As it sometimes does in times of stress, time seemed to slow down. I watched as the spit flew from Helvia’s mouth, arcing through the air and glistening in the morning sun. It tumbled towards the girl who was quickly moving away after delivering her own payload. Having reached the apex of its trajectory, it began descending, heading accurately towards where the girl had been a moment before. It was going to be a close one. Would the girl be able to dodge in time, or did Helvia just drag us into a whole new world of hurt?
In the end, Helvia’s return fire missed, but it was close. The spittle came within a handsbreadth of striking the orcish girl, but her sudden movement pulled her into the clear, sending it harmlessly splattering on the roadway below.
“Are you daft, you numpty?” Patrick yelled angrily in Helvia’s direction. Numpty didn’t translate for me because I was familiar with it from watching too many BBC imports on public television. He had just called her stupid. I am not certain I was in the mood to disagree.
With a growl, the orcish father charged my wagon. Tossing the reins over to Helvia, who I am certain had no real idea how to use them, I jumped to the ground to meet his charge. His arm drew back and then swept forward, unleashing a powerful blow with his club aimed for my head. As the blow descended, I blocked high but continued moving forward, trying to get inside enough not to get hit by the end of the club, which would do the most damage.
I successfully blocked the blow with an upraised right arm bent at an angle. Even though I had sapped some of the power of the blow. I still felt a deep, almost electrical, jolt from the outside of my ulna when the club crashed into it before it slid off to the side towards the ground. I knew what that feeling meant. My ulna was either cracked or broken.
I didn’t stop moving to assess the damage. I wasn’t going to draw my sword and escalate the situation further, but I would be damned if I was going to just stand there and take a beating. This guy had been looking for any excuse to commit violence and Helvia had handed him one on a silver platter. I could tell by the way he moved that the orc had never received much in the way of formal training. He was a brawler, plain and simple, and had likely relied on his impressive size and formidable strength to intimidate and terrorize the people for miles around. But, even though I hadn’t exactly earned it, I had one thing he lacked. That was skill. If I could stay away from his powerful hands and keep him off balance, I had a decent chance to end this quickly.
Continuing forward, I scythed a compact elbow strike at the tip of his chin. The orc managed to tuck his chin at the last moment and the point of contact shifted to the side of his jaw, eliciting a grunt of pain and then another angry growl. He took a step backward to try to gain some space to swing his club again, but I stayed on the inside, following up the elbow with a right knee strike to his groin. My knee struck true, and I guess getting kneed in the groin works as well with orcs as it does with humans as he went a little weak in the knees. Finally, after deciding that the club wouldn’t serve him well in close quarters combat, he tossed it aside and began to flail at me with his fists.
I absorbed quite a bit of punishment. That bastard was strong, and pretty quick for his size. Although I was blocking most of his shots, my arms were taking a beating. Every time I had to absorb a blow with my right arm, I winced from the pain of my earlier injury. He outweighed me considerably, by at least a hundred pounds, and it showed as I was staggered one way or another by his blows.
Don’t misunderstand, though. I was not standing there idly being pounded like a pinata. After he dropped the club, I backpedaled and tried to slip out of his reach, which was quite a bit longer than mine. He tried to swarm me, all offense and no defense, always moving forward, always applying pressure. For some reason, it never occurred to him to use anything to attack other than his hands, which I was thankful for. As he moved in on me, I tried to slip his punches, bobbing and weaving, meeting him with a series of sharp jabs and check hooks. Some of them hit, some of them missed, but while I was confining most of the incoming damage to my arms he was getting pounded in the face or in the ribs.
I could tell that he was rapidly losing whatever control he had left. Overtaken more and more by his anger, his swings became wilder and more powerful. He was looking to end the fight with one blow. And frankly, if he made contact with one of the sledgehammers he was delivering he might do just that.
Unlike the orc, though, I didn’t forget I had legs. Whenever he left a big enough opening, I would meet him with a kick. I didn’t try anything flashy. If I tried some McDojo head kick special and missed, I would be off balance and easy to overpower. Instead, I worked his legs. I didn’t throw one kick above his waist, instead targeting his thighs, skins and knees. After a few of those, he was limping. After a few more, the limping became more pronounced. Every bit of his lost mobility was a win in my book.
Finally, it appeared he lost all reason. With a bellow, he lowered his shoulder and charged me. I went under his charge. Dropping low and spinning on my front foot after hopping a little to the side, I met him with a back sweep. The back of my right leg hit him solidly, just above his ankles. As I quickly bounded back to my feet, he went sprawling forward, his momentum finally spent after he slid a couple of feet on the cobblestones of the roadway beneath us.
He was in a vulnerable position, and I was ready to make the most of it. He got one arm under him to try to lever himself to his feet, but my foot lashed out and he was once again splayed out on the ground. Then, I wound up, preparing to drive an axe kick into the back of his head to end the fight. That’s when I heard a calm voice behind me.
“That will be enough of that. You’ve made your point.”
Aborting the kick, I spun, ready to face off with my next opponent. That’s when I saw another orc, this one fit, armored, with a sword in his hand and wearing some sort of official looking tabard.
I heard scrambling on the ground behind me. Then, the orcish father spoke.
“Constable, this man talked to my daughter and one of his slaves spit at her.”
“Is that true?” the constable asked looking in my direction.
“We were making our way through town when we were accosted,” I said. “Children started spitting and throwing stones at my property, injuring the young boy over there.” I pointed up at Mero. “I told them to stop and then his daughter got mouthy and this blowhard decided he had to intervene. He attacked me with his club so I defended myself.”
“That all may be true,” the constable replied, “but did your slave spit at his daughter?”
“Only after the daughter spit on her first.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“That bitch had no right!” my opponent complained.
“That she didn’t,” the constable said. “Sounds like the children were just having a little fun and your slave decided to escalate things.”
“A little fun?” I responded angrily. “They damaged my property, property that I spent a lot of coin on. This ass threatened me before my slave spit at his daughter, only because I told them to stop. He said when I left the village I wouldn’t be in the same shape as I was when I entered. He was spoiling for a fight. He got one. He lost, and would have definitively known it if you hadn’t intervened. And now this is somehow all my fault?”
“You need to discipline your slaves better. And you owe a fine or a day in jail for brawling, your choice. The fine is one piece of gold. This is a peaceful village and we don’t need your type coming in and stirring up trouble. And that slave,” the constable said, pointing at Helvia, “will need to be punished for her actions.”
“I’ll pay if he does,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at my former opponent who was now standing meekly behind me.
The constable snorted in amusement. “He couldn’t raise a gold piece if he sold half of what he owns.”
“Then I assume he is going to jail?” I asked.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, human,” the constable growled back. “Although I suppose fair is fair. Hig, go check yourself into jail again. You’ll be released tomorrow.”
“But what about my work?” Hig exclaimed. “My family has to eat.”
“They can do without you for one day,” the constable replied. “And you’ll need that day to recover from your beating. Beaten by a human. You’ll never live that down. Go straight to jail. Don’t make me come find you. If you do, the beating today will be nothing to you, is that clear?”
“Yes, constable,” Hig replied. Then, without another word, but with an angry glare sent in the direction of his daughter, he went limping off deeper into the town.
With a satisfied nod, the constable turned back to me. “So what will it be. A day in jail or a fine?”
I pulled a gold piece out of my pocket and tossed it to him. Without seeming to track it, his hand shot forward and plucked it out of the air, depositing it in the pouch at his belt. Then he nodded to me.
“A fine it is then. Now, after we have disciplined your slave we can get you out of this town and I will never have to deal with you again, correct?”
“What discipline do you have in mind?” I asked.
“So, she tried to spit at the girl but missed. Three lashes ought to do it. Do you have your own whip? If so we can do it right here.”
“I don’t have a whip. I’ve never needed one. Who will deliver the lashes? Can I pay another fine instead?”
“You look like the soft sort, the type who wouldn’t put his heart into it, so I will deliver the lashes. And no, you can’t pay a fine. A fine teaches her nothing.”
He sent one of the children nearby to go get his whip. In the meantime, I walked back to my people.
“You can’t mean to let this man whip me,” Helvia exclaimed. Without answering her, I walked deeper into the group. I needed to know whether the fighters were willing to fight.
After huddling up with Patrick, Xeng, Aleyda and Bowen, I began to talk.
“I don’t like this, but I don’t know what we can do other than submit to the punishment. We have a long road ahead of us, and if we try to fight our way out of here we are going to be hounded every step of the way. We will have to ditch the wagons, they are too slow. And some of our people won’t be able to keep up on foot. Do you think Mariam, or Mero or even Jahhaf have what it takes to flee endlessly, day after day, lacking in supplies? I don’t.”
“You have already shown that you will stand up for us,” Xeng said. “But I agree, if we fight and have to flee several of us won’t survive.”
“A few lashes won’t likely kill her,” Aleyda interjected. “And maybe they will wipe the smug look off her face.” Have I mentioned before that Aleyda didn’t like Helvia?
“Fighting our way out right now is not in our interest,” Bowen said. “Although, if we ever get the chance to return and burn this place to the ground, we should take advantage of the opportunity.”
“You warned her, but she wouldn’t listen,” Patrick said. “You warned all of us. I would not put the lives of the people who are trying, who are working hard for a better life, at risk for that woman. Up to this point, she has done neither. Bailing her out will only encourage her to act more and more outrageously until someday we all lose our lives.”
Turning, I walked back over to Helvia.
“You really don’t get it, do you? Where you came from you were privileged and important, and the way people responded to you conditioned you to act in a certain way. Here, that way will get you killed, but what’s worse is that you are gambling with all of these other people’s lives. You will never get your old life back in this world. Never. Get that through your head. You need to show some resiliency. You need to live in the now instead of the past. You need to improve yourself and become a valued member of this group. Not one person here wants to fight our way out of here. The risks are too high, and we will inevitably lose people if we do. If you had just kept your temper in check, we would have been well down the road, this shit stain of a village far behind us. For whatever reason, though, you couldn’t. I fought for you, was injured for you and bled for you. Now, you have to bleed for the rest of us to survive.”
“Wait until my family learns of this,” Helvia replied. “All of you will be begging for death.”
“Your family will never hear about this. You are clearly trapped in delusions of your own creation. This is not a bad dream. You will not be waking up to your old life. This is your life and you need to make the best of it.”
By that time, the child had returned to the constable with his whip. I saw him holding it, a wicked looking multi-tailed scourge made of leather. The individual tails were knotted to ensure that they did more damage. There were five of them.
“Are you ready?” the constable asked. “Do you want her to strip so she does not ruin her smock?”
“Smocks can be replaced,” I replied. “I would spare her further indignity.”
“I knew you were soft,” he said.
Helvia was forced to kneel in the roadway, and she was lashed three times. On the first strike, the knotted leather ripped through her clothing and lacerated her back, leaving ugly bleeding stripes. After the first blow, she collapsed down to her hands and knees. She screamed as the disgusting instrument tore into her a second time, falling onto her belly on the hard stone roadway. After the third strike, she passed out from the pain.
Nodding at me, the constable turned and walked back into town.
We carefully loaded Helvia into the back of my wagon, making her as comfortable as we could in a nest of blankets. Aleyda, who had some training in battlefield medicine, set aside her dislike for the woman and began treating her wounds with our meager supplies. Looking around at my people, several were openly weeping. We quickly exited the village. The villagers must have gotten their fill of abuse for the day because we were not bothered again.
As we put the village behind us, I couldn’t help but reflect on Bowen’s words. I agreed that it deserved a fair bit of burning.