In a dark forest, a boy yawned and breathed in the damp, leafy smell of the midsummer air. Scratching the back of his neck where the faint outline of his mark lay hidden by his collar, the boy lifted a hand to collect some of the damp moss that clung to the rope binding him to a tree branch. The thick hemp dug deep, cutting into his thighs, but he would never be caught showing anything resembling discomfort. He brought the green clump to his mouth and chewed slowly before swallowing. The moss was edible, a fact he knew from countless wilderness lessons and a particularly lean month two winters ago. The taste, however, begged to differ, offering a flavour profile indistinguishable from chewing on the rope it was plucked from.
He fought away the feeling of disgust immediately, having been drilled enough times to do so, although that lesson was amongst the hardest for him.
A weapon does not have preferences, disgust, or appetite. It requires fuel to function, and it takes what is necessary, regardless of its nature.
It was times like these, suspended between the earth and the sky, that he idly wondered if being a weapon was a penance in and of itself. He recalled a training exercise where he and the other candidates, driven to the point of starvation after days without food, were finally presented with a writhing pile of grubs and a basket of bitter roots. Their instructors had demanded they complain about the quality of the meal, to prove they still possessed a discerning palate, apparently only to then punish them viciously for their insolence and lack of gratitude. It was a masterclass in psychological whiplash, and the main lesson he'd taken from it was that his handlers were dangerously whimsical.
Too much blood flowing to my head, the boy thought, dismissing the memory.
Maybe that's why I'm having these thoughts. He had been hanging upside down for hours, or was it half a day? He could no longer tell. Time had become a thick, slow-moving syrup. But he could not move yet. Not until the target was in sight. He had single handedly planned this approach and would execute it as was required of him by the Glaives.
Using a core of lean, corded muscle honed by years of grueling training, he pulled himself up slightly, allowing a brief, blessed relief as blood rushed from his skull. Just as he settled back into his inverted, prone stance, he heard it: the rhythmic creak of wheels and the hurried clopping of a horse. The carriage was coming.
As discreetly as a spider on its web, he shifted his weight inward, his fingers finding the point where the rope tethered him to a branch directly above the path. He drew a curved, wickedly sharp knife from a sheath hidden in his boot. He held the blade against the taut rope, the edge biting into the fibers, ready to sever it in a single, fluid motion.
The sound grew louder, clearer. The crunch of damp leaves under the horse's hooves confirmed it had reached the deeper tree line. He counted the hoofbeats, a silent, internal metronome. Three… two… one… As the horse's head broke past the neighboring tree, he sliced through the rope.
His fall wasn't a clumsy plummet but a guided descent. He landed squarely on the carriage driver, driving an elbow into the man's temple with practiced precision. There was no shout, only a soft grunt as the driver slumped forward, his unconscious body cushioning the boy's landing. The boy seized the reins, pulling the horse to a jarring halt, and in the same motion, slid from the seat and under the carriage.
"Why have we stopped!" a loud, aristocratic voice bellowed from within.
The carriage doors flew open. Two guards with drawn swords descended on one side, while a third, holding a flintlock rifle, dropped down on the boy's side. The boy, concealed in the shadows beneath the carriage, shot his arm out and hooked the rifleman's ankles. The man yelped, his balance gone, and as he crashed to the ground, his finger squeezed the trigger.
The rifle discharged with a deafening boom, the shot tearing harmlessly into the canopy above. The already skittish horse screamed and bolted. The carriage lurched forward, dragging the boy with it. Reacting instantly, he used the sudden momentum and held onto the lower rail. As the rifleman struggled to rise, the boy, kicked the man's head sending it slamming hard against the thick, unforgiving spokes of the moving rear wheel. The man went limp. One down, seven to go.
The two swordsmen were now running alongside the careening carriage, trying to keep pace. The boy rolled out from the opposite side, a small, fleeting shadow in the chaos. He came up in a low crouch behind the rearmost guard and kicked out, sweeping the man's feet from under him. As the guard fell backwards, the boy was already on him, bringing the heavy pommel of his knife down on the man's forehead with a sickening thud. Two down.
The third guard spun, his eyes wide, finally locating the source of the attack. He swung his sword in a wide, horizontal arc meant to cleave the boy in two. But the boy wasn't there. He had ducked under the blade, pressing himself against the guard's body, and drove two stiffened fingers into the soft spot just below the man's ribcage. The guard's breath exploded from his lungs in a pained wheeze. Before he could recover, the boy pivoted and delivered a sharp chop to the side of his neck. The guard crumpled. Three down.
The lurching of the carriage had sent the two guards riding on the rear platform tumbling to the forest floor. They scrambled to their feet, drawing their own weapons as the carriage finally slowed, entangled in a thicket of bushes. Unlike the others, these two moved with a coordinated purpose, their eyes not on the downed men, but locked on the small, lone figure of the boy. They spread out, flanking him.
The boy's mind raced, assessing the new dynamic. Two opponents, working in tandem.
Their reach is a problem.
He remembered a brutal lesson where he was forced to spar with an instructor twice his size. Every jab he threw fell short, every parry was overwhelmed. The lesson was simple: When your weapons are shorter, you must either fight from a distance they cannot cross, or a distance they cannot use.
The guard on the left charged, swinging his sword in a low, scything arc. Simultaneously, the one on the right dropped into a solid horse stance, sword held ready to intercept any escape. It was a classic pincer movement designed to trap and butcher.
Instead of retreating, the boy darted forward. He dropped into a slide on the slick, damp leaves, aiming not at the attacker, but at the anchor. He shot directly under the wide-legged stance of the second guard. As he passed between the man's thighs, a blur of motion in the undergrowth, his fist shot up in a vicious, targeted blow to the man's groin.
A strangled, high-pitched squeak was the only sound the second guard made as his eyes bulged and his sword tumbled from nerveless fingers. The first guard's slash had missed entirely, his momentum carrying him past his now-collapsing partner. The boy was already up, a shadow rising behind him. Before the first guard could correct his stance, the boy drove the hard edge of his boot into the back of the man's knee. The leg hyperextended with a wet pop. As the man screamed and went down, a swift, two-handed chop to the base of his skull silenced him. The boy then turned and delivered a simple, merciful kick to the temple of the groaning, curled-up guard on the ground. Five down.
The carriage door creaked open again. The final two guards, who had been inside with their master, emerged. One was large and brutish, the other was older, leaner, with cold, calculating eyes. He held his blade with an easy familiarity that marked him as the true threat. The bodyguard. The master.
The brutish one charged, bellowing. The boy recognized his disadvantage immediately—the man's arms were like tree limbs. To fight him at arm's length was suicide. So he adapted. In a move that was less a trained technique and more a feral instinct, he launched himself forward, not to strike, but to close. He slammed head-first into the man's sternum, the impact knocking the air from both of them. While the larger man wheezed in shock, the boy wrapped his legs around the man's waist, latched onto his sword arm with both hands, and bit down. Hard.
The guard screamed, a genuine sound of pain and disbelief, and his sword clattered to the ground. The boy released his jaw, dropped back to his feet, and as the man clutched his savaged arm, delivered a rapid sequence of three palm-heel strikes: to the chin, the nose, and the temple. The big man crashed backwards into the side of the carriage and slid unconscious to the ground. Seven down.
Only the master remained. He hadn't moved, but his cold eyes had tracked every micro-action. He took a half-step forward, kicking a spray of damp earth toward the boy's face. It was a simple, dirty trick, but effective. For the fraction of a second, the boy's vision was obscured, the man lunged, not with his blade's edge, but with its pommel, striking the boy hard in the ribs.
Pain, sharp and blinding, exploded in the boy's side. He was thrown to the ground, the wind knocked out of him.
He curled up, hugging his legs to his chest, and let out a piercing scream of agony. It was a raw, childlike sound, full of terror and pain.
The master stood over him, his sword held in a ready stance, but a flicker of confusion crossed his features. He looked at the seven unconscious forms of his men, then down at the small, wailing figure at his feet. This was the assailant? This child, who looked to have only just become a teenager, was now sobbing on the forest floor? The dissonance of it all created a momentary hesitation, a crack in his professional composure.
It was all the boy needed.
The man's eyes were drawn downward by a flicker of movement. The boy's wrist, seemingly tucked away in pain, had snapped forward. He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his sword hand and looked down to see the boy's curved knife embedded deeply in his knuckles, pinning his fingers to the hilt of his own weapon. He gasped, his sword arm going numb.
When he raised his eyes to track his assailant, he saw no tears, no pain. He saw a knee rising swiftly to meet his face, propelled by a pair of eyes that could not have registered the agony implied by the scream he'd just heard. Then, all went dark.
The boy rose, pulling his knife from the man's hand and wiping it clean on the unconscious man's tunic.
"All done," he said to the quiet forest.
He climbed into the carriage and located a pouch unlike the rest. While the others were plain leather, this one was made of fine silk with rich purple and gold linings. "The target of this mission," he murmured, securing it inside his shirt.
He left the site with none dead, all eight men merely unconscious, as per his training; after all, he was not allowed to kill yet. As he melted back into the trees, he allowed himself a final, fleeting thought. He wondered if these people had ever been taught anything useful in their lives to have become such bad weapons. Maybe they were not weapons, then why did they pretend to be?