Chapter 3

Part 2

Chapter 3

She gave a nasty laugh. “Ha. You’re going to be useful, Soul Dead.”

“That’s what you’re going to call me?” he asked, a bit surprised. “Soul Dead, like it’s a nickname or something?”

“Sure, why not? I don’t want to know your name, since I’ll probably have to kill you later.”

“Ah. Okay. And what do I call you?”

“Anything you want. I renounced my name when I became a renegade from The People Of Life.”

“Anything I want? What if I want to call you ‘Smells Like Wildcat Crap’?” he asked as he shouldered one of the soldiers’ packs, into which he’d consolidated the best of the two men’s supplies and possessions.

“Then you can.” she calmly stated as she dumped out the other pack and put the jars of preserves and the five coins in it. “But I swear that if you do, when I do finally kill you, I’ll blind you and torture you for a month first.”

“Ah. Then I think I’ll call you Green Eyes. They’re your best feature, and they’re very pretty.”

She whirled on him in sudden rage, her knife appearing in her hand. “Are you trying to flatter me, you stupid bloody human?!!” she screeched.

“No.” he calmly stated. “I really couldn’t care less whether you like me or hate me. It’s just a fact. Wild pigs are ugly, your eyes are pretty, and that’s all there is to it.”

With that he turned his back on her and made his way around the ruin of the house.

She followed as she put her knife away and adjusted her bow and the over-large pack on her back, and was irritated to realize that he meant exactly what he said, then she was irritated at herself for being irritated about it.

“You have a plan?!” she demanded of him as he turned onto a path leading uphill behind the house.

“Yes. We leave obvious tracks so they’ll follow us, and lead them into the traps. We could do that for weeks. Well, a couple of weeks anyway. And I have to go slow until I get to the first cache, because I’ll need my boots from there. I’m not used to hiking barefoot.”

“Ha! You’re a soft foot, literally!” she cackled. “That’s what we call someone who’s too young and inexperienced to know what they’re doing, but I never met anyone for whom it was literally true before! Hahaha!”

He stopped and turned to look at her. He had no expression, and seemed to be waiting for something from her.

“What?!” she demanded.

“I’m thinking I’ll kill you for being irritating. Then I got distracted thinking about the tactics of it. You’re probably quicker than me, but I have two short swords and you just have a knife, but elves have magic so you can probably do something nasty with it. It’ll be interesting.”

She was about to retort with something bitter and sarcastic, then remembered the sight of the fully armored soldier getting heart-stabbed by a boy who had been unarmed. She swallowed hard on her words as she stepped back and blanched a bit. “I apologize. I’ll try to not be… irritating. I’ve no wish to fight you right now.”

“Are you sure? As I said, it’ll be interesting.”

“I’m sure. Carry on.”

“Okay.” he nodded, and turned to resume his way up the path.

A few minutes later he stopped, drew one of the short swords, and used it as a pointer. “Wire snares here, here, here, and…” he stepped carefully ahead between the snares, “…a trip-wire here that sets off a rock fall from that boulder pile up there.”

She quietly whistled between her teeth in grudging admiration. “Well. That is well done. I didn’t see any of it, and I’ve developed a sharp eye for hidden dangers over the last year. I can still barely see them now that I know where they are.”

“My father’s work.” he nodded. “And picture the way it’ll go. This is set up for about twenty men who are either chasing or tracking my family up this path. The first one gets that wire snare around his ankle with all the force of this bent branch, and it took all the strength my father and mother had together to set each of these, so the soldier gets cut to the bone all the way around and it really hurts. He screams and he has to fall this way because the snare jerks his leg that way. The next guy stops to help him, and he has to kneel here to reach the first guy’s ankle, but he gets the second snare when he steps there. The third guy has to step here and he gets the third snare, but that’s optional, it still works after that if they’re smart enough to avoid that one. If they spot it they might get overconfident. Now they’ve got two or three of them screaming in agony and bleeding badly that are each going to lose a foot at least, and they’re all jittery, but now they’re not moving without beating the ground ahead of them. They stop and talk about it for maybe half a minute. By the time they’ve taken out their swords and the lead man checks the ground around and ahead for one, two, three swings and hits the trip-wire, the whole troop has bunched up behind them there so they can see what’s going on, and the rock fall takes them all out. Some of the boulders roll down the steep part of the path there and get any laggards or quick reactors.”

“Damn, that’s absolutely brilliant.” she breathed as she envisioned the sequence.

He just sheathed the sword and kept walking.

They hiked for about twenty minutes before they came to the first cache, about a hundred paces left of the path and expertly hidden in a shallow cave that was itself expertly hidden.

As he was pulling on a pair of boots she asked him in an irritated tone; “How do you figure it’s all right to kill me when you owe me a debt of honor?”

He shrugged. “I don’t care about that, neither the debt nor my honor.”

“What? Then why are you helping me?!” she asked, exasperated.

He shrugged again. “It’s something to do. I don’t have anything else to do, so why not? How old are you?”

She paused, surprised and suspicious at the sudden question, then realized that he couldn’t have any hidden motive for asking. “I’m sixteen and a half. And you?”

“I’m twelve, thirteen next month.” he said as he pulled a tunic on over his head. “You’re about the size of a Taldrian ten-year-old girl, and I’ve heard that elves grow up half as fast as people, so your character must be like an eight-year-old. That makes it pretty impressive that you’ve been killing fully grown men for a year.”

“Listen human, elves are people! And it’s true that elves love parenting, so they’re usually in no hurry for their children to grow up. But some things can make us mature even faster than humans, and I’ve experienced my share! Hunting the Taldrian army by yourself is one of them!”

“Yes, I can understand that.” he nodded as he opened the captured pack.

“These army field rations aren’t as well preserved as the ones here that my mother made, so we should eat them first. This flat jerky is like shoe leather, so don’t bother with trying to bite a chunk off; cut a bite off with your knife and let it soak in your cheek for a while before you chew it.”

“Gak! It smells horrible!” she complained as she cut it.