Sequel: The White Doe ›
Status: 1 of 7 volumes. Complete.
A Good Run
One
GREECE, 490 B.C.E. -- The Battle Of Marathon.
She runs.
The ground is hard and dry, littered with stones and the bodies of the fallen, Athenian and Persian alike. She runs barefoot and avoids the bodies, but she cannot avoid the stones. They bite at her soles, digging into her skin and she can barely feel it, but she knows her feet are raw and blistered and that with each stride she leaves a trail of bloody footprints across the plain. She barely feels anything but a distant and crackling pain from her lungs and a dull hot throbbing from the wound in her side, where the poison entered her body almost four days ago. Her chiton, once white, is now almost black in places, stained with days of dirt and sweat and blood and linen has torn at her shoulder where a vampire grabbed her while trying to take her throat.
That vampire is dead, as are a hundred others and she is dying, too, but she keeps running.
She has run nearly three hundred miles in four days and she is almost finished.
In her right hand she carries her labrys. Perspiration from her hand has soaked the leather-wrapped grip, turning it blacker then her filthy tunic and fine dust clings to the point of of sharpened wood opposite the ax head, the part she uses as a stake when a stake is better than a blade. The handle is scored in several places, where she has used it to block blades or bows or teeth and the head is chipped. The staking end, however, is still sharp. This is her favorite weapon, the one she has used again and again for almost eighteen years.
But now and for the for the first time in her life, the labrys is heavy.
The poison riding through her veins makes her hallucinate and when she hallucinates, she loses her grip. Twice already she's come back to the present from her dreams to find the the labrys dropped and retraces her steps to retrieve it. It matters that much to her.
She runs.
Her name is Thessily, sometimes called Thessily of Thessilonikki, though no one she has ever known has ever been as far north of Thessilonikki. It is simply a name, given to the woman who was once a girl who was once a slave and who is now a Slayer.
'For a little longer.' She thinks. 'The Slayer a little longer.'
She is twenty-nine years old and almost ready to die.
She runs.
The ground is hard and dry, littered with stones and the bodies of the fallen, Athenian and Persian alike. She runs barefoot and avoids the bodies, but she cannot avoid the stones. They bite at her soles, digging into her skin and she can barely feel it, but she knows her feet are raw and blistered and that with each stride she leaves a trail of bloody footprints across the plain. She barely feels anything but a distant and crackling pain from her lungs and a dull hot throbbing from the wound in her side, where the poison entered her body almost four days ago. Her chiton, once white, is now almost black in places, stained with days of dirt and sweat and blood and linen has torn at her shoulder where a vampire grabbed her while trying to take her throat.
That vampire is dead, as are a hundred others and she is dying, too, but she keeps running.
She has run nearly three hundred miles in four days and she is almost finished.
In her right hand she carries her labrys. Perspiration from her hand has soaked the leather-wrapped grip, turning it blacker then her filthy tunic and fine dust clings to the point of of sharpened wood opposite the ax head, the part she uses as a stake when a stake is better than a blade. The handle is scored in several places, where she has used it to block blades or bows or teeth and the head is chipped. The staking end, however, is still sharp. This is her favorite weapon, the one she has used again and again for almost eighteen years.
But now and for the for the first time in her life, the labrys is heavy.
The poison riding through her veins makes her hallucinate and when she hallucinates, she loses her grip. Twice already she's come back to the present from her dreams to find the the labrys dropped and retraces her steps to retrieve it. It matters that much to her.
She runs.
Her name is Thessily, sometimes called Thessily of Thessilonikki, though no one she has ever known has ever been as far north of Thessilonikki. It is simply a name, given to the woman who was once a girl who was once a slave and who is now a Slayer.
'For a little longer.' She thinks. 'The Slayer a little longer.'
She is twenty-nine years old and almost ready to die.