had wrenched his two throwing knives from the leather thong on which they hung and had brought them up in a sharp, underhand throw. The knives; straight, chisel-tipped steel blades with bone handles, hurtled through the air and hit the bowman in the left shoulder and the left leg. Athas had tried time and again to teach him with the best weighted knives available but, regardless, Kiva would never make a marksman. Still, the bow was effectively out of commission. The archer grunted and stumbled, the bow dropping from his suddenly spasming fingers.
As one of the four soldiers opened his mouth to speak, Kiva was already diving into his next move, rolling between them with his fingertips touching the pommels of his swords.
“Captain Tre…”
The soldier’s voice tailed off as Kiva’s blade tore through his hamstring. As the Captain had dropped and somersaulted, he’d whipped both his slightly curved blades out to the sides and had come up half a sentence later behind the middle two, having sliced neatly through the tendons at the back of the knees. From rounding the corner to standing behind them and watching them fall had been mere seconds.
With a sharp cry of pain the speaker collapsed in a heap, his blade flailing out at random. The man on the other side had slid to the ground, whimpering and clutching his knee. The archer began to back away down the hill, while the remaining enemy soldier stood facing the captain, looking somewhat startled. Kiva lifted one foot and kicked against the high perimeter wall, spinning in a half circle and lashing out with his swords as he turned. Before he even saw his opponent, he heard the slicing sound of carved meat and felt the slight resistance tugging at the blades. As he landed, catlike, on his feet before the man, he watched his victim’s torso slide gently off the pelvis, the spine entirely severed. He looked down at the half body, registering with distaste the startled look still on the face as the lower half of the body toppled slowly backwards. Kiva stepped back.
He looked down at the two crippled but active men flailing around on the floor and clutching their wounds. They looked a great deal less smug now than they had a moment ago.
“The problem with full-time soldiers” he noted coldly as he trod carefully among the viscera, “is you tend to stand there and bluff and bluster when you could be busy actually killing.”
He kicked the half-body out of his way and strode over to the two.
“Another problem is that you’re hampered by certain codes” Kiva said with a feral grin. “I’m not.”
Stepping on the hamstrung knee, causing another scream of pain, he leaned forward and thrust his blade into the second man’s gullet. As he pulled the sword back out, he twisted and a large piece of the soldier’s neck came with it. The gush of dark blood washed over his companion who was now visibly terrified.
“I don’t like leaving a live enemy” he continued as if instructing a new recruit. “They tend to come back to haunt you.”
With a heavy slash, he beheaded the remaining man and, turning, shaded his eyes with his hand, trying to spot the archer. The severed head rolled past his feet and off down the hill. The archer hadn’t got very far, clutching his painful, bleeding leg and stumbling down the slightly treacherous slope toward the stream. Kiva growled. He hated having to chase people down.
“Can we help, sir?”
The captain turned and glanced up at the top of the wall. Three of the company were peering over the parapet at the grisly scene and he could hear the others scrambling across the farmyard now. Athas gestured down the hill.
“I might miss at that distance,” the big sergeant admitted, “but it’s a shot I’d bet the lad could make. He’s more of a huntsman.”
Kiva merely nodded and then set about the job of looting the bodies below the wall. Athas and Quintillian appeared at the top and the lad looked down. He squinted for a moment as he tried to make out the details of the scene below and then the colour slowly drained from his face. Muffled gagging sounds accompanied his desperate attempts to hold in his breakfast. The captain crouched, grey and unconcerned, among the severed pieces of human beings, busily rifling through their pouches. Athas grabbed a handful of the boy’s tunic and hauled him back upright.
“I know it’s not nice when you’re not used to it,” he told the lad soothingly, “but we haven’t got time for this. See that man in green? Down near the river?”
Quintillian continued to stare blankly at the sergeant, his face white.
“Can you hit him or
The boy turned robotically to look down the hill, trying not to catch the huge splash of red beneath him out of the corner of his eye. The archer had almost reached the stream. It would be a very long shot, but he’d hit worse. He nodded, gulping in air rapidly.
“Then do it.”
Athas stuck three arrows in the wall while the boy unhooked his bow and tested the string gingerly. As the sergeant looked across, he saw some colour returning to Quintillian’s face. The lad plucked one of the arrows from the wall and nocked it, aiming carefully. Steadying his breath, he released the arrow.
The shaft arced up into the sunlit air and curved down, picking up speed as it fell toward the river. Athas realised he too was holding his breath as the arrow narrowly missed the soldier and splashed into the water. The lad let out his breath in a huge rush and slapped his hand on the wall in irritation.
“It’s too far” he shook his head. “He’s almost out of range.”
Athas plucked the second arrow and thrust it towards Quintillian, who accepted it reluctantly. The sergeant gestured to Thalo, who nodded and proffered another bow. In return, Athas held the arrow to him. Thalo stepped up to the wall, stretched out the bow, took the arrow, nocked it and fired with barely a pause to aim. Quintillian’s carefully-aimed shot flew out away from the wall a mere fraction of a second later.
Even Kiva stopped and turned to watch as the two arrows reached their apex and then began their descent. Thalo’s came down first, remarkably accurate considering his lack of aim, punching deep into the man’s calf, splintering the bone and jutting out of his shin. Before the figure even hit the water the second arrow, quintillian’s, struck him in the back, entering just below the shoulder blade. The distant figure crumpled into the stream, quickly staining the slow-running water red. Kiva stood back and looked up at the wall.
“Whoever goes down there to get my throwing knives back gets to keep anything they loot from his body.”
As Kiva stretched and made his way back along the wall toward the gate, Marco and Thalo turned and raced toward the gate in the wall. Athas slapped Quintillian on the shoulder.
“Not too bad” he said admiringly. “That was a hard shot.”
The lad was still very pale and shaky. He smiled weakly and then leaned forward over the parapet and retched convulsively for the best part of a minute, though nothing actually came up. Wiping his mouth with an exceedingly shaky hand, he leaned heavily on the wall, letting the bow fall to the ground, unheeded.
“He… the captain… butchered them all himself, didn’t he?”
“He did, lad” Athas answered mildly. “He’s very good at it. You could be that good one day with enough training and practice. Unfortunately, like me you’ve got a conscience and they tend to get in the way. He hasn’t. Not any more.”
The rest of the company had drifted back toward the main door of the farmhouse. Kiva had continued on round the wall of the house, and Thalo and Marco were racing for the body in the stream. The sergeant and the young man were practically alone. Quintillian looked up at the huge warrior.
“What made him this cold?” he asked with true feeling. “You’ve known him a long time. He must tell you everything, yes?”
Once again, Athas raised an eyebrow. The boy was always prying; probing for information. In another man it might be indicative of a spy, but for some reason Athas was sure of the lad’s trustworthiness. The sergeant rarely pried too deeply into peoples’ lives, tending to rely mostly on gut instinct. He sighed; gut instinct was good, but some things weren’t his to tell.
“I’ll tell you a lot of things you need or want to know lad, but not things like that.” Turning, the big sergeant fixed Quintillian with a direct glance. “You want to know about the captain, you’ll have to ask
Quintillian smiled. “I’ve been known to have a few glasses of wine after lunch.”
“Hah. Well never mind.” Athas grinned and proffered a flask. The boy took it curiously, unplugged the lid, and sniffed delicately at the contents. He recoiled in horror.
“What in the name of … What
