Chương 33: Out of Tricks

Scar was moving quickly, but I was faster still. I caught him on the edge of an enhanced gravitational field, and the weight pressed down on him, dropping him to his knees. It didn't have as much effect as it did against Maurifus, though, and already, Scar was pushing himself back up to his feet. I wouldn't have long. I snatched up the fallen orc archer's bow and pulled an arrow out of the quiver, then nocked it and aimed at Scar. Now wasn't the time for mercy. He'd killed Ticks.

How many other of his brothers had he killed? I glanced back through the woods, looking for Ticks' body. He had tried to help me in the end. I had no idea what it was like to have a brother—I had been an only child, and at that, I was pretty sure I was an accident—but this had to be close. He'd hated me, and we'd fought, but in the end he'd still done the right thing. I drew the bow back. Sure, I could have used my spear, but Ticks had made the right call. It wasn't just about combat proficiency.

It was about making it look like Scar had been killed by orcs. He still had friends here, and if they found out that an Atoning had murdered Scar, they'd take it out on me. Yeah, Scar was in the wrong, but I couldn't trust justice to be done properly. If it was obvious I killed him, I might be hanging from the gallows tomorrow. So I had to use the orc bow. I loosed the arrow at point-blank range, but it bounced off Scar's cuirass. The man laughed.

He pushed forward, hoisting his foot up and struggling through my gravity well like he was fighting back against the most powerful wind storm of his life. I wouldn't get another shot at this. With my enhanced Focus, everything slowed down. Scar wore a helmet like mine, with eye protection and an exposed mouth. I could try to hit him in the eye, but I was only a novice archer, and I couldn't get it through the eye holes of the helmet. Maybe I could hit him in the mouth, but again, these were orc arrows.

They were bent and wobbly. Even if they had been regular arrows, I just wasn't that good. But I had another idea. I needed to pierce his armour. I scrambled back to the fallen orc, pulled my homemade siphon out of my kit bag, and begged the fallen orc to produce a Presence. I was so close to three points. If I could just get one more, I could resonate [Archery] and pierce Scar's armour that way. We weren't in a labyrinth so there was no guarantee of a Presence. I just had to hope.

All the while, Scar was pushing himself closer to the edge of my gravity well. If he got free, it was over. I tightened my jaw and clenched my teeth together. Please, I thought. I'd never had the best luck, but… maybe just this once. Just this once, things could go my way. I'd already seen two of my friends die today. Besides, Scar deserved this. If there was any good in the universe, it would come help me right now, right? It could help me set things right. It could help me kill him.

A chunk of the orc's chest disintegrated and the runes of my makeshift siphon flared, but nothing happened. After a few seconds, the runes faded. No Presence. A coldness washed over me. I knew the world didn't work like that. I wanted to kick myself for thinking I'd just win. Because I was right and Scar wasn't. It didn't matter.

"What's that?" Scar sneered, his words straining. It was like he was trying to yell at me through a blizzard.

"Out of tricks, soulstealer?" I had to be more clever about this. The world wasn't nice, and it wasn't fair, but I still had a choice. I could start to set things right, and I didn't need divine assistance to do it. I lifted up the largest rock I could find—a fist sized pebble nestled into the roots of a tree—then tossed it into my gravity well, aiming well above Scar's head. The rock plummeted, striking him in the helmet and knocking him onto his back.

It bought me a little more time, but he was already pushing himself up. I held the orc's arrow in my hand and weighed it. They were far too heavy at their tips than our arrows, but at the moment, it worked to my advantage. I aimed up, pointing my arrow toward the tree branches above my gravity well. About three quarters of the way up the trees' heights, perhaps three storeys above the ground, the boughs stopped drooping under the effect of my Skill.

That was as high as I could shoot if I wanted to catch the arrow in the gravity well. I aimed for the very top of the well, then loosed the arrow. It wobbled through the air, until it entered the field of enhanced gravity, where it nosed down abruptly, streaking toward Scar. The arrow changed course, straightening out, the rusty poison-crusted arrowhead racing down until it hit Scar with a thud. The arrow pierced his breastplate with a clang that resounded like a gunshot, and it made my ears ring.

A moment later, my gravitational field fell, returning to its normal strength. Scar writhed and grasped at the empty air. He sucked in breaths with pursed lips, and with each gulp of air, he made a gurgling noise. For a moment, I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn't let him live. There was still a chance a healer found him and saved him, and he'd tell them what happened. Grimacing, I stepped over, pressed my boot onto his chest, and aimed my arrow at his face.

"No!" Scar gurgled.

"No, I'll—" The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I let the arrow fly into his eye. This close, it was impossible to miss. His head snapped back, and he fell still. I staggered back, falling away from Scar's body, then tossed the orc's bow back onto the creature. My body was exhausted from the fight, and my mind was empty from using all my Presence, and there was a dead body of another human that I'd just killed.

I didn't think it was possible to feel colder, and a clammy sweat clung to my hands, mixing with the black blood of orcs. My heart didn't even feel like it was working properly. But I wasn't out of the woods yet—literally or figuratively. I pulled the orc's tattered rags down across the hole in its chest that my siphon had disintegrated. Someone else would try to harvest there, fail, and think the hole came from his own siphon. Then, there was Scar.

I dragged him closer to the orc, close enough that it would have been potentially possible for the orc's arrow to pierce through his chest if he'd been hit at the right angle. Then I used my siphon on him. Yeah, it would be obvious if anyone looked, but Dupes' bodies were burned with their clothes on. They would take his armour off, but they wouldn't notice that a chunk of his chest had disintegrated. Scar produced a tiny Presence, which I picked up between my fingers but tucked into my kit bag.

If I used it right now and they checked my stats, someone would suspect that I had a siphon—how else would my Presence have ticked over to three? It was a slim chance of them checking, but at the moment, I couldn't take any risks. Perhaps it was for the best that the orc hadn't yielded a Presence, then. Lastly, I cleaned up the circle where my gravity well had been. I couldn't fix the broken and snapped boughs above me, but I could kick up the dirt and make it look less flattened.

I fluffed a bush back up and scattered a few pine needles across the surface, then obscured the trenches that Scar's limp legs had dug in the dirt. Hopefully everyone would be too focused on the ground and the bodies to notice the broken boughs above. Then, I rushed over to Ticks's body. He was long dead. He'd been dead as soon as Scar's mace had hit. How was I going to deal with this one? How could I explain it? There were a few orcs a ways back who had wielded clubs. It would be close enough.

I dragged Ticks back until I found one of their bodies, then laid him beside the body and tried harvesting his Presence (which got me nothing). I took the hint and put away my siphon, and just soon enough. Voices called in the distance, "Levi! Levi!" It was Romance and Elf. I dragged myself back toward them, head flicking around, still high on adrenaline, and I couldn't really say what happened after that. It was a blur. We returned to the camp, and they brought me to the field where we were triaging the wounded.

I only had minor injuries, which could wait until tomorrow for Hild to recover more Presence. Still, I helped bandage the worst injuries. Hild rushed between us, and her apprentice cautiously helped out. When she spotted me, the young apprentice acknowledged me with a nod, and I half-wittedly returned the gesture. As we cleaned up the remains of the battle and gathered the dead for burning, we found Shave's body. Most of it had decayed into black sludge, now—something to do with the shaman's rot-based technique.

But at least he'd died quickly. A few hours later, we were sitting around the campfire. I had cleaned myself up in the stream and wrapped myself in a blanket, and getting some food in my stomach had made me feel slightly better. I came up with a story about how I saw an orc kill Ticks, then killed the orc in turn to explain why I was there, kneeling over Ticks' body after the battle. No one was saying much of anything. We helped gather armour off the corpses and brought it to Maurifus for allotment and repurposing.

All-in-all, the battalion had lost almost half its number, and another portion were seriously injured to a point where they couldn't fight anymore and would have to retire—if their injuries didn't claim them in a few days, anyway. After dinner, I walked with the others to the burn pit. Ticks' and Shave's bodies were in there somewhere. Apparently, since we were burning them, there was no need to give them any sceats—their souls would rise to Welkinmere on their own.

I glanced at Romance and Elf, who stood beside me, completely silent. After a few seconds, I whispered, "Shave should still be here. I made a mistake. I—""Levi, no," Romance said, pulling me away from the flames.

"If you hadn't picked out the shaman, we'd all be dead right now. If you hadn't led the charge or skewered it, we wouldn't be here. If you hadn't had any of your plans, we'd all be dead." I turned my gaze to Commander Galliard and Sir Aldhelm, who stood on the other side of the burn pit. We were lucky Aldhelm had turned up when he had, otherwise we wouldn't have stood a chance, either. But I didn't say that.

"You did make a mistake," said Elf.

"Perhaps you should have known what the shaman was capable of before attacking it head-on." For a moment, my heart sank. I realized I didn't want to hear that. I'd probably just been fishing for pity.

"... But," Elf continued, "you also did a lot of good today. One mistake can't cancel that all out." He shook his head.

"You've got sergeant material. Chances are, when you do make sergeant, you'll make more small mistakes. Learn from them, yeah? That's what you owe them. Sarge knew what he was getting into, and so will your men, so don't throw their lives away for nothing."

"I'm going to lose more men," I replied.

"Of course you are. That's the price of victory. It's the cost you'll pay for the survival of the race of men." I swallowed, then inhaled a breath full of rotten-smelling smoke. For a moment, I felt the absolute reality of just how fragile my little fleshy body was, how dangerous this all was. It stirred a chord in the back of my mind. Like when Trench died, the fear of death and impending doom made everything more real. Made it feel more dangerous and vibrant and alive.

No sitting at a desk for hours, scribbling on paper. I was actually doing something. I wasn't going to let Ticks' and Shave's sacrifices mean nothing. I had to keep fighting. Maybe there were bad men out there like Scar, but there were also plenty of men who would choose to do the right thing when the chips were down. I wasn't just going to abandon them. After a few seconds, Sir Aldhelm drew his great warbrand and raised it to the sky.

"We are victorious! We will not forget those who died today, to serve our kingdom, to serve the Warlord!" I winced. To serve the Warlord? They'd died trying to survive and hold back the orcs, to stop them from reaching Slowbend and terrorizing the civilians. They hadn't died for their Warlord. And maybe they would still be here if the Warlord was actually trying to win. If we had been armed and equipped properly, for one thing. If we had better commanders, and better leaders even above them.

But for now, I just had to do what I could. It was presumptuous of me to think I knew everything about how this world worked, or everything about what we were dealing with, or how to fix it right this moment. That didn't mean I wasn't going to stop trying, though.

"For the rest of you…eat, drink, and be merry!" Commander Galliard shouted.

"Sir Aldhelm has authorized us to feast on our rations, and the people of Slowbend wish to thank us! There will be a great celebration tonight, in honour of your victory!"