I heard a guttural scream as I dug my fingers into the man’s eyes. It was an imprecise venture: I wasn’t aiming for anything specific – I didn’t have some surgical goal in mind.

My only goal was to hurt him, and that I did.

He brought a leg up and tried to kick me in the stomach, but I managed to dodge – albeit with the cost of releasing him. His face was no longer covered, and I could make out some of his features: there was some blood smeared around his eyes and he had a wide, square jaw which was complemented by an almost absurdly crooked nose. Yeah, that had definitely been broken a few times. Actually, come to think of it, was it just straight up broken currently?

Leon had a mean right hook, I definitely wouldn’t have found it hard to believe. The thought of Leon had me turning my head toward him – he was still on the ground but I could see that he was moving, trying to stand up now. The flesh around his eyes was cut and battered, and they’d swollen almost completely shut. As well as that he had a nasty cut running up his cheek, narrowly missing his left eye. These were no minor injuries, and I could only hope that was the worst of it, considering the man who’d delivered them must have been wielding a knife or something of the sort at some point during the fight.

My momentary distraction did not go unnoticed, and I received a fist in the mouth for my troubles. It was like feeling the crunch of a hammer against my face, and for a moment the world was a blur.

I found myself on the floor with no recollection of having fallen, the immediate threat of a boot descending on my head like a guillotine. I managed to roll mostly out of the way, the stomping boot glancing off my left ear as I scrambled to regain my footing. His reply was to simply reach and grab in my direction, and this time I wasn’t fast enough dodge. He pulled me toward him and I managed to get both of my legs off the ground using him as leverage, kicking myself away from him with both legs simultaneous. It wasn’t enough. He brushed my legs aside, as if I wasn’t putting all of the damn strength and force I could muster to try separate myself from him. I could hear Leon’s shouts of protest, calling out my name and trying to draw attention to himself whilst dragging his way towards us along the floor.

The man remained undistracted and brought both his hands to my neck. I tried to pull them away with my own, but his grip was as a vice. He didn’t budge.

My eyes darted around the room for something – anything – that I could use, and that’s when I made eye contact with Leon. He’d made a detour on his way towards us, having dragged himself towards the door. He grabbed something from the floor and slid it towards me. My vision was blurring and my lungs were burning, screaming at me that I needed to breathe. The item Leon had slid finished its course, sliding to a stop to the right of me, a hair’s breadth from my right foot. I could barely see it, darkness flirting with the edges of my vision as I approached unconsciousness. I stepped on the back of my right boot with my left, and I pulled my foot out. I hadn’t worn socks for weeks since Scrappy had got at my last pair, so my foot was bare. In the time it took me to blink I’d reached down at the item with my foot to grab it with my toes, passed it to my hand, and used it for what I knew I’d be using it for the moment I’d recognized what it was. I gripped the handle of the knife and plunged the blade into the temple of the man’s square, ugly head. I was released instantly and I fell to the floor, sucking in the air that I’d never gone so long in my life without. My throat was aching and my head was pounding, but I was alive. The world was a slurry of wild colours and shooting stars, bright lights dancing at the edges of my vision, but as I huffed and sucked in more air it became progressively better, clearer.

“Leon,” I rasped, the effort more painful than it had any right to be.

Leon was sat up against one of the walls at the edge of the room, only the slight movements of his chest indicating that he was breathing and still alive.

He was in an even worse state than I’d first realised.

His eyes were now swollen fully shut, and his skin was an angry shade of red surrounding the deep gash that ran along his cheeks. His pants were rolled up, and I could see a swollen purple lump on his shin. Shit, was his leg broken?

He turned his hear towards me, somehow still conscious.

“What happened to the dude?” He mumbled slowly, sounding like he would have were his mouth full of food.

I winced at the thought of how painful even just speaking must’ve been.

“I took care of him.” I didn’t think I was quite ready to voice what I’d done yet. I was barely holding myself together, and the thought that I’d killed a person – albeit in self defence – wasn’t one I could stomach.

“No, no…”

I raised an eyebrow.

“He’s down, Leon. It’s okay.” My voice was shaking by then, a promise of tears to come.

“The other one,” he croaked, a hint of alarm soaking his already hoarse voice, “The arrows. The archer.”

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My eyes widened and I was back on my feet in an instant.

“Your knife, Leon. Where’s your knife?”

There was a knife imbedded in a corpse’s skull a few metres from me, but that would’ve been a lot of trouble to remove and use. I was pretty sure it was actually the dead man’s knife anyway, since I would’ve recognised Leon’s.

Leon pointed a shaky hand in the direction of the hall, back towards the entrance of the house, and I could see a broad hunting knife laying on the floor.

I grabbed the knife and made my way through the hall and to the entrance of the house, a solid oak door. I checked that it was locked and moved on to the windows, locking those that were unlocked and checking for any signs of an intruder. Next, I went to the various possible hiding spots, taking care to move slowly, carefully and with as little sound as possible.

I found no sign of anyone other than Leon, myself and the corpse I’d made earlier – which, while somewhat of a relief, begged the question of where the archer was.

* * * * *

Leon had wanted nothing more than to fall asleep, but I kept him up to tend to his wounds - it wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d do. I’d set his leg, much to his very vocal complaints, and I’d stitched the cut on his cheek using some sewing materials I’d disinfected with alcohol. It was a long, wide gash that bore the promise of a nasty scar.

Leon’s eyes were closed and I could tell he was on the brink of unconsciousness, but there were things we needed to discuss first.

“Mum’s due back from Alford tomorrow,” I stated, taking a seat across from him. “We need a plan, otherwise she’ll be caught by surprise by that archer like we were.”

Leon’s eyes fluttered open and settled on me. His swelling had reduced some, and it was visibly easier for him to speak now.

“Maybe they’ll be gone by then. It doesn’t really make sense for them to wait outside for a whole two days – especially when they probably know their friend in here didn’t survive.”

He had a good point. We still didn’t know what their motivations were, and the fact that the archer didn’t even try to get into the house was even more mysterious.

“What happened when you came in?” I asked, “how did the fight start?”

“I’m not sure what the dude was doing inside, or how he even got in,” Leon replied. “But he was waiting around a corner for me with a knife – probably heard me come in through the door. He went for my face but I managed to dodge a little bit.” His lips twitched into a sardonic hint of a smile, though I didn’t imagine he could move his lips any wider without a great deal of pain.

“I didn’t dodge fully though,” he mused. “Fucker still got me in the face.”

I shuddered. If it weren’t for Leon’s quick reaction speed, he’d probably be dead – and there was a good chance I’d be, too. I decided to move the conversation on. “Based on what we know, I think they’re bandits.”

He scrunched his eyebrows in contemplation. “Maybe. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Could be they wanted to kill us and take the house.”

Did that really make sense, though? It was a humble house and was pretty isolated from the rest of society. The nearest village was half a day’s hike away, and the nearest major city was Alford – where our mother was currently returning from – and at least a day’s journey at least on horseback, and easily double or even triple that on foot. And then there was the fact that the archer was camped out front, too. “Do you think the archer and the guy in the house might not have been on the same side?”

That had Leon contemplating for a bit before he replied. “Maybe. The archer didn’t follow us into the house.”

Hmm. Although I was the one to suggest the possibility, I didn’t fully buy it. It was a possibility, of course, but at the moment there were just too many unknown factors to be surer of anything. “Maybe the archer’s not a good fighter, or maybe they cut their losses. I’m still leaning towards bandits.”

“No, no. I’ve got it, just hear me out.”

I didn’t reply, and he accepted my implicit invitation for him to elaborate.

“Maybe the archer was after the dude in the house. He was hiding, and when I came in he tried to kill me because he thought I was the archer or one of the archer’s friends.”

That… made some sense, actually. Though it wasn’t a perfect theory. “And how does the archer shooting at us play into that?”

Leon hummed but didn’t reply, apparently having no answer to that.

I moved back into the dining room and strode to the corpse of the man that I’d killed earlier in the night. The room was lit by candles and the corpse was cloaked, so I couldn’t see much of the corpse until I was arm’s length from it. I rolled it over, and what greeted me was the same ugly, square-shaped face I’d glimpsed earlier – but with a knife handle sticking out the side of its head, as well as being flecked with blood.

I took a moment to take in the man’s features, to remember his face. I felt no regret over his killing, no moral qualms – it was in self-defence, and he’d attacked us first. I still wanted to remember him, though. My mother’s words were like a whisper in my ear, the memory of my first hunt still like it was just yesterday.

I’d been eight years old at the time, and I’d managed to catch a rabbit. “Make it quick and painless, Juno,” she’d said to me. “If it weren’t for this rabbit, you and me and Leon wouldn’t be eating any meat tonight and we’d probably go to bed hungry.”

I’d nodded and squeezed my eyes shut, about to snap the rabbit’s neck like she’d shown me, but I was stopped when a gentle hand was placed a top my own.

“Open your eyes, Kero. it. You must remember its face, lest we forget its gift in our next life.”

I’d never shared much of my mother’s spiritual beliefs, but a part of me still wanted to at least honour them. The thought our souls lived on after death, that I could be born again in another body as a tree or a rat or a fly – it never stuck with me. Nevertheless, though, I stood and committed the face of the man I’d killed to memory – not that he’d given me a gift or anything of the sort; I certainly wasn’t planning to eat the man, that much I was sure of – but simply because it felt right.

He had brown eyes and short-cropped, balding black hair. He had a prominent eyebrow ridge and an even more prominent nose, two features common among the Drei: and two features I shared, belonging to the same racial group as the man.

He was wearing a lightweight leather armour of sorts. It had cuts and was peeling in places, as well as being flecked with various stains.

This armour had seen its fair share of use.

I unbuttoned the armour, finding an array of pockets and various goods stuffed within.

I found some dried meat, a compactible water skin, a compass, and lastly a sealed envelope.

The envelope was decorated with a red wax seal, adorned with the symbol of a harp.

Holy shit.

That was the symbol of the royal family. This was a letter from the fucking King.