The Company only had time to grab their most basic armors and weapons from their tents. They all ran together into the fray.
The town square had fallen into chaos. The night had almost conquered the day, and so the only light came from several fires started inside some of the houses. The Order's archers had trouble shooting in the dark, so they had unsheathed their shortswords and were now fighting several scattered bands of orcs, hunched and gray creatures with white tusks that wore a tightly welded set of scale armor. Here and there alongside the Order's forces was a leather-armored villager wielding a repurposed ax or hay fork.
The squire Elotte and Sir Shamus stood in the thick of this fight, each with longswords in hand and fighting on foot. Sir Grady had stayed upon his dark horse, riding through the midst of the chaos and swinging his pollaxe at any enemies in his way. All of them so far had been unscathed - the fight had only just begun in earnest.
From building to building, the fighting continued for several minutes. The village and its allies seemed to have the upper hand as more time passed. Lidia noticed that the people of Imnesvale themselves, while in need of help, were far from helpless themselves. More than once, she saw one of the villagers standing over the body of an orc that they had felled.
Just as the battle began to die down, however, the ground pulsed. Two massive, hulking figures stepped into the half-light, overshadowing all they surveyed.
Though both were giants, they were almost complete opposites in shape and aspect. One had an intelligent but cunning look in his yellow eyes; he was ten feet tall and well-formed with bright green skin, wearing a rich red and orange robe. The other was an ettin: brutish, vaguely shaped like a man, about thirteen feet tall, and wearing only an uncured animal skin about its waist. In its massive hand, it held an uprooted tree trunk, the fresh dirt tumbling from the tree's injured roots. The eyes in the ettin's two heads practically sparkled with the thought of bludgeoning the small, squishy humans at its feet.
The two giants gave no challenge or cry. Instead, the green-skinned one raised his hands and started turning them, murmuring an incantation in his own tongue.
A ball of fire leaped from his hands, stretching itself out into a line as it grew, shooting through the blackness towards Shamus. The knight tried to catch it with his shield, but the beam of fire slammed into him with incredible force, pushing his shield-arm aside and connecting with his chest.
Sir Grady checked his horse and rode towards the ogre mage. He swung his pollaxe at the ogre mage's head, connecting with it in one solid blow. The ogre mage fell on the spot, the beam of fire dying as he did.
But the beam had already held for several seconds. Shamus stumbled backwards onto the cobblestones in the village square. He curled to the ground with a howl, smoke rising from his armor.
Meanwhile, the ettin strode forward towards where Shamus lay, raising the tree trunk in its hand.
Lidia raced forward to meet the giant, picking up Shamus's fallen sword and holding it in a guard.
The other members of the Company gathered around her, with Minsc and Anomen on either side of her, their weapons ready. Yoshimo set an arrow to his bow, while Aerie palmed something in her hand.
"Fear not, Boo! The bigger they are, the harder I hit!" Minsc declared. He let out a massive shout.
The giant returned one in kind, much louder and longer. The pulse in the ground grew until everything seemed to shake. The two-headed giant took several long strides to where the Company made their stand.
"Yes! You're the best, beefy!" Minsc's sword said.
Lidia looked up towards the two massive, craggy faces, its two heads of stringy brown hair, its two large mouths of rotting teeth. It was covered in a layer of filth and grime that gave its weathered skin a grayish brown cast. It had the kind of stink that could sour the air of an entire neighborhood on its own. It was over twice her height and many times her weight. More to the point, she was within reach of its long arm.
I might as well be a child threatening it with a stick, she thought. But even a stick can still hurt, if placed correctly.
The ettin gave another bellow, then brought down the massive tree trunk nearly upon Lidia's head. She stepped out of the way in time, feeling a rush of air from the swing. The cobblestones in the street leapt upwards, leaving behind a massive crater where the trunk landed.
The front row of the Company scattered. The ettin's two heads turned in opposite directions, each with a gleam in their eyes. With an alarming swiftness, the tree trunk rose, then swung low to the ground in a wide arc.
They all tried to clear its path, but Anomen wasn't fast enough. The trunk glanced off him as it came to a stop. It was still enough to send him practically flying backwards.
Minsc gave another bellow and charged, slashing Larry towards the ettin's massive right hand. The sword barely pierced the skin, drawing only a little red blood - hardly more than a scratch. Yoshimo fired an arrow towards the ettin's shoulder, but the arrow glanced off the ettin's hide, probably unable to break past the crust of soil and filth. Lidia started running again, barely managing to avoid the ettin's swinging left fist.
Aerie's high voice suddenly pierced the darkness: "Cupio, virtus, licet!"
A swiftly moving cloud of mist came from the elf's hand and sped towards the ettin. The hulking creature's right head turned this way, then that, as though it were trying to wrench free from its shoulders. The eyes rolled backwards, and its tongue lolled out. The left head started shouting at the right, as though trying to shake it awake.
Lidia passed between the ettin's legs - the stench was much, much worse here than when the ettin was at a distance - and found herself facing its back.
With two hands on the hilt, she raised Shamus's sword almost to the height of her eyes. Throwing everything she had into the blow, she sank the sword into the back of the ettin's knee, nearly piercing through the massive muscles.
The ettin stumbled downwards, howling in pain the whole way. The other members of the Company moved in to finish the giant off. Anomen had managed to get to his feet and joined in, connecting his mace to the giant's left head and bashing it in.
When all was said and done, the ettin lay dead, with the ogre mage not far. There was no time to even catch a breath. The Order's foot soldiers had held their own against the orcs, but they were growing tired, and they were eager to find and eliminate the last of their enemies. The Company scattered, leaving Lidia alone with Shamus.
She looked down and called the knight's name.
He gave only a cry of pain.
She looked about her. They were more or less alone, but he wasn't safe here, and if there was any chance he might live through this night…
The sooner she could get this done, the better.
She walked around to the young knight's head, focused inside herself, and called up strength from the dark well.
She took him by his shoulders and started dragging him off the battlefield, struggling to maintain her focus. With every fight and new enemy they passed, her first impulse was to drop the knight to the ground and throw herself into the fray again. She forced herself to pay attention to Shamus's cries of pain with every step she took, suppressed every thought except where to find a safe place to lay him.
She finally settled on one of the houses in the square. The door was smashed in and the place was stripped, the occupants gone. It was a small but sturdy little place, built from collected stones and rough mortar. The thick walls kept the place cool, muffling the noise from outside.
She lay Shamus on the sandy floor. As she did so, the rush of power faded, leaving her exhausted. She drove her will to hold her limbs and focus steady, fighting her way through the fog and the swirl of unwanted thoughts drawn from the well.
Lidia knelt near him, carefully removing his helmet. The skin on his cheeks was red and blistered, his face contorted into a grimace. He could barely string two coherent words together. For a moment, she was struck by how young he was - at least a couple years younger than herself, if that were even possible. She prayed that he'd at least get to see his twentieth winter.
She drew the small light gem from her pocket and warmed it in her hands. It started glowing, allowing her to survey the knight's injuries. Shamus's cuirass and vambrace on his shield-arm was discolored, burned a dark iridescent. She set the gem down nearby and removed the armor from his right forearm.
She stopped there and went no further. The beam of fire hadn't just heated the armor; it had also gotten through to the rings on Shamus's mail shirt, burning its pattern through the clothes underneath and onto his skin. Anything he'd caught on his arm would likely have been much worse on his torso. At the very least, everything would need to be carefully removed, then all his burned skin cleaned and disinfected, and only then could any of the priests or paladins try to heal him, assuming his body had the energy for it.
All this was beyond anything she could do at the moment. At least, she thought, he was out of immediate danger. Their foes seemed determined to prey upon the weak and vulnerable, to go immediately for the kill -
A growl floated in through the open door.
She turned towards the sound, listening for it amidst the waning sounds of battle outside.
Another growl. But she noticed this time that it was unlike any other growl she'd heard before, on the worse days during camp. This one seemed almost disembodied and ethereal, as though issuing from a spirit rather than a creature.
She passed her hand over Shamus's forehead in a small effort to comfort him, avoiding where the skin seemed reddest. It felt warm to the touch, and he was still whimpering.
"Something's outside," she said to him. "I'll look."
She got to her feet, taking his sword into her hand. In the dim light, she noticed that the end of the blade was covered in a mix of black and red blood. Was that what the creatures outside were smelling?
She heard footsteps and stood over Shamus, holding the sword into a guard.
A black shape loped in through the blasted doorway. It had the form of a wolf, but no hint of color or pattern in its fur. Everything about it was black, except for its eyes. As it stopped, bared its teeth, and growled again, the eyes glowed a fierce, cruel red.