Her vision was beginning to blur but all her escape routes had been cut off. She still clutched the tulwar she'd stolen from a guard in her right hand, but she couldn't use her shoulder. Even lifting the blade slightly cause pain so intense to shoot through her she nearly lost her grip.
Over the roof on the other side of the building she could hear the guards looking for her. Yelling and interrogating townsfolk in broken english.
They'd taken her son from her over a year ago. A drunken brawl while she'd was serving drinks. Stephen had gone off to the war so she would bring Thomas to work with her, and Will, the owner, would keep an eye on him while she worked. He was usually at the balcony watching her serve drinks, which she didn't mind much, as the patrons were mostly locals and well behaved. But when that caravan had come through there were tensions, and when the fight broke out fists weren't the only things that had started flying. Thomas had run downstairs to protect his mother. She still had the blurred memory of him grabbing a knife and a serving tray and standing over her, waist high compared to the men brawling.
Sudden recognition snapped her back from her morbid memories to her hopeless now. That was the voice she'd been looking for, the caravan leader. She hadn't even known Thomas was killed until she regained consciousness, but she had always held the caravan leader responsible. His job was to keep his men in line, he brought them there, it was his fault.
She vaulted the crest of the building and began an uncontrolled slide down the tiles, the blood still on her boots helping her pick up speed. She twisted so she could take the sword from her right hand in her left. The hazy red fog of rage battling with the blinding white of pain. As she approached the edge of the roof she got ready and threw her weight forward as she pushed off with her legs.
Time slowed, had her mind not been fully occupied with vengeance she might have felt that she was flying. There he was, his gaze slowly rising to see what had made all the noise on the roof. She was headed right for him. For all the shit her luck had handed her in life, for all the horrors life had brought her, it seemed life had decided to give her one last gift, one perfect shot. She was closer now, some of the guards were reacting before others but all differently. Some dove towards cover, others pushed through the crowd to defend their master, still others stood still and grimly grasped for weapons.
He saw her now, and recognition flashed across his face, not of her of course, but of death. She was a sweeping angel, Azrael himself descending to earth to mete out justice. The sun seemed to dim, she feel closer, shifting the blade up, pointing it at the chest of the man that had taken her world away. Time slowed yet further, the light grew yet dimmer.
In her mind all her rage, all her pain, all her frenzy screamed in impatience, cried out for it's final crescendo. The point of the blade was inches away, slipping through the air, gliding serenely for it's fast beating target.
Months of tracking the caravan, stealing to survive and hiding in the woods, all her efforts building to one point, one moment, right now. Almost there, the blade maybe a scant inch away from his chest, time slowing down even more, the sun completely gone now, the scene lit only by an eerie pale glow. She fought the sluggish scene, desperate to drive that point forward, to get that last good thing she could before she was inevitably cut to pieces.
The point was pressing into his coat now, she could almost see it start to cut the fibers in the silk brocade.
And then the light was gone. Everything was blacker than night.
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