15. First Combat

The Carver class guided the knife with horrifying certainty. The blade entered the woman’s abdomen along the line that Clean Cut showed him, where resistance was weakest and damage would be greatest. For a heartbeat everything seemed to stop. Her breath caught. Then she gasped and let out a scream sharp enough to slice through the whole road.

The shock struck Alistair harder than he expected. He had fantasized about hurting slavers more times than he could count, shaping revenge in too many ways to remember them all. None of those imaginings had prepared him for the reality of a blade sinking into a living body and the immediate knowledge that he had done it. The surge of emotion ran through the connection and spilled into his other bodies. Hatred, triumph, nausea, fear. If the woman had been weaker, he might have frozen.

Instead, she proved stronger and more vicious than that. One hand flew to the wound, but she stayed on her feet. Her other hand snapped up with a knife that seemed to appear from nowhere, and she slashed at him with vicious speed. The strike cut through the space where he had been a fraction too recently. Only his improved reflexes and the clone’s desperate retreat kept the blade from opening him.

She snarled at him and came again. He still did not know her class, but no harmless trade moved like that. She moved through pain as if it were an inconvenience rather than a wound. Her left hand stayed pressed to the bleeding cut in her belly while the right kept working the knife. Alistair retreated once more, barely escaping the next slash. Her curses grew fouler, and some cold, offended part of him noticed.

Then clarity cut through the instinct. He had been fighting on instinct. Worse, he had been fighting like a slave, flinching backward from the pain, from the threat, from the simple fact of being attacked by someone of the kind he feared most.

The realization sickened him.

The clone was expendable. He could afford to be reckless.

The next time she lunged, he stopped trying to avoid everything and met the attack. Her knife drove into his side, and pain burst through the clone hard enough to whiten the edges of his vision. At the same instant, Clean Cut laid another line before him, clean and merciless. He obeyed it without hesitation. His blade flashed across her throat.

The woman stumbled.

For one second, they stood wounded and swaying. Her eyes widened in dawning understanding. Blood welled between her fingers. Alistair felt his own lips twist into a smile that looked nothing like kindness.

Then her knife fell.

She grabbed at her neck with both hands, trying to hold in what was already spilling through her fingers. Stubbornly, hideously, she stayed upright longer than he thought possible. The wound in her belly still bled. Now the throat bled too. She tried to speak and only managed a wet choking noise.

He was ready to cut her again.

In the end, he did not need to. Her knees buckled first. Then she pitched forward onto the road and stayed there.

One slaver down.

The faint brush of EXP that followed through the Guide might have disgusted him in any other situation. Here it only steadied him. No slaver should be allowed to live.

He had no time to dwell on it.

The clone was bleeding badly from the side wound. If pain were all that mattered, dismissing the clone would have been sensible. The hurt spilled through the connection even after he dulled the body as much as he could. But he needed every clone he had. So he crouched instead, breathing hard through the pain, and carved a strip from the woman’s tunic to bind the injury as tightly as he could. The blood soaking through was concerning. He reminded himself that this was still only a clone.

Then his attention caught on her knife. It looked better than the one he had brought. He picked it up, shoved himself upright, and ran toward the trees where Runner had fled with the girl.

Ahead, the rescue had gone badly.

Runner had made full use of Sprint and the extra STA Alistair had gained through weeks of work. The clone had been fast enough to snatch the girl and break for the wilderness before the couple understood what was happening. But the man pursuing them was faster than he had any right to be. Runner had gained ground at first, then lost it little by little despite every desperate push of the class skill.

The girl had stopped struggling, and that should have helped.

They were almost at the right place when the man crashed into the Runner from behind.

The hit sent both clone and girl tumbling through dirt, roots, and brush, the ugly roll ending in a crack of pain. Bones gave somewhere in the Runner’s body. The girl cried out. The man did too, though his voice carried rage instead of hurt.

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The Runner tried to rise and failed. The body would not answer properly. Even turning hurt. He managed only enough to look toward the girl and rasp, “Run.”

She stayed where she was.

She lay where she had fallen, crying and dazed, too weak and frightened to obey. The man took his time getting up. The delay told Alistair everything he needed to know about him.

The slaver was angry, but enjoyment sat beneath it.

He came toward the fallen clone slowly, savoring the moment, his knife already in hand. Through pain and fading control, Alistair recognized the type immediately. A torturer, the kind of man who needed suffering to feel satisfied.

He was afraid. A month ago, when the Company still owned his body, he would have begged the Five to let him faint before the real pain began. A little while ago, he might have dismissed the clone to escape what was coming. But something had changed in him. He had already tasted one kill. The thrill of that first kill still lingered beneath the fear.

The slaver crouched, grabbed Runner by the hair, and forced his head up.

Agony jolted through the damaged body. Something shifted out of place under the skin, and Alistair had to pull most of his awareness away just to stop himself from dismissing the clone by reflex. The man’s face hovered close now, heavy and eager. His grin made Alistair’s stomach turn. Worse, the bastard wet his lips as if savoring a meal.

He pushed through the pain and forced a reply onto Runner’s face.

Alistair smiled.