Duck, He's Dead

**Violence Ahead***







"You should choose the right side... make the correct decision. Only one side is walking out of here..." She whispered to her captor as he drew her close.

Blue to give, red to take. Mixed in purple; fear, conviction. The woman was a dancer in all ways. Doomed never to rest, doomed never to find stillness. She knew her captor would not accept it, but she offered it anyway. Blue shrouded in a veil of red. 

A chance was like gold to those who understood it.

But, he had just pulled her up into the saddle. Her words were so gentle they held no consequence. This woman went along with her newfound captivity; she was threatless. Her words were close to his ear. The measured softness was lost, all he heard was weakness. Such distortions as the Black Land teaches to those long accustomed to it.

Another man stood very still with an orc at his back. Watching.

This man was a Southerner with grey eyes that stood out against his dark complexion. The woman's green eyes met the greys for a brief moment. Death loomed like a promise in the air around them. Between their stares, in the sounds. In their breaths. In the tension of the Southerner's posture. Too still.

Then, there came an almost imperceptible jerk of his head to one side as pained cries met their ears from nearby.

There were no words. But when it really mattered, words were nothing. The woman was no fighter, but she did not hesitate. She ducked fast; as low as she could against the horse's neck.

What followed was sound and feeling. The vicious impact of the kukri striking the rider's skull, inches away from her own. It was sickeningly felt through the rider's body behind her, through saddle and horse beneath her. A bodily shockwave. Death. Red and black.

The rider began to sink, slump, then slide. A dragging sound and a restless shift of the horse before his body fell sideways from the saddle and hit the ground.

She knew the moment her captor pulled her into the saddle, Ry would kill him.