Steelflower

I woke from a fuzzy trance with my mead-filled head ringing and four Hain Guards seeking to separate said head from my shoulders.

In strictest point of fact, they did not seek to kill me. They sought to kill the barbarian whose pocket I had picked last night, and I dove into the fray without realizing it, still half-asleep. The case could further be made that things were a general mess because of one small reflexive action.

I am not my usual charming self with my head pounding like Baiiar drums and my mouth full of foul Kshanti camel-piss, and I was a bit more enthusiastic than twas necessary. As I wiped my dotanii, after the last Hain lay flopping and gasping on the floor, I finally had a chance to look about me.

I had killed three of them, two with short thrusts and one with the piri-splitter cut, carving half his face off. He drowned in his own blood.

The tavern's commonroom was full of patrons who had either slept through the fray or pretended to. Nevertheless, there was a wide space around the table I had used--leaping atop it to get some altitude, while smashing a Hain on the head with a crockery tankard--and I remembered a general scurry from the vicinity as soon as my eyes opened and my sword cleared its sheath. It says something for my reputation that I am allowed to sleep in a tavern commonroom unmolested--and without my pocket being picked.

I dropped down to the rough, splintered floor of the commonroom, my dotanii sliding back into its sheath. I considered spitting as I strode for the door, decided against it. My mouth tasted foul, but spitting here might start another fight.

"Off so soon?" A low male voice with a strange guttural accent, behind me. My mind automatically catalogued it--barbarian.

Which only meant the speaker was not of any race or language I knew offhand. There are many in the wide, wide world.

"Go and bugger yourself," I tossed back over my shoulder, "unless you want the same done to you as those poor bastards."

"Ye saved me life, wench, after ye picked me pocket last night. Even enough. So where are ye off to?"

I turned on my heel, and my reply died in my throat. That barbarian. The huge one.

He bore a startling resemblance to the puppets of giants traveling Tsaoganhi use in their shows. Frizzy ginger eyebrows and a huge bushy beard, blunt fingers wrapped around an axe haft, and a bloody bandage around his even-bushier ginger head completed the picture. He had been left unmolested with his tankerd last night, except for my quick fingers as he brushed past my table. The small blade fitted over my finger had cut into his trousers, and I had nimbly picked his pocket clean, without even knowing quite why I bothered.

I drew in a deep breath. "I desire a bath, and I need some kafi, and I wish for peace and quiet. So go bugger yourself."

With that, I turned and stamped out the door, doing my level best not to flinch when the early-morning sunlight speared my skull. It reminded me of S'tai, and fighting with the Sun in my eyes, the screams of the wounded...

I shook the memory away, stepped over the threshold and out onto the street--

--right into the path of a full cadre of Hain Guards.

We stared at each other, one tired, hung-over sellsword thief and fifteen Hain Guards in full leather armor, with pikes, crossbows, and swords, not to mention daggers.

"Oh, Mother's tits." I put my palms together and gave a correct little bow. "A good dawning to you, Dogs of the Most Beneficent Sunlord."

I received no answer but the sound of blades ringing free of their sheaths. There was a roar from behind me and the ginger-haired barbarian charged the Hain Guards. He had the grace not to knock me over as he passed me.

I was about to turn and walk away.

No, really, I was.

Then I drew two knives, and flung them both. The two crossbowmen fell. Waste of good metal now if I did not finish the fight.

I picked my moment and dove in. I received one nasty bruise on the right thigh from a stray kick, but the ginger-haired mountain bellowed like an ox and smacked that luckless Guard on his helmet with the butt-end of his axe. The Guard dropped like a stalled calf, blood dripping from his nose and mouth. I took two with quick fencing strokes, one with another short thrust to his lungs, the third was a good fighter and it took two passes before I could carve open his sword-arm, laying him open for the killing blow.

I punched another Hain in the face, a short sharp strike finishing upward and driving his broken nasal bone into his brain. He dropped like a stunned ox.

When it was done, I worked the second thrown knife back and forth against the suction of muscle in the crossbowman's throat. I hate leaving knives behind, especially ones filed down to achieve the proper balance on. Good metal that does not need filing is a rarity.

I faced the barbarian, breathing deeply, my ribs flaring. My sword was at waist-level, the blade slanting up, a guard position taught to me on a drillground in the dim dark ages of my childhood. In that long-ago time I held a wooden blade far too big for my hands, and my head ached far worse than now. The sharp thrill of combat had washed some of the pain from my hungover body.

He stood with his axe hefted easily, and belched--a long resounding sound; I could almost taste his last night's dinner. "Guards." He peeled the bloody bandage off his head. There was a nasty scrape along his right temple. It looked half-healed, but painful. "Want t'bet another cadre's not on its way, lassie?"

I would not lay odds on that, barbarian. "What do you want?"

"T'get off this street and somewhere quiet, and get to know ye." His eyes glittered under the bandage and the gingery hair. "Rainak Redfist, Clan Connaiot. And ye?"

Did I not tell you to go bugger yourself? Still, I had drawn blood on his behalf, and he looked spectacularly unfit for passing unnoticed here in Hain. "Kaia," I said. "Come this way. And try to look innocent."