"Come on, you rabid spawn of steaming godsbedammed lizard dung," Skharr roared and lifted his sword and ax. "You'll have to fight much harder than that if you want to kill me."
Dozens charged his line where they held the breach in the wall. Flames crackled and spread as the siege continued. This was merely one battle among hundreds across dozens of battle lines. A city as large as this one with a wall that went on forever merely meant that much more to defend.
The line was holding behind him but barely. The men were as tired as he was but they expected the massive barbarian to break the enemy charge and sift them through in a weakened condition while arrows were fired from above.
"Come on, you snot-sucking bastard spawn of Janus’ poxy whore!" His weapons still felt heavier than he could carry, but he rushed forward, parried a spear thrust toward his gut, and retaliated with the spike opposite his ax blade. The blow was hard enough to leave a powerful dent in the helm and the wearer stumbled back.
The others raised their shields, ready to continue the fight as the barbarian was forced back. Still, the charge was slowed and the rest of the troop rallied and rushed forward.
Another melee erupted when the opposing forces met. A spear was thrust toward him and Skharr moved to the right to avoid it. He sucked in deep breaths as sweat began to drip down his forehead. It stung his eyes and made it difficult to see through his helm as he deflected the spear to the side and drove his sword into his attacker's neck. Blood gushed from cracks in the armor.
More of the enemy joined the fray. They seemed desperate to take the godsbedammed breach this time. There were fifteen others in the wall but they wanted this one.
"How many of you cowardly ass-fucking lizard pricks do I have to pile up before the wall is repaired again?" Skharr growled his frustration as he cut another of them down and drove his shoulder into the two who followed. The force stopped their momentum and they barreled into the group that approached behind him.
It was getting hard to breathe. All he wanted to do was lay his armor down and rest for a moment until another group began to assault their battle line. He'd spent weeks training the godsbedammed bastards to hold a fucking line and he wouldn’t give it all up because a warmongering king heard a prophecy about how he was meant to be the emperor of the whole continent.
The group counter-attacked, which left him with nothing to do but push forward with them. He willed his arms and legs into movement as he hacked into the closest attacker and hurled him out of the way before he drove his sword through the next man. His blade sliced through his mail hauberk and into the padding and flesh and emerged from the other side in a powerful thrust that drove the man hard into the ground.
His men were forced back when a sudden surge of attackers rushed at the walls. They sensed some kind of weakness and intended to exploit it.
A fire seared through Skharr’s veins, one that hadn't been in them for a long time. Something deep, hungry, and angry had begun to bare its teeth.
The roar that rumbled from his chest was not something strictly human and for the first time all day, it was more than only the boisterous verbiage meant to keep his men's morale up.
He attacked the group from the flank that they hadn't defended properly, and three were dead almost before they realized he was there. His sword dropped from his fingers and he swept a shield up instead and swung it hard into the closest fighter. He raised his mace and spun his whole body to swing the weapon as hard as he could to crush the skull of another. His target’s helm was shattered and blood poured from inside.
"Skharr!"
The barbarian snatched his sword up again and wielded it to bite deeply into another attacker’s mail. He could almost feel the blood pumping from the wound as he hacked into it repeatedly. Warm blood spattered across his armor as he dropped his sword, the blade nicked and dented from the treatment it had endured. He retrieved a nearby spear that had fallen as the fighters around him began to inch away, trying to escape the madman.
One fell and was soon followed by another. The spear broke where it was buried in the warrior's chest and Skharr whirled and hammered the broken haft into a nearby head. The blow wasn’t hard enough to kill but it forced him back as he swept up the closest weapon to him, a war hammer, which crunched hard into another skull.
He swung it, shifted his grasp, and drove it hard into the belly of another.
"Skharr!"
Someone called his name but it felt like it came from a great distance and through fog with no recognizable tone or voice.
He screamed and buried the spike in the warrior's chest and gut repeatedly until the man sank to his knees and clawed at half a dozen wounds.
"Oh…fuck. You….got the better of me this time, eh, Skharr?"
The voice, even through the pandemonium around them and the man's helm, was a little too familiar. The barbarian approached, dropped to his knees next to him as the battle continued to rage, and pulled the visor of his helm up to reveal a battered and bloody face. Blood seeped from between the man’s lips.
"Tristan?" he asked. "What the fuck—how the hell did you get here?"
"The coin was too good to refuse." He coughed and the blood flowed a little faster now. His pale-blue eyes began to lose their focus. "Not…sure I'll be able to spend it, though…"
Ahverna yanked her hand away like it had been stung. Whether this was a dream or a memory, she wasn't quite sure, but the pain in it was only too real. Instinctively, she pulled herself back from it as it began to increase in intensity. She'd never been one to intentionally injure herself simply for the sake of it and nothing else.
After a moment, she shook her head and placed her hand on Skharr's forehead. She could still feel the strife roiling through his body.
"Sometimes, you carry a debt too long," she whispered and closed her eyes. "No longer will this trouble you, Skharr DeathEater."
Pulling it free was like sucking venom from a wound and she could see the poison seeping out as well. The small darts fell from his body until he was visibly more relaxed. The sweat began to dissipate and the dream faded.
The pain didn't ease much. Nor did the ache or the weight in his limbs, but there was something else that pushed at his consciousness. The battlefield was gone, replaced mostly by blackness as Skharr blinked a few times in an attempt to force his eyes to adjust.
It was odd how they hurt and ached like he had looked directly into the sun for a little too long.
But as he felt his heartbeat thump a steady rhythm through the whole of his body, they adjusted slowly to the darkness of the passage he was in.
Finally, he came to the realization that he wasn't alone.
A slim woman knelt over him. She appeared to wear light armor that was fitted a little too closely to her form. Her hair was black and long and hung almost halfway down her back and he could see her eyes, even in the darkness.
It surprised him that they were what was easiest to see about her. Even with her pale skin and a dip in her armor around her collarbone showing a little too much of it for it to be genuine armor, his gaze was drawn to her bright green eyes instead.
They practically glowed, even in the darkness of the tunnel.
"Ahverna?" Skharr asked and groaned as he propped himself up on his elbows.