The Weapons Master's Choice

* * *

He heard the woman coming long before he saw her. She was making no attempt to hide her approach, which suggested she intended him no harm, and this allowed him to sit back to wait on her. It was early evening, the sun gone below the horizon, the darkness settled in, and the purple–hued twilight filled with the sounds of insects and night birds. He was camped several miles outside of Tombara, an Eastland Dwarf village at the western edge of the Wolfsktaag Mountains below the Rabb River. He was there because he was looking for a small measure of peace and quiet and believed this was a place he could find it.

Wrong again.

Of course, she could have simply wandered in from the wilderness, following the smells of his dinner on the evening breeze. She could have appeared solely by chance and with no premeditation. The chances of that, by his reckoning, were only about a thousand to one.

Still, stranger things had happened, and he had borne witness to many of them.

He shifted slightly on the fallen log he was occupying, taking a moment to glance down at the skillet where his dinner was sizzling. Fresh cutthroat, caught by his own hand that very day. Fishing was a skill others would assume he had no time for, but a lot of the assumptions people made about him were wrong. He didn’t mind this. If anything, he encouraged it. Wrong assumptions were helpful in his line of work.

He rose as he heard her near the edge of his campsite. His black clothing hung loose and easy on his slender frame, and his gray eyes were a match for his prematurely silver–hued hair and the narrow beard to which he had taken a fancy of late. He was young–less than thirty–and the smoothness of his face betrayed this. He stared at the shadowed space through which he judged the woman must pass if she kept to her current trajectory, and then he heard her stop where she was.

He said nothing. He gave her time.

“Are you Garet Jax?” she asked him from the darkness.

“And if I am?” he called back.

“Then I would speak with you.”

No hesitation, no equivocating. She had come looking for him, and she had a reason for doing so.

“Come sit with me then. You can share my dinner. Are you hungry?”

She stepped from the trees into the firelight, and while she was in many ways a woman of ordinary appearance, there was something striking about her. He saw it at once, and it gave him pause. Perhaps it was nothing more than the unusual auburn color of her short–cropped hair. Perhaps it was the way she carried herself, as if she was entirely comfortable in her own skin and unconcerned with what others thought. Perhaps it was something else–a resolve and acceptance reflected in her strange green eyes, a suggestion of having to come to terms with something that was hidden from him.

She was carrying nothing. No pack, no supplies, no weapons. It made him wonder if she was alone. No one traveled this country without at least a long knife and a blanket.

She crossed the clearing, her eyes locked on his. She wore a long travel cloak pulled tight about her shoulders and fastened at the neck. Perhaps she kept her weapons concealed beneath.

“I am alone, if you are wondering,” she said without being asked. “They told me at the Blue Hen Tavern in Tombara that you were here.”

“No one knows where I am,” he said.

“They didn’t say you were in this exact spot. But they knew you were somewhere nearby. I found you on my own. I have a gift for finding lost things.”

“I’m not lost,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” she replied.

He gave no response, but wondered at the meaning behind her words. She moved over to the log he had been occupying earlier and sat down–although not too close to where he stood. He waited a moment and then joined her, respecting the distance she had chosen to keep.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Lyriana.” She glanced down at the long leather case propped up against a smaller log off to one side. “Are those your weapons?”

“Yes.” He studied her. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I know what they call you. The Weapons Master. But you seem awfully young to be a master of anything.”

“How do you know of me?”

She shrugged. “Stories told here and there. Word travels, even to places as remote as where I have come from. Most of the stories are good ones. People like to tell stories of disappointment and betrayal, of men and women who have suffered heartbreak and loss. But they don’t tell those stories about you. And they say you are a man who makes a bargain and keeps it.”

“My word is an important part of what I have to sell.”

“It’s said you don’t fear long odds. That you once confronted as many as a dozen armed men and killed them all in the blink of an eye with nothing but your hands.”

“Two blinks of an eye and a knife. Why have you come to find me? What need do you have of a man like me?”

She thought about it a moment, and then she smiled. “Can we eat first? Your trout is in danger of being overcooked.”

He poured ale from a skin into tin cups, and they sat together in silence while they ate their meal. All around them, the night sounds quickened as the darkness deepened and the quarter moon and stars came out. From out of a cloudless sky, clean white moonlight flooded the woods.

When they were finished, he scraped the plates and rubbed them clean with grasses before beginning on the skillet.

“You take good care of your equipment,” she observed.

He smiled. “What do you wish of me, Lyriana?”

She smiled back, but the smile was quick and small. “Help. I want you to come with me to Tajarin, my home city. I want you to put an end to what’s happening there. My people are being decimated. A warlock of enormous power is preying upon them. His name is Kronswiff. Do you know the name?”

He shook his head. “Nor do I know of Tajarin, and I thought there was no city in all of the Four Lands of which I had not heard. How did I miss this one?”

“It lies far outside the usual routes of travel, north and east on the shores of the Tiderace. It is very old. Once it was a seaport, hundreds of years ago. But those days are gone. Now it is home to my people and no longer known to the larger world. But what matters is that those who live there cannot protect themselves against what it is being done to them. They stay because they have nowhere else to go. They need someone like you to help them.”

“The Tiderace is a long way from here. I am awaiting word of a commission from Tyrsis. Agreeing to come with you would disrupt those plans.”

“Are you refusing me?”

“I haven’t heard enough yet to decide.”

Her lips tightened. “I need someone who will not turn on my people once the warlock is defeated. They are vulnerable, and I want to be sure they will be left alone afterward. There are few whose reputations suggest they could be counted on to do the right thing.”

She paused. “I am running out of time. I was sent because I was the strongest and most capable. Kronswiff bleeds my people as cattle are milked; many are already gone. If we do not hurry back, they will all be lost.”

“He is only one man. Are there not enough of you to stand against him?”

“He is not simply one man; he is a warlock. And he has men who follow him and do his bidding. They have taken over the city, and those of us he has not imprisoned are in hiding. No one dares to challenge him. A handful did so early on and were quickly dispatched.”

She paused. “This will not be an easy task. Not even for you. The warlock is powerful. His men are dangerous. But you are our best hope.”

“Perhaps a unit of the Border Legion might be a better choice. They undertake rescues of this sort when the need is clear.”

She shook her head. “Did you not hear what I said? We are speaking of a warlock. Ordinary men–even ones with courage and weapons and determination–will not be strong enough to stand against him. Will you come?”

“What am I to be paid for this?”

“Do you care?”

That stopped him. He stared at her. “Are you telling me you want me to do this for nothing? That there is to be no payment?”

She curled her lip. “I had judged you to be a better man than this. I had been told that money meant nothing to you. It was the challenge you cared about. Is this not so? Is money what matters? Because if it is, I will pledge you all the coin in the city, every last piece of gold and silver you can carry away.”

“All of your coin; all of your silver and gold? All of it?” He laughed. “What does that mean? That you haven’t got any gold or silver? Or have you so much you can afford to give it away?”

“It means that our lives are more precious than our riches. That our peace of mind and security are worth more than whatever must be paid to protect them. I’ll ask you once again. Will you come with me?”

Something about what she was telling him felt wrong, and his instincts warned him that she was keeping secrets. But they also told him that her need was genuine, and her plea for his assistance was heartfelt and desperate.

“How far is Tajarin?” he asked her.

“Perhaps seven or eight days,” she said.

“On horseback?”

“Horses can’t get to where we are going. So mostly we must go on foot. Does this matter?”

He shrugged.

“Will you come, then?”

He finished with the skillet, taking his time. “Let me sleep on it. Come back to me in the morning.”

She shook her head. “I have nowhere to go. I will sleep here with you.”

He studied her carefully. Then he rose, brought out his extra blanket, and handed it to her. “Find a place close to the fire. It gets cold at night.”

Wordlessly, she accepted his offering, walked over to the other side of the fire, spread the blanket, and rolled herself into it so that her back was to him.

He remained awake awhile longer, thinking through what she had told him, trying to come to a decision. It should have been easy. She was asking him to risk his life to save her people; he deserved complete honesty. If she was not telling him the entire truth, he should send her on her way.

But there was something about her that intrigued him, something that drew him–an undeniable attraction. He felt it in the mix of determination and vulnerability she projected. The contrast was compelling in a visceral way. He couldn’t quite explain it, although he felt a need to do so. He would have to think on it some more.

He lay down finally, having no reason to remain awake longer, and was almost asleep when he heard her say, “You should make up your mind as soon as possible.”

He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. “Why is that?”

“Because I might have been followed.”