Sasha The Assassin Part 6

Three times the blades pressed into her neck. It was the distress sign Lord Brown had never used before in Sasha’s whole life but now she was feeling it. She remembered him joking that if he ever needed to use the call that she might well decide to run the other way since the threat might be not worth dealing with. Sasha recalled his grim words and armed herself and ran to her horse. Lord Brown must be saved since if he died whoever killed him would almost assuredly find the device that controls her collar and could kill her with the press of a button.

                As she came upon his estate she saw dead bodies on the grounds, servants having been butchered with their bowels ripped out. Whatever person or persons were involved in this attack they sure were not being subtle about what they were doing. Sasha entered the back door of the building and saw Pablo’s dead body sprawled on the carpet she grimaced as his lightless eyes staring at her as she walked into the room.

                Down the hallway there were yet more dead bodies, throats slashed, torso’s run through, everything was professional and effective, she knew those behind this assault knew what they were doing. “Sasha? Are you here yet my dear?” a man’s voice called out in the distance. Sasha drew her sai and braced herself for combat.

                “You’re why I’m here Sasha.” The voice continued. “Lord Brown is the only man left alive, and he’s alive only because I fear that if I killed him it would have trigged something in your slave collar to kill you. I took the contract to finally meet you, to finally kill you.” The voice finished. Sasha felt the man shadow step and turned to where he’d appear. He popped from the shadows some ten feet away from her.

                “I was supposed to wear that collar you know.” The man said with a smile. He was pale like Sasha with light blonde hair and green eyes, she didn’t know if his features were a glamour or not. “You don’t remember me do you? You don’t recall big brother Benjamin do you?” he asked her. Sasha backed up a step at the sound of the name. “Yes Sasha. I’m your beloved brother.” He said with an acid tone. “Well not really, because I was supposed to be Lord Brown’s slave. Mommy and Daddy thought he’d want a big strong boy to be his slave and when they had me they were so happy since they knew they had paid our debt to the Browns. They never loved me or cared for me, when Jenna arrived a few years later she got all the love and attention, and you, you were the most beloved of all.”

                Sasha couldn’t believe the man’s story, but she knew from her study of people that at the very least he believed every word he said. “When Lord Brown took you it broke mother. She wailed for weeks on end, she went from not loving me to hating me. It was my fault I wasn’t good enough to be Lord Brown’s slave, it was my fault her beloved Sasha was taken from her. Then I heard the tales of the assassin’s school and how that’s what Lord Brown wanted. So I ran away from home and I found a group of assassins and I had them train me, teach me their arts, till finally I could meet the little bitch that ruined my life and kill her.”

                As he said it he charged at her, in his hands were two short swords. Sasha parried his swings with her sai and looked for openings to counter attack. Benjamin’s speed was impressive and he kept her on the defensive. Sasha shadow stepped and he was right upon her again continuing to hack away at her and forcing her to defend herself.

                “You’re over-rated” he sneered. “This is going to be easier than I thought.” Right as he finished his boast Sasha managed to leg sweep him and sent him crashing to his back. Sasha brought her sai down in a stabbing motion and Benjamin barely rolled out of the way. “Good one sister.” He smirked and then he threw a dagger at her. Sasha side stepped it and the next one. She felt him shadowstepping behind her and jumped away from the spot, when she reappeared a knife was flying at her head and she barely had time to react and deflect it away from her face.

                “Slow, to slow.” He said, he charged at her again the two exchanging thrusts and parries as they battled in the darkness. Sasha ducked under a swing at her head and lunged at him with a stab at his chest but found the blow deflected harmlessly away. “Haven’t fought an assassin have you?” he asked. “All I’ve been doing is fighting people like you, knowing their moves, understanding what they can do, how they’ll react. I’m sorry to say sister but you’re pretty disappointing.” He finished.

                Sasha didn’t reply but she knew that she’d never fought anyone who could have even threatened her before this fight. Her whole life had been killing easy targets or merely the threat of her black cloak was enough to prevent anyone was giving her trouble. Now she was in a fight to the death and she had no idea if she was going to survive it.

                Benjamin brought both his swords down upon her sai and began to try to push her arms down. Sasha decided now was the time to see if the deep earth iron was just a sales pitch or not. She twisted her wrists and started driving the guards of her sai into the sides of the swords. “Really? Trying to break my swords with your gardening tools?” Benjamin scoffed. “The Champions paid top dollar for these blades, steel refolded countless times to the point where it’s indestructible. Your silly little weapons will shatter like glass.”

                Right as he finished the word glass the sword in his right hand snapped clean in two. Benjamin stumbled forward and Sasha reacted just in time to drive her sai into his stomach. She felt the blade dig into his body and he fell into her, his head resting on her shoulder. At that instant she felt his teeth trying to find purchase in her neck but her slave collar prevented him from being able to doing any damage. She stepped away from him and in a swift motion brought the sai out of his belly and into the bottom of his jaw, through the roof of his mouth and into his brain.

                As his eyes started to glass over she smirked at him. “I guess there’s a reason mother loved me most.” She said as she pulled the blade out and watched him fall. Right after he hit the ground she drove the sai through his heart to make certain of his death. “Lord Brown!” she shouted. “It’s over, I’ve killed the assassin the king sent for you.” And then she felt the blade of her collar hitting her neck, four times it grazed her flesh.

                “How many times did I trigger the blade?” Lord Brown asked nervously.

                “Four.” Sasha replied. She knew lying could have meant her death given the panic her master was in.

                Lord Brown rushed from his chambers. “Sasha! You saved me. I can not thank you enough. This is open war the king has declared on us. All my servants and staff are dead, thank the Gods my children were not here. Armies must be gathered. I must contact the Green’s at once about this. The day of reckoning is coming soon Sasha, you must stay with me till it arrives. We will defeat them Sasha. They will pay.” He said with his voice regaining it’s confidence as he spoke. Sasha looked down at her dead brother a man who spent his whole life obsessed with killing her and now having failed. She looked at Lord Brown and thought of his obsession and how she was positive he was to fail also. The big difference was Lord Brown’s failure was going to get her killed. 

Sasha the Assassin Part 5

Sasha turned the ring over to Pablo who bowed deeply as he accepted it. “Forgive Lord Brown but he is indisposed this evening.” Pablo told her. Lord Brown was many things but first and foremost he was a drunk. Sasha fled as quickly as she could since she hated being around him when he was drunk, he had a violent streak that the alcohol brought out and he had threatened on more than one occasion to kill her while he was in a drunken stupor.

She spent the next two days resting in her hovel and awaiting the inevitable tug on her collar before she got the full details of the suicide mission she was to be sent on for the final ring. The final day of her captivity was the rare day when all six of the planets moons would be full at the same time and she’d heard legends about it increasing magic power. Sasha wondered if she would be more powerful that day or if it was all just a story made up to make the moons seem more important.

Leaving her hovel in the evening she decided to go find Arthur again and to try to have a better time having sex with him. She saw him through a window as she walked towards his house and then she shadow stepped into his doorway.

“Hello lover.” She said to him as Arthur flinched and then jumped from his chair. “Did you miss me?” she asked him as she strutted towards him. Arthur threw his arms forward, begging off as he backed away from her.

“I got something for you. Spent a few days making them.” He said, stammering as he spoke. Sasha’s eyebrows arched in surprise as she heard these words.

“Why would you make something for me?” She asked, keeping the sultry tone to her voice and masking her honest interest.

“Mostly so you wouldn’t beat the shit out of me.”  He replied. Arthur reached near the forge and pulled out a blanket and handed it to Sasha. Sasha could feel the heavy weight of the metal inside the blanket and unwrapped two black sai.

Sasha held them in her hands and tested their balance. “These feel really heavy for their size.” She told him.

“That’s because it’s deep earth iron that was used to make them.” Arthur told him. She noticed a bit more confidence in his voice as he said this.

“Deep earth iron is a joke, a con used by merchants to get people to pay extra for their weapons.” Sasha said flatly, trying to dismiss the fact that these weapons truly did feel different in her hands. The sai were expertly made and a run across the blade with her finger showed that they were deadly sharp. She flashed a grin at Arthur and moved towards him. “I didn’t come here for weapons.” She told him as she kissed him deeply and threw her arms around him.

As good as the kiss felt, when she let go of the sai she felt euphoria. Finally she was letting go of the need for control, the need to have a weapon at the ready to kill the man she was with. She didn’t even remember how their clothes came off, only that she was on top of him in her bed and completely entangled with him.

She wanted more than to just straddle him she wanted to feel his body against her own. She laid on top of him and felt the warmth of his skin, the heat of his breath, all of it was divine. Then she felt his arms reaching over her, holding her in a hug. Then he starting shifting his body from beneath her, he had managed to roll on top of her and placed her on her back. Sasha’s eyes shot open in panic. As a reflex she grabbed his hair with her left hand and pulled his head away from hers and then with her right arm she landed a forearm square on his nose that sent blood everywhere.

Arthur crumpled from the bed, blood pouring from his nose as he fell. Sasha looked down and saw her pants resting right near the bed, she didn’t remember putting them there but the years of training hard wired into her brain and still managed to make sure they got to their proper spot. She drew Mercy from its seethe. “What the fuck were you doing?” she shrieked at him, her green eyes wild with fear and anger.  

“Fuck, oh God, you broke my nose.” Arthur said. He sat up against the wall as his hands continued to clutch his nose.

Sasha spoke each word slowly, convinced Arthur hadn’t heard or understood the question he time before. “What the fuck were you doing?” she repeated.

“What do you mean? Getting on top of you? You were on top all of last time and this time. Figured you could use a break, let me be the one to put the work in. Guess not.” Arthur replied and then finished with a moan as blood continued to trickle out of his nose and stain his flesh.

Sasha stared at him dumbfounded she had no clue what he was talking about. She had to picture the two of them having sex before she could come to grips with the idea that the person on top was putting in more effort than the one on the bottom.  She felt shame for what she had done to Arthur, something she’d never felt before, tears started to well up in her eyes. “I. I can’t deal with this.” She said as she felt the world closing in around her. She dressed quickly as she kept an eye on Arthur who was still crumpled against the wall naked and bleeding.

“Talk to me please.” He begged her. “Tell me what’s going on here. Or just kill me, at least that would make some fucking sense.” He told her. Sasha started walking out of the room trying to avoid eye contact with him. She then turned towards him and struck his nose with an open palm.

“Sorry, had to set it. I didn’t want it to heal crooked.” She told him and then kissed his forehead and rushed off. She could hear him calling out to her but she ignored him. She didn’t want to deal with a world where she made mistakes that she couldn’t fix by killing somebody. She didn’t know if she really wanted to be anything but an assassin.

Sasha The Assassin Part 4

Sasha went to her hovel, a tiny rundown shack far away from decent society. She was not welcome at Lord Brown’s estate unless she was summoned and there was little in the way of housing for one who practiced the dark arts Sasha enjoyed. Her cloak and throwing knives were first on the list of tools to gather and then it came time to poison her daggers. Sasha stared at the two blades as they glistened in the moonlight, silver and steel merged to make the blades and the handles were made of ivory. The blade she carried in her left hand was serrated and named Malice, while the blade in her right hand was smooth and named Mercy.

Upon the two blades she slathered on a poison that would relax muscles once it got into the blood stream, she didn’t care if her victims died tonight, only that they be unable to stop her from obtaining the ring.

She called for her horse that she had let run free in the vast fields around her tiny shelter. He returned to her and they got about the business of the long ride towards the caravan that was carrying the ring Lord Brown so desperately wanted.

                The hours bled into each other as did the forests and fields, the road wasn’t travelled by common people at night for fear of bandits, but none seemed to be around to mess with Sasha, or maybe they just knew better than to try their luck with her. Her journey finally brought her to the northern road and now she just had to find the caravan.

                Dropping off her horse at a farm she got to the work of stalking her quarry.  Then off in the distance she heard the sounds of battle. She jumped through shadows until she could see what was happening, a party of bandits was attacking the caravan.

                She couldn’t believe the size of the bandit party there was at least six dead already yet dozens more men were attacking the king’s men. The horses of the lead carriage had been slaughtered with massive pools of blood around their bodies, the carriage itself tossed on its side. The other three carriages were under assault with knights keeping the mob of attackers at bay while crossbow men on the tops of the carriages shot into the crowds.

                Sasha found some nice shadows to blend into and took a handful of her throwing knives. The crossbowmen had to be taken down to allow the mob a better chance at success. Her first knife hit one of them in the shoulder blade and the second one hit his comrade in the throat. The second man toppled off the carriage and landed behind a knight while the other man kept his feet. Sasha glared at the man who didn’t fall from the first knife that hit him and struck him with two more knives, one in the arm and the other in the small of his back and finally he slumped to his side.

                She went to work on the other crossbowmen and soon enough they were all dead or dying. The Knights were killing more than their fair share of the mob but the numbers were catching up to them, Sasha decided it was time to start thinning the numbers of the other side. Her knives started finding their way into the flesh of the bandits. Those who strayed too far from the fray of the battle found themselves being picked off by her blades.

                The last knight was overwhelmed and the last ten or so of the bandits began ripping through the carriages and one of them came out holding a ring aloft in his hands. The rest of the men seemed underwhelmed by the prize and she could hear the group’s conversation turn from elation over the victory over the king’s forces into disappointment over the lack of riches they had obtained in the battle.

                The men walked roughly two miles to an inn where they began drinking in celebration of their victory. Whatever coins they had looted from the dead were not used to pay for the drinks that were spilling down their throats. Sasha entered the inn and stayed in a corner and let the men drink and celebrate.  She nursed a glass of water as she waited for the time to strike.

                Most of the men had drunk themselves into a stupor by the time one of them jumped on a table. “We done fuckin’ showed them pussy ass soldiers who the boss is around here!” He shouted. A roar of approval came from the others. “This fucking ring had better have been important if all these idiots had to die for it!” He gave a loud drunken laugh as he held the ring up.

                “Mitch, what we gonna do for money mate? What’s that ring really going to get us?”  Another one of them asked. “I mean it’s pretty and all but it’s just a ring.”

                Sasha pulled out her coin purse. “I’ll pay all the coin I have for it.” She said as she walked from her corner to stand in the doorway of the inn. “You boys don’t have any idea what you are holding on to. Once the king knows what’s happened to his convoy and his ring this place will be swarming with soldiers. If you hang on to that ring you won’t live the week.”

                One of the drunks staggered over to her. “We ain’t selling for no small sack of coins. Maybe we’d sell it for what’s between your legs.” He said as he reached for her crotch. She ran Malice under his rib cage and through his heart in a motion she’d practiced thousands of times and used to kill people than she cared to remember. As she withdrew the blade his limp body dropped to the ground.

                “I was lying before so now I’ll tell the truth.” Sasha said. “You will not have to wait for the king’s men to come to kill you within the week as I will kill all of you tonight if you don’t hand over the ring. I offer the coin I have as a token of gratitude. You can accept it and keep living or you can resist me. If you resist me we’re fighting to the death and I do mean that. Once I’ve left you all laid out I will walk up to each and every one of your bodies and slit your throats.  So it’s up to you to make the decision. Personally I hope you let me kill you all cause it’ll save me my money.”

                The room was silent for a few moments and then the men started muttering, their words were slurred and incoherent but the tone was depressed and defeated. A man stood up from his bench and waved a knife in the air. “No fucking cunt is gonna tell me.” He started to say. Sasha saw the shadow cast by the pillar behind him and shadow stepped directly behind him. Mercy glided quickly across his throat and before he had hit the ground she was already standing in the doorway again.

                “Does he speak for the rest of you?” she asked. Mitch looked at the ring and then at Sasha and threw the ring to her. She bowed to him and left the inn.