Chapter 19
The third day started like the ones before it. The children awoke, dismantled their camp, ate breakfast, and did the other things that one did in the morning. They spent twenty minutes practicing with their weapons, then sheathed them and continued on their way.
As they traveled, they noticed fewer and fewer commoners on the roads that they passed over, by, or along. The villages were fewer and farther between. They were approaching he Black Sky Mountains themselves now, rather than the hundreds of miles of foothills that surrounded those massive and spiritual peaks.
The trouble began with a shadow passing over the sun, shrouding them in darkness. It lasted only a moment, too fast to have been a cloud, but when they looked up, they saw nothing in the sky. They had felt it, however. A flicker of malicious intent.
Tan kept an ear to the wind and they all kept an eye to the sky after that, but the shadow or anything that might have caused it did not reappear. They sensed more intent. It was vague and nebulous, however, and they could not track it back to its source.
“We should speed up,” Tan suggested.
“No, we should slow down,” Pao argued. “If we’re attacked, we don’t want it to be after a chase. And if we’re traveling too fast we might wander into an ambush.”
The boys argued, turning to the twins for support. Won agreed with Tan, while Ko agreed with Pao, resolving nothing.
They were still bickering when the intent suddenly solidified. Tan waved his hand and summoned a gust of wind that deflected the arrows that came their way. He flared his own intent, while the others drew their weapons and faced off in the direction that the arrows had come from.
“There they are,” Won said, drawing his bow. He aimed at … something. Tan couldn’t see it, and the wind wasn’t cooperating with him. He closed his eyes and opened his other eye and then he saw the life force of the bandits hiding in the bush, just as Won began firing arrows at them that pierced through the cover of the forest and set the bandits and bushes aflame.
They began to scream and run away. The children were satisfied with that result.
The bandit leader was not.
He landed before them, in his hand a sword the size of a man. Made of obsidian and sharp enough to slice open the palm that touched its edge with a feather touch, the weapon was as infamous and deadly as the man himself.
“Tell you what, kids,” he said, twisting his neck and popping his vertebrae, “Give me your weapons and any other valuables you might have on you, and I won’t gut you and cook you over a spit.”
He flared his intent, which he had trained by killing over one hundred men.
The children didn’t even flinch.
He grinned, believing that they were frozen stupid by his--
The flame arrow struck him in the thigh, burning a hole straight through his leg. He screamed and lost control of his will for a moment. Then he seized down and redoubled the pressure that he put on the children.
A second arrow hit him in the arm.
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“Are you trying to kill him or make him angry?” Tan asked casually.
“Do you think we should? Kill him, I mean?” Ko asked clinically.
“That’s the penalty for banditry. We’ll be doing the empire a favor,” Tan said.
“Do you want to be the one who kills him, Tan?” Pao asked, and the younger boy paled.
“You little—I’ll kill you!” the bandit leader shouted, and he charged, ignoring the pain and the limp in his leg as he raised his obsidian blade and swiped it at the children.
The big one leapt out in front and swung that impressive warhammer he carried. The bandit leader grinned, knowing that his blade could cut steel, and doubled down the effort by reinforcing the swing with a burst of speed powered by Qi.
Steel met volcanic glass, and the sword shattered into a million pieces. Both combatants were struck by the shrapnel, and the shards of obsidian cut their clothes and their skin.
The bandit leader didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed the big kid by the face, twisted, and threw him into the distance with all of his strength.
“You little brats! I’ll kill you for that,” he screamed. “I’m in the fourth stage of the spiritual realm, and sword or not I’m more than enough of a weapon to put all of you in the ground!”
“Yeah, well, I’m in the foundation realm,” Tan said, stepping forward. “I cultivate the wind just like you. Let’s see who’s blowing hot air.”
The boy drew his sword and almost vanished, he moved so fast. The bandit leader was his equal, however, and he reached out to catch the blade with the gauntlet on his left hand, winding back to throw a punch with his right.
The blade passed clean through his hand, the cut searing hot but only a minor distraction. He screamed and ignored his severed hand as he swung with his other. He connected right in Tan’s face, grinning as he felt the cartilage of the boy’s nose snap beneath the blow.
The girl was next. She lasted for thirty seconds before he tripped her and kicked her in the ribs, sending her flying. He turned and--
The flame arrow struck him in the chest, piercing his heart.
Won swallowed as the man looked at him in surprise. The expression on the bandit leader’s face was seared into the boy’s soul. The first man he ever killed clutched his chest and fell over.
The children collapsed as the adrenaline faded from them. The other bandits were gone. Without the bandit leader masking their presence, Tan could sense their breath on the wind, but they were running away and none of the children had the will to chase them and … and what?
Kill them?
They didn’t have the heart for that.
Bring them to justice?
The empire would just kill them. It was an extra step in the process that only complicated things exponentially.
No. They let the bandits go. Perhaps with their leader dead they would reconsider their choice of profession and become more productive members of society. But it wasn’t the children’s responsibility to right every wrong in the world. They had merely defended themselves against a man who would have killed them.
Uncertain what else to do with the body, Tan put it in his spatial ring, and they continued on their journey after setting Tan’s broken nose and bandaging the cuts that Pao got from the obsidian sword’s shrapnel.
The rest of the day was uneventful.
The night was not.