บท 80: Stalker on the Prowl
Krix glance down at the wound, "it's through the shoulder … you should be fine."
"That Cyokaian prick," Mitch winced. "Catch that bastard before he gets away!"
Krix swung the crossbow from off his back and , pressed the stock into his sore shoulder. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the duel at the ranch and he was already summoned to do somebody else's bidding; his muscles still screaming and aching.
"He won't get far," Krix said, rising to his feet. " Get inside and send the other!"
Krix leaped down the stairs to the saloon. The arrow at the end of his bowgun guiding him southeast. That is where the attack came from. The Cyoakian fool was no fool afterall, running toward the beggars streets. There he could blend in with those who roamed, asking for loose change, like anybody really had loose change in their pockets.
Grotknot slammed against a wall, peaking around the corner. His beak nose poking out like a sore thumb. Best not give his position away, he thought, keeping to the shadows and draw him out.
Cyoakians were people of the northern forest. How Mitch had made one his enemy out here was beyond Krix. And how Mitch knew it was the one who attacked was a mystery. Maybe he'd been attacked before? Or that he recognized the goose fletching on the arrow? Likely the warcry that had followed the attack.
"I best not make new enemies …" He shook his head, "not when I'm this close to my revenge."
The Dhuragian wasn't good at minding his own business. Never was since he was young. Always finding himself in some form of mischief that his father, a well respected Dhuragian, was always trying to get him out of. He thought of him now as he dipped through shadows, from one building to the next, keeping his eyes always moving; from window, to rooftop, to alleyway. Though his mind was not with him this night.
Thump! Klunk! Thump!
Blurs whoosed past Krix's head as he rolled. He'd caught the sound of the bow sting in time to dodge the volley though his tumble left his head spinning. Uncertain where the arrows had come from. He kneeled against a post that left his backside slightly exposed, where a well placed dart could make it's mark and leaving him bleeding in the streets. But it'd have to be a good shot and by the Cyoakians misfire on Mitch, Krix believed he wasn't dealing with a marksman.
His nerves easing and heart slowly beating, Krix tilted his head, leaving himself exposed to the south, scanning the silhouettes of buildings that were crammed together like blocks. Blackness had disguised all but the outline of each building, while a yellowed-tinted haze hovered ten feet above the ground, oiled streetlamps producing the glow.
These were not fired to kill, Krix realized, but were a frantic volley to create a timely scramble. He rose to his feet. I need to cut him off.
For his age he still had the ability to move, running through the dense streets, keeping his bowgun tilted towards the ground while his coat waved behind him like a cape. The darkness made his mind wander, making him feel as though his eyes were shut, reliving the nightmares that often haunted him, and the voice that never left his head.
When you were surrounded by death you were never able to rid the darkness, he knew.
Krix felt a sharp pain in his arms. Not from carrying the bowgun, but a phantom pain produced from the wounds beneath the bandages around his wrists. He felt it often. A reminder of what must be done, the task that had to be finished, for those that were lost.
"I'll seek vengeance for you, father, " Krix mumbled. "For what he'd done … for Slivers betrayal … you were right not to trust him."
Anger raged inside him, and the target he was after was no longer the hide-wearing, shadow-stalking,
Cyoakian he'd first imagined. Another face appeared: that rounded bald head, thick graying beard, and mangled pancho that Sliver always wore. The man he hunted. The one at the other end of his tale. The one he once called Master.
Krix darted out into a four way crossing. The faint beggars chant brought him back to the streets. Around him people wearing garments that hardly hung over their skin, and faces painted with soot, cried out, children running to him unafraid of the weapon in his mitts.
"Please, anything will do …" A young girl said, her voice soft yet raspy from the sands that covered the street. "A single rimmey?"
"Or an apple," a boy barely able to stand asked. "I've alway wanted to try an apple."
Krix looked upon the kids, grimacing. They were his weakness. "I will never kill a kid," he'd always told himself. Not after what Sliver had done to his three nieces. The children brought back the screams of his sister Kaiva. And the pain from her fists beating into his chest. "There was a bounty for father!" She cried out. "On the night he watched the girls … the bounty hunter had murdered them all. And you brought them here! You defied father and gave them the right to enter our home! Now, get out … and never return! You disgust me." Those words were like knives shoved into his ears. And the last words his sister had ever said to him. The sorrow had taken her a week later.
Krix's hand trembled and he grabbed the purse, tearing it from his belt. "Take it … take it all," he said, tossing the purse away over the heads of the kids. They ran towards it, but before they could reach it another lifted it from the street.
Krix eyes trembled on the girl. She couldn't be any older than fifteen, the age his nieces would've been. With midnight hair draped down and across an old, torn black robe. Her eyes were a bright chestnut brown, and even in the night, and in the gloom, glimmered of hope.
"My name Kyina," she nodded her head, "and we thank you for your offerings."
"Do well to put it to good use." Krix said, nodded back.
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