[X] Charge into the valley and defend the wounded.
Before you know what you are doing, you are dashing down the incline. You can't really feel your legs moving under you, only the vague sensation of impacts shaking your joints. At the same time the attackers crest the opposite dune.
How splendid they are in their raiments and harnesses! How fearsome are their longspears and axes, glinting with copper leaf in the winter sun! They are one score, now two, and more, a wave of magnificent violence, snarling faces and gleaming armour, sharp edges and trampling hooves.
You are comical before this, a tiny, bedraggled thing. Any observer can see that their merest effort will cast you down like the sands that scatter beneath them.
But you are already before them, already in front of the wounded. You pause to catch your breath, doubling up, holding up your hand as though to ask for respite. They almost pause from the absurdity of it. The outriders at the flanks pull away to a canter, unsure whether their leaders want to entertain this attempt at negotiating a surrender.
The leader doesn't slow. You focus on him, his armour is embossed with copper and gold, his helm bears a crown of stylized brass flame. His eyes are narrowed with hatred behind his visor. Your world does not slow, it is nothing so simple as that. Vision is about more than what the eye sees. Light that enters the eye forms only a fraction of the image that fills the mind. Much of it is a kind of focused imagination. You simply imagine more. The sky darkens, sound dims. You feel a closeness of pressure across your skin, in your inner ear. You see the hiss of Essence on his breath, like bubbles in deep water.
You notice, dreamily, that your adversary has thrown a weapon at you in his approach. It's a hatchet, with a fine edge of glittering steel and flattened striking face on the obverse. The haft is dappled ivory, like walrus tusk, skilfully carved into flowing, wave-like patterns. Under your fingers the tactile surface brings hazy memories of opium pipes and slow, melting days. You realize you are holding the hatchet in your hand.
The warleader's tasseled spear drifts past your head. You admire the ferocious vigor of his steed, a bay of fifteen hands. Its braided mane rings with tiny bells, like a distant temple calling prayers. You reach out to brush your fingertips against it. You remember summer.
With a flick of your arm, your stolen hatchet slices through the leather cinches affixing the saddle in place on the right side. By the time he has ridden past you, the leader is already sliding off the left side of his saddle as he tries to bring his horse around. By the time he is trampled under the hooves of his beautiful steed, you have killed three others and are midair leaping from one saddle to another.
They are scattering, panicked, unprepared for this kind of resistance. You break a neck. A lance has pierced your shoulder. You swing laterally, underhand, pulverizing a sternum and sending waves of shock through your arm, ignored. You duck under the hooves of a galloping horse and hurl a broken spearhead through a man's throat.
All this feels like it is happening to someone else. You look to the sky, and it is as though the eyes that they remind you of are looking down on you in judgement.
You are kneeling in the bloody ground, your legs unresponsive. Your surviving enemies have fled. You hear yourself breathing, a rusty, hollow sound.
The blonde woman is approaching, her expression unreadable.
You are so very tired.
[ ] Try to stand.
[ ] Try to speak.
[ ] Try to sleep.
