Chapter 3 #2
Each silent footstep she took behind her victim echoed in her heart.
It was the beat of a death drum, a warning that this man meandered through the streets of taverns and bars for the last time.
The darkness wrapped around her as it always had, embracing her into its shadows like an old friend as she stalked the man in the direction of the fancy houses and cottages of Grey Hill.
Her focus drifted as irritation hung itself like a mantle across her shoulders, and Arla shifted her blade from one hand to the other and back again.
She was tired of these boring, easy jobs Cyrus had taken to sending her on.
She thought of travelling alongside Hark Stappen tomorrow and it caused her breathing to become heavier.
Red mist began to cloud the edges of her mind.
She didn’t work with others; she certainly didn’t want to be working with him.
The thought swirled round and around her head, until she no longer cared that her victim was not yet clear of the town and its keen eyes.
She usually waited until her targets were in the dark, deserted paths that led to Grey Hill before she struck.
Now, she just wanted him dead before the anger building in her caused her to do something she’d regret – likely involving a knife and Hark whilst he slept.
She was on the man before he could register that death had swept in, the knife firmly against the skin of his throat as she hauled him behind the back of a building that housed far too many occupants for its size.
She spun him, using his own weight to gain momentum so his back was pressed flush against the shoddy brickwork.
‘I should have known he’d send you after me,’ the man spat, his voice thick and unfamiliar to Arla. He couldn’t have been in the castle often, then.
‘Then how careless of you to walk home alone,’ she taunted, revelling too much in the trembling of the noble beneath her blade.
‘You’re a girl,’ he scoffed. ‘Though I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re the king’s favourite. I heard he’s easily seduced by whores.’
Any level of control Arla had reserved dissipated, ushering in a wave of violence that had her baring her teeth and reaching to her waistband with her free hand for a second blade. She would gut him for his impertinence.
‘And that adds treason to the list of crimes you’ve committed against the Crown,’ she said softly.
He made the mistake of kicking out at her – a feeble attempt to swipe her legs from beneath her, Arla thought, and then she was upon him.
She didn’t count how many times her blades struck him; didn’t count his screams as she plunged her blades into him, again and again, until he didn’t scream any more.
She had planned something quick and honourable.
A silent slit across the throat would have done, maybe an arrow through the heart if she was feeling particularly adept with her bow.
But he had insulted her, and the only way she had fathomed to make him pay was to leave him in a bloodied pulp.
She was sick of being called the king’s whore.
She had looked up to her king as a father, and had worked her body to the bone to get to become his assassin.
She would not let it be taken from her, nor have anyone suggest she did more for him than kill.
As she walked swiftly back to Castle Grey, already sighing at the effort it would take to climb back up her tower, Arla was glad she had kept the hood of her cloak up. Blood really was a nightmare to get out of her hair.
* * *
By the time the sun had risen over Castle Grey, Arla had jogged two laps of the grounds and scaled the side of the king’s tower.
She had not made it into the King’s Guard through her skills with a sword alone – she had outrun every single soldier she had been pitched against and had hauled twice her body weight up the tower steps.
She’d be damned if she lost the level of fitness she had used to hone her body into something this well-tuned and deadly.
Despite the inevitable bad mood that Hark would surely bring out in her on their trip to the northern border, Arla was feeling good as she walked down to the stables in a set of fighting leathers paid for by the king.
It was early – too early for the stable boys to be here – but Arla’s grey mare stood outside with a full set of tack tightened and ready to go.
‘Hello, beautiful,’ she said on a breath, kissing the mare’s muzzle with fondness.
‘Good morning to you, too, sweetheart.’
Arla whirled at the sound of Hark’s voice, which was lower than usual, as if he had just woken, but yet it was still distinctly Hark: smoky and soft all at once.
‘I do hope you can saddle your own horse better than you’ve done mine,’ Arla replied, ignoring his comment, and adjusting the position of the saddle on Vetta’s back.
‘Oh, no,’ Hark chuckled, leaning against the barn door. ‘I’ve picked my pony, princess. You can saddle your own.’
‘If you think for one minute that you’re taking my horse, Stappen—’
‘You’ll do what? The sun has barely risen, and you’re already being difficult. The gods know why the king chose someone as pathetic and spoilt as you,’ he snarled, pushing off the doorframe and marching towards her.
Arla often forgot how tall he was, how easily he towered over her. And usually she didn’t care, she had taken down men just as big – bigger – but today…
Pathetic?
No. She’d been pathetic once. She wasn’t anymore. She’d worked hard enough to prove to this kingdom – to this world – that she was not pathetic.
But now, with him towering over her whilst she argued about which horse she would be riding, she felt that way again.
Without a word, she shouldered past him into the stables, careful not to knock precious Vetta, and chose the black stallion she knew carried Hark between Kastonia and Hadalyn when he was attending to his ambassadorial duties.
With any luck, he would find Vetta too temperamental and swap the mare for the stallion anyway.
Eros was actually a lovely horse, Arla discovered, as they reached their sixth hour of travel out of the centre of Hadalyn towards the border with Kastonia.
He was a lot bigger than Vetta, and Arla felt over-horsed on him.
But he was proving to be a sweet soul, and the nickers he whinnied out, either to himself or to Vetta, made her smile.
‘Finished sulking?’ Hark’s voice pulled Arla from her meandering thoughts on dragons and how Eros was definitely descended from them, and the lopsided smirk he had curled his lips into made her want to stab something. Or someone.
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘You haven’t said a word in six hours,’ he replied, still turning back to look at her as Vetta picked her way through the forest that lay two hours from the Kastonian border.
‘Well done for being able to count to six. Maybe the king will give you a gold coin for being such a clever boy,’ Arla sniped back.
‘So you are sulking?’
‘I’m not sulking, Stappen. I simply don’t like you.’
‘Interesting. I was under the impression that you’ve never liked me and yet it hasn’t ever rendered you silent before.’
Gods, he was infuriating!
‘I was under the impression you knew when to stop talking so I guess we were both wrong,’ Arla ground out, her teeth clenching just as tight as her palm was around the handle of the blade resting at her waist.
‘Is that a threat, sweetheart?’
Arla’s fingers tightened to the point of pain where they lay concealed under the edge of her leather jacket.
Eros’s withers tensed beneath her and she hoped Hark realised his beast had saved him from the silver shard of metal about to come flying at him.
Arla pressed a gentle hand against the stallion’s neck to calm him.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. To convince herself or the horse, she didn’t know.
* * *
As the sun began to bleed into different shades of red, and gold, and orange, Arla found she was tired and thoroughly sore from riding an unfamiliar horse for so long.
They had crossed the border into Kastonia and were still miles away from the closest village, but even so, the ground had never seemed like such a welcome place to sleep.
As she dismounted, wincing at the stiffness in her legs and picking the stallion a handful of grass in gratitude, Arla threw the saddlebags containing her bedroll and food rations onto the floor.
Hark had chosen a hillside that was playing host to a crop of trees overlooking the Kingdom of Kastonia, and if she squinted hard enough, Arla could make out lights and the sloping roofs of houses in the distance.
‘So is Hadalyn’s famed assassin good at making fires, or would Your Highness rather I took on the task?’ Hark taunted as he sauntered back from the trees into which he had vanished moments ago.
‘What is your problem?’ Arla glowered, too tired to even fathom arguing with the pretentious bastard and his maddening smile.
‘My problem,’ he began, irritation and downright aggression lacing his words as he threw down his own saddle bag, ‘is that you are spoilt, and rude, and think the world owes you something.’
Arla’s fatigue quickly melted into red-hot fury.
Venom dripped from her tongue as she dragged herself off the floor to stand in front of him and declare, ‘Perhaps the world does owe me something.’ One more step towards him.
‘Specifically, your world,’ she raged, stabbing a finger into his chest and covering her surprise at meeting a solid wall of clearly defined muscle lurking beneath his shirt.
‘Oh, we’re still on that?’ Hark snapped back, pushing her away from him with such force it was bound to leave bruises on her collarbones. ‘Because my kingdom killed your parents, is that it? You get to blame me because my blood runs the same colour as the rest of Kastonia?’