Song crouched low among the underbrush. Pine needles prickled her armor, and the snow-capped trees above her head loomed in the deep silence of Krownest’s eternal winter. A pair of binoculars in hand, she stared out to the encampment waiting near the foot of the mountain, studying the guards posted about. Once finished, she set them down and cast a glance over her shoulder to Minerva.
“I count at least twenty men, not including Tyre and whoever he has guarding his tent.” She unholstered the polished blaster on her side, checking the safety and cocking the hammer back for safe measure. “I hope you’re hungry, because this should be a piece of cake.”
It was the truth. They were both Mandalorians. Both of Clan Wren. They’d been trained for dealing with everything between outsiders and mountain-dwelling monsters. Song had been no more than ten years old when she was tossed into her first hunt, and when she earned her first kill: a silver-white wolf. The deed had been bloody, gifting her a small scar on her right leg, but it had taught her plenty about the world and the rest of the galaxy.
You either learned to fight, or you learned to die.
Song moved carefully toward the clearing by the mountainside. Under the orders of her father, Count Ghent Wren, she and Minerva had elected to hunt down a band of marauders that had taken refuge in the eastern wilds. They’d been told the men were armed to the teeth, and led by a former Mandalorian by the name of Tyre. Once hailing from the Clan Kryze, he’d since broken away from his kin and built himself the status of a warlord. A pirate. Clan Wren only saw him as a thug.
Still, the old Kryze had plenty of history. He was a legend, having fought both Jedi and Sith and lived to tell the tale. Word had it that he even managed to get a hit on a Darth, taking both his lightsaber and his head as proof. It didn’t matter if reports estimated he was nearing his eighties. If the Mandalorian could still wield a sword or a blaster, he’d still have twice the experience of Song and Minerva combined.
They would have to be careful for what lay ahead.
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