Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1375: One Strike

Weaklings.

The thought surfaced, and Negan froze.

He rejected it instinctively — it was rubbish, she was goading them — but the rejection didn’t hold. Two men, armed and armored, working in concert against one unarmed girl. And they had not won. That was the ground beneath his feet, and no amount of fury changed the level of it.

The hatred had been building for years: hatred for Roland Wimbledon, for Graycastle, and most of all for the hot weapons that had overturned every natural order. With a firearm, the meanest farmer could cut down a knight who had spent decades forging himself into something extraordinary. The strong were meant to stand above the weak. That was the world’s structure, the compact that civilization recognized. Without hot weapons, he and his brother would still be untouchable.

But this girl had fought them without hot weapons. Without any weapon at all. And they had lost.

When the improbable fact collided with the faith he had built his life around, his mind went briefly sideways — adrift in a confusion too large to stand inside.

“As expected from a witch — misleading the public with lies.” Talos gasped in twice. “Relying on brute strength to win? Don’t make me laugh. You used some unclean power and contaminated my God’s Stone. Cough cough — if the Church of Hermes still stood, would you even show yourself? Aside from the Graycastle king who destroyed everything right, you witches are next in line for Hell!”

“Nonsense.” A man’s voice cut in from the front of the carriage. “I’m a Church member and I’ve ferried dozens of witches. Not only do they show themselves, they praised my driving. The past and current leaders of the Church are witches — you want to lecture me about tradition? They are the bloody tradition!”

Both brothers turned.

That was the coachman talking.

There is always a way out.

The driver was alone in the cab. Seize him, use him, get clear of the port. Come back later. One of them needed to occupy the wolf girl for a moment — and given how the exchange had gone, that task fell to the stronger one.

Negan opened his mouth to assign it.

Talos seized him by the shoulder and threw him.

The world tilted. Negan flew toward the girl, watching over his shoulder as his brother turned and sprinted for the vehicle, the distance growing between them with every heartbeat.

“Broth—”

The girl’s palm connected and drove him into the dock planks. A kick followed, the full weight of it, and the world went black at the edges and then all the way through. His last conscious thought was fragmented and dimming — stunned and betrayed and failing — and just before the darkness took it completely, a voice above him said something in a quiet mutter.

“The person there isn’t someone you two could handle either.”

Talos covered the ten paces in a sprint. He was almost through the cab door when a figure stepped out from behind the vehicle.

A girl. Dark gray uniform — the same as the other coachman, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t considered that the large carriages might require two drivers.

An ordinary person. Whether one or two, it made no practical difference. If anything, the girl was easier to control than the mouthy male. Talos intended to take her as a shield, then deal with the man who had dared answer him back.

The steel rod in her hands didn’t register as a threat. He didn’t spare it a thought.

He tore his scarf free, let his face do the work his voice usually did, and closed the distance at a sprint with the dagger raised. The visible weapon, the ruined face — in every encounter he’d had in the past months, that combination had been enough. Submission was the predictable result.

Her expression didn’t move.

Not hesitation. Not the braced terror of someone deciding whether to fight. Simply — stillness. As though she had been standing here for a long time waiting, and here he finally was.

Talos registered the steel rod lifting. Both her hands on it, raised vertical, then swinging down from overhead.

She’s going to slash at me. Wide open. Suicidal.

In the eyes of an untrained observer, the gesture read as desperation — the wild swing of someone with no idea what they were doing. To Talos it read differently. That sweep contained something. An oppressive density, a way of claiming all the available space at once, as though the head of the rod had grown to fill every angle he might take.

Too late to stop. Too fast to redirect.

If he held his line, the dagger might reach her throat — but the rod would split his skull.

His body made the decision before his mind finished the calculation. The blade rotated, both arms lifted in a cross-guard above his head.

“Break!”

The rod came down through the sparks of the impact and shattered the dagger along its middle. The momentum didn’t diminish. It drove through the fragments in a clean continuation, straight into his face.

How—

The sound was enormous inside his own skull. His body went rigid before it went down, and then it did not get up again. His muscles twitched — the mechanical contractions of a nervous system still firing without anyone left to direct it — but Talos Murray had already gone somewhere that couldn’t be reached by twitching.

“Settled?” Joe leaned out from the cab window.

“Yes.” Farrina shook the blood from her fingers. “If he’d committed to the stab, we might have exchanged more. Once he flinched, one strike was all it needed.” She glanced at him. “Your lure was equally important. Well done.”

Joe laughed, the easy laugh of a man who knew he’d done something right. “Don’t forget I was once a noble — and one known to be quite skilled at insulting people. I can promise you no sentence in that little speech was repeated.”

Farrina lifted her eyes to his face. “He was obviously a noble too. Yet the two of you are nothing alike.” The observation seemed to genuinely puzzle her. “Sometimes I think about it — why are there such differences between humans? Was that the Creator’s intention?”

“You’re different too.” Joe’s gaze shifted briefly sideways, then came back to her. “That’s why I find myself so drawn to you.”

“Joe…”

“Farrina…”

“Ahem. Excuse me.” Lorgar stepped between them, carrying the unconscious Negan by one wrist. “Is he still breathing?”

She dropped him beside his brother and considered them both without much visible concern.

“I believe so,” Farrina said. “How did you know we were here already?”

“I heard your footsteps.” Lorgar’s ears shifted. “As expected of the captain of the Judgment Army — to notice the commotion and intercept so quickly.”

“They had already spent most of their fight against you. I arrived at the end.” Farrina smiled. “If there’s an opportunity later, I’d be glad to spar with you properly.”

Lorgar’s ears came forward. “I’d welcome that.”

“The future can wait.” Joe sighed. “The problem now — what do we do with these two?”

“Hand them to the First Army for interrogation.” Lorgar looked at the brothers without any particular expression. “They’re wearing armor under those coats, so they’re not ordinary refugees. As for what to do with them — that’s for the Army to decide.”

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