Cursed: Traitor's Trail

Chapter 10 part 2

Jaob raised his hands, intending on gripping the sharp edge before it could finish its mission, but he was going to be too late. His heart hammered in his chest as he waited for the end of his life.

But it never came. The blade at his throat stilled and the man's grip loosened slightly.

“Drop your sword,” a familiar voice said softly, calmly.

The sword at his throat lowered and Jaob tore himself away, whipping around to glare at his attacker. Bane had the man in an exact reflection of how Jaob had been held. This was no Magi. He was no one that Jaob recognized at all.

“Who sent you?” Bane demanded, pressing his blade into soft tissue.

The man's hands twitched and Jaob thought he might reach for the sword at his throat, as he himself had been inclined to do. But instead, they traveled downward, toward a leather satchel on his hip.

“Bane,” Jaob warned, but, as always, Bane was ahead of him. Without hesitation he finished the man, stabbing the blade beneath the jaw and into the attacker's brain. The stranger slumped to the ground, a few gurgling noises emerged, and then he lay still. Bane rolled him over.

Jaob found himself frozen in horror. That could have been his death; it was so close to being my death only moments ago.

“Thank you friend,” he said at last. But Bane didn't reply, he was busy efficiently examining the body. “Who is he? And how did you know he was...ah...”

“An assassin,” Bane announced, his tone flat. Jaob edged nearer, but he couldn't bring himself to kneel next to the dead man as Bane did. “I noticed his silhouette moving across the steppes at dusk. I have been tracking him since.”

“Yet you waited until now to dispatch him?”

“I wanted to see who his target was.” Bane was undoing the man's satchel and pulling out the various items within. He set out several clay phials and a sharp looking dagger.

Jaob found these easier to stomach.

The dagger in particular drew his attention. Actually, it was not quite a dagger, more like a sharp needle with a hilt. The sides of the blade were narrow and not sharpened, but the tip was long and looked as though it would break skin on contact.

Jaob reached out his hand to the blade, but Bane's large fingers gripped his arm.

“It is poisoned,” he gestured to the dagger, releasing Jaob once he was sure he was safe from accidentally killing himself on the assassin’s weapons. “The hilt too, if you grip it wrong.”

Jaob drew back and studied the weapons and phials. Bane laid out several more daggers and a sword beside the body. It looked as though the assassin had been out to slay an army.

His nerves finally began to calm to a place where he could think rationally. Was this the traitor? Had he cut the poles to provide a distraction and pull Jaob out of his tent?