More Than Just a Man

I ran back up the hill to give some final instructions to my assistants.

"Fire when you can see their faces," I said. "Or if one of them's about to kill me." I ran a hand over my belt. I felt as though I had not made my weapons soon enough. What was a pistol going to do against three hundred men with swords? Quite a lot, I hoped.

Since I had a strange aversion to being stabbed to death, I decided not to go charging out on the front lines. I would wait for them to come to me. I leaned against a catapult, leisurely checking my weapons while sounds of battle wafted up to me. I peered over the edge of the slope as the battle began. It was mayhem. The men fought without regard for themselves, thinking only to hack and stab. Then another roar sounded. I looked around to see the blood red dragon, Thorn, gliding towards us. Immediately, Saphira rose to meet him.

There was an explosive whoosh of air as my men directed the catapults into the fighting throng, aiming for the bulk of King Gabrownick's troops. I saw from the red stripes on the barrels that they were our anti-personnel weapons. I had not intended to make them, but when one of my assistants came up with the idea himself and I would have looked like an idiot to turn it down. Hence the barrel had an inner core of mercury fulminate surrounded by sacks of nails and oil. You did not want that thing anywhere within 50 feet of you.

When it blew apart and blasted about thirty soldiers with boiling oil and bits of metal, they didn't even flinch. They just kept fighting, oblivious to the burning oil or nails embedded in their armor. It had to hurt. Were they zombies or something? Maybe magic here includes necromancy, I thought. Upon seeing my little artillery station, a group of twenty soldiers detached itself from the mob and charged up the hill toward us. I pulled out my pistol, which felt weak and insignificant compared to the huge swords the men were swinging. One of them was laughing as he ran, even though a nail was sticking out of his head.

I centered the pistol on the lead man.

"Stop!" I yelled. He didn't even slow.

The gun bucked in my hands. There was a flash and a puff of smoke. The man stopped, as did all of his fellows. He looked down at the neat hole in his armor, then back at me. He grinned, his mouth filled with blood, and he resumed running up the hill toward me. My next shot took off part of his head. That stopped him. In fact, it knocked his corpse into several others and half the group went tumbling back down the incline. Immediately a Buster hit the ground at their feet and promptly obliterated them.

My pistol did not seem very weak anymore. I carefully picked off the remainder of the group with neat headshots, then for good measure tossed them a Molotov cocktail. Fortunately, the wind did not blow the smell of burning flesh in my direction.

"They must be immune to pain or something," I told the men guarding the boys manning the catapults, who shifted their repeating crossbows uneasily. "Aim for the head."

The battle was brutal. Most of the Varden would slice a soldier good, but then the soldier would get back up and hit him from behind. Even the Urgals were overwhelmed in places. We might very well have lost the battle if my hilltop brigade wasn't raining death on them from above. We had stopped wasting our anti-personnel bombs and kept up a steady barrage of high explosives.

"William!" I heard a voice, high and and anxious. I turned to see Nasuada on her horse, gesturing frantically. "The ship! The fifth ship!"

I whirled around and saw to my horror that one of the black-sailed ships had drifted farther down the river until it had come to a stop in a bend just 500 yards away. I swore, gave a few choice instructions too my men, and grabbed a couple choice weapons from a crate. I nodded to Nasuada and dashed down the hill, jumping over the bodies of the charred men I had killed.

As I approached the bank of the river, the remaining men on board jeered at what must have looked ridiculous: a single man, apparently unarmed, with two bottles in his hands. I saw one of them raise a bow to his shoulder, saw him release the arrow, but it was too late to-

Wump. The blow knocked my back three feet. My chest burned where the arrow had hit my Kevlar jacket. I had completely overlooked padding. Then again, I was lucky to be alive.

I got unsteadily to my feet. The men in the boat gaped at me, unable to believe that an arrow had hit me point blank and that I was still alive. I felt rage boil up inside of me.

"You thirsty?!" I screamed. "This one's on the house!" I threw the lit Molotov. It arced gracefully through the air and shattered on the deck of the boat. The flames spread hungrily across the wooden deck of the boat, engulfing the sailors. After the fire had consumed the entire deck, I threw the other bottle I was holding. When it smashed, it released a large plume of purple smoke. A marker.

The sinister blue Buster barrel sailed over my head and landed directly on the boat. It actually smashed through the weakened upper deck before exploding, causing even more damage as it blew the boat apart from amidships. Flaming bits of wood and canvas rained down upon me, and I crouched low to the ground to avoid being crushed by the flying debris. When I got up, I saw a second ship was bearing down on me.

You've gotta be kidding! I had told my men only to aim at my marker. How was I supposed to take out a ship full of painless warriors? Fortunately, that genius mind of mine was already whirring away even as I sprinted toward the ship. A crazy, hair brained, awesome idea came to me. I grabbed the rigging on the side of the hull and hauled myself over the railing. When I got to my feet and disentangled my feet from a pile of loose rope, I saw a group of ten men coming at me with a nasty collection of spears and swords. They were grinning like it was Christmas morning or something.

That made me mad. These men reveled in slaughter. They were the monsters, not me. They were a scourge to be wiped out. I calmly checked the ammo in my pistol. Full. The my other hand pulled a switchblade from it's sleeve on my belt. The men were slowly closing in on me, oblivious to anything else.

William! Arya shouted in my head. What are you doing? You'll be killed!

Not if you come and help me right now! I closed my mind to her so she wouldn't distract me at an important moment. I then decided to see if I could pull some logical reasoning on these guys.

"Gentlemen, did you come here expecting to die?" I asked calmly.

The lead man stopped smiling and glared at me. "Death does not frighten us. We do not feel pain and our families are paid much for our absence."

"And yet, you're on a suicide mission! Surely you cannot walk into death's embrace so serenely! Just surrender! Live to die another day! I would not have come here if I did not think I could kill you all."

Unfortunately I seemed to have made a mistake with that line. The men's smiles reappeared and the lead man jeered, "A nutter like you finish the ten of us? Not likely, you fool."

I sighed. I think the sight of me just standing there letting them come unnerved them somewhat, sort of a he-must-know-something-we-don't feeling, but it didn't stop them from coming at me. I accepted that I was going to have to fight my way out of this bunch of wack jobs. I let them come until the lead man stopped and raised his sword, preparing to deal me a death blow.

Instead of killing me, he brought his mighty blade down on thin air. I had dodged and now slashed him across the throat with my switchblade. Taking advantage of the momentary confusion, I shot one of them in the head and stooped to grab a pile of spare rigging, which I threw at one of them to buy myself some time.

The men growled and charged at me. I waited until the last moment, and then jumped out of the way. One man could not stop in time and toppled head first into the water. I blew another man's head off and stabbed another in the chest. The spells in the blade kept it from shattering against his armor. While he was busy looking at the knife in his chest, I kicked him away and counted: six men left. They came at me like a herd of angry rhinos, the deck shaking under their feet. Even when my gun made three profound arguments for them to give up, and three of them had toppled lifeless to the deck, they kept coming. My gun needed work on its persuasion tactics, it seemed.

Then a crazy idea came to me. Before I dodged the latest charge, I took careful aim and shot at a rope holding a sail furled. It snapped cleanly. The heavy sail fell between us, tripping two and allowing me to kick their heads back to snap their necks.

The remaining man eyed me warily, finally realizing how dangerous I was. It was a mistake, though. By stopping, he allowed me a still target. I noticed that he was the one whom I had stabbed. Finally, he decided he didn't care, and bounded toward me.

How thoughtful of him to bring my knife back, I thought. My gun gave him a sincere thank you.

As I was pulling the blade from his headless body, a very breathless Arya swept over the side and adopted a fighting stance, expecting to see a horde of soldiers bearing down on me. Instead she saw me wiping my blade clean and sliding it back onto my belt, surrounded by nine lifeless bodies.

I felt unusually calm. Before I ordered the first red barrel launched, I had accepted that I would be responsible for the deaths of men, men who had had hoped and dreams before Galbatorix took them and turned them into monsters. But in the end, did killing them make me a monster as well? No, I reasoned. Galbatorix survived by being a source of fear. If the Varden won, Nasuada would keep power by being a subject of love. It is always better to have the people love you, something I knew very well. The Varden fought for peace and freedom, while the Empire wanted obedience and oppression. One side would triumph eventually, and in the meantime I would kill in the better one's name.

"I underestimated you," Arya said quietly. "When we fought the soldiers on that road, I had thought you weak and timid. Now it is clear you are a warrior to rival Eragon, for without magic words or weapons you cleared a ship of its crew and came out with not one wound." Nasuada clambered up onto the deck after her, eyeing the corpses with surprise.

Suddenly Arya's slanted eyes widened. She looked behind me. I whirled around as a boy no older than sixteen jumped out of a hatch, his arm raised to throw a knife. Arya reacted fast, using magic to kill him instantly, but his knife was already in the air, winging its way toward me. I raised my hand in a desperate attempt to catch it, but I was too slow. Fortunately, I had on my Kevlar jacket, which stopped the blade from eviscerating me. In fact, the blade bounced off my chest and into my hand, where I caught it. Nasuda and Arya looked at me in wonder, and I realized that to them it must have looked as though I had caught the blade an instant before it would have gutted me. Ezio indeed.

The battlefield was bloody, filled with bodies of the dead and dying. I checked on my assistants, who all seemed shaken but unhurt. Apparently word of my violent adventure had preceded me, and they looked at me wonder and admiration. I was far from a scientist experimenting with powders and burning plants now. I was a warrior.