A Hand from Beyond the Sea (5)
“Ghk!”
A hand shot out of the undergrowth and seized a fellow sailor by the throat. In an instant the man was dragged thrashing into the brush.
From the opposite side of the thicket Chester rose, knife already slick with the bright red blood that had just spilled. In his other hand he held a pre-loaded crossbow; he loosed the bolt and punched it clean through the shoulder of a sailor farther back.
“Tch.”
He had been aiming for the head. Close, but not quite.
Ignoring the minor miss, Chester tossed the crossbow back into the foliage to hide it and swept the knife in a tight arc. Using the keen blade he had taken from the sailors, he stabbed a man three, four times in the blink of an eye, then ignored the collapsing body, reversed his grip, and drove the knife into the next nearest sailor.
“Kh—”
The instant the blade went in, Chester let go. Blood had made the hilt so slick his fingers slipped.
“Damn it, use a decent knife for once.”
That was why he hated knives without a guard or ricasso between blade and handle. Only his absurd grip strength had generated enough friction to keep the blade from sliding all the way through his hand; he got away with a shallow cut across his little finger. Without that strength the knife would have skated free and taken his fingers with it.
Thuck!
He yanked another knife free, rammed it into a throat, twisted, and ripped it out, then seized the corpse he had just made. Arrows thudded into the body he was using as a shield. A cutlass swung by another sailor buried itself in the same corpse; Chester simply shrugged the dead weight off like a discarded cloak.
“Wha—”
The sailor whose blade was stuck staggered from the impact. Chester dropped low, slipped inside his guard, and buried the knife. After a few thrusts he felt the edge grate harshly against something hard. He pulled free, saw the blade roughened and nicked, and knew he had hit bone. Without hesitation he flung the ruined knife at the man closing in and drew a fresh one.
“Aaaagh!”
A sailor who had been scrambling back from the flying steel tripped and went down hard. As he fell he caught sight of a beautiful woman standing some distance away. She was half-hidden in shadow, watching the fight, and the moment she released whatever she held, a single silent arrow punched through the sailor’s chest.
“Kh!”
A chest wound was not automatically fatal if it missed the heart and the great vessels; thick muscle actually made it safer than many other places.
“Oh! It flies all the way from there to here?! This is what a properly made bow can—”
“You savage bitch!”
The downed sailor shoved himself upright and charged Monia. That she had the long black hair and violet eyes Rotin had described no longer mattered. In his eyes she was not the pitiful castaway noblewoman their captain sought; she looked like a cannibal tribeswoman born and raised on this island. What noble lady loosed arrows with such perfect form, then drew a machete as naturally as breathing the instant a man rushed her?
Whoa—how is she that fast?!
Even in unfamiliar forest the sailor came on like a wild boar, cutlass already free, and swung for Monia’s head. She had meant to meet the blow with her own blade, but his momentum left no room for resistance.
“Kyaa?!”
She barely got the machete up in time. The cutlass smashed into it and the machete began to vibrate strangely; before she knew it the weapon had leapt from her fingers.
“Huh? What is this?!”
The machete lay on the ground, still humming. She had forged and used it for days and never seen anything like this. But that was the least of her problems. The cutlass, rebounding from the clash, came whistling back toward her. Monia threw herself into a desperate roll, and the sailor kept hacking at her as she scrambled.
“Don’t worry! I won’t kill you! Once I’ve cut off your arms and legs I’ll keep you as the ship’s pet!”
He stepped in close as he spoke. Monia’s leg snapped upward.
Thwack!
The tip of her foot sank into something soft and yielding. A pain beyond any word in the language erupted from the man’s groin and shot straight through the crown of his skull like a volcano. His vision went pure white.
“Uwaaaaaagh! Gyaaaaaah! Aaaaaaagh! Aagh! Aaaaaaa!!”
“...More effective than I expected.”
Chester had told her that if things ever got truly dangerous she should aim between a man’s legs first. At the time she had wondered why he would call a place that was not a vital organ a weak point. Now she understood.
“So for men the crotch is a vital spot too!”
She snatched up the still-vibrating machete; the shaking had lessened enough that she could grip it firmly.
“Hup!”
She brought it down. The humming blade parted the man’s skull as smoothly as if it were soft fruit.
“Huh?”
Monia stared blankly from the machete to the corpse and back again.
“It never did this when Chester hammered it...”
Nor had it ever behaved this way in all the work she had put it through with axe and knife.
“...Because it touched another metal?”
She carefully touched the machete to the fallen cutlass. Instantly the blade began to vibrate with furious intensity.
“Kyaa! Wh-what is this?!”
While Monia reeled from the unknown power of the ore, Chester found himself in genuine trouble.
“Uwaaaaah!”
One of the braver sailors simply accepted a knife in the gut and slammed into him, wrapping him up.
“Kh!”
Chester tried to twist free, but the man kept driving forward even with steel buried deep in his belly and finally locked him in place.
“Hey! You bastards! Stab him! Stab him already!”
The sailor forced Chester back against a tree and clung on with every ounce of strength, knowing that the moment he let go he was dead.
“...!”
With his upper arms pinned, Chester worked the freer lower half of one arm, drew another knife, and drove it into the man’s side.
“Aaagh! You little shit!”
“Nngh!”
Even half-mad with pain the sailor held on. Chester, teeth clenched against the knowledge that more blades could arrive at any second, kept stabbing the same flank again and again.
Then another sailor stepped in from the side and thrust a cutlass straight at Chester’s head.
“Hhk!”
Chester jerked his head aside; the blade scraped past. A second cutlass came from the opposite direction and he twisted again, feeling the edge nick his ear as the steel sank into the tree trunk.
“Damn it! He keeps dodging!”
“Do it properly! Stab him properly, you bastards! Aaaaagh!”
“We are!”
“Forget the head—go for the gut! He can’t dodge that!”
“Ah!”
The two sailors yanked their blades free and aimed for Chester’s midsection. In that instant Chester heaved the corpse still clinging to him sideways, bowling one man over.
“Uwa?!”
He closed on the startled second sailor in a blur and carved him apart with the knife, then spun back, found the gap left when the first man shoved the body aside, and buried the blade in the base of his skull.
“Gurk!”
“Hoo... haah. Hooo...”
Chester dragged in ragged breaths and eyed the thick forearm that had held him. It looked half again as thick as any of the others; just looking at it made him shudder.
That’s going to bruise. Circulation’s cut off—arm’s already going numb.
Even as the thought formed he set himself to throw. An arrow already nocked on a sailor’s bow leapt free and buried itself dead-center in Chester’s forearm. He forced the throw through the pain; the knife took the archer through the eye.
“...Aaaagh!”
Only after he watched the man fall did a groan of pure agony escape Chester’s lips. He clamped his teeth and gripped the shaft.
Damn it! It hit!
First he snapped off the long shaft so it would not snag on anything.
Muscle clenched around it the second it went in... I’ll have to cut it free later. Monia? Is she all right? Two of them went after her...
Of the two sailors who had chased Monia, one paid no attention to roots that tripped him, branches that raked his skin raw, or trees he slammed into when he could not check his speed. He simply ran and ran.
Damn it! What the hell are those monsters?!
He had seen it with his own eyes: a woman who looked fragile as porcelain splitting a man’s skull like soft butter with a heavy, crude blade. And that man—that terrifying man—when his arms moved at speeds the eye could not follow, an unidentifiable light flashed and another comrade went down spraying blood in every direction.
What even was that?! A knife? How do you bury a knife in a human body and still swing it that fast?!
Monsters. Both of them were monsters.
Cannibals! They have to be cannibals! Damn it—so this is a cannibal island after all!
He kept plunging through the forest, screaming as if his throat would tear.
“Captain Rotin! Captain Rotin! Captain! Where are you?! Captain! Uwaaaaah! You bastard of a captain, where the hell are you?!”