A pair of local guards were pulling a young woman by her hand away from the barn as she protested vehemently, continuing to shake her head again and again. It seemed like she was going to scream when one of the guards slapped her, making the woman cower in fear, although she didn’t stop trying to free herself.
Some of the other slave women were pulling her back by the other hand, while a few children huddled behind the doors of the barn. The three male slaves she had seen earlier were not present at the time—perhaps because they had been sent to do some work elsewhere, or maybe they didn’t sleep here in the barn.
It barely took a moment for her to realize what was going to happen, with two male guards leering at the young woman they were pulling away from the barn, while the other slaves tugged her back with distraught faces.
She glanced around in a hurry to call for help, knowing that she had seen half a dozen guards when they had arrived, but it seemed only these two bastards were present on duty tonight.
Dammit!
She looked at the scuffle again. There was only one thing in the future for that poor woman, and it filled her with such a burning rage that she forgot where she was and what she was doing.
Before she knew it, she found her crossbow in her hands—already loaded with a broadhead bolt—and aimed at one of the guards.
“Get away from her!”
The guards—one tall and the other bald—looked at her in surprise.
“Who the hell are you?” the tall one demanded.
“She’s one of the drifters the boss gave shelter for tonight,” the baldy replied. “They came here when ya were sleepin’…” He glared at Hyola. “Get back to the stables if ya know what’s good for ya!”
Then the guards started to pull the young woman away from the barn again, ignoring her.
“I said leave her alone!” Hyola snarled, her voice trembling with fury.
“Mind your own business, bitch!” the tall guard snapped. “It’s been so long since the two of us were allotted for night duty together. Just be smart and get back inside the stable.”
“Fuck you!” Hyola barked as she brought the guards into her crossbow sights. The sole brazier had been extinguished earlier, and with just a half-moon in the night sky, there wasn’t much light, but it was still more than enough for her. By now, her crossbow had become like an extension of her arm. She could load and aim it in her sleep if she wanted.
“Move back right now or you’ll regret it…” she growled, a dangerous note in her voice.
The guards finally let go of the woman’s hand, and turned to her.
“Ya don’t know how to take orders, do ya?” the baldy scowled as he looked at the crossbow. “What’s that in yer hands, anyway?”
“Looks kinda dangerous,” the tall guard muttered, before he began to remove his sword from its scabbard. “Better take care of her first.”
The baldy nodded and pulled out his own sword as he sidled away, trying to flank her. “Ya’ll regret not listenin’ to us.”
Hyola gave a sidelong glance to the slaves, who had all huddled together, but were some distance away from the guards. Perfect.
The tall one smirked at her as he also took his sword in his hands, then glanced at his partner in crime. “Maybe tonight’ll be good anyway. We haven’t had a redhead in forever. She’s tall too. Gotta be fun for sure!”
Hyola saw red. She brought the tall bastard’s head into her crossbow sights, and without wasting another moment, squeezed the trigger.
The guard’s head exploded.
It was dark enough that the full gory details weren’t visible, but it was still easy to see bits and pieces of the tall bastard’s brain tumbling everywhere, before his body fell to the ground, lifeless.
“What the fuck…?” The baldy’s hands fell limp to his sides.
Immediately, there were screams from the slaves, ringing loud in the night. It cleared Hyola’s mind at once and she finally realized what she had just done. She was alone here, and the baldy would be upon her before she could reload. Even if she could somehow be quick enough to load it first, he was a swordsman, and her crossbow could only shoot once…
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Shit! Where the hell was Feroy when you needed him?
She didn’t regret killing that tall bastard one bit, but she had no doubt that she was going to be heavily outnumbered, and soon. She needed to escape long before that.
She glanced around, noticing that guards had started pouring out of another building, then she looked at the baldy, who was still staring at his comrade’s dead body in shock, and decided this was her chance. Probably her last chance to survive.
She began to run away from the cursed place as fast as her legs allowed, while trying to load the crossbow at the same time. She looked around as she ran, searching for the ex-mercenary. She needed to warn him not to return to the stable, or he’d be dead too—because of her and her temper.
Dammit… She should’ve thought up a proper plan before killing that bastard. The baldy was still alive, and the slaves’ lives wouldn’t get better just by killing one of them.
She kept running, and before long, she saw that she was being chased by five angry guards. She gave up loading the crossbow, and just began to run for her life.
It didn’t work.
The night was fairly dark, and she didn’t know the terrain as well as the locals. Her foot got caught in a hole in the ground when she was glancing back at her pursuers, making her tumble. She cried in pain as her ankle twisted, before she went down to the ground.
By the time she found her bearings and began to limp away, the guards had already surrounded her. And that’s how she found herself in her current situation.
Damn it!
***
Handing over the crossbow to another guard, the old knight finally stopped in front of her. “Well, well, well… What do we have here?”
Hyola spat at him, targeting his face, but only managed to dirty his tunic with her mouth thoroughly dry.
The knight just snorted before he bent low, holding her chin in his hands. “A feisty one, aren’t you?”
Hyola immediately chomped down on his fingers with all her strength, making the older man howl in pain. The bastard slapped her with his other hand, hard, making her open her mouth in pain, which finally allowed him to free his bleeding hand.
She had fallen to the ground from that hit, but she still grinned at the bastard.
Hyola—one; old bastard—zero!
The knight glared at her, as he wrapped a cloth around his hand, provided by another guard. Once he was done, he tilted his head. “Seems you’re not going to make it easy for me…” He looked around. “Where’s your partner though? Feroy, was he? I refuse to believe that you two are just traveling merchants.”
Hyola finally managed to sit up on her knees after a few failed tries, and just glared at the bastard.
The boss of the farm looked at the baldy. “Go and find him! And bring him back alive. I want to know how they managed to get a hold of an arbalest. They’re not supposed to be found outside of the duke’s armed forces at the fort.”
The bald guard nodded, and called out two of the other guards before they ran away from the group, leaving just the knight and two other guards here. The slaves were still gathered nearby, watching the scene nervously. Their male family members had also gathered with them now, from wherever they had earlier been sent to.
Looking at her situation, she wondered if she could have done something differently? Should she have waited for Feroy before attacking? Perhaps, but she just couldn’t have left the woman to go through with what was going to happen to her. If she had waited, by now…
She didn’t even want to think about it. Yeah, she knew she had a temper, and had a tendency to act before thinking or planning, and she would have to work on it if she survived tonight, but she didn’t regret it. Not at all.
The knight took the crossbow in his hands again, as he looked at it from all sides. “I haven’t seen one of these since I left Aragosa a decade ago… It’s much smaller than I remember, but it looks far more handy than those arbalests at the fort. Those were a pain to reload in a pinch.”
He looked at her again. “You know what—if you tell me where you got it from, I promise to give you an easy death. The Count is going to pay a lot of gold if I can tell him the name of the bowyer selling arbalests in the black market. If it’s someone smuggling them out from the fort’s stockpile, even the Duke will reward me for reporting on that.”
The retired knight tilted his head. “Or… perhaps I can buy a few of these for myself. Being a patriot doesn’t pay much nowadays anyway. Those pesky patrols of the Duke are giving my drug mules a lot of trouble these days. Can you imagine my Veydril sales to Ulriga have nearly halved in the past few months…? If a few of those damned horsemen fall to bandits’ bolts, maybe the Duke will decide to focus somewhere else. Like on Binpaaz—which he should be doing anyway. So why don’t you be a nice little girl and tell me where you got this?”
Hyola scoffed as she finally managed to stand up, and spat at him again. This time, she met her target, and grinned.
Hyola—two; old bastard—zero!
The knight shook his head as he wiped his face. “Hmm… Looks like it’s going to be the hard way then.”
He ordered a guard to bring a chair. “But you know what, I ain’t gonna do anything to you—not until your partner is found. He has to know just as well as you where you got this mini-arbalest from. Let’s see how long he manages to hold out once I put the screws on you in front of him. Or the other way. Whatever works.”
He smirked at Hyola as he sat on the chair a guard had just brought and stretched his hands, sending a chill to her bones. “It’s been a while since I interrogated anyone. Seems the night ain’t gonna be boring after all…”
Hyola grimaced, hoping the mercenary wouldn’t be caught by the bastards too. There was going to be no hope for either of them otherwise.