Everyone has a flaw that inevitably becomes his or her downfall.   Dalanesca’s flaw happened to be that of indecision.  As she counted it, she had made quite the mistake a month ago and failed to properly execute a contract.  That had proved to be quite troublesome to her.  Not only had she failed assassinate her target – she had ended up going to bed with him, and that had made for an awkward morning.  There had been brief explanations, confusion, and a quick departure.  Fortunately for her, she had not run into the would-be target since then.  Unfortunately, she had run into some friends of the client who had requested the hit.  

The problem had been that she had not quite gotten around to returning the crescents that had been paid to her as a down payment when she decided that she was no longer going to fulfill the hit.  She hadn’t intentionally withheld the return of the coin, it had slipped her mind more or less.  With the doubt of whether she wanted to continue her life as an assassin in the forefront of her mind, other things were falling to the wayside, and she was letting her doubt get the better of her.  The client had sent some people to retrieve the coin from her, and it had ended up in a brawl – and she had, for once, ended up on the losing side.  She had found herself lying face down in an alleyway behind a tavern in Adeluna.  She had become distracted, which had allowed for one of the bastards to sneak up behind her and crack her on the back of the head, knocking her unconscious.  

The assailants had taken nearly all of her weapons, save the spine sheath she always wore beneath her clothing.  Though the garb she chose to wear was tight against her skin, the ridges where the leather corset laced up along her spine hid the bulge from the sheath.  They also relieved her of a large portion of her coin, though they had been kind enough to leave her a small amount still.  

When she had come to, she had a nasty bit of a headache, thanks to the blow she had taken to the back of her head.   Taking a moment, she surveyed her surroundings, which included checking for her weapons.  ”Shit,” she muttered under her breath, realizing that her wrist and ankle sheaths had been removed.  Instinctively, she crossed her arm over her neck and reached behind her, feeling for the hilt of the dagger.  She let out a groan as excruciating pain came from her shoulder – possibly a side effect of her fall when she had been attacked from behind.  She felt a bit better when her fingers brushed against the cool steel, knowing that she was not completely unarmed.  

With a bit of effort, she hoisted herself into a standing position, feeling a bit dizzy on her feet.  After a moment she had righted herself, and took a look down the alley behind her.   She realized  that the alley she was in ran directly behind the Winking Mermaid.  ”You’re the bane of my existence, you know that?” she said to the building.  It seemed as though every time something had gone wrong as of late, it had involved that establishment in some way or another.  She was not so naïve as to think that the tavern itself was to blame for her indiscretion, but it made her feel better to scapegoat it.

At that moment, her ear caught the sound of footsteps echoing down the alley.  She whipped her head round only to see a group of four men headed towards her.  She was about to turn heel and head out of the alley, until she could see that one of the men was carrying what looked suspiciously like one of her wrist daggers.  She stopped, mid-turn.  She wanted her dagger back. 

The group stopped its advance as recognition came over her face.  They knew that she was aware that they were the ones who had put her into this situation, and she was clearly unhappy about that.  They didn’t completely cease, however, as the man to the left center of the group called out to her down the alley.  ”We came back to see if we had a job to finish,” he said, a snide tone to his voice.  She rolled her eyes upwards for a moment before bringing her gaze back to the speaker, her voice sounding annoyed.  

”If you meant to kill me, you’ve done a piss poor job of it,” she said, her voice unwavering.  One of the men let out a chuckle – the one holding her dagger.  ”I’ll be having that back, if you don’t mind?” she continued.  The men stayed where they were.  The one furthest to the right spoke to her this time, a rapier grasped in his hand.  ”You should’ve just killed him,” he said, shaking his head slowly.     

”Wouldn’t have to be doing this to you if you hadn’t backed out on that contract,” he continued, the group beginning to advance towards her and drawing their weapons.  ”S’a shame, really,” he continued.  ”But if you can’t hold up your end of the deal, we can’t have you around.  No loose ends, and all,” he said, with a shrug – though his voice didn’t sound sorry in the slightest.

Just lovely, she thought, mentally preparing herself for battle – though truth be told, she was beginning to get a bit worried on if she could hold her own.  Her head still throbbed, and something wasn’t quite right with one of her legs, so she found herself a bit wobbly on her feet. ”Look, you’ve got the coin back from me, and you’ve hurt my pride as well as caused me physical pain.  Isn’t that enough?” she asked.  She reached to withdraw her dagger from her spine as the men grew closer, and nearly screamed in pain.  She felt downright pathetic.  Was this how it was going to end for her?  In a back alley being accosted by some thugs for a client she hadn’t even met in person?  

The man furthest to the left of the four came at her quickly now, blade above his head and poised to strike.  She had managed to draw her blade out and get it into a parrying glance, but the force from her attacker’s blow cause the pain to flare up in her shoulder and pushed her down to her knees, a shout of pain escaping her lips.  The man’s blade pushed against her own, and she was unsure how much longer she would be able to hold him off.

Raiding had been good to Galin since he had come south. It put enough crescents in his purse to live comfortably and he had been able to improve his arms from the spoils of the last battle. Instead of the half-rotted leather jerkin he had grudgingly taken from Domnall when he rejoined the company, he now owned a thick, padded, leather cuirass and he replaced his sword as well. The old blade Domnall had laying about was a crude thing of southern make, long and heavy and crude. Its edges were nicked and blunted, making it more like a club or a cleaver than a proper sword. While many blades from Adeluna were well-forged just as many were made of softer steel, likely to bend and chip in a fight and after the civil unrest, many of those blades had been captured by the Northmen. Galin’s ended up cracking the skull of a man at arms in one of Domnall’s smaller actions and he left the blade there, taking the dead man’s sword instead. It was Northern work and it made Galin smile when he yanked it from the dead man’s scabbard. The blade had the wispy pattern through the middle of the blade that spoke to the blade’s construction in the Highlands, where softer and harder steel were tempered together, leaving a blade that was sharp enough to slice and thrust but flexible enough not to shatter in a melee. He needed to find a name for the blade, he knew, as most Northmen named their swords like they did their hounds and horses, but the right name had not come to him yet.

He wore the sword nearly every waking moment, even though most often he relied on the heavy, thick-spined fighting knife that the Northmen used in the press of the shield wall. It was a fortuitous thing that evening then, as he leaned against the clapboard wall, relieving himself of the night’s ale. “Never buy the stuff, just rent it,” he grunted to himself as he pissed loudly against the boards in the rear of the tavern. He had been visiting Isabella that night, or had planned to when she was finished her duties in the taproom. She was a lively girl and the two of them had hit it off well in the last month. The men back at the company’s small holding had begun to joke that soon he would end up with a bastard or a wife, or maybe both if things kept up, and part of him did not truly mind the idea. He had not really recovered from losing his fiancée in the war and Isabella proved to be a welcome source of comfort as he found himself again in the south.

Tying his trousers back up, he shifted his sword belt so it hung more easily at his side and turned the corner to head back into the tavern. In the dimly lit alley ahead, he saw a few figures in a confrontation, four men advancing on what looked like a woman in the distance. “No sir, no sir I won’t,” he mumbled to himself. “I haven’t butted into another man’s business since I was in the North, at which time it nearly got me killed.” Shaking his head and accepting the violence of the city as commonplace, he started to turn away when he watched the woman defend herself and saw she was already hurt. Her cry of pain slowed him and he looked a moment more and watched the man kick her in the ribs. He could have ended things then with a quick cut but the man wanted to drag it out. “Oh, why’d he had to go and do that for…” Galin, no stranger to violence, growled and stepped back into the alley. Violence was one thing. Cruelty was another. He pulled his sword out of its scabbard and kissed the small shield inscribed on the pommel, the symbol of the Northmen’s god.

The three men were focused on the woman, two leaning closer to watch the leading man take his time killing her as her defense grew more and more desperate. The farthest man, maybe uncomfortable with the cruelty or maybe he was standing watch. If it was the latter, he did not do a good enough job. Galin clapped a hand over the man’s mouth and before he could draw his own weapon, Galin rammed his sword through the man’s back, shattering ribs and piercing his heart in a single, massive heave. The man let out a soft whimper, stifled by Galin’s hand, and slumped down, head before he hit the cobbled street. Wrenching the blade free, Galin stepped over the dead man with a smile. “Oh boys,” he said with a mockingly cheerful tone. “How about we have a talk, you and I, and you stop beating on a woman in an alley like a pack of limp-dicked cowards, eh?” The two men who had been watching the apparent leader turned and charged him with a shout, while the leader kicked the woman again before shouting abuse at Galin as a bastard, intermeddling son of a whore.

As the men charged, Galin stepped back over the body of the man he killed and held his blade in both hands in front of him. The first of the two men stumbled as his boots slipped on the blood-slick cobbles, nearly losing his grip on his mace as he floundered. The other was more cautious and stepped over the body as he swung a great chopping blow with his falchion. The heavy, curved blade hissed at Galin and he took another step back out of its arc. The man followed him, over his friend’s corpse, and swung again, a low cut to test Galin’s speed. He was a true swordsman, Galin thought with grudging respect as he parried the strike on the flat of his blade. Sparks struck in the alley and the sound of blade on blade rang like a blacksmith’s forge. One of the man’s blows deflected off the crossguard of Galin’s sword and thumped against the hardened leather of his cuirass, scoring a cut but not penetrating the armor. As the blow struck, Galin grabbed the man’s wrist and jerked him off balance, then thrust up with his own blade into the man’s thigh. He felt the steel sink through flesh until it scraped against bone and as he twisted it free, he felt the warm pulse of blood on his hand. The blow would be fatal, he knew, severing the artery in the leg, but the man did not die immediately. Instead, he swung one last time, putting the last of his strength into the strike, a horizontal slash at Galin’s waist. The leather armor took much of the force from the blow, but the falchion bit deep and Galin felt his tunic dampen with his own blood while his opponent sunk to the ground. Grinning, he turned to the other man, spreading his arms wide. “I am Galin Ochiern and I killed Aelric of Egjora in the Sarchu. Come, die on my blade, you coward son of a bitch. Join your two friends waiting to serve me in the Otherworld and tell them it was I that sent you there. Come and die!"

Her mind had now entered full blown panic mode.  The force that the man exerted upon his blade was becoming too much for her to bear, and she could feel her arms weakening by the second.  The gravel dug into her knees through the thin leather of her legs.  Coupled with the pain from her shoulder, it was becoming too much.  To her relief, the man released the pressure of his blade and drew it back, which she thought would give her a moment to regain her composure – but she thought wrong. 

Within seconds, the man had landed a heavy blow to her chest with his boot.  She fell backwards to the pavement, knees still bent, and the back of her head made contact with the solid ground.  Her vision became somewhat blurry and the wind had been completely knocked out of her.  For a few moments, she gasped for breath, seemingly unable to draw in enough oxygen to satiate her lungs.  Her eyes were shut tight, unable to take the dizzying effect of having hit her head on the ground.  She rolled onto her side, knees drawn up towards her chest. For a moment, she accepted that this was how her story was going to end – lying on the ground in a dirty alley – but the voice of another called out and broke the silence.  

She could not make out what he was saying; only that he seemed to be taunting or antagonizing her attackers in some fashion.  The man who had landed the kick to her ribcage moved from his position, now standing behind her.  She couldn’t see what was happening, only hear.  Whatever had been said to him had clearly upset him, as the attacker landed another kick on Dalanesca, this time in the small of her back.  The pain shot up her spine and she screamed out in agony, writhing on the ground.  

Pain blinded her, but she could still make out muffled sounds – like the laughter that burst forth from her attacker’s mouth.  Apparently he found it amusing to beat a woman as she lay on the ground.  She could hear other sounds happening behind her – which, unbeknownst to her, were the sounds of Galin dispatching some of her attackers.  The specific man who had kicked her had stepped a few paces away from her, now shouting obscenities in the direction of the newcomer.  

After a few seconds, she was able to focus her vision enough to see clearly – though Galin was still too far away for her to make him out clearly in the dark alley.  She could see that the man had his back to her, and took this opportunity to drag herself to her feet, as quickly and quietly as she could.  A sharp pain shot through her chest, a clear indicator to her that at least one of her ribs was most likely broken.   She managed to keep quiet, despite the pain.  A warm sensation ran down her neck and she reached round, only to pull her hand back sticky with her own blood – clearly an injury sustained from her head hitting the pavement during the first kick that her assailant had landed on her.

She stood slightly wavering, uneasy on her feet.  Her head pounded furiously, and her balance felt slightly off.  With her uninjured arm, she reached to pull her blade out of her spine sheath, but realized after a moment that it was not there.  She then recalled having already pulled it out, and her eyes scanned the area – she found it discarded on the ground near where she had lain during the assault, less than a foot away from her.  She bent over as much as her injured chest would allow her and managed to grab it, the weight feeling awkward in her non-dominant hand.  Slowly, she walked towards her attacker, who clearly was convinced that she still lay on the ground.  The man still yelled at the new character that had arrived as he seemed to be dispatching the remaining men – Dalanesca could make out the form of one laying on the ground already in the distance, and happened to look at the right time as the man took out another.

As she quietly crept towards the man, she could see, grasped in his hand, one of her own daggers.   She had been deciding the best course of action, and seeing her prized weapon grasped in that miscreant’s hand was enough to make the decision for her – though perhaps the injuries she had sustained weren’t exactly helping her in thinking clearly.  When she was less than half a foot from the man, she cleared her throat.  ”Hey,” she said, her voice not sounding nearly as confident as she planned for it to.

The man whipped around, surprise visible in his eyes even in the darkness of the alley.  She raised her dagger, ready to strike, but the man moved faster as he was without injury.  As she brought the blade of her longer dagger down towards him, he jabbed at her with her own dagger.  She screamed out as the blade stabbed into the bicep of her already-injured limb, but still held true with the unsteady lunge at her opponent.  The dagger lodged sideways into the man’s throat, and she exerted force until she could push the blade no more.  She let go of the blade, which still stuck out from the man’s neck, and took a step back.  His eyes stayed wide, blood bubbling at his lips as he sputtered.  He was trying to say something, but the sound wouldn’t come out.  He dropped to his knees, and then forward, sputtering and coughing for a moment before falling still.  She looked down at him for a moment, blinking emptily.  

Slowly her attention turned to the dagger that stuck out of her right arm, and a feeling of nausea washed over her.  After a moment it subsided and she reached over, pulling the dagger out.  She cursed out loud at her own stupidity as the blood began to freely flow.  ”Shit,” she mumbled, fumbling with her uninjured arm to tear a chunk of cloth off her tunic, leaving a section of the bare skin of her side exposed.

Before bandaging her arm, she turned her attention towards the other group that was fighting – the new one was yelling something.  She stared, attempting to listen – though her vision was beginning to cloud over, and the sound dampened.  All of the injuries coupled together were becoming just too much for her, and she could feel the darkness of unconsciousness creeping up on her.  She fought it until she heard the newcomer yell his name to his opponents.  ”There’s no bloody way,” she muttered, before her legs gave out and she fell to the ground, finally having succumbed to everything.  The wound on her arm lay unbandaged, trickling blood to the ground.

The man with the mace needed no invitation.  He rushed Galin before the last of his words left his mouth, snarling at him with a mouth full of rotting teeth.  As he brought down the mace with brutal force toward Galin's head, the Northman dropped to one knee and raised his sword.  He kept his right hand tight around the leather-wrapped handle and pressed his left palm up against the flat of the blade.  As the mace swung low, it clattered against the sword but Galin, wielding the blade like a staff, pushed back with both hands.  He let the mace slide down the length of the blade, its force already spent, as he whipped the pommel of his sword at the man's snarling face.  The heavy, iron, three-lobed pommel of the sword whipped up toward Galin's assailant and smashed into the man's left eye.  Howling, the man fell back, his eye ruined into bloody pulp and the bones around it shattered.  Cursing, he swung at Galin again, a wild blow from a desperate man who faced his own death. 

Galin let the blow swing by him and as the man tried to recover, Galin hacked down with his sword on the neck of his opponent.  Blood spurted again in the dark alley and the man let out a strangled whimper.  Wrenching the blade free, Galin gripped it with both hands and brought it down again, severing the man's head so it rolled along the blood-spattered alley.  He turned back to where the woman had been and saw that her opponent was down as well, and Galin smiled.  He stuck his fingers into the rent in his armor and felt his side.  The falchion had barely broken the skin so he stuffed a scrap of cloth into the armor as a bandage then went about the work of plundering the dead.  The three he killed were hired blades of the lowest order, thugs who would take a man's life for enough coin for a drunk and a hump after, so he was not hopeful.  Their purses yielded a few debased silver coins and, strangely, each had a gold crown from Tarishatar.  Each was worth nearly fifty crescents, so Galin tucked them inside his tunic rather than his purse.  Their weapons and clothes were nothing of note, and after he stripped them, he left their pale, blood-speckled bodies at the edge of the alley as a message to whoever sent them.

Finally, he stooped over the woman that had been the target of all the excitement.  Beneath the blood and the bruising, he recognized her as a woman he had a drunken fling with a month before in the Mermaid.  Her name was slow to come but her face was familiar.  Using the sleeve torn from one of the dead men's tunics, he bound the wound on her arm then lifted her head so he could cushion it with the piled clothes from the corpses.  He did not want to move her until she was conscious for fear that there were more serious injuries he could not see.  Instead, he went back into the tavern's small yard and stuck his head into the kitchens, calling for a bucket of water and a blackjack of ale.  Isabella, hearing his voice, brought them quickly and gasped at the sight of the blood all over his clothes.  "Don't worry love," he said with a wink.  "Ain't much of it mine.  And be sure and tell the owner he's got four dead men in the alley, so if the Watch comes by, he won't be caught looking a liar."  He leaned closer and kissed her, then went back into the alley.  "Won't be but a minute," he called back as he rounded the corner.

Sitting on an upturned barrel next to Dalanesca, he sipped his ale and felt the battle tension flowing out of him.  He would need to have a smith put a new edge on his sword, he thought abstractly, as though that was the most pressing concern.  Instead of waiting longer, he put down the mug and picked up the bucket.  "Up we go, hun." he said, laughing to himself, as he splashed a half bucket of freezing water over the unconscious woman's face, then nudged her with his foot.  "You alive?"

The world around her was dark.  Her hears heard nothing and her eyes saw nothing.  The blackness with blissful to her subconscious – a welcome respite from the utter shit she had been dealing with for the past while.  While unconscious, she did not have to worry about how she would deal with the consequences of her indiscretion.  She had failed more than one contract as of late, but some were a bit more dire than others in terms of the repercussions.  Most of the contracts she had not completed were more due to the fact that she was no long certain that assassination was a field she wanted to associate herself with.  Those contracts which she had voluntarily not followed through with usually ended quite civilly, as she had not been paid any coin in advance.

The contract in question which had led to her current state was a bit different.  The sum of silver she had been given as a down payment had not been returned swiftly enough.  As a result, she lay motionless on the cold, hard ground of the alley.  Blood slowly trickled from the stab wound on her arm and the gash on the back of her head.   She clearly had no idea of the situation unfolding after she had fallen unconscious.  When Galin bent to bandage the wound on her arm, it swung limply with his movements, allowing him to work the bandage as necessary.  Her head rolled slightly against the ground at the movement of her arm, but she did not quite come to.  

Suddenly, she was wrenched back into consciousness quite harshly as Galin tossed the pail of water onto her.  She gasped as she snapped back to reality, the pain of every injury shooting through her nerves, even in the place where Galin’s foot came into contact with her.  It was as though every inch of her body had been injured in the attack.  

She let out a bit of a cough, as some of the liquid had made its way up her nose when she drew in air.  After catching her breath, she lay still for a moment, the reality of the situation coming back to her.  Panic rose, as her vision was still slightly blurry, and she could not quite figure out who was standing over her.  She attempted to scramble backwards, though her injuries were not allowing for much movement.  The man’s voice sounded familiar to her, and she stopped trying to get away, since it wasn’t doing any good. 

Opening her mouth to say something, she was met with a cough instead – which elicited a cry of pain from her.  She was certain that she had at least fractured a rib in the ordeal.  After the coughing had subsided, she looked at the man again, and realization came over her.  She had seen him before she had fallen unconscious.  A fit of anger washed over her mind briefly – it was his fault.  If he hadn’t been so damned charming I probably wouldn’t have failed the hit, she thought to herself.  Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have imbibed quite as much as I did, she continued, on the contrary.  She pushed the thoughts out of her mind, choosing to address him politely, as it most definitely had not been his fault.

”Thanks,” she said, gesturing to the bandaged wound on her arm as best as she could.  She moved slowly and painfully in an attempt to get herself up into a sitting position, as she knew that at this particular moment was out of the question without any sort of assistance.  She managed to get herself propped up into a half sitting, half laying position.  Glancing around for a moment, she noticed the bare portion of her side, looking for a wound.  Moments later she remembered that she had torn the cloth to bandage her arm  - something that Galin had seemed to complete for her.

She could feel a flush rising to her cheeks in embarrassment as she looked at him, momentarily thankful for the abrasions that covered her visage.  The last time she had seen Galin, she had been standing in a room, completely naked, surrounded by knives, while he awoke from their fling the night before.  That had been quite the awkward explanation, but she had been lucky enough that he had accepted her explanation.  The two went on their separate ways, and she had been fortunate to not run into him again – until now.  

”Nice to see you again,” she said sarcastically, adjusting her position and wincing in pain.  ”Would have put something a little more sultry on had I known I was going to be seeing you again,” she quipped, though it was clear that she was cracking jokes to mask her discomfort.  She chose to leave out the fact that the attackers had been after her for not killing him, as that would have been a strange way for one to start a conversation.