Csyth looked into the setting sun with his hand cupped low on his brow. The road cut straight through the old growth forest toward the horizon, and seemed devoid of trouble but the base of his skull held a knotted ball of stress, and the tension would not allow him to regard such apparent innocence lightly. He twisted his facial features a bit as the fingers on his other hand pressured and poked at the wound in his side. The ragged exhalation of muted pain told him that he needed to keep moving, as he was in no shape to fight again.

His old tricks were enough to have gotten him this far, but he wasn't sure how many more he could summon, and if they would give him away for what he really was.

"Mithaynt was my age when I met him, the damned old fool. He seemed so much younger than I feel today," he thought with gritted teeth. Things had changed, he told himself. Starting out on one side of the law and the throne and ending up on the other did no favors for one's soul. Nor did bearing the responsibility of your teacher's demise inside yourself for the past several decades.

He moved back into the forest, far enough to feel the concealing canopy overhead, but still keeping the trail in sight, parallel to his path. Csyth knew he was moving faster than most in his condition, but it surely did not feel like it was fast enough. And it wasn't.

The bootheel struck a gnarled root awkwardly, and instantly Csyth knew where his attacker was. The resulting silence gave him the impression of others who had suddenly froze from the audible mistake. Like coloring in the empty space to make a picture, he could visualize three other attackers, all frozen in mid stride, trying to not even breathe.

"Four of them, just for me," his mind raced, "There's no way they could know what I am, and yet to send four of them..." He reached out with his mind for a visual, only a portion of a second that he could gather from the smooth eye-stones under their feet and the mist that hung in the air, but it was enough to get the impression that they were not coming with nets and shackles. Orders to kill. That made things easier for him.

If they were trying to capture him, they would know who he was and would have made special arrangements before attempting an ambush such as this.

His mind was counting down the seconds before one of them would be bold enough to make a move. Csyth had calculated almost every tactical option when his ears picked up the nearly silent whine of two bow strings being drawn. His knuckles clenched against his improvised walking stick, almost a crutch to him at this point. He lifted the end off the ground gently and as he heard fingers release gut he raised it at an odd angle and braced himself. The arrows hit simultaneously, for which Cysth was thankful, notching themselves, one in each end of his walking stick. In the din, he knew two more would follow.

Csyth's heart had barely begun to skip faster, as he calmly snapped his walking stick over his thigh and swatted the air in front of him. One arrow clattered to the ground, deflected; the other lodged akimbo to the first in the wood. He dropped the two halves and slowly knelt to the floor of the forest, pressing his hand against a bare spot of earth. He rotated his palm until he discovered the best tension-line of stressed rock hidden below and then tightened the muscles down his arm, compacting the dirt when he touched. He heard bones snap in one of the attacker's legs, and the cry of pain echoed through the trees. Two more arrows had buzzed just over Csyth's head while he was so engaged.

Csysth rotated to face the the attacker who's bootheel had given them away eight seconds previously, knowing that he would be the one to try and make up for his mistake by charging. There was a slight alley between the trees in that direction and the man was already covering the distance with fury burning in every step. Csyth 's hands expertly grasped his sword's hilt and drew them upward in a graceful and compact arc. There was a slight crystal goblet ring in the air, and Csyth's lips pursed together; adding a dissonant harmonic note to the ring. He stabilized his muscles and his legs seemed to root themselves into place. The attacker brought his weapon from overhead, crashing down. The note hanging in space seemed to peak, and Csyth's blade flashed brightly, as though somehow the sun found a way to pierce through the leaves. His attacker tried to pull up, or even adjust the angle of impact to glance the blow, sensing some devilry at work.

Contact should have been devasting to one or both of the combatants. But the attacker's moving sword shattered and crumbled around Csyth's defensive stance; his now gleaming sword unwavering against the blow. The attacker stood face to face with the gruff and graying warrior, eyes widening as he raised his hands to observe the bones turning to powder under the skin. Csyth butted him in the forehead brutally with the hilt of his sword and the man crumpled to ground. Csyth knew that the poor soldier's arms would be jelly from the elbows down by the time he came to rest.

The sound of forest silence emerged for a heartbeat. The other two attackers were nearer to each other, trying to determine whether to press the attack. Csyth reached towards them, fingers splayed painfully and brought forth a growl that crescendoed into a sharp shout. The two hidden men felt their noses and sternums seem to crack and then melt inside. They gave an anguished moan and fell where they crouched.

The forest now returned to a more normal state. Csyth nearly doubled over, and was able to sheathe his sword just before he retched. He picked himself up and spat a few times. He hobbled in the direction he was trying to head for almost an hour, found a rotted out tree stump and heaved his failing old body into it, hoping that he would awake in the morning. Whether it was a guard's blade or his own undoing, he hoped to have one more day before meeting that end. One more day to accomplish that which had eluded him his whole life. Tomorrow. Hopefully.

Life is: hearing a song from someone else's car while you are walking through the parking lot with your bag containing the makings of a quite nice Italian dinner and the song totally takes you back to something really personal and private, like the first time you made out with a girl and by made out, you know that I mean like really got past just kissing for the first time, which just so happened to be at a church function and your friend was really addicted to this band and had them playing non-stop on their little mauve plastic boombox and even the kids over in the rec room playing kickball or volleyball or whatever the non-making-out kids were playing back then, were telling your friend to turn that horrible song off, and you kinda smiled a little bit which meant you lost your place in your make out session for a second and she started to wonder if she wasn't a very good kisser, which actually still haunts her to this day, and then a car horn lets you know you strayed out into the middle of the gray, slushy ice that still runs down the middle of the parking lot lane and when it startled you your day old french bread loaf that you were going to make homemade garlic bread with tumbles into the slush, but it was wrapped in that weird half paper-half clear plastic sleeve that every bakery in the world apparently uses so you're pretty sure its going to be okay for dinner and then you look up at the driver of the car and give them the mostly-polite-but-still-letting-you-know-I'm-kinda-pissed wave acknowledgment thing that we all do, even when we are really seething with hatred but we're in public and probably shouldn't act on it, and then when you hop in your car and set your bag in the passenger seat, taking care that the jar of the "expensive" sauce isn't going to fall over onto your middle console; just then the name of the make out girl pops in your head, even though 9 seconds ago you would have sworn that you would have never been able to come up with it in a million years, and then you remember the song and the way she smelled and you smile and then you drive home without remembering you forgot to buy the garlic you needed.

yep

Life is: those two old people who always dance at weddings, when the band slides into some old 40's standard played in half-time; their orthopedic shoes shuffling point-counterpoint on the scuffed wood dance floor and you can tell that the joints are hurting and the artificial hip isn't quite as stable as it was, and you're sitting there with a watered down gin and tonic in a too tiny plastic cup next to your hand that rests on the commercially washed and starched table linen and the conductor notices the old couple and gently prods just a couple of extra beats per minute and a couple of extra decibels out of the band that was really hoping for a cigarette break three songs ago and everyone starts to hold their breath because the finale is coming and he gives her a little whirl and everything falls into place for just that split second and then he goes for the dip on the last "wah-wah"ing note and holds her perfectly and she gives the laugh/blush/peck on the cheek and everyone applauds, and your date who you only kind of knew but had to ask at the last minute because the girl you'd been obsessing over at the bar turned you down, but in a pretty nice way that makes you think that maybe next time it would work out; your date is wiping tears away but she looks a little dorky doing it because you bought her one of those wrist corsages and now you feel bad that you didn't get the cheaper one that pinned on but then you remember the old people and start to clap yourself and kind of smile and use everyone's diverted attention as a chance to run up to the bar to get another too tiny gin and tonic.