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She had camped in a well-used spot by the edge of the creek, rising with the
sun the next morning to start the second day's travel down the southerly road.
She was humming in the early morning sunshine as she walked the hardpack.
She spent her time idly looking about her at the various sights that could be
seen along the road, or at clouds in the sky, or at pretty butterflies. She
looked at everything but the person who was sneaking through the woods
following her.
She had walked past him the previous day about two hours into her journey, had
more sensed him in the bushes than anything, and had listened to him tracking
her through the woods the rest of the day. He was very, very good, hardly ever
giving his position away. She had climbed down the slope to get a drink at one
point, and caught a glimpse of him through the trees. He was short, no more
than three feet, and wearing a cloak that obscured his face. She thought he was
holding a staff, but she only got the slightest of glimpses before her follower
blended back into the woods like a ghost. She had been trained to look for such
things, and she was impressed by how hard this guy had been to keep up with.
She was giving him his space, wondering if a bandit group of the size she was
tracking would send out a lone scout. She didn't think so, they'd send a group
of men to scout the road, at least, so that they could fleece any targets of
opportunity that should happen along. This person behind her was a mystery. One
that she was going to solve before the sun sank west. But for the moment, she
was content to stroll the road peacefully as the chill melted away into the
morning. This day, or most certainly no later than the next, would likely see
her ebony blades blooded for the first time in anger, and she was taking some
good advice...
***
"Tasha, my dear, come and look at this." Her mother had said,
stepping back from the flower arrangement that she had done in her windowbox
and taking a look. "Do you think it needs more orchids?"
"Mo-THER." Tasha had replied in mock irritation. "I'm busy, I
have to get the sixth Kata right or Mistress Klauss will be upset again. I've
been having beastly trouble with it." Tasha took her guard, holding the
sword overhead, then snapped through the Kata, sword whistling about her head
in a series of complex guards, thrusts, and slices. Near the end of the routine
there was a complicated behind the back move that defeated her consistently,
and again this time. The sword spun out of her grasp and stuck half-heartedly
into the ground beside her, hilt quivering with the impact as though to mock
her. Tasha cursed. Her mother had looked at her with a knowing smile, then
threw an arm around her shoulders before she could pick the sword back up and
lead her to the shade of the apple tree they had in the yard. She reached up
and picked a nice one and handed it to her daughter, then found another for
herself and took a bite.
"Listen to me now, Daughter. I studied under the Mistresses myself when I
was your age, so I understand what it is you have upon you now. But hear me as
your friend today. If you succeed, and if you are called by the Ancestral
Spirits, you will go forth as an enforcer of good, the champion of others, the
sacred Defender of those who cannot defend themselves. But such duties can
often lead to a hard heart, and I would give you something today that you might
carry with you through those times. Would you have it?" Her mother had
looked at Tasha earnestly, and Tasha saw something in her mother's eyes that
day that had never been there before. An equal. Her mother wasn't talking to
her as a mother, she was talking to her as another woman.
"With all my heart, Mother, I would have it." said Tasha, moved
almost to tears by the revelation. Her mother threw her arm around Tasha's shoulders
again and led her back towards the house.
"People speak of your skills, you know." Her mother said.
"They do not! You tease me, Mother!" she had exclaimed out of
modesty.
"Nay, Tasha. You are years ahead of where you should be with the sword, and
to see you glaive is divine. You are an artist, and your skills are seen with
admiration. If you pass the training, you will be something truly special when
you are called. But when you are called, you will go forth and do horrible
things in the name of good, and that has a dark toll on a heart. I would give
you a weapon today against that terrible toll, that you may defend yourself and
keep your heart pure."
She led Tasha up to the flowerbox. "See this? Remember it well, and think
of it when you go to battle. Remember that the world is supposed to be a place
of beauty, just like these flowers, and it is your responsibility to make sure
it stays that way. That is also a thought that should be remembered, as well as
your Katas..." she turned and faced her daughter, placing her hands
lightly on her shoulders. "You are going to be a righteous and terrible
enforcer, my beautiful Tasha. I would also like to think that you will remember
to mind your heart and keep joy in it, for only that will sustain you against
that which you will have to do." Her mother had dropped her hands
from her daughter's shoulders and retrieved the sword from where it stuck in
the ground. She took her guard, and then flawlessly performed the sixth Kata in
front of her daughter's amazed eyes. Within two hours, she had taught it to
Tasha as well.
***
And so it was that Tasha spent all that morning keeping note of the mystery man
behind her, keeping a sharp eye down the road ahead, and mostly compared the
wildflowers that she saw along the side of the road to the ones in her mother's
box that day. None of the ones this day compared to that warm memory, and she
was smiling the entire morning. She sat down by the creek around lunchtime for
a short break, and noted that her follower continued on, getting out in front
of her but staying out of sight. More interested in him now that he had changed
tactics, she waited on him to get settled into whatever he was planning, then
she regained her feet and began down the road again, hoping that she still
looked nonchalant.
To her surprise, she saw the guy walking down the road towards her, whistling.
She eased the leather clasp off her sword hilt, just in case, and continued
down the road towards him. He was strolling along jauntily, hood thrown back
off his head, a walking stick with him. He was taller than she'd thought, but
still only about three and a half feet high. He was whistling a merry tune, and
as he got closer, Tasha was taken aback. He had the face and build of a ten
year old human boy.
"Hallo!" He called jovially, with a wave. His voice was high, and had
a chirpy quality to it. "Where are you travelling to, stranger?" He
stopped and leaned on his funny little stick, a thin rod with a shape like a
spoon at the top. Looking at him closer in the sunlight, Tasha decided that he
wasn't even human, but she had no idea what race he was. His eyes had an almost
elvish slant to them, but he had round ears. A little crinkle at the bridge of
his nose set him apart as well. He was smiling broadly, and she noticed
that he appeared unarmed with the exception of a small dagger stuck in his
belt. On him, it looked like a short sword.
"I'm travelling to the next town, sir." she replied lightly, watching
his every move. Her right hand rested not upon her sword hilt, but upon her
holy symbol she wore around her neck. He noticed and nodded to her holy symbol.
"Are you a priestess, then?"
"Yes." said Tasha, not lying. "And you are...?"
He sighed, and the smile faded. "I was in the bar with you and
Tookey. I followed you out here to take a look in that coin purse of
yours, what with you giving that moron Tookey two gold. Then I found out that
you were a fraud." He held out the lead slugs that had yesterday filled up
Tasha's coin pouch. Mixed in with the handful were two gold coins, the remains
of her fortune. Confused, she grabbed her coin purse and spilled it out on the
road. Instead of the lead slugs that were supposed to be there as bait, there
were smooth, appropriately sized pebbles from the creek. She might not have
noticed the theft for days.
"How in the hells...?" she mumbled, genuinely confused.
The little man continued. "So I asked myself, I said 'Myself, why would
she try to get robbed like that?' and Myself said "I don't know, she might
be crazy.' and so I said back to Myself, I said, 'Myself, she isn't acting
crazy.' and..."
"Whoa." said Tasha, raising a hand. "Why are you here if you
already have my gold?"
The guy smiled. "Why are you here trying to get robbed?"
"I asked you first. And give me back my stuff." Tasha was surprised
when he cheerfully stepped forward and dumped it into her bag. He was smiling
again, and looking at her. She could tell that her enhanced charisma had no
effect on him; he was just naturally ebullient and bubbly. She surreptitiously
cast her senses over him, and got no sense of mischief or evil intent. He was
genuinely curious, as peculiar as it sounded. She allowed herself to relax
some, but never quite came close to letting her guard down. She reaffixed her
coin purse to her side.
"I'm here to stop the bandits along this road." she said simply.
"The best way to find them is to look like a rude."
The little man burst out laughing, slapping his knee with glee. "Oh, by
the Gods above." he chortled. "The word you are seeking, M'Lady, is
rube, not rude, and if that was the look you were going for, you nailed it
right and proper, so you did." He broke into giggles again.
Tasha felt her face flush. "And why are you here? I've told you my
purpose, now I would have yours."
The man gathered himself from his laughing fit. "Oh, I mean to go with
you, is all. I figured that no matter what your business was, it had to be more
interesting than mine, so here I am. I'm looking for an adventure."
"No." said Tasha.
"But why not?" he asked, the grin never quite leaving his face.
"It would seem to me that someone in your position would welcome a friend
to watch your back."
"Were
there a friend close by, I would be delighted to have them watch my back."
said Tasha peevishly. "You, however, are a little man that I only met five
minutes ago. And you've already stolen from me, which does nothing to ease my
unsettled nerves where you are concerned."
"I stole nothing!" the man cried, seemingly hurt by her accusations.
"And I already brought it back to you, so there." he added with
a righteous nod.
"How could you have brought it back to me without having stolen it
first?" asked Tasha crossly, and once again cast her feeling across him,
trying to figure out whether the man was attempting to fool her or not.
"I told you, I just wanted to look at it. I borrowed it from you last
night while you were asleep. I wanted to run my fingers through it, and
boy was I irked when I found out." He actually had the nerve to look
perturbed for a second, but Tasha hardly noticed. She was looking at him
quizzically, wondering if her new powers were working right. What she was
reading of him was sincerity, and he was indeed chagrined about her accusations
of theft. He thought himself guilty of nothing. She wished the power went
beyond a general emotional state and into clairvoyance, but it didn't.
Emotionally, he was happy as a lark. She sighed.
"I cannot stop you from travelling with me, but I warn you that I go
looking for a fight. I guess it's going to be a big one, too."
"Right!" he beamed. "They must have seventy guys!"
"What do you know about them?" she asked him, trying to not sound
excited. The town had provided little in the way of hard information.
"They camp up in the hills to the west of the road. They send raiding
parties into the valleys all around the area, and even into the Scurlock Province to the east. This road is just
a minor thing to them, they keep an eye on it for troops and such, as much as
looking for rubes." He giggled again, cutting his eyes at her. "Oh,
excuse me. Looking for rudes, I meant to say. They've sacked a couple of towns
in Scurlock, though. Their leader is a guy called Fat Murrah."
"Fat Murrah?" she asked, trying to make sure that she had heard
right.
"Yup!" the man exclaimed. "It doesn't take a genious to figure
out why, if you ever have the unfortunate chance to meet him. He's shaped like
a keg of ale."
"Have you ever had the unfortunate chance to meet him?"
"Yeah, he's not nice." said the man and lapsed into a rare moment of
pensive silence as he rubbed the back of his neck. Then he smiled again, and
stuck out his hand.
"I'm known as Buddy. Nice to make your acquaintance."
Tasha paused for a second, then took the hand he was holding out in her own.
"My name is Tasha. It is good to make yours."
"Great! Let's get moving, then." exclaimed Buddy, and without looking
back, took off down the road with a skip in his step. Tasha took a deep breath,
and then followed.
By the end of the day, she was sure that she had the unfortunate luck to piss
off a higher deity somehow. Nothing else could explain Buddy's amazing ability
to talk without pause. She plodded along beside him, not having to hold up her
end of the conversation, as Buddy left no room for comment in his ceaseless
banter. She now knew the names of all of Fat Murrah's lieutenants. She also
knew the name of every other person that Buddy had ever met in his life, it
seemed. He had an amazing knack for such things, and could move as silently as
a ghost when he needed to. But once there was no need to be quiet, he wasn't.
She could almost ignore him. She wondered why the Mistresses had not included a
lecture on tolerance of babblers in all the years she was there under their
tutelage.
"...and so," Buddy continued on, in oblivion to her desperate looks,
"here we are with a legion of orcs coming down the hill and Brendel was
standing there with his arm completely up this donkey's..." A hand clamped
over his mouth, making him jump. He turned to look up at Tasha, who simply
pointed up the road. He turned to follow her finger. There were three men
mounted on horses in the road. She grabbed his head and turned it so that he
could see behind them. There were three more riders there. All of them heavily
armed. Five had heavy crossbows pointed at them, the sixth merely sat astride
his horse, taking them in thoughtfully. Then he eased forward slowly, the rest
of the riders following suit. They were a rough-looking pack, their clothes
showing the grub from living in the woods, many showing signs of scars and
infections that had gone without medical treatment. Tasha would have bet they
didn't have an entire mouth full of teeth between them, at first glance. Then
she cleared her mind, taking a knee in the road. She clasped the holy symbol in
both hands, closing her eyes, focusing her mind to a point.
"Ancestral Spirits, guide my mind." She prayed, then opened her eyes
and stood up, her face a mask of concentration. She turned to Buddy.
"Now that the moment is at hand, can I count on you to watch my back as
you said?"
Buddy smiled his brightest smile. "Sure! They've been trying to kill me
for a while, anyway. I've no friends here."
"Then why did you come?" she asked.
"I want to be a bard some time in the future, but to be a success I need
an epic tale. I figured that your death might make a great ballad one
day."
"That is so comforting of you." said Tasha, shaking her head with
disbelief. "Stick close to me, Bardy, and pay attention. I think you're
about to see the first verse of your masterpiece."
The horsemen had stopped just ten feet away, still bearing down on the two of
them with crossbows.
Buddy looked at her with his never-ending smile. "Bardy, I like
that!"
***
Tasha could feel the power of the Ancestral Spirits flowing around her like a
maelstrom, her very fingertips tingling with it. She took it into herself,
feeling her heart rate accelerate with it, and gave a sigh of marvel when it
flowed in. Even in the advanced trainings she had attended, the power had been
nothing like this, infinitesimal in comparison. Her blood sang with the
battle-power of every Valkyrie that ever walked the earths as a Defender. Then
the feeling faded, the power fusing to her life force and becoming her. She
opened her eyes and clasped the holy symbol around her neck. She was smiling
under her hood, excited. A lifetime of training culminating into this moment,
and she damn well meant to enjoy it. She was giggly with it. She stepped
forward towards the horsemen, specifically to the man without a crossbow. The
leader.
"You are in charge here?" she asked from the depths of her hood.
"I am." he said simply, taking in the spectacle of the girl in the
robe. He wondered if the ruby in the middle of that silly cross was real.
"Then put down your weapons, and ride away right now if you want to live.
I will broker no barter from you." She pulled back her hood, fixing him
with her emerald-green eyes, and continued. "The Dictums of Decency
require me to give you one chance to surrender, but I would prefer that you
give me cause to separate your useless head from your vile neck."
She had placed her right hand on her sword hilt under her cloak, and her left
caressed her holy symbol. Her green eyes flashed fire as she stared the
man down.
The leader of the bandit party grew red in the face. He was used to
fear and compliance from those he robbed on the road, certainly not this sass
from some whelp of a girl, sword or not. He frowned down at her from
astride his horse.
"I don't care what you think, Miss Piss and Vinegar." he
stated flatly. "Nor do I care about your idle threats nor your
little wise-assed companion..."
Before he could react, before he could move, Tasha had drawn her sword from beneath her
robe and hurled it straight at him in one fluid motion. The hilt caught
him fair in the forehead, knocking him senseless in mid-sentence. He slid
from the saddle into the road with a clump. At the same time, Tasha made
a gesture with her left hand, and all of the bolts rose out of the crossbows
and flew into the sky as though they had been fired. Her sword hit the
ground beside the unconscious leader, and she extended her hand towards
it. The sword flew back into her hand as though it were alive and knew it
belonged there, and Tasha dove between the two horses in front of her,
slicing the saddle cinches and shoving the riders off the animals as they
either tried to draw their sword, or scrambled to reload their crossbow with
another bolt. In both cases they were too slow. She gutted the
two men that had been with the leader as they scrambled to their feet from
coming off their horses. Then she slapped the two horses on the ass
with the flat of her blade, sending them crashing into the other three riders
just about the time they got their crossbows reloaded. One of the riders
was knocked from his horse by the panicked horses, and the other two had
to abort their attack and dodge them. Then Tasha stepped out from behind
the leader's horse with her holy symbol in hand. With practiced precision
she manipulated the ruby in the center of the symbol, springing three blades
forth from every arm of the cross, so that the pattern of razor-sharp
blades formed a square. She drew back the glaive and slung it
sideways, straight through the neck of one of the mounted riders.
She held out her hand and summoned the weapon back to her hand before his
severed head ever hit the ground. The last mounted rider threw his
crossbow down into the road and spurred his horse back down the road
towards Talon's Nook, riding like the wind and never looking back.
She let him go, and instead killed the man that had been knocked off his
horse. Then she turned her attention back to the leader. The entire
fight had lasted only thirty seconds. She wasn't even breathing
hard.
Buddy was already going through pockets, sorting out things of value and
stuffing them into his bag while giving her sideways looks. She let him,
walking over to the unconscious man and binding him with the rope from his own
saddle. Buddy made his way over to the leader, and was careful to wait
until Tasha had him bound and gagged before searching him. He came up
with nothing that was of value to her, so she gathered up the horses and tied
them together, picking up the amazingly heavy body of the bandit leader by
herself and throwing it across the back of a horse. The light was fading,
so they cleared off the road and made camp in the woods. Buddy got a fire
started while she killed a couple of fat hares for it.
***
The bandit leader came back to slowly; his head pounding like a dwarf with a
hammer had taken up residence in his skull. He couldn't remember what had
happened to him, but he was bound and tied up, hung upside down in a
tree. It was night, and there was light from a campfire coming from
somewhere behind him. He groaned, trying to free his hands. The
sound of footsteps from behind him caused him to stop his movement, and he
looked up/down into the face of the girl with the red cloak. Suddenly he
remembered. She looked up at the rope he was hanging from, and then
looked down at his pained face with a smile.
"Do you think we might be able to have a talk about your camp?" she
asked pleasantly. "Or how about Fat Murrah?" He shook his
head no, his vision swimming with the effort it took to do so. The girl
in red drew her sword, slowly this time, and when she had it clear of the
scabbard looked down its length as though appreciating the ebony blade for the
very first time.
"I don't recall
asking you a question that had a 'no' answer." she said, and her smile
grew wider as she leaned down and grabbed him by the hair of the head.
Copyright 2008 J. Brown
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