“Now, then. Lydia, Marion,” he began, gesturing to each in turn. “It's been a long day for me and my men. I'm getting tired. They're getting tired. I'm sure you are both eager to be rid of us.”
Marion spit, earning him the back of Arik's meaty fist.
“Come on, Arik,” Rowan protested.
Vincht popped the clasp on his leather belt pouch and produced a single sheet of folded vellum. Sheathing his blade, he carefully unfolded the worn sheet of paper. The page was soft from regular handling, but in relatively good shape aside from an angular tear indicating the page had once belonged to a larger sheet of paper.
“Marion, your wife has been so kind as to answer all of my questions, and with a refreshing level of honesty, I must say. But then, the point of a blade can have that effect on people.”
He put a hand on his chest and bowed ever so slightly. “My apologies for that. The people of this province haven't shown themselves to be readily cooperative today, and the strain on my patience has caused me to approach relations with an unpleasant level of haste.”
“You pushed yer way into ma house, you stu-” Marion's outburst was cut short by a quick jab to his wounded arm by Arik's cudgel. The old man howled in agony, sweat erupting from the flaking skin of his bald head.
Arik squeezed his shoulder and leaned in close. “Speak again, and I'll give you a jaw to match your arm.”
To his credit, Marion nodded in agreement.
“Let's start over,” Vincht continued. “My name is Vincht Morfren. As the three of us are already on a first name basis, I won't object to you calling me by mine. I generally prefer to conduct my initial interactions with people from a certain position of respect, patience, and understanding. Regretfully, that was not an option in your case due the immediately unpleasant attitude Marion here presented my man before we could properly introduce ourselves. Again, I do apologize for our part in that, and I hope you'll grow to understand why the rest of our interaction must proceed will a certain level of necessary...hostility, if you will.”
Vincht smiled and clasped his hands together. “Now, to business. My companions and I have made the long journey to Elbin not out of pleasure, but of necessity. Some time ago, an item of some import made its way to this peninsula. It is my hope that said item was not lost to the trackless wilderness, but instead, found itself in the hands of one of your fellow citizens.
“However, I am growing less hopeful of this with each passing hour. Too many of your neighbors have been unhelpful, to say the least, and many were outright...” He cocked his head, considering his words. “Rebellious, if you will. I've lost at least one man since setting out this morning, and it's possible more will follow before the sun sets on Elbin.”
He sighed, peering down at the two in pity. “But the toll on your little hamlet has been far greater. You may never see some of your family again. You may never know what happened to some of your friends. Though I suspected it might be necessary, upon setting out from Comelbough, I had hoped to accomplish my mission here with little to no violence, no bloodshed.
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“But your people wouldn't let me. Such ugliness has been shown to me and mine, but with the two of you, I will admit that the fault was ours.”
Kneeling, Vincht tapped the sheet of vellum. “Allow me to make it up to you. By way of apology, I will make you a deal. You help me find what I'm looking for, tell me who has it, and I promise you this: whichever of you tells me what I want to know, will get to live.”
The silence was palpable. Rowen opened his mouth to protest, but a single withering glance from Vincht made him reconsider. Arik just kept grinning, shifting excitedly from one foot to the other like a child surrounded by piles of Namesday gifts. The husband and wife exchanged helpless looks, but it was the wife who spoke up first.
“But...I told you already, I-”
“I know, I know, my dear,” Vincht interrupted, resting a comforting hand atop her head. “But you can't even begin to understand the importance of my task. I'm not willing to take the chance of not recovering this item just because I didn't insist hard enough.
“What about you, Marion?” he said, giving the old man a good-natured slap on the shoulder. “Tell me something good, something helpful, and you get to walk away from this with naught but a busted arm. Or, you can do the noble thing; say nothing, and your wife gets to spend the rest of her days in the quiet safety of your little hovel over there.”
He shrugged. “Alone, of course, but no one said life was fair.”
He turned the sheet of vellum around, making sure the old man got a good, long look at the crude ink drawing within. The item was long, with rounded edges like a oval stretched to its breaking point. One end was slightly narrower than the other, and on that end, a tubular grip was embedded on the bottom edge. Jagged lines crisscrossed the object from tip to tip, breaking off the main tangle of lines at various points to terminate on the upper edge. To Vincht, the lines appeared to have some sort of mathematical significance, but the truth of the matter was that he had no real idea what he was looking at, or even what the item was. All he really had to go off of was the enigmatic drawing, and the meager descriptive details the other half of the letter had provided him.
Marion's eyes drank in the picture, not noticing his wife's quiet sobs and increasingly defeated posture. Vincht's free hand moved to the hilt of his belt knife, making sure to pop it out enough to be certain of smooth, unrestricted draw. Rowan chewed his thumb and shifted his attention to the woods crowding in around them.
The longer Marion stared at the picture, the more annoyed Vincht became, and the more annoyed he became, the more he wanted to visit unpleasantness upon the old man. His fingers tightened against the soft vellum, crinkling the already worn paper further. His frown deepened into a scowl, but still Marion looked, eyes darting from side to side as he studied the simple drawing. His darkening mood made even Arik uncomfortable, as the soldier had to take a slow, deliberate step back away from the tense scene.
“Wait...” Marion breathed, stroking the indentation above his upper lip with a finger. He bowed his head, mumbled quietly to himself. “Where have I seen that..?”
Lydia stared at her husband and shook her head, fighting back a fresh wave of tears. Vincht studied Marion's scrunched face, but a growing disgust kept him from getting a read on the old man's sincerity.
“You're wasting my time, old man.” The charcoal-haired swordsman straightened, stuffing the paper back into its case with little regard for its integrity. “Arik, cave his head in.”
(Continued in part 3)