In-country with Fiona -- ambush

[song_tra_bong]

They head north for a while, finding nothing particular but silence and trees and room to wander. Soon enough, the light begins to fade and they head back towards the site of their earlier skirmish. For an ambush point, then end up settling on the set of trees their runner had made for earlier; they do make excellent cover.

Mary Anne leans back against a trunk, checking her knives in preparation. She is looking forward to using her newest.

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[song_tra_bong]

Closer and closer and she can practically smell the blood when she arrives.

She can't stop Fiona from stumbling but she closes the distance before the soldier realizes what to do with the woman who's killed his friends. It's just as well he doesn't know about the woman standing behind him.


If you work in a medical aid station and you kill enough people, you learn something about anatomy. Like about the fourth lumbar down and the abdominal aorta. The punch knife slides in like a dream and she gives the blade a twist.

"Thanks for saving me one, dear," she says to Fiona over the dying man's shoulder.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Pleasure," Fiona says in a voice husky with adrenaline and relief. She gets her balance again, and then lunges at the remaining soldier with her axe.

[song_tra_bong]

Meanwhile, Mary Anne still has her hands full of dying soldier. And blood--the abdominal aorta is nothing if not a bleeder.

She draws the knife out (will have to clean it quickly, or the hilt will stain) and slides it into the man's neck. A jerk of her arm opens his throat and she lets him fall to the ground.

In the dark, the blood on her hands looks black.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

The last soldier is on the ground, clutching his stomach in an attempt to keep the contents in. Messy, messy, axes were always such a messy weapon.

But it's Fiona's, and she brings it over then up and down to cut off the man's head. She tosses her braid back over her shoulder, her breath coming quick and deep from the fight.

[song_tra_bong]

Mary Anne gives her a bloody wave.

"Lovely work."

Beauty, as it has often been said, is in the eye of the beholder.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

She half turns and bows, utterly graceful despite that laughing smile.

"My thanks."

[song_tra_bong]

She gets a curtsey in return.

"You are very welcome. Can't say that I get to see many people use an axe around here."

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"I guess not. They are useful, though. Far more so then a sword." She traces the blood on hers, making a pattern. She'll clean it soon enough, but for the moment she just has I am alive, I am alive singing through her veins.

[song_tra_bong]

It is a wonderful feeling, isn't it? Mary Anne hums a little, scrubbing some blood from the marble handle of the knife.

"Exceedingly. You wield it well."

She wanders across the clearing, taking time to study Fiona's kills.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Fiona is the most civillized of the girls, but, oh, how does she love that feeling.

"Over ten thousand years practice." A quick glance, and rips off some uniform to begin wiping the blade clean.

[song_tra_bong]

"And practice makes perfect."

She unhooks a canteen from a dead man's belt, using the water to better clean her knife. If her hands are getting clean at this point, it's coincidence.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Only perfect practice, oh, bother, I'm going to have to sharpen this."

[song_tra_bong]

"One sec."

She sets aside the knife for a moment (never sheathe a dirty weapon) and searches in her pockets.

"Here." She comes up with a whetstone at last. "Not sure how well it works on axes but it's hopefully better than nothing."

She tosses it to Fiona.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"A blade is a blade," and she catches it perfectly. Finding a rock, the princess sits down and runs the whetstone down the edge.

The noise should set her on edge, but she's already buzzing, so it doesn't make a difference.

[song_tra_bong]

Mary Anne finds the sound oddly soothing; the rhythm or the familiarity, perhaps.

She settle back into cleaning blood from her knife, humming a vauge countermelody to the shriek of metal.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Is it always like that, here?" She asks at last, looking up and rubbing at the drying blood on her pretty face.

[song_tra_bong]

"Like what?"

The blood came out of the marble nicely. She puts the knife away and starts on the remaining blood on her hands.

"Busy like this? Two good fights in one day?"

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Mmm."

[song_tra_bong]

She shrugs.

"Sometimes. Hell, if you go looking for trouble, it can be like this every day." Something in her smile says she's done that before.

"Most of the time, it comes in waves. Moving through an area with a lot of military traffic, and then you hit an empty patch and don't seen anyone else for days, a week even. Just depends on where you go."

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Ah, I see."

[song_tra_bong]

She picks at a stubborn fleck of blood beneath her nails.

"Do you like it here?"

Because she does have a measure of concern for her guests' feelings.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

And Fiona smiles her faint, accepting and acknowleding smile.

"It is not my place, but yours. Your home, and it has the marks of you everywhere. It's an honour to come and see, to kill and live in, but I am guest. Does that answer your question?"

[song_tra_bong]

She smiles back, small but sincere.

"Yes, I think it does."

Her hands are clean. It won't last.

"You said...you said that your Shadow--Maghrib?--is a desert." A faint upturn of pitch at the end, inviting Fiona to elaborate.

[scion-of-amber.livejournal.com]

"Yes, a desert. Maghrib means 'land of the sunset', a romantic name, really, but it suits the mood I was in when I created it. It's a world and a city, built on oasis hedged by cliffs. Worship many gods, of stone and sand and water. Mother Sun and Daughter Moon and Father Earth. They are a people who refuse to draw these gods, but who can build the most fantastic patterns and mosiacs to dedicate to Their glory that you can imagine. More women then men, so there are harems from which the women peer out from latticed windows, or else walk the streets in veils to get water and gossip. Not a mask of civilized behaviour, just a manner that you act in the city, whereas when you are out of it, you are the warrior. No shame in killing, nor being killed. I can show you it at night, here, if you so like."

As she talks about it, her voice rises and falls with a distinctive, and musical, beat.

[song_tra_bong]

The cadence of Fiona's words is enough to lull her into imagining the place, close enough to touch--

And then she hears the offer.

She sits a little straighter, expression both eager and intriuged. "I...I would love that, yes, please but...how?"