-
Mariah's tears were slowly drying on her cheeks as she smiled wanly at Jame. In a soft voice she joked "First you hit me, then you heal me, and now you comfort me; what can I do to repay you Jame?" Hearing his sage words of advice, the red haired thief nodded. His words were correct, if she was not going to suffer, and not get the short end of the stick, she would have to use her head from now on. Her smile grew warmer as she thought From now on, whether I'm on a mission for the guild, or just in need of shelter, I'll use my head. It isn't always the greatest idea to rush head first into things. I'll end up more in boiling water, then in a safe, and secure shelter...
As she turned to watch the blizzard, she felt Jame's hand leave her shoulder. Blinking she turned to look at him, but he was already gone, her mouth fell open as she watched him transform into a dragon. So, that is why he was no where around, he isn't fully human... still in shock, Mariah hadn't yet picked up her shotgun. Jame had told her to prepare, but she had not expected him to turn into a dragon right before her eyes.
"Miss!" Leaves had halted the horses, as the grey haired warrior in front of them smashed through the brittle fence. The dwarf had noticed that the red eyed lass had not heard the noise. Poking her shoulder he shouted "Pay attention! Grab that shotgun lass, we're approaching the enemy!"
Shaking her head clear of its dazed state, the thief moved to grasp the cold gun in her hands. She could feel the freezing temperature getting to her. Her cloak was not warm enough for this, her chilled hands grasped the butt of the gun, and she slid her finger into the trigger. Getting settled again, her eyes then turned to the vast courtyard in front of them.
Humans, many of them, were yelling and screaming. Swords, and spears clashed against one another, as the Alerarian government and Parisians of the church fought each other. As the caravan blazed through, Mariah shrieked and fired off a shot at a soldier who noticed her approaching. The bullet caught the man by surprise and he fell softly into the icy snow.
As flakes begin to turn the red haired thief's hair white, Mariah clicked to reload the gun. Her eyes were slanted as she prepared her next shot. She was fearful, inexperienced at battle. She wasn't sure how well she could do, but she prayed that by the end of this, she'd be safely through here and on her way back home to the guild.
-
The snow was very cold, but it was a different kind of cold than before. With adrenaline surging through his body, it barely fazed him and the shivers that it caused only added to the excitement. Djakara commanded the driver forward, waiting expectantly as he approached what he believed was the right range.
As he moved closer and closer to the battle, he could practically feel the violence on his skin. It was a tingling sensation that came all over him and he became more and more eager the closer and closer he got to the fighting. On his home world, war had always been an abstract concept, a reason to rally around the flag and support the soldiers, but he had never experienced war this way. The violence was like a party, a massive orgy of weapons and blood in which all the rules of propriety were forgotten.
There was electricity in the air, and this time it wasn’t Djakara creating it. He looked on eagerly, firing the first round of bullets early in his eagerness.
“Ey, lad, ye said ye wanted to keep as much of them,” the dwarven cartmaster said.
Djakara only replied with a snide expression as he hurriedly reloaded the weapon. The war itself might have been dazzling, but firing the weapon was even better. The young Freiherr knew that Godhand was stronger and Jame had a number of powerful abilities, but none of them were behind a weapon as powerful as his.
“Gilead, don’t you give up on me…” Djakara said. “We’re going for the kill this time.”
The dwarf nodded.
As the wagons grew closer to the battle, they began to diverge. The Gatling gun was in the center, and now it was exposed. From a strategic standpoint, this might have been disastrous, the one equalizing asset that his band of weapons shippers had was now being exposed without protection. However, Djakara didn’t see it that way. He was far too excited. He wanted his enemies to see him, he wanted to see the looks in their eyes as the gun mowed them down.
The Gattling gun had been reloaded. Djakara began to work the crank, certain now that he was doing it right as he had already fired off one round. It was fortunate now, the certainty he possessed made him feel invincible.
“Now it’s my time to shine,” he figured. “After all of that, it’s finally my time.” He imagined telling the story back in Alerar about how with nothing more than a few dwarven drives and guards, he was able to mow down an army with the gun he had assembled.
-
The marksman felt justified as he fired off a round at the demon summoner in the distance. Still, he felt something just wasn't right with shooting at such a pretty young girl, even if she was so much paler than he usually liked them. Nonetheless, he had aimed badly to begin with, and the jolt that the wagon took as it rolled over a misplaced stone made the bullet fly wide.
His shoulders slumped and his gun arm dropped to his side as he shook his head slowly in distaste, dirty blond locks falling over his eyes. He turned away from the opening at the rear of the cart, leather boots tapping on
wood as he strode towards an opened crate. His eyes caught on a glint of steel in the wooden box, and the merchant kneeled to look inside. Armor, he thought. Ought to make some use of what we've got. As is, I've got little to stop an arrow or a sword. Leon shrugged off his longcoat, the metal studs in the shoulders clinking against each other as it fell. Searching through the crate, he found a simple chain shirt, all the ringlets made of polished steel so that it shimmered as he handled it. A smile parted his pursed lips, pearly whites glinting like the metal before them. "This'll do."
He pulled the rattling shirt over his head and replaced his studded leather longcoat. As he reloaded his pistol, using the glowing red marble of kiramaini he'd found earlier, he heard a loud crash from outside, followed a minute or so later by a shotgun blast and the rapid unloading of a gatling gun. He crept to the rear of the wagon, pulling back the flap and poking his head out. Satisfied that he would be safe in his climb, he clambered into his precarious position on top of the cart, his stance wide to keep him from falling off the moving vehicle.
"Lily," he whispered to the flintlock, naming his new pet weapon, "it's about damn time you got a proper christening." With that, he pointed the gun at the heart of the church's forces, cocked the hammer, and squeezed the trigger.
(It's up to the next poster how powerful the blast is from the gun. It should be a small fiery explosion.)
-
Now that Godhand had broken the walls down, Djakara and Leon Adalbert had gone on the offensive. Jame wanted to get into the action as soon as possible. As a dragon, he was the weapon himself, but he knew, against the odds, he would need to be careful. Even with the blessings of Aglarlin, his dragon scales were still relatively tender, and they could be pierced by swords rather easily. The issue of how the wounds would translate to humanoid form was another concern for him.
With his face stern the half dragon let out a long breath of fire, picking off the back of the lines of the church forces. They were mostly peasants, haphazard in their organization, and when they saw Jame, they began to panic. The Salvarian soldiers were much more disciplined, and while a few of them looked on in awe, as a group, they were able to take advantage and work more efficiently. Jame was glad he could give them this advantage merely by flying around, and the few people mowed down by Djakara and Leon Adalbert only helped to add to the peasants panic. The explosion from Leon's pistol had left over twenty peasants dead, and far more wounded and confused.
Jame took no joy in burning the peasants. He had felt bold earlier when he had been fighting the undead, but the way that fate had dealt him such a sudden twist loomed in his mind. Fate had taught him a hard lesson, that even in moments of supreme power, the distance between success and failure was not all that much.
The parallels between the assault on Eluriand and this battle at the Salaturn Church would have been unnerving if Jame thought about them too much. In both cases, Jame was fighting alongside a state that he didn’t really have much attachment to, for reasons that he couldn’t put into words. Both times he was running on a mess of feelings, the comparisons between himself and his father, the women who stirred feelings in him, and the things that he hoped to do. The parallels were chilling, especially since Jame had failed in Raiaera.
The air was becoming thick with tension, and the battles between peasants and soldiers had become so encompassing that he could no longer use his flames. He was just as likely to harm his allies as he was his enemies. He knew this wasn’t going to help Djakara and the rest that planned on using their firepower. Scowling, the half dragon scanned the area, hoping that with his vantage point, he might be able to take out the church leaders.
Inside the stone church, Jame could see a few shadows from behind a stained glass window. There was nothing he was able to discern about the people it concealed, other than there seemed to be a heated debate among them.
“Control center,” Jame realized. Without any hesitation, he flew towards it, crashing his claws against the glass, shattering it as a volley of arrows came his way. A few bounced off his scales, but most of them fell back down to the ground harmlessly.
Quickly, Jame unleashed a breath of fire. By the time it had dissipated, the people who had been behind the glass had disappeared. He cringed and flew back up into the air to get out of the range of a second volley of arrows.
-
Godhand remained stock still and with a perfectly calm expression on his face while his comrades roared and raced past him. The mercenary had served in many wars all over the world and he had the scars to prove it, but being back in an honest-to-God battlefield really made him nostalgic. He'd spent the better part of a decade doing wet work for the mob, the quiet jobs where you snuck around some guy's house before popping him in the back of the head when he leaned down to sip at a spoonful of tomato soup. Lousy work. All that creeping really shot the Hell out of a man's nerves. Those new electric alarms Alerar was making were probably the worst thing that ever happened to Godhand.
But out here there was no need for that sort of thing. No hiding or stalking or sneaking around; he was back in his element. Power! He rarely got a chance to show off, usually trying to play it cool and quiet and keep his true strength a mystery. And it was a good thing, too. Just look at Letho. Probably one of Althanas' greatest heroes and yet he couldn't go one day without some upstart trying to make a name for himself by taking him out. Godhand didn't have that problem. But protected by the guise of anonymity, he was free to really "open her up". He couldn't wait.
The swordsman burst forth from where he was standing, moving through the battlefield at an astounding speed. Anyone that got in his way even by accident was instantly decimated; it was like watching a cannonball getting fired through a horde of pins. When he reached the area where the battle was thickest he ground to a halt before making his presence known with a savage crouching palm strike to the person who was faring the best in the fight. He entered the horse stance, the frozen earth shattering and sinking beneath his feet when he grit his teeth and tensed his body to it's maximum. His forearms began to shake like overloaded beakers before he roared and swept his arms around himself. Using that same momentum he drove his left elbow into the abdomen of a churchie that had tried to charge him before lunging forward and driving his fist into a man's throat. More and more men began to charge him but he never moved from his position or turned his head; his arms were a blur and his face a strained scowl as he flung back attack after attack and zealot after zealot. Finally they seemed to take the hint and formed a circle around him about six feet in every direction.
Godhand shifted his eyes before stepping forward resolutely, never breaking stance. The soil collapsed under his right foot and he lunged forward again, making wider movements this time and moving all around the circle. He seemed to batter their ranks and the circle around him grew exponentially until he had to quickly unsheathe, slice, and resheathe his Muramasa to get at those that were just out of his reach. All his movements were vicious and circular, always seeming to lead back to the center of the circle. More men got swept up in his strikes; he moved through them like a tornado.
He was home.
-
Even though Djakara was shocked by the amount of raw carnage his convoy had already caused, he wasn’t discouraged from his dream of having the most kills. He wanted to collect them now, to the point where he had all but forgotten about the causes of the war. Instead, the young boy just wanted to be counted, to be seen as tough, an equal in the eyes of Althanas’ toughest warriors. Djakara noticed the way that Godhand respected Jame, and he assumed that was because of the half dragon’s martial prowess. Now, with the Gatling gun, Djakara knew that he could change everyone else’s estimation.
All but the most basic actions had faded away from Djakara. He still breathed, but he didn’t notice it. His hands no longer shook, his mind had been completely purged of fear. There were just two things that Djakara did, wind the gears and fire the gun. He had become a part of the machine, just as capable of thought and emotion as a trigger and a crank shaft. He didn’t care that peasants were screaming in pain, that stray bullets had hit some of the soldiers, or that any of these people wouldn’t be returning home to their families.
Most of all, Djakara didn’t remember his parents, the early demonstrations on his home planet, or the end of the Ethical Law. He didn’t think enough to realize he was becoming just like the people he despised. First, when Djakara had come to Althanas, he swore that he’d put the life of Faraiaera behind him, and that the brutal ways of his planet would end when he escaped the Water’s Edge. When he’d first come to ALthanas though, he’d found this planet was hardly better than one he’d left. Slightly more civilized, but technologically primitive. Djakara couldn’t cope with that, so he’d struggled for comfort. He’d found none, no opportunities, save for the sale of weapons. He’d assured himself that it was alright, that he wasn’t the one doing the killing, even when he spoke to none other than the current High Graf of Alerar about the necessity of starting a civil war.
Both Djakara and Schynius had decided that the Salvarian civil war and rise of Xem’zund were not a massive waste of life, but a godsend for Alerar. They provided the optimal diversions from national politics, and Djakara had welcomed them. At the time, he’d rationalized his guilt by reminding himself that it wasn’t him who had done the killing, that the wars were going to happen any ways, and that he was only trying to profit off a situation that would have been terrible regardless of what he did. The opportunity to give Jame the weapons might have been humane, but the whole time that the young Freiherr had lead Jame along, because he expected to charge Raiaera a particularly dear price for the weapons.
Now, though, he was killing, and morbidly, Djakara was keeping count, mentally listing every corpse he had felled. After the battle, he would puff up his chest, and brag about his killings to the red haired girl, who would be awed, and to Godhand and Jame, who would still be impressed. He doubted that both of them would be able to match him, both of their energies were finite, but the machine gun had no limits.
“Move in closer,” Djakara shouted to his driver. With the walls broken down, he wanted to continue the onslaught. He wanted to see the people he felled closely, and he wanted the people who he had felled to see him and know him as their death dealer.
“Sure lad?” the dwarven driver asked.
“Do it, damnit!” Djakara shot back like a petulant child. The dwarf complied.
Djakara unleashed another volley of bullets, this one targeted at the archers. He grinned eagerly, watching as they began to duck in cover after the first few had been slain. Later, Djakara would find a way to rationalize the killings, but for the moment, he was content just being known as a monster.
-
The steady beats of her horse’s hooves took her farther and farther from the battle. From the screams of pain, the shouts of victory and the battle cries that reigned, rose and fell. Their sounds a cacophony, an orchestra of death that was oddly quite beautiful to her ears in the way that it travelled through the air. And the farther she travelled from it, the safer she began to feel. Once she felt a good enough distance away, she pulled on the reigns of her horse, bringing Firnin to a stop and turning the beast around to once again watch the battle unfold.
It was a beautiful sight, stunning evening. It was a macabre dance where those in it fought for the most basic thing; their life. They shouted and cried, they lived and they died and she had nothing to do with it. No blood was upon her hands this time, for her plan had never come into fruition, but she was suddenly without care for that. The battle was far more interesting and in the end, she wasn’t sure whom she wanted to win or even cared to win. No one down there knew who she was and only what she looked like, just a face amongst a crowd and at the end of it they might not even remember she had ever existed. That was of course if they survived the entire ordeal.
Their strength was impressive, far beyond anything she could have imagined a human capable of. And their fighting prowess could have been legendary, especially from the one man who could turn himself into a Dragon. Never before had she seen such a thing and she doubted she ever would again. The man who had threatened her with torture had a breath-taking beauty to the way he fought. If ever she were to hire a mercenary, surely she would look for someone as powerful as him and loyal to his employer as well.
For a few moments she watched, as large bullets from a stationary machine gun tore through peasant and soldier alike, she watched. The ground was soon becoming stained with blood, splattered in all directions as the bodies of those who had fallen hampered those who stilled lived. There was still time for her to enter this battle. She could always summon another demon, one that would enjoy this carnage, but it would be pointless. They had already beaten two of her demons and rather easily at that, she was not about to summon a third just so he could be killed as well. It was a waste of a perfectly good and powerful demon, one sadly not powerful enough to go up against these men, these titans.
With no more left for her here, A’rai once again turned her horse around and began heading towards her home. It was a ride from here, less than an hour but one she would take comfort in knowing she would be safe and had done her best in this altercation. The wound upon her hand throbbed and though the bleeding had stopped, the wound was aggravated and she would need to treat it whence she was home. Hopefully, she could minimize it and leave barely a scar upon her skin.
((SPOILS:
Glock 17: The Althanas equivalent of the earth known Glock 17. It’s a 9mm pistol with a magazine capacity for a standard of 17 rounds, though the magazine can also hold 19. There is a safety along the side of it which allows the gun to be handled without fear of it being accidentally triggered. The entire gun is made from Titanium, a metal well known for resisting heat and fire. During A’rai’s escape from the caravan, the slide was somehow jammed and an unspent bullet got stuck inside, making the gun unusable until she can get it fixed. She also acquired three magazines from one of the crates with the gun, each magazine holds 17 rounds. ))
-
Mariah's eyes widened as she saw many men, soldiers and peasants alike, fall before her eyes. So far in this battle she had only slain one man, a peasant, whose green eyes had filled with shock once the bullet pierced his heart. The blood that fell form his body had stained the snow red, like a crimson flower. After this, she had aimed her shotgun at a mass of soldiers and peasants whose weapons were clashing together loudly, but, before she could fire off a shot, they had been killed by the stationary machine gun that the dark skinned youth was operating.
Watching the bodies fall like toppled dominos, Mariah sighed, as she swiveled to point the gun at a mass of more peasants and soldiers she thought This is a bloodbath...worse then anything a thief can do! They call us monsters, for taking what isn't ours...but look at what they are doing! They kill and slaughter for gain! We at least don't kill if we can avoid it! gritting her teeth, Mariah felt like pulling out and pulling back, as she swiveled to disappear into the wagon, a hand touched her shoulder.
"Lass, that won't do ya any good," Leaves said his broad shoulders hunched as he drove the wagon past the bodies, tugging the reins to a halt as one of the soldiers got trampled by one of the frightened horses, he continued " we need to fight our way outta here lassy. Or else we'll die!"
Mariah groaned, her eyes were closed as she gripped the cold metal of the shotgun, the cool weapon made her remember where she was. She was in the middle of a war, in the middle of a smuggling deal. She had to keep going, the red haired thief had to make it out of here alive. Or else, she knew that the guild would mourn her death, much as they had mourned Mother's.
With this thought in mind, the young thief turned now resolute, she had only one way out of this mess; and that was to fight. Cocking the trigger back, Rose let lose another bullet as she aimed it at a peasant that was over powering a young brown haired soldier boy. The peasant moved to stab his iron pitchfork into the boy's stomach, but shock filled his eyes as blood blossomed from his own stomach. Turning as he fell to the ground, his slowly dying eyes caught sight of the red haired girl reloading her shotgun. The soldier boy just stood dumbfounded, as Mariah prepared another shot to fire at whoever got near her. She was getting nearer to the church, and as she stared at the glassy windows, she wondered just who waited inside.
-
With fierce hand to hand combat practically making it impossible for anything but the most precise breath of fire to be successful, Jame didn’t know what to do. The original arrival of the convoy had completely unsettled the inexperienced peasants, but it seemed that the entire strategy of the soldiers had been torn asunder as well. Godhand in particular was moving as if he also had the Blessings of Aglarlin on his side, and between Leon’s explosive bullets and Djakara’s tremendous gun, the tide was beginning to turn in favor of the vastly outnumbered soldiers, but at an important price. They could no longer use their advantage of being the better trained force.
Jame shook his head, he hadn’t realized this unintended side effect. Though the status of the Salvarian army didn’t directly relate to his goal of getting the weapons to Raiaera, they were too important to be killed because of haphazard strategy. Since his fiery attacks were of little use and there was really no where he could land all that well, the half dragon began to scan the area for the soldiers’ commander.
Soon, Jame found the man. He was riding on a horse, brandishing an older flintlock rifle bravely as he shot at an oncoming hoarde of peasants, only just able to hold them at bay. Jame could tell the man was the leader because there were disheveled maps strewn on the ground all around the man and his horse, presumably knocked out from the saddle bags by the conflict.
“If we’re going to combine our strategies, I’m going to have to act fast,” Jame realized. The man was doing a great job fighting off the peasants, but there was only so long that he’d be able to survive. The numbers game was working against the soldiers far too much at the Salaturn church.
Quickly, Jame scorched through the sky, swooping past all the carnage to reach the soldier captain. Once there, he began to scoop up the attacking peasants in his mouth and throw them away like they were little more than rag dolls. He worked fast, and even though one of them had managed to scratch his face with a sword, the half dragon had managed to free the old battle grizzled warrior.
“Thanks,” the grey haired soldier said gruffly. “Captain Sean Flynn. We’re here to escort your convoy…”
The terse introduction was likely all the situation could afford, and so Jame replied only with, “jump on my back.”
Though there was a bit of reluctance from Captain Flynn, he climbed up Jame’s neck and sat on his back, moving quickly to avoid the sudden volley of arrows that were aimed at the half dragon now that he had lowered himself back into their range. Jame didn’t even wait until Flynn was properly seated before he lifted himself back up into the sky. Once they were hovered over the battle, they exchanged a few more words.
“There are no hills here,” Captain Flynn declared, rubbing his chin testily. “I could barely see what was going on…” From new vantage point on Jame’s back, the veteran fighter was reassessing the battle, and from the tone of his voice, Jame could tell that he wasn’t pleased with what he saw.
“They’ve lost any sense of direction,” Jame said. “They’re just killing whoever’s near. There’s no place for me to really even get in there…”
Captain Flynn snorted. “Your people aren’t helping much either there,” he said. “That boy with the gun’s behaving like something else, just a dumb boy with a gun.”
Jame suppressed a guffaw at Djakara’s expense, as he flew back towards the church, now that he’d shattered the glass window, he figured that Captain Flynn could use it to coordinate the efforts. Jame would wait with him for the moment, and the two of them could plot together before the half dragon conveyed his message back to Godhand and the rest. The situation on the ground was delicate, practically hanging on the edge of a knife, and Jame feared that acting too quickly could hurt them even worse. Even if it took him out of the battle for a bit, the worst that could happen was that the soldiers would be able to regroup.
With that, the half dragon broke on through the window, destroying some of the frame itself as he bust into the church with more force than he had used just to cast fire earlier. The room on the steeple had seen better days, a long line in the carpet had been burned out, and there was just burned floor and ash. In the panic with which they had left, a few vases had been knocked over. However, everything else had been spared from Jame’s breath of fire, and the ornate vases and elaborate drapes created a strange juxtaposition with where the war below had touched.
Immediately, Jame turned back into his humanoid form. A few drops of blood fell from his cheek, most likely from the wound he had suffered rescuing Captain Flynn. He wiped the blood away quickly and was surprised how easily it healed, leaving little more than a faint scar on his cheek within a matter of seconds.
“That’ll be a mark of courage,” Captain Flynn said appreciatively before he stepped out to the large opening Jame had created to get a better view of the battle. “You going to relay messages for me?”
Jame nodded, but he was a bit surprised by the mention of a mark. The Blessings of Aglarlin had heretofore protected him from any injury being severe. In Raiaera, shortly after receiving the gift, he had been injured, only to have the wound seal without a mark. Now, as he felt his cheek, he could sense the slightest hint of a scar. The blessings were beginning to wear off, he was no longer invincible.
“I’ll do what I can,” Jame said, suddenly speaking with considerably less certainty than he had moments ago. Mortality had returned, and now he was very glad that he had grabbed the chain mail earlier from the wagon.
-
Screams of pain and fear reached Leon's ears, sending a chill up his spine as he watched the deaths of the peasants his blast had taken. He didn't like killing, but this was war. Kill or be killed. Him or them. And the young trader's son wasn't about to let it be him.
Dropping down into a crouch atop the wagon, he poured a little more gunpowder into his Lily, rolling a small blue bead in after, its surface seeming to suck heat from the very air around it, replacing that with chill mist. Once he had loaded and cocked the pistol, he stood and made several leaps forward, standing on the foremost supporting arch of the wagon's canvas. He peered down on the battlefield, where the Freiherr's gatling destroyed rank after rank of churchgoers, and the large mercenary Godhand had cut his own swathe into the crowd. A dragon roared and flew straight into the steeple, flames billowing from its toothy maw, and the dirty blond man grinned. Good to see everyone having fun, he thought as he turned his attention back to picking his new target. Time for a little fun of my own.
He searched out the best blast point for the second of his enchanted bullets. There! A large man stood amongst the pikemen, pushing his way towards Godhand in heavy armor, presumably to take out the most visible and accessible threat to his army. He was coming dangerously close to the caravan, large buster sword in hand as he shouted orders. Must be in charge of the forward assault, Leon surmised. He aimed carefully at the officer, squeezing the trigger just as something struck the side of the wagon, ruining his shot. The glowing blue bullet sailed past its intended target, missing by only a few inches, and struck in the dirt behind him. A spire of ice burst from the ground, and a pale mist formed on the skins of the minutemen before freezing and killing them. The large man's armor protected him from the brunt of the attack, and he cringed through the rest.
"Prevalida," cursed the son of a merchant, recognizing the qualities of that metal in the warrior's armor. "Damn that stuff!" There was only one way to do this, and he had the means. He quickly reloaded, sliding the final, yellow orb down the barrel, its crackling filling his ears and making his fingertips tingle as he held it. Drawing his rapier, he crouched down, then leaped off the top of the wagon. Landing in the middle of a bunch of pitchfork-wielding conscripts, he began slicing and stabbing his way to the commander, a few prongs catching on his longcoat or grazing the chain shirt as he went. But he was too quick for them, having spent his youth dancing and dodging whippings, he knew instinctively how to twist to avoid the telling blows. As he closed in, he called out to the soldiers, "Form up around me! Hold off these peasants and I'll handle the commander, or my name isn't Adalbert!"