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Man. How could it have all gone so wrong after that? Agh. Pride before the fall, he supposed.

Amateurish of him, really. Letting a little success go to his head like that.

Well. In fairness, killing a marshal when three of them were hounding him day and night was more than just a “little” success.

But still. No excuses.

“You’re awake,” came that familiar double-voice of the Black Scourge. “I was beginning to think Grant had done some kind of permanent damage to you.”

Jercash didn’t turn to look at him yet. He hadn’t sensed Gohvis there a moment ago, but now he did, and he was not surprised. The jerk always did like to sneak up on people. Like a little kid, honestly.

A giant, draconic, little kid.

“Grant...” The name fell almost involuntarily out of Jercash’s mouth. That was right, wasn’t it? He’d gotten into a pitched battle with that son of a bitch, one that he’d felt like he was about to win. He’d manipulated the battlefield in order to create exactly that scenario, after all.

Truthfully, Carson’s death had been more luck than strategy, Jercash felt. While he certainly didn’t mind taking credit for it in front of the men and the general public, he and his top guys all knew the truth. It was a routine assassination attempt. The kind people at this level had to deal with all the time.

It wasn’t actually supposed have to succeeded. It was just supposed to have bought Jercash time.

But then his assassins came back with wonderful news--and the physical proof of their success, to boot.

Jercash could not have been prouder.

The Little Assassins that Could. Led by the Bolt of Kavia. Or the Headhunter, as some had also started calling him. Or Karkash the Thunderbolt, as still others did.

Personally, Jercash preferred the latter, but he knew that these sorts of things tended to take on a life of their own. Whatever stuck, stuck.

He didn’t yet know if the youngster was truly deserving of all the attention, though. Nor would he know for quite some time, he suspected. Unless he’d already gotten killed in the mayhem of the last battle, of course.

That was the way it worked with these meteoric upstarts. The ones that just exploded onto the scene, making big waves out of nowhere. Usually, it was just dumb luck that earned them that first wave, but time always told whether they could sustain themselves, eventually.