A Flight of Ravens by John Conroe (thriller books to read TXT) 📗

second bolter came free from its spot at the small of my back and I took careful aim at the king’s assassin.  My first shot missed as he ducked suddenly, but my immediate second shot caught him in his right biceps, the force of the impact twisting him around.

My gelding wasn’t having any more of the dark river and slick stones and he stopped suddenly, almost throwing me.  Rather than take time to wrestle him for control, I slipped off his left side, landing on my good left leg.  Shooting pain made me glance down as I put weight on my right leg. There was no knife sticking out, but a gushing slash in the meat of the thigh and sharp, biting pain told me I had a real injury to deal with.

I forced myself to set aside the pain as the horse spun and headed back to shore, removing himself as a barrier between me and Toothaker.

Hand-to-hand is as much mental as it is physical.  The will to win, along with exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses, are vital.  I knew Toothaker was older than myself, but not a lot was known about the man, even by Brona.  Ironic that his name was Toothaker, as he had been an irritation to the princess for years.  An unsolvable puzzle, one her father refused to speak about.  Right now, all I knew was that his right arm was wounded, as it hung limp at his side, and that we were both standing in the middle of a slippery, freezing river, me with a bleeding leg.

He splashed forward, a knife the size of a short sword in his left hand.  I had my own knife in my left and Jella’s axe in my right, but my right leg was blazing with pain and refused to move smoothly.  Both of us were hindered by the force of the river, the freezing water, and the slick stones that rolled and twisted underfoot.

Toothaker closed with me, snapping out his blade in a lightning-fast cut.  Fighting with blades, short or long, is about attrition.  Bleeding your opponent with multiple slashes, stabs, and gashes until they weaken enough for you to strike a killing blow.  His flickering, snapping cuts were designed to cut me at distance and slice me to ribbons.  But he only had one blade and the terrible footing of the riverbed hindered his two-legged agility.

I had two weapons, and I used my axe to block his left-handed cuts while flicking the tip of my own knife blade back at him in counterattack, all while awkwardly rotating around my unstable right leg.  We traded strike and counterstrike, each trying not to slip and fall into the rushing river.  He crouched low to slash my right leg; I blocked with the axe and then pushed the head of Jella’s weapon fast and hard against his thigh.  The Forester axe has a pronounced toe, or top of the blade, by design and the razor-sharp tip stabbed into his leg.

He jerked away and slashed at my right arm, but I was already pulling back and he simply scored the handle of the axe.

His face was schooled to hardness, not showing any sign of pain, his will strong.  He circled to my right, forcing me to pivot and block another flickering series of snapping cuts.  The tip of his knife drew a line of fire across my right arm, but my own knife swept toward his belly, forcing him to step back suddenly.  His left foot rolled on a stone and he dropped hard on his knee.

I leaned forward on my good left leg, hooked his left arm with the heel of my axe blade, dragging it close to stab with my knife.  He twisted to his left, moving his fighting arm out of range.  I slashed his limp right arm as I pulled my blade back, cutting hard into his wrist.

Blood immediately ran down his hanging hand, dripping in a steady stream into the water.  He stepped back, carefully, creating enough distance to glance upstream.  Unable to move fast enough to press my attack, I too snapped a glance at the canoe.  It had capsized and filled with water, held against a big rock by the force of the river.  Two bodies floated in the eddy created by the sunken canoe, pincushioned with white arrows. Slinch kneeled in the freezing water, hands over his head, the third boatman copying his posture exactly.

I turned back to Toothaker, watching the flood of expressions that crossed his face.  Clearly here to help Slinch, who was now being held at bowpoint by Jella, fresh out of additional allies, he was knee-deep in freezing water, bleeding badly from several wounds.  It was me and Jella, one of us with a bow, against just him.  His decision came fast, his feet immediately backing him away, his body shifting back and forth in a manner that made me realize he was keeping me between him and Jella’s deadly arrows.

He made the far shore and backed rapidly up the road till the forest covered him from our view.

“If you’re done splashing about, perhaps you could give me a hand,” Jella said. “Especially since you’re already wet.”

She ordered both men out of the river at arrowpoint and had them lie on their stomachs. After I had used my belt to make a tourniquet around my thigh, I used their own belts to lash their wrists.  Jella searched them, removed a half dozen blades from Neil’s clothes, then tied both their feet up to their lashed hands.  With the prisoners secured, she pulled supplies from her waist pack, handing me a needle and thread while she used a birtch bark and pine resin tinder bundle to strike a fast fire.

By the time two squads of royal guardsmen rode up, I was tying off a bandage over my stitches and Jella had a hot bonfire burning to keep myself, Slinch, and the unnamed boatman from freezing to death. I had recovered