Page 389 of Warlords, Witches & Wolves

Chapter 4

"Ready?" Father asked.

Rossa nodded sharply. "How many targets today?" She would get them all this time, she swore. Without missing a single one.

Father tilted his head to the side, as though he needed to consider for a moment before he said, "Twelve."

Another nod, and she was off.

She caught sight of the first one, half-hidden behind a tree. She slipped around the other side of the thick trunk, then plunged her dagger into the target's neck, or where it would have been, had the target been a man and not a stuffed sack. An ambush like this one usually had more than one, in line of sight of each other…

Rossa pressed against the straw corpse, scanning the trees for his accomplice. Ah, there it was.

Carefully, she strung her bow, and took aim at the painted acorn, set high in the fork of a tree on the other side of the path. When she loosed her arrow, she didn't wait to watch it hit its target, as she knew it would. Instead, she shifted to a new position and scanned the forest for other targets.

High, low, behind trees and rocks, she took out her targets, disarming two traps and springing a third, rendering it harmless, until her count reached eleven.

One more to go.

She followed the game trail in a long loop, back to where they'd started, but she didn't see a hint of a target anywhere.

Had she missed one on her way, which now lay behind her, or had her father placed it at their meeting point, ready to ambush her when she thought she was safe?

While there were many who wished to engage the services of an assassin, hired killers were not well-liked, and their heads often fetched as high a price as the people they killed. So, her father would definitely have placed a target where it might shoot her in the back, when she reached the meeting point.

Rossa skirted the clearing, selecting a tree that would give her a good view across the dell where she knew her father waited, while its branches would hide her from the sight of anyone who might hope to catch her unawares.

Zoticus sat on a rock in the sun, calmly slicing up an apple with his dagger, before popping the slices in his mouth, one by one. The loud crunching sounds surely would have alerted any would-be assassins to his presence, and made him an easy target, but Father had so many magical protections, even Rossa wasn't sure she could fight him and win.

The twelfth target would be somewhere that gave it a clear view of the clearing, and the path Rossa would have taken, if she hadn't chosen to climb a tree. She scanned the clearing, then the treeline, then did it all again.

It had to be there. The twelfth one had to…there! Just as she saw a hint of red paint, it vanished. Yet something was there, moving along the tree branch…

She nocked an arrow to her bow, sighting along it as she exhaled. Her arrow flew across the clearing, sinking into its target before tumbling off into the undergrowth.

There. Mission complete.

Rossa slid down the tree trunk and skipped into the clearing. "I'm done, Father," she announced. She couldn't keep the pride out of her voice.

"How many did you take down?"

"All twelve."

"Ah, but you missed one," he said, rising.

On the rock he'd been sitting on, a patterned sack came into view.

Rossa knew better than to argue. He'd said twelve and she'd hit twelve, but here was a thirteenth to taunt her.

She drew her dagger and flung it at the cloth. The blade struck the centre of the target, then tipped over onto the ground, taking the sack with it.

"All thirteen," she said.

"And now you're a blade short, with only half a quiver of arrows, going to meet the contact who sent you on your quest. Not all men are honourable, and those who would hire one assassin to kill for them aren't above hiring others, so that they don't have to pay the first," Father said, drawing both daggers.

Rossa swallowed. She had one knife in easy reach, but to draw any of the others, she'd need to take her gaze off her opponent, which would be a costly mistake.

Perhaps if she could reach the sack and the knife she'd thrown…

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