The kill that never was. 

His kill. 

Snatched away from him after all that planning.

All that rage he'd bottled up, saving for this very moment, and all he had to show for it was a very dead corpse.

A dull ache snuck behind Talon's eyes as he stared down at the Viscount's limp body.

The stopper was close to popping loose – that dull ache was beginning to burn.

Talon screamed, not caring for the noise he made as his fists rained down upon Du Puis's body.

Blood, some of it his own, streamed past Talon's cracked knuckles in rivulets once he was finished. His chest heaved up and down from the exertion but he didn't feel any less angry. He needed something, someone new to kill, and he'd start with whoever had stolen his revenge.

There was a crash and Talon whipped round to find a small weasel of a man trembling over a cracked pile of crockery.

'M-Murderer...' he whimpered. 'MURDERER!' he cried, lunging towards Talon.

They struggled against each other, rolling over the carpet and smacking into furniture.

Then the man was atop him, straddling his waist whilst he attempted to choke the life out of Talon.

'MURDERER!' he screamed in Talon's face, half weeping, half snarling in a most ugly fashion.

On the weasel's side, he was a grown man, albeit a pathetic excuse for one at that. Talon, however, smaller he was, had years of working the pastures with his Uncle.

He smacked the weasel in the jaw with his fist, his greased back hair jolted at that but the man now had a hand firmly clamped against his throat.

Talon caught the man again and he toppled over to the side clutching a bleeding nose.

Rubbing his throat, Talon picked himself up the floor and ran to the stairs, not making it halfway down before the weasel tackled him from behind.

They fell away from each other after the last step, panting underneath the chandelier.

Shaking as he did, Talon pushed himself onto his knees.

The weasel was already on his feet and he had wicked grin plastered over his face.

Talon glanced down at the handle of his Uncle's hiding knife, the one now stuck in his side.

Oh, he thought. He hadn't even felt it go in.

Smug-like, the weasel began to advance toward him. 

The shadows swallowed the man before he could reach Talon.

Dark fingers closed around the man's neck and face and twisted. The weasel's neck had snapped with as much noise as leaves crunching underfoot.

Shrugging off the shadows, an olive-skinned woman garbed in a grey cloak stepped over the limp sack of bones and flesh now lying before her. She had a head over Talon but she couldn't have had more than three or four years on him.

The most beautiful green eyes Talon had ever seen swept over his half-cloak, brow raising half a degree as she did, then flickered to the knife jutting out underneath.

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' she said warningly.

Talon withdrew his hand from the knife hilt, feeling his cheeks flush. 'M'lady,' Talon grunted, clutching his side. Whatever adrenaline had hidden his pain was beginning to wear off.

The girl fell silent and Talon didn't like how her eyes ran over him, like Uncle Jack had over his knife – before Talon had stolen it – checking its sharpness, its weight, its durability.

'I'm no bloody tool!' Talon shouted at the girl. She seemed just as surprised as him by that sudden statement.

BANG!

The explosion, like a hundred rocks shattering against each other, was distant sounding, as if the cliff behind the tower had fallen in on itself.

The girl wheeled Talon out of the tower until they stood by the cliff edge, overlooking the ship that lay in wading distance of Cliff Edge's shores.

It was a long vessel, if a bit thin looking, with three lateen sails pointing into the water like arrowheads frozen in motion. Smoke still leafed faintly from the cannons at its side.

'That's yers'?' Talon asked the girl. He was trying as hard as he could not to growl with that knife in his side.

She grinned mischievously at that. 'I'm sure Captain prefers to think it his.'

'HEY! You two! Stop right where you are!'

The two soldiers had returned. A sword screeched as it was withdrawn from its scabbard.

The girl was a blur after she had released Talon, a hint of silver pirouetting through the air in two sharp arcs that brought the soldiers clanging onto the ground.

'Follow me, farmboy!'

The girl snatched Talon's arm and dragged him along with her, not bothering to dry her blood-soaked blade.

Eli's house burned still as they dashed through Edge Cliff - what remained of it anyway. The roof had collapsed; only a blackened wall remained standing defiantly in the face of the dying flames.

'Excuse me, out of the way please, excuse me!'

The girl cut past the sea of bodies, demonstrating a surprising amount of strength for a girl only a little taller than Talon. She pushed a couple men onto their backs, one of whom Talon thought might have been ox-thick Buck Owens.

'Flayin' whore!'

A glance back proved it to be the case.

'Where are ye' taking me?' Talon demanded. He tried tugging his arm away but the girl had an iron grip and she squeezed his wrist more tightly every time he tried to break free. Not to mention the knife was making it all the more difficult to move, let alone resist. Tears ran down his cheeks but he refused to make a sound.

'This is for your own good, farmboy,' the girl told him. 'Don't touch that knife!' she slapped his hand away from the hilt.

She led him down the hill past the bowl of land containing the headsman's block. The executioner was sat on the debilitated tree stump, still sharpening his axe.

Talon was certain the girl hadn't even looked, she'd just whipped her hand out at the air behind her. Beady black eyes blinked down at the quivering knife handle protruding from his chest. The headsman offered a faint grunt before his knees buckled.

The headsman had meant nothing to Talon. Just another tool he reminded himself. Talon felt the burning in his side subside for a moment - it had still felt good to see the man die.

The knife had stopped jangling as painfully as soon as they were on the beach. A mist of sand followed in their wake.

The indigo sky slowly crushed the remaining streak of amber into the sea, beyond the moored ship. A few people were gathered against the ship's rails, in between the two cannons, watching their progress. Talon thought he saw one of them wave.

The girl tucked her knife into her boot the moment they reached the water, letting go of Talon's arm as she waded in.

'Afraid of the water, farmboy?' she turned back to him when waist-deep.

Talon laughed and clutched his side with a wince. He wasn't afraid, he just happened to have a bloody knife stuck in him, and he certainly had no reason to go with her.

'Why?' he shouted at her.

'Why what?' she yelled back.

'Why should I come with ye'?' he demanded.

Talon had expected a grand speech, the girl to hold aloft her arms and speak promises of adventure that all began with the ship behind her. He would have just settled for just finding out who had killed the Viscount.

The girl didn't do any of that.

'Why not?' her green eyes twinkled with a curious mix of mystique and challenge.

Talon stared at the spot she had submerged in. Honestly, a speech would have annoyed him. The girl's indifference in his coming or going however, snagged him like a fisherman's hook.

He dove into the water after her, screaming dark oaths into the depths of the ocean as sea salt burned his side.

The girl had told him not to touch the knife but right now he would have loved nothing better than to be rid of its weight.

Somehow, he managed to catch up with the girl and followed her up the rope ladder the sailors had tossed overboard.

A ring covered hand extended over the edge towards him and Talon grasped it.

He was hauled roughly over the side and slammed against the railing, uttering a sharp cry as the knife stirred.

'What we have here then eh, little fish?' A gold-plated tooth glinted at Talon. The man clutching Talon by the mantle of his half-cloak had a mean look to his face. Talon had not witnessed a man alive pull off a full bushy beard without looking soft. But this one, well... He could have told Talon that he died his ginger moustache, and the parts of his beard that hadn't been touched by grey, with blood, and Talon would have believed him. He had a face like a cliff, weathered-like but sturdy, with hard lines and wrinkles as trenched as if the ocean had carved the stone of his face. Waves of grey hair ran back over his scalp, falling against the nape of his neck.

'I'd normally commend your caution, Captain but given we're dealing with a mere child with a knife in his guts, I think you can relax.' The girl with the green eyes was casually upending her boots onto the deck as she spoke.

In my guts? Talon felt the blood leave his face, it couldn't be that deep, could it?

The Captain eyed the knife below with a grimace and withdrew the cutlass he'd held to Talon's throat.

'Be glad that did no leave in water, little fish,' the man pointed a ringed finger at the knife.

'TALON!'

Talon peered over the railing to see Uncle Jack tearing down the beach towards them.

The Captain brought up a funny looking pole of wood from behind the ship's rail. The thing was longer than Talon's arm and had a sheen to it, as if it were polished. The pole was about two inches thick with a shining silver cap at the end which glinted in the sun. The wood curved at the back and widened, fitting neatly against the Captain's shoulder, as he aimed at Jack.

Talon didn't know what in the Devil's name that thing was but he quickly deduced it couldn't be anything good.

'RUN JACK!' Talon waved his arms frantically, urging the man to turn back.

A bang almost as loud as the cannon sounded from the pole, which bucked upwards in the Captain's hands, as if he held a ram by the horns.

The green-eyed girl had tipped the pole ever so slightly with the flat of her blade. Whatever had flown out struck the sand harmlessly a few metres to the left of Uncle Jack.

Red-faced, the Captain lowered the smoking pole and looked at the girl murderously. 'You – I wasn't going to shoot at him,' he said. 'I'll take the little fish, if you do be set on it. But not him as well!' The Captain pointed at Talon's Uncle, who showed no sign of stopping his pursuit.

'Nor would I wish you too,' the girl said.

A second later she had wrapped an arm around Talon's throat and held her other hand flat atop the crown of his head.

He thrashed his arms about and kicked out his legs but the girl may as well have been made of stone for how little it bothered her.

Uncle Jack fell flat on his face in the sand just as the sailors had pulled the ladder back up to the deck.

'Let... go... a' me,' Talon wheezed.

The edges of his vision had begun to darken. Black spots gathered in the numbers like blots of ink oozing across a page of parchment.

Talon fell to his knees.

'It's alright,' a voice whispered into his ear.

Someone hoarsely screamed out orders close by, the words coming out clipped, one after the other.

'HOY! ... ANCHOR! ... MAINSAIL!'

Talon blinked and saw his Uncle waist deep in water.

The ship lurched suddenly but Talon remained rooted to the deck.

'TALOOOOONNNNNN!'

Talon collapsed onto his side. The wind smoothed his hair back, or maybe it had been a gentle hand. Two balls of green, no, two gems glistened underneath a hazy blue sky, swirling above like clouds of sand.

'...alright... farmboy.'

Talon blinked once more, and the dark took him for its own.

Thanks for reading this far! If you've enjoyed How the Axe Falls and would like to see more, please feel free to vote, comment, and share the piece. I always like interacting with fellow readers and writers in the comments, so don't hesitate to tell me what you think! :)