The first volley of arrows came at me like a wall of death. I didn't think. I didn't really have the time to think. My feet moved on their own accord to make me dive – literally dive – to the ground just as the projectiles whizzed overhead, and buried themselves into the dirt where I'd been standing just a moment before.

I landed hard, brain desperately seeking out a plan of action. Obviously, the archers were all too far away for Aggro Magnetism to bite. But the foot soldiers? Now they were closer. Certainly close enough to work with. I turned my fall into a roll and came upright to run towards the small group of spearmen who had fanned out to my left.

As I ran, I felt the air thickening with the pulse of my Aura, and my minimap tracked as I pulled a couple of them into range. I grinned as the closest two were driven wild by the Rage Debuff, and my vision haloed red as my new Mask activated its focus retention and distortion effect. I made eye contact with the closest spearman, then turned my side to him, and ran. But not away from him. Across the line of fire of the archers.

Obviously, he took the bait, and his equally enraged mate followed him.

I heard their boots slap through the mud in rhythm as they gained on me, but I didn't accelerate. I needed them close enough for this to work, but not so close that they could spear me. I looped a tight turn around the body of the Village Hall, forcing them to follow and enter what I was mentally calling the kill zone. I actually had to slow down a beat to let them keep up.

But then I heard the shout for the archers to release again and everything happened at once.

I had precious little time to make this work, so with no further ado, I spun on my heel to face the spearmen and engaged Crash Tackle, making me surge back towards them. Steel met chest plate with a nicely wet crack as the first absorbed my shoulder barge, which caused him to stumble back into the arc of rapidly falling shafts...

Five struck him. Three in the back, and two in the neck. Unsurprisingly, these dropped him with quite the finality. Wasting no time, I used my momentum from the Crash Tackle to spin my morningstar at the head of the second guy I'd pulled. The simile 'exploded like an overripe watermelon' probably needs to be used here.

However, I couldn't stop there to celebrate my minor victory. I caught his decapitated body as it began to fall and turned around, clutching it, just in time to let the next wave of arrows thud into it. Quality shield work there, mate. Cheers.

But then two further spearman had come around the hall from the opposite end. This was a good flanking move, but unfortunately was poorly timed. I sidestepped inside the first one's thrust and let Weighted Argument carry the momentum, smashing my morningstar into his thigh. Then his shoulder. And then, finally, his forehead. He went flying, at which point I grabbed for the spear of the second guy, who was gawping at all the carnage a bit. Closed Circle lit up as I janked him close to me, which made him both off balance and also nicely Rage Debuffed.

Mine.

I let go of his spear and punched him in the face. I felt something break in my hand - but I didn't have time to worry about that - and Crash Tackled him into the wall of the Village Hall. The angle of his neck as he slipped to the ground suggested I was a solid 4-0 nil up at this early stage of proceedings.

The odds, though, were still massively against me, and I wasn't going to last long if any of the Rebels caught me out in the open without any cover. Certainly not with all those archers and the cavalry out there. Cautiously, then, I moved along the edge of the Village Hall, pressed tight to its wall, trying to read the various angles. I needed to keep under cover, but I also needed to keep thinning out the enemies.

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Then I heard hooves. Big ones. And worryingly close.

Instinctively, I dropped to my knees as a rider came thundering in from behind. The warhorse was dead-eyed and half-rotted, and the guy on top obviously knew his business. The warhammer he was swinging wasn't chosen for its aesthetic impact and I leapt aside just before it slammed through the timber above me. Bits of the Village Hall exploded inward, as did one of my Shadow Workers who got caught in the attack. I hadn't seen him manifest next to me, but he must've done so and given me a helpful shove to get clear at the last second. Brave, little idiot. The notification that he had been destroyed pinged, but I dismissed it. Reading was going to need to wait.

The sound of a second set of hooves kicked in from the opposite side, as the first one rode away. Another rider, also packing a swinging hammer, was thundering towards me. I didn't have time for anything as elegant as grace, and threw myself sideways into a roll that started clumsy and got worse. My shoulder smashed into the dirt, and mud filled my mouth. My mask clanged off something buried in the soil, and then I was tasting, and spitting out, plenty of blood.

But, hey, I was alive. Any day you walk away from two, determined cavalry attacks has to be a win.

Especially considering that, as the second attack missed my head, the guy's warhammer had buried itself into the door frame of the Village Hall, which jerked the mount to a halt. But in the kind of fortunate outcome that made me think Aunt M's thumb was pressing down on the scales of my Luck, the horse's momentum kept going, at which point its rider was taught a valuable physics lesson.

He was catapulted clean off and hit the doorframe of the Medical Hut headfirst. He went through it in a spray of splinters and what I'm hoping was a shower of brain matter. I didn't have the spare breath to cheer, though, which was a shame, because that quality of dismount deserved plenty of applause.

But the hits were just keeping on coming as three foot soldiers were running at me, and their spears were looking pretty damn sharp. I scanned left to right at the archers. No arrows in the air anymore. I presume, after the first mishap, they'd decided against shish-kebabing any more of their own lads. Which was disappointing of them.

I was five-nil up, sure, but this was sudden death rules now. The Rebels only needed one goal, and I didn't have a goalie. The first spear jabbed in, but it was angled too wide, and I was able to bat it away with the shaft of my own weapon and stepped forward, not back. That put me right inside his stance, and Weighted Argument flared.

I swung the head of my morningstar low, smashing into his shin. His greave armour held, which was annoying, but his balance didn't, which turned out to be a decent trade. He screamed and stumbled, and I followed through, dragging the spike up and under to connect with the meat of his jaw. He went down twitching and drooling, and I stepped over him without looking back.

The other two closed in like jaws, at which point Aggro Magnetism grabbed them. One moved to flank me, and I tried to put their fallen comrade between us. But it didn't work. Because the downside of Aggro Magnetism was that it made those under the Rage Debuff attack in a frenzy, and those spears were jabbing in just too fast. I parried one, but the point of the second bit deep into my side just above the hip. Pain bloomed, even as Stubborn Constitution dulled my scream down to a manly grunt.

Then the shaft of the second spearman's weapon cracked against my ribs, and something inside gave, and breathing got a whole lot harder. In fact, even standing got harder. However, Lineholder's Instinct triggered, and I felt the burn of it settling into my legs and arms. No knockbacks, thank you very much. And no panic.

Nevertheless, I was being effectively pinned down. My attackers were moving into an easy rhythm now. One feigned and the other stabbed. By the grim smiles on their faces, they knew they had me.

I gripped the morningstar tighter and adjusted my stance, desperate for a crack in their pattern. But it didn't come. What did come, though, was the sound of hooves. Which was catastrophically bad right now. And then a terrified whinny. Which gave me a little moment of hope.

The first Paladin who had charged me had sought to loop around the back of the fight, but their horse had skittered too close to the broken frame of the Village Hall. Which, as it turned out, was a bit of a mistake. There was a loud groan, and then the whole side of the building just gave up. Support beams snapped like twigs, and a sheet of timber buckled outward and spun like a drunk god's discus.

It smashed into both spearmen at once and sent them flying away in a spray of blood and meat.

I stared. My first thought was that I was irritated I was going to need to get that building put back up again, but that felt like a minor concern right now. It's funny, isn't it, the things you choose to care about in your last moments of life . . .

Because this was the moment that Berker decided he was fed up playing nice.

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