Chapter 24: The Boy with the Shield, Part 3

Valerie made a point of walking past the turn that would have led her back to the Scaled Maiden, instead following the thoroughfare to Shadefall's farmer's market, located in an open, circular plaza. At this time of day, the worst of the rush had already passed through, and already some stalls were beginning to pack up.

It was a space that had plenty of witnesses, but where the crowd was thin enough that there was nowhere to hide. After a few minutes of circling the market, Valerie was sure of it.

She was being followed.

She had at least two shadows, but her gut said there were more. Both kept their faces obscured by hoods, though she could still see the telltale bulk of sheathed blades beneath their cloaks.

Her first thought was that they were after the sizable sum of scales she was currently carrying, which left her with a problem. If she took them back to the Scaled Maiden with the rest of their things, she ran the risk of turning the place where they slept into a target. But she couldn't just walk the streets forever.

She knew she had to somehow shake them, but that was where she ran into a problem. Her training didn't cover how to shake a tail. As a monster huntress, having the awareness of her surroundings to know when a predator was stalking her was invaluable. But as a monster huntress, her response to that kind of situation was supposed to just be turning around and filling the problem with crossbolts. That wasn't exactly viable in the middle of a populated market. 

Dr. Siren would have known what to do, but Dr. Siren wasn't here. Once again, she was on her own.

She took a deep breath. She'd uncovered a werewolf on her own. She could handle a couple of ambitious thieves. 

Doing her best not to give away that she'd seen them, Valerie began circling the market until she managed to get both of her shadows behind her, after which she left. With both of them at her back, they'd have a harder time cutting off her retreat, and she'd have to worry about fewer angles of attack.

After that, she was making turns at random, trying to break line of sight as thoroughly as possible and keep her path impossible to predict. When she hadn't seen either of her tails in over three minutes, she thought she'd managed to pull it off.

And then, on her next turn down an alley, she found herself facing down another hooded figure. When she turned around and found the original two from the market square behind her, she realized too late that her random pathing had also taken her away from any witnesses.

"Oops."

Three blades rasped out of their sheaths, and Valerie gripped her chest of scales tighter. She turned partway, keeping the duo on her left, her interceptor on her right, and her back to a wall.

"We don't have to do this," Valerie offered.

"You owe the Pavers a debt, outsider," one of the duo said. "I think maybe you should hand over that chest. Along with the rest of your money, your weapons, and anything else you've got worth a thing."

"Oh." If these men were Pavers, that was probably going to limit Valerie's ability to talk them out of this. Setting a person's place of business on fire didn't tend to engender feelings of peace. Even if it had technically been List who set the fire.

That said, she didn't particularly feel like getting robbed by the Pavers a second time. She dropped the chest of scales, and the arms of her wristbow snapped into place. She loaded and took aim, movements fast, precise, and practiced. But one of the Pavers was faster.

The knife sailed toward her before she could loose a bolt. She dodged it, but it made her own shot go wide. The second knife came while she was still off balance, on a direct course with her heart.

The knife never hit her. 

The male figure that dropped down to intercept the knife was lean, sporting earth-toned leather armor and a head of messy, dark brown hair. A small, pointed bronze shield glinted on his right arm, which immediately flashed out to bat the thrown knife out of the air. Valerie had barely registered what he'd done when he darted past her, using his shield to block another knife thrown by the Paver to her right.

"Who—?" Valerie started to ask.

"Later!"  the boy with the shield shouted as the Pavers rushed them from both sides.

Valerie drew her knife, blocking a strike before countering by bashing the pommel into her opponent's face. Next to her, the boy blocked one attacker with his shield, and sent the other sprawling with a kick.

Their melee descended into fast, brutal chaos, with Valerie and her rescuer fighting back to back. Valerie was used to fighting things that moved faster and hit harder than any normal human, and her new ally was no slouch. In a matter of seconds, they had all three Pavers laid out on the ground, battered and bleeding.

"Nice moves," Valerie complimented, not taking her eyes off the enemies in case they decided they wanted more.

"Thank you," the boy replied with a level of sincerity that took her by surprise. "We should probably run."

"Why?"

"There he is!"

A man appeared at the edge of one of the roofs overlooking the alleyway, leveling a crossbow at the boy as soon as he saw him. The boy's shield came up just in time to stop a bolt from shooting through his face.

Valerie didn't think, just loaded, aimed, and loosed, putting a bolt through the man's chest. His body went limp, falling over the edge of the roofing and landing in the alleyway with a disturbingly wet crunch.

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"Oh gods." Valerie stared at the body, stunned. The smell of blood, human blood, filled her nostrils, and her stomach twisted into knots. She'd only started to process what she'd just done when the next person appeared at the roof's edge, followed closely by several more. All of them had crossbows.

"That's why!" the boy shouted, grabbing Valerie by the wrist. "Run!"

His urgency snapped Valerie back into focus, and the two of them broke off into a sprint, as crossbolts pinged off of every surface around them.  

Shouts came from all around them, some from the Pavers trying to kill them, some from terrified townsfolk. Valerie barely registered them as they ran, too preoccupied with surviving and mentally blocking out the fact that any one of the shots she heard could be her end.

Her fellow target led her through town at a breakneck pace, leaping over and diving undering obstacles as they came. More than once, he stopped running to wait for her to catch up. He always had to block shots with his shield when he did, but it didn't seem to stop him from doing it.

Eventually, he led Valerie to what looked like a butcher shop, which he immediately kicked in the door of before ushering her inside. Just as she crossed the threshold and dove for cover behind a wall, a bolt finally found its target, striking the boy just below the collar bone.

He crumpled backward from the impact, but managed to at least fall into cover and kick the door shut behind them as he did. That was when Valerie realized that though he was bleeding from a hole in his armor, the bolt that hit him was on the ground, only its tip bloodied.

"That's some nice armor," Valerie said.

"Not exactly," the boy said. "But it probably still helped."

"So a few questions," Valerie said. She crept towards the closest window to peek out of it, and could already see people running as armed men and women began to converge on their hiding spot. "Who are you, why are these people trying to kill you, and why did we come here?"

"This place is abandoned," the boy answered. "And the walls are thick enough to hold up against crossbolts. It seemed like a good place to make a stand."

"How did you know about this place?"

"I've been . . . antagonizing? Yeah, I've been antagonizing the Pavers for the last few weeks in a few nearby towns. It's important to have a secure location in case of—well, this. I was following this group of them trying to figure out what they were up to, I saw they were following you, they saw I was following them, and now things have sort of spiraled . . ."

"Those are all Pavers?" 

A handful of Pavers stragglers trying to ambush her in an alley for money and petty revenge made a certain amount of sense, but this was ridiculous.

"Looks like," the boy said. "I can't think of anyone else who'd want to kill me this bad."

"If they are Pavers, it might not be you they're desperate to kill."

"Weren't they just mugging you?"

"Well, yes. But before that, I sort of burned their office down."

The boy's eyes went wide. "What?!"

"I mean, I didn't set the fire, but I was with the person who did. And we also cleared out their vault."

The boy stared at her, only blinking for several seconds. "Okay. So maybe they want to kill us both."

Valerie risked another glance out the window. There were at least a dozen Pavers now, establishing a perimeter to keep the townsfolk out and cut off any avenue of escape. Per Kiva, Shadefall had only a few volunteer peacekeepers who wouldn't touch the Pavers. Dr. Siren and List were, at the closest, on the other side of town. 

There was only one way out of this.

"What's your name?" 

"What?"

Valerie reloaded her wristbow. "If we're going to have to fight our way out of this together, we should probably know each other's names."

The boy blinked. "Kaleb."

"Nice to meet you, Kaleb. I'm Valerie."

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