Swords And Shadows (TennTenshie)

Mathias Wolfbane, a warrior from Nesme and fairly well-known sword-for-hire, found himself in what was no doubt the most embaressing situation he could imagine. His life was endangered by goblins, of all things. Three days ago, he had hired on with a small caravan of wagons making the long journey to the southern villages, transporting supplies and other items to sell to the isolated communities found there. It was hardly heroic work, true, nothing that would get his name in any songs, but at the same time it provided food and coin for a man who was in sore need of both. Truly exciting work was few and far between these days, even for a skilled swordsman such as himself, and often these minor tasks were the only thing that put food in his belly. So he had settled to the prospect of a dull, uneventful journey, perhaps broken only by the occasional highwayman.

But ten minutes ago, his wagon had stumbled upon a nest of goblins... a rather sizable one, at that, as the little bastards seemed to pour from almost every crevice in sight, bearing crude spears, clubs and stone hatchets. Almost immediately, Mathias and the other four guards had fallen into a defensive circle near the wagon, well-trained and enough of a threat to cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. But there always seemed to be more goblins, and even after the wretched things were filling the narrow trail with their corpses, the others just kept on coming.

"C'mon, men, let's not let these gobs think they're a step above vermin!" Mathias called, deflecting a clumsy club swing with his curved sword and countering with his dagger, tearing the goblin's throat open with the backhand. Even as that one fell with a gurgling cry, however, two more were ready to take its place, and despite the warrior's confident words, he was beginning to slow down; his arms ached with the effort of constant battle, and his arms were covered in small scrapes and gouges from where a lucky spear or hatched got through. Under his chainmail, half of his body felt bruised from the constant thud of clubs, and many times it was his training alone that fended off their numbers. His hair, brown and cropped close to his head, glistened with beads of sweat as his blue eyes blinked rapidly, trying to keep any of that persperation from blinding him. With every passing moment, things seemed to be growing all the more dire.

There was still a chance, however; his was only the first wagon of the caravan. The other was supposed to be mere minutes away, having been delayed by a stuck wheel, and with that second wagon were more guards, soldiers who would (gods willing,) be fresh and ready to help dispatch of the rest.

That second wagon was carrying a walking weapon, at least by human standards. Drow were quick, exceptional fighters, even the upper world ones. Her hair was bound back into a thick braid that was bound to the woman's head. Her white eyes standing out against her darker skin, much like the hair. She heard the clanging before she saw it. Asril watched crouched low on the top of the wagon as they approached. She curled her lips, goblins. She hated Goblins. Hated them.

She heard the shouts now as one of the tired men let a Goblin slip. Asril grabbed her weapons, quick fingers locking into the hilts, pinky going through the hole at the base, She jumped taking from the back at the entrance, knocking enough into it to keep them bottled for the time being. She grabbed a heavy branch dropping it as well, leaping away from a swinging Goblin before she turned taking it out quickly, She said nothing. Asril never spoke in combat, she rarely spoke to most people, humans she didn't like very much, but she'd learned to deal with them, and she wouldn't get paid if the first wagon fell. The Goblins screamed as she danced around, blade dances where dangerous, beautiful things.

Between the two sets of fighters and the now clogged nest, they cleared out the onslaught. She looked at the men, dressed in the tight black leather armor. Her boots standing almost to her thighs, the pants tucked into them, they laced up the sides, a belt held them to her, the Top was shaped to hug her curves, stay out of her way. Hooked over her arms with another round of laces to the bracers. She wore a pair of thin gloves to protect her hands. She stared at Mathias, narrowing her eyes, She then pointed at the clogged hole though they where attempting to get out. "Goblins?" She growled.

The fresh and weary fighters had joined in common purpose now, settling in front of the Goblin's cave exit and working together to beat back the bottlenecked creatures before they could emerge. The monsters were nonetheless persistent, and the warriors holding them off had to constantly rotate their ranks, keeping any one of them from getting too weary. Off to one side, two of the guards were too sorely wounded to join the defense, and the amateur priest who had been hired on was working on tending to their wounds. Mathias had suffered a deep gouge to his forearm in the fighting, rendering his swordarm nearly useless, and he was forced to wait impatiently as the priest worked on imbuing the injury with some healing magic. His eyes flickered over the approaching drow with mild curiosity, though he obviously didn't expect her to try and cut his throat; one of the first lessons mercenaries learned was that oftentimes their work involved decidedly unorthodox races.

"Mmm," Mathias replied, the tone one of agreement as he paused to catch his breath, working his shoulders in their sockets and carefully stretching his muscles. "A considerable number of them by all appearances... if the caravan owners had thought to hire themselves a mage, we could use him to collapse the entrance... but I suppose that would be too expensive." His teeth bared with irritation at that as he eyed the hole, ready to leap in should any of the defenders need to catch their breath. "If the tunnel links to the Underdark, there could very well be hundreds of the wretches down there, if not more. We might be best served getting the wagons some fair distance, keeping them in their hole until we have moved beyond their comfort zone... Goblins dislike wandering too far aboveground. Maybe we will even be so fortunate as to plug them in with their own corpses. What do you think?"

It was a risk; while the guards were occupied here, the wagons would be all the more vulnerable for the half-mile or so it traveled to get clear, meaning so much as a band of ragged highwaymen could hijack it. The more men stayed with the wagon during its escape, the harder it would be for those remaining to keep the goblins at bay.

Asril looked at him, and curled her lips. She hated Goblins, most Drow found the servants repulsive. "Then I suggest you and the wounded one get on a wagon." She told him simply. Looking around for a moment. She turned, "explosive!" She shouted as she walked away, she made almost no sound as she moved. Looking around quickly she Abandoned him and the priest and the other wounded man to jump back into the fight, Taking a Goblin out at the stomach, spilling his innards across the grass before the entry.

She shifted shouting again for something that would go boom. The underdark, they thought there where thousands of goblins, they had no idea what else was down there, Trolls, Drow... The drow where merely the superior race, not the only one that was big enough to truly do some damage. "Human!" She shouted. "Get those wagons moving!" She wasn't playing very nicely, she never did honestly. Knocking a goblin back into the door.

"Back on the wagon my ass," Mathias growled to himself, gesturing for the priest to load the others onto the wagon. The healer had done a fine job repairing the rip in his arm, and though his smaller scrapes and bruises still left him a sore lump, his swordarm was once again perfectly operational, and it was with another growl that he drew his weapons, marching right back into the mess of things. Within seconds, he had fought his way right to the woman's side, his sword moving in wide, devastasting arcs to keep the monsters at bay, and his dagger ready to plunge into whatever poor creature managed to slip through. "You'll never find a man of Nesme spending a perfectly good fight to the death on the back of a wagon!" he called to her, ducking beneath a crude spear and retaliating with an upper sweep of his curved blade that hacked off the goblin's arm at the elbow.

The wagons were beginning to pull away finally, the wounded suitably recovered to sit with the drivers and keep watch for any further threats. Of course, the longer the battle went, the clearer it became that pulling away from this conflict gracefully was going to be a problem. Any man who suffered a wound in the fight, even minor, would find his mobility reduced, and the moment they pulled away from the cave entrance entirely, they would no doubt be swarmed by whatever goblins still lurked inside.

There was hope, however. One of the other soldiers had backed away from the fighting, pulling a jeweled bracer from his forearm and clearly working to pry out one of its rubies. Figuring it to be the precursor to some magical attempt to close the tunnel- Mathias would have been surprised if nobody had a single enchanted item- Mathias called out to the drow, directing her attention to the man's work just long enough to make their intentions clear. If the ruby was any indication, nobody would want to be between that soldier and the cave entrance when the man used its enchantment.

((Feel free to post the fireball casting yourself if you want. n.n ))

Asril looked at him. "And they wonder why they're clan is so small." She told Mathias as she continued to fight, Pushing men to start backing when they got injured, going after the wagons, the more space she had the more damage she could actually do. She looked up when he got her attention. She glanced at the human. At least someone had come up with an idea. "That's going to kill him!" She shouted. Burying her Long daggers into a Goblin's head. THey where systematically backing up.

The man finally got it appart throwing the suddenly sparking bracer and its ruby to the entrance. As it hit a Goblin Asril pushed Mathias back into the men who where still with them. As it errupted into a massive ball of flame, the stones around the entrance begining to shake as the heat radiated. "Move!" She shouted. Starting to shove the men after the wagon. "Get back to work!" She had a workers mentality, and really she wanted the least amount of humans here possible. This many goblins dead, there was going to be ramifications. "Go!" They finally got up moving, heading away from them. She spun with her weapons to take on another as it came at them. Asril cursed under her breath. Stabbing another.

"Ha!" Mathias retorted, sword sweeping in a quick back and forth pattern to fend off a club, a crude sword, and a spear, "Nesme's clan is so small because the gods realized if we were any more numerous, we'd be running things by now!"

When she shoved him away from the cave, he initially protested, his sore joints nearly causing him to topple over, but it became clear that she intended to spearhead the defense against the Goblins while the magic played out. How ridiculously self-sacrifising of her. Reflecting that a self-interested, cowardly drow would have made things a great deal easier, Mathias muttered a curse under his breath and went right back for the drow, similarly manhandling her by wrapping an arm around the stubborn, distracted woman's waist from behind. A goblin lunged for them, thinking the distraction might work to its favour, but Mathias' other arm shot out from beneath the drow's arm, causing the fool creature to run right into the tip of his sword.

"Fool woman, I'll not have your sizzling carcass on my conscience!" he snapped, leaving her arms free to defend against any stray Goblins (or take a swipe at him, if she was that determined to die,) while all but dragging her back from the cave entrance. The cave's entrance was only growing all the more unstable, rocks starting to fall, and further back flashes of light could be seen as the rather powerful spell seemed to bounce around the interior. Even if the cave entrance wasn't to collapse, the sight of so potent a magical assault sent the Goblins- notorious for being particularly vulnerable, and therefore terrified, of wizards- scurrying in a panic. Either way, it would buy them the time they needed.

I'll have to ask the lad who sold him that bracer... I want one.

When he'd captured her she'd stabbed him, one of hte long daggers penitrating his arms when the dance was broken. She stared at him stunned for a moment. "Idiot!" She snapped leaving the blade there to block the bloodflow until they got somewhere where it could be patched, using her feet to kick and knock Goblins as the entrance collapsed. "I wasn't going to die!" She growled at him. She knew how to maneuver in dark, and caves, even around breaking tunnels.

Humans! They're all idiots.

She thought as she was dragged away, watching the scrambling goblins. "Tell me the rest of them went after the wagons. And I hope you can move faster than that." She said as the tunnel continued to collapse. further back into itself. She finally got free of his hold so they could get moving. "Goblins aren't the only things that are down there that aren't drow."