The Gift

Chapter Eight

 

 

The first one came while I was walking around the town.  Spending most of my time with twelve men starts to wear on you after a while, so I went out for a walk just to escape them.

 

I’d been gone for about an hour and was contemplating returning when my little voice shouted a warning in my head.

 

Drop now!

 

I let my legs go out from under me and flattened myself against the ground.  I heard something whizz by over me, where it would have hit me in my back.  I scrambled to my feet and twisted to face where it had come from, my left hand going to my knife sheath.  I scanned for the attacker but saw nobody out of the ordinary.

 

Everybody was going about their business as usual so I resumed my walk but kept alert.  A few minutes later, the warning came again.  This time I stepped to the side a couple steps and watched for where the projectile came from.  My sharp eyes found the attacker on the roof of a shop with a crossbow.  I closed my eyes and willed myself to have a vision of what he would do next.  After the vision had passed through my mind, I smiled to myself and leapt into action.  I ran close to the wall of the building where he wouldn’t be able to see me.

 

I hid myself where I Saw he would be coming down from the roof once he gave up on finding me.  Sure enough a few minutes later, he came down from the roof.  Once he was within range, I kicked out, knocking his hand from the drawstring.  The arrow he’d had notched to it released, shooting into the ground.  Another swift kick knocked the contraption completely from his hands.  I plucked it out of the air before he could even register what was going on.

 

“You’ll have to be better than this if you want to kill a Seeress,” I informed him.

 

“You’re the Seeress?” he repeated, his eyes widening.

 

“I didn’t stutter, did I?”

 

“No.  I had no idea.”

 

“Then you might want to talk to whoever sent you about raising the bounty on me.”  I kicked out again, this time hitting him square in the chest.  The force of it pushed him back against the wall, which he knocked his head against, effectively knocking him out.  “Oops.  I really should learn to control that strength.”  With a smile, I broke the crossbow into five smaller pieces and dropped the pieces by him before returning to the house.

 

I did not tell the men about the attack.  They’d only overreact and get overly protective when I’d handled the situation fine by myself.

 

The second attack came a week later. This time it was a different person.  It was a woman who tried to engage me in hand to hand combat.  With my superior strength and reflexes, I dispatched her in less than five minutes.

 

The next two attacks were the same.  I could tell that whoever had sent them was sending assassins by the way that they fought but none of them were more than a nuisance.  They came once a week.  After that, they grew more frequent.  They came every few days instead of just once a week.