R. Salvatore - The Companions

But still, Bruenor’s feint had been obvious, and the idea that the dwarfling had swallowed it so fully …

Bruenor easily turned aside to avoid the downward strike, sliding one hand up to the middle of his fighting stick-straight poles this day-and thrusting his arm out behind him, driving the weapon hilt into the ribs of the stumbling dwarfling. Bruenor’s continuing turn put him directly behind the gasping youth-and he in the general direction, then paBo her father remembered that it was, after all, just a child here, and that thought almost slowed his next merciless strike.

Almost.

His two-handed slash cracked his weapon across the dwarfling’s head and sent him flying to the side and to the floor, where he abandoned his weapon and grabbed at his head with both hands, tears flowing and cries of pain echoing.

Gasps came from all around the room, along with a call from Master Muttonchops Stonehammer to two other dwarflings.

Bruenor sighed and turned around to meet the charge of not one, but two students this time.

Fist and Fury, they were called, the powerful Fellhammer sisters, considered among the top students of the training class above Bruenor’s level. And Bruenor had to admit that by the way they were coming in at him, their coordination appeared sophisticated and correct.

He settled himself calmly, feet widespread, and easily defeated the twin thrusts with a sudden down-and-over, leftward sweep of his fighting stick, at the same time hopping out to the left to further exaggerate the miss.

The nearest of the twins, though, extracted herself almost immediately and with a quick two-step, launched herself at Bruenor, swinging with one hand, punching with the other.

He dived down low, shouldering her just above the knee and launching her into a somersault past him, to thump down hard on her back on the dirt floor of the chamber. The collision staggered Bruenor a bit, but he never lost his balance, and was already into his next move, sweeping a tremendous uppercut that froze the second sister in her tracks, and just barely missed taking the tip from her nose.

She charged in right behind the uppercut with a roar.

Bruenor had known that he would miss with his wild swing; the point of the attack was to give him just an eye-blink of time to reset his footing and to get his momentum going. As his stick lifted, he veered that momentum and threw himself into a rolling back flip over the stabbing stick of the female and over her arms, as well, landing only a step back to the right, but directly in front of her.

She was just a child, a girl child, he reminded himself. But with a growl, he slammed his forehead into her face anyway, and as she staggered backward under the blow, he leaped up, flattened out, and double-kicked her in the torso.

He landed on his side, bounced right back up and parried the incoming attack from the first of the sisters.

“Bungo’s Roll,” Emerus Warcrown said to Muttonchops at the side of the room, correctly naming the maneuver Bruenor had used on the second charging teenager. “When did ye start teachin’ the dwarflings to dance such a move as that?”

“Haven’t,” Muttonchops said with a shake of his head.

Emerus Warcrown turned his attention back to the fight, just in time to see one of the sisters go flipping head-over-heels to the right and to see the second cringe in pain as Little Arr Arr, working her hands, her weapon, and her attention up high, stomped down on her foot.

She cringed and started reflexively to double over, and a left hook sent her sprawling.

“His father’s sitting at Moradin’s side, laughin’ at us,” said the king. As he spoke, the other of the young sisters went somersaulting aside yet again, the victim of a beautifully appearanceI holding onbalanced parry, hook, and throw.

“I’m guessin’ that Arr Arr’s jaw’s hanging as open as yer own,” Muttonchops replied. “Moradin’s too.”

They came at him in a long line, a stream of attackers, sometimes two at once, and in the end, the last four together.

This wasn’t Little Arr Arr they were battling, but Bruenor Battlehammer, King of Mithral Hall, the great warrior who had held back Obould’s hordes in Keeper’s Dale beyond Mithral Hall’s western gate.

And it was Bruenor Battlehammer who had sat upon the throne of Gauntlgrym, who had heard the words of Moradin, the whispers of Dumathoin and the battle shouts of Clangeddin. Though he wore the frame of a child’s body, inferior to those of his older attackers, his understanding of balance and movement kept those attackers constantly turning and shifting, often right into each other, and always clumsily.

And whenever that happened, Bruenor’s fighting stick invariably and painfully cracked against an opponent’s skull.

In the very first moments of that last assault, four coming at him furiously, Bruenor had stopped their charge and tied them up with misdirection, feinting left, then right, then left again so smoothly that the edges of the foursome collapsed upon the middle.

He swept the legs out of the teenage dwarf the farthest to his left, half-turned and backhand stabbed the second in line, then pivoted the other way to parry and roll around the stabbing sticks of the remaining two. Running back out to the right afforded him a few moments of single combat with the one on that end of the line. He stabbed, pulled up short and swept across, taking his opponent’s weapon and her balance with him, then reversed suddenly and snapped his fighting stick across her chin, dazing her. In a one-on-one fight, Bruenor would have let it end there, but this opponent had three allies, after all, and so he leaped up and spun, lifting his stick over his head, and came around with a resounding chop that knocked the dwarfling girl senseless, and shattered Bruenor’s fighting stick in the process.

He dived to the floor, retrieving her stick-she wasn’t going to need it any longer, after all-and just managed to turn sidelong and brace the butt of the stick against his hip as the next in line leaped at him.

If it had been an actual spear instead of a blunt stick, that second dwarf would have surely impaled himself. The stick bowed but did not break. The flying dwarf bowed as well, doubling over the forward end, eyes going wide, breath blasted from him. He hung there for what seemed like an eternity, feet off the floor, until the momentum played out and Bruenor’s stick dipped, dropping him back to his feet.

He didn’t stay on his feet for long, however, grabbing at his belly, wailing in shock and pain, and tumbling to the side.

“Are ye having fun, then?” Bruenor roared, becoming disgusted with this whole ridiculous exercise. “Are ye, damned Moradin?”

The blasphemy drew more than a few gasps around the room, but Bruenor hardly heard them. Up again, he launched himself at the remaining two, his stick whirling with seeming abandon, though in truth, in perfectly timed and aimed angles and strikes. He cried out with every hit, his voice filling the air, and soon, so too did his two opponents cry out in pain and terror. They turned and fled … or tried to.

asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh holding onBruenor kicked the feet out from under the nearest, the same poor dwarf whose legs he had swept out at the beginning of the encounter. He ran right over the poor lad, stomping him flat. He couldn’t catch the other one, though, for she was older and faster, so he hoisted his fighting stick like a javelin and let fly.

The missile caught the poor girl right in the back of the neck and sent her sprawling to the floor in a cloud of dust.

“Are ye having fun, then?” an outraged Bruenor yelled at Muttonchops and King Emerus.

“Promote him at once to the town guard,” King Emerus mumbled to Muttonchops Stonehammer.