[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]
[@Conscripts][@Raineh Daze]

[color=goldenrod][i]It means I'm not as dumb as I look.[/i][/color]

Whatever contact the armored butcher may have expected, in what mind he could speak to beneath that ugly pig's helm, what he received was feather-light on his guard. Gerard had sold the preparatory motions, but not the full shift of weight through the arc— he was never going to get that lucky to begin with, but given the ideas already in his foe's head from their shared history?

Surviving long as he had on the battlefield had honed the Boar's speed, even beneath his shell of tempered iron, as well as any other. The reprisal came immediately out of the same motion that brought his hammer haft into guard, a sequence that had caved countless Verloren skulls. Men like the knight before him, only half a year ago—

Who had already disappeared from the space, ducking low as he dodged to the side the moment he drew the reaction out. The swing flew past by an inch or two, rushing wind grazing his scarred cheekbone— if he hadn't already been moving when it came, it would have clocked him cold, sallet or no. Half a year ago, he very well may have died. 

This man expected the aggression, expected the vitriol to take his senses, expected him to throw his whole being into every blow. He'd seen it from Gerard's ilk, time and again. Reckless, wild, overwhelming—

A flash in his mind, of the towering silhouette that buried blade and axe into his bones.

—and stopped by a brick wall all the same. There was likely nobody better the Knights had, then, to sell the feint. But feinting alone wouldn't knock a castle gate down.

When sieging heavy fortifications... you brought the battering ram.

Surging forth from the smoke as though fired from ballistae and filling the void Gerard had left, Sir Steffen bore down upon the Black Iron Pig, spear flashing, shield braced to bowl him over. Gerard's mind raced as he pivoted his strong side back into the exchange, now at the flank, sensing something wrong with their enemy's balance from the arc the swing had taken— [color=goldenrod][i]There![/i][/color]

He swung again, as the gleam of rime drew the eyes to the compromised leg the boar suddenly needed to [i]favor[/i], crossguard every bit as good a hook as it was a hammer. If he could take out a balance point, hook or knock in a knee or ankle from the back, the pig's hopes of bracing into and checking Sir Steffen would be dead in the water!