Chapter 99: Volume 2 - CH 5.5

The other brutes, too, broke abeam, even as strewn about them were their Fiefguard brothers: bodies many in number, but each numb of all life.

“Lo, Master,” said a lackey. “Right smash’d in, them flesh ‘an faces. An’ wot did th’smashin’ but the ‘ammer in that there virago’s ‘ands, eh?”

“Virago, for sure,” Ebbe half-snorted. “But just the same: a sow spent o’ all spirit, from the look o’ her.”

Ebbe’s unit—an elite platoon more rightly belonging on the ramparts of Balasthea. Their official headcount numbered more than what Berta presently beheld, for a band from their ranks had broken off prior for some plundering on the west end. That group was led by one Karl, whilst Ebbe himself had marched forth with the remaining troops.

“Th’margrave’s men try’d t’shog through this shantytown, methinks,” guessed another grunt.

“Ah. Then it were this bint what bar’d their way—all t’let ‘er dear folk flee. Folk, fresh for the culling… after we culls this covess from us course,” Ebbe hissed, baring his teeth and pointing a finger at Berta. “No time t’waste! Have at it, boys! The hunt awaits!”

“Aye!”

The Men moved in. The war-chief clenched her hammer.

“Boys… best keep their bedtime!” she snarled with laboured breath.

The fray was affrighted anew. Two Men made of themselves silver streaks as they speeded in, flanking Berta from both sides. She sprang to action with no less alacrity, meeting the rightward sword with a deflecting swing of her hammer.

“Eaghh!” she groaned, her boldness blunted by the blade’s instilled odyl, large and boisterous in its breadth.

With too little of her own for resistance, her hands were buffeted back, the hammer along with them. An opening; from the other side assailed another sword, keen on the cut.

“Ech!” The war-chief recoiled, saving her skin from the slash as it sailed but a hair’s width away, and next bounded backwards to break from the exchange.

Yet it was a hounding one, for there followed a third sword head-on. Berta brought up her hammer-haft, halting the blade, but not its bite: from its silver length leapt a wave-breath of odyl, passing the hammer and crashing unto the war-chief.

“Gahh!” Berta cried as she was blown clear back. Though as she met the dirt, her body did not tumble and fail, but bore itself erect again, for undergirding its girth was sheer agility unjust for its size.

She readied her hammer again in time to contend with yet another stubborn sword. Her head ducked beneath its sweep, her shoulders heaved next—up soared her battlehammer.

The uncontested counter caught the brute from below: a half-circle strike, jowling his jaw. Teeth and bone cracked and crunched. His maw unmade, the soldier groaned grimly, and to the ground expired to all stillness.

Fury flared anew upon another Man’s mien. “Ye sty-whore, you!”

His sword wuthered, wild with indignance. But its ungainliness was a gift to Berta, who brought her hammer up once more and met him straight on. Her bull-like boldness stunned him still, and in that slice of a second, the hammerhead came crashing down.

The time spent tarrying exacted too heavy a toll: his skull exploded on impact.

“Aaach!” howled another. “Begone, bitch!”

In the same moment, one more livid sword, delivered from the left. The war-chief wound about to ward off the strike, flinging from her hammer bone chips and churned brains. But it was a defence endeavoured too direly, for silverborn odyl flashed forth and stung her arms to a throbbing sore.

The opportunity was seized: to Berta’s right ran a spear. She twisted her body to avoid the voulge—

“Gghhaah!!”

—but made a victim of her right shoulder instead. The silverpoint pierced and poured out searing odyl, teasing a tearing scream from Berta’s bosom.

Ebbe broke for joy. “That’s it! Let ‘er have it, lads!”

But Berta was defiant. “…Hmph! There’s naught to be bullish ‘bout, boys!”

The war-chief wrenched herself from the offending spear and stood away, newly poised. Renewed as well was the vigour of the Men, to which Berta gave a grinning glare.

Sprawled now on her face was unfeigned fatigue. Sweat coated her cheeks. Hoarseness wrung her breaths. Still, her spent stamina dampened her spirit little, which enlivened every limb and length of her body that she might bar the Londosians all the more doggedly.

“Her candle’s all but burnt!” Ebbe barked. “Snuff ‘er out! Now!”

Berta scowled. “There’s… loads more wax… left… on this wick, lads!”

The Mennish hounds heeded their master. One after another, they swept and stabbed with their swords and spears. Berta bore the brunt of them all, biting back with many a heave of her battlehammer. But her bravery was requited less and less as more and more the silver blades bit and burrowed away at her flagging flesh.

At length, wounds could be seen every span of her body, myriad seams from which flowed blood that blotted the earth rich in red, drop by drop.

“Haa… hahh…! Hmph…! You boys burn… more like embers… before my blaze!”

But, oh—a fearsome sight.

For beneath the blood-veil upon Berta’s face, there glinted a glower of white, grinning and gnashing.

At last, the sons of Londosius began to feel themselves prey before a predator, whose mettle they guessed now to be immeasurable. Some of their knees buckled. Some more had a mind to flee. But Ebbe’s scolding was quick on the catch.

“Panick not, you pansies! What’s the covess now but a corpse? Put ‘er in her coffin, damn you!”

Their wits whipped back in place, the pale-faced partisans then sallied forth another charge unto the war-chief. Her grip was abating by the second, but galvanising it with the vim of her very life, Berta clenched fast her foe-smiter and flew into the fray once more.

“Woouhh!” From her throat: a thunderclap coupled to her career. “Come! My hammer craves a fine drum!!”

And the drums came aplenty.

Over her head the hammer wheeled, roaring down centre-wise before reducing a soldier to a smear upon the earth.

Then did it rise again, sailing sidelong to rend and reveal the ribs of another.

Next it leapt aslant, catching one more at the collarbone and stamping a crater into his sternum, and therein flattening his deepest flesh, lungs and all.

Once more, the mother of battle hoisted up her hammer to meet her fourth mark, but in the motion, received through her right breast a spear unseen.

“Gwh… oofh…!” Berta groaned. Blood, fresh and flesh-red, ran down the length of her chin—a savoury sight to the spearman that did the deed.

“Hyahaha!” cracked he a hyaena-cackle. “This mark’s mine!”

Words upon the soldier’s grave: the Nafílim hammer howled anew, upheaving from half of the Man’s too-proud pate a languid splash of skull-liquor. Not a second, and the rest of him retired to the dust.

“And now… it’s mine…!” Berta hissed. “You celebrate oversoon… spear-waggers…!”

Life-red spat from her lips, the latter bent up in a death-daring smile. A semblance most sinister to the soldiers, for one of them then lowly let out a yelp. The momentary cowardice painted a mark upon his head: Berta bounded unto his midst and broke the air with a sweeping swing of the hammer.

“Uwahh!”

“Geagh!”

Power, once waning, waxed instead, a candle crowned with a conflagration, as by its unbridled fury not one, but two Men were sent into the air.

Ebbe grated his teeth and stamped his foot. “This filth-fiend all but clings t’this coil, brothers! Hell hath hunger! Have it fed!”

Goaded, revived grips tightened about silver hilts and hafts, and once more the brutes flocked to the fray. It was but a sacrificial sallying, a death trip fueled by fear dyed in delirium.

“H-half-dead ha—g!!”

“Die now, damn you!”

A blade lunged in. To it, Berta brought forth her left hand. Off her centre finger flew, and into her palm the edge passed. But there it stopped, snatched by the bone, before a hammer steeped in blood and brains blasted into the offender’s face.

“Bwarhh!!”

Eyeballs burst from their sockets, and with them the soldier’s soul as his cranium caved in. But from beside the fresh corpse sprang another spear from another soldier. This weapon, too, found flesh, eating deep into Berta’s belly.

Yet the war-chief wailed not, instead winding her halved hand about the shaft and, paying not a mite of her mind to the spearpoint set in her flesh, pounced forth to let fall her hammer once more.

“Gheu…!”

“H… hmph…” A scoff afore the fountain of red—and a seething voice. “…You’re all moths… too-fain for the flame…”

But Berta’s defiance had not gone unanswered. Already steeping her soles was a pool of her own blood. Cakes of red dirt dotted her legs. And hanging out of her flank: a sword.

“Yes! Yes!” Ebbe yipped. “Lo, brothers! The end!”

From his sheath hissed his own sword. And to Berta he began his way. His mind was set, confident the curtains shall close here, by his hands, by his triumphant stroke.

“Haa… hhah… ghhah…!”

Yet, Berta drew breath. Though her veins were dry, though her vitals were eviscerated, Berta yet barred their way. And before the unfailing Hammerweib, the Londosians knew fear anew.

“Y… Yoná ‘ave mercy…” one of them uttered. “Wot madness be this might…!?”

How they trembled, beholding so bloody a being. She oozed the red, drooled it from her lips, and yet would not bend the knee before their number. Oh, how they trembled, indeed.

“Hhhaa… aa…”

But Berta all but stood. Action had left her. The brink, it seemed, was reached.

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Though, not crossed.

Death had yet to take her.

From the rotundity of her form, there flowed faintly still some respiration.

And then, with eyes cast down, her breaths began to form words.

“…I’m sorry… so sorry… my dears…” she muttered. “…Auntie… will be… a bit late…”

It was mere minutes since she had last seen them. And now, they were all she could see.

Tears will be shed.

Surely.

Tears for their Auntie.

How heartbreaking.

If for them, so for Berta.

“…But… have heart… my loves… Auntie… will scare them away… all away… for you…”

“Hah! What wickedness this churl-wife chants!” Ebbe jeered, gained closer and closer still. Their way unbarred, the brutes followed, now cocky in their stride and crooked smirks.

“…Look… my dears… they’re gone… all gone…” The war-chief whispered on. “…Come… smile again…”

“Filth-fiend! Die!”

To the air, Ebbe’s blade rose. But as it did, a new fury flashed! Steeped in blood, sweat, and tears, the face of Hammerweib Berta!

“…My dears!! Live!!”

Mightiness returned to the battlehammer! Up it leapt and down it lunged, eating into the earth and wrenching from its bowels a bellow of a bang!

The air snapped, the skies flinched: the rallying of all remnant odyl—nay, of all remnant life in Berta’s body into this one swing. A mortal manoeuvre, taught in secret, honed out of sight; rightwise retribution, wielded to the self-exaction of the steepest price.

This, Berta brandished. And with it, every drop of life that might be wrung from body and soul both.

Thus, life turned to light.

From the hammerstrike, from the shattered earth, there shouted a thunderous shine, thrusting up and out in throes of palpable power most immense. Through a stunned Ebbe and his brothers it stampeded, stamping out all sight.

“Ggeeaaahh!?”

Heat and pressure harried and pounded the Londosians. And amidst the mighty light, their lives, too, were left to ruin.

“Aagh—!?”

Odyl, silver, flesh—all were pierced by the primal surge.

The sun-like light washed whitely through the scene. A brilliance most beseeming Hammerweib Berta: ungaudy in its glister and merciful to none of its marks.

And with the passing of a moment, the mightiness faded unto night.

What remained were the remnants of the Londosian sons, all scattered about Berta, who now was bent upon both her knees.

ㅤ∵ㅤ

…My dears.

…It is done.

…You are saved.

…But…

…I’ll not see your faces again, I fear.

…Neither your lovely little cheeks…

…nor the worldly smiles of your later years.

…But those years…

…they are yours now.

…All of them.

…A little gift from your Auntie.

…Keep them well.

…Live them well.

…My dears…

“…Berta…! Berta…!”

Through a vision veiled in blood: a tearful Lise, screaming, sobbing.

…Oh?

…Dearest… you’ve come for me?

…No… don’t cry.

…Be not so sorrowed.

…But… oh, how glad you make your Auntie.

…Glad… to have you with me at my last.

“…Aunti—e!!”

…Lise.

…I leave them to you.

…For them…

…be as big a sister as you can be.

…

..

.

.

..

…

…Ah.

…My dear.

…Was I…

…a good mother…?

A wistful wondering, perhaps for the soul once set to be her own child.

And as well, the very last thought of Berta.

Upon her unmoving mien was mild mirth.

A smile unbroken beyond her final moment.

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