Red Tsonia & The Witch in the Dark

By Blind_Justice & LoquiSordidaAdMe

Author's Note: This story is a joint collaboration between myself and Blind_Justice. We wanted to write a grim, brutal sword-and-sandal adventure in the style of Robert E. Howard, creator of characters like Conan the Barbarian, Soloman Kane, and Red Sonya (whom we pay homage to in this tale). We both took it in turns to develop the plot and characters and passed the story back and forth as we saw fit. The section breaks do not necessarily indicate a change of author. The full story is published here under Blind_Justice's name, but you can read the first section below.

Brogan felt the clang of steel reverberate up his arm. It made the old wound in his shoulder throb causing a moment of distraction when he could least afford it. The short sword he clutched swung back around in a high arc, giving the she-devil with the fiery red hair ample time to catch his wrist in a grip like the jaws of a wild boar. Her nails dug gouges in his thick leather gauntlet.

"No!" Brogan screamed in vain protest, desperately trying to wrench his aching arm out of her grip.

Her blade found the broken seam of his cuirass and a searing white pain pierced his side. He felt the razor-edged steel dig into his abdomen, up behind his ribs into his chest. Brogan was surprised to notice how cold the sword felt, buried deep in his hot guts. He had only a moment to appreciate the numbing chill before the blade was ripped free, trailed by a gout of viscera. The vomit that filled his throat tasted of blood.

He fell to the ground then, released from her grip as the she-devil turned her attention towards his men--the men he had failed.

Brogan was the most experienced warrior in the band of outcasts and vagabonds that scrabbled a hard living out of the wastelands. Often that meant taking what they needed by force, raiding caravans and villages for tolls and tribute. Eventually that life catches up with you. Eventually some warlord or princeling gets it into their head to raise an army and rid their lands of brigands and ravager scum. But an army is easy to avoid. Brogan had always been able to keep his band a step ahead of pursuit.

This was different.

Someone had found a champion, a warrior-witch with the cunning of a puma and the strength of a bear and the fury of a wolf. Half his band had fallen like wheat to the scythe before Brogan himself had caught her blade. The other half would quickly follow. Brogan and his men must have pillaged the wrong caravan, slaughtered the wrong villagers, raped the wrong daughter. And now they would pay the price in blood. Which of their crimes had brought this fell wrath upon them? Who of their victims had set this terror on their scent? Could they have bargained with her for their lives or was their doom sealed from the moment she stepped from the shadows into the glow of their campfire?

Brogan pondered these last questions, unable to lift his face from the loam made hot and muddy by his own blood. The ring of steel and the cries of agony faded in his ears.

And then there was nothing.

* * * *

Tsonia stalked the flickering shadows of fire light, the soles of her sandals sure and steady in the mud and the slop. The will of the brigands had broken when their leader fell, just as she had known it would. They beat a hasty and disorganized retreat, but every man who lived the night would be a knife in the dark some future tomorrow. She well knew how the hunger for vengeance gnawed in the belly.

Her sword flashed in an arc slicing through the back of a man's knee as he fled stumbling between the scattered plunder of the brigand camp. He staggered as his maimed leg failed and he fell backwards screaming. She caught his neck in the crook of her elbow and, using her hips and legs to assist, wrenched the brigand's spine apart. Hearing the vibrato twang of a crossbow string snapping tight over his strangled cry, she let the momentum carry the dead weight of the man around her and the bolt impacted in the battered brigandine hung on his chest.

Tsonia let the corpse slump to the ground and sprinted across the brigand's camp counting the seconds it would take a competent crossbowman to reload. Vaulting an overturned barrel of beer, she followed her shoulder towards the ground, another deadly bolt flitting harmlessly through her flowing hair, and rolled to her feet at close quarters to the rocks that concealed the crouching sniper.

The warrior thrust her sword point into the exposed throat of the crossbowman as he fumbled to reload his weapon. Steel scraped bone with a satisfying rasp as she withdrew the weapon and the man fell with a choked gurgle.

In the darkness, panicked footfalls scrambled for safety. Tsonia hooked a toe under the haft of a discarded spear. She sheathed her sword in the ribs of the fallen crossbowman and kicked the spear up to her hand. Tracking her fleeing quarry, the warrior cocked her arm and let fly the javelin into the night. A wet thunk and an agonized scream rewarded her ears.

She had counted fourteen men in the brigand's company and fourteen broken bodies now littered the encampment. The night's bloody work was done.

"If any man here yet draws breath," she called into the corpse-strewn night, "cry out, and I will end your suffering with mercy."

There was a low groan from a man sprawled over a rock next to the campfire. His eyes gazed vacantly at the night sky; his entrails lay spilled in a pile by his side. Gripping her sword pommel-up with both hands, she stood astride the dying man and plunged the blade deep into his chest. He wheezed a final, wet gasp and then breathed no more.

"Stop right there!" a familiar voice shouted from the darkness. "Do not move."

Joras emerged from the shadows, a tablet braced against his forearm as he sketched frantically with a bit of charcoal. "I want to remember exactly how the firelight plays on your face as you stand triumphant over your fallen foe... push your hip out just a little more."

"Now is not the time for sketching," Tsonia admonished. Nevertheless she cocked her hip to the left and gave her hair a quick toss. "We should make sure the camp is truly secure--"

"Now is not the time for sketching," Tsonia admonished. Nevertheless she cocked her hip to the left and gave her hair a quick toss. "We should make sure the camp is truly secure--"

The thrum of a fired crossbow cut short her words. Tsonia stumbled a half step forward as a bolt slammed into her shoulder blade, pierced her flesh, and protruded through the tattered chainmail covering her breast.