Arathel leaned against a wall, picking her teeth with her dagger. Awaiting word on her newest assignment. She was a mercenary or hired thug if one wanted to be rude, ill-advised as that was.
Her hypothetical detractor might point out she had no warrant and didn’t let matters of morality interfere with business.
But what did any of that matter? So a few of the zombies got hurt as they shuffled through their meager existence. Did people complain when she laid down in the morning to dream new figments living phantasmal lives? No, perhaps because they couldn’t conceive that she might not wake to dream them once more.
But whether she went when she closed her eyes or the world did was a matter for the scholars. As she smirked to herself at the idea, her lieutenant ran up to her.
A southerner, her pink furless skin flushed with the cold.
She didn’t salute; they didn’t bother with silly niceties or ridiculous pageantry on the basis of rank. Arathel led because she was the toughest and meanest, and it didn’t hurt that she was a northerner; blue skin and a bit of down could get a woman surprisingly far in this region. Her lieutenant kept her position because she knew better than to challenge Aratehel’s authority.
“They’re on the move,” her lieutenant said. “Four people.”
“There were six before,” Arathel said. “Where are the other two?”
“We don’t know; the watchers haven’t seen them,” the woman said.
“You don’t know,” Arathel sneered. “Well, find out. You confirmed the target?”
“We believe so.”
“Believe so.” She considered striking the fool of a woman. “Well, if they’re not, you’ll be the first to know. Tell the watchers to find that other group, and then come on, we’re going after the primary.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her lieutenant ran off, and she set off in the opposite direction, her bloodhound falling in next to her.
“You have an idea of their route?” Arathel asked.
“Yes.” She was a slight woman, skin the bright red of the eastern folk. Had been a light cavalry scout or something before finding better employment. “Captain, they’re going toward the Palace district, and they were heading from that direction when our shadows caught up to them. This whole thing’s off; we should-”
“We got paid what I asked?” Arathel demanded.
“Well, yes, but-”
“Then who cares?” she asked. “We do the job, we don’t ask questions, you know the rule.”
“Ah,” the small woman said. “Yes, Captain.”
They moved on, followed and preceded by six others, taking up spots in the shadows of a relatively lonely part of town. The group couldn’t be too large without giving the game away.
In a way, though she didn’t like not knowing where those other two were, it was convenient they were missing.
So she and her seven settled in and waited. Minutes ticked by in the cold, the wind picked up, and it began to snow again.
A light flurry falling down onto the steepled rooves of the buildings.
She shifted, drawing her cloak closer about herself and pressing her body into the shelter of the recessed doorway of the building by which she squatted; if the meat didn’t get there soon, she’d freeze to death before she got a shot at some action.
Finally, four figures began to form in the distance, making steady progress in their direction.
They held; this wasn’t their first ambush, and her women knew anyone who moved too soon and allowed their target to slip from their grasp would answer to her.
She waited, watching until the group was almost past before giving her signal and bursting from hiding and falling upon the little group.
What followed was chaos, a wild tangle of blade and flesh; she and hers came with dagger in hand, but the ladies, well trained and drilled, it seemed, held them at bay with finely curved sabers.
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She registered a flash of light off metal and ducked back just in time to remove her head from the arc of a sword.
She came to rest looking at a slip of a woman standing over one of hers, saber in hand, its curved blade painted crimson. She raised her dagger and closed on the woman.
But before she could bring the weapon down, something struck her hard in the side of the head, and her dagger fell from her hand, clattering dully against the cacophony of the battle.
Arathel flailed out, grabbing something, someone, and wrestling them to the ground.
Then, silence, she looked around; three of her’s lay dead or dying. Off to the left, having gained some distance, and turned about to face her group, three of their targets. Each with blood on them, though the product of injury, or a trophy, she couldn’t say. The fourth still struggled beneath her; this one did bleed, all down her arm and staining the snow. She ripped the hood and scarf from their face; unlucky, a woman, young, a bit of a runt, and with the dark, rough skin, a woman of the interior, the corse fur on her arm matted with blood. A prize, to be sure, but she wanted the man.
She looked at the other three, and sure enough, shielded behind the two not wearing a sword belt and towering two, or perhaps two and a half head heights over them, was her target. Now, why couldn’t she have grabbed him and made things easy?
But it wasn’t all bad. There were only two defenders now, to her remaining four, and she had a hostage.
She retrieved her dagger, and the woman stilled the moment it touched her throat.
Carefully avoiding the woman’s clawed feet, Arathel stood and dragged her prize to her own feet, one arm tightly wrapped around her prisoner’s chest, the other holding the dagger tightly to her throat. Turning to face the other group, she said. “Why don’t you make it easy and hand that little man over?”
“Just take him and go!” the little lady shrieked before Arathel could clap a hand over her mouth.
The women looked between each other and seemed ready to do just that when the man slipped past them, weaving out of reach of their grasping arms.
“Get back here,” one of the women shouted, but he acted like he didn’t hear.
He reached up, pulling away his hood and scarf. Very tall, with stubby ears, a small sharp nose, and impossible green eyes—cold as the night sky—glittering with starlight. One of those sky folk. The bloodhound, who was at that moment gurgling her last breaths through a slit throat, had been right. They weren’t being paid enough to start a war.
She made a note to bring that to her employer’s attention once he was dead.
His long golden-brown hair, which sparkled much like his eyes, and a cloak of red fluttered in the breeze. Had he held a saber, he would have cut a figure not unfamiliar to tales of the ancient heroes who cast down those fell beasts that now lived only as a dark racial memory in the vagaries of women’s minds.
He looked at her intently, head tilted just slightly, as though confused or attempting to solve a puzzle.
“You should let her go,” his voice was impassive, devoid of emotion, or maybe, very slightly amused, the tone a woman might take with a young girl caught in the act of stealing sweets.
“And why should I do that?” She asked.
“Because if you don’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “I won’t kill you quickly.”
Her lieutenant, standing on her left, and bleeding from a cut on her cheek, laughed. “Hear that, the little man’s gonna-”
There was a crunch followed by a thud. Aranthel looked to find her lieutenant lying on the ground, stone dead, the handle of a dagger sprouting from her left eye socket.
She turned back to the man, eyeing him carefully; she hadn’t seen the knife; he must have been palming it, but when had he thrown it? She was watching the whole time but-
He took a step toward them, then another, advancing at a slow, deliberate pace. “Drop her and run,” he said. “It might delay me enough to save you.”
She drew the knife tighter to the girl’s throat. “One more step, and I carve her throat.”
“Then go ahead.” He didn’t so much as miss a step. “It will only make things worse for you.”
From behind her, there came a sound of retreating footfalls, then another, and another, her women abandoning her. They would get theirs; she’d see to that.
In the meantime, she looked to her dead lieutenant, down at the woman she held, then back into those cold green eyes, and decided she wasn’t being paid enough.
“Take the bitch then,” she snarled, throwing the woman to the ground and herself taking flight.
She didn’t look to see if he stopped for the woman, focusing on the road ahead as she pelted down snowy streets and back alleys.
She ran until her legs and lungs burned and kept on running, ran until sweat poured down her back despite the cold, and kept on pushing.
She burst through the door to her safe house and collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath.
She lay there in the chill air of the entryway just a the foot of the stair up to her bed; she knew not how long before mustering the strength to kick the door closed and drag herself to the murky window, crisscrossed with its lead bars, and peek out into the world, searching for signs of pursuit.
She pressed her face against the window, the chill glass soothing against her burning skin.
“What are we looking for?” She screamed and twisted around to face the source of the voice. There was a flurry of gold-brown hair, and something struck her throat.
She fell to her knees, clutching her injured throat, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, tasting the blood that welled up in her mouth.
She looked up into glittering green eyes. “Don’t worry.” He cradled her cheeks in his hands. “You did as I asked, so you won’t suffer.”
A jerk, a wrenching pain, then darkness, floating. The roar of high winds and beating of wings. The angel of death come to conduct her away?
She felt nothing at first, then as the wind grew louder, she perceived a creeping numbness at the edges of her perception, slowly spreading.
The wing beats receded, leaving only the roaring silence, oppressive darkness, and a mounting sluggishness of mind. She drifted aimlessly in that infinite moment when even death had gone.
Slowly, even the drifting faded, and whether the world went or she did, was a matter for the living.