The Assassin

                                                    The Assassin

The familiar sounds of sword fighting and guttural war cries met my ears. Along with the gasps that are incited by fatal blows. I loosened my swords in their scabbards, a battle was imminent. Suddenly an unfamiliar person burst into the hallway that leads to the king’s chambers.

Obviously oblivious to the fact that I was standing outside the doors to the chambers, my remaining foe pulled off his helm, releasing long flowing golden hair. I gasped; this alerted her to my presence. She dropped her helm and whirled to face me, swords drawn. A look of surprise and recognition washed over her but it quickly changed into a smirk. “Mitrian, is that you?”, I questioned though I knew the answer already. Her smirk only confirmed it. This was my left handed, childhood friend. The fact that I would have to kill her, or at least try to, made me take a step back. As I looked into her cold and savage blue eyes that were once filled with warmth, I knew that I would not fight someone that I once considered a sister, but instead a savage stranger. My heart was beating fast as she approached me. It was now or never.  I leapt forward and drew my long swords in the same movement, but she too was fast and she met my assault with an amazing riposte that I just managed to parry. I jumped backwards then forwards again with my swords whirling in a clockwise attack that aimed to disarm her. The sword in my right hand slammed into her cross-guard of her scimitar but she managed to keep a grip on it. The sword in my left hand met its mark with more success and her rapier went cart-wheeling out of her hand. I was expecting more resistance so the fact that she relinquished her grip so easily took me off guard and off balance, leaving the left side of my head totally exposed. She tossed her scimitar into her right hand and sent it slicing into my head. But in her eagerness to kill me she had forgotten to reverse her grip on her single sided weapon when it landed in her right hand. So instead of cleaving my head open she had bludgeoned it with the blunt side of her sword. Flashes of white hot pain lanced through my head and as I staggered around in my semi-conscious state I tripped over my feet. Again in her eagerness to rid the world of me she made a mistake, this time her error would mean her demise. Griping her sword in both hands she leapt into the air with a blood frenzied shriek. Her sword was high over her head and her legs were poised to place her into a squatting position when she landed, one on each side of my body. Though her attack would have proven lethal if it had struck true, she had left her whole body open to attack. I saw this and even in my drunken state I acted on impulse and instinct and drove both of my swords through her chest, she landed dead right beside me.

The fact that I had killed a childhood friend weighed heavily on my conscious. But I knew I needed to alert my king, for, even though I doubted it, there might be more assassins coming. As I tried to rise to my feet my dwindling strength ebbed out of me and I collapsed un-conscious near Mitrians corpse.