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“You can listen,” said the old man. “You can run away. Or you can die.”
“I . . . I have the gun,” wheezed Dahlia. “I . . . ”
He shook his head, the way a teacher would during a difficult lesson. Patient, but not infinitely so.
“Listen, run, or die,” he repeated. “Those are the only three possible outcomes. Take a moment. Make a careful choice.”
— 9 —
THE WARRIOR WOMAN
“Drop the knife or I’ll shoot.”
Rachael considered her options, hyper aware of the gun pressed against her back. She didn’t think she’d be able to get the drop on him with her dagger or jump to the side fast enough before he pulled the trigger. She needed to put them off guard first, make them think she’d surrendered.
“Drop it.”
Opening her hand slowly, she obeyed the command., the Elven dagger hitting the dirt path with a soft thump. Other than that, she stayed perfectly still, eyes trained on Alice and Jason, who both watched her intently, ready to go for their weapons on her signal.
She counted at least ten people. Didn’t mean there weren’t more out there. Most of them carried machetes or axes or hammers; only the guy behind her had a firearm.
Scratch that. A man carrying a shotgun stepped into her line of sight.
Overall, Rachael had never been great at math—her grades at school had only been average—but she was good at calculating combat situations, thanks to LARPing. Larger numbers of enemies didn’t necessarily mean a disadvantage, but it did mean they needed to work smarter.
Disable the enemies with the guns first; ranged weapons would put them at a serious risk. Machetes and hammers next; they were one-handed weapons that could be swung fast, and cause more potential damage. Shovels and axes last; they usually required two hands to wield, had lousy balance and a slower hit rate. They would, however, do more damage if they did land a strike.
The other man with a gun had it pointed directly at Jason’s chest. Her friend’s gaze didn’t leave hers, and she darted her eyes at the man holding the weapon. She hoped he got her meaning . . . and that their enemies didn’t.
Jason give an infinitesimal nod and she looked over at Alice, who’d faded back into the trees, Tommy clung to her legs like a baby koala, his face buried against her stomach. “Stay back,” she mouthed.
“Stand up, I don’t want you getting any ideas about that knife of yours.” The man behind her spoke again, accenting his words with another jab of the gun barrel. Rachael stood slowly, hands out in front, making sure not to make a move for her knife and sword—both within her reach.
She was going to have to do this on hard mode apparently. But that was their life now. Hard mode.
Without warning, she crouched and swung her leg around, hooking an ankle behind the man’s knee and yanking hard before rolling to the side, dagger back in her hand. Unprepared, the man lost his balance, falling backward with a shout. He hit the ground hard, gun falling off to the side and into the brush. He lay there, the wind knocked out of him.
“Go!” she shouted to her team. Without waiting to see if they obeyed, she moved on to the next man, landing a strong kick to his chest as he swung his machete. He stumbled backward. Rachael pressed her advantage, slammed the pommel of her dagger against his wrist. He screamed and dropped the machete and she kicked him again, this time in the balls. He toppled over, hands folded over his groin.
She heard the sounds of combat behind her, punctuated by Tommy’s screams. She turned and immediately ducked under the vicious swing of a shovel that would have taken her head off. Rachael grabbed the long handle and gave it a violent twist so that the attacker’s wrist was bent at an extreme angle. The leverage snapped his thumb with a sound like a heel stepping on a green twig. The man shrieked and Rachael doubled him over with a kick to the groin as she tore the shovel from him. She whirled and swung the flat of the blade against the ankles of a woman rushing at her, sending the attacker flying forward into a bad fall. The woman hit the bent-over man and the two of them fell into a sloppy heap.
Another man rose up with a woodsman’s axe and chopped down at her, but Rachael brought the shovel up in both hands, blocked the axe handle at an angle that sloughed off the brute force. Even so, the shock of it vibrated through her wrists like a thousand needles.
The axe man pulled back and tried a second and even more powerful blow, but Rachael was in motion, too. She darted sideways, reversed the shovel on her hands and rammed the blunt end of the handle into his solar plexus. He let out every molecule of air in his lungs and the axe chunked down into the dirt. Rachael spun the handle again and hit him in the back of the head with the flat of the shovel with such force that the man dove face-forward into the dirt.
A knife whipped past her head and thunked into a tree behind her, startling her so badly she dropped the shovel. Rachael turned, looking for whoever threw it, and her heart jumped painfully in her chest as another attacker burst from the woods with a knife in his hand identical to the one he’d just thrown. She backpedaled and tore the knife from the tree, did a pivot that was more like a choreographed pirouette and used the momentum to give her power for a throw of her own. It caught him four steps away and buried itself in the meat of his thigh. The leg buckled and the man screeched as he fell, dropping his own knife to try and stanch the sudden explosion of blood.
Rachael heard a cry and saw that Jason was fighting another attacker armed with another damn axe. Before she could take a step to help him, Alice rose up behind the killer and smashed him in the back of the head with the butt of her sword. The man’s eyes rolled high and he dropped senseless to the dirt.
Rachael could see the first man she disarmed scrambling to find his gun. She snarled aloud as she ran toward him, snatched up his fallen machete and skidded to a stop with the blade pressed hard to the side of his throat. He froze, his fingers on the handle of the gun.
“You can be stupid or you can be alive,” she said.
He stared at her.
“Right now none of your friends are dead,” said Rachael, pressing the edge into his skin with such force that a bead of blood broke from his skin and rolled along the steel. “It’s totally on you if you want to change that.”
Behind her, she heard someone rack a shotgun. “On your six,” said Jason.
