The stench of blood was still thick in the air.

Gabriel leaned heavily against a shattered stone column, trying very hard to ignore the throbbing agony in his leg. After all, with how close they had just come to dying, with Magnifico grievously wounded, Rainald missing an eye and Radskyrta dead, it would seem the height of folly to complain about a simple arrow wound. He scowled. Four of the five hostiles were dead, the fifth missing … and Gabriel still didn’t know what this nonsense had been about.

“Here.” Merasiël drew alongside him. Like nearly everyone else, the elf was badly injured. Automatically, Gabriel shifted slightly to give her room so she could get off her feet, which seemed to irritate her at least a little though the slight grimace of pain she made when she took the offered seat hinted at injuries worse than he thought. Wisely, Gabriel held his tongue and waited. She offered one of the strange-looking pronged weapons to him. “Thought you might want to look at this.” Gabriel accepted it, tested its balance for a heartbeat, before finally grunting softly. It reminded him of a main gauche, though he would be the first to admit that he had only rarely used a parrying dagger. By his calculations, it had been almost twenty years since Father first showed him the basics with such a blade and, though he had used one infrequently throughout the decades since, he was long out of practice with it. Abruptly, he realized that Merasiël was studying how he held the weapon – what was the bloody name of this thing again? – and a flash of amusement stabbed through him despite the grim circumstances. Of course she had an ulterior motive. Didn’t everyone?

“A sai,” Gabriel said suddenly. “This is called a sai.” Merasiël gave him an impatient look and Gabriel offered her a tight smile. “My father taught me to use a weapon like this. It was a parrying dagger.” That certainly drew her attention, but she was a connoisseur of knives, so was that any surprise? “I am somewhat rusty, but once my leg is attended to, I will be happy to show you what little I know.”

“There is something wrong with your eye,” Mendel was telling a seated Rainald. The monk looked somewhat the worse for wear himself, but was still seeing to the injured.

“This thing?” the burly Northman exclaimed loudly, jabbing a finger toward the practically-empty socket. “Gone! Like Odin!” He frowned darkly. “Hildra will not like, I think maybe.”

“Who is Hildra?” Merasiël murmured under her breath in Elvish. Gabriel grinned and responded in kind. If for no other reason, he enjoyed having Merasiël around because it let him use Elvish. It was such a beautiful language…

“His wife.” He twirled the sai around one finger, then casually swapped it to his other hand with an expert flourish. Yes. This would be a nice weapon to use. “You would like her, I think.” Automatically, his eyes returned to Radskyrta’s unmoving form.

And he remembered.

Six Months Ago

He was not sure how he had been roped into this.

Walking alongside Cometes, Gabriel listened to the unintelligible gibberish that passed for a language among Rainald’s family. Hildra was driving her cart with expert skill while somehow managing to keep the two boys under control with little more than a stern look or sharp word. Clearly, it was some form of magical ability he did not comprehend.

“I take Uncle to monk-healers,” Rainald had said some hours earlier. “Go with family to village for me. I owe you favor.” Hildra had exchanged some forceful words with her husband, but had finally agreed after several long minutes of loud argument. It was so very strange to see the big Northman back down from such an unassuming woman and, if he was honest, Gabriel would have to admit that was at least most of the reason he’d agreed. Any woman who could make Rainald obey her had to be an impressive lady. Besides, he very badly needed to replenish his own travel rations and a mug of decent ale (or, since this was Caithness, flavored piss that passed as such) would not be unappreciated.

So here he was, several miles out of a village he didn’t know the name of and wondering if there was any way he could convince Hildra to pick up the pace. He was on foot and moving faster than her damnable cart.

As the terrain smoothed out, Gabriel could not shake the feeling he had been here before. There was something terribly familiar about this place, something … ah. Yes. He, Rainald and Dane had killed a handful of deserters near here some years ago. There should be a collapsed windmill somewhere nearby, although that had been six or seven years ago. It might have collapsed entirely by now. He frowned. Zabka had pointed them to this place. Had that been part of his grand scheme even then?

The road curled through the woods, drawing closer to the small village, and Gabriel immediately felt familiar instincts begin tingling. They were being watched. He fell into Cat Crosses the Courtyard without thinking, noting immediately how Hildra broke off her comments in mid-sentence. Very softly, she called out his name in that curious accent of hers, but he ignored her. Where? Where were they, dammit?

Six poorly dressed men carrying rusty axes and swords stumbled out of concealment. None of them had anything resembling actual armor – one carried a battered, much abused shield that probably could not protect the man from a stiff breeze, and the rest wore tattered rags that might have once been clothes – but they had numbers. Had he been alone, Gabriel would have not hesitated to attack but his eyes darted to the cart and the three inside. Rainald would be displeased if he let harm come to them…

“That’s close enough,” he said flatly as he took a ready stance in front of Cometes. With an almost casual gesture, Gabriel flicked his cloak back, exposing the burnished gauntlets bearing the dragon-marks upon them. Here, so deep in Caithness territory, it was a toss-up whether any of these men even realized what they meant, but at the very least, they’d see he was both armed and armored. “Take another step and I will kill you.”

The calmness of his words, the casual confidence in his posture, and the fact he wore steel upon his chest when they did not gave them pause. One of them – the nominal leader, Gabriel guessed – glanced back and forth between his men and the cart, before licking his lips.

“We only want the cart,” the man said. His expression darkened when he looked at Hildra. “And the woman,” he added as he took a step closer.

So Gabriel killed him.

After so many years of dealing with hardened warriors and deadly Vasar, these men were no more dangerous to him than a blind and dumb ten year old wielding a wooden practice blade. As Gabriel sprang forward, his father’s rapier whispering free from its scabbard, the men reacted with open surprise that turned abruptly to panic when they saw their ‘leader’ suddenly stagger back, his throat opened by Arc of the Moon, and Gabriel flowed through the forms like water rushing down a mountainside. Kissing the Adder dropped another of the men and Kingfisher Circles the Pond batted aside a wild swing from a panicked defender, leaving the fool wide open to Mongoose Takes a Viper. A fourth man fell, his body pierced through by a spear – so, Hildra was not totally useless in a fight, then – though he was not dead, and then the fifth shrieked as Gabriel disemboweled him with Snow in High Wind. At this, the sixth would-be robber turned to flee but Gabriel barely hesitated: the familiar weight of Angrist fell into his hand as he twirled in place and he hurled the elven blade with every ounce of his strength. It was a lucky shot – he’d simply hoped to strike the man, perhaps to slow him down long enough for Gabriel to reach him and finish him with the rapier, but in mid-step, the would-be bandit stumbled over a half-buried root. Angrist punched through the back of his skull with a meaty thunk. The man staggered forward another three steps before spilling forward onto his face. He twitched twice, and then a third time when Gabriel summoned the knife back to his hand.

“I did warn you,” Gabriel said as he drew abreast of the one with the spear through his belly. He was still squirming in agony and had no time to do more than jerk in agonized surprise when Gabriel thrust his father’s sword into the man’s heart. He twisted the rapier, then pulled it free. “Good throw,” he remarked calmly as he pulled the spear free before glancing up toward Hildra. She had retrieved another spear and a battered old shield. To Gabriel’s surprise, the oldest boy who could not be more than five was off the cart, armed with a knife, and ensuring that the fallen would not be getting back up. He should have been horrified, but Rainald’s casual acceptance of violence over the years implied a far less civilized upbringing.

Says the person who killed his first man when he was little older than this boy, Gabriel mused darkly. He frowned before tossing the spear back to Hildra.

“Safe?” she asked as she snatched the spear out of the air. Or at least, he guessed that was what she said. Her accent was even thicker than Rainald’s. Her eyes quickly tracked across the fallen men, then back to Gabriel. This was the first time, he realized, that she’d seen him do more than simple form practice and if Rainald was any indication, Northern warriors were accustomed to skirmishes made up of long, protracted exchanges that relied more on strength and toughness than anything like precision.

“Safe enough,” he replied with a nod and a shrug. If she understood him, he had no idea – how exactly did she intend to negotiate with the townsfolk? – but he guessed she understood the gist of his intent as she snapped another order to her eldest son and he went to work checking the corpses for valuables. Naturally, he found nothing of use – these bandits had been desperate to have struck like they did – but Gabriel simply watched, his attention more focused on their surroundings in case there were more of these fools than those on the ground. The forest was oddly quiet, so if there were any more, they were wisely staying hidden. He yawned.

“Ready?” he asked when the boy had rejoined his mother at the cart. They’d thrown the rusted weapons into the back, possibly to sell, though Gabriel doubted they would get much for them. Hildra gave him a pointed nod and flicked the reins. The sullen-looking pack animal snorted angrily and set off. Gabriel glanced at the bodies before him once more, then gave the forest another look. He was almost certain that there were others watching now.

Before he realized what he was doing, he’d dug a handful of silvers from his purse and tossed them onto the ground. Cometes blew out an irritated (or perhaps amused) breath as Gabriel climbed into the saddle.

“See to these fools,” he called out. “And reconsider this life. You’ve seen how it ends.”

One day, Gabriel mused, that would be him in the dirt, bleeding out.

But not today.

“Not today,” he murmured as he stared at the corpse that had once been a friend. Merasiël gave him another sidelong look and Gabriel forced a smile on his face, no matter that he did not feel it. “You’re holding it wrong,” he said. “Ease up on your grip. Yes, like that. Better?”

“Better,” she replied with approval.

After a moment, Gabriel began to suspect that she was intentionally trying to distract him from his darker thoughts – he had been thoroughly useless during this fight thanks to that damnable force dome and the dead archer, and because of that, Radskyrta was dead; it was taking every bit of his self-control to hide the rage swimming in his belly, rage that was focused almost solely inward – but he did not call her on this, even if it gave lie to her oft-stated lack of concern about the feelings of others. Merasiël was far more layered than she pretended to be. But then, aren’t we all? Gabriel mused briefly before turning his focus back to the elven woman before him.

He would find a way to repay this kindness, one way or another.