First Blood #3
The tactical instincts Varia had taught me to trust were operating at full capacity. I read the pattern of the vampire’s movement as I had read hers in the training yard: the weight transfer, the angle of approach, the fraction of imbalance between motions.
I saw the window.
Its turn exposed the narrow seam beneath the armored collar, a brief line of unprotected throat.
It was the specific small window that opened in the half-second between the end of one motion and the beginning of the next. The window that Varia had told me existed in every fighter regardless of how good they were.
I took the window.
The hook found the opening beneath the armored collar. I pulled through, hard and committed, the curved blade biting cleanly across the exposed throat.
The head separated. The body went down.
Blood struck the snow in a hot, dark sheet. Some of it caught me across the hand and sleeve, startlingly warm against the cold. The contrast was obscene. Red spreading over white, steam lifting faintly where it landed, the metallic smell arriving a second later.
For one suspended moment, I could not move.
Fear remained inside me, sharp enough to set my hands trembling around the hook. The vampire had been faster. If I had misread the angle, moved half a second later, or caught the blade against bone, I would have been the body in the snow.
Instead, it was dead at my feet.
Adrenaline moved through me, hard and bright. I had seen the danger, chosen, and acted before fear became hesitation. I was alive. Varia was alive. When the moment came, my body had done exactly what I had trained it to do.
Varia had never softened the purpose of the hook. Here was the motion. Here was the follow-through. Here was what happened when you hesitated. Somewhere over four months of repetition, that knowledge had passed from my mind into my muscles.
Now the snow was red with the proof of it.
Velox came to my side as the engagement ended around us. Varia entered my peripheral vision, already assessing the field, the dead, and me.
Then my body, which had performed flawlessly through the entire engagement, submitted its resignation. The shaking started in my hands and moved inward.
This was my first kill. I would not pretend it was nothing. The blood was still warm on my hand, my grip was unsteady, and a body lay where I had put it.
It was the correct outcome. The alternative had been Varia dying.
I held those facts in that order: first the weight, then the reason. The reason did not erase the weight. It made the weight bearable. I was beginning to understand that this was what the garrison’s steadiness was made of.
I stood with the hook in my right hand, my chest heaving. Each breath pulled freezing air into my lungs, stinging my throat and turning every inhale painful. Moonlight lay across the white valley, and the silence settled around us like fresh snow filling Velox’s hoofprints.
The stillness did not reach me. My pulse remained fast and electric, every edge of the world unnaturally precise. I felt the weapon in my hand, the blood on my sleeve, and the bodies lying motionless in the snow.
I had acted. Correctly. Decisively.
I was still inside the moment.
Varia’s face had gone unnaturally still.
Her eyes were wide, fixed on me as if she were confirming that every part of me remained attached, while her mouth pressed into a hard line that did nothing to hide the fear beneath it.
Then her shoulders dropped by a fraction, and something fierce and relieved moved across her expression.
She looked caught between embracing me and shouting at me.
“I told you not to engage.”
“It was going to kill you!”
Her mouth tightened. “You broke formation.”
“I left the rear because a command-layer vampire was about to take your head off!”
“You could have died.”
“I know. But I didn’t, and you’re still breathing. You’re welcome!”
Varia’s reply stopped behind her teeth. For a moment, neither of us looked away.
Then Varia exhaled through her nose, anger and relief still fighting for control of her face. “We will discuss your interpretation of orders later.”
“That seems to be a developing theme.”
The downed soldier. I crossed to him. His arm was badly damaged, and he would need Caen, but he was breathing. He would live.
I had one hand on his shoulder when I heard the hoofbeats.
Skip came across the valley from Ely at full speed.
He came off the horse before it had fully stopped moving.
He assessed the field in approximately four seconds. The three vampires down. The garrison standing. The downed soldier. Varia. Me.
Skip’s anger transmitted to me, but fear sat beneath it, hotter and harder to bear.
As he took in the three dead vampires, something new cut through his anger: a hard current of exhilaration and pride that his expression refused to show.
He crossed to the downed soldier. He gave two orders to the garrison in the command voice. He stood up. He gazed at Varia.
Varia, to her credit, met his gaze with equanimity. She had made a decision that she was prepared to account for.
His eyes then turned to me.
“We will discuss this inside,” he said.