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The knight met his gaze, raging hot fury that it was.
Unflinchingly, he did nothing but watch as two
figures in mail
harnasche stepped forward to
meet the ranger; he, armed only with the splintered
kindling that had once been a crossbow; they, fully
mailed and heavily burdened with glittering
instruments of devastation.
The first soldier charged ahead and swung a mighty
blow with a broadsword. Longshanks ducked beneath it,
and the blade clanged loudly against a merlon. Sparks
flew from where its edge scraped against stone.
Expecting such an obvious attack, the lanky ranger
clouted his makeshift club into the guard's
unprotected face. The blow crushed his nose and
knocked him reeling. Throwing his weight into the
momentarily stunned soldier, he parried the other's
mace, but lost the club to the jarring assault.
Pain lanced up and down Duril's arm as the first
guard, regained of his senses, brought the pommel of
his sword crashing down upon his shoulder. Then the
limb beneath it went numb.
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Ayrn dodged forward, trying to keep the two soldiers
within dagger's reach, limiting the effectiveness of
their weapons' greater lengths. The ploy didn't
result as he had hoped, for he ended up between the
two of them, weaponless and now slightly crippled.
A desperate idea came to his mind as both guards
raised their weapons. With a resounding bellow,
Longshanks charged the mace-wielder, and knowing full
well his opponents' credence for back-stabbings,
deliberately turned away from the other soldier. He
was, in fact, counting upon a coward's response.
In the last heartbeat of his action, Duril threw
himself to one side, narrowly escaping decapitation
from behind. The other guard fared not so well.
Unable to stop his blow, just as Longshanks had
hoped, the swordsman struck instead his fellow, the
mace-wielder, who stood just within sword's reach.
The broadsword bit through the fellow's helm and
bretache
, to shear away a full quarter of the
guard's face. Deep it clove, into
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