A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)

I felt the dart whiz past me nicking the top of my shoulder as it raced by. I drew my sword to charge her and cut her down before she could fire another dart at me, but instead I felt myself pitch forward onto my knees clumsily after just a few steps. Things got dizzy and I felt my back hit the ground hard, as the blond shoved me over backward with a foot to my shoulder. The hard hit helped me refocus my scattered thoughts some.

The blond confident of her supremacy placed one bare foot on my chest and craned her blood stained face back to give a jubilant whoop, as she had done with Seth. Anger pulsing through my sluggish senses spurred me to awareness and I reached up and grabbed a handful of the poison darts she had hung in a waist belt around her hips and rammed them into her muscular stomach.

Her whoop of victory came out more of a strangled gurgle as she looked down at her stomach and then at me with a look of both horror and abject hatred. She fell onto her side on the ground, as her body went into convulsions and then went still.

I felt like I could breathe easier and I managed to get to my knees. I tried to get to my feet but that wasn't happening. My head felt like it was separate from my body and my body responded to my head's commands, as if from a long way away. I crashed through the underbrush half crawling half stumbling knowing only that I needed to get away as fast as I could so that I could recover from the poison rioting through my system. It was good to stay awake and moving. Must keep moving!

I felt wetness against my hands and arms. Was I bleeding? Was I in a trough of my own blood? No that couldn't be and from some recess of my still functioning brain came the answer. Water. I was in a swamp. That was good they couldn't track me here. There was a lot of water. It was so tempting to lay my head down into the warm folds of the water and go to sleep. I was so tired. I'd rest for a moment. Just a moment though I thought sleepily to myself.

Rain pounded down on the swampy part of the forest I had crawled into. My head was propped up against a tree trunk above the stagnate green slime of the water. I didn't hear the horse approach or feel it tug me with its teeth as it gripped my tunic firmly at the shoulder as it began to drag me further into the swamp.