Tossling Madeleine"s hair, Jack took a deep breath and stood back up, looking around the wrecked room until he finally spotted her silver-handled dagger laying partly beneath some debris near the fireplace. He picked it up and flipped it around in his hand, and wiped the blood off the blade before walking over and handing it to her, handle-first.She reached out and took it from him, looking at the dagger, then back to him.
Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.
"Thanks." She said, smiling faintly.
"Sure thing." He said, returning her smile.
He turned and walked over to his axe, and picked it up off the floor. Swinging it up onto his shoulder, he turned back to Madeleine, who had slid off the bed and was adjusting her disheveled, blood-stained clothes.
"Stay hidden in here, Maddy. I can"t promise if something else spots you that I"ll be able to save you in time again. We got lucky this time."
"Okay." She said, nodding as she slid her dagger back into its sheath on her belt.
"Just stay put in here and stay quiet. I will come back for you when this is over. If you hear anyone coming, and they aren"t me, find a way to hide yourself until you know they"re friend or foe, okay?"
"I got it." Maddy said, her demeanor losing its softness. "And if they"re an enemy, and I can sneak attack them, I will. I could have taken those two if I"d had a chance to ambush them, you know."
"I"m sure that"s probably true." Jack said, walking to the room"s entrance. He turned back and nodded with a smile. "Try to give yourself that advantage this time, alright?"
"Yep." Madeleine said, before she motioned towards the exit. "Go help the others. They probably need you."
"Yes, maam." Jack said, smirking. Choking up on his axe handle, he ran for the entrance of the cave.
As he did so, the toll using so much magic in a short period of time had taken was abundantly evident. His limbs felt like he"d been exercising for hours, and his whole body, having not gotten a full night"s sleep to begin with, felt completely drained, like he had just spent the last day carrying a carrying a backpack full of lead around. Best he could guess, he probably had one or two more spells in him before he"d be too worn out to fight any longer. That was less than ideal, but it wasn"t something he could help. He would just have to grit through the rest of the battle, and rely on his combat skills rather than spells.
Jack cleared the cave"s entrance back into the clearing, and engaged with a gnoll that was about to finish off a wounded watchman on the ground. This particular gnoll was tall and wiry, and held a wickedly curved, elegant looking sword carved with filligree and layered metal flowers in the hilt. The weapon looked completely out of place in the hand of the dogman, and something about the way the blade glinted off the moonlight gave Jack the suspicion that it might be magical, though he couldn"t be sure just by looking at it.
Shouting at the beast, Jack managed to get its attention before it could deliver the killing blow, and it turned and snarled at him, before deftly spinning the blade around and a.s.suming a combat stance. The way the gnoll manuevered the weapon, and the stance that it took, p.r.i.c.ked something in Jack"s combat understanding that told him this gnoll was not an ordinary opponent. He couldn"t be positive, but he suspected this could possibly be the raid"s leader, or, at least, one of its most talented fighters.
Sensing the threat in front of him, Jack shifted stances. He was going to have to be careful here.