CHAPTER 54
Katarina brightened as Elizabeth and Ollara showed up. Elizabeth was astride her own horse, and leading the Witch Hunters'. Ollara was on foot, with a roughly hewn sapling carried across her shoulders like a long club.
Elizabeth eyed the conflagration behind the Witch Hunter. Someone had set fire to an entire village and the fire was belching thick black smoke that stung the eyes.
"What happened here?" Elizabeth asked as she swung down from her horse.
"I did." Katarina replied with a serene smile. "Where'd you get the horse?" She asked.
Elizabeth chuckled. "Bandits fleeing Montesilvano." She replied, and Ollara chuckled, hefting her club. "They didn't have a prayer." the giantess added.
Katarina nodded. "That was a beastman village." She replied shortly.
"You killed them all?" Elizabeth asked amazedly. Katarina nodded.
There was a long pause, and Ollara picked it up. "We tried to chase after you. The ground did not stop shaking for some time." She paused. "It was easy to follow your trail, for a time, but it disappeared after the rains. We refused to give up, and searched for you."
Katarina nodded again, and eyed her horse severely. "Hopefully this time you won't throw me." She admonished, and climbed into the saddle. She eyed Elizabeth and Ollara.
"Let's be off."
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Katarina awoke near dawn, unbearably hot and suffocating. She struggled to throw off the blankets from her bedroll, but immediately discovered it was impossible. She couldn't move. She opened her eyes and was somewhat unsurprised to find that at some point in the night Ollara, the giantess that called herself a 'Moonracer', had somehow snuck into Katarina's own bedroll.
The woman was inconsolable after having lost her mate and child, and had unconditionally adopted Katarina as a surrogate daughter after Katarina had rescued and freed her from the Castle of Schactice. Katarina struggled to free herself from the giantesses' entangling embrace before she suffocated in the giantess' magnificent bosom.
Elizabeth watched Katarina untangle herself with some amusement.
"Couldn't sleep?" She quipped as Katarina staggered over to the campfire.
"You try breathing sandwiched between her breasts." Katarina grumbled, not unkindly.
"No, thank you." Elizabeth replied with a smile. "I prefer my partner to be a man."
Katarina made an obscene gesture at Elizabeth, who chuckled, and offered Katarina a crock of soup.
"How much further do you expect it is to Osk?" Katarina asked, and Elizabeth shrugged and stirred up the fire before adding a log.
"I hadn't heard of such a place before it was mentioned." She replied simply. "Forgive my ignorance, but you really don't hear about far-flung places when you patrol the Sterious."
Katarina nodded at that and sipped at her soup.
"What do you expect to find there?" Elizabeth asked, and Katarina glanced at Ollara, still asleep in the Witch Hunter's bedroll.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to find as much as I don't understand why I was told to give that to you." Katarina replied, gesturing at Elizabeth's sword.
"Should you not rethink the plan, then?" Elizabeth asked, and Katarina sighed and with a shake of her head, dismissed that idea.
"I may not know why I'm supposed to seek it out, but I know that I must." She replied simply. "Right now, that's good enough for me."
Elizabeth nodded, and touched a finger to her lips thoughtfully.
"My Lady, I have a question." She asked, and Katarina frowned at her.
"What's with the formality? Haven't we spilled blood enough together?" She asked, and Elizabeth shook her head.
"This is a... delicate question." She added with a glance at the slumbering giantess, and Katarina's eyebrow rose.
"Ask." Katarina replied, and took a swallow of her soup, grimacing at the heat.
"You exterminated that village of nonhumans. Burned the village to the ground, 'in accordance with the will of the Goddess', you said."
Katarina nodded. "That's right."
Elizabeth looked pointedly at the giantess.
Katarina gave her a lopsided grin. "You wonder why I haven't visited the same upon Ollara?" Katarina asked, and Elizabeth nodded.
She took another gulp of soup and idly wished for something more tangible, like a mountain of roasted meat, or piping hot breadcakes, mounded with butter and drowned in honey or syrup. If wishes were coin, no man would be poor.
"Several reasons." Katarina began, taking a gulp of soup, and listing them on her fingers. "Because her people rejoice in the Lady of Spring." Katarina replied. "To them, she is the patron of fertility." She punctuated this by finishing the crock of soup and handing it to the young paladin. "Because her people watch over the city of Osk from the mountains and prevent all intruders from entering." She pontificated, gesturing at the tea kettle.
"And finally, because she is my friend." She added.
"She treats you as if you were her child." Elizabeth observed, while pouring tea. Katarina smiled at that.
"I see no reason to stop her. Her love is pure and unreserved." Katarina retorted. "I will not rebuff her."
"But you seem to have some sleeping problems." Elizabeth replied with a knowing grin.
"Of course. She's as tall as I am when I am astride my horse." Katarina replied, retrieving her cup and sipping at it.
"You going to stay up?" Elizabeth asked. "It's my watch."
Katarina shook her head. "I'm off to bed after this cup." She toasted Elizabeth and drank it down quickly, and rose.
"Rest well, Witch Hunter." Elizabeth called, and Katarina waved disinterestedly on her way back to her bedroll and Ollara.
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Katarina and her companions journeyed south, following what Elizabeth called the Sterious and what Katarina had been told were the Shactice mountains, roughly paralleling the Blackwall, hundreds of miles to the east. They were making for the Samarkand Highlands, a region the armies of the Golden Lady had desperately tried to hold sixty years ago. Somewhere south there was a sloping incline that would lead to the Highlands themselves, and the blighted cities that lay there.
There had once been a small magical kingdom that existed in symbiosis with the Lyonesse, a kingdom within a kingdom, a loosely affiliated number of cities dedicated to specific forms of magical research, each named after semiprecious stones. Jade, Opal, Beryl, Onyx, Carnelian, and Citrine. They were the jewels of the Anglish Empire, crafting and developing many different forms of magic, from the basic firestick that was used by adventurers and woodsmen everywhere to light their campfires in even the harshest of climes, to the useful construction magics, to deadly combat spells and incantations that were wielded against the Empire's foes.
Details were sparse, but there was an incident, or perhaps a magical accident that occurred in one of the cities, and pandemonium and chaos followed in its wake. The other magical cities fell, one by one. Demons and hideous mutations, abominations surged out of the Samarkand highlands, and Lyonesse fell. The armies of the Golden Lady marched to suppress and contain, and lost at every turn. It was impossible to contain, some had said. You send an army one hundred strong, and sixty would come back with mutations, cancers, or possessed by blasphemous entities that howled and gibbered and slaughtered their brethren.
The Anglish Empire was mighty, however. It spanned five continents, and comprised millions of people. The Anglish empire held a long and bloody history of war, eight thousand years of warfare. It poured its resources into stemming the tide of evil, and atop the Hell Stair leading to the Highlands, uncounted millions died.
The Anglish Empire relocated the capital to a continent to the north, a barely explored, little known land that held promise. The Grand Exodus was planned. They drew lines on a map and divided the continent into new zones that the lands to the south could claim and occupy as their own.
Katarina journeyed to the Hell Stair, not to test her might against the blasphemous monstrosities that lurked there, but to cut across them in search of the legendary city of Osk, the first city, the sacred city, the city built to honor the Golden Lady, and the first capital of the Anglish Empire, abandoned and forgotten in the great expansion.
"You sure Osk is up there?" Katarina asked as they travelled. Elizabeth made a face. Katarina asked this a lot.
"Yes." She replied patiently. "We need to climb the Stair, and then buttonhook back along the upper Sterious on the highlands. Ollara's people inhabit the mountains you call the Schactice, and they overlook the city of Osk. It's hard to get there."
"'Hard', she says." Katarina remarked with a sarcastic eyeroll. "The way you've described it, we'll all die horrific deaths on the Stair, snuffed out like a single matchstick dropped in a cistern of water."
Elizabeth nodded reluctantly at that. "Urdistan is small and provincial, but we know well the campaigns against the blasphemous darkness." She paused. "I don't know why the Empire suppresses information about those campaigns, but my country has not. We know the terror by day and the horror by night... and the valiant sacrifices made to stem the tide of evil."
Katarina gave Elizabeth a sidelong glance. The paladin-in-training often made jabs like that. She had some sort of backhanded relationship with the Empire, at turns lauding it, at times condemning it. If she ever made those comments in Darnell, the capital of the Empire, when she made it there to take her vows in the Alstroemeria, she might find herself at the wrong end of an executioner's axe.
"The monstrosities, the mutants and the like have not been seen in some time." Ollara allowed. "They seem to have fallen back to the blighted cities. Perhaps they muster their strength there, I do not know. It will not be easy by any stretch, but perhaps we might slip through the Stair without drawing too much attention." She explained, hitching at the hide wrap around her bosom. "For certain, if your avowed Empire is as mighty as you say, they might be able to reclaim the Highlands if they struck now."
Katarina shook her head. "I don't know what actions the Anglish military are engaged in now, but if I could hazard a guess, they're combatting the evil in other lands."
Katarina glanced at Ollara. As always, the woman's stature impressed her. The giantess was around nine feet tall, Katarina guessed. She was possessed of a figure that any sculptor would bargain his entire livelihood to use as a model. Her arms and legs were smoothly muscled, her belly contoured and defined, her bust magnificent and her hips womanly. Her pale flaxen hair hung in thick cables to her calves, with long feathers twisted in at seeming random intervals. She carried a sapling that was nearly as long as Elizabeth was tall as a weapon, and Katarina had no doubts as to its effectiveness.
The giantess caught Katarina eyeing her.
"Yes, Katarina?" She asked, a smile tugging at her lips. "Is there something you need?"
Katarina shook her head. "Jealous of your strength." She replied honestly. Ollara laughed unashamedly and casually rest her club across her shoulders.
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Almost as soon as they entered the forest, Ollara's eyes narrowed and she readied her club, instead of letting it rest across her shoulders.
Katarina noticed her change, and adjusted her sword so that it could be drawn quickly. The forest was quiet, but it wasn't the deathly silence that usually heralded danger.
"What is it, Ollara?" She asked, as she pulled her coat back to allow access to her gun. Elizabeth looked up at that, and seeing Ollara scanning the forest with her club in hand, loosened her new sword in her scabbard.
"I don't like it here." the giantess stated flatly.
"Not used to forests?" Katarina asked.
"That's not it." Ollara replied tersely. "Can't you smell it? Death is in this forest."
Katarina frowned thoughtfully as she sampled the air.
"Something smells burned, sure." Katarina replied, confused. Ollara clamped her lips together and shook her head.
"Things from the blasted lands, perhaps?" Elizabeth hazarded.
"Well, we're as forewarned as we'll ever be." Katarina muttered. "Elizabeth, keep an eye on our backtrail." She called back. "I'll watch the flanks."
"Leaving me to take point?" Ollara teased with a smile.
"You seem to be the most attuned to whatever's out there." Katarina replied. "I trust your judgement."
Ollara smiled. "Thank you, Kat." She replied easily, and Katarina busied herself with scanning the trees for any threats. It was hard to come to terms with the implicit trust the giantess so easily gave her. It wasn't much of a reach for Katarina to synonymize Ollara with the gray-skinned things in the village she'd butchered, despite what they'd been through together, despite the giantess joining her in her morning prayers to the Golden Lady. They were just too widely dissimilar.
Katarina had rescued the giantess from a quartet of mutant witches that had imprisoned her and sacrificed her family. In turn, Ollara had led her to the ashes of one of the saints of legend, and if that wasn't all, she'd readily agreed to escort Katarina and Elizabeth to Osk, an ancient Anglish city long abandoned.
Katarina herself struggled with a mountain of problems. A myriad of conflicting orders from the Alstroemeria, the grand cathedral of the Anglish Empire, from which all authority flowed. She was ordered to hunt down her sister, but when she took the assignment, she was told the assignment had been frozen and she'd been requested instead to journey to the capital. Katarina, convicted in the belief that her job was to hunt witches regardless of politics, ignored the request and continued. When next she'd made contact with the Church of Angland, the request had turned into an order, and a warrant had been issued for her arrest. Instead, Katarina had sailed from the continent of Hesperia to the continent of Rothgar, initially on a quest for her family.
Katarina was also at times beset with visions, strange wracking convulsions, and miraculous revelations compelling her onward, ever further into the tainted lands of Rothgar. Her last vision seemed to come from the martyred Saint Alicia, who commanded her to travel to Osk.
So Katarina, the young paladin Elizabeth, and the giantess Ollara of the Moonracer tribe journeyed through the blighted lands of Ardeal, Urdistan, and would soon pass through the lands of Montesilvano, at which point they would buttonhook around the Sterious, an irregular line of severe peaks, and through a hidden pass into the city of Osk.
The expected path in the beginning had been to take the well-used path between the Schactice and Sterious Mountains, up the trail known as the Hell Stair, and then across the Samarkand Highlands, but they'd discovered that route had been collapsed with rockslides and massive walls of stone. The Anglish Empire had done everything in their power to prevent the horrors of the Blighted Cities from spilling out, so the trio had to take an alternate path.
Katarina eyed the forest they were passing through, a dense collection of fir and cedar, not too different from the forests she was used to trekking through in Hesperia. The floor of the forest was covered in a thick carpet of fir needles, and the air was thick with the aromatic scent of the cedar.
There was the occasional small sound of something scuttering through tree branches, or fleeing deeper into the forest, but strangely, no songbirds.
"What do you think?" Katarina asked her group.
"Kinda spooky." Elizabeth replied. "Like a library. You instinctively feel like it would be bad to make noise." She replied.
"Death is here." Ollara repeated.
Katarina rolled her eyes. "You said that before." She replied, peering into the woods.
"I meant it. We're getting closer." the giantess replied.
"How much further, do you think?" Katarina asked, and Ollara glanced at her. "It's hard to say. At our current speed, maybe ten minutes."
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Katarina swung down from her horse, checked her sword and gun, and stretched until her back popped.
"All right. Let's be ready for whatever comes. Eyes up and alert." She commanded. "If there's something out there that means to kill us, I aim to kill it first." She added, and gestured for Ollara to continue onward.
While they journeyed inward, Katarina racked her brain for everything she could remember about Montesilvano. It was a decently-sized country, with a number of cities, popular for its many lakes and idyllic forests. Before the disaster up on the highlands with the Jeweled Cities, it was known as a land where many nobles and people of significance in the church purchased properties to retire to. Hundreds of years ago, Lyonesse used the land as a staging area for raids deeper into the continent.
One detail she'd picked up from her former master before he'd passed on was that Montesilvano was host to the grand fortress of the Witch Hunters. The complex had once been the bastion of faith that trained and managed the Witch Hunters of old, but since the exodus, Darnell had taken over training and arming of the Witch Hunters.
They stopped at a creek and refilled their canteens and waterskins, and Katarina found a shard of metal in the water that was jade-green and seemed warm to the touch. It didn't seem to radiate magic, and was interesting, so she decided to keep it.
As she finished filling her waterskin, She rose up from the creek and frowned as the smell of burned meat filled her nose.
"Ollara, Elizabeth, you smell that?" She asked, striding back to her horse.
"What?" Ollara asked irritably.
"Like burned meat." She replied, and Elizabeth sniffed the air.
"I did earlier." the paladin reported. "I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, since I haven't eaten anything but vegetables for weeks." She complained.
Ollara nodded. "I've smelled it since we entered the forest."
Katarina raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "All right." She glanced to Ollara. "Not much further, right?"
The giantess nodded and gestured with her club towards the woods.
"What do you know of Montesilvano, Katarina?" Elizabeth asked, as they rode deeper into the forest.
"Quite a bit, actually." Katarina replied. "It was part of my training in the Preux Academia." She replied.
"Before the Anglish occupation, the Lyonesse used it as a staging area for their raids deeper in- the lands of the Metzcal, Dakar, and Tassili, to be precise." She added.
"After the Anglish occupation, Montesilvano was declared a 'preserve' by her Highness Lady Cardinal Luciana de Selene, and so it was until her death, at which point it became a..." She trailed off, searching for the term. Giving up after a few minutes, she shrugged. "A 'Knight's Preserve', I think is the term. Maybe I'm wrong. Certain sects of the Anglish Empire established training facilities here to combat the problem of local armies. Back then, the Anglish Empire wasn't as organised as it is now. See, many Lords and Ladies had their own private armies, and they often ended up combatting each other, instead of marching under the Golden Lady's banner." She explained, remembering from her lectures. "Incidentally, there's an old Witch Hunter bastion here in the lands somewhere. It's probably abandoned, since all Witch Hunter training takes place in Darnell now."
"Do you need to stop there?" Ollara asked curiously.
Katarina shook her head. "Not our mission." She replied.
"We could take time and see it, at least." The giantess offered, but Katarina shook her head. "I was raised and trained in Darnell." She replied levelly. "There's no real point for me to see it, except as a novelty." She shook her head again.
"Continuing on, Montesilvano grew up around the bastions. They created their own cultures here. Likely most of them have already moved on to Hesperia." She finished, and turned her horse sharply when Ollara held up her hand.
"What is it?" Katarina asked, her gun already in her hand.
Ollara gestured. "Clearing up ahead." Katarina nodded, and drew her sword. "Mayhap we'll find some answers." She replied, clamped her reins between her teeth, and urged her horse forward with her feet.
As she cleared the line of trees in the glade, she could see four or five people clustered around a series of charred stakes at the top of a crested rise in the center.
She urged her horse forward, the stink of seared meat in her nose.
"Hie on up there." She urged her horse, as the group of people reacted, turning towards her. She counted five, and one more, tied to the stake. The other stakes held the scattered and seared remains of past victims.
As they turned towards her, three of them unlimbered crossbows, and were struggling to knock them.
"In the glorious Name of the Golden Lady, what's going on here?" She challenged in a clear yell.
She looked them over carefully, her observant eye catching three men, one older, graying, and two women. The women had reddish-brown hair, all five of them of them wore leather jerkins. The men wore leather pants, while the women wore reddish skirts of some heavy material. They, each of them, wore the Golden Lady's holy symbol. The person on the stake was a blonde woman, wearing a collection of rags. Her face was so battered and purpled that she couldn't identify anything about her.
The older man waved down the others.
"Who are you?! He demanded sourly. "Name yourself, or I shall mete out the Golden Lady's Mercy to you."
Katarina raised an eyebrow. "I am Katarina lon Pavlenko, Justicar Witch Hunter, Inquisitor, Anointed Knight, and lady of the Church of the Goddess of the Dawn." She replied boldly. "Now who are you, and what are you doing?" She demanded. She still hadn't lowered her gun or sheathed her sword.
The quintet shared looks amongst themselves at Katarina's introduction.
The older man spoke up, then. "I am Vincenzo Mazzullo, Justicar Witch Hunter in service to the Church of the Golden Lady." he gestured at his compatriots, pointing them out in turn. "Marco, Brando, and the ladies are Francesca and Emilia."
Katarina eyed each of them carefully. Emilia glared at her hotly, while the woman named as Francesca had a more wide-eyed look of innocent wonder.
Katarina, still keeping her gun on the quintet, examined the woman tied to the stake with her blessed senses and frowned.
"What is her crime?" Katarina asked as she carefully eyed the woman.
"Witchcraft, of course." Vincenzo replied. Katarina raised an eyebrow at this.
"She has no magical talent at all, and she is guilty of Witchery?" She asked curiously. She nudged her horse further into their cluster, inspecting the other stakes.
"There is no sense of magic on any of the remains here. No residues." She declared, swinging her head back to the quintet. "You call yourselves 'Witch Hunters', but there are no witches here." She stated from horseback.
She glared at Vincenzo. "You name yourself Justicar, and yet you cannot tell she carries no magic?" She asked, an anger growing in her breast. "I would very much like to audit the evidence arrayed against this woman before I allow you to take her life." She demanded, brows lowered angrily.
Vincenzo gaped at her. "Certainly not." He objected hotly.
Katarina shook her head. "That wasn't a request." She stated decisively. "If you can't use auravision or sense magic, the basic abilities any Witch Hunter learns in training, then I doubt your credibility as Witch Hunters." She declared. "I'll have your Writs and Warrants, now." Elizabeth and Ollara crested the rise as she finally centered her gun on Vincenzo.
"Ollara, for the time being, free the girl." Katarina commanded. "Elizabeth, secure the two women."
The quintet gasped in shock at Ollara, reaching for crossbows that had been hastily lowered at Katarina's introduction.
"She serves the Lily of Spring as we do." Katarina warned. "Lose the weapons. All of them. If I suspect you of holding out on me, I'll have you all strip naked and I'll march you to Blackwater Bay dressed only in the skin the Golden lady gave you." The fury was building, now. Just the thought of someone pretending to be a Witch Hunter churned her guts. There was the possibility she was wrong, however, so she clamped down on her anger with an iron-hard will.
"Our mission-" Elizabeth objected, and Katarina smiled. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten."
She glanced over their Writs and Warrants, and laughed mockingly. "As I suspected, you're not even real Witch Hunters." Katarina struggled to stay civil. The thought of people running around pretending to be Witch Hunters seethed in her breast.
"Yes we are!" Brando yelled.
Katarina tossed the papers to the ground. "You need to be trained and receive your Writ and Warrant in Darnell." She replied sternly. "These didn't come from Darnell." She scoffed.
"You think we need sanction from bureaucrats to operate?" Vincenzo scoffed.
"Well yes, actually." Katarina replied. "And Witch Hunter talents come from training, discipline, and experience."
Ollara finished freeing the girl, and Katarina eyed the young woman again.
"No sense of magical talent. No visible sign of mutation." Katarina mused again. The girl let out a feeble croak in response.
"What're we still doing here? Let's just go." The other man, Marco, urged the others.
"Try." Katarina encouraged. "Three of you will get a bullet in the back for your trouble, and we'll ride the other two down like animals." She replied with a grin.
"She's lying. There are no guns." Brando urged.
Goddess, forgive me for what I'm about to do. Katarina prayed, and shifted her aim and pulled the trigger.
The report was shattering, the puff of smoke anticlimactic. Miraculously, her horse hadn't bolted. Horses used by Witch Hunters were trained to ignore the thunder of gunfire, but this horse wasn't hers. Her horse was likely still in the stables of Einsamkeit.
Brando staggered, clutching his ruined throat. Blood jetted everywhere. He gaped at her stupidly, before falling over on his face like a puppet with its strings cut.
Katarina glanced at the sky. Goddess, forgive me. She prayed again.
"As you can see, it's very real." Katarina announced through clenched teeth. "You'll surrender to me. Elizabeth, pat them down for weapons and tie them up. There's rope on this side."
Only after they were secured, tied at wrist and ankle, did Katarina dismount from her horse. She reached into one of her packs and pulled out several long, polished wooden stakes.
"You're going to have one shot at proving you're actually Witch Hunters." She encouraged. "These are firesticks. Before you start your training as a Witch Hunter, the first thing you're tested for is magical resistance." She selected a single firestick. "That resistance grows stronger as a Witch Hunter gains experience. It eventually expresses out from you so much that eventually, you can form barriers, use it to interrupt spellcasting, and eventually you can reflect any magic used against you back upon the Witch." She smiled briefly. "You also start accidentally breaking magical devices."
She held the stick up. "Light for me." She commanded, and the end blazed into flames. "You're not going to need to break these." She grabbed the blazing end in her hand, the flames licking between her fingers. There was a feeling of warmth, but as always, the magical fire didn't burn at all. One of the women gasped.
"If you're Witch Hunters, even just Initiates, you should be able to do this much." Katarina finished, and looked at Vincenzo. "If you're truly a Justicar, then you should have no problem doing this." While she held his gaze, she concentrated, focusing on her hand. The firestick suddenly splintered in her hand. She opened her fingers to show no burns or even a hint of ash.
"Your turn, Vincenzo." Katarina urged. She held out a firestick. "Light for me." She commanded, and as it burst into flame, she nodded at the older man. "Grab it."
He immediately shook his head. Katarina brandished her gun.
"...we're not Witch Hunters." He finally admitted it.
"I thought not." Katarina replied smugly. "How many people have you murdered under the lie you've spread?"
He clamped his lips tightly together and wouldn't say anything.
"Katarina, wait." Elizabeth interrupted.
"Go on." Katarina called as she reloaded the spent chamber.
"Perhaps the punishment should fit the crime?" Elizabeth asked. "There are enough stakes for all of them."
Katarina's eyes opened wide at that. She had no reservation whatsoever with the idea of burning them alive at the stake. To pretend to be a Witch Hunter was offensive to her very core.
The remaining four of them started falling over themselves, begging and pleading for mercy, for their lives.
"...I don't know." Katarina replied reluctantly.
"What?" Elizabeth asked, as Katarina stepped away from the four. "What do you mean?"
Katarina shook her head. "They're monsters. They're monsters and blasphemers and they deserve to die." Katarina replied. "But the Goddess has delivered them into my hands."
Ollara kindled a small campfire, and began boiling water to treat the girl. She looked up at Katarina.
"What do you feel you should do?" She asked.
Katarina rolled her eyes at that. "There are three solutions I'm considering." She replied, and began ticking them off on her fingers.
"One: I kill them." She smiled at that, the simple beauty of that smile at complete odds with her words. "I really want to. A bullet in the head for each of them." She added. She raised a second finger.
"Two, I tie them to the stakes and burn them alive." She compressed her lips together. "That's a great idea, I like it, it's got elegance to it. They've made it their pursuit to ... apprehend people and burn them at the stake without proof? Appropriate. But it detracts from our mission."
She squatted down by the fire, causing Elizabeth to grimace. Women did not squat, and they certainly didn't squat in trousers. Obscene.
"The third choice is we take them with us. We bind their hands and they come with us to Osk. Whatever troubles we face, they face as well. Perhaps they'll earn redemption in sacrifice."
Ollara's eyes widened at that.
"I hadn't considered that." She offered, and then rubbed at a spot on her cheek, leaving an ashy smear. "But we would have to feed and watch over them. Katarina, Osk is a dangerous place. I confess that although I like the idea of taking them along with us, our risks double. Not only would we have to contend with threats from outside, but also from the four of them. Don't mistake me, though: I do like the idea of them working for redemption. 'There are none so lost that they cannot be found and brought back home', after all" Ollara quoted.
Katarina nodded. "The logistics of doing so would kill us."
"What, so no matter what, we're all to die?" Emelia shouted at Katarina. "We were trying to do the Goddess' work." She spat.
"Your motives are irrelevant." Katarina replied. "You tried to impersonate an officer of the Church. I don't care what you thought you were doing, or why. You die."
"I..." the other woman began, but Marco glared at her. "Shut up!" he warned.
Katarina glanced at the sky again. It was coming up on late afternoon.
"I'm going to spend an hour in prayer." Katarina finally decided. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth, Ollara. I can't make a decision easily." The two of them nodded. "We can keep an eye on them, no problem."
Katarina stepped away from the fire and went to the edge of the glade, sat down and began to pray.
Time was short, she knew. She didn't understand why or how she knew it, only that there would be a limited window for her to go to Osk and return safely, and they still had far to go. Vincenzo, Marco, and Emilia seemed committed to the work, though there was something about the other woman that radiated uncertainty. Should she alone be spared? No. Yes. Katarina struggled with these thoughts as she prayed, and after an hour, she rose to her feet.
She announced her return to the campfire by ordering Elizabeth to tie Vincenzo, Marco, and Emilia to the stakes.
Katarina turned to the other woman and racked her memory for the woman's name. "Francesca, do you have something to say? You've been quiet."
The woman shook her head. "I joined them because i thought I would be doing good. It's obvious I was wrong. I accept the consequences of my decisions." She moved to the available stake.
"Fine. By virtue of being the only official of the Anglish Empire, I do sentence you to die for the crimes of heresy and impersonating an officer of the Church."
She recited the prayer she had learned in her dreams in the forests of Hesperia, and a stream of fire lanced down from the sky, consuming the four, searing them in a flash, searing the ground down to the bedrock.
She'd used this ability once before, in the city of Wallachia, against the blight-cursed. She knew it for a power that certain warpriests could use, though she couldn't understand why she would have this ability.
As the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the stakes, or the four, just smoking stones.
Both Elizabeth and Ollara gaped at her. They hadn't expected that at all and were speechless, struggling with the repercussions.
Katarina herself didn't notice their unaffected shock and amazement. Katarina herself wasn't much aware of anything going on around her. She was casting her mind forward, thinking of the trip through the rest of the woods as they made their short arc through Montesilvano. She knelt next to the blonde woman, and prayed for a speedy recovery.
"We won't be able to take her with us." Katarina noted, and Elizabeth nodded. "You're right." She agreed.
"Thoughts?" Katarina asked, and glanced to the paladin and giantess.
"The main problem is we don't know where they- or she- came from." Ollara replied. "We have no sure way of knowing how to return her to her people."
Katarina nodded, lost in thought. "We'll have a look around. Maybe we'll spot tracks. This place was used frequently." She mused, "So there should be plenty of tracks, maybe even a campsite. It doesn't seem much likely that they would come out here on foot, unless the bastion was close by."
Elizabeth nodded at that, and then caught notice of Ollara's silent gesture at her.
Elizabeth looked a question at Ollara, who looked at Katarina and then back at Elizabeth. The paladin shook her head and added a shrug for good measure.
Ollara sighed, and fed the girl another sip of water. She'd been badly beaten. She looked up to spot Katarina moving back and forth across the grass of the glade, seemingly disinterested in the still-smoldering pit she'd dropped in the middle.
"Found their tracks!" Katarina called. "Stay there. I won't go far."
Elizabeth waved, but Katarina was vaulting into her saddle and trotting away, and didn't notice.
"Did you know she could do that?" Elizabeth asked Ollara, who shook her head.
"I was about to ask the same thing." The giantess confessed. "I have never seen such power wielded by a human before."
"Never?" Elizabeth asked, curious.
"Well, keep in mind my tribe never interfered with humans." Ollara replied with a half-smile. "We tend to avoid you."
"But you serve the Goddess as we do." She replied. "You could help us. We could help each other." Elizabeth insisted.
Ollara shook her head. "Humans are too excitable. We do things at our own pace."
"But yet you follow Katarina." Elizabeth pointed out.
Ollara gave Elizabeth a scrutinizing look. "There are reasons behind my choice." She stated coolly.
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I'm curious, here."
Ollara shook her head. The young paladin wouldn't understand, and she wasn't certain she had a strong enough grasp on the Anglish tongue to explain it, either.
Elizabeth gasped as she removed the cloth from the young woman's face. The bruises had faded and the woman looked almost well. The woman looked as though she'd had several days of restful sleep.
"By the Goddess." Elizabeth breathed. "Is Katarina..." She trailed off.
"What?" Ollara asked, masking her own shock.
"Do you think she's even human?" Elizabeth asked wonderingly, and pointed to the shallow pit that still smoldered around the edges. "Look. She can call down fire from the heavens. She can heal the injured." She hugged herself, remembering the awful horrors visited upon her. "She told me she wasn't, but..." She trailed off. "A human being can't do the things she's done, Ollara. Tell me she's human."
Ollara shook her head. "I can't."
Katarina rode out of the treeline leading a train of horses.
Elizabeth gaped at Ollara in unaffected shock and surprise as Katarina trotted up to them.
"Found their horses. Also, the treeline thins out that way. Could have sworn I saw the lights of a village or town further south." Katarina reported casually. "Likely that one will be able to find her way home without any problems."
She slid from the saddle of her horse with a casual grace.
"Katarina..?" Elizabeth began hesitantly.
Katarina's gaze focused on the paladin. "What is it, 'lizabeth?" She asked curiously.
"Are you an angel?" She asked again.
Katarina gave her a baffled look. "Of course not. I'm just as human as you are." She replied crossly. She gave the sky a look; the sun reported it as late afternoon.
"We should push on. I think we can get at least thirty or so miles before we have to start looking for a place to camp." She decided.
"The girl? Are we taking her with us?" Ollara asked. Katarina shook her head.
"It looks like those ... people had a good mix of supplies. I found a couple skins of wine; plenty of water, trail food, a few knives and rope. We can leave them for her. Also the horses. She'll be fine on her own."
The woman opened her eyes and let out a feeble cry.
"Oh! She's awake!" Katarina exclaimed. She knelt by the girl's side.
"Hi there. Don't be frightened. The Goddess has punished the ones that hurt you." She murmured.
The woman stared blankly at Katarina. The Witch Hunter rolled her eyes, and tapped her chest. "Katarina." She offered by way of introduction.
The woman babbled at her in some language neither Ollara or Elizabeth could understand. Katarina eyed her intently, and then slowly babbled back at the woman, who looked puzzled for a moment, and then nodded.
Katarina smiled, and babbled at her.
"What's she saying?" Elizabeth asked, and Katarina glanced at her and held up a finger.
Katarina babbled at her, gestured to the horses, and hooked her thumb over her shoulder, and then babbled something that sounded like a question.
The girl nodded, and touched the Witch Hunter's arm, and hesitantly pointed at the scorched ground that was bereft of even the topsoil. Katarina negligently waved it away.
Katarina got up, went to one of the horses, and pulled out a maroon dress from the saddlebags. She gabbled at the girl, pointing out her rags, and the girl babbled back.
Katarina gave the girl a comforting pat on the shoulder, and stood up.
"She knows how to get back home. They didn't take any particular precaution when they hauled her out here. She'll head back tomorrow morning. Apparently it's a two or three day ride back to that town, and then another trip for her to get home. She'll be fine. We'll leave the campfire for her. Up! Let's go." Katarina explained briskly, gesturing at Elizabeth and Ollara.
"You could understand that?" Elizabeth stared at her, baffled.
Katarina rolled her eyes. "Elizabeth, part of a Witch Hunter's training is learning about every region controlled by the Anglish Empire. Part of that training is learning the languages and cultures of each." She sighed. "It's hard on me, because I haven't spoken Montesilvano in at least ten years. That girl was looking at me like I was an idiot the whole time."
"How do you learn all the languages?" Elizabeth asked, as they rode away.
"Part of it is lessons. Part of it is very specialized training involving incense and tones." Katarina replied. "You're taught in such a way that you don't really forget. It just goes into your brain and sticks there until needed."
Katarina's eyes lit up. "So that's what Sasaki was talking about!" She exclaimed, bouncing her fist in her palm. She chuckled and shook her head.
"Sasaki?" Ollara asked.
"A girl I adventured with..." Katarina trailed off. "I don't know. How long have I been here in Rothgar?" She asked rhetorically. "Some months back. Anyway, she told me part of her sword training was like that. I didn't get it, then." She explained.
"Onward to Osk?" Elizabeth asked unnecessarily, and Katarina nodded. "We've still got a mission."