‘He was like a brother to me, and you just went and killed him, you stupid cu –’ A fist came flying in from down by her side, slamming heavily into his stomach. The man’s breath went out of him in a whoosh of alcohol-tainted wind over Syline’s face as he dropped her. Someone else caught her, pulling her out of the way of a beer glass flying past her head. She turned to face a man unlike any other in the bar. Deep red skin with eyes of a brighter hue of the same. Huge ram horns curling down from his temples, nearly touching the gorget of his breastplate, and jutting forwards like tusks either side of his cheekbones. He was a hellblooded; the hellblooded she’d been warned away from.
‘I hear that you’re looking for a bodyguard?’ he asked slowly, enunciating every word clearly with a deep, soft voice. As he spoke, he pulled her close and stepped them both out of the way of a charging bounty hunter.
‘Yes! Yes, I am!’ Syline managed, panic going through her at him wrapping his arm around her.
She wriggled away but did her best to control herself. In that same instant, he let go of her to catch one man by his extended wrist before he could catch either of them with a dagger, getting nicked on his forearm for his trouble. The man threw a punch for his head, which the hellborn narrowly dodged, getting caught on one of his horns and twisted around. He shook his head to clear the stars before slamming his forehead into the man’s nose. The hunter hit the floor like a falling tree, and the hellblooded, rubbing his forehead, looked back at Syline.
‘Well then, let’s get you out of here. Can you stand?’
‘Y-yes, yes, I can. Please, don’t touch… I’ll-I’ll walk myself out.’
The hellblooded gave her a sad frown but nodded and turned just in time to catch a bottle against his shoulder, stumbling a step back.
‘Just stay behind me,’ he called over his shoulder.
With that said, he immediately set to putting his promise to get her out of there into action. Wading through the brawl and taking blows along the way, he proved himself solid, if not exactly quick, always putting himself between any blow that would’ve hit Syline. His armour protected him from much of the chaos, even if none of it looked to have come from the same source. Syline stuck close by him, using the adventurer as mobile cover from the brawl around them. He was making for a fine battering ram, forcing their way through towards the door as she moved with him, the bloody axe still clutched to her chest. The only times he threw his own punches was when he came to bounty hunters. Those, he had no compunctions of playing nice with. The hellblooded grabbed one by the scruff of the collar and threw him through a table, but as he did, another came for Syline. The hellblooded was strong, but his armour weighed him down. He cursed aloud as he spun to try and stop them.
The man had that same rakish look to him as the monster who’d taken her to the lumber mill, but their air of civility was long gone. He looked wild and furious. He rushed at Syline, trying to grab at her. Syline felt the indignant anger, fury and fear welling up inside her once more. He wouldn’t touch her; he wouldn’t touch her. Her protector spun, his arm raised to meet the man but instead found Syline screaming as she swung the flat of her axe for his legs, sweeping them out from beneath him, the man let out a squawk of shock, a moment before the back of his head collided with the edge of a table and he went limp on the floor.
Syline breathed a sigh of relief. She looked over her shoulder to see her bodyguard give her a smile and once more forge on, forcing their way around an upturned table and the brawl going on around it. That was when one fool was stupid enough to try and grab at Syline. She screamed as she felt the hands yanking at her hair, feeling strands ripped from her scalp as she was pulled away from the man’s side. Her scream was shrill enough to get a pause from some of the people around the pair, long enough for the lumberjacks to note what was happening. The old barkeeper appeared from the melee beside the hellblooded, and together they fell on the man, a truncheon in the barkeeper’s hand making quick work of the bounty hunter, alongside the hellblooded’s armoured fists. Her new bodyguard helped Syline to her feet as the barkeep nodded to him, giving her an apologetic smile before he turned to try and quell the brawl. Finally, a path was open for the pair of them to reach the door. As they stepped out, Syline spied a glass flying over the crowd for her face. She let out a squeal as she tried to block with her forearms.
The man spun and slammed the door shut. Syline could just manage to hear the sound of glass shattering against it. She let out a slow sigh of relief, finally free of the bar, even if she was being shepherded by a strange, hellblooded man. Corax seemed just as relieved, poking his head out from her scarf to let out a little victorious caw at their escape before affectionately rubbing his head into the side of her neck. Her saviour trudged on. He walked from the entrance of the tavern to where the two horses were tied up. She followed.
‘So.’
‘So?’ Syline replied, looking back at him.
‘Did I get the job?’
Syline stared at him incredulously for a few long moments before a limp, tiny laugh escaped her, quickly falling along with the smile that came with it.
‘Yes…. yeah, yeah, just… please get me out of here. I don’t want to be here; I want to leave. We can talk about payment later.’
‘Alright then. Can I get your name?’
She looked at the horse, running a hand down its mane, it whinnied at her. Only after a moment did she realise he had asked a question.
‘Hmm? Oh… Syline… S-Syline Petranski.’
‘Thelonious Pugil. Do you need a hand up Miss Petranski?’
He offered his cupped hands for her to step up into. She climbed onto his horse, moving off the saddle between its shoulders so he could sit behind her. She could have summoned a magical steed to ride but, at that moment, she didn’t feel she had the requisite focus, nor energy; she just wanted to rest. She just wanted this horrible day to end.
Corax stared at Thelonious as the hellblooded mounted the horse behind Syline and set the horse on its way out of town.
‘Say, ma’am, you sure you should be hanging onto that axe? S’a bit big for you.’
It was only then that Syline realised she still had the axe, gripped tightly in one hand, the other holding the horse’s mane for balance. She’d had it this whole time.
‘Yes… I think I will, Thelonious. It… it’s a good axe. Can you hold it for now though?’ He gently took the axe from her, sliding it into a loop in his saddle bags. They hit the end of the street, and he pushed the horse into a light canter.
‘Where’re we headed?’
‘South and stay off the roads please; I’m… on the run.’
Thelonious simply made a little nod. She thought she heard him quietly mutter, ‘yessum’, but his voice was soft enough it could’ve been a sigh. As the road went by around them, Syline found herself laying down against the horse’s neck, too tired to keep herself upright. Soon enough, Syline had nodded off, lulled into a doze by exhaustion and the gentle rocking of the horse beneath them. She had never been so glad to have a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 8
Syline slept heavily. Neither the fall of snow, nor the jostling of the horse beneath them, could do a thing to wake her. She only woke up when the ride had come to an end, and when it did, the day before felt like a terrible nightmare, surreal and unimaginable, one she’d be glad to forget. She opened her eyes to find herself being shaken gently by Thelonious. Her arms were wrapped around the neck of his horse, and she’d been using the poor mare’s head as a pillow.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,’ he said quietly, watching her stretch her arms out over her head and let out a long yawn. Corax was still dozing fitfully, nestled in her scarf.
‘I didn’t even realise I dozed off, thank you for letting me sleep until now.’
She looked around as she dismounted, taking note of the position of the moon overhead. It must’ve been near on midnight. He’d been riding for a good few hours now.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, watching Thelonious busy himself with unloading packs from his horse’s saddle. It looked like he had a tent nestled in amongst his supplies.
‘Somewhere safe. Can you start a fire?’ he replied, pulling down a set of folded canvas and tent poles. Syline smiled and nodded, glad to be able to do something useful, keep her hands busy and thoughts distracted.
‘Then’ – he left the unmade tent on the ground and pulled a short bow and quiver of arrows off his saddle – ‘if you can do that, I’ll go catch us some dinner.’
His mind must’ve been made up because the hellblooded trudged off into the moonlit night with the bow in hand. He was a man of few words, but she could appreciate his decisiveness. Left alone but for the horse, who seemed content to lay down in the snow and take a rest of its own, and Corax, who had not deemed her waking worthy of him doing the same, Syline set to gathering firewood. Trying not to think about the bar, trying not to think about the fact that she was alone in the woods with an even larger, even stronger man now. He wasn’t like that. He’d saved her, he seemed honest. She had to believe he was honest.
By the time she’d gathered enough and cleared the ground to set up a campfire, Thelonious was on his way back. This island was a bit more open than the last she had made camp on and she could see out over the frozen water. Thelonious was dragging what looked like a doe by one of its horns from a nearby island. She busied herself with her sparking sigil to get the fire going and settled in to watch him, warming her hands by the flames. He wasn’t particularly hurried, moving with a steady pace through the night, the doe leaving a furrow in the snow behind him.
‘What happened to it?’ she asked as he got close, taking note of a huge bite wound on its leg. One he couldn’t have inflicted unless he was a very different sort of hellblooded to what she thought.
