The mound was slippery with blood and it was becoming increasingly harder to navigate with any grace of movement other than a stagger. My left arm hurt at the shoulder from where I had been too late to avoid a crushing blow from a war hammer.
I could feel the blood trickling down under my armor from a graze to my neck caused by a spear point thrust at my head. Sweat rolled into the slash and it burned like fire. I saw the sweaty, angry faces of the enemy around me yelling out who knows what, as they tried to catch me and avoid being caught by my ever swinging blades at the same time.
All was quiet in my world and I didn't really hear them even though the din of the battle noise had to be overwhelming. I had tuned out the noises and distractions around me and simply reacted to the opportunities I saw, almost unconscious in my awareness of what was going on around me outside of the sphere of death that I dealt out to any who fell within the path of my blades.
Dimly it registered to me that I hadn't seen anyone who was alive on my side for a long time. Clearing a brief swath around me I glanced to the right and then the left. It was all bad as both ends of the line had been completely overrun as well as my section in the middle, except for where I alone still defended and my run of luck could be over in a second with one ill advised move on my part.
There was nothing to be done about it. I had no sense of how much time might have passed by. All I could do was keep killing until there were no more of them or no more of me.
Suddenly like an assault on my emotions that smarted worse than the salt of my sweat falling into my wounds, I thought of Krista and the life I had hoped to experience with her. All gone now!
The knowledge of my futility to control the future and to survive the present enraged me and the enemy once again reeled backward from me as I took out my rage on them even more savagely than before.
Out of the sea of faces my eyes caught sight of Rolf. We turned back to back and fought in unison of movement unequaled by any other than those who have been tried by fire in the bonds of a brotherhood thicker than blood.
One of Rolf's arms appeared to be almost useless from some wound and I extended myself even further to keep him alive and the brunt of the attention on me and not on him. Rolf slipped and I saw him pitch down the side of the mound in the direction of the Shrine and I dove after him hacking and slashing as I went.