Less Than Heroic Strategies, Part 2

"I've got him!" he shouted. "Kill him!"

Reiner drove the sword deep into the barbarian's chest, the barbarian roared in pain and threw Ulf through the air as if he were a child. Ulf crashed into Reiner and they both fell.

"Hey." said a cracked voice.

Reiner looked up. He barbarian turned around to see the speaker, and found himself face to face with the barrel of the pistol clutched in Pavel's trembling hand.

He fired. The back of the barbarian's head exploded in an eruption of brains and blood, and the Norseman fell like a denuded ox.

"That one was a critical hit." Hals commented.

Everyone's relief was short-lived. Before Reiner and Ulf could do anything but stand up, four other barbarians rounded the end of the hedge at a run with axes and swords in their hands. One had an arrow stuck in one shoulder, proof that Franz could hit more than rabbits.

Barrister stood up and drew his pistol.

"Fire!"

Reiner and Erich also drew and all fired at the same time. Only two of the bullets hit, and only one was effective in shattering the throat of one Barrister, who fell to his knees and clutched his neck with his hands as he swallowed his own blood. The others continued forward, and there was no time to fire more shots. Reiner threw his unloaded gun to the ground and muttered a prayer to ask Ranald that the dice would roll in his favor.

Hals snatched the spear from Pavel and pushed his friend down the stairs.

"Get out of the way, you old fool!" he shouted at him.

Erich, Barrister, Giano and Ulf advanced to meet the charge while Gustaf, as Reiner had predicted, fell behind.

Just before the two sides met, a shot rang out and one of the barbarians stumbled. Reiner saw Oskar and Franz run out the door of the collective dormitory. Oskar's pistol was smoking.

Then there was no time to look around. With an impact like that of two ships colliding, the two sides locked in battle. Erich and Ulf, the bigger ones, took the full brunt of the charge and resisted while Barrister, like the wily old warrior he was, ducked and slashed at the enemy's shins. Reiner and Giano dodged by darting left and right and delivered blows to the barbarians' backs as they ran past them.

The three Norsemen received these attacks without flinching. Although they were wounded and outnumbered two to one, it seemed to Reiner that they were on the winning side. They were hurling slashes at the men around them with an undaunted ferocity that was frightening. Reiner wondered how the Kingdom of Glacia had managed to prevail against such monsters for so long.

Were the people of Glacia as tough as the barbarians?

Ulf found himself in trouble after a short while, pushed aside from the others by a barbarian whose bare arms were covered with tattoos, and who outstripped him in strength; he was giving ground with every blow as the handle of his mace splintered under the repeated slashes of the Norseman's sword. But just as he was about to slash through the engineer's defense, the barbarian slipped on the pistol Reiner had thrown to the ground and fell forward. Ulf seized the opportunity and cracked his shin with an upward sledgehammer blow. The barbarian fell to one knee and Ulf rushed forward, directing the blow towards the head. But though he could not move, the barbarian was a danger. He parried the blow with his sword and slashed Ulf across the chest.

"Ulf!" shouted Franz. "Get back! Get out of the way!"

Ulf, bleeding, jumped back as Franz and Oskar, who had been waiting, fired at the kneeling barbarian and hit him squarely. Franz's arrow pierced his throat. Oskar's bullet shattered his crotch. He collapsed on his side, clutching this last wound, as blood stained him red to the knees in a matter of seconds.

Two were left, and one of them, the one with Franz's arrow stuck in his shoulder, fell almost immediately as Barrister's glowing sword stuck cleanly between his ribs. But the last one, the boss judging by his size and strength, continued to fight while roaring like a bobcat. Although he was bleeding from a hundred cuts, that only seemed to make him stronger and, to Reiner's incredulous eyes, bigger.

Reiner blinked and shook his head as he ducked to avoid a tremendous slash from the man's axe, but when he looked again the illusion had not faded. The barbarian seemed to be stepping out of his armor. The leather bands around his biceps snapped as he backhanded Barrister and knocked him down. The links in the chain mail of his nightshirt stretched and snapped. A strange glyph he wore on his mighty chest seemed to glow as if illuminated from within. His pupils enlarged until they filled his eyes completely.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Giano, uneasily, the moment the warrior's armor fell from his body like a molting skin.

"He is Manifesting the power of his god" replied Barrister, who was recovering. "He is no mere barbarian. When the battle rage has taken hold of him, I release the dark power that was within him. He is an Antipaladin Barbarian."

"Well, I'm a bit irritated too, how can I get that skill?" asked Hals, and he thrust a lunge at the monstrous warrior. The tip of the spear snapped off as if he had tried to puncture a stone wall. The barbarian drove the pikeman back with such a powerful kick that he slammed him into a pillar at the foot of which he collapsed. Giano threw a blow with his sword against the warrior's now bare back, but the blade was deflected as if he were wearing armor. Erich and Barrister slashed at him with similar results. Erich parried an axe strike with his sword and was felled with a finger-deep nick in the blade of the weapon.

"This is ridiculous." Reiner thought. they outnumbered the warrior by ten to one and yet they couldn't finish him off? There had to be something sharp enough to pierce the warrior's inhuman skin. He furrowed his brow, deep in thought. The transformation had made the warrior bigger and stronger, but he didn't seem at all smarter; in fact, he was becoming more bestial by the minute.

"Let's get back to the square!" shouted Reiner. "I have an idea!"

The men looked at Barrister.

"Do it!" Gasped him. "That way we get nothing."

He and the others backed toward the steps following Reiner.

The barbarian was after them and was throwing slashes without rhyme or reason.

"Hals, Ulf!" Reiner called. "Kneel before the balustrade with Hals' spear between the two of you."

"But it has a split tip." Hals said.

"What I want is not the tip." Reiner replied. He picked up a handful of stones and, as Hals and Ulf knelt with the split spear held between the two of them, he jumped over the balustrade facing the square to make sure he had positioned himself correctly.

"Very well!" He shouted. "Disperse!"

Giano and Barrister jumped back, but Erich hesitated.

"You heard him!" bellowed Barrister. "Out of the way!"

Erich leapt to the side, and before the Nordic transform could go after either of them, Reiner hurled a stone that smashed into his chest. He looked up.

"Come on, you dust-eating barbarian!" shouted Reiner. He threw another stone that smashed into the bridge of the barbarian's nose and made him bellow.

"Puffed ox!" provoked Reiner, who hurled another stone against the warrior's forehead. "Orphaned son of a herd of goats! I've stepped on things that smelled better than you."

With a deafening roar, the mutated barbarian charged towards Reiner swinging the axe. At the last second, Reiner threw himself to the side and crashed into the stone slabs of the floor. The barbarian hit the balustrade at the knees and went forward. Hals and Ulf helped him by lifting his legs with the split spear to throw him over the railing into the square below.

There was a horrible wet crunching sound and an animal howl that was cut short. Reiner stood with his hands over his mouth. He had bitten his tongue when he fell and was bleeding. Along with the rest, he looked over the balustrade. The others uttered a choked exclamation and a proud smile appeared on Reiner's lips. His plan had worked. The Chaos barbarian was impaled on the broken statue of the Mother, and the sharp marble wedge protruded between his split ribs like a white island rising out of a red swamp.

"By all the gods." said Hals as he rubbed his chest where the barbarian had kicked him. "He didn't deserve half of that."

"Bravo." Giano approved. "But he might not have fallen there. Why didn't he just..." he pointed to the cliff edge balustrade.

"Because, unlike you." replied Reiner as he rubbed his jaw. "I have quite a bit of regard for my own life. Here I slip and bite my tongue. I slip there and..." Reiner swallowed at the thought.

"Ah, yes, you're right."

Barrister patted Reiner on the back.

"You've been smart, boy. Very smart."

Erich snorted through his nose.

"Though the feat cannot be said to be worthy of praise. Heroes didn't win by dirty tricks."

"That's why there are so many dead heroes." Reiner replied.

"Well, it looked good to me." Commented Pavel, who was climbing the ladder. "To me, not in a hundred years would I have thought of something like that."

The others nodded. Franz smiled and gestured to Reiner with his fingers stretched out and forming a circle with his index finger and thumb. Erich frowned and turned his back on them. Lady Roselyn appeared at the top of the stairs.

"If the danger has passed, it's time to enter the vault."