It was a hot, humid day on the isle of Sampetra.
And Blackmoon Redclaw was hunting trouble.
Not that the black ferret was usually one of those who picked a
fight.
It was just one of those days when tempers were on edge, and the black
ferret
was irritable and hot. He was lean and sinewy, with a lightning temper
and
an innate skill with most types of weapons. He was especially adept at
the
use of his curved saber, which always hung loosely at his side. The
battle-scarred blade still shone with an aura that belied the fact that
he
still polished it every day. In his right boot there hung a pair of
throwing
knives, at the use of which he was very skilled. He had lately hit a
paw-sized piece of bark at the fifty-pace mark with one of them. They
were
special knives, relics of a happier era in Blackmoon's life. When he
was the
personal bodyguard of the Warlord Rovis Fangclaw, he had had those
knives
crafted by a master armorer. He had slipped the weasel a little
consideration, and the knives had a finely honed edge, a keen balance,
and
handled like no other. He could practically make them stand up and
sing. He
was a warrior, first and foremost, but today he was letting his dark
side
show through. When the loudmouthed rat and his three compatriots came
in the
door, he could smell trouble, and he welcomed it. He kept himself
agile and
quick with encounters like these; too slow, and you bit the dust. His
paw
strayed to one of the knives in his boot as the rat ordered a round of
grog.
When the ferret bartender was a bit slow in bringing on his drink, the
rat
began insulting his heritage, parents, and ferrets in general.
Blackmoon
Redclaw rose slowly from his seat, paws hanging limply at his sides.
"I'm a
ferret," he said gently to the rat. "Would you like to make something
of
it?" The rat was obviously too drunk to note the dangerous
undercurrent in
the ferret's voice. "Yeh, if yer another one o' those slimy scum, all
high
'n mighty like you was the superiors, an' we was trash." The rat's
sober
companions tried to stop him, but there was no calming him. He ranted
on.
Their loyalty was commendable, however. When the rat went for the
knife
concealed in the back of his belt, they both drew theirs. Blackmoon
felt
that old urge well up inside him, the urge to kill, and at that moment,
he
did not care which way the cat jumped. He whipped out a knife and
hurled it
at the first rat. It seemed to sprout like a flower from his chest.
The
second knife followed, going straight for the other rat. Before the
third
rat, the drunken one, could react, Blackmoon Redclaw was upon him. The
saber
glittered in the dim light from the tavern lanterns. He raised it high
and
brought it down, slaying the rat instantly.
It all lasted a matter of seconds.
Suddenly, Blackmoon Redclaw looked down, and there were three dead
rats
lying on the ground. Dazed, the ferret cleaned his knives off on the
tunic
of the third rat and left the tavern. Suddenly, he didn't feel like
hunting
trouble any more. Burning one paper tiger today had been enough.