“Good afternoon, Sirs!” She called out to them as she subtly shifted to shield the boy from view

  “You! faun bitch! Hold that boy!”

  “Sir, there’s no need for insult. My name is Hoxley, thank you very much, and I’m a messenger for all the lands and- “

  “Stand aside!” The tall man shouted as he walked past Hoxley’s front and rounded her long body to grab the boy. The boy attempted to swipe at him, but the man expertly dodged away, grabbing his arm at the wrist and twisting until he dropped the knife. The others closed in.

  “Help me!” the boy said, pinned to the tall man’s chest despite his obvious struggle. “Stop them!”

  “Who’s this?” said the burly man with a pronounced gut and an unkept beard, one of the three men approaching the scene

  “There’s no need for any of this.” She said. “My name is Hoxley, and if you’d just- “

  “Silence that tongue, horse girl, or I’ll cut it out of your head.” The tall man said, pointing the tip of his short sword at her. He continued twisting the boy’s wrist back to the side at an angle. Hoxley noticed that he was trying to keep a straight face, but as he was forced to one knee, she caught a slight wince. “You,” The tall one nodded to another man, another portly sod with a scraggly beard. “Search him.” The small man waddled over and started searching through his pockets. It wasn’t until he started searching the boy’s shirt pockets and produced the receipt slip that Hoxley got truly nervous.

  “Only a slip of paper,” said the man

  “What does it say?” the tall one questioned.

  “How should I know? I can’t read. Here, you read it.” he passed it to the man with the large belly. The big guy looked it over for a moment, his lips moving with the words as he spelled it out. When he was done, his eyes narrowed and glanced up at the girl with four faun’s legs.

  “What does it say?” The tall man asked again.

  “It’s a receipt for goods, from her.” He nodded at Hoxley. “He’s paid to have her deliver something to the western kingdom.”

  “The boy doesn’t have anything on him, but those saddlebags look big enough to carry a crown,” said the fourth one. “Hey, horse girl, what did this runt give you to deliver?”

  “I-I’m just a messenger for parcels.” She stuttered, hand drifting to the satchel where the item was held. “He gave me a bag.”

  “Hand it over,” said the big fat one. “He took something that doesn’t belong to him. Go on, give it up.”

  “Good Sir, if you’ll please listen, you’ll see that once I have something in my possession, I cannot relinquish it until it's properly delivered to its receiver. It’s my only job.” The tall one let out a long huff with frustration.

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  “Faun, you look like you’re young enough that you’ve got cabbage between your ears, so I’m going to be nice. If you don’t give me those saddlebags before I count three, my man here is going to open you up with his sword and take those bags from your cooling body. Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, Sir.”

  “Get on with it then.”

  “Good Sir, please don’t make me do this.” Hoxley pleaded.

  “One…”

  “I’m sure if we talked this over, we could come to a reasonable solution.”

  “Two….”

  “Ah, horse apples….it was such a good start to the day too.” Said Hoxley. When she reached back with her right hand by her lower back and dropped the saddlebags to the ground next to the ledge, the men relaxed. This quickly turned to alarm when, in the same motion, she unsnapped the leather strap holding the pugil to her back and yanked it free. Faster than anyone could react or shout a warning, the six-foot pugil with bronze spheres attached to the ends was already spinning wildly. Much quicker than the men were expecting, one of the ends shot out, braining the fat man above the left ear.

  “Gah!” He shrieked as he toppled backwards to land on his back. A half step to the right and a downward strike caught the tall man on the back of the hand. He yelped like a scalded dog, yanking the appendage back and releasing the boy with his other hand. His sword clattered to the stone, forgotten momentarily as he wailed in pain. The boy collected the sword and stepped away,

  “You! Get behind me!” she ordered. He quickly obeyed, and she could feel him crouch against her hind legs near the ledge of the bridge.

  The squat one tried to rush from the left, but a sharp jab just below the second bulbous chin was enough of a strike to the windpipe to stop him cold. He backpedaled, stunned and struggling for air. The fourth one retreated a step or two out of reach of her pugil and took up a defensive stance. He looked to the tall one still cradling his injured hand that very well could be broken from the way the fingers hung unmoving.

  “What are you waiting for?” shouted the tall one. “Cut her down so we can get the boy and go!”

  “Gentlemen, I beg you to please put your swords away so we can resolve this with reason.” Hoxley proclaimed.

  “You break one man’s head and one’s hand and want me to disarm?” said the fourth, his weight quickly shifting from one foot to the other as he readied himself for an attack. “I think not!”

  “I apologize then, this could have been avoided,” Hoxley stated as she prepared to reengage in the conflict. Her bravado quickly faded, however, as on the horizon she could spot ten more men, all wearing similar attire. From the tall man’s relieved eyes and a shift to a more comfortable stance, she knew he saw them too. Before she could react, he waved his good hand in the air.-

  “Here! over here! We have him! Hurry!”

  Hoxley’s gaze went back to the man with the sword, and he saw his body weight shift to charge. She reinforced the grip on her pugil, letting gravity pull the majority of the stick down to the ground and grasping the top bronze ball with her right hand. When he was about to lunge at her, she raised the stick horizontally, aiming with her left hand and driving it from the back end with her right hand like a lance. The strike glanced the man’s blade, and for a second, it looked like she missed. With a small grin and a quick flick of the wrist she recalibrated, sphere slamming home between his eyes. His forward momentum added to the fierceness of the strike, causing his whole body to freeze before falling chest first at her left side and going over the edge. This might not have been a problem if not for the fact that his last desperate attempt to keep from going over the edge was to grasp onto anything stationary…including her saddlebag. She watched in horror as the man toppled ass overhead, still grasping the contents of her livelihood down, down, down, twenty feet to splash into the swiftly flowing water.

  “No! My bag!” She yelled after it.

  She looked back at the tall man, still waving and yelling to encourage the others to move faster to join them. One man rolled on the ground cradling his head, another rubbing his neck and still coughing. The tall man still grasped his injured hand, but he’d lost the desperation in his eye. Instead, a calm smirk sat comfortably on his face.

  “You’ve done it now, horse girl. You may be able to fight four, but nobody can fight ten. I’m going to enjoy watching you scream when they carve you up.” Hoxley’s eyes darted around. From the men on the ground, to the men who were getting closer in the field beyond the bridge, to the frightened boy who cowered behind her, and ultimately to her saddlebags getting further and further away every second she watched. She knew what she needed to do.

  “Can you swim?” she asked the prince.

  “Yes. A little.” He answered, trying and failing to hide the waver in his voice.

  “That’s enough.” She spun about, twisting her rump and knocking the prince from his footing to fall down, down, down and splash into the water. He returned to the surface a moment later, flailing but alive as the current carried him quickly away.

  “Not smart, horse girl,” said the tall man, his wicked grin still taunting her.

  “I’m a faun.” She corrected him, swinging her pugil and smashing his other hand, causing him to crumple, crying out in anguish for the smashed appendage. And with that, she turned and leapt off the bridge to escape into the summer air. “And my name is Hoxley!”