The connection was a moment of glorious reaffirmation. Even wounded, Swick was still Swick. Even skilled as they were, this treasure hunter was no match for a Hero. His dagger bit through their shawl, then opened up the shoulder beneath. They pulled themselves from it, cloth snagging on the blade and ripping itself open longways at their retreat to reveal a face beneath rains of tattered fabric.
Swick paused, the Hand paused. The damned sky probably paused, for all the pausing that was going on. Because not a one present had been expecting a damned woman beneath all that flowing fabric and impossible speed.
Perhaps predictably, the woman herself did not pause. She came flying at Swick, if anything faster than before and far more ferocious. He was backing away again, parrying, dodging, trying his best to ignore the growing pain of his leg and aware the entire time how much slower he was growing. Every swing brought Bal’s blade closer to him, every parry was nearer to a fail than the one before. Swick winced as he saw his death coming.
Then the Hand’s words came out .
“Felicia!”
Finally, the woman paused. Only for a moment though, because Swick’s dagger caught her clean before the eyes in that brief moment’s respite. Pommel first, given that he was a gentleman and she a useful ally, but with every ounce of strength he could muster. The woman shot back like she’d been fired from some giant crossbow, landing several of her own body length back from him and groaning.
Sometimes, in a man’s life, he was forced to make a decision. To consider who he really was, and what sort of tales he wanted in his legacy. Looking down at his worthy opponent, seeing her grunting and stumbling to her feet with her sword lying yards away, Swick found himself certain what that was for him.
His dagger’s blade came down to rest atop all the big veins in her neck, and she froze the instant steel touched skin.
“Don’t go twitching now, there’s a good girl.” He breathed, suppressing the urge to wince at his damned leg all over again. “You made a good fight of it, but I don’t think there’s any doubting that you’ve lost now, is there?”
And there bloody had been until that very instant. Hurt or no, Swick would never have won against this woman easily. She was beyond strong.
Perhaps even a Hero, or close enough. The Hand might as well have tried helping him with harsh language.
To Swick’s surprise, the Hand himself rounded on him rather than Bal. The man looked furious, and not entirely sure of where best to direct his rage.
“Be gentle with her, you oaf.” He spat. “This is Princess Felicia.”
In that single sentence, everything snapped into place within Swick’s mind. The woman’s way of walking, her posture. The sheer militarism of it all. The handling of that bastard sword of hers, and now other things too. With her body uncovered, and her hands no longer busied with his imminent demise, Swick was able to observe the woman’s dark skin and darker hair, her tough, sharp features and the sinewy steel of her not-inconsiderable musculature.
And the look in her eye. Like they were orbs of flint, the pupils clumsily carved into them by a drunkard’s chisel. He’d been a damned fool to have missed so obvious a resemblance to King Galukar.
“Treasure hunter.” He frowned, staring at her. Well, it certainly sounded like a Galukar thing to do. The woman spat at her feet, suddenly seeming more angry with him than she’d been during the actual attack.
“What are you here for, you rat?” She asked.
For some reason- just basic association, really- Swick assumed the glare and harsh words were aimed at him. He realised only after a moment that it had been the Hand who Bal had intended to receive them. He drew his blade back, figuring the conversation would be a shade less awkward if she were able to actually move her head without fear of losing it, and fairly certain she’d not be trying to hack off any more limbs. For the moment, at least.
“I’m here for you.” The Hand replied.
“On my father’s orders.” Bal noted, phrasing it like a statement of fact rather than a guess.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Well, in her defence, it actually was.
“I am.” The Hand said, testily. “But I see no reason why that should impact things here, because your father is acting on the advice of another.”
At that, the woman snorted.
“Well there’s a first time for everything I suppose.” She sighed. “Shaiagrazni, right? Somehow it’s typical that the first person to actually sway him on anything would be the second most evil creature this world has ever seen.”
Suddenly, Swick found himself rather more confident in the decision to ambush her. Particularly knowing she was Galukar’s. A drop of that man’s blood would’ve made anyone harder to persuade than a mountain, and this one seemed to hold pints.
“This isn’t about King Galukar-”
The Hand’s attempt at replying was crushed beneath the woman’s answer, which came out in a great roar demonstrating such volume and potence of lung that Swick found himself wondering whether she might have killed a Vigourless man just by shouting.
“Everything is about him.” Bal snapped. “Even now, a hundred miles away, everything somehow manages to be about him. So why don’t you just get lost and let me put a few hundred more between us, see if that fixes things?”
The Hand paused, clearly reassessing his conundrum and reconsidering his approaches. Swick could appreciate that. He didn’t like the man, but he’d noticed his cleverness quick enough. And he saw it more clearly now.
“Then forget him.” He shrugged. “And ask yourself this; how would you like to sit inside a skyship again? How would you like to fly one?”
It really was remarkable how quickly the woman changed her tune.
Or perhaps not. It was, after all, a damned skyship. Those were rather valuable when they weren’t on fire and sticking out the side of an ancient castle.
“Conditions.” Bal- Princess Felicia- began. “I’m not working for anybody, I’m a freelancer. I don’t have to speak with my father either, and Shaiagrazni isn’t going to come anywhere near me with his freakish magic. I also want a ton of silver. A ton, literally, as my payment. And I want an open position as the ship’s engineer for me to come back to take and refill whenever I want it, no matter how much time passes after its repair.”
Swick was slow that day, because it took him quite a while to piece things together even despite the obvious hints.
“You’re the engineer?” He realised, with a frown. Bollocks, maybe he shouldn’t have brained her between the eyes quite so hard.
Princess Felicia, apparently, was still rather annoyed with him for ambushing her. It showed in how she replied.
“Wow, you’ve recruited a genius I see. Is this the moron who smashed his skyship into that building or am I to expect an even higher grade of stupidity in my future encounters?”
The Hand sounded weary as he replied.
“This is Captain Swick, yes.” He sighed. “I would ask that you show him…Every courtesy.”
She spat at her feet, and the man sighed again.
“That aside, your terms are…Doable.” He winced, even as he said it. “I do hope you realise a ton of silver is no small sum, even for Arbite.”
“I do.” The Princess sighed. “That’s why I’m asking for it. Completely reasonable thing to ask for a skyship, isn’t it?”
Swick found himself grinning as the Hand squirmed. He really did like this one.
“So we have an agreement.” The Hand tried, and the Princess shrugged.
“Mostly I was asking that to see if you’d actually offer it.”
The Hand actually grew irritated then, which was a sight Swick didn’t get to relish for long before his fury was covered up like so many other great treasures.
“This isn’t a game.” He snapped.
“Correct.” The engineer growled back. “It isn’t, and unfortunately for you you’re hinging everything on convincing a woman to make a return to her most hated place in the world. If I want to say no, I’m completely in my right, and if a ton of silver doesn’t sway me then you have no right to judge me either.”
Swick frowned at that. He wasn’t sure about judging, but if a ton of silver didn’t sway someone, he reckoned it made them a madman.
There were more pressing concerns than that, however.
“We should get moving.” Swick cut in. “We were pretty…Loud.” He looked around, to the street they’d churned up with dodged sword swings and thrown Hands. “And there are people after us, I don’t like how easily they could catch us here.”
The engineer scoffed.
“And that sounds like it’s not my problem, if I want to stick my neck out for my father’s thugs then it’ll be another ton of silver on top of it all.”
“I’m serious.” Swick growled.
“So am I.” She growled back. “I still don’t even know if I’ll be working with any of-”
The arrows were in the air before she finished, and both she and Swick were diving within the blink of an eye. He hit the ground,rolled, came up to his feet and turned to see the metal shafts sticking out of cracked stone in walls and the floor. Bal had evaded them all too, if anything by a wider margin than Swick thanks to the crippling injury she wasn’t suffering.
Unfortunately, the Hand was not nearly so quick as either of them. He dropped with an arrow plunged deep into his shoulder, hissing and twitching on the floor where hot ichor poured out of him. Scraping boots caught Swick’s ears from all directions, and he didn’t even need to look up to know it was the Red Finger Crew closing in for him.
He fought of course, translocating around, slashing, headbutting. From the corner of his eye he saw Bal doing much the same, though faring better by far thanks to not being nearly so strong a focus for the attacking mercenaries. Betraying a hundred elite fighters, Swick supposed was bound to have its occasional disadvantage.
Come to think of it, he’d betrayed so many that it was a wonder he was only just suffering the consequences now. Swick stumbled from the battlefield, catching a sword across one rib- bad- and feeling an arrow dig into the small of his back- very bad. His Heroic flesh was like tough armour, but the weapons of men as strong as these were perfectly capable of bypassing that. He could already feel his strength failing.