35 – Blitz-Rats

  The pounding steps of the approaching ratman squadron added urgency to Andy’s voice as he whispered, “You all got that?”

  Omar nodded. “Let’s do it!”

  Bella was quick to agree. “It’s only twenty ratmen! We’ve killed way more!”

  “They sound different…” Bea shook her head.

  Andy looked at Lucy, wanting her opinion, but she just shrugged, her eyes gleaming from the depths of her hooded cloak. “All right, listen,” he whispered hoarsely, leaning closer to the others. “We didn’t come here to make friends. We need to get past all these rats to get to the Baron, and there’s a good chance that if we don’t deal with them now, they’ll show up when we’re least ready.”

  Nobody argued, and Bella and Omar nodded.

  “So,” Andy continued, “go back to the stairwell. Lucy and I will pull them in here, and we’ll use the stairs as a choke point.”

  “Right!” Bella grabbed Bea’s arm and pulled her toward the broken stairwell door.

  “Me?” Lucy asked, glancing after Bella.

  “Yeah.” Andy smiled, nodding to her bow. “Easier to pull them from range. Don’t worry, I’ll slow them down as we run.”

  Lucy licked her lips, eyes darting toward the doorway, but she nodded. Omar clapped Andy on the shoulder and hurried after the others.

  “Come on.” Andy led the way to the door, and as he peered out, he immediately saw their quest objective. A group of gigantic rats, all wearing tarnished copper breastplates and helmets, stood at the intersection to his right. Their commander, a hulking ratman bearing a massive black iron polearm, was facing the squadron, looking left and right up the other street, as though determining which direction they should march. Andy pointed. “It’s perfect. Shoot him in the back.”

  Lucy stepped forward, but she hesitated. “Those ratmen look mean, Andy. They have armor and—”

  “We got this, Luce. It’s a chokepoint; they won’t get to you and Bea.”

  She narrowed her eyes, pressed her lips together, and drew back her bowstring. Andy held his breath with her as she sighted down the length of her arrow. Just before she released the bowstring with a vibrating thrum, her arrow glowed with silvery light. It streaked into the air and, as Andy watched, it shimmered, and then there were two silvery missiles flying toward Jarqar the Butcher’s back.

  The two arrows slammed into the grizzled fur of the ratman’s thickly muscled back, just beneath his spiked metal shoulder guards. Jarqar roared in agony and fury and whirled with his polearm, hacking the empty air with a loud whoosh. When he saw Lucy and Andy standing in the building’s doorway, he screamed a garbled command, spittle flying from his fanged mouth, and his soldiers took up the cry, charging up the street toward them.

  Andy grabbed Lucy’s shoulder, tugged her back into the building, and propelled her toward the stairwell. “I’ll be right behind you.” She ran, and Andy leveled his spear at the doorway, backing up as the crashing boot-steps of the ratman soldiers approached. His plan to stall them in the doorway fell apart as they hit the doorway in a rush, smashing the gray stone blocks loose and taking half the wall down in their haste to get at him.

  The ratmen were wild-eyed in their frenzy to tear him apart. Worse, they were huge and powerful, and many wielded spears. Andy’s usual advantages of size and reach were neutralized, and the power of their charge overwhelmed his speed advantage. He stabbed one, then another, and another, and then they were pushing into him, and he had to use every ounce of his concentration and quickness to avoid half a dozen brutal attacks.

  As he stumbled back, gleaming silvery arrows flew through the air, hitting ratmen in their faces and throats, and even punching through their metal breastplates. Lucy’s rapid missiles might have saved him—Andy wouldn’t ever be sure—but by then he’d gathered his wits and, with a great exhalation, blew a cone of hot, blinding smoke into the frenzied crowd of giant ratmen.

  His Brimstone Breath gave him the reprieve he needed to back the rest of the way to the stairwell. It slowed them, but to his dismay, they kept coming. When the first few broke free of the crowd, they looked disoriented, and their fur was singed, but they weren’t burning like the vermin Andy had killed back in the mesa. Were they fire resistant? He didn’t think so, but he had another idea: the heat of his spell was mana-derived—magic—and he was pretty sure that meant it could be resisted. These ratmen soldiers had stronger Will attributes than Andy had faced before.

  At the doorway, Bella and Omar stood on either side of him. They had time to brace themselves, and then the first pair of huge ratmen were on them. One was limping—wounded by Andy earlier—and it barely had time to lift its axe before Bella darted forward and thrust her sword into its belly. The blade’s enchantments hissed, and the ratman screamed, falling back to be trampled by two more.

  Andy didn’t have time to check his mana, but he knew he had plenty for another Brimstone Breath or two, so he cast it again, filling the wide hallway with hot smoke, slowing the rat soldiers’ advance. This time the spell had a greater effect; the ratmen had to stand in it while they tried to hack at the three of them, slowly suffocating, half-blind, and occasionally bursting into flame.

  Meanwhile, as Andy, Bella, and Omar fought, Lucy continued to fire her enchanted arrows into the cloud. Each hit was devastating. Sometimes the arrows would explode with fire or lightning, or even ice, and sometimes they delivered debilitating enchantments that caused nausea or weakness or even blindness. Thanks to the smoke in the hallway and Lucy’s arrows, the ratmen who made it up to the three fighters were confused, wounded, or both.

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  Andy’s superior Speed attribute made itself felt in that protracted battle. If he saw an opening in a ratman’s guard, he didn’t hesitate to plant his spear, enchanted with caustic burning flames, into vulnerable spots. More often than not, his victims would fall back into the smoke and were overcome by the crippling magic. Meanwhile, Omar did something to his new mace, making it blaze with crackling blue flames, and if Andy’s smoke didn’t catch the ratmen alight, it did. Bella was nimble with her sword, though Andy had to bail her out more than once when a polearm-wielding ratman bullied her back with his superior strength and reach.

  It felt like the battle went on for hours, though Andy knew it was just the intensity of combat and the exhaustion that came from pitting himself, nothing held back, against enemies who wanted him dead. The smoke of his Brimstone Breath gradually dissipated, and the mound of enemy corpses grew. Still, there were more pushing forward, with their huge commander, red-eyed and frothing at the mouth, shouting and whipping them on.

  “I can’t!” Bella gasped. “My arms—”

  Just then, like glowing raindrops, Bea threw her water over them, singing something in a language Andy had never heard. It was cold where it splashed against his neck and scalp, but that cold turned into a tingling rush that seemed to invigorate his exhausted muscles. “Hell yeah, Bea!”

  Lucy’s bow thrummed, and two gleaming arrows flew between the armored heads of several ratman soldiers to slam into Jarqar’s stomach, just below the edge of his black iron breastplate. He roared, stumbling back, and the remaining ratmen drove forward. One, bigger and bulkier than the others with mottled white fur, drove a nine-foot metal lance toward Bella. Andy darted out of line, rushing from an angle to meet him with his spear.

  He planted his enchanted spearhead right in the gap where the ratman’s shoulder armor met his breastplate, slamming him against the wooden wall. He’d saved Bella, but left himself wide open, and another ratman smashed an enormous axe down on his extended spear. The blow reverberated into Andy’s hands, numbing them, and knocking the spear out of his hands.

  “Push!” Omar screamed to Bella, and they drove forward, shoulder-to-shoulder with Andy, forming a new line. The ratmen pulled Andy’s victim back, dragging his spear out of reach, so he stooped to snatch up the first weapon his grasping fingers could get ahold of—an axe. It wasn’t the perfect weapon to use in confined spaces, especially with allies on either side of him, but it was better than his empty, leather-gloved hands.

  The footing was terrible in that hallway. The boards were slick with blood and other fluids and corpses tangled their feet. Worse, the space was confined, forcing the allies to jostle one another as they parried and hacked. Still, those disadvantages were even more pronounced for the hulking ratmen, especially as Lucy continued to snipe perfectly timed arrows into their exposed body parts.

  “Push again!” Andy yelled, seeing that the hallway was less cluttered just a few steps ahead. They drove forward, over the corpses, into the face of the last few ratmen, and renewed the fight. Andy felt clumsy with the axe, but surprisingly, some of his spear training—imaginary though it was—seemed to apply. He managed his feet, his balance, and his focus on his enemies like a veteran despite the clumsiness of his hacks and thrusts.

  His speed helped enormously, allowing him to dodge, parry, and time his clumsy hacks. Meanwhile, Bella and Omar continued to mount wounds and kills, and Lucy’s arrows delivered cold, deadly grace. Bea threw her invigorating water on them one more time. Then, after another frenzied drive, all the ratmen save the badly wounded commander were dead.

  Halfway through that last drive, Andy passed by his spear, and he dropped the axe for it. With his favored weapon in hand, he dove at the huge ratman. Jarqar was already reeling from another perfect shot from Lucy. Andy saw the shaft appear in its throat almost like it had sprouted there. As the ratman commander stumbled back, reaching for the offending arrow, Andy slammed his enchanted spear into the crease of the ratman’s hip, avoiding the heavy iron plate that shielded his thigh.

  The blade bit deeply, and the black, lightless flames poured into the wound. Jarqar made a strangled, gargling roar and crashed to the floorboards hard enough to shake the entire first floor of the building. Omar rushed past Andy, flaming mace held high, and while Jarqar struggled to right himself, he hammered the heavy metal ball against the ratman’s iron helmet.

  Jarqar fell back, and Andy darted forward again, burying his spear into Jarqar’s guts, driving it all the way through until the tip bit into the wooden floorboards. He stood there, holding the ratman pinned while his thrashing subsided. Bella limped past him, sword held ready, staring at the massive ratman warily. Omar hurried to the open doorway, peering out into the street, and Andy heard Lucy and Bea approaching.

  “Nothing’s coming,” Omar whispered between heaving breaths.

  Andy, still holding his spear in place, allowing the magical flames to spread, turned to observe the chaos of the battle scene. The wood-lined hallway leading to the stairwell was scorched black, and mounds of huge, armor-clad bodies lined each wall. It almost looked as though they’d been stacked. The air was thick with the scents of ash, burned hair, blood, and—worst of all—guts.

  “Is it over?” Bea asked, holding her jacket sleeve to her nose. “Who’s hurt?”

  “All of them,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not—” Andy started to say, but then he realized she was right. His plastic-scaled jacket was missing patches of scales, and injuries were making themselves felt. It didn’t seem like anything serious—bruises, scrapes, and shallow cuts.

  “Me,” Bella said, limping back to fall against the wall. “My thigh.”

  Andy could see what she meant; a ragged tear in her jeans revealed bloody flesh. Behind him, Omar said, “Nothing serious.” He walked away from the doorway and stooped to pick up an iron-strapped wooden round shield.

  Andy felt his spear shift as the huge rat commander gasped out a last rattling breath and died.

  ***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve completed the optional quest: Jarqar the Butcher. In addition to the experience you earned for slaying 20 Elite vermin and one Boss vermin, you’ve gained a greater chance at rare, System-generated awards if you’re able to complete the dungeon. For your efforts, you’ve gained two levels in your Brimstone Stalker class, bringing you to level 19, and earning you 1 Improvement Point.***

  ***Excellent work! Your efforts have led to a moment of clarity through which you’ve seen deeper into the art of spear fighting. You’re close to a true breakthrough, and may soon be able to improve your skill further.***

  “Two levels,” he said, yanking his spear out of the ratman’s guts and turning toward the others.

  Bea was crouched in front of Bella, treating her leg. She didn’t look up as she muttered, “One.”

  “Two,” Omar announced.

  “Two,” Bella said with a wince, biting her lip as Bea drizzled some droplets of magical water onto her cut.

  “Three,” Lucy said, “and a breakthrough in my bow skill.”