They laughed as the triton rode forward slowly on an exhausted plow horse. The village around them was ash and cinders, their flames had already burned out. The group of rugged men stopped what they were doing, gambling most, . A few stood with their breaches around their ankles surrounding a girl who only wore a glazed over expression. 7 in all. The triton surveyed them with a blank expression before bringing the borrowed plow horse with its muddy roan coat to a halt in the center of the dirt road that ran through the raided village. He had seen the carrion birds from the trail here a half of a mile ago. The villagers that had fled to the east had only gotten arrows through the back for their troubles. A few hung by their necks from trees outside the village now he saw. The crows and the vultures tearing away strips of rancid flesh from the faces of the dead, the choice picks like the eyeballs already consumed.
He was almost angry at the plow horse. It was old. He was old. If his ride had been in its prime might be he wouldn’t have had to stop so often for fear of laming of old plow horse.
He was still fond of peaches…even if peaches had broken her leg on the first day riding here. It had been a hard thing to send her to the next life without a rider.With the war maybe she would find a good master in the next life. He had cried after easing her suffering. He had no human friends.Only peaches.Now peaches was gone like the men and women he called comrade. He knew he paid too much for the plow horse. But he couldn’t be mad at the farmer who sold him to the triton. There was war in the land after all.
“Can’t fuckin pull a plow with gold eh ser night? Bugger off”.
In the end he doubled the weight and was handed the reins by a toothless grin that for a second made him want to tell the old farmer off.
The triton dismounted the plow horse and approached with his hand on the undecorated hilt of his long sword.The scabbard and armor equally plain. His plate bore dents and scratches and entirely too much dirt and grime to appear at all like the weight of his title should have afforded.
“Gold is for fat men and dead kings boy…steel is not a whore to be painted”
He recalled his Master arms instructor fondly. He always did this before a fight. Let his mind run around. Best not think too hard at what could happen. Every man dies. All will be greeted by Myrtu in the end. Best not keep him waiting. He could almost see the disapproving glare of Mater Arias.
The group of rugged men looked at him with unbridled amusement. Some openly laughed. The three that were actively raping the girl against the shell of a burned down hovel did not even regard him at all.
“Nice steel, cunt”, One man wearing a boiled leather jerkin said as he stood from the game of dice the rest of the men were playing. None had plate. Fools.
“Triton”, The triton corrected casually.
The brigand that had spoke let out a whistle and said “never killed a triton b’fore”
“You won’t this day either”, The triton said evenly. No emotion behind his voice.
The brigand laughed and it was picked up by the men around him, He drew a chipped length of steel from a stained scabbard and said “we’ve got you outnumbered in a fight you can’t win. Surrender and we’ll only rob ya”
The triton said nothing for a moment that stretched into an eternity. He did not need to come here. His orders were to wait for reinforcements. He had violated those orders. In hope of….stopping it? It didn't matter. He stood here now and regarded them with cold detachment before finally speaking.
“Use the steel or set it down. Either way you die this day”
There was no fear, Only a heightened sense of things. The way the sun was casting his shadow long in front of him. They had the sun in their eyes. A few of the men paced in place nervously. The lead brigand was tensing his jaw. Fear.
The triton had none.
“You fucking mental?”,The seeming leader spat back. “No man can prevail so outnumbered”
“Come and see”
The triton drew free his steel with a smooth dominant side draw. The sword left the scabbard inverted in his hand. The blade rested against the length of his arm and poked out over his shoulder.
The stance of the wasp.
The triton Reached a hand shrouded by a gauntlet to his raised visor and lowered it. Closing his world to slits
“I am unable to walk away”
The silence consumed the street, deafening it was.
The triton moved his head to count them, Finally he grabbed his visor and raised it before taking it off completely and throwing it to the dirt. 9. He drew his dagger with his left hand and widened his stand, The sword held in front and the dagger curled along his forearm close to his face.
He had forgotten is shield
Instead of the form of a scarab he took up the form of the tiger.
The first Man rushed at him recklessly from his right closing the distance fast, The triton parried the slash aimed for his face and planted the dagger in the soft flesh of his neck before kicking the man off of the blade.
A wet gurgling noise filled the silence as the man grabbed his neck trying to breathe as he drowned in his blood and kicked feebly at the dirt. Nobody else made a move. 8.
The triton raised to fingers off of the hilt of his sword and whispered the fatal word.
“Oku”
The flames shot savagely hot from the fingers of the triton closing the distance between him and the group.He felt the savage heat blister his own skin. He was too drained to prevent this. The burns would heal on him. Not on them.
The leader caught the full effect.
“The war is in the mind, make one man an example and the rest lose their nerve”
The flames entrapped the leader as his inhuman screams pierced the air.
“HELP ME’
‘GAHAHAH SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
The leader's scream raised even the hair on the tritons arm as he cooked alive. Finally the Triton walked over to the man and drove the point of his sword through his skull. 7.
He could sense their unease at his brutality but now was not the time for waiting. The triton fainted the next closest brigand aiming a thrust at his face before rotating his wrist and planting the razor sharp edge against the unarmored breaches of his left thigh.
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The triton heard the footstep to his right and looked to see the blade coming down. He swiped it away with his vambrace and stabbed the man in the gut before putting his foot behind the leg of the brigand and sweeping it away. The man fell backwards off his blade.
“Oku”
The man had no time to recover as he found himself engulfed in flames. Searing pain shrouded the triton up to the wrist. This he did not show.
The triton took two large steps back and regarded those that still stood. The man with the slashed thigh hobbled back. The triton pointed at him and whispered “Olemus”
Blood cascaded out of the cut like the rushing of a river as the man went pale and fell dead in a mere moment. The triton felt the blood fall from his own nose as he did this. He was becoming feint from the magic. Fool.
5.
The triton never saw the blade as it clanked off the side of his helm turning his head. The triton shoved the man back Only to turn his head to see another brigand mid half sword. The brigand gripped the blade and used the hilt as a makeshift hammer.
The triton moved too slow and caught the full effect to the face.The triton stumbled back as the blue stars clouded his vision.
4.
The triton took a two handed grip of his blade and stood side faced strobing his eyes, the hilt at his hip and the point in front of his face.
The scorpion pose.
Those that still stood tried to encircle him, the Triton had hoped for this.
As they maneuvered around him the triton spun into a two handed swing that split the man's head into two pieces at the temple. He used the forward momentum to pivot back the other way and with a rotation of his wrists he had opened his neighbors throat open in one clean swing.
Putting him back into scorpion pose.
2.
The last two dropped their weapons and kneeled. With their hands raised. One man gargled in his blood, one was still screaming from the flames and five were already in the next life.
“Mercy sire”, the weathered looking man said. His comrade was a smooth faced boy with a wispy mustache.
The triton pointed at the boy with the bloody sword and said. “How old are you, boy?”
“Seventeen winters sire”
“Run west and choose a new profession.”
The boy stood hesitantly, The triton raised his sword acting like he was going to cut him down. The boy flinched and took off sprinting through the shell of a village towards the south. Fear.
The older man still kneeled, sighed tiredly and said. “ Death?”
The triton said no words to the man, He pushed his head down so he was staring at the dirt and raised his sword. The triton looked at the man for a moment that felt like an eternity. He could not kill him. He hesitated. The triton looked up and saw the girl they had been raping staring at him with glazed over eyes. He saw the gore dry slowly on his blade. He looked at the man who sat burned alive sitting in place because his tendons had tightened from the heat. Bubbles formed at his mouth as his fluids boiled.
There were two monsters here.
“Go “, The triton said bitterly.
The older man looked at him skeptically. A glimmer of hope in his eyes.
The triton looked around at the burned out hovels and the dead bodies he did not make. And the sword came down.
After he would tell himself they deserved it, they were bad men, horrible people. But they would still give him sleepless nights. It is a hard thing to take a man's life. Harder even when their faces blend together and you lose count of them. Harder yet even when they can look up at you with hope.
How many years had it been since he felt like he had stopped making a difference? How many times had he come too late? How many had he failed to save. How many brothers had died for filth like this?
The injustice of it all rattled the triton.
He always got emotional after killing. After seeing death.
“The fuck are you wattering my pit sand for boy? Need a fucking skirt too while your at it?”
The thought made the triton laugh to himself. Master Arias used to make him so upset he would cry, and then he would come by after the lessons and when he did that he was always a different person.
“I am hard on you because I care whether you live or die lad. The man who chases two rabbits loses both, you can focus on the man or how mad at that man you are. Rooted like the oak in the wind, not the mule who pulls the lead attached to the fence. That is the way”
He felt his face and found it tender from the blow he had taken. He had over extended himself with the magic. Humans were no aracanes. Even tritons. He had been reckless and now he was scared to see the condition of his left hand. He knew there would be blisters. His fingernails probably gone. He just hoped he would not find the flesh black. He would have to cut off the hand. Like so many eager that had not taken the proper precautions. Magic can bite both ways and this would be his fault. He looked back at the girl who still sat watching him with guarded eyes.
The Girl was the only survivor. Her beauty had been her curse. She stared at the triton with fear but did not run, She did not speak. She did however start screaming like a banshee when the triton attempted to lift her. Her nails cut into the soft skin of his cheeks as she raked his face aiming for his eyes. The triton had grabbed her wrists and that had only made it worse.
She drove a foot into the one place he had no plate. His own manhood. The arming doublet did nothing to dampen that blow.
What an idiot he felt. He opted to wear no Codpiece for mobility reasons.
The triton felt his anger boil. He released the girl who scooted away from him and hugged her knees into her chest as sobs racked her body.
“Anger is like the taking of poison and expecting your enemy to die. Foolishness. Do not pull it like the weeds of the garden, acknowledge it, and then put it down Verlassen”
The Triton took a deep breath as he recalled the words from Master Sylon. He let the anger fall from his body as he took in peace instead.
‘I am angry because I am in pain.’
He lowered himself to the girl's level and sat in the butterfly pose looking her in the eyes. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a melon of water. He pulled the cork and drank deeply without breaking eye contact and then offered her some.
The girl regarded him with suspicious blue eyes as her knotted and tangled black her shrouded her face. She swiped it from her brow and other than that made no move.
Triton sat the Melon of water down and scooted away from it, Made awkward by the weight of his armor. Finally he said “Drink”
The girl regarded the Melon suspiciously, Her eyes shooting back and forth between the melon and Triton.
The Triton scooted further back from her still sitting butterfly. Finally the Naked girl was on one side of the dirt road. And Triton was on the other. The corpses of the dead sparratically in the middle.
The girl hesitantly snatched the water off the ground and drank it with the ferocity a sober wino attacks ale.
“Slowly”, The triton advised.
The girl ignored him and drank until she was shaking the melon for falling drops of water.
The Girl still looked at him suspiciously. In her defense she had just seen what he had done to the men.
“Who are you?”The girl asked with a shaky tone.
“I am Triton Verlassen.”, The Triton said evenly as he removed his gauntlet and looked at his hand. Blistered and red but no black flesh. Relief spread through the triton.
“Tritons don’t have names”, The girl said near at a whisper.
“It’s not a name, It’s a title”
He had not expected her to speak so soon. He had expected it to be days until she stopped crying.
It has been days. If you were faster this needn’t have happened.
But we needed rest
Did she rest? Your fault coward.
The triton clenched his jaw and took a deep breath before putting on a small smile and saying. “Our names are taken from us, we are given titles by our masters at rebirth”
“What does Verlassen mean?”, She asked.
The triton rose gracefully out of butterfly pose to a stand and took off his dusty leather cloak and tossed it to the girl.
The girl put the cloak on, she was smaller than him by a lot, the cloak basically swallowed her.
“How many summers have you seen, girl?”, The triton asked.
“fourteen”
The Triton clenched his jaw at that.
“Wishing for things that can not happen is less probable than holding back the wind”, The triton said out loud softly.
The girl offered him a guarded expression in response but said nothing.
The triton lowered himself to a kneel in front of the girl and said “Did your parents survive?”
The girl actually slapped him at that question. Her small hand collided harmlessly with the stubble of his jaw.
“What do you think!” She said punching him in the chest
“WHERE WERE YOU THAN?” She screamed, pummeling the plate of his breast plate with small thuds.
She started racking with sobs as the blows stopped.
The triton let her take it out. All of it. She looked at him with eyes that expressed candid hatred as she sucked in breaths.
Verlassen took a deep breath and said “I am sorry”
The girl said nothing, but she couldn’t tell him anything he had not already told himself. If he had not slept at all he could have gotten here in 26 hours at a full gallop. With the laming of his horse and rest it had taken him near three days.
“Come child, where will I take you?”Verlassen asked. He was now duty bound to see her brought safely to her next of kin. Whether she wanted to go with him or not.
The girl raised her arms mockingly towards the village, the cloak still covering her made her look like a bird with wings when she did this.
“Do you have family anywhere else?”
The girl laughed maniacally through her tears and shook her head.
Verlassen pursed his lips as the shame hit his chest like molten iron. “Where would you like to go?”
The girl never answered, she just stood there wrapped in the cloak staring at the ground. Through the ground.
Verlassen knew that people reacted strangely to grief, shock. She was shutting down again and when she started again who knew what emotion it would be. Anger? Sadness? Manic giddiness? Grief did strange things to people.
Verlassen led the girl gently to the plow horse and lifted her up onto the saddle before mounting up himself. He trotted out of the burned village back the way he had come. There was another village a half day's ride up the road. No doubt that would have been the brigands next stop.
Normally Verlassen talked to his horse, but he wasn’t friends with this horse yet and the girl was the only company he had at the moment and he did not know what to say to her. He instead opted to ride in silence speaking only in his head.
“I hate everything about this fucking world.”, The girl whispered softly.
“It's not the world that's bad, it's the people I think”, Verlassen said casually reaching into his satchel for linen to wrap his hand.