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Mapping and claiming (3/5)

They were three men and two women, one of the little child, who seemed to be less than ten years old. The woman was the biggest of the adults, but none of them seemed to be strong in a muscular way. They even seemed somewhat clunky. The animal, she saw, was actually a horse, although she ignored how it got to the island. She had never seen one so far south.

But she didn’t have much more time to analyze them, as the woman got closer, sword in hand. It was weird for Lania to see someone carry a sword only with one hand even while having the other one free. It was never wise to do that: it limited the strength of the strikes and the maneuverability of the weapon. The woman positioned herself weirdly: the sword in her back pointing upwards, hiding it from Lania’s sight. The other hand pointed to Lania’s face, although the purpose of this was completely unclear for her. Her stance, on the other hand, was far more closed: holding her sword with both hands, the handle pointed at her belly button and the point of the sword at her opponent’s throat. Both arms were behind the weapon, so as to not leave them as an easy pick for a fast cut.

Lania got impatient when the woman didn’t move. Wanting to end the problem quickly to reunite with her companions before nightfall, she struck first, moving her feet forward and raising her sword to bring it down on the woman’s head, not hesitating if she had to kill her to get away. But the woman moved, turning her body to try and cut Lania with her sword. The movement was so wrong and wide that Lania decided not to kill her, as she didn’t want to scare the child too much, and she sliced the woman’s arm in the elbow joint. The arm fell to the grund, blood spilling out of both sides, the one that was still attached to the woman and the one that had fallen to the ground.

The surprised gorrin, now with only one hand left, fell to her knees, shocked, grabbing her severed limb. The other three gorrin were furious. Two of them grabbed what they had available and ran to try to kill Lania. One had grabbed a wooden club, and the other a piece of metal that seemed to come from the saddle.

Lania sighed. She had now committed to not killing them only out of pity for the little girl, so, annoyed by herself, she raised her sword and waited for the two gorrins to approach. The sound of the clacking hooves on the ground got closer until they attacked, one horizontally from her left and the other diagonally from below and the right. She gracely dodged them by carefully jumping backwards. When they were unbalanced, she quickly moved to the left and slashed the leg of one of them, turning around in a fast motion and rapidly thrusted into the other gorrin’s leg muscles, leaving both incapacitated.