But I'm a Black-Briar! (A Skyrim Fan Fiction)

Chapter 33: Target Acquired

     One time at Black-Briar Lodge, I had been eating a piece of fresh bread when I went out to the stables to visit Ilinalta. She had poked her nose out toward me, nostrils flaring with curiosity, so I had held a piece out on my hand.

One disdainful sniff, and the mare had shoved the offering out of my hand and onto the ground and given me a look I could only describe as "Why? Just why?".

Most horses like bread. Ilinalta didn't, although she would eat just about anything else I put in front of her nose.

My eyes swept from the dead mercenary to Jiran, and I could feel that I looked exactly the same as Ilinalta had that day- only, I could state my feelings aloud. "Why?" I demanded, resisting the nausea that rose in my stomach at the wet gasps and weak struggling of the dying man.

Jiran walked to the mercenary and ripped the arrow out of his throat in a spray of blood that reached the cave wall. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and looked away as he shot the already bloody shaft through the man's back, stilling his struggles. "Why not?" he asked, pulling the arrow out again and wiping it on the man's pants, then getting a grip on the dead man's legs and dragging him out of the cave. A few quiet thumps and a loud crack shattered the air as Jiran slung the body off the cliff outside the cave.

"Why-" I choked on my indignation as the assassin returned to the cave. Jiran pulled his black shirt over his head and tossed it over a rock to dry, but I refused to be distracted by the way the flickering light from the fire played across prominent muscles that glistened with rainwater. "He wasn't going to hurt you or me and he was leaving Skyrim! You didn't need to kill him," I insisted, my voice rising in volume.

"I suppose I didn't need to, but why would I leave him alive? I just said I didn't like leaving things to chance." Jiran flipped his wet hair out of his eyes.

"And then you admitted that chance could be a good thing," I reminded him, scooting myself away from the stream and toward the fire as the pool of blood where the body had lain sent a little trail trickling over the dusty floor toward the lower ground of the stream where I was sitting.

Jiran sighed. "Mere, can you say with certainty that he was really going to leave Skyrim? He could have easily been saying that just to save his own hide so he could go back to Maven."

I hadn't thought about that at all, and the thought that I hadn't thought about a ruse so simple nearly cause me swallow my next words. Nearly. "No," I admitted unwillingly, "but he was just one mercenary. Maven has a lot of those and another one lived through yesterday anyway, so he could have gone back to her to report already. What was the harm in letting one more live?"

"Next time Maven sends mercenaries after us, if you see him, would you want me to spare him? I might as well kill him now so he doesn't have another chance to kill us. Also, I only said that I found seven bodies, not that the eighth mercenary had survived. His body could have fallen in a vent or something."

Really, I didn't know why I was even arguing the point. Jiran's brow was drawn together and he merely looked confused. Clearly, he didn't understand why I was arguing with him either. In his eyes, he had eliminated a threat. "It's just.... You didn't need to kill him," I repeated lamely.

"Mere. As an assassin, you'll probably kill for money. How is that any better than killing to protect my back?"

"I could pick and choose my targets," I said stubbornly. "I could only assassinate those I feel deserve it."