Chapter 49 - Chapter 49: The Bulls - Part 3

Chapter 49: The Bulls – Part It was as Lyrika said. Hard-headed. He wouldn’t listen to a word she said. He was completely focused on her as a threat, and that was it. She would not be able to get through to him.

Granted he had a damn good reason for his hatred of her race, but still.

While the diplomacy route hadn’t worked on this guy, there was still another. But whether she could actually talk to him was dependent on how she got away from this one.

Olivia turned to run, but the man was gaining on her fast, and before long, he had caught up to her.

As he ran he swung his sword, only missing her by a hair and she knew she wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. She did have her weapons on her, but she couldn’t really use them. If they thought she was a monster now, what would happen if she injured one of them, or even killed them? There was no way she could continue with the mission to talk to the chief if that happened. It also didn’t help that with the creature in her arms, she couldn’t heft the Morningstar anyway, so the dagger would be the only option.

But while she couldn’t use it to attack, that didn’t mean defence was off the table.

There wasn’t a way she could seriously defend herself, so this was more of a statement than anything else, but she knew she had to deal with this guy somehow. Taking hold of her dagger, upsettingly in the arm she had an arrow in, she still managed to keep a good grip on the creature with her other arm.

He slashed towards her, but his swing was slow and she managed to block it with her dagger and step to the side. As his blade met hers, it just increased the pressure on her arm with the arrow, causing her to grit her teeth in pain.

She had to end this fast, and she thought she saw how.

After a few more attacks, the man overextended causing his blade to end up hitting the dirt, leaving him exposed. He stood there hunched over, struggling to get it up and out of the ground. It must have been all the running and searching that had tired him out, and who knows what he had been doing in the forest. So, with him mostly exhausted, she decided to use a blunt object to knock him down and hopefully out.

And that blunt object was herself.

She charged forward and using her good shoulder slammed in the side of the man, knocking him down to the ground. He fell back hitting the dirt, and just laid there. With a quick check to see if he was ok and still breathing, which he thankfully was, she dashed away as fast as she could.

As she got further away from the man, she happened to see through the crops what appeared to be a building of some kind. Her thoughts were that it was a barn of some sort, and so she headed towards it, hoping she could hide in there without anyone knowing.

This though wasn’t to be, as before she knew it, she had exited the field, the barn being just outside of it. She froze for a second, before continuing her stride and finally made it to the building, before dashing inside. She hoped that no one saw her, but with the sound of an arrow thunking into the wood, she realised that wasn’t the case.

She had screwed herself and had nowhere to run. The only thing she could do was try and keep herself secure. Looking around, she found sacks of grain and various crops along with pieces of equipment, from hoes to rakes. So, she did the only thing she could and formed a barricade.

…

With the rake across the door through the large door handles and the heavy bags of crop pressed against it, it wasn’t long before she heard the first people trying to hammer it down. Next came a few swords slashing against the wood, where on occasion a blade would pass right through the seams of the wood freighting her to no end.

“Ok, how do I get out of this? Think Olivia, think!” she shouted to herself hitting her head with her hand.

Looking around she couldn’t find any other way of egress from the barn. It was just one way in one way out. There was a second level to the place which she could easily reach up to place the baby creature on it, before climbing the nearby ladder, but even then it was all solid walls. There were a few windows dotted along them, but by windows, she meant tiny, open-to-the-outside, square gaps in the wooden structure, none of which she could squeeze through.

She did find one that was slightly larger than the other and attempted to see if she could widen it enough that she could make it through. But when a nearby guard of the village patrolling the area fired an arrow towards it, where it then ended up barely missing her before hitting the roof of the place, she put that idea to rest.

There really was no way out. No more ideas came to mind. The smashing and slashing of metal against wood made it almost impossible to try and figure one out either. By this point, the baby creature had woken from all the racket and started to make a whining and mewling noise, probably because it was woken from its nap.

How it hadn’t woken when she rammed into the man she had no idea.

All the noise and tension made it so stressful for Olivia, and panic continued to build and build as more and more wood from the door fell to the floor. It was a hopeless situation.

She had so far not really hurt anyone. The only person that she had come into contact with was still alive and would probably just walk away with a nasty bruise. But, when these people came in swords swinging, she would need to take her defence seriously. Even it if meant injuring them or in an extreme case, killing them. She wasn’t going to just let them take her down.

Looking around the barn, she found the most defensible place she could see. Really though it was just an enclosed area which means people firing arrows couldn’t do so from the door to the barn, and by its narrow entrance, meant only one or two people could attack her at the same time. In there, far at the back of the area she dug into the dirt and placed the creature, hoping to keep it out of the danger.

She then proceeded to take the Morningstar off her back and got ready. All she could do now was wait.

…

The constant hits against the barn managed to make her jump every time, grating on her nerves. It was a frightening prospect and really, she didn’t know what the outcome of this would be. Even if she wasn’t in her injured state, if any of them had some real combat experience, they would surely take her out easily. Even if they didn’t, she was severely outnumbered.

There was the possibility that she could deal with enough of them that they would decide to back off, which might allow her time to escape. Then there was whatever was happening with Lyrika, who she really hoped was on her way to save the day somehow.

*Thud*

Everything went silent after the final thud of the hammer. The only reason she could think for them to stop hitting the door was if they had managed to break their way through.

How right she was as the next thing she knew; a man was standing right in front of her with his sword raised.

Fighting against all the pain in her body, she managed to raise her Morningstar and block his hit, the metal scraping against the metal as he continued to try and push his blade downwards.

It was agonising. Her injuries just made her feel so weak, and this man’s attack caused her to struggle against it. When she was in her peak condition, she was sure she wouldn’t have had that problem, but now, she didn’t know how much longer she could last.

The man finally pulled back and went in for a thrust, trying to stab her. She turned to the side, the blade only slicing against her skin slightly. But while the man thought he had done well, Olivia used what he had done to her advantage.

His arm forward along with his sword, Olivia brought her Morningstar down as fast as she could towards the man’s hand. She didn’t, however, aim properly, lack of training and injuries making it hard to do so, causing the large metal ball covered in spikes to glide through the air, and just clip his hand. It was enough though, as the spikes on the end sliced and scraped right along his skin, ripping it apart and causing blood to spurt everywhere. He cried out in agony and dropped his sword from the pain, jumping backwards to cradle it as he shook.

With him shouting out, it only brought more people towards her, where this time, two men wedged themselves together in the opening as best they could. They couldn’t get in, but it was enough to get their swords through, where one ended up thrusting his sword to stab at her and the other going for an overhead swing.

She tried to move out the way to doge the stab as well as block the one that was heading for her head, but too much was happening in such a short amount of time, and her body just couldn’t keep up with it.

The man thrusting his sword managed to gouge the side of her body, the pain of which causing her to lose focus as the blade sunk into her flesh. The shock of it all caused her to falter with her grip, allowing the sword that had been swung overhead to slide along the shaft of the Morningstar and dig into her shoulder.

She was feeling weaker and weaker by the minute but all she could do was continue to hold them off. It couldn’t end here for her. Not after all she had been through in this new world.

But then, as she went to block the attacks of the men yet again, who had pulled their swords from her body, she heard a voice rise high above the others, causing the ones attacking her to freeze.

“Stop!”

…

It was like time was standing still. The men in front of her was frozen in position, their swords ready and waiting to continue their decent into her skull…but neither made a move.

With them in this state, it was the perfect opportunity to attack back, her mind being in overdrive it thought this was a good idea. But as she went to, she found that her injuries had made it impossible to do so, the Morningstar having fallen from her grip when they pulled their weapons back.

Olivia for a moment thought that time was actually frozen, but when she saw the man from before rolling bout in agony as he held his hand, she realised that some sort of time-manipulating magic hadn’t been used. If there was such a thing.

“Everyone, stand down.”

At hearing the very deep and authoritarian male voice, the men in front of her all pulled back and started walking away, always keeping her in the edge of their sight as they did.

Confused at everything, Olivia looked out through to where the men that had been attacking her had come from and realised how thankful she was of the person who had spoken. In the barn alone she saw around a dozen people all with various weapons, which was bad enough, but just past them through the entrance to the barn, she saw a good number of people with bows and arrows, along with even more people holding swords and maces. It was like she had been up against an army. She didn’t even realise there where that many, figuring it would have been several guards that were after her or something.

“Olivia, you can come out, its fine.”

Olivia sighed as she heard the voice she had been waiting to hear for a while. As she stepped out, in amongst the people leaving, she found Lyrika just heading into the barn. Upon seeing each other, Lyrika dashed towards her, grabbing her as Olivia ended up collapsing from her injuries.

“Its…its good to see you again.” She managed to eke out.

With those last words, Olivia passed out to the sounds of Lyrika trying to keep her awake and the mewling of the creature in her torn shirt.