Eleventh Stroke – Different Colors
Dawn came, and four silver-eyed warriors awoke as one. They strapped on their armor and swords, scattered the few ashes of the campfire, ate a mouthful or so of tasteless granola, and got moving. It all took place in silence. There was no need for words now, it was time to work.
Jessica, her pace as swift as the previous day's, set the march. The other three forced themselves to match her.
Silvia got her first glimpse of the village about half an hour past dawn, when they crested a small ridge. It looked surprisingly normal, the crops were untended and wild about it, but the rest seemed more or less intact. The yoma must have been rather reserved, she decided. Normally they tear down most of the buildings, or set fire to the town when they rampage through. Nevertheless, fires streamed smoke in unusual places, so clearly the village was not in any normal state.
As the Claymores approached they started to feel the yoki, growing a minuscule measure stronger with every step, building and building. It was something like descending into deep fog, more and more pervasive as time wore on.
Jessica grimaced, so did Lynne, while Sylvia held her expression forcibly neutral, though impossibly tense. Racquel had it the worst, obviously to them all. Her expression blanched, as close as a half-human half-yoma could come to looking sick.
"Don't like the feel of yoki?" Lynne quipped nastily at the younger Claymore. "It's only going to get worse you know."
"I am aware of that," Racquel's voice was smooth and steady, completely different from the emotions written on her face. "And it is not the flavor, just that there is so much of it. It is like swimming in a sea of blood."
In a way the young woman was correct, it did have that sort of sticky, clinging feeling, a great sense of too much everything. Yoki was a part of them as well as of yoma, but it was hardly welcome for all that. "We must simply focus on the task at hand," Sylvia whispered to Racquel. They were empty words really, since focusing on the yoma properly required one to plow even deeper into the flow of yoki, but she offered them anyway, considering it appropriate.
"Keep moving," Jessica admonished them all, betraying a hint of the dark temper that must have terrified the innkeeper.
They reached the edge of the town with the rising sun at their backs, low on the horizon, a screaming wall of light to confuse their attackers. It was of only little use against yoma, whose senses were strong against glare, but no sense in wasting even the tiniest advantage.
"Nice place," Lynne commented as they hit the outer ring of buildings.
She was quite correct; all the others could see buildings in good condition, with only rare signs of violence.
"Perhaps the villagers simply fled?" Racquel offered.
That seems unlikely, Sylvia thought to herself. She had passed through towns in utterly wretched condition from the depredations of yoma, but rarely did the people flee. Young men might, and sometimes young women, but the older people would stay, bound to their land, and the children stayed with the parents. It was beyond the Claymore to know what bound people to land in the face of certain death, she who had no home and could recall only the vaguest memories of whatever one she had once lost, but she knew that people would almost never leave. Is that what separates us from humans? Sylvia wondered darkly. We will die for ourselves, or sometimes for our comrades, but not for a patched of earth as they do. Is that something we have lost?
"The yoma haven't come to greet us," Lynne smiled. "I guess that means we get to root them out?"
"They will come," Jessica spoke with certainty. "Violence draws them forth. Advance."
So they did, moving into the town further, toward the second, central ring of buildings centered about the lone well that surely occupied the center.
Sylvia could not tell what the first clue was. She expected she missed many. Afterwards she would berate herself for not wondering why the thatch was not as rotted as it should be, why so few doors and windows had been wrenched apart, or why the smell of dead flesh was burnt, as opposed to raw as yoma normally fed. Had she picked up on those things all might have fallen out differently. The half-human half-yoma missed all this, however, all four of them did. Such was their lack of familiarity with the life of humans.
The village seemed devoid of people, but it was covered in a solid layer of yoki, very characteristic of a nest. The oppressive feeling was distracting, difficult to handle. It made hands itch on sword hilts, muscles tense, and yoki energy rumble within the body, demanding release, demanding to unleash death. Even Sylvia's tight and practiced control pattern was barely sufficient. She was holding a lid over a boiling pot, but some steam would inevitably escape.
It became obvious the yoma were all in the center of the town. A decent enough plan on their part, to concentrate their forces and attempt to overwhelm the Claymores who had come for them.
The exterminators were not without counter-tactics of their own.
"I will burst through their mass," Jessica instructed. "You three will circle together and hold your position. We will pin them and cut them down."
Walled-away perspective of buildings peered back only slowly, so the four Claymores had almost a full two rings of buildings behind them when finally they could see their quarry.
Only then did Sylvia realize her mistake.
"There are too many…" it began in a whisper, sliding through her lips in incomprehension.
Parsing out the individual yoma was not easy within the overwhelming mixture of yoki, but there were maybe twenty or twenty-five in village green at most.
A good fifty men stood there, waiting. Their heads turned as one when the Claymores approached.
"What's this? It makes no sense." Racquel's confusion spoke for them all.
One man, tall, with a swarthy complexion and a powerful build, certainly very fit for what must have been his middle years, broke the moment of quiet with a forceful shout. "Form up and attack!"
Footsteps pounded, metal rattled, and bodies distorted, but all was buried beneath the sound of two dozen yoma in wild laughter.
"Trap." It was Jessica who recognized the connection before the others, to Sylvia's shame; she should have expected this, made the realization long ago. Now panic surged through her as her human senses, reawakened from the dullness she had lazily allowed in this sea of yoki, reawakened to recognize the full truth of what was happening.
The group in front was not one group, but two, as the yoma, howling with glee and the anticipation of bloodshed, separated out from the other men, now more recognizable. Their clothing seemed ordinary enough, but it all matched, and looking with sharp silver eyes Sylvia saw the lines of light armor beneath the drab linen of what must be some type of uniform. They had hard eyes for men, and it reminded the half-human half-yoma slightly of Tyrin. Half held long spears, grabbed from careful hiding places in the short grass. The other group, behind the first for safety, held powerful crossbows. Slow to load, but with the killing power to seriously endanger even inhuman flesh on a solid strike. These are not bandits, Sylvia recognized quickly, not farmers given weapons. These men are soldiers.
Clattering shod footsteps echoed behind and above, and the four warriors noted men with bows shimmying across thatched roofs and closing the path behind. More bows and spears faced them now.
Yoma laughter built and built, never ceasing as the creatures rippled and tore back into their true forms.
The soldiers didn't wait.
Triggers depressed, fingers released. Arrows and quarrels screamed through the air, leaving no time for anything more but reaction.
Sylvia ripped her sword free, ducking down as she did so, hoping to move under some of those hateful shafts. She whirled her massive blade about, blocking and avoiding in all directions.
The initial volley had little impact, but there was no time to pause as yoma claws followed behind it.
Overwhelming stimuli bore down as attacks came on from every direction. The Claymores pressed back together, covering each other instinctively as they knew to do and then striking back.
Laughter mixed with howls of pain. One yoma went down, a massive hole torn in its torso by Jessica's brutally swift blade. A severed arm joined him on the earth, as Racquel gracefully pivoted through her foe, deftly avoiding all yoma strikes to lop the limb away.
Sylvia, as the weakest present, held the rear position, her back to Jessica, and strangely, after a brief moment, facing no yoma. Instead she stared down into the face of perhaps three dozen men, a rank of spears blocking the road and two rows of crossbows behind. A single man in the center, wearing a lustrous black tabard, raised an arm. "Double volley!"
"Evade!" Sylvia shouted as loudly as she could to warn her companions. Beyond this she could only attempt to block.
Her massive blade flat side before her, Sylvia's arms moved in a storm of motions, shifting angle after angle to knock away those bolts, but there was no time. The men had released in unison on command, and the attacks filled too wide of an area. Even as she desperately let yoki flow down her arms, turning the world yellow and blood black-brown, giving flesh a hideous feeling of self-will that roiled her stomach and maddened her soul, it was too much. She couldn't move fast enough.
Sylvia jerked her shoulder left, willfully taking a bolt straight through the metal of her pauldron, feeling the cold metal point bite into her shoulder's flesh even blunted as it was, to prevent it from slamming Jessica in the back. More danger came from the other direction, for shooters were on all sides.
Ripping and tearing a barbed arrow lashed through Sylvia's right leg, burning cold pain and weakening her footing. Another bolt barely glanced off her right hip, denting the armor. A finger's width closer and it could have rendered the whole leg useless for a time. I can't see! Sylvia howled silently, reliving the dark moments of that first battle with humans, but this all the worse. The pain was there, burning hot and cold at once, blood leaking around those ragged torn wounds, but this was only a minor distraction to the true hopelessness coursing through her mind. No room to maneuver, and men who knew their killing work far better than those other before them.
She wanted to charge, to hack down these offending men who stood before her, to slice them ribbons for daring to stand against her, a creature far superior to their pathetic little existences. It would be so easy, she could see it in her mind even as the defense continued desperately, slash them apart, and let red blood drench her from broken mortal shells.
I must not, Sylvia shook herself, fighting the siren song of the yoki, the bloodlust that came with yoma power, the urges to strike down anything, human, yoma, even half-human half-yoma. It was not easy, not easy at all, even though she had experience at it. The struggle weakened her; it engendered hesitation, reduced potential, created limits beyond just the limits of power that must never be crossed. But there is no other way, we cannot strike humans! The prohibition was as it was.
Sylvia's slight grunt in pain was not alone. At the edges of her vision she could observe wounds on Lynne and Racquel, and perhaps even Jessica had been struck somewhere.
"Dammit!" Lynne shrieked, losing her temper and control all at once. "We're pinned in like pigs in a sty! What's the plan miss number eight? Make it fast now."
Some distant, detached, and oddly calm part of Sylvia's mind managed to note that Lynne really could do with additional discipline in a crisis, even as the rest was lost in a desperate surge of survival.
"Retreat," Jessica responded, her voice level as before, and betraying nothing even as she held off as many yoma as could squeeze toward her at once. Sylvia could not see the single digit fight, could only hear the rush of shifting winds as the blade whirled about in air, impossibly quick and strong at once, so far beyond her. If they were all like that there would be no danger even now, but Sylvia and the others were weak by comparison. "Now, before the crossbows behind reload. I will give you three seconds."
"But, what about-" Racquel began.
"Don't question the single digit!" Lynne silenced her angrily.
"Go!" Jessica ordered.
They burst into motion, leaving everything behind utterly beyond them, looking only forward, leaving over twenty yoma and more than that in bowshots behind for Jessica to struggle with for three eternal seconds. Don't die number eight, Sylvia whispered silently, hoping the quiet warrior could indeed handle it.
Twelve spears before them, twelve men between buildings, an obstacle that must be overcome. They could not jump up, not with men above with bows, it would be too open, they had to push through, push through and put human bodies between their flesh and those deadly darts, hopefully that would provide these grim men pause, though Sylvia had no confidence of that.
"Stand fast!" the officer shouted, hefting his long spear, its foot and a half of steal strong enough to stop a even a half-human half-yoma long enough so that more blows, and then death, could accumulate. "They can't kill!"
The clatter of Jessica's sword work, lightning fast, and a cry of all-too-human pain, rose behind them.
Sylvia slammed the line first, turning her body to the side, presenting a narrowed target, as Tyrin always did when she charged, she slid in between those spears, then jerked her arm, using yoki to provide the impossible, inhuman strength, slapping side to side with the flat, knocking men aside like candlesticks.
An archer above saw her exposed backside and shot.
Sylvia, forewarned only by the briefest of glimpses, raised her stance to the end of her toes and took the arrow just beneath her ribcage, instead of through a lung. She pitched forward and rolled, striking out with her right hand, turning back to attempt at least one move to aid her comrades.
Racquel, a half-step only behind Sylvia, moved with liquid grace, using her blade to slam down the spearhead closest to her, then using the supple wood as a stepping stone, carrying her forward through the air with her feet level with the soldier's waists. She kicked out, sending two men crashing to the ground with smashed faces, then landed on her left hand, vaulting upright and forward still.
Lynne, on the other side, burst through the group by main force, slicing through spears and putting a shoulder forward. She took a crossbow bolt to the leg from the men behind, but was all but through, twisting past the soldiers.
The wave of men set off by Sylvia's actions crashed through those in front of Lynne, and previously men standing together and sturdy were not, and one slipped, his body falling into the flare-haired Claymore.
Her reactions heightened to fever pitch by yoki coursing through her body, Lynne's reaction was automatic. As she had been trained to do whenever an enemy stumbled, she took advantage of the opening.
Lynne's blade plunged through the man, cutting free a passage and leaving a ruined human corpse before it had even it the ground.
Time seemed to stop.
Sylvia could only watch that body descend slowly to the ground, to hit with the sickening collapsed motion, unresisting flesh, belonging to the dead, not the living. Dark red blood, so different in shade from that of yoma splashed upon them all, droplets hitting clothes, swords, and faces. The yellowed word seemed to go briefly orange. Shock burst within her, and yoki energy fell away from her body with unprecedented suddenness, all her emotions draining away utterly, only to flare molten once more as the cycle of the moment completed itself. She could see Lynne's absolute astonishment, the brash woman's mouth wide open, her eyes staring far off into space, seeing nothing.
Human panic was slower, but eyes widened in slow motion before Sylvia's gaze, and mouths distended to shout and scream.
Yet for a single space of time there was silence, into which Sylvia clearly heard her stricken comrade speak. "It can't be."
Then chaos reasserted itself. Shouts broke the air, and men struggled to raise their weapons again. Lynne, Sylvia and Racquel stood numb in shock, uncomprehending of what had happened.
Jessica appeared, eyes burning yellow flame, mouth set and grim. A half dozen arrows and quarrels stuck out from her body, and a claw wound had ripped open the side of her face. Her blade was drenched in the dark blood of yoma. "Move!" she hissed. "Escape now, worry later!" emotion bled into her voice for the first time since Sylvia had heard the single-digit speak.
They moved, but something strange caught the Claymore's eye. The man with the black tabard, the officer, stood next to her for a moment, holding the edge of his reforming line. Facing him from the side Sylvia could see an icon sewn into the shoulder of that garment, a figure that her eyes, swimming in every direction at once, could not presently place, but something deep inside told her it was important.
Recklessly she took two steps in the wrong direction, grabbing a spear with her bare left hand, her glove shredding and flesh and tendon ripping away. It hurt worse than all the other wounds, but she ripped the weapon away and with a bony, bloody grasp tore into the officer's sleeve, pulling free the black badge.
Jessica's sword crossed before her face to knock an arrow away from her eye. Sylvia had not even released the attack was coming, her vision had collapsed inward too far, this mad chaos was too much to take in entirely while still maintaining control "Go!" Jessica shouted again, voice distorted as her own blood leaked down into her mouth.
They ran, backwards, their faces toward the enemy, still wielding blades before them to knock away missiles as they went.
Yoma leapt over buildings, running with their own preternatural speed, moving to outflank the fleeing group.
Racquel pirouetted in midair, slicing an over-eager foe in half. Lynne, faced with a pair of yoma in front of her, blasted free energy to match her anger, yoki pouring out of her as she simply overbore the pair, her swordhilt in the right hand and the left pushing down the blade, pressing the demon's heads off their shoulders as a carpenter might plane imperfections from a knotted plank. The flare-haired Claymore seemed completely insensible to the pain of the deep gash her left hand acquired in this process.
Jessica scythed through everything before her, unbelievably fast, her blade moving in every direction, never hesitating. Few of her hits were lethal, but the yoma hesitated, and the Claymores burst free of the ring.
"Now we run!" the single digit ordered, and pushed for speed with everything she had, scything through fields on burning footfalls, leaving the bloody village behind as fast as they could.
Screams and howls of yoma triumph, and the jeering comments of humans, followed them. Sylvia could recall only one, a cry of "Silver-Eyed Cowards!" before the village vanished from her hearing.
They did not go far, not even as far as the campsite where they had spent the night, but instead the group collapsed in the trees when they had moved beyond the sight of the village.
"There is no pursuit," Racquel spoke through wheezing breaths. I can't feel any yoki, and the humans couldn't possibly keep up this way." She slid down to the ground, bleeding from several wounds.
"We must heal," Jessica noted, not really ordering. The single-digit reached down to her stomach and, with a grunt, ripped out a buried crossbow quarrel in a spurt of blood.
Sylvia mirrored the motion, pulling out the offending pieces of wood and metal, carefully directing her yoki to replace lost flesh, staunch bleeding, and restore her strength. Individually no wound, not even the one on her hand, was especially serious, but added up she was greatly weakened, and there was blood everywhere. The old bloodstains were all but buried beneath the new damage, all her own.
The others were equally impaired, Jessica worst of all, some of those crossbow bolts having apparently passed through yoma flesh to slam into her body. An smart tactic, Sylvia noted, though cruel.
It was a silent gathering there, as flesh mended, no one wanted to talk about what had occurred; their failure or anything else. Instead they waited, and rumbled through their bags for food, knowing it was necessary to speed recovery. The coarse grains were tasteless to her tongue, now buried beneath the metallic flavor of blood, but they gave her strength, and her body repaired itself swiftly enough, the horror or the wounds and the dread specter of death they engendered fading rapidly.
Finally Lynne, voice and face stricken in a way Sylvia had never seen nor expected from the energetic warrior. "What the hell do I do now?"
"We," Jessica stressed the term. "Are going back to Treadersberg. Everything can be handled later."
"But the rules…" Racquel attempted miserably.
"We will handle things as they fall out," Jessica spoke sternly. "The circumstances are extraordinary, we can only hope for the best."
"That's hardly anything!" Lynne shouted back at the dispassionate single digit.
Jessica said nothing, clearly uninterested in arguing.
"Lynne," Sylvia felt she should say something, anything, even though there was nothing really there. "It's not like there's anything else to do."
Lynne grimaced, and stared at the rest of them, burning with rage. "Easy enough for you to say. The sword's not hanging over your head."
It bit ever so deep, that remark, brutal it was. Sylvia didn't know what to say, she felt horribly wrong, totally confused. But what can I do? She had no answers. Jessica's plan, which consisted of little more than hope vested in persons not known for mercy, was hardly ideal, but no other options presented themselves.
"Enough," the single-digit ordered. "We have to get moving."
They were a tired, battered, and altogether silence procession as they moved out. No one said much of anything. Sylvia avoided looking at Lynne, not wanting to think about it, to think abut anything to do with the whole miserable ambush. All she knew was that this day had marked another change, a new development, and that everything had gotten worse, not better.
Notes: I am not entirely happy with this chapter, but for the moment here it is. Hopefully it serves its purpose even in the imperfect form presented.