Fanfic:The Right Moment

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The Right Moment
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There was one woman in the Tower more terrifying than a Fist of Trollocs. She was a woman whose displeasure was more blood-curdling than the eyeless gaze of the Myrddraal. A single harsh word from her could send any Tower denizen running for cover, and the Creator forbid that she should ever turn that power against the very stones of its foundation…

The entire place could come tumbling down.

This woman seemed about as old as the Grey Tower, and about as grey…but it was not the Amyrlin Seat.

No. This woman was the Mistress of the Kitchens.

From time to time, said terrifying personage got it in her head that sending the full ranks hopping was an amusing pastime. Normally, the Tower’s stores of meat either came purchased from the local farms or off local hunters. Other times, the learning ranks would be allowed to take hunting excursions and their game was then to feed them and their compatriots.

Today was one of those other days, and the Mistress of the Kitchens–if she actually had a name, only the vaunted members of the triumvirate were likely to know it and most believed that even they did not–had picked a victim from the fully ranked members of the Warder Yards.

Her choice had been Lysira Viathene Walker Gaidar.

No one said “no” to the Mistress of the Kitchens.

And so it was that the diminutive Gaidar was strapped with a brace of long daggers, and outfitted with her recurve bow and a quiver full of arrows at her hip. True to the name she had borne during her formative years prior to and for a while after coming to the Tower, the small dark-haired woman slipped through the foliage as silent as a mouse. The forest was lush just beyond Hama Valon and she could find traces of deer nearly everywhere she looked.

She had been tracking a large one for some time now. Then she came to a sudden half, spotting it grazing on the leaves of a low hanging branch not far ahead of her. Her breath stilled in her throat as she pulled four arrows from her quiver and held them in her bow hand. Placing one on the string and nocking it, she aimed swiftly and carefully.

The distance was not far and her target was not small. Very little accounting for space covered was needed, and the wind was almost non-existent that day. She sighted, pulled, and released with practiced ease from decades of archery.

Just before the arrowhead would have pierced the creature’s heart, a noise somewhere off to the east caught its attention. It jerked just enough for the arrow to land shy of where it needed to be and if Lysira had had a voice, she would have cursed.

Instead of bolting into the trees like a normal buck, the thing whirled its head with its large rack of antlers around towards the source of its adversary. Then it did something she never would have anticipated: it charged. Her black eyes widened as the words rutting season came to mind and she skipped a step back.

Swinging her hand, she let her bow arm drop as she looked up to see a branch not too far above her. She jumped, catching it with one hand and pulling herself up enough to swing her bow and bow arm over it. Fallen branches crunched under the deer’s cloven hooves as it hurried in her direction and she shifted her body weight up, folding herself over it just in time for the thing to pass underneath.

The buck seemed to know it had passed its enemy because it skidded to a halt, spinning around and snorting with fury. The blood poured down from the wound in its shoulder as it wildly flung its head from side to side, seeking the source of its anger. With the branch pressed against her waist as she hung over the wood like a piece of laundry, she watched the buck upside down with her hair dangling under her.

It was coming near again and if it reared, the prongs of that rack could pierce her skull…

Well, flame it all… she thought as she put her bow arm down, using the other to pull an arrow awkwardly from the quiver resting horizontal against the branch. The blood was rushing to her head, disorienting her, but she found and embraced the silence in her mind. She remembered all the training that had been ingrained in her since she could remember after coming to the Tower.

It was as if Caden’s rasping voice itself drove into her head. He told her that the situation didn’t matter, because to say she could not do it because of this or that was nothing more than an excuse, and excuses were for fools and weaklings.

Lysira was neither, and she had long proven it.

Watching the buck see her as she pressed the arrow into place, she sighted its upside down form and focused her black eyes directly between its own.

Time was short. Breathe in. Pull the string. Breathe out and release.

The arrow flew true and at this range, its power was enough to drive itself between the beast’s eyes. It continued several steps and the tips of those antlers drew frightfully near before its brain and body caught up to one another. It swayed on its hooves before collapsing to the ground. She let out a harsh breath as she pushed herself up.

Before she dropped herself to the ground, she heard a second crash in the trees and wondered if there was another deer…but then she recalled that something had startled her quarry in the first place. Instead of dropping down, she pushed herself up and clutched her lithe but muscular thighs around the hearty branch, holding herself in place.

The sound that followed was distinctly human. It was the shirek of a woman and then the sound of light footsteps running through the brush.

“Get away from me!” the woman screamed. Her voice was panicked, desperate. The rest of Lysira’s muscles tensed with a second rush of adrenaline that crashed against the walls of her inner silence, but she resisted the temptation to act rashly. She knew she wouldn’t have long to wait to know more, and she didn’t.

With the fabric of her dress torn at the shoulder, a pale-haired woman rushed between a pair of trees. Just as she burst through the greenery, two men were right behind her. One of them, a wiry creature with a leer made worse by the scar on his lip, reached her and grabbed her. She spun around in his vicious grip. Even from this distance, Lysira could see the fabric around the woman’s arm bunching in that tight hold.

Right behind him was a burlier man who grabbed her other side. The two of them began to wrestle her down, but she kicked and bit.

Lysira already had an arrow to her bow, but she knew that she had to be as careful as she was quick if she didn’t want to hit the woman too. She breathed in as she sighted the burly man’s head, because he was likely to be her biggest problem–literally and figurative. He was furthest from her but she narrowed her focus in on his head and neck, waiting for just a moment for her opening.

The group was not as close as the buck had been, but this was not a shot across a long battlefield… She released the arrow. It whistled as it cut through the air and then drove into the soft flesh just below his jaw. He clutched it with a gurgling sound as his blood splashed his victim’s face.

His skinny companion looked at him with a shout, letting go of the woman in his shock. She overcame hers first and scrambled away while the second man swung his head around to find Lysira in the tree.

What he shouted at her was decidedly unkind as his grappled for something at his belt. She didn’t know what it was as it came flying at her, but she was already dropping to the forest floor. By the time her feet hit, his were pounding the ground and running for her. She got her last arrow from her bow hand and onto the bow, against the string. The aim and draw was fast, and could not be as precise as she would have liked.

It hit him hard where his shoulder and chest met, making his scream with a rather womanly sound, but his momentum and rage kept carrying him forward. She spun her bow hand around, using the curved wood to catch him in the throat and hold him away as they crashed backward to the ground with his slim form over her. Even skinny, however, he still was larger than she.

He hacked from the hardwood against his windpipe but still reached for her. She clung to her silence to focus, even as his hands reached for her neck. With her other hand, she pulled an arrow from her quiver and wrenched her arm up. It was not the least awkward of movements, but she managed to drive the arrow hard into his eye.

Shrieking, he flailed back and clutched at his face as the vitreous fluid of his burst eyeball ran down his face mixed with blood. She did not let up, however, and rose up as he fled back. As she pressed forward, she drove the shaft deeper until it pierced his brain and he fell to the ground with her knee in his chest. He twitched once and then went still.

“By the Light!”

It was a woman’s voice, breathless and quivering. Lysira was on her feet and spinning around to see the girl with the torn dress, which she could now see was torn at the skirts too. They had gotten close, she reflected, using the silence to keep her rising gorge at bay.

“Are…are you from the Tower?” the woman asked, trying to hold her modesty together.

Lysira nodded. This woman would come back with her, whether she wanted to or not. She needed to have the Yellows look her over, the Gaidar decided.

“Th-thank you,” the woman whispered. “Those men…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

Looking back at the men, Lysira reflected that the buck had gotten off lightly. Although it was nothing compared to what the Mistress of the Kitchens would have done to them. As she determined who would have to come back for the buck and the bodies, and gestured for the woman to follow her back to the Tower, a macabre voice in the back of her mind reflected that the Mistress of Kitchens likely would have had those two ‘men’ stewing in her cookpot by nightfall…