Sword, Chapter 1

The young twit of a man kept staring at him, as he was walking to the swordman's right. It was something Jesse could always tell with people. He could always somehow understand when someone would look at him persistently, content in the safety of the knowledge that Jesse was blind, and therefore the rudeness associated with staring somehow did not apply. But Jesse could always, always feel every single of those curious stares. They enervated him, even when he had painstakingly tried to not to, all these years. In earlier times, when he'd just been blinded, and he had not had her...

No. Don't go there. Don't dwell in the past, he admonished himself harshly. His hand tightened reflexively around the hilt of his sword.

"Master Jesse? Are you alright?" the messenger asked, in a hushed voice. Jesse would wager good money that the young man had never ventured into a forest during night ever before.

"That I am. That I am…" he sighed, trying to keep himself from speaking his mind any further.

He failed.

"However, sir messenger, I would prefer it if you did not stare at me so; I do recall it is still considered impolite."

"Oh!... oh. Oh I beg, do beg pardon, Master Jesse. I… I hadn't… I did not mean… well…"

"I must inquire further," Jesse said irately, "whether you are always as glib or whether it is my daunting presence which is causing it to you?"

In the next few seconds, Jesse only heard the crickets in the still darkness and the subtle huffing breaths of the horse as they were walking in the easy, wide and relatively well trodden forest path. The fact that the messenger was holding his breath at the snide words and not replying grated at Jesse's nerves. He was still uncertain why he was so cranky with the boy; he had met and interacted with less pleasant company.

"Well?" he prodded when no answer was procured in the following minute.

"Oh, I didn't think you'd want me to answer that."

"If I did not, I would not have asked. You are staring at me again."

"I'm sorry… but Master Jesse… that… that's a really… I mean I wonder…"

"How I got my scarring, is that it? What, you have never heard the tales at the court? I should imagine I still make a good wine tale," Jesse sneered.

The messenger did not reply, and this time Jesse didn't prod him. He didn't want to have to answer. Not because of the two large, slightly diagonal traces across his face or his blindness per se. More of what it cost me.

The crickets stopped their night melody abruptly. Jesse frowned and stopped, immediately taking the warning into consideration. He loved nature and forests exactly for the hints they could give him of approaching danger. Many times, in the main road or in towns and villages, the only hint of approaching trouble had been stomping feet, a shout, the metal sound of a blade being unsheathed or just that infernal staring. Not nearly enough time to prepare at his own leisure. But in Nature, this was not so. In nature, the tiniest clack of a leaf that should not be there, the flurry of foliage when the breeze did not warrant it, the unnatural lack of sound where it should exist, everything was a language which spoke to him of so many things that eyes could never see.

The messenger saw Jesse stop and did so as well, but judging from the ease of the young man's breathing, Jesse did not think he had sensed the approaching danger. Jesse gripped the sword hilt calmly and waited.

He did not expect the danger to have been far nearer than nature had pointed out to him. Suddenly, the messenger's feet shuffled unnecessarily and before Jesse could even think it, he flinched backwards. He felt the pressure in the air shift dramatically as the messenger's armed hand sailed past his face in front of him. Jesse had not heard the blade being pulled. Must be a leather dagger sheath. Damn brat, his mind thought idly as he pulled her out smoothly and swiftly in a front arc, bringing the hilt deftly to his side, where he knew the messenger's jaw to be. The hilt connected harshly, and he heard the messenger's body fall in a heavy heap to his right even before her blade had stopped its melodic resonance.

Of course by then, Jesse heard the drawing of a sword's blade as the other adversary he had actually noticed sprung from the bushes and charged.