Champion

Chapter 26

Stepping to his right further away from 'baby seal', David allowed 'sword boy' to fall to the ground between them, alternately clutching at his destroyed eye and his mangled arm. Turning his attention back to 'baby seal', he was surprised to see the man continuing his attack. He had assumed that after killing one and obliterating the other two, the last fool would run off. No such luck he supposed. As he took another step back to gain some distance, Murphy's Law came into effect, and decided to screw him royally.

Lacking his normal situational awareness, his intoxicated brain had forgotten about the pistol that had been cast into the night. Specifically, he had forgotten where it had been cast into the night, as in the direction he was currently moving. Thus his surprise when he stepped on it awkwardly in the dark, rolling his ankle and losing his balance. Falling to the ground, he tucked his form and rolled away as best he could, but he also knew that this was too good an opportunity for 'baby seal' to miss. He didn't have many options against that club from the ground. Rolling to his back to protect his spine and kidneys, he raised his arms to protect his head, and pulled his legs up hoping he could use them to strike back and possibly get enough distance to regain his feet.

The man was on him in a flash, and the swing he sent at David would have caused severe trauma to his head, had his left forearm not been in the way. As it was he was pretty sure the ulna and radius were both fractured after that hit. Worse, if he had not been fortified with eighty proof, the painful hit would have surely immobilized him long enough for a more effective follow up swing; but his forearm had been there to absorb the blow, and he was thankfully drunk enough to sufficiently numb the pain. So he had the time and awareness to capitalize on the opening between baby seal's first damaging hit, and his second attempt. Thrusting out with his left leg, he mule-kicked his target dead on.

'Baby seal' dropped his club. His eyes crossed on his face, and his hands crossed as they reached for his destroyed testicles, the target of David's kick. Rolling onto his feet, David looked for his knife, but couldn't find it. Instead, he reached down and grabbed the club that had fallen nearby with his right - undamaged - hand. Swinging it carefully to test its balance, he walked around behind his attacker and aimed half an inch below the occipital lobe, right where the spine and skull connected. David twirled the club once to add additional rotational force to his strike, and brought it down on his target with everything he had. As the man's lights went out, David thought to himself, I just clubbed a baby seal.

Chuckling at his own joke, he turned back in time to see the attacker he had dropped with a throat strike thrust a sword into his side. Shocked by the blow, he barely managed an ineffectual swing at the man with his club. David missed, but he had forced the man to step back and pull his sword from David's side before he could twist the blade and widen the wound. Not that it would matter soon. David had lost his pistol and knife, had a most likely broken left forearm, and now a sword wound through his right side. He was also wielding a club one handed against an opponent that was mostly uninjured, and had a damn sword.

Worse, the man fighting him seemed to know all of this. He kept his distance from David, and seemed to be more than willing to drag out the fight until the soldier bled out. Realizing this fact, David tried to rush him again and again, but the man was unhurried. He did not even bother to attack the few times David left himself exposed during a rush. The man knew it was only a matter of time until he won, and David knew it too.

Suddenly the man froze, and slowly lifted into the air. His arms and legs spread as though being pulled outward from his body. Not understanding his good fortune, and at that point not caring, David charged the man c*****g back the club to swing it as hard as he could with his one hand.

"NO," a feminine voice, oozing with hatred, bellowed from the night; and David's club and body were stopped with an irresistible force. "HE. IS. MINE!"

Turning towards the voice, his anger at the attempt on his life died alongside his higher brain functions. This woman was BEAUTIFUL!

Standing a few inches over five feet, she looked young, barely a day past eighteen. Her hair was long, its silken black tresses hanging in a loose braid past her buttocks. Her pale, milky skin seemed to have a bluish tint in the light cast by the two moons, and her face had a breath-stealing exotic look to it; similar to the mixed ethnicity Asian-Wakadans of his homeland. He could not determine the color of her slightly almond shaped eyes, but her full pouty lips seemed to be made for kissing...and other things. Her clothing was a seductive ensemble of knee-high black leather boots, skin hugging black leather pants, and a leather bodice that thrust her C-cup breasts up into the most tantalizingly succulent cleavage he had ever seen. Her figure was perfect. With toned, shapely legs, full hips, a narrow waist and the aforementioned bust, she would have Playboy models racing to gyms and plastic surgeons in envy.

Even that w***e Laurena, David thought vindictively.

Unfortunately, at the moment her beautiful face was marred with a scowl that would freeze the heart of any man caught on the receiving end. Luckily for him, the focus of her rage was floating beside him.

"Care to tell me what the deal is?" David asked. Adding quickly, "Not that I mind the help. These assholes tried to kill me, and might have succeeded without your help."

Feeling a rush of dizziness from the alcohol and blood loss, David sank to one knee. He pressed as hard on the wound through his right side as he dared. He wasn't sure if his forearm or bleeding side hurt worse.

"They still might, now that I think about it," he added.

Casting her gaze in his direction, the woman muttered a quick chant, and David felt the skin on his side pull. Lifting his hand he noticed the wound was no longer bleeding.

"You will not die immediately. So gather you things and go to the priest," she told him tersely. "My business with these men has gone too long unfinished."

Nodding his head, not so much in agreement as to keep her from focusing too closely on him, he searched the ground until he found his knife and his pistol. He wiped the knife off on the clothes of the nearest downed attacker, and then folded it closed and pocketed it. Keeping his pistol in his right hand, he carefully made his way to the side of the woman, who had begun to question her captive.