[@Diexsmiling]

[i]Unable to pull his axe back in time and with only a bottle of rum in his other hand, it seemed like Dartega was a shoo-in landing the stab. There was still a missing element to the savage's fighting style though, and in hindsight him initially only arming himself with a skewer and some liquor should have given it away, especially in how Zande had evaded and trapped the broadsword.

It was that he didn't use or need his arms for defense. He handled virtually every attack thrown at him this way, with as little expended motion as possible and keeping his arms free.

A solid thrust could definitely puncture plate armor as thick as Zande's. Head on, that is. Trying to stab through plate armor at an angle results in the blade just glancing off. Zande demonstrated this by twisting his upper body further counter-clockwise, to his left, so that instead of Dartega being able to land a direct thrust the short sword would instead skid across the armor and past Zande, drawing bright yellow sparks. There wasn't enough time for Zande to bring his axe up, but he could turn his upper body freely and quickly.

It'd be unlikely that Dartega would notice the pint of rum had fallen from Zande's hand during the attack. He'd abandoned it as soon as he realized his opponent wasn't going to back away, clawed fingers instead finding the hem of his cloak as his enemy's stab went past the mark, so that he could then throw it up over Dartega's extended arm and drape it over his head and across his field of vision, filling his sight with the ragged black fabric.[/i]