Highway Robbery

         Lil knew she was being followed, she had known for two days now. She had been traveling the King’s Highway for two weeks, alone. She was a small woman with short dark hair and a slight build, but ample enough in the bosom and hips so that, unlike other women of her stature, there was no mistaking her for a boy. Although she laughed in the faces of men who told her she was beautiful, she knew that her high cheekbones and full lips were attractive. She scorned the long flowing dresses and skirts and petticoats of the women she considered soft in favor of loose sleeveless shirts and tighter, less restrictive breeches that displayed her shapely legs. She knew she was desirable, and she had even used this at times when the advantage had suited her.

         So she was a woman, a beautiful woman, and alone on the Highway. Two days ago she had spotted an advance scout for what she could only assume was a small party of bandits working the Kingdom's main strip of trade route. She had seen the glint of the man’s sword sticking above the scabbard at his back as he watched her pass from a small hillock near the side of the avenue. Without looking at him directly, she observed his carelessness in letting himself be seen, and she could even smell the sour stench of sweat on the slight breeze that was blowing. Stupid, she had thought, the jackass sticks out like a pansy in a rosebush and he doesn’t even realize that he’s upwind of me and stinking like a hog.

         Over the next two days she marked other indications of the raiders—flushed birds, the occasional tinkle of saddle gear, and the constant feeling of being watched. She made no move that would tip off her advantage though, and traveled at the same pace, almost leisurely continuing along the Highway, stopping occasionally to rest her horse and nibble on trail rations. Let them think I am an easy mark, she thought.

It was now two hours before the sunrise of the third day and she lay rolled in her blankets beside a still smoldering fire, the remnants of her dinner from the night before spread on a flat rock near the pit. She heard the men coming, and counted four of them by the sounds they made in the woods. She had purposely chosen a thicket of trees near the road to make her camp that night, the underbrush and dense foliage surrounding the site would be her alarm. She knew that the bandits would be restless and tired of following, and that tonight would be the night that their hunger for spoils and the chance at a woman would drive them to strike.

         Next to her, beneath her blankets she fingered her staff, a length of ironwood rubbed smooth and blackened in the places where her hands had gone through practice motions for hours and hours. It was a good staff, she could carry it through towns and villages openly, using it for a walking stick, but when the need arose it also made a fine weapon. She felt the press of her throwing knives beneath her shirt, close to her wrists and nestled between her breasts and went through the motions of drawing them in her mind. She fingered open the leather drawstrings on a small pouch by her side and slowly drew a handful of its contents, being careful not to stir any into the air.

The men were almost within the circle of her camp; their clumsy movements had become hushed and more careful, though still clunky and awkward. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing slowly and deeply, as if sleeping unaware. The first man to reach her drew his sword softly and placed the tip on her neck from her right side. With the toe of his boot he kicked her in the ribs.

         “Git up missy, yer stupid for ridin’ alone, and we have some things we mean to take from you,” he grunted loudly with the smell of mead on his breath.

         Lil blinked her eyes and opened them slowly as if she was being raised from a deep sleep and screwed up her face into a mask of fear and confusion.

         “What…what do you want, who are you?” Lil asked sleepily as she tensed her body.

         “We’re honest highway businessmen, and we want the valuables you got in yer saddlebags queenie,” said a second man across the fire pit from where she lay, holding a wicked looking dagger and wearing a nasty grin.

         “And the valuables you got in them breeches too,” the third man said, off to her right with a short sword and dented, rusty helm. All three of the men were dressed in mismatched pieces of leather and steel armor, the clothes beneath dirty and torn. Lil could not see the fourth yet, but she knew he was somewhere behind her by the high-pitched chuckle that the last comment had drawn from him. Armed men surrounded her on all sides, intent on rape and thievery.

         Lil’s heart beat faster and she prepared to move. “Oh,” she whispered as if afraid, “please no.”

         With that last word she took a deep breath, closed her eyes hard and moved like lightning. She whirled onto her back and with her right hand and staff she pinned the sword at her neck into the ground. With her left hand she threw the pepperweed, ground into a fine powder, into the air. The bandits shouted and spluttered, the dust settling into their eyes and noses, burning and swelling soft tissues.

         “Kill her!” The first man with the sword screamed.

         Lil rolled heavily to her right several times, avoiding a slash from the sword that had recently been poised at her throat. She cut the legs from under the man to her right with her body and heard a heavy thud as he hit the ground. As she rolled onto her back, she bucked herself into the air, landing firmly on her feet with the iron-hard staff spinning in her hand, facing the man from across the fire. The dust hadn’t reached him entirely, and even though his eyes were red and his nose was running, he could still see. He snarled and dashed at her with his dagger arm wide to swing in and slice. Lil stepped back and let the blade pass in an arc before her, then rapped his hand hard as he followed through, sending his blade into the hot coals of the dying fire.

         The bandit cursed and clutched his hand, then jumped at Lil in a blind rage. The girl drove the point of her staff into the socket of his eye with a crunching of bone, and then struck his right arm, breaking it. She then flicked the opposite end of the staff around, connected with the man’s temple, and watched as his other eye rolled back into his head while he slumped to the ground.

         Just then the man who she had knocked to the ground earlier grabbed her hair from behind and yanked it down hard. Lil knelt quickly, using his momentum as her weapon, and yanked the rear end of the staff up behind her and between the man’s legs. He screeched in agony as the staff connected with the soft parts between his legs. Lil whirled around spinning the staff above her head for momentum and connected with the man’s face, breaking cheek and nose bones in an explosion of blood. That man hit the ground as well and did not move.

         The first man, the one who had first threatened her, was now stumbling towards her with watery red eyes and a look of murder on his face.

         “Bitch,” he growled and lunged at her.

         Lil stepped to the side and sent the staff into motion, relieving the bandit of his sword and crushing the kneecap of his closest leg, she then spun on her heel lashing the staff around with her, and struck him full in the throat with her back to his body. He screamed a wet gurgling sound as he fell backwards into the embers of the fire, clutching his neck and turning blue in the face.

         The fourth, an urgent voice whispered in Lil’s mind.

         She spun again, dropping into a crouching defensive stance with the staff pointed downward and resting on the back of her arm and shoulder. She looked up in the growing light and saw the fourth man in the shadows of one of the larger trees in the glen with a short bow in hand, arrow pulled taught and pointed at her chest.

         “Now you pay, cunt,” he said as he took a breath.

         Time slowed then, Lil watched as a bead of sweat drew a line down the dirt on the archer’s cheek, and she saw the muscles in his arms tense and saw the fingers of his right hand release the string. The twang the bow made echoed in the little glen and Lil watched the barbed tip race for her heart. Time caught up then, and with blinding quickness, the staff was up, spinning across her body, and slashing the arrow in two before it could reach her flesh.

         “Impossible,” the archer gasped, then clumsily fumbled for another arrow at his back.

         Lil crouched and spun the bow to her left hand and with one fluid motion drew the knife next to the breast that had just been the archer’s target. With a quick flip of her arm, the carefully balanced knife sailed through the air and planted itself in the archer’s chest. The man looked down at the quivering blade in astonishment and dropped his bow. With his mouth gaping and eyes bulging, he staggered to his knees.

         “Impossible,” he muttered again through a bubble of blood and spit and fell onto his face into the dirt, the life draining from his body.

         “Impossible” Lil said coolly to the dead man as she kicked him over and retrieved her knife, wiping it on the corpse’s tunic. She looked around her, there were two men dead for sure, one most likely on his way, and another that would most likely be crippled. Lil gathered up her saddlebags and blankets and saddled her horse. It was time to leave, even if there were no more bandits around, the last thing she needed was to be interrogated by the Highway Guard, none of whom would believe a word of the story, and some of whom were just as bad as these bandits themselves.

         Drawing her steady coal colored mare onto the road, she mounted and continued her journey west. Lil closed her eyes and let the horse walk, stretching the tight muscles in her arms and back and resting for the first time in days.