CHAPTER FIVE
THE WOES OF BEING MENKA: SWORDS, SUNBURN AND CONFUSING BACKSTORIES
“SO, the epic saga continued: as Andy, Menka and Florence left the inn the next morning, traveling onwards under the clear, blue, describing-word – and something-else-epic-sounding – sky, toward the volcano with the totally-awesome name that--”
“Andy, why is the sword out?” Menka growled, while Florence chuckled.
“--Rude, interrupting. Anyway, as I was saying: totally-awesome name that the bad guy probably made up himself. Elias, who is not to be confused with the other bad guy – Menka, who is not nearly as cool or awesome at naming things--”
“Grrrrrrrrh.” Menka ground his teeth together, feeling the frustration of a new day. Also, he hadn’t slept last night – even though he was immortal and didn’t need to sleep, but that wasn’t gonna stop him from moaning about it. No, sir.
“Sorry,” said Andy, “but I promised last night that I would leave it out of its sheath for a whole day... if it could beat me at dice.”
“What did you do that for?” he hissed.
Andy sighed. “Well, Florence was the one who said she wouldn’t play if the sword wasn’t allowed to--”
“--and Andy was the one who came up with the ‘favours’ thing for the winner,” she interrupted.
Menka sighed and pulled up his hood as they walked northward though the village – passing people going about their daily business; passing a group of kids playing in the dirt, tossing a dusty sack back and forth between them. The sun was bright and it worsened his already-deteriorating mood, the light seeping under his hood and glaring his vision. The higher and stronger the sun got, the more his vision seemed to become 'whited-out', and he began to feel like a blind man – even with his hood up: as dark as he could make it, without drawing attention to himself.
The sun was burning the exposed skin of his hands, quickly turning them an unnatural burnt-red, which he could see Florence eyeing with a look of both sympathy and interest as to why he was burning so fast. Damn, how would he explain that? He figured it would be like this every day that they travelled.
Well, maybe in the forest he could find some much-needed shade and sun-cover... and, of course, he would be better in the night-time, but then there was still the moon to worry about. He could morph into a shadow and hang out in Andy’s shadow for a while – and he would have, too, if Florence wasn’t around; but as long as she was traveling with them, that wasn’t an option, as it would probably be too suspicious.
Meanwhile, as they walked, the sword continued to chatter on and on and on, not doing anything to help Menka's mood. The sun was growing much brighter today than it had been yesterday, and he could see barely further than an arm’s-width in front of him. Beyond that was just a horrible, painful white light.
“Andy,” he whispered, walking closer to him.
“Hmmmm?” Andy murmured back.
“I can’t see. Well, barely anything.”
“The sun that bad?”
“Yeah.”
Florence had taken to arguing with the sword, so she wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. The sword had stopped its ‘epic narrative’ and – from what Menka could hear – was attempting to flirt with Florence’s sword... even though it was obviously inanimate.
“Just hang out in my shadow for a bit,” Andy suggested quietly.
“I would, but...” Menka sighed, and that sigh said to Andy everything that need to be said.
“Oh. Well, you should get some gloves, at least,” Andy said, motioning to Menka's hands.
“Yeah.”
They were interrupted by the sword, who was still using terrible lines on Florence’s sword. "A shining babe like you looks like it has a mysterious past. Tell me about yourself."
Andy, Menka and Florence all simultaneously groaned.
“Aww, babe, you don’t have to play shy with me. You can talk.”
Menka groaned as he walked. “You do realize her sword doesn’t speak and most-likely doesn’t even have a soul, right?”
“Yep, that stuff doesn’t matter to me,” the sword said, being perfectly honest.“I’m just looking for lifelong-commitment with someone who enjoys evening-strolls along the beach as much as I do. Oh, I was gonna tell you guys a few minutes ago, but you were too busy complaining about the sun, Menka, and I was having too much fun narrating. Anyway, some guys with swords are following you.”
“What?” Florence swore. I dare not repeat it.
Menka chuckled.
Andy sighed, before taking them all off the main-path and around the back of one of the village houses. “Why did I not suspect this would happen?”
“So wait, hold on... You guys actually believe me.” The sword’s voice went up an octave at the end of that sentence, a hint of a questioning tone at the end.
“I thought me and you had shaken them off last night,” Andy said to Menka. He sniffed the air. “Is it just me, or is that alcohol I smell?”
“It seems like we underestimated those mercenaries,” Menka commented, as he slid out of the sun and into a shady part against the house-wall, blinking as his eyes adjusted and his vision improved a little. He quickly hid his hands from Florence as they healed, the blistered-skin quickly fading to his usual pale shade. Yes, Andy was right, he definitely needed gloves. Now that he could see better, he looked around at where Andy had dragged them off to.
An abandoned yard lay in front of them, a small dusty square of land between several buildings. Maybe, once, it would have served a purpose – he could see the remains of what looked like a drying rope, dirt-caked and twisted like a hiding snake; one end still attached to the roof of the building opposite him. There were several small trees – most without leaves – with their bark as dry and cracked as the soil beneath. But one tree, slightly larger than the others, still showed a hint of life – crispy leaves hung delicately from its branches and it even bore several fruit, pecked to death and as dry and hard looking as a rock... certainly not edible, but fruit nonetheless. Other than that, the area was pretty boring – but not every fight in a novel can be fought on the top of a cliff, hanging over a sheer drop, or in the middle of a volcano, right? What would be the fun in that?
“What mercenaries?” Florence asked – drawing her sword anyway. The phony surprise was clearly evident in her voice, as the tone raised a little too high at the end.
Menka rolled his eyes at her and she frowned in response. “Don’t even try to play dumb. Me and Andy--”
“--And me--” the sword interjected.
“--And the sword... We know all about your ‘mysterious past’.”
Florence stiffened. “Really?”
“Yep,” Andy said, pulling his bow off his back and grabbing an arrow. “To be honest, it’s actually not all that mysterious.” He peered around the side of the house before quickly pulling his head back. “Yep, it’s those mercenaries from last night.”
“How did you know they were looking for me?” she asked.
Menka snorted. “Do you think we are royally stupid?”
“Well, no, but--”
Andy interjected: “You two, we can have a big discussion about this later. Right now, we are about to get attacked by a group of alcoholics who probably lost their moral-compasses ages ago.”
“Awwww, it’s okay Andy,”Menka cooed to Andy, who ignored him.“You can hide behind me, if you're scared.”
“This isn’t your fight,” said Florence, motioning for the others to leave.
“No way. I’m not leaving you to all the glory.” Menka indicated for Andy to give him the sword.
Andy nodded in agreement. They waited for the mercenaries to round the side of the house. He wasn’t really staying for the glory, but he definitely wasn’t leaving. He shuddered at the idea of leaving Florence to fight off these brutes, not that he thought she couldn’t handle herself, but he thought such odds just weren’t fair. However, the odds of them coming out on top of this without admitting that they were gods weren’t looking too good either, so he drew back his bowstring and gave Menka a side-glance. “You have any ideas?”
“It sounds pretty wimpy – but I could cloak us, and we could hope they don’t notice. Probably won’t work too well, though. It’s still too bright out here, even in the shade.”
“Insult their mothers,” the sword suggested.
Andy turned to Florence, deciding to ignore the blade for the time being.
“Well, either we fight them, run away, or pay them off,” she said.“But I don’t think we have enough money to make up for the price of both me and this sword. And I’m not giving them the sword, either.”
“Will they leave if you give them the sword, though?” Menka asked.
There was no time for her to answer – for at that moment the mercenaries came around the corner. They were definitely the source of the alcohol that Andy had smelled – it emanated from their pores, like they bathed in bourbon... which was entirely within the realms of logical possibility.
There were a half-dozen of them in total, all with their weapons drawn: swords, axes, hammers and other nasty, sharp things. But, as Menka carefully noted, no ranged-weapons. That was common amongst men of that type, though. They liked to feel the blood of their foes splatter on their faces, feeling death as they danced close to it, or something crazy like that. He just thought they were disgusting and one-hundred-percent crazy. They didn’t need smelly, dried blood on their faces to scare people off – wasn’t that what the big weapons were for? Their logic failed to land on the same level as him. Death was a moment of silence and a cold knife in the dark, not ‘whack whack whack’, with a huge mess to clean up later.
“We thought we would be seeing more of you,” Lumpy sneered at them, waving his great-sword in their direction, the tip of the blade being indecisive as to who it wanted to slice first.
“Actually, boss,” started the man to his right, with a nasty-looking spiked-mace – the one who Menka remembered to be the only one with brains, who knew the true sound that gold made when rattled together. “Didn’t you say before, as we were following them, that you were surprised--”
“Minor details.” Lumpy held up an interrupting hand. “It’s very interesting,” he leered at Florence, who snorted at him, failing to be intimidated. “How we have found you with the very men who claimed that you had gone ‘that way’ – the opposite direction from which they were traveling.”
“We tried. Give us that.” Andy tried to give Florence a friendly smile.
She shot him down with an unamused look that said: ‘If you are going to attempt to save me, for the love of the gods, do it properly!’
He winced. “Fine, whatever. Don’t be grateful for our help.”
“But now we have found you,” Lumpy continued, “and to make things even easier, you are still holding onto that sword. You had to keep it for yourself, didn’t you? Too obsessed with its ‘magical powers’ to sell it like any sane person would.”
Menka moaned in his head. Ugh, not more backstory. He wished they would get around to the ‘whack whack whack’ part already.
“Not everything is about money.” Florence clutched the sword tighter.
“Actually, it kinda is,” Menka said, shrugging.
Andy nodded in line with Menka’s words. She glared at them both.
“What. It is. Tell me the last time you got something without money, then.”
“Actually,” said Lumpy’s right-hand man, “she didn’t have to pay anything when she killed that prince and ran off with his sword.”
“Minor details.” Menka shrugged him off. “Besides, who doesn’t like killing members of the royal-family?”
“I didn’t kill him,” she hissed.
“Yes, you did,” Lumpy argued. “People saw you. You went into his room when you were meant to be guarding him, and you came out with his sword. And he was dead.”
Menka moaned. “Florence, that’s really embarrassing. After these guys go away, me and you are gonna have a little talk about how to properly assassinate someone, okay? At least you grabbed his sword. I’ll give you points for that.”
“He killed himself!” She swore at them. Again, I won't repeat what her filthy mouth said.
Lumpy frowned at her, his face hard. “No, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Menka growled with frustration, knowing exactly how many hours a conversation like this could go on for. He wished those mercenaries would just raise their weapons and attack them already. Florence killed some prince, Florence didn’t – who cared? They had been hired to take her out, grab her sword and whatever, so that’s what they should be doing. Why waste time with all the bickering? They were annoying him, and Menka gladly awaited the opportunity to make them shut it. His eyes wandered around the yard as they continued their yes-no fight, and spied the tree with the rock-hard fruit.
Andy was fed up with them, too – but also felt slightly hurt, as Florence hadn't appeared to have given even the slightest care that he and Menka had tried to avoid this kind of confrontation last night. Maybe she would be more grateful this time, if they succeeded in saving her. However, they could only save her if the mercenaries ever got around to actually attacking – instead of continuing to argue with Florence. He looked around for Menka and saw that he had disappeared from view. This made Andy crack a grin. It was only a matter of seconds before--
There was a thump sound, as several of the mercenaries suddenly felt a hard, round object whack them in the backs of their heads. Furious and sore, they turned around to see Menka flashing white teeth at them from under his hood.
Pointing the sword at them, he tossed another one of those hard balls – fruit, maybe – up into the air and caught it with his free hand. “You are the worst mercenaries I’ve ever seen. You may as well take up debating for a living, because if you lot continue to annoy me by pointlessly arguing, you won’t be alive for much longer.” He threw the other fruit at Lumpy, who stopped his bickering and turned around, glaring furiously at Menka. “What, I thought you guys liked fighting? Hurry up and attack Florence or something, ‘cause I’m getting bored here.”
Andy chuckled, as instead of going after their target– Florence– they swarmed and attacked Menka, who continued to insult them as he fended them off with the sword.
At least Florence and Lumpy had stopped their 'No-Yes-No' nonsense, though, and – triggered by the fighting behind them– had begun to lock swords. And although they were still exchanging pieces of backstory, they were at least making an effort to kill one another. Like they should be.
Andy drew back his bowstring and switched targets – back and forth, between a few of the mercenaries trying to take down Menka, mentally debating with himself if it would be wise to kill any of them, or if he should just take them down and let Florence decide. He settled for impaling one in the foot, grinning as he grabbed another arrow from the quiver on his back.
As Menka fought, one of brutes tripped and fell on the dusty ground in front of him, cursing and clutching an arrow in his foot. Giving Andy an awkward thumbs up, as he struggled to simultaneously fend the remaining four off and see – with the bright sun shining down upon him – he decided to try and lure them into the shade. After all, it would be rather awkward if one of them did manage to take a slice out of him, expressly when it came to explaining why he was healing so fast.
Another went down from one of Andy’s carefully-placed arrows and Menka kicked him on top of the other fallen mercenary, creating a make-shift pile. Not to be out-done in the art of taking down without seriously injuring, Menka leapt back from the swing of another huge weapon and held up his free hand to manipulate the shadow of one of the remaining three, twisting it into a black and solid tendon which wrapped around an ankle and tugged, causing the merc to fall flat on his face. Menka kicked away his weapon, a huge battle-axe – and kicked the man in the shin for good measure– before adding him to the pile.
Florence continued to face off against Lumpy, their swords clanging together as they blocked and parried each other’s swings.
“That sword doesn't have any magical powers, after all,” he taunted, leaping at her and driving her back with the beginnings of a furious onslaught. “So, why are you holding onto it, then?”
Barely keeping up with the superior strength of his sword-arm, she leapt back from a vicious swing, the tip of his blade tearing at her shirt as it nicked her skin, creating a small but painful cut. “I know it’s magical.”
“Then why isn’t it shootin’ fireballs at me?” He swung down with another heavy blow, one which she just blocked, both swords coming close to her throat.
“I haven’t figured that bit out yet,” she admitted, as she pushed his sword away from her neck, feeling sweat drip down her forehead.
Andy had another perfect shot lined up – or so he thought. Only one mercenary was left, attacking Menka – and he aimed for the ankle this time, letting the arrow fly. But he watched in dismay as the target’s leg moved just in time as he fought, Menka’s leg stepping into the line of fire. The arrow hit him directly in the lower-calf, spearing through the leather of his boot and into his leg.
“ANDY!” Menka cried, as he fell back out of the way of a swing from a mace– which wasn’t actually a very good idea, as now Menka was on the ground and the mace was still heading right for him. Knowing Florence was most-likely too busy exchanging blows and one-liners with Lumpy, he quickly dematerialized into his attacker’s shadow.
The mace-holder swore in disbelief as his mace hit empty ground and then swore again, as he felt a cold but rusty-looking blade press against his neck. A pale arm wrapped around his throat.
“Surprise!” the sword yelled, causing the mercenary to swear yet again.
Menka jabbed his windpipe with his hand, removed the sword from his neck and threw him into the pile. He then glared at Andy, before pulling the arrow out of his leg and hurling it in his friend’s direction. Looking back down, the mercenary-pile was starting to lose its shape. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that Florence was on the way down, as Lumpy was slowly draining her strength with every one of his vicious swings. He motioned to Andy to help her, while he picked up the rope from the ground and ripped it down from the roof, starting to work on securing the mercenary pile.
Lumpy was too strong for Florence. His swings seemed to increase exponentially in force, while her blocks just became weaker and weaker, each swing driving her closer to the wall behind her.
He raised his great-sword again, grinning as he prepared to lay down a nasty chop. Suddenly, an arrow pierced through his hand, impaling it to the handle of his sword and effectively ruining his overhead chop. The blade jerked to the side, where it missed Florence entirely, instead smashing into the dirt.
This made Lumpy really mad. You could see it in the muscles around his eyes, as they screwed up and turned a ghastly shade of red, along with the rest of his face. He cried with rage as he lifted the sword from the ground, but instead of taking it out on Florence, he turned to the archer responsible.
Andy yelped at the sight of Lumpy staggering towards him, ready to strike.
Florence dropped her sword, tired from the onslaught. But worried that she had just doomed Andy to a nasty death, she found the strength to raise her hands and mutter a few words, sending a magical blast of icy air right into the back of the charging Lumpy. This froze him solid and Andy quickly stepped out of the way as he toppled over, already beginning to melt in the scorching sun.
Menka walked over, his face the epitome of bemusement. Florence looked behind him and was impressed to see that he had already dealt with– and tied up – the rest of Lumpy’s mercenaries. Half of them had arrows sticking from their feet and ankles however, so she knew that it wasn’t entirely a lone effort.
“Now, why,” he said, motioning to the Lumpy-cube, “didn’t use magic earlier? You know how much time we could have saved?”
“I only had the one spell memorized,” she said, weakly picking up her sword and sliding it onto her back.
“Useless mages,” Menka muttered, grabbing one of Lumpy’s frozen arms and dragging him over to the others. He was already starting to defrost and reanimate, so Menka worked quickly to tie him up.
“I didn’t think it was useless,” said Andy, feeling grateful for not being cut to pieces, whether the act would have killed him or not.
“My magic is still better,” Menka declared. “Now let’s get outta here before these guys manage to break free.” To fortify his point, he indicated to one of the mercenaries who had started wiggling, but luckily failed to untie himself.
“Magic,” Florence scoffed. She pulled an arrow from one of the mercenaries' feet, passing it to Andy, who gratefully accepted it.
“You know what else is magic?” asked Menka, advancing towards her. “The story you are about to tell us, which describes exactly how you got into this mess.”
Florence chuckled nervously.
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