We were moving along a road between a small village and the larger town where I was to leave the group to seek out any knowledge of a wizard who might be able to help me get home. The attack came out of nowhere. First indication we had that something was wrong was the crossbow bolt embedded in the captain’s neck. The soldiers and Calais drew their weapons immediately and we were swarmed by bandits.
I’m not a professional soldier like these people, but I’ve always been a gamer and have taken lessons in numerous martial arts, though as I’ve mentioned before, never sticking with one long enough to really master it. So I drew one of my knives. I got into a fight with a guy wielding a short sword and, while I didn’t manage to beat him, knocking me down distracted him long enough for someone else to embed an axe in his back.
The woman who had saved me, Emily, had been one of the people I had spent the most time talking with. I knew quite a bit about her. I knew that she had two younger brothers. I knew that she had a fiancé waiting at home. Her favorite flower was the lily(I’m still amazed at the fact that not only does this world have humans, but it has many of the same plants as back home). She would eat shepherd’s pie every day if allowed to, though she liked to top hers with goat’s milk cheese.
She knew about my distrust of clowns and that the first girl I had ever asked out had turned me down when we were thirteen, but agreed when I asked again when we were fifteen. She knew that my violin was given to me by my grandfather, who had died when I was young, and that it had belonged to him, relegated to a shelf after his arthritis had made it impossible for him to play until the day he found out I was interested in learning to play. She even knew that I enjoyed putting cottage cheese seasoned with garlic powder on my pizza, even though she had never heard of pizza before I mentioned it.
She reminded me of my older sister, so it upset me so much when I watched her die. She had offered me a hand to help me up after killing that bandit when a bandit came up behind her. With a sickening crunch, his blade bit through her armor and emerged through her stomach, splattering me with her blood. I still remember the look of surprise and pain on her face and the startled cry that escaped her lips.
Now, I need you to understand something about me. I’ve always been a big guy. You know, tall, fairly muscular, that kind of thing. In part because of this, I had always been one to stick up for my friends. I’ve gotten into a fair few fights because someone I knew had been the target of a bully. Something primal in me just can’t stand to see someone I care about hurt. So, it was completely in character that I jumped to my feet and grabbed the nearest object available, which happened to be the folding shovel in a pocket of my messenger bag(I always wore it, though my violin case was in the wagon). With a flick of my wrist, the shovel was locked into an open position. I struck at the bandit, intent on wiping the smug smirk off of his face.
Things started out okay. I knocked the sword from his hand pretty easily. A smack to the leg threw him off balance, causing him to stumble. The third, however, bounced harmlessly off his helmet, at worst causing a bit of a ringing in his ears. Turns out those shovels aren’t meant to be used as bludgeons against men in metal armor.
Gauntlets versus unprotected faces, on the other hand, well that’s a weapon that works just fine. One blow sent me spinning to the floor. The only thing that saved me was the bandit seeing that his fellows were having trouble against Calais. The paladin had slain several foes already in one on one and two on one combat. Surrounded as he was by multiple foes, the outcome was less certain. Still, he was likely to take most of them with him, that’s how good he was.
My opponent ran off to help bring down the last of the friends I had just made and I was left on the ground, my head spinning. I half watched as I tried to regain my bearing. Calais cut down most of his foes, but a lucky strike from my former opponent had finally brought him down. I’ll never forget the sound of that man’s voice as he laughed at my fallen friend.
“It is over, paladin. Die quickly so I can rifle through your belongings for something of value.” He flipped his sword and prepared for a two handed downward strike, intent on ending Calais’ life once and for all.
Things seemed to go into slow motion as I lumbered to my feet, drawing my boot knife as I stood. I’m not sure if it was the blow to the head or gift from on high, but I suddenly heard Bonnie Tyler singing “Holding Out for a Hero” in my head. I started charging at my foe and threw the knife as I did so, aiming for the gap between his helmet and his mail shirt. Of course, as awesome as it would have been if I had managed to hit my mark, I instead managed to hit him in the helmet. The knife bounced off, doing little more than startling him. But it bought me the extra second I needed.
I impacted him with the force of defensive lineman sacking a quarterback. The force of the impact sent his sword flying and the two of us hit the ground. In the superior position, I pulled the helmet from his head and began striking him repeatedly in the face, determined to crush his skull with my bare hand. He hit me square in the chest with his gauntlet, sending me tumbling off of him. We both leapt to our feet. He drew a backup dagger and charged at me.
Now, I wish I could say what happened next was that I pulled something from my past martial arts training and sidestepped his attack while putting him into an arm lock. Or maybe that I had dropped low and tripped him with a leg sweep. But alas, in that moment, my martial arts dabbling abandoned me.
What did stick with me, however, was years of television. So I did the only thing I could. I swear that I’m not making this up, though I wish I were. With a mighty cry of “That’s my purse! I DON’T KNOW YOU!”, I acted. If you have the same TV watching background I do, you probably know what happened next. The bandit, however, had never even heard of television, much less watched it. So it came as a big surprise when my foot struck him in the manly bits.
You always hear stories about how adrenaline affects you in moments like these. For instance, there’s that one time the mother lifted the burning car off of her children. Or the time the guy rolled the helicopter off of the pilot to save his life. Now, you can add “the time this one guy punted another man five feet into the air with one kick” to the list.
His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the ground. I then kicked him in the crotch a few more times. Okay, so it was more of a stomp than a kick. Then, deciding that it might not be possible to kill someone with kicks to the nuts, I stabbed him in the face with his own dagger. Then, remembering an episode of some show about real stories from the emergency room where a guy survived sticking an ice pick in his hear, I grabbed a nearby weapon and decapitated him to make sure. Somewhat fittingly, it was Emily’s axe I used to do the deed.
Satisfied that he was dead, I surveyed the scene. All my friends were down, the only one possibly still breathing was Calais. All the bandits were dead too. I rushed to Calais side to survey his injuries. Things weren’t looking great. If I didn’t do something quickly, he was going to bleed out.
I cut the straps from his armor and got to work tending his wounds. I used up pretty much everything in the first aid kit in my bag and still had wounds to tend to. I ended up cutting strips of cloth from a blanket I found in the wagon and using those(thoroughly sterilized by soaking in alcohol, of course) to dress the remaining wounds after I stitched them up.
Satisfied that I had done all I possibly could for him, I carefully moved Calais into the wagon. I didn’t want to move him, but I figured it would be better than leaving him on the cold ground. I covered him with another blanket and then started searching for my shovel. Someone had to tend to burying these bodies. Might as well be me.
About the time I located the shovel, the adrenaline wore off and the realization of just how close I had come to death sank in. I dropped to my knees and vomited, even though I had nothing in my stomach but acid to vomit up.
After completing that act, I began the work of digging graves. It took over a day, though it would have taken longer had the ground not been fairly soft. For the bandits, I dug fairly shallow graves. For the soldiers, I dug the full six feet, give or take a few inches. I only stopped to start and tend a fire to give me light to work by, and to check on Calais, occasionally wetting his mouth with a few drops of water. He was still unconscious, but I detected no fever or any signs he was taking a turn for the worse.
It was midday the next day when I finally finished burying the last person. I considered marking the graves with crosses made from whatever I could scavenge, but I figured that it might not be proper to mark their graves with the symbol of my religion. I also considered using their swords as gravestones, but figured that just lead to them getting dug up and looted since I showed that they might be buried with valuables. I ended up settling on simple stone markers. For the soldiers, I marked the stones with their names, using pigments I made from some berries I found nearby.
I checked on Calais again. There was still no change to his condition. I had to decide whether to continue on the path we were traveling before or to turn around and head back to the village a few days behind. I decided on heading forward, rather than back, and hoping for the best. Before we left, I said a prayer on Calais’ behalf. I knew he was a devout sort, so I prayed to his goddess, asking her to help him.
I then kneeled in front of the graves and said a simple prayer for each of them, asking whatever god or goddess they worshipped to carry them safely to their eternal reward. For Emily, I also said a prayer for her family, asking that their deity help them through the troubling news of her death when they received it.
Something about all this prayer opened a floodgate within me. For the first time in years, I said a prayer for myself. Something beyond the short and sweet “Please watch over me, amen” that I often recited before bed. Kneeling on the grass near the road, I made the sign of the cross and clasped my hands tightly. Tears brimmed in my eyes as I prayed aloud. “Lord, it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to you. I’m truly sorry for that. But I come to you in my hour of desperation, begging for your guidance. I know that you set tasks before us to test us, but I fear that this trial you have lain before me is too much for one such as me to bear. I’m not ready for any of this. My life has not prepared me to bear this burden. I should be at home, facing tests of character. Perhaps I should be growing through the loss of a single friend or even a couple friends to a tragic accident, but to lose so many in such a short time, while also fearing for my life, I’m not sure I can do this. I should be at home, worried that I might fail a test, or worried that I damaged my car, or stressing about how many nights of ramen noodles lay before me in order to get that new game I want. My biggest fear should be that a professor doesn’t like me.
“Instead, I’m halfway across the galaxy on a world so very different from my own, a world filled with monsters the likes of which I’ve never seen. A world where magic is a real thing, where the strong prey on the weak with only minimal interdiction by those in authority. I’m a student, not whatever this takes. It’s too much. Please, I’m begging you. Send me home. I can’t do this. Please, help me. I’m so alone. Please…”
Now, when you’re praying and thinking no one can hear you, you certainly never expect anyone to respond. Nonetheless, I heard a voice. “No, not alone.” I nearly jumped out of my skin. Turning to the sound of the voice, I saw Calais sitting up in the wagon.
I quickly made the sign of the cross and said, “Amen.” I then stood and admonished my friend for risking tearing out his stitches.
He simply laughed and removed one of his bandages. I saw that the wound had miraculously healed. “One of the perks of being a paladin. I have magic hands.”
Realization dawned. “Oh crap! Should I not have buried them?”
He laughed. “No, there are limits. I think they’d be grateful to you for the care you’ve taken.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Let’s continue on to the town we were originally headed for. There should be some other Chelish soldiers there. We can ask them to deliver news of what happened here to the families. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”
“Sounds good to me.”
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