Lazar was grateful to this woman for the help she was giving him, but that wasn"t enough to put his distrust to sleep, he wasn"t one of those people who believed in chance. The adrenaline rush gone, his visual acuity became as c.r.a.ppy as it was a few moments ago, however, by squinting his eyes so that his vision became less blurry he noticed from where he was that the lock of his front door had been fractured and that traces of soil coming without a doubt from soldiers" boots didn"t extend beyond his doorway. This detail was quite disturbing since it would mean that the woman would have arrived exactly at the right time to prevent them from entering, he wasn"t going to believe in such a coincidence while a much more plausible scenario could explain what had happened."It hurts my self-esteem to admit it, but the most likely possibility would be that she has followed me so far. If this woman has managed to do this despite my training then she is definitely not a lambda awakenee. One thing is certain, she doesn"t give me the impression of being a dumb person, on the contrary, it only remains to me to determine for what reason she went so far as to challenge the army and I doubt that it comes down to "breaking down doors isn"t a nice thing". There is inevitably something that I have neglected and which could help me to understand why she is doing that for me, maybe helping me for her is just a way to gain my trust..."
"Are you seriously going to stand there for a long time? It"s been 4 f.u.c.king hours that I"ve been stuck here negotiating with an idiot looking like the brother of doctor Eggman and my arms are full of cramps because I had to keep my bow straight and motionless while patiently waiting for your arrival. Now that you are here, do me the favor of helping me a little by convincing them to move their a.s.ses from YOUR yard."
The frustration of the woman against Lazar who was just observing the scene without acting since a minute could be heard in her voice but couldn"t be seen on her face which still displayed a calm expression. She couldn"t have known that Lazar"s inaction was due to his injury which drastically reduced his possibilities of helping her and that he was thinking of a way to settle the conflict peacefully. In any case that wasn"t a reason to start talking to him directly without even trying to hide his presence, it wasn"t as if they were all alone.
"Maybe she"s stupid in fact, she could have waited for me to put away my weapon, d.a.m.n it!"
The least we can say is that Lazar would have liked to have had a slightly more discreet arrival... He saw the soldiers turning towards him all at the same time following the direction fixed by the woman"s gaze, since he was far from their group no need to say that he got noticed very quickly. Fortunately, he nevertheless had the time to sheath his blade and adopt a pose with his arms crossed more or less natural before we saw him.
Seeing all these heads turn towards him, Lazar was surprised to see that even in this situation the majority of the soldiers didn"t seem hostile. Many didn"t dare to look at him in the eyes, some gave him small discreet nods as a sign of respect, it was obvious that they didn"t want to be there, they felt ashamed to partic.i.p.ate indirectly in the break-in of someone who was fighting in the same army as them. Not enough to excuse them for Lazar by cons, he was not going to take pity on burglars because they have scruples.
"At least they don"t seem to want to fight."
But did their fighting spirit really matter when they weren"t the ones giving the orders? If you ask Slawn the answer is "no", he had a very different opinion from his men, no matter whether Lazar was disarmed or not, whether he had good intentions or not, he didn"t give a d.a.m.n about all that. For him, the only important thing was that the woman and Lazar seemed to be related and that the best possible bargaining chip to recover the hostage that she had in her possession had just appeared in front of him. A f.u.c.king gift coming straight from the sky had just been offered to him when he intended to give in to the woman"s demands, how to refuse a gift like this? He pointed to Lazar with his index finger and the vicious expression on his face already announced that the order he was about to give wouldn"t be peaceful at all.
"CATCH H..."
Four arrows slitting through the air were shot at the very moment when Slawn p.r.o.nounced the first syllable of his sentence and nailed it to the ground, the woman"s trap had just closed over him.
"Well done, I underestimated you."
Lazar understood what kind of person this woman was when he saw that before Slawn had even made a move she was already aiming at him, his basic idea was the right one when he thought she was very clever. He now knew why she had spoken to him with so little discretion, it was part of her plan. From what he had understood the first part of it consisted of using him as a bait to briefly draw the attention of all the soldiers towards him so that they don"t see her change her target.
"Really Slawn? You thought I was going to let you do something like that, dumba.s.s."
"Colonel ?!"
Small splashes of blood on the gra.s.s in front of Slawn"s body had just made the soldiers understand that the woman had not only immobilized her target this time.
"This b.i.t.c.h killed him!"
"I hate my life."
Slawn wasn"t moving and yet Lazar was sure he wasn"t dead, he had seen where the arrows had gone before he fell to the ground. 2 had pierced each extremity of the collar of his jacket and 2 as well at the bottom of each of his sleeves which explained why he was pressed to the ground. The blood loss was due to one of the two arrows at his collar which had pierced his neck, but this wasn"t serious enough to kill him instantly. Admittedly, he wasn"t seeing anything at more than 40 yards now but this image of Slawn falling to the ground like s.h.i.t was imprinted in his memory, he was convinced that he was still alive.
Lazar then said to himself that there was perhaps something in the arrow of the woman who killed him, maybe poison? But that would be counterproductive, the best thing to do would be to keep Slawn alive as a second hostage and it would surprise him that she wasn"t aware of it. If he was dead then the other hostage wasn"t going to be a sufficient guarantee to prevent the soldiers from attacking, it only remained to prepare for combat, and Lazar wasn"t in the best conditions for that. In any case, he didn"t need to think about whether Slawn"s men were going to turn on him and the woman if they thought he was dead. He could recognize the officers having unlimited respect from the soldiers under their orders and this b.a.s.t.a.r.d was one of them, the kind of officer their men are ready to fight for without thinking twice.
"Argh! Argh!"
"False alarm, he returned from the kingdom of the dead."
They had all buried Slawn a little too early, he was struggling like a possessed on the ground.
"Excuse me, I just wanted to immobilize him on the ground but I missed him a little."
Such a perfect shot could only be intentional, the arrows at the collar of Slawn"s jacket had been shot at an angle causing the pressure they exerted to strangle him. He could no longer speak and if the soldiers wanted to save him they were going to have to act quickly and on their own, and as not to make things easier for them the woman wasn"t intending to let them approach him.
"I didn"t give you permission to help him. Stay where you are! If I see a single a.s.shole in uniform moving I"ll put an arrow in your colonel"s skull! Don"t worry too much, he can still be saved, however, it would be a shame if one of you is the cause of his death."
As Slawn"s face became increasingly purple over the seconds and his blood continued to flow on the gra.s.s, the soldiers continued to stand still. The woman was aiming at their colonel"s head now and she had just shown them for the second time how quickly she could shoot, they knew that if they moved, Slawn was over. On the other hand, they saw that they couldn"t wait forever, his blood loss looked manageable but not his asphyxia.
When she told the men in uniform not to move, Lazar knew that implicitly she was signaling him to take control of the negotiations and when he looked at her the wink she gave him confirmed that she trusted him for the rest.
"I still don"t know what to think about her... But that"s not the important thing for the moment, I have to make them leave as long as I can stay standing."
"I will address each of you since Colonel Slawn is definitely unable to make a decision in his state and that I don"t know who is second in the hierarchy here. This will be my first and last warning. Get out of my property, and never go near it again. I will not allow you to dirty my lawn more."
"Urrrrrrh!"
Slawn was out of his mind, leaving the tail between the legs was the scenario he wanted to avoid at all costs. With the foam that was starting to come out of his mouth, what he had said looked more like the growls of a rabid bulldog than anything else but the message seemed clear to Lazar, something like "go f.u.c.k yourself".
"If I was too nice to you, I can fix that."
Lazar slowly approached Slawn under the hostile gaze of the soldiers who refrained from rushing at him, arrived before him he crouched down and grabbed a tuft of hair so that everyone could see his face puffed up by asphyxia.
"Sigh... Look at him carefully and ask yourself this question, does he want to die this way? Then ask yourself the same question for your own lives because make no mistake you will all die here if you decide to keep p.i.s.sing me off, it will be by no means a death of which you can be proud. If your goal is to serve your country you are at the wrong place, you already know what to do."
Slawn pa.s.sed out the next moment, the soldiers" reaction was immediate. A man walked up to Lazar, no one was disputing the fact that he was going to speak so Lazar thought that he was second in the chain of command.
"We accept your conditions."
"Pick them up and go then."
We never take enough precautions, that"s why Lazar kept his hand on the handle of his weapon while waiting to hear the next order that was going to be given by this guy, he also intended to tell the woman to remain vigilant but seeing her concentrated and firmly holding her bow he didn"t see the need for it.
"We fall back! But before that I want some volunteers to go help Colonel Slawn! Remove the arrows from the ground but not the one in his neck to avoid a hemorrhage, then take him away! Also, I want other volunteers to take care of unlocking the soldier Roman."
"I can"t wait anymore..."
Just waiting 2 more minutes for the yard of his house to gradually empty of the unwanted guests was torture, his condition was critical. He didn"t dare to move until he was sure that he and the woman were alone. He walked not without difficulty to his doorway and when he looked up and saw the concern on the woman"s face, he understood that he failed to hide his wound to her.
"How long have you noticed it?"
"I noticed it very quickly, if I came up with such a far-fetched plan it was to make you lose as little time as possible. Just by seeing how much you were trying to make your gait normal, I understood that you were injured, however, I didn"t think you were hurt that much."
"You can say that without even seeing my wound?"
"You look abominable enough to give me an idea. I could examine your injury, but do you trust me enough for that?"
"We can"t talk about trust in my case, it"s nothing more than a gamble that I didn"t choose to make. I will know when I will wake up if I was lucky to come across you."
"Wake up?"
"Catch m..."
While they were 10 meters apart and Lazar was already collapsing before she could react, the woman managed to catch him in her arms long before he hit the ground. Like Slawn, he had pa.s.sed out, his life could only be saved by this mysterious woman now.
"Don"t worry Lazar, you"re in good hands."