Chapter 2
The First Step on a Long Journey
Falkyn slinked through the thick forests, cutting back the heavy vegetation with his razor-sharp katana. His "traveling companion" stayed back, wary of the beautiful, deadly weapon as it flashed with each swing.
Li'na shivered as the sun set and the trees overhead blocked out what little light remained. "It's getting colder, can't you feel it?"
He could, but he said nothing about it. He pushed a low-hanging branch aside, revealing a small clearing that looked perfect to set up camp in. The fighter looked around, listening for anything that might want to eat them. "At night," he told Li'na, "the creatures that eat meat wake up."
"Are you trying to scare me into leaving, because it's not working." She looked over her shoulder when she heard a rustle in the brush. She breathed again when she saw a tiny critter run to another bush and disappear outside the clearing.
Falkyn turned away from her and started setting up a fire. Foolish.
Their campfire flickered, decorating the area with its dancing shadows. Falkyn sat with his hands folded, deep in meditation, while Li'na poked at the fire with a long stick.
She wanted to say something to him, but she couldn't find the words. Li'na had never known a stranger guy; he just showed up and pretty much vanished just as suddenly. She had some kind of attraction, but she knew better than to blindly follow some stranger.
She stopped poking. I am blindly following some stranger! But they knew each other's names, so she couldn't really call him a "stranger" anymore.
Still, an enigma surrounded him, and she couldn't quite put her finger on what else made her uncomfortable.
Falkyn couldn't achieve the peace he wanted as he meditated. He could see those faces as clearly as if they stood right in front of him right now.
I've stopped killing, he told them with the faintest delusion that they might respond.
I won't allow anyone to force me to kill again.
But no matter how many times he said that, he still saw them: every face of every person he had slain since he started his life as a hired assassin. He found it extremely difficult to sleep when their faces flashed in his mind.
He promised himself one thing as the faces kept flashing. I won't teach her how to
kill.
He knew that those faces would haunt him until the day he died.
Li'na woke up the next morning as sunlight streamed down through the canopy, and scratched some twigs out of her hair. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, she looked around and found herself alone in the clearing, with Falkyn nowhere in sight.
"Did he leave me here?"
Something crashed through the trees, and she jumped up and backward with a gasp. A huge, purple-green lizard fell to the grass, a pool of blood forming beneath it.
"You say you can cook," Falkyn said, stepping over the reptilian corpse, "then cook this." He crouched down next to the fire and put one finger toward the cold cinders. They ignited into a roaring blaze when he removed his hand from the wood. Li'na sat there, astonished, as she watched him light the fire with a bare hand.
Falkyn lifted the dead lizard's leg with one hand, and quickly sliced a strip of flesh off its quadriceps and impaled it on his blade. He crouched next to the fire and held the steak over it to cook, blood dripping down to sizzle out of existence on the burning wood.
This guy is really starting to freak me out, Li'na said to herself.
Li'na took in the sights with Falkyn as the two strolled down a street in the bustling port town of Chonn, even though he appeared out of place in his straw hat and exotic attire.
"This is just my second time in Chonn," she said, "and it's still just as beautiful as it was the first time."
Falkyn didn't seem to care. He wanted to book passage to Island Major and stay on the move, but this woman didn't want to leave him.
An idea struck, and Li'na's face lit up. "Hey, what do you say we get something to eat, huh? I haven't eaten since breakfast, and that half-cooked dead animal didn't satisfy me."
He sighed in frustration.
Falkyn had barely eaten, while Li'na had polished off an entire chicken breast and ordered dessert for herself.
"So," Li'na started, "what can you tell me about yourself?"
"Nothing," Falkyn told her.
"Oh, come on! You can start by telling me your real name."
Falkyn lifted his glass of water and studied it. "You can't tell somebody something you don't know."
As he took a drink, Li'na sat back, confused. She decided to ask a different question. "Where are you going to go?"
"I don't know where I'm going until I get there."
"Well, I've always wanted to see Farrawee," Li'na told him. "They say the countryside is beautiful this time of year."
"Then go," he said simply.
She sighed in exasperation and hung her head. Why am I following this weirdo? She cheered up a little when her ice cream arrived.
They boarded a ship for Island Major later that evening. Falkyn stood at the bow of the ship, with one foot on the railing and his hat titled back as he stared out across the sea, shimmering in the sunset.
"So, that's where you are!"
Li'na stepped out onto the deck. "I, um, just want to ask something: what did you mean by 'self-defense training?' And don't give me an evasive response."
Not moving his gaze from the sparkling sea, Falkyn told her, "I will not defend you from every ruffian that crawls out from under his rock. You will have to fight for yourself if you want to follow me."
"Well, I have watched some Bru Sli films, and I think I can do some of his moves." She put up her fists in a semblance of a martial arts pose. "Yeah! I'm pumped! I'm going to show you my skills!"
In the blink of an eye, Falkyn had pushed off the rail, turned, and wrapped one hand around her neck, his thumb pressing painfully upward into her chin. He stood right in front of her, and when she looked up, she couldn't see his face in the shadow his hat cast across his face, but she knew that he gazed directly into her eyes.
"Understand this: you have no skill." He released his grip, brushed a stray piece of hair out of her face, and turned back to the water.
Li'na's entire body shook. Yeah, compared to you I don't.
He disregarded the tiny silhouette soaring high above them. If he had known its true identity, he would have done something about it.
He moved through the tall grass with the grace of a cat, while Li'na did her best to keep up with him. Several times, she thought she would lose him as she fought with the five-foot stalks to get past them.
"Slow down, won't you?" she had cried several times. When she exited the field, she saw him sitting on a large, flat rock, staring down the blade of his sword. "Falkyn, how do you do that? Moving through that forest of grass without slowing down?"
Without averting his vision, he replied, "If I told you-" He flipped the blade to stare down its back- "I would have to kill you."
She looked down to her feet. "You're not scaring me," she told him, even though she knew full well that he could carry out that threat.
Suddenly, he snapped his head up and jumped down from the rock, bringing his sword into a ready position.
"What?" Li'na asked as she turned around to look. She saw the group of four ugly goons as they approached their location. They all looked ill kept and ill mannered, and Li'na did not want them to get anywhere near her.
"Hey, buddy, who's the girl?" the overweight, balding, greasy biker-type drawled, ogling Li'na as he neared her.
The tallest flashed his pierced tongue at her, only succeeding in grossing her out. Her cringing put off the lanky punk, and he sneered at her.
"'Dis is our turf, ya' know," the squat, dwarfish one told them. "Anyone who crosses our turf has t' pay some tribute."
"Give us your money, or give us the girl," the longhaired, pale-skinned one inquired, toying with a small pocketknife.
As Li'na shied away to hide behind the rock, Falkyn sheathed his sword. "I take it you're not going to leave without a fight." His eyes flashed with a yellow light as he scanned his opposition.
"Aw, he's just some freak. Joey," the dwarf called, "show him your blades."
Joey drew another knife and flipped out the short cutting edge. " Pops, yer as good as dead."
"I am not interested in fighting any of you. I have other things to do." Falkyn's voice did not waver, and it did not rise.
The knife-wielding lowlife thrust his knife, but Falkyn caught his wild strike. The switchblade fell from his hand as a sickening wet crack echoed from his elbow. With a dislocated arm, Joey fell to the grass, screaming in pain.
This display of skill admittedly scared the pants off of the biker's gang. What they had thought easy pickings proved far out of their league.
Falkyn stepped back, turned, and walked back to the rock. "Come, Li'na, it is only beginning."
The bald biker slipped on a set of brass knuckles and charged. The dwarf pulled out a taser and started it up, and the tall one took out a length of lead pipe. They would all bash his skull in.
As soon as the biker reached him, Falkyn drove his elbow backward and right into his gut. He pushed him into the dwarf, and struck the tall one with a high kick to the jaw with enough force behind to knock him off his feet.
The biker and the dwarf still had some fight left in them. The biker took the lead pipe from his tall ally and waved it threateningly. "You're going to be sorry now."
Falkyn casually tossed his sword to Li'na, who still cowered behind the rock, and he rolled his neck.
The dwarf attacked first; he lunged with his taser, blue electricity crackling between the terminals.
Falkyn wrapped his cloak around his arm and smashed his knee into the dwarf's face. He unwrapped the cloak, and the taser fell from the dwarf's grip as he fell to the ground.
Frustration overcame the biker. The pipe shook in his grip and he bit his lip, coming dangerously close to drawing blood. Then, he did something he knew he shouldn't have done: he charged, raising the pipe high above his head.
He didn't even see it coming. As soon as the biker got within striking distance, everything went black.
Falkyn looked down on the gang, and then he noticed Joey struggling to his feet. He stepped toward him and looked down on him.
"I'll cut you," Joey spat, biting back the pain. "I'll cut you till you die."
Without saying a word, Falkyn backhanded Joey and sent him into unconsciousness with the rest of his gang. He turned away from the heap of bodies and walked back to the rock. "Now we continue," he told Li'na as he took his sword from her, and the two of them left the heap of bruised bodies behind.
"What a disgrace." He sat casually on the rock, one arm resting on his knee, the length of his black coat spilling down the side. "Tell me, why did I hire you losers?"
They couldn't respond; none of them could talk, or even hear him, because they lay unconscious. He considered blowing them away, but decided not to.
"Huh, no matter. Street thugs are useless, anyway."
He hopped down and kicked the fat one, his steel-toed boot sinking into the beer belly. He still didn't get a response.
"This job is going to require some subtlety." He looked in the direction that Falkyn had gone as a wicked smirk came to his face.
At this height, the view from the mountains of Zrinth surpassed the chill in the thin air. Li'na looked out across the horizon, wondering if her companion could appreciate the beauty of the scene. "So, why're we up here?" she asked as she turned back to him.
"Training." Falkyn opened the pack he carried and threw a bundle of cloth at her. "You might want to wear this; it won't impede your movement."
"Are you sure?"
"I wear the same thing." He untied his cloak and laid it out on a rock, and then removed his hat and placed it on top of the cloak.
Li'na studied the brown training gear. "Okay, when does my self-defense training start?"
"It starts when I say it does. For now, you have to show me you're capable of learning." He searched inside his cloak and came out with two collapsible buckets. He pulled them to full size and dropped them in front of Li'na. "Go down to the stream and fill these. Return without spilling a drop."
She picked them up. "Um, the stream is halfway down the mountain."
"Is there a problem? You can go home anytime you wish if you don't want to learn."
"I want to learn; it's just… Okay, I'll get the water."
As she turned to leave, Falkyn told her, "Leave your watch."
She did as he said, and Falkyn studied it briefly before setting it to stopwatch mode.
"Iku." (Go.)
Li'na hefted the buckets and started down the rocky trail, hoping to prove to herself more than to Falkyn that she could do what he instructed. This is just a test, she told herself. He's disguising it as heavy labor, but he won't fool me.
As Li'na carried out her appointed task, Falkyn timed her. The numbers increased steadily: ten minutes, eleven minutes, twelve minutes…
"Aware na. That city girl will not be able to handle this."