When we finally arrived, most everybody just listened to the folks giving orders. I didn't have anyone shouting at me. Not being a member of the main army, I wandered around looking at the crazy sky and getting a feel for the ground... or what passed for it, there.
I ran into a wandering patrol of horned demons and slid through them as a hot knife slices into butter, leaving a trail of slowly rising, gaping bloody smiles. One of the things, the one with poisoned talons, was choking on a garrote. I remember looking him over with an eye toward getting the weapon back before he floated away, when a shout brought me around. My blade came up, a long slim grey steel affair with a short stabbing tip and a thin rhomboid cross section.
Uh oh, think I attracted some attention. A contingent of archers had taken up position on the nearby hillside. At the second shout they drew, focusing on me.
My attention, however, was riveted on the man (if man he was) who had been shouting the orders. A huge figure in massive armor, adorned with spikes that were themselves hung with skulls. He carried a long sawtoothed blade in one hand, and a massive shield in the other. A living battle standard, his troops were all dressed in his livery, each breast marked with a duplicate of the snarling dog he wore on his shield.
"Hola, little one," he called mockingly. "You are between me and my chosen prey. Please take your leave, that I may get on with dragging the rabbits of Amber down to destruction for having dared to profane the Courts of Chaos."
The demon to my left finally gurgled and expired, beginning to rise into the air as his companions had. Took my garrotte with him too, damn it. "No."
"No?!? Do you know who I am, whelp?"
"No."
Slightly non-plussed by this child's nonchalance in the face of certain death, the man-mountain paused. "Know then, that I am Carados, Duke of Deep Mountain, and Warden of the Bi-Coloured Lands." He paused again, for effect. "Which you are standing in."
I took another look around. Fuschia and chartreuse. Yuck!
Carados went on speaking as my eyes returned to him, not quite in control of this conversation. "A second warning. Get out of my way."
"That's not a warning, that's an order. Warnings have or elses attached to them, somewhere."
"It was implied."
"Was not."
"It was SO!" Carados stamped his foot, causing two of the skulls adorning his armor to clack together. The lower jaw of one fell off, and broke into shards of bone and teeth as it bounced off his heavily armored boot. He didn't notice. "Third and final warning. Move, or I will KILL you!"
That raised an eyebrow. "You, and not the bowmen?"
Carados laughed. "Yes. If you move, the bowmen will kill you. I wasn't really planning on leaving you an option that included your life as a bonus."
"So you're challenging me to a personal duel, eh? Very well, I accept. Shame I lack a second, but one can't always have everything the way one wants it in the barbarian lands." Goading's always good against a bigger opponent.
Carados reviewed what he'd said quickly. Duel?
Meanwhile, his mouth got away from him. "Bar-BAR-ian lands?" Both of the skulls jutting from his shoulders dropped jaws. He irritably brushed the pieces from his shield arm. Then he looked at my weapon. And down at his own. He looked at his shield, and at my lack.
Far to the back of his mind, or slightly off to the left perhaps, he began to hear his school chums laughing. And then his men, behind him on the hill where his imagination could see them even if he couldn't, began to giggle. Pure speculation on my part, of course.
He dropped his shield, and dropped his weapon. "I will kill you with my bare hands," he growled as he lowered himself and charged.
A tiny bit of my awareness let me know the bowmen had for the most part relaxed their strings, as I danced to the side and let Exeunt Omnes lash out twice.
I twirled, watching Carados turn about eight lengths away. He rose again to roar, shaking with rage. The skulls on his knee spikes, which I'd tapped with the flat of my blade, fell to pieces. I had what I wanted as, nearly blind with a crimson wash over his vision, he charged again.
Well, that's about enough of that, thought I. Next ones have to count. I darted to the side but stayed close this time, and my blade flickered out, once high, once low.
The first blow was quiet as it slid inside his visor, piercing his eye and stabbing deeper. The second screeched like a lost soul as it drew out from between his breastplate and greave at the junction of his right thigh.
I'd intended the femoral shot to kill him, as I couldn't have counted on the shot to his eye to reach his brain. He dropped, the clattering of his armor sounding oddly insignificant in the silence around it.
Then, three things in sequence altered my life.
One. The few archers on the hill that hadn't slacked off fired.
Two. Bleys' cavalry charge, heading toward the destruction of the main force's western flank, swarmed over the hill and swept it clean of archers.
Three. I turned to look.
The arrow smacked into my eye from above, destroying it without doing me the courtesy of finishing me off. I screamed, and fell into darkness.
I awoke with an eyepatch to my mother, alternately berating me for having gotten into trouble and babying me. Have to hand it to her, though. I didn't notice the pain in my lack of eye for the pain in my neck.
Two things occupied my real attention, though. I was going to have to work on monocular bow hunting and weapon throwing... and I had to get a suitably debonair eyepatch.