The closer she got to him, the more apparent that the man was badly injured. It was difficult to tell how long the man had been injured and stranded out in the middle of the Rothian woods, but Beatrice could begin to see bruising along his thigh and a nasty protrusion from the broken bone that not yet pierced through his leg.
When she finally reached him, he smiled with a painful expression that overtook his expression of gratitude and relief.
“What is your name, dear girl?”
“Beatrice,” she hesitated.
“You should not be travelling alone.”
“Neither should you, apparently.”
“There are bandits in this world that favor the woods.”
“I have nothing of value they would want.”
“There are far worse things bandits would want from a woman.”
Without touching, she examined the injury more closely. “How long have you been out here?”
“It is difficult to be certain. I lost consciousness at one point. Is it as bad as it looks?”
Beatrice took another moment to look it over. “Does it feel as bad as it looks,” she asked instead.
“Lord, yes,” he winced.
Suddenly, a dagger lashed out from behind the man. Beatrice reacted just in time, falling onto her back as the dagger narrowly missed her neck. She kicked out her right leg into the air, then, dropped it down like a hammer upon the man’s broken leg. He squealed in agony, dropping the dagger. Before Beatrice could take advantage of the dropped dagger, a couple twigs snapped from her left as another man crashed through the foliage, racing toward her.
She rolled backwards into a handstand, then, pushed off the ground to turn her rollback into a standing position. Taking a quick, giant step back, the charging man ran passed away, stopped, and then, swung a dull broad sword at her. Beatrice was barely out of range and as soon as the sword swung passed her, she leaned into her attacker, going on the offensive.
With her left hand, she grabbed her attacker’s left arm, holding it firmly, then, drove a powerful punch into the tender area where the joint of the arm met the shoulder. The arm dislocated from the shoulder with an unsettling pop. The attacker wailed in agony, dropping the broad sword. Beatrice was quick to silence him with a follow-up, left-handed jab to his throat. He collapsed to the ground, wheezing and hacking a forceful cough.
With both assailants momentarily immobilized, she calmly bent down and picked up the broad sword from the road. She looked at the dull blade, noting how excruciatingly painful it would have been to have that blade torn through her. It would have been like chopping down a tree rather than slicing through the belly of a fish. The hilt was crudely made: tarnished brass wrapped with pieces of leather straps. The blade, itself, was most likely of equally poor quality. It was worthless. And she had no need for a sword, anyway. So, with the blunt end of the hilt, she rammed it into the attacker’s head, knocking him out cold, then, stepped over to the first man with the broken leg, who was still whimpering over the additional pain to his leg. “What part of any of this did you think was a good idea? Did you think I was defenseless? Did you think I was meek?”
“We didn’t know…,” he managed to say behind gritted teeth.
“Didn’t know what? That someone like me was coming along? What were you planning on doing? Sit here in the middle of the road, waiting…by some chance…that someone was going to come along? Either that was incredible foresight, or a random shot in the dark.”
“I am not stupid,” he barked in his defense.
“I didn’t say you were,” Beatrice replied. “No, you are just uninformed about a great many things. We all have our faults.” She drove the blade of the sword into the hard ground a good five inches and leaned on it for support as she gently placed her foot on the man’s injured thigh. New sensations of pain coursed through his body and manifested in a guttural cry from the man’s lips. “Why would you do this to yourself? Break your own leg?”
She could see the man begin to shiver from the pain and shutter with anger. She imagined that the pain was becoming unbearable; his anger festering inside. “Because people like you always fall for it.”
“But I didn’t,” she reminded him.
“Yes, you did,” he countered. “You just don’t know it, yet.”
In an instant, the man stopped shivering from the pain. His gritted teeth relaxed, his groans and cries ceased, and his expression of anger turned into a smirk as the ground rolled from underneath Beatrice’s feet. Startled, she took a couple steps back, witnessing the hard ground soften around the man, came up like a small ocean wave, and covered his leg.
The man rose from the ground. The dirt that covered his leg fell off in clumps like sand from a buried beachcomber. The dirt then rolled over to his fallen companion, collecting more dirt as it rolled along and began to cover his companion’s entire body. Moments later, his companion rose from the mound: revived and rejuvenated. Both men showed no signs of any previous injury. They were completely healed and held malice in their eyes.
He was right. She did fall for it.
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