Pathfinder Tales - Shy Knives

by Sam Sykes

  For a brief moment, it looked like cooler heads would prevail.

  Of course, then someone went and shot that to hell.

  “HIT HIM, YOU COWARD!”

  Had just another moment passed, they might have realized that the voice that cried out was no centaur. Had just another moment passed, they might have both looked to me and wondered why I was grinning so damn wide.

  Maybe I just happened to say the right thing at the right time.

  Because someone went and took my advice.

  The savage threw the first punch, his sword hand lashing out to bring the crosspiece against the armored centaur’s jaw. The clean one staggered with the blow, letting out a bellow as he reared up and brought hooves crashing down upon the barbarian’s skull.

  The savage collapsed.

  A roar erupted.

  And then, as intended, everything went right to hell.

  The armored ones assembled themselves into a tight knot as they charged. The nomads howled, bringing their spears down as they rushed to meet their foes.

  Fists flew.

  Steel flashed.

  Blood spattered.

  And within the span of six seconds, the idea of rampaging bird-bears was nothing more than a pleasant memory of calmer times.

  I didn’t bother with stillness as I began to wriggle out of my ropes; it seemed everyone had bigger concerns than me at the moment. Tight they might have been, but the knots were about as clever as you’d think a centaur could muster.

  That is, not at all.

  “What’s going on?”

  The female centaur that had tied me came galloping up, running past me and skidding to a halt at the edge of the brawl. She stared out over the roaring, squealing carnage with mouth agape, wide eyes fixed upon the savagery unfolding before her.

  And not the girl sneaking up behind her.

  “What the hell happened here?” she whispered.

  Poor girl. I don’t think she ever learned.

  Not as I reached for Whisper hanging from her belt. Not as I tore him free from his sheath. Not as I plunged his blade into her kidneys.

  Five quick stabs—in and out, like a rusty machine—and she collapsed to all four of her knees. She let out a wail of pain that went unheard among the sounds of the brawl. Not that it mattered much—it only lasted another moment before I jammed Whisper into her neck.

  Warm red life burst out, spattered on my leathers. She cast a shocked look at me through a face fast going white, still not quite certain what was happening even as her life leaked out onto the dirt. I almost felt bad for her.

  Until I remembered she wanted to pulverize me into fertilizer.

  I stepped back, let her limp body crash to the ground. I didn’t take a lot of pride in that. It had been a messy job. But a job done messy was still a job done.

  And I still had more of it to do.

  I resisted the urge to run for the camp’s exit. I could see a few centaurs hanging back from the brawl, cheering on their comrades. All it would take was a few of them to notice me gone and pursue me. Out on the plains, I’d be run down for sure.

  I had to find something to keep them busy.

  I rushed to a nearby bonfire, grabbed a nearby piece of wood and thrust it in. It started burning immediately; I had only moments before it was engulfed completely. Fortunately, I didn’t need much more than that.

  I darted to the barrel of whiskey, kicked its spigot off. With a grunt, I turned it on its side, the liquid sloshing around inside it. Another kick sent it rolling toward the brawl, leaving a trail of thick, reeking liquor as it did. It got lost in the melee almost immediately, smashed to pieces beneath a centaur’s hooves and spraying liquor that went unnoticed amid all the blood.

  And I took a moment to savor that moment.

  Because in another, things were about to ugly.

  I tossed the torch onto the ground. The trail of whiskey caught in an instant, raced across the earth and into the brawl. It went up immediately, catching leather, cloth, liquor-coated skin, whatever it could.

  In a chorus of screams, the battle turned into a panic as the savage and civil alike went mad with fear. A brawl that beautiful gave the fire a feast, and it leapt from combatant to combatant, sending the fighters screaming for help even as their friends tried to get away from them.

  I wished I had time to watch.

  But I was already running.

  I had grabbed up the torch, and as I rushed through the nomads’ camp, I set it to every tent I could find. The dried hides went up like tinder, and in a few seconds the camp was bright as daylight with burning pyres.

  As whatever fighters could be spared tried vainly to put out the flames, I was already back on the other side of camp. I tossed the torch into the nearest cabin, hoping its old, rotted wood would catch quickly. Centaurs went screaming, unsure which flaming ruin to help first: their friends or their supplies.

  I hoped they had fun with that.

  As for me, this seemed distraction enough. I tucked Whisper into my belt and went bolting for the exit. If any centaur noticed me fleeing, they didn’t bother chasing me as they rushed for whatever water they could find. I kept to the shadows, out of their paths as they went galloping around the camp.

  The mouth of the valley loomed large before me. It would be just a few more minutes out of the forest, across the plain, to Harges’s carriage, and then we could get the hell out of here.

  Admittedly, I thought as I came sprinting out of the valley mouth, I hadn’t thought things would go this smoothly. Norgorber usually didn’t like me this much.

  At least, not as much as he liked a mean joke.

  That’s why I should have seen it coming, in the instant I heard hoofbeats behind me: the punch line galloping up.

  I ducked the axe just as its head came cleaving through the air where mine had just been. I threw myself to the ground as a great, four-legged shape came leaping over me, hooves narrowly missing me as I rolled to the side and back onto my feet. I held up Whisper, still fresh with centaur blood.

  This, of course, failed to impress Kjoda.

  “My beasts dead, my kin dead, my camp ablaze…” Kjoda’s teeth were yellow and stark through the red war paint on his face. “All from one two-legged whelp and Halamox’s impotence.”

  “Sounds like you two have a lot to talk about,” I said. Not that this was a particularly wise thing to say, but it wasn’t like this could get worse.

  “WARRIORS!” he howled, rearing up on his hind legs. “To me! The stabled have failed us! It’s time we showed the humans we are not to be trifled with!” He leveled his axe at me. “And we start by sending this one’s head back to its masters!”

  He swung. I darted, scrambling into the underbrush.

  I could feel the earth shudder beneath me as I slipped into the forest. More were coming.

  You might have expected me to start panicking. And, truth be told, that would probably have been a sensible reaction. But just because there were now a bunch of centaurs hunting for me in the forest didn’t mean things had gotten worse.

  It just meant things were about to get dirty.

  8

  Steel Whispers

  “Spread out! Search the underbrush! She can’t have gotten far!”

  I wouldn’t blame you for worrying for me.

  “All the stabled couldn’t handle one human? Hah! We’ll show them.”

  After all, six centaurs against one tiny Katapeshi girl? Not great odds to begin with. If you were a gambler, I’d not begrudge a tiny bet against me.

  “First her, then Halamox. Bring me her head. Bring me her broken body. Bring me her blood.”

  But I’ll let you in on a secret: gambling’s a fool’s game. What kind of buffoon would risk his meager fortunes on something as fair and reasonable as dumb luck?

  “If I find her first, I’m going to paint myself with her blood!”

  No, no. Amateurs gamble. Professionals?

  We rig the game.

&nb
sp; “Come out, human! Make this easy on yourself!”

  I’m not quite sure what Kjoda was expecting me to do here. Give up, I suppose.

  That wasn’t an option, of course. Neither was slipping away and running. Eventually, they’d chase me out of the forest, back to Dalaris. And her crappy carriage couldn’t outrun these beasts. I had to keep them here. I had to finish them here.

  Fortunately, as I peered at him from the underbrush, I couldn’t help but feel Kjoda was going to make that easier than I expected.

  He stood at the center of a small clearing, directing his clan with bellowing commands and powerful sweeps of his axe. And his clan, in turn, went tromping through the forest, spearing at the underbrush and stomping on the ground.

  Not to sound too generalizing, but there’s a certain mindset you come to expect from people in less civilized lands. From the lowliest orc to the mightiest lord in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, hard lands breed hard people used to hard ways.

  People like Kjoda, they rule by strength. They howl and stomp their feet and, so long as they keep bringing in corpses, they continue to lead. And all their people, they follow that example, becoming as brash and noisy as their leader. I don’t blame them. They do what they must to survive.

  But noisy people are all alike: whether they bellow or roar or just talk too much, they tell you everything about themselves within minutes of meeting them. They tell you their fears, their problems, their insecurities …

  Or, in this case, they just tell you where they are.

  I heard the brush rustling behind me. I heard hooves stomping the earth. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the centaur approaching. A youth, it looked like: lean and hard-bodied, but not brimming with the scarred muscle of his kinsmen. He was tromping through the underbrush, sweeping his spear back and forth in an attempt to flush me out.

  And he was nowhere near my actual location.

  Did they assume I was some kind of pheasant? That I’d just out and run and let them chase me down?

  Ah, well. His bad luck.

  I maneuvered around him as he came tromping through. Over the noise he was making, he never even heard me sneaking up behind him. I flipped Whisper over in my hand, angled the blade downward, and waited.

  The youth glanced around for a moment and scratched his head. I assumed he was just now beginning to wonder if his strategy was all that effective.

  Too late.

  I leapt out of the bush without a sound. I jammed my dagger into the flank of his horse body and, with a jerk, yanked downward. He cut open like old leather, something thick and viscous spilling out of the wound. His hooves lashed out, his spear swung around, but these were only the spasms of someone in agony.

  His scream was long, loud, and full of terror.

  I jerked my blade out, went darting back into the brush, and scrambled away.

  Hoofbeats thundered across the forest as his comrades came to see what was the matter. The youth collapsed in a pool of his own blood, hooves flailing as his body tried to figure out why it was no longer working. The rest of him, however, knew well.

  “Help me!” he shrieked. “Please! Help!”

  I winced. His voice was shrill, squeaking. He screamed like he didn’t know what was wrong with him, even as he went leaking out on the forest floor. He couldn’t be more than a teenager, out to prove himself to his brothers and sisters.

  Poor kid.

  But the world’s full of poor kids.

  “Holy…” one of them whispered. “Look what she did to him.”

  “She couldn’t,” another grunted. “She was so small…”

  “What happened over there?” Kjoda bellowed.

  “She got Munda!” another one shouted back.

  “Avenge him! Find her!”

  With apprehensive looks, they returned to the hunt. I couldn’t help but smile. They moved a little slower now, a little quieter, and even beneath their war paint, I could see the fear written on their faces. Hard lands breed hard people, but hard people break like anyone else.

  You just have to hit them in the right spot.

  I glanced down at Whisper, painted with blood. Thick-bladed, he was always good for sending a particular kind of message. And the one I wanted to send was ugly and scarlet.

  I peered out from the underbrush again, chose my next mark. A tall, burly-looking female. She carried a thick bow in her hands, arrow nocked, searching for a target.

  Funny thing about hard people: they’re suspicious, but never about the right things. They don’t trust civilization because they think it makes people soft. But they never realize that soft people just learn how to work to make things easier.

  Case in point. I could tell by the tension of her legs that she was ready for me if I were to come up behind her and try to stab her. If I were a hard woman, like her, I might try to do that and take my chances.

  But I’m a civilized girl.

  And I like to do things cleanly.

  I slipped through the brush, pausing whenever another one of them tromped by, resuming when they cleared me. Inch by inch, I made my way toward the woman as she poked through the underbrush. I waited for her to pause, her legs tense and muscles bunched, and then …

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a farm, but they tend to take good care of their horses there. With good reason: for all their burliness, horses are pretty fragile creatures, particularly around the legs. They do everything standing up, so a horse with a broken leg, sadly, doesn’t do well …

  And a horse with a dagger jammed in her thigh? Well, she doesn’t do much better.

  I slipped out, reached around and cut at the interior of her leg. I felt something big burst in my hand. Her leg snapped out in response and immediately went limp as the blood drained from her. She screamed, falling to the ground as I sprinted away and ducked back into the brush.

  “She got me!” she screamed.

  Her companions came galloping over. Fear colored their faces more plainly than their war paint. Their eyes were wide as they looked down at their companion. They saw exactly what I intended them to see: someone no longer capable of hunting, of running, of even standing up. She was going to bleed out slowly and they could do nothing but watch the color drain from her face.

  She shrieked again, holding her hand out.

  “She’s like a ghost,” one of them muttered. “Maybe Halamox was right.”

  “Halamox was not right.” Kjoda came stalking up. “We prove it tonight.” He looked down at the female, frowned. “Sister … we’ll get you to the healer, once we’re done. But we can’t let the human escape.”

  Deep down, she might have known that. But that was deep down, buried beneath all the fear and screaming they tried to ignore as they turned away and resumed the hunt.

  But they were leery now, holding their weapons close, looking at every shadow. Fear can be handy in a hunt, but panic isn’t. Panic makes you jumpy, makes you inattentive, makes you miss things …

  Such as the woman scaling a nearby tree and sliding into its branches.

  I found the thickest one, crept out as far out as I dared. Below, I saw them shaking, nervous, wary. Remember what I said about hard people? These ones were ready to break.

  I just had to make the next hit suitably dramatic.

  And fortunately, opportunity came pacing underneath. A big one, brimming with muscle and a bright mane of red hair, held a massive blade as he came stalking beneath my perch. His face was thick and broad, unused to holding the kind of nervousness currently on it.

  And certainly, it was unused to surprise.

  So when I dropped down from the tree and landed on his back, he didn’t quite know how to react. All he made was a confused grunt as I reached up and grabbed him by the hair. All he made was a growl as I jerked his head back.

  And by the time he thought to scream, my blade was already in his neck.

  I heard the others shout their surprise as they saw him, blood fanning out of his throat in a bright re
d gout. I heard the others tear off running in various directions as their friend went to the ground, twitching and bleeding out. I heard Kjoda roaring curses at them as I sprinted toward the forest’s edge.

  That would keep them busy for a little bit, I thought. Long enough to get back to Dalaris’s carriage and get the hell out of here. By the time they caught up to us, we’d be too close to Yanmass for them to engage.

  I burst from the forest’s edge. My breath was heavy, my heart thundering in my ears.

  I don’t think I even heard the sound of Kjoda’s charge until he got me.

  Something struck me in the back, knocked me to the ground. I felt the breath explode out of my lungs, felt the ground rise up and hit me like a fist. My head spun as I staggered to my knees. My breath came in short, ragged gasps.

  I felt a shadow fall across me, fell to the side just in time to avoid a pair of hooves that came crashing down. I only barely managed to roll away from the axe blade that followed. By the time I found my legs, they were shaking under me. And when I looked up, Kjoda’s eyes were like fires in the night.

  “Two-legged scum,” he snarled. “The stabled are fools to try to work with your breed.”

  “Well, listen,” I said, “I just killed, like, a whole mess of them back at your camp. I thought you’d be happy.”

  He roared, reared back.

  I made a lunge at him with Whisper. He batted it aside easily with his axe and nearly took my head off with the next swing. I leapt backward, again and again as he plowed ahead, swinging wildly.

  He overextended. I leapt. Whisper found the flesh of his flank, tore at him. But I was too close. I heard his fist crack against my nose before I felt it. I flew backward with the force of the blow, staggered. I looked up at him. The wound in his side wept, but he didn’t even slow down. I hadn’t so much as tickled him.

  That might explain why he was chuckling as he advanced toward me.

  I wiped the blood from my nose, felt more flowing. I glanced around. Nowhere to run that he couldn’t run me down. Nowhere to hide that he couldn’t find me. Nothing between him and me except a big-ass axe and a lot of room to swing it.