Whatever the reason, the creature was quite skilled at combat, regardless of the distractions constantly assaulting it. It was able to catch the chain of the electrical flail, preventing the head from causing anything more than a deep bruise, and duck under the other strike, while at the same time retaliating with a deep claw gouge across the stomach, a blow that no doubt would have been fatal to almost all of the human soldiers. But Yenque twisted, letting the thickest part of his armour take the blow, and it scratched off, sparks flying from the claws as they struck the armour.<\/p>\n
A jerk on the flail freed it, no doubt in part because of the creature\u2019s surprise at its fight ending strike doing nothing of the sort. This time, when Yenque came in with both flails, he was more circumspect in how he did so, and the creature took a bash across one arm, but only glancingly so.<\/p>\n
With the helfarchs fighting shoulder to shoulder at the other end of the embattled area, his men were having a great deal of difficulty in creating any form of headway. If it wasn\u2019t for the tight confines of the area, he\u2019d have had no doubt that the helfarchs would have pushed his men back, despite their training. Those bloody abominations were bred warriors, skilled at combat in ways that it took humans decades of training to master, and they were showing it. As Yenque fought, he saw one of his men disembowelled, the intestines then cut through by a sweep from the second blade and flicked forward to create a spot of uncertain footing right in front of the helfarchs.<\/p>\n
If I don\u2019t break through and smash them from behind, we\u2019re dead and gone. And the fact that Iaprem hasn\u2019t charged over here with that claymore of his means he\u2019s doing his damndest just to keep the north gate closed. So, all on me. Joy. <\/em><\/p>\n Sending both flails arcing in on overhand tracks, Yenque watched as the creature did exactly the right thing to defend against that, namely, step into the blows and come across with a strike at Yenque\u2019s face. What the creature hadn\u2019t anticipated was the arrival of Yenque\u2019s booted foot in its midriff, knocking the wind from its lungs. At that moment, it was dead. The following strike that sent it tumbling over the crenellations to fall outside the wall was entirely preordained.<\/p>\n As another of his men was sent tumbling by the helfarchs, Yenque bashed aside the next creature to stand in his way. This one had better luck than the previous, and with a raking blow had left bloody grooves where a gap in the armour did not protect him. The next did even better, the thunder club that it wielded so large and heavy as to be almost unstoppable when swung first. Certainly, with flails, which were a poor defensive weapon at the best of times, Yenque could do nothing aside from attempt to dodge as the massive head swept in from his right.<\/p>\n The dodge was partially successful, in as much as he was hit by the upper part of the shaft rather than the head square, but such was the force of the blow that he was driven fully across the walkway and slammed into the crenellations, leaving bruises and likely worse up and down both sides of his ribcage. It also stopped all the momentum that had gone into the flails, and they hung limply, the one still furiously blinking and howling from its enchantment.<\/p>\n In the end, it was likely that enchantment that saved Yenque\u2019s life, for the following blow was a slightly misaimed overhead from the thunder club, this smashing into the ground and splitting the stone of the walkway as Yenque dived out from under the heavy strike. Thankfully, the thunder club was, if anything, an even worse defensive weapon than the pair of flails, and so now that it was safely out of the picture and lodged into the stonework of the battlements, it was possible for a hefty kick followed by a circling mace head to dispose of the foe wielding it, sending the rather startled orc over the battlements and to the courtyard below.<\/p>\n Whether the foe had died was rather immaterial, for at that moment Yenque found himself facing down the imperious leader of the raiders, the tall muscular creature bending slightly at the waist and spreading his claws in response to the opportunity presented. Accepting the challenge, Yenque swept the flails into motion, their heads spinning back and forth in front of him, their whirling heads too dangerous for his foe to challenge directly.<\/p>\n At which point, his foe grinned, stood tall, and flicked something concealed in a claw at Yenque. Whatever the small object was, it took Yenque directly in the chest and exploded in a spray of red mist, coating him in a foul, nauseating, substance that had him all but on his knees in moments.<\/p>\n When next he was able to see, he looked up to find the creature standing above him, a gloating smile on its face, claws raised to end the engagement almost before it had started.<\/p>\n I have failed. Both myself and my people. I guess I really well end up as a goblin turd. What a noble end <\/em>that is going to be.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whatever the reason, the creature was quite skilled at combat, regardless of the distractions constantly assaulting it. It was able to catch the chain of the electrical flail, preventing the head from causing anything more than a deep bruise, and duck under the other strike, while at the same time retaliating with a deep claw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[60,4],"tags":[61],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-bn","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":706,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=706","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":0},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #13","date":"April 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"But the blow failed to materialize, and he glanced up again through the heaves to see his foe standing there with a dazed, stupefied expression on its face, swaying slightly in the nighttime breeze. And then down to the courtyard below, where Dregnon was staring at him with a concentrated\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":704,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=704","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":1},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #11","date":"April 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Yenque had had, up until this moment at least, a rather dull battle. Given command of the southern gate, he had found the enemy singularly reluctant to attack his position, and so had been forced to watch the frantic signalling from the tower on high, conveying some status of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":694,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=694","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":2},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #3","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the next installment of a new novella in an old setting, called Arhosa. I\u2019ll be posting a thousand words a day of Work-in-Progress, with the end goal being five chapters of 10,000 words each, roughly. Yenque cursed as he watched yet another of the craven simply drop their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":696,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=696","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":3},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #5","date":"March 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the next installment of a new novella in an old setting, called Arhosa. I\u2019ll be posting a thousand words a day of Work-in-Progress, with the end goal being five chapters of 10,000 words each, roughly. It was a panicked and upset messenger who burst in upon the three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":703,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=703","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":4},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #10","date":"April 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Glancing backwards, he saw that the line of his soldiers had stretched out to the right, the man on that edge of battle attempting to hedge his unprotected side away from the foes who assailed him, with those placed near him unconsciously following. It was a natural outcome of fighting,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":693,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=693","url_meta":{"origin":705,"position":5},"title":"Pillowed Comforts, Part #2","date":"March 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the next installment of a new novella in an old setting, called Arhosa. I'll be posting a thousand words a day of Work-in-Progress, with the end goal being five chapters of 10,000 words each, roughly. Dregnon found Yenque at his usual post, overseeing the various actions and objectives\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}