The Red Rider Read online

  Leviatha caught the blade on her chin and pushed it down, though it left a red scratch on her skin. Her eyes wide with rage, she grabbed Red's head and pulled it downward into her rising knee. Red felt teeth splinter inside her mouth, tearing her gums. She tottered on her feet, unable to stand straight. Leviatha stepped back and brought her sword around. Red got her knife up just in time, saving herself from being shorn in half, but couldn't stop the blow completely. The impact ripped the weapon from her grasp, sending it with a thunk into the floor, and Leviatha's blade went on to cut her badly over the ribs. Blood poured down her torso, and her head grew light—lighter. Leviatha kicked her in the bottom of the jaw, smashing her upper and lower teeth together so that her broken ones shattered further. This time she did a full flip head over heels, face hitting the ground first. Leviatha grabbed her by the back of her cloak, lifted her and held her in the air at arm's length.

  She grinned. "What did I tell you? You did better than most men, but still, you never had a chance. You should see yourself now, tears coming out of your eyes—you're crying!"

  Red spat blood and teeth into her face. She turned her head away, momentarily closing her eyes. Red drew one of her small daggers and stabbed it through her forearm. Leviatha yelled, slammed her into the ground. She squirmed free of Leviatha's grip and scrambled away, snatched up her long knife and turned just in time to parry a wild slice. Even the glancing contact stung her fingers and nearly disarmed her again. She backpedaled from Leviatha's flurry of avalanche-like blows. Driven to the edge of the room, she dodged a thrust—and the great sword embedded itself in the wall. She put all her weight behind a kick to the side of the blade, snapping it.

  Leviatha backhanded her with the hilt she still held, making blood spray from her mouth and nose. She struck down with what was left of the blade, and this time blocking did relieve Red of her weapon. In desperation, she ducked a punch from Leviatha and tackled her, pushing her back. A gasp from her foe surprised her, and she stared as the broken half of Leviatha's own sword burst from her belly, having impaled her from behind. The hilt tumbled from the big woman's hand, and Red put hands on knees with a sigh of relief. She had won.

  Leviatha grabbed her by the arms and yanked her forward. She gaped as the blade protruding from Leviatha's stomach slid into her body as well, and for an instant they were grotesquely linked together. Then Leviatha pulled herself off the blade, carrying Red with her before toppling forward. They fell together, the limp giant landing on top. Red pushed her body off and she lay on her back, face still. As the victor struggled to her knees, though, she didn't know if she would last much longer. Blood gushed from the huge hole in her abdomen, streaming out between her fingers, and such pain lanced through her she feared she wouldn't be able to stand. And Leviatha's men were still around.

  A big hand shot up, grabbed her around the throat. What..? Leviatha's eyes opened and somehow, still, she smirked at Red. "You really think you'd kill me? I let you think you had won." Keeping those long fingers around her neck, the noblewoman surged up and powered her down, crushing the back of her head into the floor. Red scratched and clawed at her wrist, fighting desperately to break her hold. But then Leviatha lifted her head up slightly and slammed it down again, and again, and again. The strength went out of Red's arms and they flopped to her sides as she lay there staring up in a daze.

  "Come!" she vaguely heard Leviatha say, continuing to hold her down. Footsteps approached and then somebody was kicking and stomping her... one of the men who she'd humiliated before, she guessed, and confirmed it to be the shorter one with a glimpse of his round face. "Enough!" Leviatha said. "Don't kill her—though I'm not sure she'll survive with that wound. Still, get her treated as much as you can and put her in the jail."

  Red wasn't sure why she didn't kill her right away—perhaps she had sympathy for her as a fellow werewolf enemy, though not enough to listen to reason. The guards hauled her to her feet, blood dripping from her face. She could barely see, eyes clouded with agony and tears. She wanted to clutch her stab wound, fearing her guts would fall out of it, but the men had her arms... Leviatha stayed on her hands and knees while they dragged Red away; she had hurt her badly, just not enough to win.

  They carried her dead weight outside and down to the town, then she felt herself being tugged in opposite directions as they tried to go different ways. "Hey, where are you going?" one of them—her stomper, she recognized from his voice—asked.

  "Taking her to the doctor. The boss said to get her treated."

  "Just let the prison medic do it. Look at her, she's probably dying anyway."

  "Still, we should give her the best chance we can."

  She realized their grip on her arms had loosened in their argument. Forcing her weak body to move, she elbowed the man trying to help her and stomped on the other's knee. She twisted free, felled her kinder captor with a punch, and nearly kneed the head off the one who'd kicked her when she was down. She stomped on his groin for good measure, causing him to grab it with an anguished shriek, then stole the nearest horse and rode it barely clinging to consciousness from town.

  #

  She expected to be recaptured quickly, but for some reason no one seemed to chase or at least catch up to her. She didn't know how far she could get in her condition, what with her abdominal wound still bleeding and bleeding, and decided to seek aid. Reaching the mining town, she tried to dismount only to lose her balance and fall painfully in the dust. Some "Red Rider," she thought while she fought back dizziness. She snuck inside and headed for the house of the couple she had helped, figuring there was at least a decent chance they would return the favor

  When she got there, nobody seemed to be home. The door was unlocked, so she let herself in. She wanted to bandage her wounds, but needed to clean them first. Wracked with pain, she limped around looking for the necessary supplies. Spotting some towels on a dresser, she let herself feel a smidgen of relief. She started towards them—then her legs buckled, and she went sprawling while she coughed blood. She tried to raise her head... but a second later, blackness closed in and she passed out.

  Red awakened after an indeterminant amount of time, surprised she woke up at all. She lay in two separate puddles of blood, one originating from the wounds in her torso and the other from her face. She probably hadn't been out too long though, if she was still alive. She drew herself up slowly to her hands and knees, crawled to the dresser which she used to pull herself upright. Her mouth, ribs and stomach hurt so much, and she wanted to vomit. Putting spirits from her canteen on the towels, she sat on the nearby bed and cleaned her wounds as best she could. Wait... didn't she have towels in her pack? The shock, and her scrambled brain, wasn't doing her any favors. Nonetheless, she managed to get the outside of the gashes passably clean. As deep as the one had gone, that was all she could hope for. She wrapped her torso with strips of cloth and stood unsteadily. Forget help. She didn't know when the couple would be back, and she'd probably do well to get out of Leviatha's territory as soon as possible.

  Leviatha... was she alive? The giantess' wound was at least as bad as hers, but then, she'd appeared quite energetic when she beat her down again. It would be rather anticlimactic for her to succumb to her injuries after a performance like that. Red needed to think of another way to stop her if she couldn't beat her in direct combat. She stumbled towards the door. Upon setting foot outside, something heavy and ropy fell on her and bore her to the ground. She saw that she had been trapped under a weighed net. A balding though not old man in leathers stood over her, grinning.

  "Shouldn't you have run farther before taking a rest?" he said with a laugh. "Kind of stupid of you."

  She tried to free herself from the net, but soldiers closed in to level blades at her and she knew she wouldn't get away this time. "I was pretty beat up. And who are you?"

  "Me? Just a humble jailer. But you skewered my sister, and I'm not too inclined to let you get away with it."

  #

  Leviat
ha's brother and his men tied her up and escorted her back to the castle town, and along the way she learned he was named Lane. She wondered if Leviatha's real name was similarly pretty, or moreso. That would be a laugh. As well, his average height answered the question of whether all of the family were "leviathans." He prodded at her to move faster on occasion when she would slow down; she'd almost swoon each time, then mutter something about her wounds after she recovered enough. Deciding there was no good reason for her to continue fighting off unconsciousness when her chances of escape were nonexistent, she allowed herself to faint so that they would be burdened with carrying her.

  Awareness gradually returned, and she realized she lay on the cold stone of a basement prison cell with something hard around her ankle. Sitting up though it hurt all over to move, she saw it was a manacle attached to a chain which bound her to a wall. One small slit of a window allowed her to see outside to the street, but even without the bars, a child could not have squeezed through. A plate of cooled food rested before her; how long it'd remained exposed to the open air, she didn't know. However, she did feel hungry and in desperate need of energy. She picked up the dish and dug in with the spoon that had been left within the slop.

  "Good to see you showing an appetite," said a wild-haired old man with a face like parched leather in the next cell. "Didn't think you were going to make it, you looked so dead when they threw you in here."

  She looked down at her bloodstained clothes and pale hands, the color of which she imagined to match the rest of her. It scared her to wonder where the food she ate would go if her innards were damaged as badly as she feared, but then, she couldn't not eat either. She continued to swallow down the sickeningly congealed gruel despite the agony twisting her stomach and hoped for the best. "I'm pretty resilient, else I wouldn't even be here now. So why are you locked up?"

  He clenched a gnarled fist, anger brightening his age-clouded eyes. "I saw what I thought was a werewolf only to be told to keep my mouth shut. But I had to warn my friends, so I did—and after one of them left, they threw me in here for it."

  "You too? I found out Leviatha was letting people get eaten as part of a plan to slaughter werewolves en masse, and tried to stop her. Hurts my pride a little to find out I'm not strong enough."

  "You did well. Heard the guards saying you wounded her badly, which surprised me seeing how much smaller you were."

  So she was still alive. She hadn't been completely sure. "How long do you think she'll keep us in here? Did they give you any idea?"

  He looked sadly at her. "Me? I assume she'll let me go after she gets what she wants. But you tried to kill her, so for you it might be a little different."

  "I didn't actually want to kill her, not when the fight began. I don't know what I would have done if I beat her, but I guess I just thought I could get her to stop. We both got carried away and, well..." She fingered her burning abdominal wound with a shudder as she imagined the mess underneath her bandages. "We're both still alive though, at least for now."

  "She must admire you considering she hasn't killed you yet. It's not often the Fourslayer meets a fighter who can stand toe to toe with her."

  She shrugged. "That, or she wants me to live to see her success and the proof that she was right."

  "She'll never be right," he spat. "No matter how many beasts she kills, it won't justify throwing away lives she could have saved."

  "I agree. Looks like we probably won't be the ones to stop it, though."

  Despite those words, she thought about ways to escape, and kept her eye out for an opportunity to do so. But the guards were alert, making sure she didn't keep any objects she might use to pick her lock, and her hope dwindled with the passage of days. It bored her so much in here, agonizing boredom, and she spent most of the time imagining herself elsewhere, meeting people, slaying werewolves, and doing whatever she would have had she not gotten into this predicament. She pissed and shat blood in the bucket they left her for it, a sign of how bad her worst wound truly was. Her body grew thinner and thinner, and it hurt incredibly to move or sometimes for no reason at all. But even when she felt like she would die, she refused to.

  Knowing that Leviatha had the same type of injury, it surprised her when the noblewoman visited her barely more than a week after she woke up in the cell. She heard her voice first, coming from the street outside her window. "Red Rider," Leviatha mocked, "not riding so free now, huh? It was foolish of you to turn on me. If you'd gone along, I could have let you kill werewolves like you never have before."

  "Dead wolves bought with human blood? Not worth it."

  Leviatha laid down on her belly before the window and smiled at Red through it. "It'll happen with or without your help. Don't you feel bad to be down there, wasting away your youth like this?"

  Red spat in her face, making her frown and wipe it. "Fuck you, you selfish cow!"

  "You know, I want to let you go after my glorious task is done, but I don't know if I should. You might attack me again and get lucky enough to kill me this time around."

  "It's not about luck. I did better in the second fight than the first. Next time I'd beat you."

  "So you will try to kill me? You might have to grow old down there, sorry to say."

  She looked into Leviatha's eyes. "I don't want to kill you. Why would I want you to die, when you're such a inspiration to women everywhere?" She held back a snicker, but could tell Leviatha knew she said it sarcastically. The giantess smiled a bit, though. "I just want you to stop. We should't sacrifice people to kill monsters. Hunt down the werewolves here now and send them a message that we won't tolerate them preying on us. We can find and exterminate the rest later."

  Leviatha bit her lip. "You give a good speech. I can't abort my plan when I'm so far into it. Watch me, Red Rider. In your heart, I know you'll be impressed."

  She stood gingerly, showing her wounds still hampered her, and left. Red punched the wall in frustration. Dammit! She'd almost thought she would get through to Leviatha there, but...

  #

  More days passed with Red stuck in her cell, fantasizing about opportunities to escape that never came. She wondered how long she could last before she lost her mind; already, she sometimes had dreams she struggled to distinguish from reality. She'd thought she heard the guards say she was to be transferred elsewhere, which should give her a chance to run—but why did they never do it? It must have been a happy dream after all.

  The old man didn't speak to her much. They had started off well enough, but later it seemed he only wanted to tell her stories of his mundane life that didn't interest her. When she showed her disinterest, he stopped. They still complained to each other regularly about the food, the lack of beds and Leviatha's lack of ethics, though.

  It was maybe two weeks after Leviatha's visit that Red heard another commotion outside. She looked to see, to her surprise, Herbert arguing with Leviatha before the window. He had slimmed down some since last she saw him, but still looked over thrice her weight. He must have heard about her captivity and come to help. "You have to let her go," the knight was saying. "What has she done wrong, try to make you stop throwing your people to the wolves?"

  Leviatha looked away. "So rumor has spread that fast, huh. But do you know why I'm doing what I am?"

  "No, and I don't care. I think it's wrong, whatever the purpose is, but this is your territory and I won't try to stop you. All I ask is that you let Red go."

  "And if I do, what's to keep her from sticking her nose in my business again?"

  Herbert shook his head. "I-I'll vouch for her! If you release her into my custody, I promise she won't bother you again."

  "You think she'll listen to you," she said quietly, "you fat fool? It's a rare woman who would even stop to give her ear to you."

  His nostrils flared, but he otherwise kept his temper under control. "How long do you plan to keep her?"

  "Not sure. At least until after the next full moon, or maybe the one after that, or..."

>   "That's not right. You need to let her go."

  "No." She seemed to consider and met his eyes, drawing a sword that looked identical to the one Red had broken. Apparently she'd had it fixed, or kept spares. "Or maybe... I'll let her go if you beat me in a fight."

  Red dared to feel hope. But it was quickly overtaken by worry. She didn't think Herbert stood a great chance, even if he outweighed the taller and faster woman, and feared how far Leviatha might take it.

  Herbent slowly drew his own sword and shifted his shield onto his arm. "If that's the way it must be."

  Leviatha grinned. Herbert walked forward, took a slash on his shield and retaliated with one of his own. She darted aside and struck the shield a ringing blow, making him reel back. She followed with rapid slices, forcing him to flail his shield arm to ward them while they dented the metal bowl. An overhead chop drove him to one knee. He desperately managed to push her back, but when he stood again, Red saw that he cradled his now injured arm against his side, unable to raise his shield anymore. Damn, Leviatha was strong.

  "She's hurt!" Red yelled. "Her gut..."

  As she and Herbert locked swords, Leviatha glanced with annoyance at Red, giving him an opening to kick her in the stomach right over where she'd been impaled. Her face contorted in pain and she staggered. Herbert pressed the attack, battering at her guard with heavy blows which drove her back until one got through her defenses. He slashed her down, blade tearing into her chest. She toppled down into a spread eagled position, sword flying from her grip, and for an instant Red thought the fight over. But Herbert must have seen better from where he was, as he dove after her stabbing down. She rolled to her side in time so that his sword stuck in the ground next to her and shoved him off herself. He went for her sword, but she shouldered him away. While he stumbled off balance, she hooked her arm around his leg.

  She lifted him into the air, all five hundred plus pounds of man and armor, and suplexed him on his head so hard he flipped over on his belly. Red's jaw dropped, and she thought he was dead. Then he groaned and moved, if only to clutch his head and neck with both hands.