Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

She shrugged. “Let them send someone, Safford. Let them send their very best assassins. I’ll stay here until my last breath.”

“Till your last breath,” Shiv whispered, staring at the trail ahead. “This way,” he said louder, stepping onto the trail toward Telvan and, for the moment, taking the lead.

Shiv didn’t hear the boots crunch on the snow ahead, or see the shadows stretch out from a spire along the path. If the sun hadn’t been shining so fiercely, he wouldn’t have caught the glint from their swords, which they stupidly hadn’t blackened. The glint was the only thing that alerted him.

“Rish!” he shouted as his hands tugged free the twin blades. He crouched as he heard the swoosh of steel behind him, Risana drawing her long sword.

“Safford, what is it? What-?”

Shiv darted forward just as the first assassin lunged into his path. He was a young man, full of muscle and energy and, fortunately, not terribly skilled. Shiv dropped below the swing of his short sword and drove one of his knives up into his belly. The second knife stabbed higher and punctured a lung. He twisted the blade for good measure.

Shiv stepped back and kicked the man down the mountain path. The young man struggled to stop his descent and managed to grab onto an embedded stone. Shiv turned his attention to the second figure. This one was older, well into middle age, and careful from experience. His eyes narrowed as he caught Shiv’s angry expression.

“Shiv.” The word was a hiss of remembrance. Then, much louder, “Shiv of Telvan!”

Shiv grimaced. He had seen this one in a Dark Knight camp last year, a mercenary who had the favor of the commander who had ordered Risana’s assassination. The man opened his mouth to say something else, but Shiv cut him off, hurling one of his knives and watching as the sharp, slender blade pierced the man’s throat.

So the Dark Knights have sent more assassins, Shiv thought. They are tired of waiting for me to finish her. They are in a great hurry to have this woman die.

There was a sudden clash of steel and Shiv whirled, shaken from his thoughts. Risana was battling her own foe, a third man whose weapon was blackened and whose presence Shiv had not sensed. Perhaps the two Shiv had dispatched had been sacrificial lambs, part of a ruse to distract the woman from the more dangerous killer.

“Who are you?” Risana demanded. She was trading blow for blow with the man. “What do you want with us?”

No answer.

The assassin was a professional, Shiv quickly understood, one who was merely gauging Risana’s strength and skill. The man was dressed like the first two, as a shepherd with ragged clothes, but his unlined and unweathered face made it clear he wasn’t native to the mountains.

“The contract is mine,” Shiv hissed, as he charged up the path, drawing his remaining knife and taking aim.

The man crouched and spun, catching Risana off guard and slicing at her abdomen, then continuing on past her and hurtling toward Shiv. Risana stumbled back as Shiv threw his knife. The blade lodged in his opponent’s shoulder.

“Saf-” Risana cried, as she regained her footing and darted forward.

Shiv’s opponent was quick, stabbing down and catching Shiv in the chest. Before the man could deliver a second blow, however, he was speared in the back. He made a gasping sound, then crumpled.

“Safford?”

Risana pushed the corpse away and knelt at Saf-ford’s side, putting her hands over the growing blossom of red on his chest.

“There might be others,” he managed to gasp. He felt himself growing weak. “Dying,” he said. “Leave me, Rish.”

Instead she stayed at his side all through the night and the following day, using herbs from her pouch, shielding him from the cold with her own body. When she was certain he would live, she carried him to a rocky overhang and wedged him into a crevice, using her cloak for a blanket. She then tended to burying the three assassins. The ground was so hard she had to fashion cairns.

“They were Dark Knights,” Shiv told her when she finally returned.

Risana shook her head. “No. Knights, even Dark Knights, would be wearing armor, something to identify themselves. And they wouldn’t be using short swords.”

“Agents of the Dark Knights then,” Shiv returned.

“I guess you would know.” Risana’s words made him aware of the chance she had taken, healing him and not leaving him for the wolves.

In Brighthollow Risana assisted with the birth of the mayor’s twin daughters. In the next three villages she saw to scattered cases of fever, helped bury individuals she could not heal, mended clothing and fences, and stalked and killed a wolf that had been preying on the local herd. Shiv followed after her, rarely speaking, but intently watching.

“I’ll start toward Telvan tomorrow,” Risana announced one evening.

Shiv growled. “There are Dark Knights there.”

“I guess you would know.” Again the telling words. “But I need some clothes. These can’t stand up to many more washings.”

He knew he could find the Dark Knight commander there, or someone else of authority, and that he could collect his fee simply by marching her into the camp.

“I’ll lead the way,” he said.

It was shortly before sunset, two days later, that the tall buildings in Telvan appeared in the distance and another band of assassins struck.

This time Shiv caught their intake of breath from around a sharp bend in the trail in front of him. The assassins were using the spires and overhangs for cover. He drew his knives and spun around the bend, jamming the blades deep into the stomach of a man he knew well, one he’d trained himself years ago.

“Risana is my contract,” Shiv said, half under his breath.

The man collapsed, his weight taking Shiv down with him. As Shiv struggled in a failed attempt to pull the blades free and to get out from under the corpse, he heard Risana drawing her sword behind him. She stepped around him and his fallen foe, quickly engaging her own target Shiv finally pushed the body off. It rolled down the side of the mountain, with his twin knives protruding from it

“Ah, thank the vanished gods for this!” Shiv retrieved his onetime student’s dropped short sword.

A few yards away, Risana was exchanging blows with a pair of Dark Knights.

“Given up on assassins, have they?”

Shiv watched her for a moment, noting with admiration that she had some skill with a blade, but her two opponents were gradually wearing her down.

“Time to share, Rish!” Shiv called, as he pressed by her and engaged the shorter but bulkier of the two men. The Knight he fought was strong, his swings forcing Shiv back. Shiv spun to his right, the Dark Knight following him, then he pivoted to the left and entangled the Knight’s legs. Pressing the attack, he rained blow after blow on the man, one finally biting into the chainmail gusset of his armor between the shoulder and breastplates. The Knight dropped his sword. Shiv kicked and sent him to his knees, knowing the man was dying.

Shiv whirled to see how Risana was faring. She was parrying her foe’s repeated strikes. Her wide charcoal eyes were unblinking. A corner of her mouth turned up as she shifted her weight and became the aggressor, varying her swings and forcing the Dark Knight to back up.

Shiv watched in admiration as she increased the tempo. Unarmored, she was more agile than the Knight, and within the span of several minutes she had her foe gasping for breath. She made quick work of the man now, wresting his blade from him with one fierce swing, then thrusting her sword into a gap between his plates.

She jumped back as he fell, then leaped forward and over the dead knight, charging along the narrow trail straight toward Shiv.