The Sword-Edged blonde by Alex Bledsoe Page B

army? My dad had insisted I learn to handle a knife and sword, and it turned out I had a real knack for it. Since I didn’t care which side won, I had no problem hacking down anyone designated as my “enemy,” and so I spent five years bouncing around various small countries, once rising to the rank of major. I drank too much, killed people for all the wrong reasons and generally behaved like most of the career soldiers I knew. I saw things so brutal they would give a lesser man, or any man with a conscience, nightmares for life. It was a liberating experience.
    Once again, though, the change came when I awoke one morning with a girl. Only this time she was dead, and so was everyone else in the whorehouse, including my entire unit.
    It remains the spookiest dawn of my life. A noise awoke me, but I never found out what it was. I winced at the sun through the window. The girl’s body had stiffened during the night, and I had to struggle to get free of her cold, clutching arms. A single sword thrust went through her back and emerged between her breasts, bisecting her heart. Blood soaked the mattress beneath us. Her expression was one of slack-jawed surprise, although her eyes were closed. When I threw her aside in momentary panic, I dislodged two dozen flies already claiming the body.
    My head thundered from drink, and I quickly checked myself for injury. Not a fresh mark showed among the old pink scars. Had the murderer been after only the girl? And had I been so drunk that someone could come into the room and stab her without waking me?
    I got dressed, and found my money was still in my pockets; robbery hadn’t been the motive. I searched each room on the second floor and found the same thing—a soldier and a whore, both dead from a single sword thrust. Nothing seemed to be taken from them, either.
    The bar downstairs was empty. I helped myself to enough drink to dull my headache, then went into the street. Our horses, tied to the post the night before, were gone. The manure piles told me they’d been away for over six hours. The rest of the tiny crossroads town was deserted, although I found no other bodies, or any indication when the native population left. It was as if they’d just vanished.
    I didn’t make a really thorough search because the whole thing was too damn eerie. I got out of there as fast as my wobbly legs would carry me. At first my wine-addled brain convinced me I was marked for death, that who or whatever had slaughtered everyone else would realize it had missed me and follow me to the ends of the earth. Later, after I’d thrown up a lot and choked down some half-cooked rabbit, I realized I’d just been incredibly, almost mythologically, lucky.
    To this day I don’t know for certain who killed them all, or why. We were fighting in a disputed territory with lots of guerrilla units as well as regular troops on the prowl, none of whom were above ambushing us while we were drunk or asleep. Later I heard a faction loyal to the local king may have killed everyone and burned the town; I must have accidentally slipped out while they were off readying their torches. Either way, that day loaded with real death marked the symbolic demise of Eddie the Mercenary. Although I wasn’t areligious guy, I couldn’t shake the notion I’d been spared for a reason, and once I’d sobered up enough to think straight, I decided I’d be an idiot not to honor my luck.
    I spent two aimless years doing odd jobs for meals and learning various quirky trades. I was still young, and didn’t really look like a soldier, although I still had my sword and sundry other hidden weapons. I also still despised horses, so I traveled everywhere on foot. It kept me lean and alert.
    And so it was that one day thirteen years ago I strolled along the empty road between Antigo and Cazenovia, minding my own business, when I heard the distinctive clatter of swords in combat.
    I instantly slipped off the road and into the thick forest. A