The fort is a monument to a long-past age, a time when some grand kingdom locked its feet and dug its heels into the ground, exerted influence across the world. Once, it would have been imposing, a stellate citadel with five strong towers on each point, the fingers of a grasping hand, ready to close into a smashing fist if any force was foolish enough to assault its walls under the fire of two towers either side.
Now, though, the fort is a ruin, its towers collapsed beneath their own weight — all but one, the furthest from the forest, and no doubt where the militia shelter. Kara has no difficulty swinging herself up over a crumbled bit of wall, creeping along the parapet, and slotting herself into a crook by the surviving tower — especially not with Lily, Jaika, and her goblins outside, drawing all eyes to them.
“My lady wishes for you all to return to your homes,” Lily’s voice, clear and beautiful, fills the clearing. “There is no need for violence, my friends! Truly, she means you no harm.” Kara presses her ear to the tower wall; sound filters through the cracks.
There’s Dalia’s voice, just ever so slightly husky from age, settling into Kara’s ears like an old friend in the guestroom. “It’s a trick,” she hisses.
“A trick? A trick? You must think me foolish, wife, of course it’s a trick!” The new voice is gruff, irritating. “There can be no peace with the goblins.”
“Yes. You understand-”
“So I shall challenge their leader to single combat.”
“N- Alyc, you must not-”
“It is my woman she attacked, my home she invaded!” he barks. “The girl she witched was under my protection. I must be the one to answer this.”
“No! I’m telling you-”
“Calm yourself, woman,” says another voice, gruff and overly-familiar. Kara smiles at Dalia’s anger, which ripples through the stones. If the beautiful farmer had allied herself with Kara instead, any man who interrupted her thus would have his tongue torn from his head. “I’ve seen your husband drop men thrice as frightening as that kitten out there. Let it be done already, so that we might all go home.”
“She is a daemon, with untold tricks! You will bring ruin on us all!”
“I stand with Dalia,” says a very interesting female voice, steady and strong. “Who’s to say these heathen goblins honour deals, as men do?”
“What choice do we have? As far as the daemon knows, there could be any number of us in here. In truth, we’re outnumbered 3 to 1.”
“I can kill 50 damned goblins!”
“Yes,” returns Alyc, in a tone that suggests he’s stroking his beard. “They know we are stronger. They will act as cowards! Surround us, besiege us. No. With Thala’s protection I shall strike down their leader, and they will let us go.”
This is all going far better than Kara expected — she swings back down the wall and rejoins her host outside, just in time for Alyc to appear on the wall, Dalia next to him. Kara grins at her and she flushes, looks away. “I propose a challenge, demons,” Alyc says. The setting sun glints off his sword. “You cling to your heathen goddess; I honour Thala, the true. Let me meet your leader in battle, and you shall see your false demon has no power over a man of faith.”
Kara steps forward. The fear on Dalia’s face is plain, only intensified by Kara’s easy, casual stance, like she’s waiting not for combat but for a drink in a tavern. “And when I win,” she shouts, “you will all surrender your weapons, disband the militia, and return to your homes in peace, swearing an oath to never take up arms against me again.”
“No, daemon!” Alyc’s already rattled, banging the stone with his fist. His rage has him trembling, unbalanced. “I shall win, and your goblins shall withdraw to whichever den they came from, and pledge to Thala to never trouble Meadowbrook again.”
“The terms are acceptable.”
“Then prepare to meet your fate.”
Kara notes with no shortage of annoyance that the militia don’t all quit the fort — Dalia and the other woman, whoever she might be, at the very least. With any luck it’s just the two of them, the wife and her guard. Regardless, it seems the bulk of them — perhaps three dozen in all — believe in Alyc’s swaggering. An otherwise fatal mistake, if Kara weren’t so merciful.
They meet just outside the fort’s gate, their arena defined by a circle scratched roughly into the dirt. Kara stands with her longsword ready, Alyc with spear and shield in hand.
“Please be safe,” Lily whispers, squeezing Kara’s hand.
“That’s good, baby. Your love will help Sayla shield me. Make sure Jaika’s pouring her heart out, too, okay?”
The sun’s just about hidden itself, and the world slips into a dim, purple-tinged twilight. The birds of the forest, sensing the duel’s import, silence their twitters and wait with closed beaks. Lily moves clear of the circle, back to Jaika and the others, and the world contracts to just Kara and Alyc, all else discarded. “This is your last chance,” she warns the militia’s champion. “You needn’t throw your life away.”
“You will not deceive me to cowardice, daemon. I shall avenge my wife’s honour.”
“I’ll take good care of her when you’re gone.”
Alyc rages, charging forward for a clumsy thrust, all discipline forgotten. Kara sidesteps and answers with a swing of her own, battering tiny woodchips from his old shield, interposed at the last second. She rolls back, grinning, as he wheels. “You know she was coming to the barn to fuck me, commander?”
“Silence, daemon!” Deep down, every man imagines that his rage is enough to carry the day, should he only be angry enough, but it’s exactly that passion that feeds Kara’s stamina, has her dodging every frantic spear thrust like a cartwheeling circus acrobat. High Dex has its advantages.
“Do not let her unbalance you, husband!” Dalia calls, from somewhere atop the wall. That’s a shame. She won’t have an easy time forgiving me after she sees this.
Kara ducks a thrust and catches Alyc’s unarmoured thigh with her sword, spilling his blood across the grass. Her sword makes a glinting sound as it’s pulled from the flesh, and she resumes her casual saunter around the circle. Alyc, managing to stay on his feet, circles too, growling.
“You know she only thinks she hates me, right? Because she loves me so much?” Kara dodges another charge, misses her followup attack. The two circle again like rival wolves. “She gave me these clothes, after all. Like ‘em?”
Recognising his own tunic and breeches, Alyc roars. “I’ll tear them from you, thieving witch!”
He charges toward her, ducks to the side at the last moment. As she swirls trying to hit him, pain lances through her thigh, still raw from the spear in the church; Alyc grabs a fistful of long, multi-coloured hair and yanks back hard. From the outskirts, Lily cries out. Kara, who should land flat on her back with a dizzying impact, reaps the benefits of her supernatural agility by flinging her momentum into a tight backflip and, on the upswing, stabbing her opponent in the gut with her dagger.
She leaves the knife twanging in place as he falls to his knees, picks up her discarded sword from the dust. The first stars are specking the sky, the entire world painted blue as she yanks Alyc up by his oil-dark hair and places her sword at his throat.
“Mercy!” cries a faceless soldier.
“Spare him!” cries another.
Dalia’s voice is conspicuously absent from the din. Had enough sense to see where this was going. Didn’t want to see it happen. All the better. Kara opens the man’s throat with a vicious slash. His body falls limp, and the militiamen gasp. One shouts in horror, before an older, greying man silences him with a hand on the shoulder.
“We must honour our word,” he says, “lest Thala condemn us as oathbreakers.”
“But- She killed him!”
“Would he have done differently?” Kara asks, arms thrown to the side like a strutting barbarian. “Would any of you have done differently, if it were me at your mercy? No. He knew the risk. I warned him. I offered him, as we stood before you all, the chance to surrender in peace.” She levels her sword, pointing at the greybeard. “That is a wise man. Listen to him, and we will have no more trouble today. Your families await you. I want you to embrace them, to laugh with them, to cry with them. I serve the Goddess of Passion, and your love for your families and neighbours pleases her greatly. It’s that love that took you to this crumbling ruin on the edge of civilisation, to face dangers most men would run from. You have already demonstrated that you are no enemies of mine.”
Greybeard draws his sword and throws it to the dirt. The other men follow his example — some immediately, some hesitantly, but soon the hammering of dropped blades fills the night like the hoofbeats of a marching beast, and Meadowbrook is pacified.
“Jaika, escort our new friends home.” Kara sprints forward, leaps, and hauls herself onto the wall. “Dalia!” she calls. “I need you!”