brown cloak and full dress. It must have looked like easy pickings to the men, but the older fellow had put up quite a fight. One of the attackers lay, possibly dead, along the trail, and another had a torn jerkin and a spreading bloodstain on the right side of his chest, although it was clearly a superficial wound.
There were, however, too many of them; the one with the wound had grabbed the girl, who might well have gotten him with a dagger of some sort; he held her firmly while she futilely struggled to break free of him. The man who'd been untouched had beaten the old man to the ground with his heavy sword and now brought the blade down hard on the defender's neck.
The girl screamed again, then seemed to lose all will to resist further as blood spurted from the certainly fatal wound to her companion.
Joe looked around, trying to think of some way to help. Physically no longer a match for the pair, although her old self ached to pick up a sword and have at them, she was not without power and resources here.
'Put her down!' Joe shouted as menacingly as she could. 'Let the girl go!'
Both of the surviving attackers froze in the deepening darkness; the one with the small wound frowned but kept his grip on the girl.
The other one looked around, trying to get a make on the newcomer, grinning as he thought things through. 'Come on out yourself, darlin'! We got enough for two of you!'
'Take what you want but leave the girl here and go,' Joe responded, moving around the periphery of the trees and bushes. This would be tricky, but it was makable.
'Well, now, I don't think we kin do that,' the grinning man said. 'See, we think we want her, too. We got real plans for her, y' see. What's she to you, anyways? You got to be a nymph from the sounds. Hell, this is what you's
The girl, too, was suddenly paying attention. She looked desperate and her eyes were more than a little wild, but clearly she was looking for some kind of opening. Touching the great trees just in back of the man holding her, Joe decided that this wasn't something she couldn't provide.
Vines suddenly shot out from the tops of the trees and grabbed the man who held the terrified woman, wrapping themselves around his neck. While not thick or strong enough actually to do him in, they were enough to cut off his wind and give him a sudden and direct choice between letting his captive go and letting the vines keep wrapping around his neck. There wasn't even a contest; reflex made him let go of the girl and grab for his neck.
The girl dropped to the ground, spied the dagger she'd dropped after stabbing her captor, picked it up, and rushed toward her assailant, who was just pulling the last vines free, his head leaning back so he had room to grab them and break them loose. It was almost as if he were offering his throat, and with a desperate reach and a slashing motion the girl shoved the dagger right into his Adam's apple.
He went down with a gurgling sound, pulling out the dagger as he fell to his knees, but by then the blood was filling up his air passages, strangling him. He knew it and could do absolutely nothing to stop it.
The man stepped back, not wanting to get trapped by vines as his companion had been but also unwilling to abandon either his prize or the possibility of revenge from the still not clearly seen attacker.
He stepped over the girl's still body and put his sword down on her. 'All right,' he growled menacingly. 'Show yourself! Show yourself or I start on the girl here. She's not much, but it can be a little hard to watch, especially if'n she comes to! First a foot, maybe? Then the other'n? So's she won't walk away on us? Then the hands, arms, legs, that sort of thing. What do you think? What should I start with? Maybe this here leg? You got five seconds to try'n stop me!'
The bastard was good; Joe had to give him that. This was no common robber or cutthroat; he knew his business too well. He also had picked a stance and a position where it would be next to impossible to get him with vines, and there wasn't much else around, either, except maybe throwing rocks and sticks — and Joe knew just how little arm strength she had for that sort of thing.
'What would it get you?' Joe tried, hoping to stall while she thought of something.
'Satisfaction,' the man responded. 'In fact, I don't think I like stalling. You've used up your time, girlie.' The sword arm came up a bit, the muscles tensed, and Joe, familiar with the stance and the move, had no doubt what was coming next.
'All right,' Joe said, stepping into the clearing but away from the swordsman, out of easy reach. 'So now what?'
The man obviously had some faerie sight; he didn't seem at all bothered by the nearly pitch darkness around them, and he stared carefully at the wood nymph. The kind of bravado and guts she was showing, as well as quick thinking, was beyond most nymphs of any stripe, but aside from this one being a bit taller and having if anything an even more inhumanly exaggerated set of proportions than the usual, she didn't look all that different.
'I guess you didn't hear me,' the man growled with a kind of confident, even smug tone. 'I didn't ask you to come out. I said you had to stop me.'
The sword hand moved, and Joe sprang at him without even thinking, leaping over the distance and hitting him in the chest. Since he stood maybe five-ten and weighed a hundred seventy pounds or so, he was a brick wall to her four-foot-eight, perhaps eighty-pound bulk, but it was enough to knock him back and break his sword motion.
To him it had been a solid punch; to Joe it was that whole brick wall and it hurt like hell, and she fell onto the ground, slightly dazed.
He was over her with the sword before she got back her bearings.
He put out the tip of the sword and touched her left shoulder, and there was a hissing sound where metal met faerie flesh, as if the sword were not solid at all but some kind of horribly caustic acid, and an acrid smell of boiling flesh and a tiny whiff of white smoke came from the wound.
'You know, it's gonna be a shame to kill you,' he said, almost sounding as if he meant it. 'Never saw a nymph with this much guts. Can't have you doggin' me and threatenin' my back, though, or callin' in some damned army or the cops. Good-bye, girlie,' he added, and plunged the iron sword deep into her, making a horrible gash along her entire breastplate, probably all the way down to her back.
The hissing and smoking and smell were terrible, and the nymph screamed in pain and then went still.
The man pulled the sword out, satisfied that he'd done the job, and returned to the fallen girl. She was coming to, but there would be some time to go, and he didn't like this particular forest, not at all.
He put down his lethal short sword, reached into a small knapsack he had brought with him, and removed two very delicate sets of bronze cuffs. No iron here. He rudely grabbed both of her wrists, brought them in back of her, and put on the smaller cuffs. Then he pulled off her boots and brought the ankles together, clearly with the intent of cuffing them as well.
Suddenly he felt a horrible, burning pain in his back, and he cried out and straightened up, dropping the cuffs on the ground. He stood, frantically trying to reach between his shoulder blades and remove the dagger that had been driven in between them, but he could not reach it.
He looked around, totally confused, wracked with pain, yet desperate to see who had gotten him, only to see the wood nymph standing there, looking at him in grim satisfaction, the ugly gaping scar on her chest blazing but already beginning to somehow heal and disappear.
'But — but — that was
He then pitched forward, shuddered, and was still.
'This is Husaquahr, bub. They got a rule for
She was probably the only one in all faerie — save the dwarves — who could not be killed by iron. But it really did hurt like Hell.
The girl groaned, tried to get up, found she couldn't put a hand out to steady herself, and didn't quite make it.
'Try getting yourself into a sitting position,' Joe told her. 'I can check and see if he has a key to those cuffs on him.'
