Lyric The Fair

Lyric The Assassin

The last bit of biscuit was barely more than a pile of crumbs that Lyric had been picking at for the past couple of days. She let out a heavy sigh as she stood squatted in a bush, her eyes staying as focused as possible on a squirrel a few feet away. She silently cursed herself for not searching for a bow before she left her Master's fields but, she also hadn't known how far Hashwounder was from them. Had she known, or bothered to stop and do a bit of research, she would have grabbed more than just a few biscuits and handfuls of dried berries. Her stomach let out a low rumble to remind her of her stupidity.

As it was, none of that was able to be fixed now. So, she took another breath and resigned to throw her knife at the critter. Slowly, she drew her arm back above her head, careful not to disturb the leaves and branches around her. The squirrel just sat in the dirt, picking and nibbling at a small nut. If worse came to worse, she could always take the nut when the squirrel ran. Attempting to shake that thought from her mind, Lyric inhaled deeply and held it. She began to count down slowly in her mind, her eyes never leaving the squirrel. Three...two...one...release.

The knife cut through the hair, hurtling itself toward the squirrel. Lyric watched with utter dismay as the knife sailed way over the squirrel, bounced off a tree, and landed with a crack against a large stone. Pieces of the blade fell about the ground, laying uselessly in the dirt. The squirrel looked up from its snack, looked at the shattered blade, and then back at Lyric before grabbing the nut and bouncing away. "Oy! Don't you judge me, you little imp! You've not enough meat on your bones for more than a meal for a worm!" She spat in anger.

A burst of laughter erupted from behind the bush Lyric was still squatting in. "I didn't think you had much skill in you for hunting but, I figured I let the little wench try. Never seen such a big failure." A boot connected with Lyric's rump, ending her sprawling out of the bush and into the dirt. She rolled onto her back to see three men standing above her, all laughing as they watched her. "Your stomach is bitchin' so loudly the Gods could hear it. That squirrel was no fool at all for standing there. No danger near him as he chomped away on his meal." The man laughed again.

Lyric frowned at the group of men, her forehead wrinkling in a way she hoped would come off as defiance rather than annoyance. "Oh, come now Brail, you've gone and offended the wee lass." The man named Brail whooped with laughter.

"The only thing that offends me, sir, is your odor." Lyric spat as she rose to her feet. She placed them firmly on the ground and straightened herself. In the back of her mind, panic began to take over. Her eyes darted around to look for an escape route. She knew that she was not putting forth an air of bravery or intimidation. That made this situation even more dangerous. If they sensed her weakness, and they most certainly did, they would pounce even harder. She was in trouble.

"Oy. That's not very nice. You are just a young thing yet. You know not how a real man smells." Brail said, looking slightly wounded. His voice was low and sluggish, almost as if he were pulling his words through molasses. His face was long but round, his eyes were large and set in his head in a way that made him look very tired. He was not the tallest man she had ever seen but he was several inches taller than her and more than several inches wider. Below his tunic and belt, he sported a round belly that seemed to be the product of a lot of drink. His arms and legs were thick with muscle but the layer of fat at his midriff made him nearly seem like he was a jolly middle-aged man. The only thing that puzzles Lyric was his hair. He was bald. There was no stubble about his head, he was not wearing a close shave style. All that sat atop his head was smooth, shining emptiness. Honestly, when you looked at the man, the best worse that would come to mind was oaf.

The men on either side of him looked as equally unkempt. One bore a hole in his shirt, outlined in dark, dry blood. The shirt hung from his thin frame as if it belonged to Brail. The man wasn't starving by any means but he was thin, his cheeks sunk in slightly and his brow protruded almost a little too far. His nose jutted out from his face, casting a shadow from the son on his left cheek. The other man had no extraordinary features. If you thought of a regular man, unremarkable in any way, that was him. As a group, however, they were a bit of a sight to see.

Brail stepped forward and looked only slightly down to see Lyric's eyes. As he focused, his left eye began to wander slowly away, bringing an even more oaf-like quality to his being. "What are you doing out here, hunting in these lands? Do you have a permit?" He drew out his words so long that Lyric was unsure if it was just to his slow nature or to make sure she understood the meaning behind them. There was no real hint of danger or threat to this man but, she could tell the words were meant as such. The thin man reaching for his knife gave her just a bit more a hint to this. These were thugs. A motley group but thugs nonetheless.

"I am traveling through. I haven't eaten in two days and needed some food. Do I need a permit not to starve?"

A high-pitched and nasally voice sounded from the unremarkable man, thereby making him remarkable. Lyric would have expected the voice to have come from a goblin or perhaps his long-nosed, thin friend. "Not to starve but to hunt on Thorkill's land."

At the mention of the name, Lyric straightened her back. "Neri Thorkill?"

The moment the name left her lips, the large Brail seized her by the collar of her shirt, lifting her off the ground with surprising strength. "An assassin, no doubt! Betrayed by her own words! We have a dead woman, boys." A vein throbbed in his forehead, bringing more attention to his bald and reddening scalp. The thin man had his knife out and low against his side, his legs bent and set firmly in a battle stance. The unremarkable man had produced a sword from an unknown location and had it raised, held with two hands across his chest.

"Assassin?!" Lyric choked out. Brail's hand closed tighter around her shirt, pulling the cloth against her throat, leaving hardly a hair's width of space between skin and fabric.

"Thas right! Everybody knows Thorkill don't use her first name! Nobody that knows the name lives anymore. The only ones that would dare speak it are those come to assassinate her!" The unremarkable man shuffled in his spot as Brail continued to reason with himself out loud. "An since you know her name, you must be an assassin. We know what to do with your kind, don we boys?!"

Lyric's hand shot up to grip the man's thick wrist, giving it a few tugs before his other burst through her vision. The punch was hard and fast, surprisingly so for such a large and oafish man. The ringing in her ears was instant and far more noticeable than the pain, at least at first. Pain blossomed through the left side of her face, spreading like a slow fire down her chin and into her neck. She gave her head a slight shake and looked back up at her captor. She was rapidly losing patience for these silly excuses for guards or whatever they may be. Lyric brought her hands up to the man's wrist again, this time prepared for the hit. The man's fist connected again with the side of her head, this time, bright splotches bloomed in front of her eyes. She just needed him to hit her one more time. Her small hand shot out and slapped the red scalped man right across his face, his cheeks jiggling with the impact.

There it was, the rage. Instinctively the man's hand opened, falling down to his side to draw his weapon. Lyric fell to the dirt, looking up at the robust man from her back. A mace came down fast and hard, faster than she had anticipated. The mace was a strange weapon of choice for this man, she thought. It was heavy and slow, though that may have been his choice as it matched his person. Lyric rolled sideways, feeling the mace scrape down her back and rip her shirt away from her torso. She tucked her arms into her chest and rolled again, her aim to escape the man's reach.

There was a scuffle, the sound of feet shuffling in the dirt close to her and before she could even identify the object, a boot connected with her temple. For a moment, the world grew hazy, blurs of greens, blues, and yellows became her world. A few sounds that barely registered above the ringing in her ears blew through her head with a force greater than any wind. The pain came in waves, nausea rolling through her stomach muscles. There was nothing to purge. Her stomach heaved anyways, the movement sending even more pain crashing through her head.

A hand gripped her hair, pulling her head back and up so that the owner's blurry face came into view. She could not hear what the man was saying, only knowing that he was speaking by the bits of saliva that soon spotted her face. With a final cascade of fluid, something hard slammed into her forehead and her world faded from view.