It was as if the whole world had had the volume turned down. Lister could still hear the shouts, the shots ringing out, the clash of swords, but it all seemed to be coming from a huge distance. You couldn't think about it, he'd decided. You just had to stay on your feet and keep fighting. Keep fighting. He didn't know how many he'd killed, everything had blurred into one long slideshow of limbs sliced and heads flying. He'd shot a few, but had lost the bazookoid somewhere along the way. It wasn't much good in such close contact anyway.
He knew there was blood on his hands because he kept losing his grip on the sword; and sweat never felt that greasy. He kept finding himself stumbling over bodies, or bits of bodies that seemed to wrap themselves around his feet. On a few occasions, the bodies had faces that he recognised; and it seemed that every time he turned to get away from them, there was another mouth full of pointed teeth lunging at him, another blade poised to come down on his head and all he could do was keep moving, keep dodging, keep lashing out with his sword, or his fist or his shield. He knew on a few occasions he'd come close to taking out his own men, just on the overriding instinct to kill anything that was getting too close to him.
He'd caught sight of the Cat at one point, in the centre of what seemed to be a whirling ball of destruction. He'd had a huge grin on his face and seemed to be having the time of his life. If they both got out of this, Lister decided, he was going to have to talk to him about why you really shouldn't look like you're having a good time in the middle of a pitched battle. It tended to piss people off; on both sides.
As far as he could tell, their ploy seemed to have worked. The pincer shape had come together and the Furies were, for the most part, trapped on three sides by the human army. The hardest part now would be to hold the formation against the sheer number of their enemies. If the Furies broke through and scattered their forces, it would all be over. They had to hold together.
Suddenly, there was a massive pain in his side. He doubled over and cried out. There was a crossbow bolt lodged in his waist. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to straighten up. It's just a flesh wound, you're okay, keep going... Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of steel and whirled around just in time to ward off the blow. He knocked the sword aside and slashed the attacking GELF hard across the middle. He caught a brief glimpse of blood and something that might have been intestines before the body crumpled down out of sight. He sucked in a few deep lungfulls of air and tried to steady himself.
Another shockwave of pain smashed through him; this one greater than the last as another bolt slammed straight into his ribcage. The battlefield swirled and he crumpled down onto his knees. In front of his eyes, he saw the dry earth of the plains was sticky with blood. There were corpses on the ground, their open eyes staring up at him, empty as those of fishes on a market slab. And Lister just had time to think, before the darkness overwhelmed him, that it was such a terrible shame.
