Before the sun shone, Vaenuth was awake. She glanced at Novon, who’s bed she had shared now for a second night, and quietly climbed off of his mattress. Before she could get her sandals laced up, she felt him stir, and his hand gently rested on the brands in the middle of the back. “Is today the day?” he asked, quietly. She had told him she would be leaving, abruptly, to complete private business. Judging by the presence of her weaponry and the sharp lines of her muscles, he knew it was not the task of a travelling merchant.
“It is,” she said. She stood up, and his hand fell limply to the bed-sheets. She donned her white wrap, looping it around her breasts with her arms waving around in the air.
Novon looked up at her. They hadn’t spoken a lot, but had enjoyed drinks a few times over the last few days and even engaged in a game of cards, twice at the pub. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. She glanced at him, and he smiled openly. He wasn’t trying to tell her what to do, just offering her other options.
Vae smiled back. “It does,” she said. She buckled her sword to her waist, and spread her hands at her sides. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. If I’m back in Lo Mallago, I’ll come find you again. If it’s what you want.”
“It is,” he said. His bare chest caught the first ray of sunlight, and squinted at her as she walked for the door of the small bedchamber.
Two hours later, Vaenuth and her friends were marching along the trail that led north out of Lo Mallago. Tagg walked at her side, stretching his arm whenever he felt the muscles seizing. It was an overcast day again, though the heat rising from the south point of Radregar blocked the arrival of rain most days, leaving it a barren waste. There were trees ahead of them though, looming alvara trees with wide triangular leaves.
“Arloe,” Vaenuth called, and the black-bearded man scampered up to her left side. “I want you to run on ahead to Wartha Mull. Scout it out and brainstorm plans for dealing with Jorath senior. We’ll have to do that during the night, I suspect, or in the morning.”
“Are you sure?” Arloe asked. “We don’t know how many guards Alrin will have yet.” Pressip, the most stealthy and experienced tracker among them, had delayed at the Lo Mallago gates to scout out the group that was leaving the city in concern for the medical emergency that had apparently befallen the head of House Jorath.
“If Old Man Jorath hears of his son’s death before we get to him, we might not,” Vaenuth explained. “Besides, Hulean can handle healing if something happens, right?” The strange magician nodded mutely. As Arloe replied and began a slow jog, she had a momentary flashback to the night before and Novon’s intense actions. She inhaled, sharply.
It was after midday when Pressip reached them and reported that Alrin and three guards were marching this way. Vaenuth ordered him into the nearby long grass, to ready himself with his bow. Vae, Tagg, and Krebin walked back the way they had come until they spotted the party approaching. It was a guard in the lead, with chainmail and leopard fur about his shoulders and a spear in his hand. Vaenuth kept walking until they were close, then stepped out of line with her friends and forced the guard to react. “Please, sir, we’re out of water,” she said. “Would you pause and share?”
“Keep walking,” the man in second said at once. He wore a red tunic, had an imported iron sword at his waist, and ink-smudged fingers. His hair and short beard were speckles with white from his age.
“Please, sir!” cried Vaenuth, holding out a canteen.
Alrin leaned closer to her, but did not stop walking and said, “I can spot a liar at a hundred feet, and we’ve no coin for you to rob either. By Atmos, be gone!”
Vae yanked out her sword, smoothly, and slashed open the sword-arm of the guard behind Alrin. The man screeched and stumbled off the road, only to be taken by an arrow. Alrin went for his sword, as did the third guard, while Tagg bodily knocked the leading guard off the road. His spear clattered across the ground.
Alrin swung at Vaenuth, who parried the blow and hacked back. Behind her, she heard Krebin clash with the last guard. Hulean kept his distance, but helped as Vaenuth would soon find. As Alrin cursed and drove his point forward with a stab, his blade suddenly moved slower, and drooped, like it had gained ten pounds. Vaenuth easily slashed the man across the shoulder as she danced away. Alrin grasped his shoulder as red mingled over his hand, almost hiding it amidst the folds of his red shirt.
Vae glanced left, where Tagg was smashing blow after blow against the guard’s machete, his own ornate gifted blade sparking the air with flecks of light and metal. She looked right, to see Krebin leap back from a slash and stride forward his own attack.
Then Alrin moved forward again, struggling to lift his burden blade. Vaenuth moved with the speed of her recent training and pricked another chunk of flesh, this time from the man’s free arm. Alrin stumbled back again, crying out and cursing. “Why are you doing this?” he shrieked at her, as the skirmish continued around them. An arrow whizzed by Vae’s shoulder and sent the guard Tagg fought reeling.
Vaenuth shrugged and danced toward her opponent. Then Krebin cried out. He had a sword hilt in front of his stomach, and the back of it pointing out, like a red tail, behind him. The guard who had wounded him shoved him to his knees, sliding the blade out of his gut. Tagg shouted, and threw his sword. It soared, like a lance or an arrow, and arched on impact against the chainmail over the man’s shoulder. Blood splattered, and he was knocked to the side. By the time the guard forced himself to square his feet once more, Tagg had kicked the first guard’s spear into his hands and hurled it as a javelin into the man’s chest. No mail blocked that point, and the guard tumbled over Krebin and onto the hard, rocky road.
Alrin gasped, and kept walking back from Vaenuth. Hulean and Tagg ran to Krebin, the mercenary clutching his stomach in the dirt.
“Vaenuth?” called Pressip, rising out of the grasses with his bow drawn toward Alrin.
“Lower it,” she shouted, striding toward the business man.
Alrin whimpered wordlessly and dropped his sword. As Vaenuth continued, he fell to his knees and murmured, “Please, please don’t do this. I can pay you, whatever you want, please name it!”
Vaenuth exhaled quietly, sweating from the short fight. She lifted her sword.
Alrin wasn’t done begging. “I have a young son. I’ve done nothing to you, please, please, please don’t!”
Vae twisted her sword round in front of her, across the man’s neck, and his body rolled back onto his buttocks, head half-severed. Vaenuth went cold. She hadn’t killed men who caught her stealing, or had something she needed. She had killed a man on his knees, begging for his life. She felt the fire of the fight turn to transparent smoke, and her bones flooded with cold murk.
Pressip reclaimed his arrows while Hulean tended to the mortally wounded mercenary. “I can heal this,” he told them. “Krebin, you’ll live,” he assure the man. Tagg muttered under his breath how useful the damned magician would have been in Varravar or Soros.
“Vae?” Krebin asked, against all the pain. Vaenuth barely heard him, standing over Alrin’s bloody corpse. She didn’t regret it, she told herself. This was what she had to do. “Vae?” her warrior repeated.
“I’m here,” she said. “You’re going to recover better than this pock-shouldered fool did.” Tagg gave her a reassuring smile and a wink, and they did their best to ease Krebin’s pain as Hulean worked on him with herb, and stitches, and focused energy invisible to them all.