The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2 by Charles Dean Page B

water pressure. He turned around, opening his eyes to see where she was despite knowing how much the water would sting them and then swam up to grab her again. Luckily for him though, by the time he reached her, she was already aware of what was going on and had started treading water towards the shoreline, which was now covered with debris from the splintered boat and dock.
    “Are you okay?” he asked her as he slung her over the wooden dock remains.
    “Yeah, just go save your village, and tell them they owe me a boat,” Eve said as she coughed up a little water.
    “Right,” he agreed, not waiting to see if she had anything else to say as he dove underwater and began his swim to shore. He made sure to stay as deep in the water as possible to avoid the floating obstacle course above him until he finally reached where the sand and air converged.
    He broke into a sprint the second his feet hit dry land and ran as hard as he could towards the fight. He couldn’t see what was going on, but he could make out enough details to know who were the good guys and who were the ones that needed killing. The peasants were dressed like they were trying out to be potatoes in a court play, and the guards were in three tight tower shield formations moving independently to block the invaders. They wore a uniform he didn’t recognize, but he knew the garb of a guard like the back of his hand. After years of having to deal with men of that ilk escorting him even to the lavatory, their style of uniform was more familiar than any. The pirates, on the other hand, with much smaller, plank-like bucklers, were charging forward in clustered groups and ramming into the defenders’ formations as they tried to propel their blades over the shield wall. They were unsuccessful, however, as their attempts were constantly being parried by free blades.
    Eve was right: they won’t last forever , Qasin thought as he charged headlong into the conflict. The defenders of the town had already lost five men, and, with a few more men down, they would lose their buffer zone and get surrounded. The pirates simply had more men and were attacking in waves designed to wear the guards out, get their shots in and drain their numbers a little each time as they rotated into fresh, fully-manned groups. Just as much as the Captain clearly knew what he was doing, so did the pirates, and they would have undoubtedly won the skirmish with few to no losses.
    Qasin came up behind the group furthest back that was readying for another slam and slashed his blade as hard and quickly as he could into their backs. Four down, he smiled as his blade moved from one enemy to the next. The crash, his running up behind them--they hadn’t noticed any of it over the constant clanging of metal upon metal, and their focus was still entirely on the battle before them. Qasin had open hunting season on his foes, and he planned to kill his prey before they noticed he was taking aim.
    As he finished cutting through the back wave, with only a few noticing him in time to even try to stop his blade, the next group up spotted him. They pivoted from facing their initial line of foes to facing him, and charged with their defenses up as if he represented an entire wall of wood and metal. There aren’t openings. The formation is beautiful, Qasin admired as they grew closer to his position. It’s too bad that their awareness of their surroundings is far too lacking, he laughed to himself, noticing that the closer the pirates came to him, the closer the freed up group of guards came to slamming into the pirates from behind.
    He almost wanted to just back up and watch the massacre, and it probably would have been more than just a thought, if it weren’t for his urges: the same urges that made his hand itch for his sword during idle conversation and made him smile as his favorite piece of steel rended flesh like a butcher cutting meat on a busy day. Those same urges were what now compelled him to