield, and a good person off of it. Mathiu had hopped to take the most obvious approach to that quandary, there had to be two opposing sides for a battle occur, if he refused to be a tactician and was only a doctor then he could be as pleasant a person as he cared to be.
Alexander seemed to take a the exact opposite approach. He had no intention to ever 'leave' the battlefield. Of course to avoid turning into a monster Alexander granted enemy and neutral (and in some horrific cases friendly) civilians and noncombatants considerably more privileges then 'proper' tactics and conventional practice said they should have.
Granted this was arguably a reasonable mindset for a revolutionary, since revolutions were even more vicious and muddled affairs then regular wars. The difference might be compared that between a proper duel and a bar fight. In a regular war there were clearly defined boundaries, two armies would line up at some place, select weapons and then fight one another, usually to the pain. Of the army at least, for those individual soldiers involved such battles quite frequently proved lethal.
A bar room brawl had no rules beside that it was good manners (if such a phrase was appropriate for the situation) to keep the fight inside the boundaries of the building. Any weapon, any tactics, any target, any manuever was acceptable, friend and foe could change with painful celerity. The War of Succession had been somewhat like that, and Mathiu had been plenty old enough for a Silverberg to understand most of what of how it had unfolded.
But that had at its heart been more of a civil war than a revolution, if Barbarossa had died then his uncle would have been able to lay a quite convincing claim to the throne of the Scarlet Moon Empire. What would Alexander say if someone asked him what right he had to be trying to dethrone Barbarossa and thus by default take control of the Scarlet Moon Empire? Looking at the tall man, Mathiu had no trouble at all imaging his answer. "I wanted to."
This was not an affair between two different branches of the same noble family, but between the noble family who wanted to keep things the way they were, and peasants with a spurned mercenary general to lead them in rebellion. Also in the War of Succession, Alexander had been leashed by Emperor Barbarossa a leash he hadn't terribly resented. But with Odessa's death, the leash that Barbarossa had passed to her, had snapped. No, perhaps it was best to simply extend the leash metaphor, there was still a leash around Alexander's neck, but it was in the hands of a dead woman, and Alexander could probably drag her corpse along with him wherever he wanted.
It would most likely be interesting, and a certainly frightening to see how a war commanded by Alexander would turn out, what targets he would want to attack, how he would want to attack them, and of course the orders he gave in the field where a man did not have the luxury of time to fully think through his decisions. Mathiu suddenly found his way barred by Alexander's hands, and he mentally reprimanded himself for getting so caught up in his thoughts that he might every forget the situation at hand.
The zombie dragon was at least as big as most full grown dragons that Mathiu had seen as a tactician (though he had not studied the great beasts at any true length) the best description for its size might be simply "big enough" for that it was. Big enough to comfortably fit a mans upper body if not the entire man insides its jaws in one clean bite.
But apparently Mirri didn't think it was big enough to frighten her. She walked forward an faced the dragon her fingernails lengthening into claws that burst free from her gloves. "Okay you lizard lips, let's dance." The dragon opened its mouth and let lose with a mouth full of blue flame at its minuscule challenger. Mirri dashed across the floor, flames licking at her footsteps but never catching up to her. When she came to a wall she proceeded to simply run straight up it as if it was a perfectly flat field.
In fact she made the transition from running up a wall to running across the ceiling without problem either. She ran behind the dragon's head and it finally closed its mouth. Mirri braced against the ceiling and jumped downwards. The zombie dragon skittered about trying to bring its head to bare against Mirri but it didn't' make it in time.
Mirri landed on it's neck digging her claws into her foes neck. With a quick twist of her arms, she pried lose several of the dragons scales, causing sprays of a black substance to erupt from them. Mirri suddenly vaulted over the dragon's head to avoid those sprays as if considerably more then the cleanness of her garments was at stake. Of course considering the way some of the rocks that the black substance hit began to bubble ominously perhaps there was.
Alexander saw the look on Mathiu's face and nodded. "Zombie dragon 'blood' is highly acidic in nature. Vampires don't go near it if they have a choice." Of course while Alexander might have just been following Mathiu's eyes, there was always the open possibility that Alexander was simply telepathic and could read the thoughts of those around him. It was a theory that would always hold a certain amount of credence up until the point that it could be disproven beyond a doubt.
The dragon didn't go after Mirri with its breath, instead this time it went after her with its fangs. Of course Mirri was still with all the speed of darkness, and she had no trouble at all avoiding the dragon's attacks. Eventually the dragon found itself on the ground snapping up at Mirri who was once again standing on the ceiling. So the dragon began to flap its swings and rose up towards the ceiling , and it was clear that Mirri didn't approve of this turn of events.
"Oh no you don't. I was embraced and granted the rank of No Life Queen by Sierra Mikain, the greatest vampire still undead, nobody beats me in the air!" Mirri dropped from the ceiling and spread a pair of shadowy wings that allowed her to fly as gracefully as any bird, and she soon grabbed hold of the dragon's lower right leg. She tore a few more scales from it before letting go.
Mirri plummeted towards the ground but stuck out her hands, and stopped falling just a few precious inches short of her hands touching the stone floor. Then she flipped around and looked up at the dragon who was just now realizing that she was no longer above it. "Nope, I'm down here now" The dragon turned and let lose with another blast of blue flame.
Mirri however easily flew upwards darting to the left and right to doge blasts of flame before she finally wrapped her hands around the dragon's tail. "You may weigh a lot, but only when your on the ground!"
Mirri rose a few more feet into the air hands still holding onto the dragon's tail, flipped herself around once again so she could plant her feet firmly on the ceiling, thus giving her plenty of traction. She began to spin around quickly, keeping a tight grip on the dragon's tail, making it spin about as well. Once she had not only the dragon's tail, but the entire dragon rotating upon her whims as well, Mirri let go.
The dragon went flying a considerably different manner that most people would have though of when they heard the expression of "a dragon in flight." That image was of a beautiful creature soaring majestically through the sky. This was a dragon flying headlong into for about three seconds, before smashing itself into a disgusting mass of pulp that looked like, well a disgusting mass of pulp.
Mirri flipped around again a third time and dropped to the floor, at which point she saluted Alexander, her shadow wings vanishing to wherever they had come from. "Mission accomplished Sir, the target has been eliminated." Alexander nodded to her throwing in a small sideways motion to it afterwards. "Excellently done Mirri, dismissed, feel free to go keep James company.
Mathiu I take it this demonstration of our fighting capabilities should prove a useful measuring stick for future plans you concoct?" Mathiu nodded slowly unable to take his eyes off of what was left of the dragon. "Yes it should be."
--
The two tacticians met the next morning to discuss plans. "If you oppose Emperor Barbarossa on your own then you will only be at best pin pricks against his empire, and far more likely fugitives who need to spend all their time to remain one step ahead of his watchdogs."
Alexander cupped his hands together as he listened to Mathiu's words. "Forgive me if I don't fall on my knees and worship the intelligence of your statements. I've seen more then enough failed and successful revolutions to know the simple ground rules.
You need a core of determined people, but you need an army as well." Though Alexander's words were all but dripping with sarcasm, they were also barbless, designed to pierce and then come out cleanly. It was the masterful teacher that could tell his pupil he was wrong without discouraging him and Mathiu was just as sure he was both currently Alexander's pupil and far from discouraged.
"Very well then, since Odessa never told you much about the Libration Army, we subsequently have no idea how much of it still remains, or where it is. Therefore, rather than trying to round up the previous members of what used to be, we might as well start fresh.
With things the way they currently are, the Emperor betraying even his old friends, it shouldn't be too hard to locate those who are dissatisfied with him. I suggest that one man in particular might be of great use to us, if we could sway him to our cause. Not only he is a local magistrate, but he is a man of noticeable skill with a blade."
While Mathiu's last string of words had produced a down turned curve in Alexander's lips, this one was sending his lips upward. "If he's also a man of reason then I think we'll get along swimmingly. What is his name, and how might I convince him to our cause?"
Mathiu wrung his hands nervously before answering. "His name is Lepant. At the moment the Emperor has committed no great slight against him, but hasn't done much to win his gratitude either. He owes me a favor or two, so mentioning my name and that I sent you should be enough.
That said, a Silverberg must try to plan for things not to go as planned whenever possible. Lepant has two great loves. His wife Eileen is one and his sword Kirinji is the other. I'd suggest against permanently harming either, but temporarily obtaining, or somehow convincing the imperials to put one in danger, may be quite a useful tactic."
"Thank kind of information we can make considerable use of, especially knowing that he owes you some kind of debt. If you're any good with a fishing pole you shouldn't have too much trouble surviving out here on your own till we get back, so we will be on our way to see Lepant as soon as possible."
--
"Well so much for the direct approach." It was not a frequent occurrence that the Prophets of Destruction were held back by the everyday bores of bureaucracy. However the grey haired servant's excuse had been air tight and easy to double check. Lepant was not in town, he was expected back sometime tomorrow or so, but he was apparently going to be quite busy doing business that was too important to just let anyone know exactly what it was, and once he got back he would be much too busy to meet with anyone.
Alexander picked up on James words and nodded sagely. "Yes, but when the direct approach fails, all that means is the time has come to think a little bit more cleverly. When Lepant gets back there are two distinct ways that we might get his attention. One of them is we can break into his mansion tonight and steal his sword. Well even be polite enough to leave him a note telling him that we stole it, and where he can come to find us if he wants it back.
Then when he gets back, he'll have to come and face us if he wants to lay his hands upon it again. The other is once he gets back we break into his mansion and talk to him that way. Of course if we break in after he gets back, then we'd seem unduly violent and uncivilized.
So instead tonight we'll be sneaking into his house and making sure that his sword is gone by the time he and his wife get back. Though personally I wish that he'd taken his sword with him wherever he went and left his wife behind, then I wouldn't feel like I was taking a bath in excrement."
An accusatory eyebrow belonging to one Florence Bastien rose as high as it would go. "So your saying that you'd put down hard money that Lepant cares more about his sword then his wife?" Alexander strove bravely onward where other men would have turned tail and run for their lives. "I'm not saying he does, I'm just saying that's there's a distinct possibility.
A wife with only a few exceptions, is who a man comes home to, but his sword is what he counts on to keep him alive so that he can in fact get home. That's why a great many men have special bonds to their blades that their wives cold never possibly understand."
Florence's right eyebrow sank, but her left one rose to take its place. "You just don't care if you ever have sex again for the rest of this century do you Alexander? Well at the very least it'll will give you plenty of time for you to 'bond' with your 'blade' at night."
Alexander's face assumed the unusual (at least for him) expression of a cowed man, well a mostly cowed man. "Hey, hate the sender not the messenger. We go to Gregermister or any other good sized city and I can find for you at least one man who beats his wife. Feel free to tell me when you've found a man who beats his own sword out of shape just for the hell of it, because it'll be the first I've ever layed eyes on or even heard about." And with that Alexander stood up and walked out of the room.
--
Lepant was a man in his early thirties with a mane of orange hair and a large mustache. Said mustache was bristling to the point that I was only a hair away from jumping off of his face. "How dare you!" Alexander sat alone at a table with Kirinji's resting openly across his knees. "Hello to you to Mister Lekamp."
Lekamp however was not interested in formalities at the moment. "Do you have any ideas, what I had to shell out to that Trickster Jupon in order to get his mechanical contrivances to guard my home while I was away? You turned them into scrap metal!"
Alexander shrugged, Masamune was strapped to his shoulders every bit as visible to the naked eye as the sword he'd stolen. "Those metal soldiers tried to kill me, so I did the exact same thing to them that I would have done to them if they were soldiers made of flesh." Lepant's fury was far from spent. "YOU CARVED UP THE FLOOR OF MY HOUSE!"
Alexander shrugged again and leaned back, placing his feet on the table elevating Kirinji to being just outside of Lepant's reach. "If you didn't want me to destroy your floorboards you shouldn't have installed such a horrifically pointless device. Honestly, I saw no logical way that even the swords rightful owner could have accessed it easily, so you should be thanking me for eradicating that wheel."
Lepant's rage was such that if he was so much as one iota angrier smoke would probably start shooting out his ears. "You vagabond, you bandit, you cut purse, you ruffian! Give me back what is mine!" Alexander picked up Kirinji and exhaled a very deep breath. "You know, this is exactly why I wanted to seperate you from your wife instead of from your sword. Lepant, my name is Alexander Diamondclaw, Mathiu Silverberg told me to come to you for help me dethrone Emperor Barbarossa." Lepant's face did not soften.
"Sir, if you had dared to lay one claw upon my wife we would not be having this conversation, I would have already tried to undue you with every ounce of strength present in my body." Alexander only smiled at Lepant's rage. "I suppose I'll have to apologize to Florence, your apparently one of the exceptions. Now then, I want your services, you want your sword back, surly we can come to some kind of agreement. Of course if we can't..."
Alexander drew a few inches of Masamune free from its sheath so Lepant could see the way it sparkled as light struck it. "Now your Kirinji is a fine, boarding upon exceptional sword, but my Masamune is better. If you refuse my offer, then Masamune's blade will cleave Kirinji's in half."
Lepant was having none of it. "Never, there is not one single thing you could do to make me take up arms alongside you. If it means I must make due with only my wife and not my sword, so be it." He turned his back on Alexander but at that moment, Lepant's assistant ran into the room.
"Master, the Emperor's men have taken your wife! I tried to stop them but..." Lepant spun around to cast a fresh glare in Alexander's direction. "Did you play some part in this debased plot? Pulling me from my wife's side so that others could whisk her away against her will?"
A black gloved hand grabbed hold of Kirinji's hilt and a head was shaken. "My plan was to steal your sword, I wanted to steal your wife but since she was out of town I couldn't.
I might have destroyed your blade if you walked out that door but my primary plan was to keep it close by me in case you changed your mind. However if you were willing to forsake your wife rather then fight the Emperor, then clearly you would not have been the man Mathiu thought you were.
You want some proof of my intentions? I know I'm weakening my own hand, but I think this strengthens your's considerably." Alexander tossed Kirinji to Lepant who caught his broadsword gently and Alexander grinned at the look o his face. "Ahh yes, that's what I wanted to see, let's go get your wife."
Lepant nodded as he took the time to inspect his blade. "Indeed, Kirinji is not just any finally crafted sword. See the markings in the hilt? A rune granting great power to anyone who wields her resides within." Alexander whistled, though he had of course noticed the rune, very few runes of any type had ever escaped his notice. "Most impressive, but I have much more than a fancy sword as you and those who took your wife will soon discover."
--
There were two guards outside the imperial commander's residence. They went down both went down due to a few well practiced strokes from Masamune. Lepant whistled in surprise. "If ever there was a man who was said to both fight with all the exuberances of youth and wisdom of age, it is doubtlessly you."
Of course that said, Lepant at once charged through the unlocked door that the two soldiers had been guarding. "Let the snivelling swine who runs this place come forward so that he can face my wrath for daring to lay a hand upon my wife!"
Of course the two imperial soldiers inside the door did not seem so pleased with this announcement. "Cool it pops or else..." No one ever found what "else" the solider might have been. These soldiers unlike the ones outside, were not wearing armor even if they did have sheathed swords.
Before one of them could draw his blade, Lepant gave him a full body check sending the younger man to the floor. The other solider went for his blade but Lepant was ready and, with one mighty swing Kirinji knocked its nameless foe free from his opponent's hand. Lepant then held his sword to the man's neck. "I suggest you and your partner never, ever, get in my way again, or else you will find yourself losing more than your blade."
The man didn't nod, because it would have lead to him slitting his own throat, so instead he simply whimpered until Lepant lowered his blade and then ran from the building. "Let us seek out the dastardly scoundrel who is behind this!"
--
Alexander wondered if he shouldn't have been more surprised to find out who was running this base. No wait, kidnapping the wife of a man who was extremely attracted to her, and was known for his skill with a blade, that spoke of incredible lack of morals, and incredible idiocy.
No, he was actually surprised at how surprised he was at finding Commander Kraze holding a knife to Eileen's throat. "Alexander Diamondclaw! Your actions caused me to be shuffled off to the side command in the middle of nowhere, now not content to just interfere with my career now you stand in the way of my pleasures!"
That mustache bristling anger was in full swing throughout Lepant's body, but then seeing another man hold his wife at knife point could do that to a person. "If you harm one hair on my wife's head..." Kraze smiled as he staired down Lepant. "You'll do what? I want both of you to drop your swords, now, if you don't else I'll cut this beauty's throat!" Kirinji and Masamune both thudded to the floor though Kraze kept his knife at Eileen's throat.
"Thank you for being so prompt, seize them!" A half a dozen soldiers burst into the room and at once a pair of men got to work restraining both Alexander and Lepant, with two more just standing around holding their weapons drawn but doing nothing else. Kraze cackled at the sight before him. "Hah! How do you like that? See, even you the great General Alexander Diamondclaw are helpless when a woman's life is put in danger, chivalry, what idiots it makes of men!"
Though Lepant's face was crestfallen, Alexander's smirk (an expression considerably more common for him then a true smile) did not wane in the slightest. "If I thought it was necessary for Masamune to remain in my hands it would have been a race between your blade and mine, and I would most likely have won. But as it is, there is no need for me to put this woman's life in any sort of peril. You see Commander Kraze, you are standing with your back to a second story window. Think about what that means for the last moment of your life."
--
"This is way too easy. He's so into gloating that he's lowered the knife." Cal looked down the length of Phoenix, and a over hundred yards away at the window. "You sure they don't know we're here?"
Cal did not take his eyes off the target. "James don't distract me now, if I miss things are going to go badly and Boss isn't going to accept 'Firecat distracted me' as an excuse. So remember, we're on a grassy knoll that's not even part of the city. More to the point, most people around here don't even know what a gun looks like, so keep your ears down and mouth shut up." Cal adjusted his aim again, and smiled as a familiar mantra with his own personal twist flowed comforting from the gunman's lips.. "Ours is a howl that shatters the wind itself, bitch."
--
Commander Kraze stopped in mid cackle and fell forward, a large hole suddenly opening up in his skull. A man shot through the front of the head will have only a small circular hole about the size of a thumb to show for it on his face. But when a man is shot through the back of his head, the transformation that his face undergoes as the bullet leaves his body is the stuff of nightmares for the young, old, and those in between. Kraze's soldiers and Lepant looked on in surprise, but Alexander had been expecting it.
He easily slipped free from the guard's slackened grips, slipped a foot under Masamune and kicked it up from the floor into his waiting hands. The long blade came free from its sheath and with an expert thrust slew one of the guard holding Lepant before its holder used another quick kick, to send Kirinji in Lepant's directions.
Lepant used his free hand to catch it cut down out at the other surprised guard holding him. More guards began to storm the room, and Alexander quickly hurled Masamune's sheath in Eileen's direction, since her hands were empty.
"THE WINDOW!" Lepant hurled Kirinji's sheath to his wife as the two raced towards her. Alexander grabbed Lepant's wife with one hand and Lepant placed his free hand on her as well, then three jumped went out the window. Alexander lead the way, his body bearing the main brunt of the breaking glass.
After their abrupt exit they fell no more then five feet before landing in a tree located directly behind the window they had shattered. Lepant staired at the foliage surrounding him in amazement. "I don't believe it, I've seen this building from many different directions countless times, but never before laid eyes on this tree!" Another guard armed with a crossbow leaned out the window to try to find a target, but the trees leaves got in the way.
Not that he would have had time to take the shot even if his targets had been without any sort of protection, no sooner did he lean out the window then such actions were proven to be a fatal mistake. A second bullet went through the front of his face just as cleanly as the one that had gone through the back of Kraze's. Lepant's mouth fell slack. "Sweet merciful... I've heard stories of the Howling Voice Guild of Harmonia, but to fire two shoots that close together, it would require two seperate gunmen. The money to gain the service of one guild member is extravagant, two would require a king's ransom."
Alexander shook his head at Lepant as he looked up from planning how to get to the ground. "It only takes one marksman if he can reload quickly. Of course it doesn't hurt if he's got a magical way with bullets. Now then, am I mistaken if I say that the imperial 'base' in these parts holds no more then around two dozen men?" Lepant nodded along with Alexander's assessment, and the silver haired man continuned.
"Well then, I've already killed three, my gunman another one, two if you count Kraze as fighting solider, and you've another unfit for combat, that makes five or six. So that leaves nineteen or so of them left. Call it ten each, do you think to insure that the there is no one left to tell the Emperor what has happened here, you can kill ten men?" Lepant growled as Eileen handed him Kirinji's sheath. "I think I might manage that, assuming they did not all come at me at once.
However if you and I go down there, who will be left to look after my wife?" Alexander gestured calmly toward as a pair of green gloved hands that had subtly snatched Masamune's sheath from Eileen's unresisting hands, and passed it back to its rightful owner. "That would be my female companion, Florence Bastien. She's of a milder temper then me most of the time but when riled even I do not wish to cross her." Lepant's eyes slanted in a knowing way as he looked at Florence. "I know the feeling."
Florence nodded back to Lepant, and then smiled at Eileen as she steadied herself on a branch even as she held one of her arms out towards the window. "Don't worry mam, Cal's still watching the window so we can stay up here and be perfectly safe while our boys go out and play with half a score of men each." "Oh please, I heard what Kraze said, and those men sure as hell weren't about to stop him, I want as many of them as I can get my fangs on."
Lepant looked down and found Mirri "standing" below him her feet braced against the underside of the same branch he was sitting on. To his credit by this point his eyebrows didn't even budge, he returned his attention to the man with all the answers. "So who is this?" Alexander began to brace himself for jumping out of the tree. "This is Mirri Catwarrior. You know the saying about a woman scorned? Well Mirri isn't so much a woman scorned, as a combination of every woman ever scorned.
Every time she sees a woman taken advantage of by men, she tends to become a being of pure rage and malice even more then as a vampire she's normally a creature of blood and shadow. Apparently it's going to be six for all three of us." Now then, why don't we get to work?" Alexander pushed himself out of the tree and dropped to the ground. Mirri likewise "let go" of her "grip" and fell downwards, spinning around to land on her feet. Lepant uttered a few quick words to Eileen as he prepared to leave as well.
"Stay safe a while longer dear, I must go make sure of it in the long term." Then he dropped to the ground. There he slowly adjusted Kirinji's sheath so that it was clipped to his belt. Alexander preformed more or less the same act, attaching Masamune's sheath to the strap he still wore across his back. Lepant looked at his sheath, then at Kirinji, and then at Alexander. "You said you would have rather taken my wife than my sword, what would you have done with her?"
Alexander shrugged helplessly as he approached the door into the base once again. "I'd have chained or tied her up in a room with Florence, Devi, or Mirri looking after her, well maybe not Mirri. There are as many female members of the Prophets of destruction as male. We are all devoted to one another, so any impropriety I attempted would have had serious consequences. Mirri tell Lepant what you did to the last man you caught who'd just done what Kraze was doubtlessly planning to do if he'd had enough time alone with Eileen?"
Mirri hissed the words her voice low and for the most part emotionless except for and undercurrent of rage beneath the words. "I ripped off all his reproductive organs, and proceeded to shove them down his throat. He never quite managed to swallow them properly so he ended up choking, not that they were so big, more likely it was the fact that I had a hand around his neck at the time."
Lepant paled slightly, after all every single man felt a communal bond to every other man based around said reproductive organs, and choking to death on his own bits was doubtlessly one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable. "Ahh, well with that in mind I don't suppose I can suspect you of any wrong doing of that nature. No woman, ever born, even one already dead could so callously lie about such actions."
--
Lepant walked out of the building, and closed the door behind him, and only then finally sheathed Kirinji. "It's been a very long time since I've done anything like that." Alexander sheathed Masamune in almost perfect timing with when Lepant's own blade went into it's leather cover. "If it's any comfort, the less time between such actions the easier it gets."
Lepant's nodded slowly as if in a daze. "Of course, just like wadding into and out of frosty water, once you've been there for a while, you don't realize how cold it is till you try to leave." Lepant blinked and then turned to Eileen who with some help from Florence had gotten out of the tree. "Eileen, by the powers vested in me as magistrate, we are no longer married." "WHAT?"
Lepant gazed at her sadly. "I just helped kill an entire imperial command post. Sooner or later the Empire will send more men here, and sooner or later, everyone will agree that I did it. When that time comes I had best be some place as far from the mansion as possible and you no longer be of any relation to me." Alexander coughed interjecting into the lovers conversation.
"If you're trying to find some place safe, we are currently in possession of a castle on Lake Toran, and it should be proof against any but the most well thought out of assaults.
Eileen turned away from Lepant to face Alexander. "This castle... are its occupants cramped for space?" Alexander shrugged. "There's no lack of space. Food, other types of supplies, fresh water, those still we are but a hair away from having a veritable dirth of, but space, space we've got plenty of. We have in fact, vast mind numbing amounts empty space at the castle."
Eileen stood up proud and tall glaring back at her husband. "You worry about my safety Lepant? Don't leave me here with hope that the Emperor won't extract his vengeance on me, take me with you. It's your job as my husband to protect me is it? And according to Alexander it sounds like his fortress needs some women to take care of making sure that there's something that you can eat between battles."
For a response to that, Lepant pulled his wife into a dramatic kiss and Alexander, Florence, and Mirri had the good decency to look away, after all it wasn't like the Emperor was going to be finding out about what was going on any time soon. Mirri of course did not have the decency to stay silent. "Yeah, yeah, he still loves you, I would have known it at the room full of dead bodies..."
FN: Impress can mean "to have an emotional or cognitive impact upon" the definition your probably more familiar with, but it can also mean to force or coerce someone into service. See what a great double meaning joke the title is?
