I Am Warrior

Twenty-Two

TWENTY-TWO

Imogen's gut clenched. His smile was feral, his eyes glinting with a dark light. If she were against any other person, she was sure she would have deigned the comment with an appropriate response, but this man was a whole other piece of bread. So she remained silent, simply glaring at the man with her frosty eyes.

Imogen's silence must have been equal to unleashing a cold retort on this man, because in one step he invaded her personal space and backhanded her furiously across her cheek, the force of which sent her flying to the ground with a grunt.

Her cheek throbbed in conjunction with her thumb, and for a brief moment, Imogen saw tiny white specks dance across her vision. Then her gaze landed on the tent pole and dress torch which she had been trying to make. The flame had died considerably, but it was still there, and Imogen realised her only shot at survival rested seven feet away from her.

A pair of dusty leather boots blocked her immediate sight of the torch and she looked up at the man who towered above her, slowly getting to her feet. Even when she was standing, the man had both height and weight on his side. She didn't know what he knew of her capabilities, increasing her already great disadvantage.

'You killed some of my friends.' He accused angrily, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted down at her. It took all of her willpower to not wipe away the traces of saliva that had located themselves on her face and neck, knowing that doing so would enrage him further. This man had the definite potential of a berserker, and she stood no chance at all against him if he did.

'Answer me!' He bellowed, despite the fact that he had neither asked her a question, nor expected a satisfactory answer.

Imogen, unsure how to go about the situation, simply looked down; if she answered, she'd anger him just as much as if she didn't do anything at all. A materialistic sign of submission was all her pride could muster in the circumstances, since the word 'sorry' posed no chance of slipping from her mouth.

Once again, her cold, clear eyes fell on the makeshift torch, then shifted to the fire that had continued to burn out. She had one shot at this. It was now or never.

All the same, her heart pounded to the beat of a horse's gallop, adrenaline shooting through her veins like an electric current. Quick as a snake, Imogen slammed her booted foot into the first man's knee cap, darting away like a fly as he keeled over in pain. She snatched the torch from the ground and dropped the skirt into the small flame.

A second man, by then, had recovered from the shock of her attack and grabbed her upper arm, swinging her around and landing a punch to her gut that forced all the air out of her lungs in a painful gush, causing Imogen to double over as her lungs emptied, diverting her attention from the issue at hand to trying to draw in another breath.

She knew from instinct that his next action would be the same as Blake's had been; slam down hard on her back, knocking her to the ground. Imogen's rondel, though painfully close, would not come free of both a sheath and the swaths of material covering it with a blind eye.

Gasping for air like a fish out of water, Imogen glanced up and saw two things; one was a flash of the man's raising hand curled into a fist as he drew it back. The second, of almost equal importance, was a shiny, gleaming stiletto shoved through his belt at her eye level.

Time slowed down, the seconds hovering in the air like they were frozen. Imogen lunged forward on unsteady legs, snatched the slender knife from its sheath and arced it upwards, opening up a deep cut on the man's thigh before embedding itself into the man's meaty forearm.

His yell brought time back to normal with a snap an without thinking, Imogen shoved the blood-slick blade into his throat, cutting off the yell with a disturbing gurgle.