Mercenary Little Death Bringer Read Online Free PDF

told him as I wiped my knife and sword on the bottom of
my cloak to clean the blood off.
    “You can learn at school with dull blades
that won’t kill you,” he retorted. He was upset, but I had no idea
why. I hadn’t done anything wrong, well at least not that I could
think of. “Quickly check them over,” he ordered.
    I searched each of the men, coming up with a
measly forty coins. I was searching the leader, sure that I would
find nothing when I came across a small painted picture in his
pocket. I stared at the picture in shock and couldn’t move. It was
me. Why would he have a picture of me?
    “You find anything?” Favian asked.
    I turned the picture over and found two lines
of writing:
     
    Kidnap alive.
    Bring to me.
     
    No signature. No name. Favian took the
picture from my hand, scaring me and making me jerk a knife from my
belt in reaction. He looked at me in shock a moment until he read
the writing and turned the picture over. “We’re going back to see
Father,” he said angrily.
    “No!” I yelled. “We are already late for
school as it is. We cannot be any later.”
    “Someone sent these men after you, Marin.
Don’t you understand that?” he asked as he faced me.
    “Yes, but they failed and we are only a day
away from school. Whoever hired them won’t have time to learn of
their failure and hire new men before we arrive and you know as
well as I do that the Academy is impossible to break into.”
    I could see the decisions warring within him
and crossed my fingers behind my back. This was a tough decision
for him since he was the one who had vowed to protect me when I’d
been found and brought to the castle. Now as my self-proclaimed
protector, he had to decide which the best protection was, the
Academy or the elves where I would try to sneak away to return to
school.
    “I have to finish at the Academy,” I pleaded
with him, “I only have three months left. Please Favian.
Please!”
    He sighed. “Fine, but I’m sending word to
Father about this.”
    I smiled happily and hugged him. “Thank
you.”
    He pushed me away and put the picture in his
pocket. “Get on your horse.”
    I did as he asked and we rode off at a brisk
pace towards the Academy. We would have to camp off the road later
that night since we had gotten such a late start to the day and
then we would reach the school by midday tomorrow. Macon would be
very upset that we were half a day late, but the worst he would do
was force us take an extra shift of guard duty.
    I glanced at Favian to find him releasing his
long silver hair from the silver clip he wore to hold it back from
covering his ears. He wasn’t ashamed of his Elven heritage, but he
found it beneficial to hide it sometimes. Other times it meant he
was mad at me and hiding his ears because he knew I preferred his
hair up and his ears out. I was pretty sure it was both things
prompting him to let his hair down currently.
    I wanted to talk with him or joke to lighten
the mood, but he had his serious face on and that meant that for
the next eight hours we were going to be riding in silence. Silence
would have been fine if I wasn’t slightly freaked out by the fact
that someone had hired bandits to kidnap me. Why? Who on earth
would want to kidnap me? And to what purpose? Were they going to
use me for ransom from the elves? That would only end up bad for
the kidnappers. The elves would agree to their terms and then as
soon as I was safe again they would send out assassins to kill
those that had kidnapped me.
    Had I angered someone so much that they
wanted me dead? No, otherwise the note would not have said to
kidnap me alive. Had I angered someone who would want to kidnap me?
I wasn’t the most loved person, but I didn’t really have any true
enemies, just some childish dislikes. Even the three jobs I had
done had all ended well and hadn’t created any enemies for me.
    It seemed like minutes had passed when I
realized that the sun was setting. “We’ll set up camp