Snippet #2715225

Saerin hurried through the crowd, the ends of his sleeves folded in on themselves to hide the blood that had covered them when his daggers had torn holes through the torsos of the two men who had held him pinned just minutes ago. Surprisingly, no one looked close enough at him beneath his cowl to see the blood dripping from his brow to chin. Eventually someone would ind out he was wounded, and then the questions would begin. Not being one who was willing to sit under any scrutiny, that meant the sooner he got out of here, the better. However, he had bigger fish to fry...

Miralda and Zhyle were definitely in trouble, if Artur had been telling the truth. Of the two, Mira had proven to be able to handle herself through her performance in the arena so far. She could probably wrap things up for herself and collect her winnings without too much fuss about it. He could probably leave the town now and meet up with her later, or continue on her own. They had only agreed to travel together for a little while longer...

He shook himself back to reality. The blood loss and strain of his channeling was causing his thoughts to become erratic. He couldn't leave these two, not now. Their fates were linked when they began their journey. He stopped for a moment to re-focus.

If he left the city now, Zhyle was going to be in a bit of a tight spot. A city is not a place one can easily use a bow, especially near a crowded arena, and Saerin had little confidence in the boy's swordsmanship. Plus if his attackers had any type of longer ranged weapon, like a staff or polearm, he would likely lose his weapon before he could get in range (though, if his skill was lacking enough, he would probably be disarmed anyway).

That meant Saerin had several things to do, in order of importance:

1. Make sure Zhyle wasn't killed by an assassin.
2. Drop a small pouch of gold off for Bartholomew's children. Likely just hide it in a place his wife would discover it; the less he had to deal with her the better.
3. Leave a note at the inn for Mira so they could regroup later.
4. Retrieve his horse and get out of this city before anyone deduced that the bloody man running out of the alleyway was related to the streaks of blood on the ground leading to a pile of corpses behind some stacked crates.

Saerin's concentration on this list was broken by shouting near the entrance of the arena. Since it was his best lead at the moment, he started to make his way towards the noise.

He was mildly surprised to see that, while being wounded, Zhyle hadn't been killed by his attacker. That meant the boy was either extremely lucky, more skilled than he had appraised him as being earlier, or just very, very fast. He kept a reasonable distance from the two, ready to spring in if the girl pursuing him was ready to deal a fatal blow, but decided to hold for now. The kid had surprised him already, and he wanted to see if he could do it again.