Chapter 19: Veteran Finger Battle

I looked away from Lorraine at the guy who was watching her back. His eyes were completely flat and I realised that he was dangerous in a different way. There is no-one more dangerous than someone who doesn't care about the consequences, and that is the feeling I got from him.

"[Listen guys, watch out. These guys are doing this in earnest. This is not a game for them,"] I sent to my finger members.

I took a few steps away and rejoined my finger. I noticed that Lorraine and her companion took care not to take their eyes off me as they did the same. Well, at least we had respect from them; now to test just how capable we really were.

Fist Ryon asked "Everyone ready?"

When he had received an affirmative response from Lorraine and I, he gave the command "Fight".

For a few moments no-one moved, then Lorraine's finger shifted into the three-up/two-back formation, with her in the centre. Pretty much what I expected, and for the same reasons that I would have chosen that formation in their place. They had sufficient strength up front to hold off any attack, two in reserve to reinforce the front and to guard their flanks. They were also sufficiently far back that my up-and-over trick from the fight before would not work. They held still, obviously quite happy to initially hold a defensive pose until they had determined what we intended to do.

I shifted my finger into a two-up formation. We were one short, having only five warriors to their six, so we ended up like the five on a dice, two-up, two back and me in the centre. Geraint was front left and Elaine, now slim, fit and strong, was on the right. They were paired as they had the strong bond between them of lovers and, I suspected, soul-mates. Lian was to my right and Desrae to my left.

"[Advance to contact.]" I ordered.

We moved forward and Elaine and Geraint started dueling with the front three. I watched them for a few seconds. They were both extremely fast and I saw that they were holding their own. Their speed and skill allowed them to fight against the three that they were confronting, but more than that, coordinating two people was definitely easier to do than three. The outside two were also not able to pay one hundred percent attention to the fight as they knew that they could be threatened by Lian and Desrae as they had seen us go around the flanks before and I knew that Lorraine would expect us to try something similar against her. Geraint was left-handed and Elaine right, so that we had swords on the outside and parry daggers on the inside. To start with, they were fighting conventionally; essentially keeping the parry-daggers unused and concentrating on using their swords. I closed up on the line to support the centre with my sword, but they were fighting so well that I was not needed.

It didn't take long though to see that they would be able to hold us like this for as long as they needed and that if I didn't act soon, we would surrender the initiative. I knew that if I allowed Lorraine to dictate the course of the fight, she would soon move to the attack.

"[Ok, ready {image/schematic}. Steady. Steady. Attack!]"

I moved as fast as I was able. The plan was that I would run straight through the centre, throwing my parry-dagger at the man in the middle to get his sword off-line was he tried to deflect the dagger, and try to use that gap to run him through and breach their line. It work better than I had expected. The centre man had just extended himself in a lunge at Elaine when I threw my parry-dagger and it went right past his guard and pierced his chest, he was down and I was through their line and engaging Lorraine in a flash. The momentary surprise that this caused Lorraine worked entirely to our advantage as it caused the rest of her finger to lose focus for the tiniest amount of time, just long enough for Geraint and Elaine to move around their outside opponents to attack the pair in the rear at the same time as Lian and Desrae moved up to take over their battles with the front pair. As Geraint and Elaine made their moves, it pulled their opponents around to the outside to follow them, and created opportunities for Desrae and Lian to put their new opponents down. They quickly joined up to gang up in pairs against the back pair, while I was left fighting Lorraine in the centre. Desrae quickly saw that Geraint was going to be able to handle his opponent without help and turned to help me out, and I needed it.