The feeling, the result of waiting, ready for battle, many times over many lifetimes, was familiar.
The guards in front were almost beneath them before they sprung the ambush. With fierce shouts, three of the brigands leaped into the road. The horse of one of the blue-clad guards squealed and reared, more from its rider’s panicked reaction than anything else. The centermost man, a burly, bearded fellow who looked older than the rest and might have been in charge, drew his sword and advanced on the attackers.
Three more rogues charged from the ditch, leaving one behind to cover them. Lakini leaped from her perch, lifting her sword overhead in a two-handed grip. She felt the wind of Lusk’s two arrows as they flew by her left shoulder, and an instant later she heard the hiss of their passage. They hit the back and shoulder of one of the attackers, who screamed and crumpled into the road. Lakini landed on both feet behind the centermost rogue. Just as she did, he lifted his arm, took aim, and a crossbow bolt pierced the chest of the burly guard.
Using the force of her landing, Lakini brought her blade down slantwise between the neck and shoulder of the man before her. The thick metal chopped into the soft flesh, almost severing the spine. Over his head her eyes met those of the mounted guard. The short, wicked shaft of the bolt quivered in the center of his chest; it had pierced the leather and mail he wore like a pin through paper. His face held nothing but astonishment. He stared at her, uncomprehending, and groped blindly for the shaft with one gloved hand.
He looked as if he was about to tell her something, and a scarlet trickle bubbled from the corner of his mouth. With no alteration of expression he slid off his jittery horse, lying unmoving in the dust of the road.
She tore her eyes away from his body as another brigand leaped at her, slicing at her with a curved, eastern-style blade. She couldn’t pull her greatsword from the body quickly enough; she maintained her grip with her left hand and drew her long-bladed dagger with the right, deflecting the light blade as it bore down on her. Letting her blade slide down his sword to the hilt, she flicked the tip of the dagger in a circular motion, slicing the man’s wrist. He jumped back with an oath, grasping the wound with his free hand. Blood spurted between his fingers. She hoped she’d cut through a sinew.
Putting her foot on the first man’s back, she pulled the sword free, using her left hand to slash at her opponent with the same movement. He stumbled backward.
“Meddling bitch,” he snarled. “I’ll have that mask off you, and teach you to use parlor tricks in a fair fight.” He had the protruding lower canines of a half-orc.
Lakini grinned and flipped her dagger, grasping it by the blade.
“Mind your manners,” she replied, and tossed the dagger with a strong arm and a sure aim. It pieced the half-orc’s throat with a satisfying thunk. He staggered backward, his crimson-streaked hands clutching at his neck.
Lakini glanced behind her and saw another of the brigands lying limp at the lip of the ditch, Lusk’s arrows bristling from his body. Lusk kneeled by his side, making sure he was dead.
Three of the brigands remained. Lakini saw that two of the mounted guards had recovered control of their horses and were attempting to box in one of the attackers, a female tall and bulky enough to be another half-orc. The fourth blue-clad guard, who had slid off his horse to check the body of the burly man, was now engaged in a desperate clashing of swords with another rogue. It was clear that the guard was formally trained and had the advantage of youth, and that the brigand was older and had the inferior weapon. But Lakini’s keen eye told her the brigand had years of fighting experience under his belt—street fighting and raids, fights where the goal was to overpower, to draw blood and kill, not to score points under an instructor’s eye in an exercise yard. If Lakini had the inclination to gamble, she’d bet the guard had never fought for his life before.
Lakini retrieved her dagger from her opponent’s throat with a deft twist, the big ruby on the hilt smooth to her palm. Wiping the blade clean on the brigand’s shoulder, she considered interfering but decided to let the boy fight it out. If he lived, he’d learn several valuable lessons. Never let one’s attention slide on the trail. Make sure all enemies are accounted for before succoring the wounded or attending the dead. Never give up the advantage of horseback before necessary.
That left one rogue unaccounted for. Quickly she sheathed her dagger and gripped the sword in both hands, scanning the scene before her. The caravan was in chaos. Horses and riders milled about, calling out in confusion, and the wagon was stopped aslant the road. One of the mounted rear guard had forced his horse through the shambles and joined his companions in trying to corner the half-orc, while the other stayed behind, frantically looking around in case of an attack to the rear.
Lakini spotted the seventh brigand. The girl in the garnet dress had lost her mare’s reins and, knee-deep in purple lupine and yellow flowers, stood by the side of the road, looking unsure whether to flee on foot or to pursue her mount. The rogue was charging straight for her, holding a long knife at his side. She stared at him wide-eyed, her mouth an “O,” frozen in shock.
One of the mounted travelers, a tallish woman perched sidesaddle on her gelding, saw what Lakini had seen.
“Kestrel!” she shouted, and, wheeling her horse away from the confusion in the center of the road, she urged her horse toward the girl and her attacker.
Behind her, Lakini heard Lusk mutter an oath. The mounted woman came between the deva and the rogue, and he was unable to release his arrow.
The girl in the red dress, Kestrel, backed away from the man with the knife. In her right hand she held a bunch of lupines, their purple blooms incongruously cheerful, and she raised them as if she were going to strike him down with her bouquet. He reached for her arm and raised his knife at the same time. Lakini raised her sword to her shoulder and ran at them. She couldn’t be sure of her aim with the dagger, not at this range and not with the mounted woman between them.
The man seized the girl by the wrist and jerked her forward. The mounted woman wheeled her horse about so violently, Lakini was surprised she didn’t fall off. The mounted woman uttered an oath and slashed at the man with her riding whip.
Startled, the man also swore in his turn and, without releasing Kestrel, turned and lashed at the woman with the long knife. He might have meant to slice at her leg, but he cut into the gelding’s side. The horse whinnied shrilly and shied away from him, while the woman fought to stay mounted.
He turned back to the terrified girl and raised his knife, streaked with the horse’s blood, once more. Two strides and Lakini would have him.
In that instant, the black-feathered shaft of an arrow sprouted from the man’s back. His head flung back and his spine arched, but he still held Kestrel by the wrist. The knife slipped from his fingers, and he flopped to the ground right at her feet. Kestrel wrenched her arm out of his grip as he fell. She looked ahead and flinched back, her eyes wide. Lakini turned to see Lusk before them, another arrow ready, pointed straight at the girl. He lowered his bow to cover the man sprawled before her, but seeing no movement, loosened the gut string.
A glance told Lakini the girl was unhurt. The other woman had subdued her horse and dismounted, her blue dress streaked with the gelding’s blood.
Lakini turned to survey the situation at the center of the road. The rear guard, armed with a pike, managed to knock the half-orc’s sword away, but she had drawn a wicked-looking dagger and was slashing at their horses’ heads. Lakini clucked her tongue in annoyance. It should not be such a task for three horsemen to take down someone on foot, even if it was a half-orc.
She cupped her left hand at her mouth. “You, with the crossbow! Yes, that thing slung on your back. It has a use.” The guard—like the others, little more than a boy—threw her a bewildered look.
“Don’t look so confused!” seconded the pikeman, who seemed to know what he was doing. “Shoot her in the leg, and get this over with.”
The young guard nod
ded, urged his horse back a few paces, and retrieved the crossbow, inserted a bolt, cocked it, and promptly sent it into the ground a man’s-length from the half-orc’s foot. Lakini stifled a groan and looked for the guard engaged one-on-one with the rogue.
He had managed to survive thus far. Blood streamed down his cheek, collar, and blue tunic from a cut beneath his eye, and he had a desperate look. The brigand was pressing him hard and Lakini was about to step in, when the guard’s stance shifted slightly and the panic vanished from his face, replaced by an expression of intense concentration.
Lakini paused, interested. Training and more, a fighter’s instinct, had taken over for the frightened boy, struggling for his life. Anyone who might make the warrior’s art his life’s work experienced this moment, being at once fully engaged with the opponent and detached from the battle, able to see it from all angles. The boy might make a fighter yet.
Behind them, she saw Lusk nock an arrow and look at her inquiringly. She gave him a slight shake of her head, and he nodded.
The guard let the brigand swing high and came, swift and deadly, under his opponent’s guard, slashing his sword across his midriff. With a piercing scream the man staggered back, clutching his belly. Without giving quarter, the guard swung at his foe’s shoulder, laying him down in the road.
Panting, with his sword raised, the guard stared down at the still body of the rogue. His face was once more that of a bewildered boy. As Lakini approached, he lifted his face to look at her, and he let the tip of his weapon fall.
In that moment the brigand, still gripping his sword, drew a last dying breath and with a convulsive movement lunged at the young guard’s leg. The blade was a handbreadth from his knee when Lakini kicked the rogue’s arm, deflecting the blow, which went wide. At the same time she plunged her greatsword into the base of the outlaw’s neck, delivering the coup de grâce. Facedown in the dirt, the man convulsed, sighed, and was still.
There was a strangled cry from the cluster of horses as a crossbow bolt hamstrung the half-orc. She fell to the ground heavily, and the guard with the pike kicked the knife from her hand. Crouched on her hands and knees, she snarled ferociously, until the pikeman brought the butt of his weapon down hard on the small of her back, pinning her in the dust of the road while the other two bound her arms to her sides.
Lakini pulled her sword free and crouched, carefully wiping the blood from the blade with the dead man’s tattered sleeve and sheathing it only when it was clean. When she stood, she was a headspan taller than the young guard, who still held his sword as if expecting an attack.
“What’s your name?” asked Lakini as gently as she could.
The boy swallowed. “An … Ansel.” He looked up at her and frowned, trying to puzzle her out. “Ansel Chuit, ma’am.” He started to shake.
She made her voice stern. “Clean your blade, Ansel Chuit. Now. Never sheathe it soiled.”
He blinked at her, and his trembling ceased. Mechanically he pulled the edge of his shirt free from under his tunic and wiped the sword.
“Your first fight?”
He sheathed his weapon and straightened. “I was trained at the Three Fists Academy in Nonthal. First in my class at free combat.”
She cut him off. “Playing at swords. Your first kill, then.”
He slumped. “Yes.”
“You did well. You lived. Perhaps next time you’ll learn to guard what you’re hired to protect. But not bad, for the first. You’ll have a lovely scar to remember it by.”
Ansel felt his face as if he hadn’t noticed the wound. In the heat of battle he probably hadn’t.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s clotting up. They’ll take care of that at Shadrun.”
“Shadrun-of-the-Snows,” he whispered. “We’re almost there, aren’t we? Captain Nimor …” He glanced at the big man who lay with the bristles of the crossbow bolt protruding from his chest. “He said it was close, and we could relax.”
Lakini frowned. “He was wrong.”
Having retrieved her mare, Kestrel stood at the gelding’s head, stroking it to keep it calm while the woman in blue who had come to her aid examined its side. The gelding shifted restlessly but was otherwise still.
The guards slung the captured half-orc, trussed like a goat for the roasting pit, over their dead captain’s horse. The rear guard who’d come to the aid of his fellows was taking command, barking orders at the others to flank the sides of the road and look out for more attackers. Lusk, still holding his lowered bow at the ready, came to her, looking intently at the trees on either side of the road and sniffing the air.
“There may be more,” he told her, barely sparing a glance for Ansel, who looked from his striped face to Lakini’s in puzzlement. He had probably just realized the band across her eyes was not a mask.
She nodded. The faster they got the caravan to the sanctuary, the better. The rear guard with the pike, having marshaled everyone into some sort of order and remounted, urged his horse next to them and nodded.
“From Shadrun?” he asked. His face was lined and he had his own set of scars. His eyes, alert, flickered from them to the fallen brigands to the forest around them. He knows what he’s doing, thought Lakini. Why wasn’t he in charge?
“Lakini and Lusk, in the service of the sanctuary,” replied Lusk. “It’s one hour’s ride up the mountain path. We’ll stay with you and come back with horses for the bodies. We should hurry. We haven’t seen any others, but there might be another attack regardless.”
“Kaarl vor Beguine,” said the guard, and Lakini swiftly searched her memory for various naming customs and determined that Kaarl was a descendant of an illegitimate but acknowledged child of a Beguine scion.
“You’ve come from Turmish as part of the wedding negotiations?” she asked, and he nodded.
“I’m acting captain now, I suppose,” he continued, with a glance at his dead predecessor. He pursed his lips. “By the helm, what folly. I thought him too old a campaigner to let his guard down like that; to let the men play at ladies’ afternoon stroll, without a thought of the danger. I spoke to him of it, and he told me to get behind and not play nursemaid. Almost got the young mistress killed, if not for your skill with the bow, sir.”
He shook his head and spotted Ansel, still staring at the odd pair. “Wake up, Chuit. Catch your mount and fall in.” Kaarl vor Beguine gave the field of slaughter an appraising glance. “Pretty efficient, for holy folk,” he remarked.
Ansel obeyed, and Kaarl vor Beguine trotted over to the two women—the girl in the red dress must be Kestrel Beguine, betrothed to Arna Jadaren. The woman in blue, with the injured horse, looked too young to be her mother or governess and too self-assured to be a servant, and she wasn’t dressed as a bodyguard. Perhaps she was her sister. She turned from examining the horse to speak to Kaarl, making emphatic motions with her hands.
“Yes, Mistress Ciari,” Lakini heard the guard say.
Lakini stood beside Lusk. “Notice anything?” she said.
Lusk nodded. “Of course. It’s not customary for a raiding party to be in uniform,” he said, nudging the man at his feet with his foot. Lakini winced internally. It was against her nature to disrespect the dead, no matter the path they took in life. It used to be against Lusk’s nature, as well. But increasingly she noticed that her deva companion seemed to cherish the divine spark that existed in all living creatures less and less, and to regard his fellow creatures with a cynical air.
She would not think less of him. Lusk was her dagger-mate, as the knife at her belt and his proved, and had been for a matter of lifetimes. But it did distress her.
“Sage tunics, with a chevron on the sleeve,” she said. “The livery of House Jadaren.”
“Attacking the scion on House Beguine, on her way to negotiate her marriage to Arna Jadaren,” said Lusk. “Interesting, to say the least.”
“And I’ve heard nothing of the Jadaren party’s arrival,” said Lakini. “Curious that they’re not here yet.”
Again, she sensed rather than saw Lusk’s reaction to the name “Jadaren,” so small that it might have been merely his blinking at a gnat near his face.
“Very curious,” was all he said, securing his bow in its place across his back, and Lakini wondered if she had imagined it.
Under Kaarl vor Beguine’s urging, the caravan gathered into some sort of order and turned from the road to the winding path that led to Shadrun-of-the-Snows, following Lusk as he led them on foot. Before she fell in behind them, Lakini waited for the girl in the red dress to pass by, leading her bay mare. This must be Kestrel Beguine, soon to wed an enemy of her House and make him a friend. Lakini had the impression of intelligent green-brown eyes in a smooth, olive face. Kestrel still held her bouquet of lupines, and gave Lakini a hesitant smile. She slowed her horse.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “You, and your … partner …” She indicated Lusk’s back. “I’m sure that man would’ve killed me. His face …” She shuddered. “I was foolish to dismount. I thought it was safe. I know better now.”
“You’ll be safe at the sanctuary,” said Lakini.
The girl glanced at the place where the late captain lay. One of his men had thrown a sage green cloak over the body. Her green-brown eyes filled with tears.
“Poor Captain Nimor,” she said. “He used to lead me on his horse when I was a child, and he a guardsman. My uncle will be especially saddened. They were close friends.”
“He didn’t suffer,” said Lakini. “I saw it, and I promise you that. Quick and clean.”
He had also died very surprised, even after the fight began, a fact that made Lakini suspicious. But this wasn’t the time to make mention of that.
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