Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (26 page)

This startled her out of her inaction.
Tarc was horrified to see however, that she took her first two steps without a limp. Looking down he saw that she was barefoot. Without the sock stuffed in the heel of her shoe to throw her off balance she’d evidently forgotten she was supposed to have a lamp. She rose up on her toes after that first couple of steps, but Tarc feared it was too late.

As he threw the saddle on the horse
’s back, Tarc looked over the horse to see the two soldier’s eyes following Daussie. They looked suspicious. Heart sinking, but doing his best to distract them, Tarc said, “You guys on night watch tonight?”

“Yeah,” the man said
, his eyes tracking Daussie as she came back the other way. “Hey, you know what? I think your cripple here has been faking it.” He reached out and grabbed Daussie by the shoulder, spinning her around. “In fact…” he reached out and lifted her chin, “
I
think this is a girl,
pretending
to be a crippled boy.” His eyes searched Daussie’s face. He barked a laugh, “
This
,” he reached up and ripped open Daussie’s shirt to expose the windings around her chest, “is that beautiful little bitch everybody’s been hankering after.” He grabbed Daussie by the wrist, “And I’m gonna be firs…”

The man
’s speech cut off when Tarc’s knife buried itself in his eye socket.

The second man had started forward. His eye widened and he started to duck. A look of dismay was his final expression as the second knife curved after
his eye.

Tarc
ran out of the stall, afraid Daussie might start shrieking and he’d have to clap a hand over her mouth. Instead, she kicked the body of the soldier closest to her. “Assholes!” she said.

Tarc
skidded to a stop beside her, astonished by the change. She was calmly buttoning her shirt back up. Where had his timid sister suddenly gone? “Um,” he said, brilliantly.

Daussie looked up at him.
“What are we gonna do with the bodies?” she asked.

“
I’ll load them onto their horses and take them a long way from here.”

She frowned,
“What if we run into some other soldiers?

“
I won’t.” Tarc said. He waited a moment for her to ask him how he could be sure of that.

Instead, she bent over and pulled the knife out of the first man’s eye socket. Wiping it on
the man’s sleeve, she said curiously, “Where’d you learn to throw a knife?!”

“I, uh, I’ve been practicing.”
She didn’t seem to be surprised by his accuracy, but perhaps she thought anyone could throw that well.

“I’ll clean your knives, while you’re saddling the horses.”

Tarc had just put the saddle on the second horse when Daussie came into the stall where he was working. “Here are your knives,” she said, handing them to him. She watched as he put them away, then said, “Hah, I’d just started wondering where you were keeping them.” She glanced down, “I think I know how to do the straps, if you want to put the first guy on his horse.”

“Okaaay,”
Tarc said still wondering what had happened to his previously faint-hearted sister. He considered asking her, but this seemed like a bad time. He didn’t want to scare this new person away. “I’ll try it with the smaller guy, but I might need help.”

“Okay,” she shrugged, “just call me if you do.”

Tarc dragged the man into the stall. As he had feared, lifting the floppy body onto the horse by himself proved nearly impossible. He called Daussie, and without complaint, while he held the man up by the waist, she took his hands and guided his upper body up and over the saddle. Once in place the man’s body seemed fairly stable. They did the same with the second man, then Tarc checked to make sure the horses were tacked correctly. He wanted whoever found them to think they had ridden out of the stable and been killed somewhere else.

Tarc
wiped up a little blood off the floor and checked outside the stable with his ghost to make sure the way was clear. “Okay, I’ve got this now.”

Daussie
shook her head, “I think I’d better go with you. I can help you make sure these guys don’t fall off, and if they do, you’ll
surely
need help putting them back on.”

That made eminent sense,
though Tarc couldn’t believe she didn’t want to cower in her hideout. He shrugged and said, “Thanks, that would be great.” He led the first horse out and Daussie followed behind. Casting ahead with his ghost, he led them down first one street and another, staying away from streets Tarc could tell were populated by warm bodies. Though it was slow going, despite the turning back and forth they gradually got farther and farther from the tavern. He wished he’d known where the soldiers had been assigned. It would be better if they were found somewhere between the tavern and their assignment as if they’d been attacked in route.

Once, when
Tarc had them double back, Daussie asked, “Why are we turning around?”

“There are some people up around that corner.”
Tarc waited for her to ask why he thought that, but she didn’t. Her ready acceptance of his leadership kind of freaked him out. Years of having her argue with him on every detail of their lives made this sudden acquiescence difficult to comprehend. He kept wanting to ask her about her sudden change, but feared that the mere question might bring the old Daussie back. What if she was merely displaying some kind of shock? She might recover, but he really didn’t want her to.

Eventually, about ten blocks from the tavern
, he led one horse into an alley. He went back out, pointed the horse Daussie had been leading the other direction, and slapped it smartly on the backside. It took off at a startled trot, though it soon slowed. To Tarc’s relief the soldier’s body stayed across the horse’s back. He wanted them to be found a long way from the tavern, but also wanted their death to strike fear into Krait’s men. He thought that finding them belly down across the saddle would be more frightening than finding them on the ground.

For a minute,
Tarc pondered going somewhere else in the town to try to kill another soldier. It would be less suspicious for the tavern if another of their men, one completely unrelated to the tavern, died that night as well. However, he would have to travel across town with Daussie, which would put her at risk as well. He turned back toward the tavern.

They had gone two blocks when
Tarc felt one of Krait’s patrols coming their way. He turned left and they hurried a block to be sure that they could be around the corner before the patrol came into view.

There were people on the street
Tarc had been going to turn onto as well. He wasn’t sure they were Krait’s men, but he and Daussie hurried across that street anyway. The siblings trotted down to the next corner, trying to stay as quiet as they could. Once again there were people in the street to the right, the direction which went towards the tavern. Worse, Tarc could now tell that someone was coming down the street towards them from directly ahead. They had no choice but to turn left and travel away from the tavern.

At the next half-block,
Tarc turned them into a narrow alley. Part way down it he realized with dismay that, although he’d checked the alley for people, he’d been using his ghost to search for bright spots of warmth indicating people on their feet.

Only about 20 feet away, there
was a man lying down under a pile of leaves and debris! Tarc wondered if it was a drunk, but they were a long way from the bars and taverns. Besides, the man looked tense, not sprawled.

He had a
sudden thought. Crouching down a respectable distance away he whispered, “Sgt. Garcia?”

In return he heard Garcia’s voice, “Young
Hyllis?”

“Yes. Are you doing okay?”

“I guess. My wife and kids have had to scatter out to hide with different relatives. I’ve been trying to stay undercover and figure out something to do about these invaders… Unfortunately, I haven’t had any strokes of genius yet.”

“Capt. Pike says that it will be terribly demoralizing for them if som
e of them are killed each night,” Tarc paraphrased. It wasn’t exactly what the captain had said, but Tarc thought it was close enough. “He thought you might be able to kill some of them.”

Garcia snorted softly, “Easier said than done, unfortunately.
Killing a man is hard.” After a pause, “The Captain’s still alive then?”

Tarc
nodded, then realized again that Garcia probably would have a hard time seeing it. “Yes, he’s pretty sick though.”

“Who’s that with you?”

“My sister, Daussie.”

“Jesus, what’s
she
doing out here in town?”

To
Tarc’s great amazement Daussie said, as if it were obvious, “Tarc needed help moving a couple of dead soldiers away from the stable on their horses. If they’d fallen off, he wouldn’t have been able to get them back on.”

“
Dead soldiers
?”

“Oh crap!”
Tarc said. He had been focusing on the conversation instead of keeping his ghost spread as far as possible. A pair of soldiers were about to enter the alley. “Someone’s coming!”

“Where?” Garcia said, lifting his head. The two men came into view, “How did you know…”

“I heard something,” Tarc whispered. “Let’s get out of here!” Then he sagged, “Too late. Two more coming from the other end.”

“Move on a little towards that end,” Garcia whispered back, “when these t
wo go past me, I’ll attack them from behind.”

“Okay.” He turned to Daussie, “Dauss, you hide in that doorway.”
Tarc started slowly towards the far end of the alley. Two soldiers appeared there and started towards him. He hated the trapped sensation. Resisting the temptation to reach for his knife, he wondered if he could brazen it out. “Good evening,” he called.

“Patrol. Stop where you are. We’ve had the feeling you might be trying to avoid us. What are you doing out
this time of night?”

Tarc
didn’t have to pretend to be nervous. Voice trembling, he said, “Just going to talk to my uncle. Is there a problem?” He checked behind him to see what was going on with the two soldiers back there. With horror, he realized Daussie hadn’t hidden in the doorway like he’d told her. Instead she was standing right behind him. The other two soldiers were just passing Garcia’s position.

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” the soldier said, drawing his sword. “Get down on your knees.”

My knees?
Tarc wondered why, but only for a second. He started to lower himself as if he was going to kneel, but at the same time raised his hands as if he were surrendering. At the last moment he reached back over his shoulder.

His arm flashed forward.

One knife on the way, he reached back for another.

The first soldier convulsed, flipping end over end as the knife blade
shot into his brain through the thin bone in the back of the eye’s orbit and set off a massive seizure.

The second soldier simply slumped, quivering
in his own death throes.

Tarc
pulled out his working knife and spun towards the men behind him. Garcia was leaping onto the one farthest away.

Tarc
threw his working knife at the closer one. The bigger knife was quite a bit harder to control, but Tarc had thrown it relatively well. He was able to make it strike the eye, though it went in near the upper part of the orbit. The point of the blade skipped inward off the harder rim of the orbit, down the semi-conical funnel of bone behind the eye and into the brain.

Garcia was struggling with the soldier he had attacked.
Tarc had the impression that he had tried to stab the man in the back but had encountered mail. Now he had the man from behind, wrestling with him. He appeared to be trying to reach over and cut the man’s throat.

Tarc
had thrown all the knives he had.

He was about to
run to the soldier he’d just killed and retrieve his working knife when Daussie said, “Here.”

Tarc
realized she was holding out the knife he’d given her earlier. He took the knife. He’d never thrown this one, but its balance felt fair.

Garcia and his opponent heaved at each other. A twist in their battle put Garcia behind the man from
Tarc’s perspective. The man tried to stab his sword up over his shoulder at Garcia and Garcia ducked his head down.

Tarc
threw Daussie’s knife.

It flew,
curving slightly to follow the man’s head as he hunched against Garcia’s grip. That slight curve was about as much as Tarc could put on the heavy work knife, but it was enough.

As the knife lodged in the base of his brain
, this man also convulsed. The explosive contraction twisted the man free from Garcia’s grip. For a moment Garcia looked panicked, but when the man flopped to the ground and lay there merely quivering Tarc could hear the breath sigh out of him.

Tarc
bent and retrieved his working knife from the man in front of him. Giving it a quick wipe on the man’s clothes, he slipped it in his sheath and stepped to the one who’d been fighting Garcia.