Does this read right?

[Damiynn]

Chapter 16
Betrayal
Travis set a furious pace out of the mountains. The weary and footsore party was greatly relieved when they finally put step onto the softer earth marking the beginnings of the forests paths.

Everyone, including the steadfast Kendle, was dreaming of the moment that they would enter one of Embry’s inns and could for the first time in almost two weeks fall into a soft bed.

Alyssa, had that morning wrinkled her nose in disgust, saying to each that first they needed a visit the baths before fouling up some hardworking innkeeper’s sheets with their stink.
No one noticed anything odd in the darkening woods as they contemplated the coming delights. That was until they passed into a narrowed section on the trail and saw a group of mounted horsemen facing them farther down the path wearing the brown armor of mercenaries.

The moment their eyes met, the knights spurred their mounts forward. Their large warhorses thundered out of the semi darkness, hurtling towards the group.

Travis yelled to spread out, then leapt out of the way. His warning was a hair late. Kendle, Alyssa and Mathis were captured as twenty more knights in brown armor dropped out of the overhead trees and caught them in a large wire mesh net.

As if they had done the same thing a hundred times before, the knights crisscrossed each other on the ground. In about half an eye blink, three of the companions were caught and wrapped tight. The wire net prevented them from moving inside of its cutting mesh and didn’t allow them any space to draw a weapon.

Alyssa, still being able to speak, began chanting. One of the knights saw her and raised his sword. With a vicious swing, he hit her hard on the side of the head with it’s flat side. Silencing her voice before the spell was finished.

Damien, out of the corner of his eye saw that Travis’ leap had carried him out of the path of the net but had put him into the path of the charging horses. One rider was swinging a heavy broad sword in a fast descending arc straight at his head.

Reacting without thought and using years and years of fighting experience the blademaster dodged quickly and the blade’s edge missed. If the bald headed blademaster hadn’t already cut off all of his hair, the sword’s sharpened edge would have shorn it from his head.

Gathering his magic, Damien quickly said the words to a steelskin spell. Silver ripples surrounded him, encasing his body in living metal. Unless one of the mercenary knights was wielding a magical sword, he would be impervious to their blows until the spell wore off.

Twisting both bracers on his cleverly designed Esian ironwood staff to the left, two foot long double edged blades hidden inside shot into view. Moving like a black and gold blur, he threw himself into the fray with an irresolute and determined expression etched onto his face.

Damien wasn’t about to lose another friend to Morid’s doors and if these mercenaries were looking to reap the thousand gold mark reward that had been put on Alyssa’s head, he was going to make them earn their money. That alone made them fair game.

Hearing a warning yell, he reacted without thought, throwing his body down as a sword stabbed the air where his back had been a second before. He rolled over just as another mounted knight leaned over in his saddle and attempted to stab him again.

Damien’s mind processed the distance and he almost grinned in spite of the situation as he thrust his own longer weapon upwards. The ironwood staff drove the tempered foot of folded Esian steel blade straight through a gap in the knight’s armor, burying deep into his armpit.

Damien saw a startled expression cross the mercenary’s face as the blade pierced his lung, his hands involuntarily letting go of the reins and his sword as he slid off of his mount sideways.

Dropping onto the earth with a dead thud, he almost fell directly on top of Damien. The battlemage scrambled crablike backwards, and narrowly avoided being crushed by the armored man.

Using his magic, the young dark haired battlemage who had been Westlake’s city champion in both open handed and weapons combat propelled his body up off of the earth and back onto his feet. Working more magic as fast as he could gather it, he cast another spell on himself. This one made his movements twice as fast.

It was then that he remembered he didn’t have to move out of the way of the sword’s path. It couldn’t have hurt him due to the steelskin spell. This though was the first real time he had used his abilities in mass combat and that little tidbit had fled his mind. Damien resolved to never ever forget again how his magic aided him.

Feeling an odd sort of unease as if danger was almost on him he turned and saw Caliban standing behind his back. His slate blue eyes were blank and an unreadable expression was on his pale face. Another man was also there, behind the white haired Caliban, his sword raised. Using the speed of the spell he had just cast and stretching out his whole body in a lunging thrust, Damien struck.

His staff moved in a blur of lightning fast speed in Caliban’s direction. The deadly blade passed within an inch of the white haired assassin mage’s ribs and pierced the heart of the knight standing behind him. The outstretched thrust was perfect and before the man’s sword had dropped out of his lifeless fingers he was already dead.

“Thank me later,” Damien called out, his dark blue eyes flashing, then he spun with an almost impossible quickness back into the melee erupting all about him and the others not captured in the wire net.

Caliban stood motionless, watching the battlemage move into the fray and a wave of indecision tore through him.

The angular faced Braden had been knocked down by a group of the mercenary knights, they had encircled him with their swords. Of Travis, Damien saw nothing, then spotted him as he spun out from behind a tree, his body flowing in a living dance of death. The blademaster’s weapons were working in unison as he quickly disarmed the man he was fighting with several well placed strikes and swings of his sword and mace. Kicking out with a booted foot, he caught another opponent in the stomach, doubling him over. A quick flash of steel, a twist of his body, and both mercenaries fell to the earth, their bodies spurting red blood.

Caliban, Damien noticed, still wasn’t fighting. Instead he was just staring at him as if he had never seen him before. Suddenly as if reaching a decision the white haired young man’s hands shot down to his thighs and withdrew the same talon like fighting blades that he had used in the fight with the Golath. He threw himself at the knights moving in on the fallen Braden.

Damien watched in shocked amazement as the white haired young man with the slate blue eyes became a living breathing killing machine. He was awed by the devastation that the white-haired young man created with his long talon like blades in a matter of a few seconds. Using the double bladed knives that ran along the outer edges of his hands and the hand guards protecting his fingers, Caliban parried and caught blades with one hand and with movements flowing like quicksilver he cut his opponents arms and legs almost in half with the other. Blood flew through the air around the white haired young man as he hacked apart the mercenaries with his enchanted blades.

To Damien’s incredulity, Caliban didn’t stop with just the blades, he also used his elbows, knees, feet and head as weapons.

Somebody, Damien realized, watching him cut through three men in about as much time as it took for him to swing his bladed hands, had spent a lot of time training this young man claiming to be nothing more than a simple bodyguard. His strikes were perfectly precise in their application and the way he fought almost seemed familiar. In an odd sort of way Damien almost knew what the silver haired young man was going to do before he did it. At first Caliban started out sluggishly to Damien’s trained eye almost as if he was being deliberately slow, but once his body took over, his training showed through, at least to Damien’s eyes. Not many knew how to use all of the weapons that a body gave them.

No moves were wasted by the young man out of the capitol city. It was an economy of motion and movement, simple and efficient with devastating results much like Damien realized after a moment, he had been trained.

Caliban was halfway through the fourth man encircling Braden when he stiffened, recognizing him. His blades froze in mid swing. These men weren’t mercenaries at all, they were krannion knights from the palace in Kallamar, protectors of the Throne and Crown like himself. He knew the one who he had just about thrust his blades into.

Quickly he realized these men must have been sent by his father or the Royal Regent to intercept the group and dispose of them and recover the rings. The Dragon rings naming the heir to the Throne and Crown that Damien wore upon his fingers.

Indecision filled him and his doubts about Damien truly being the true heir swam once more up to the surface. As Braden regained his feet with a grateful nod, he turned away from the older man and watched the younger battlemage move into more of the fighting, not sure about what he felt he should do. His job was to kill Damien Daverge at the first opportunity and this might be a good time to do it.

As Caliban watched him fight, he too was filled with awe. Damien’s lithe and lightening fast form moved quickly into the chaos of the battle, his deadly staff twirling like a spinning whirlwind of death. A solid thwack, thwack, thwack sound accompanied it each time it moved. As the staff struck a succession of multiple targets consisting of arms, thighs heads and chests, blood flew from its two blades in a rain of red that drenched the grass around the battlemage’s feet.

The men around the black haired battlemage fell away from the brutal assault and the enhanced speed of his attack and tried hard to regroup. That was what Damien had been waiting for. Fire filled one of his hands, shooting out from his fingertips in a spray of flame. It engulfed two of the closest retreating knights. Globes of force power filled his other hand and he threw them at the other men attacking his companions. His magic guided the globes unerringly towards his enemies and they were blown back away from his friends.

Damien risked a quick glance away from his fight and saw Travis and Braden surrounded by men in brown armor. As his dark blue eyes met the blademaster’s, Travis called out in a desperate voice, “Run, there are way too many to fight off and you must not allow yourself to be captured.”

Damien hesitated for a moment, watching the two struggling blademasters, wanting to lend assistance but held back and heeded his father’s blademaster’s words. He knew his duty and what had to be done, but it was hard. Travis had been like a family member to him since he was ten and he couldn’t bear to leave him or any of the others behind if he fled.

Kendle and Mathis were also shouting from their wire mesh prison for him to run away, to flee into the woods. Then he saw both blademasters fall under a rush of charging knights and despite the agony filling him at doing so, he turned away, doing exactly what Travis and the others were telling him.

As he started to run somehow Caliban’s foot ended up between his legs and he sprawled headlong onto the soft forest floor. Before he could get back onto his feet and scramble away he felt a solid weight land on his back. A hand pushed him back down, face first into the earth. Long fingers intertwined tightly in his dark hair holding him there, forcing him downward. Then a sharp blade pricked the back of his neck.

Damien actually felt the edge cut through his steelskin spell. He knew whoever had him pinned on the ground also held a magical blade. Not knowing what else he could do the young battlemage stopped moving.

Caliban’s soft voice filled his ear with a whisper, “One move, one spell, one single twitch sire and you are dead! Do you understand me Damien Daverge? Don’t speak, just nod your head.”

Damien did the only thing that he could do if he wanted to live without that razor sharp blade against the back of his neck piercing him. He slowly nodded. He did notice oddly that Caliban had called him sire.

In a loud voice that Damien knew was infused with magic, Caliban called out over the sound of the clashing blades. “Cease fighting and surrender or else I will kill him!” The tone of his voice was enough to let all know he was serious and his position showed the two blademasters he could do it.

Only Braden remained standing and he froze, his sword dripping blood.

“Put down your weapons and surrender or,” Caliban turned his blade slightly and nicked the inside of Damien’s ear. In spite of himself Damien felt his body jerk away from the edge and the intense pain. He knew that the blade Caliban was holding up to the others had his blood on it. As he glanced sideways from his place on the ground he saw Braden lower his blade his blade to the earth.

“Good,” said Caliban and they both watched as men in brown armor grabbed hold of both blademasters arms.

Suddenly Damien felt sense of warmth from Caliban’s armor and his grip on the back of his neck tightened into an iron vice. A surge of magical energy shot through him. Weakness filled him as magic sucked the life right out of him and then there was nothing.

[Nik]

Er, yes-- I nearly fell off my swivel chair.

IMHO, writing realistic combat is difficult, but a meleé is far worse due to the fur-ball. Did this take as long to craft as the detail and choreography suggest ??

Um, "an irresolute" should be "a resolute"...

[timelord4]

Damiynn

You started really well, then went into a massive info dump about battle. You described the whole battle thing with four pieces of dialogue (not counting the 'Good.' at the end). Last time I did that, I had no choice, it was a battle between two groups of Dire Wolves. See what I mean. Humans yell and scream and swear, abuse, get excited, scared, terrified. All these emotions that can be exploited by voice so that the reader can relate to what's happening. You want the reader to forget to get off at their train stop, let their bus go past, so what, catch the next one. That's hooked them. They're in the picture and don't want to stop reading in case they miss out on something.

OK. Enough prattle. You can see what I'm driving at. You got a lot of tell and not enough show. Remedy; clever dialogue. Also watch the *You know Bob... then what happened Bob... * syndrome. Happens in describing battles.

Small hint Damiynn. When you get to a place in your writing where you have started a sentence with As... then went on to describe the action, and followed it by using Before... and something else happens. STOP writing and go back over it. You've got to the stage where you're in a frenzy and can't get it out fast enough... unfortunately. It's usually info dumps. Go back and animate your characters and make then cry uncontrollably, laugh hysterically, swear like a fish mongers wife, be arrogant, cheeky, dimwitted, a whole host of things to make the reader react the same way.

Well, thats IMO. Hope you can get a bit out of that. BTW, once it's cleaned up, I think it's going to be terrific.

[Damiynn]

I appreciate the comments and would like a few more, anything that cleans it up before it goes out would be good.