The Weapons Master's Choice

* * *

He didn’t sleep much after that, but when he sat up suddenly sometime after midnight, the moon had moved across the sky northwest of the clearing and the stars had shifted their positions. He hadn’t heard anything, but he was the Weapons Master and his highly developed instincts warned him even in his sleep. He sat up slowly and looked around.

Lyriana was sitting on the log once more, still wrapped in her blanket. She met his gaze and pointed into the trees. He couldn’t imagine how she had heard what was out there before he did, but apparently she had, and he reassessed his view of her abilities immediately. She was definitely something more than she seemed.

He slipped from the blanket, rolled it into the shape of a sleeping man, and left it on the ground. Then he brought out a pair of throwing knives from beneath his loose garments. He made no sound doing so and none as he moved toward the trees, listening. For long seconds, he heard nothing. Then there came a slight rustle of clothing and the scrape of a boot against the earth.

He dropped into a crouch at the center of a deep pool of shadows. There were at least two of them. Possibly three.

He glanced over his shoulder at Lyriana, sitting on the log, and motioned for her to lie down. If she remained sitting up as she was, she presented an inviting target for a blade or an arrow. He waited for her to comply, but she just shook her head.

Then he realized what she was doing. She wasn’t simply being stubborn. She was offering herself as a target to distract their attackers.

He quit breathing and went perfectly still.

They came out of the trees, three of them, wrapped head–to–toe in black, faces covered, hands gloved, no skin showing. Two carried knives, the third a crossbow. Because they were looking for him to be sleeping by the fire with Lyriana, they didn’t see him in the shadows, even when they were right on top of him.

Then the one with the crossbow raised it to eye level and sent a bolt whizzing toward Lyriana.

He was fitting a second into place when Garet Jax killed him, piercing his heart with one of the throwing knives. The Weapons Master went straight at the other two. Agile and cat–quick, he killed the first before the man could defend himself and was on the second an instant later. Locked in combat, the pair rolled across the campsite and into the fire. Flames snatched at their clothing and began to burn, but neither relinquished his hold. In a silence punctuated only by gasps and grunts, each fought to break the other’s grip.

Until, finally, Garet Jax employed a twist and pull that yanked his adversary’s knife arm down and in, turning his own momentum against him. The man stumbled away, his own blade buried in his chest. He was still trying to figure out how it had happened when the Weapons Master finished him.

Everything went silent then, a hush settling over the campsite and its occupants, living and dead. Garet Jax rolled to his feet, snuffed out the last of the flames that burned his clothing, and did a quick search of the shadows. Nothing moved, and no one else appeared.

He turned back to Lyriana, remembering the crossbow. But she was still sitting on the log, the bolt lying at her feet. She watched him a moment, read the unasked question in his expression, and shrugged. “I was ready. He waited too long, so he missed me.”

Garet Jax moved over to the dead men, pulled off their masks, and began to search them. All three had a triangle with a star at each corner tattooed on their right wrists. They were Het–mercenaries out of Varfleet, killers for hire and very good at their trade. He looked back at Lyriana. How a Het could have missed his target from no more than twenty feet, even at night and in shadow, was difficult to imagine.

But he left the matter alone.

“Come here,” she said.

He complied, and she lifted away the remnants of his burned tunic, turned him about so she could examine his wounds, and then seated him on the log. Pulling a pouch from beneath her cloak, she began placing leaves against his burns. As soon as the leaves touched his skin, they began to dissolve, becoming a kind of paste that cooled and soothed. He sat quietly while she worked, surprised anew.

“I have never seen such medicine before,” he said. “Where did you find it?”

“You can find many things you never thought you would if your need is desperate enough,” she answered.

When she was finished, she ran her hands over his shoulders, her touch making him shiver. It had been a very long time since he had been touched so. In seconds the last remnants of pain from his burns disappeared.

“Now are you coming with me, Garet Jax?” she asked.

He nodded. “Now I am,” he said.

But he suspected she already knew as much.