Lucien brought his horse to a stop, staring at the two men with a stern look on his face. Lynn stopped next to him, also watching the scene with concern.
The woman was already in a difficult situation with her health and the state of her house, but it looked like the men were going to try and take from her what little she still had.
“We’ve already given you enough time. The boss won’t be happy if she doesn’t get the money she deserves,” one of the men, the larger one, said. The two of them towered over the woman and looked like they were about to barge into her house and turn the place upside down.
She stepped back, almost falling to the floor as she looked up at them in fear. She didn’t have the strength to stop them. She was completely helpless. “Please, give me a few more days. My son is missing. If I find him we’ll be able to pay back what is owed.”
“That snivelling little shit of yours? He’s probably dead in an alley somewhere.” The men barged inside and tore the place apart.
Lucien clenched his fists and hopped of his horse. Lynn joined him as he walked towards the small house.
The men pulled up the broken floorboards, finding a small cloth bag with a few copper coins inside, barely enough to afford a loaf of bread.
“Looks like you’ve been holding out on us.” The man turned around, shaking the bag as he sneered at the woman. “Are you hiding anything else from us?”
“Please sirs, that's all I have. If you take that I won’t be able to afford food.” She reached out, trying to clutch onto his leg with her bony fingers.
“You should have thought of that before you decided to borrow money you couldn’t pay back. This is barely a fraction of what you owe us.” He kicked her hand away, causing her to groan in pain. He turned to his companion. “John, take everything you can and sell it as scrap.”
There wasn’t much in the house, not even a proper bed or any form of storage. The only furniture was a set of old wooden stools and a wooden table that had seen better days. John picked up the furniture, carrying them with such ease that the tables looked like toys.
He walked out with the furniture and found a nearby wall to lean against while he waited for his friend to be done.
The man who was still inside crouched down facing the kneeling woman and sneered. “We’ll be back tomorrow. You better have enough money by then, you hear me?” He grasped her roughly by her hair and pulled her up, causing her to feel like her scalp was being pulled off.
She hurriedly nodded, to which he dropped her back onto the floor.
Satisfied, the man stepped outside, prepared to walk away with the coin purse when an arm reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Give her the money back.” Seeing everything that had happened, Lucien couldn’t stop himself from butting in. Especially when the woman said her son was missing. It’s like her words were ripping out his heart and crushing it. He knew this was none of his business, but he couldn’t not help.
“This is none of your business.” The man turned around to find out who was messing with him, and was surprised to see that it was someone even taller and more muscular than him. He saw the sword hanging on Lucien’s hip, and was worried that he had been caught by the town guard.
His first impulse was to flee and seek shelter elsewhere, but that idea immediately went away when he noticed Lucien’s missing arm. He sneered, his fear replaced with anger at the fact that a crippled guy and a young girl were trying to stop him from doing his job.
He shoved his shoulder into Lucien’s chest, trying to push him away. Lucien cooperated, letting go of the man’s shoulder and taking a step back, now standing between the man and the woman.
The man was now thoroughly angered that someone was trying to help the woman, and felt like beating her up in front of them to send a message.
He stepped forward, sizing up to Lucien with a cocky smile on his face. “Get out of my way old man, before I take your other arm.”
Before he could take another step and barge back into the house, he saw something flash through the air then felt something sharp pressed against his throat. Looking down, he saw that the sword that was just a second ago on Lucien’s hip was now at his throat.
“I may be crippled, but I can still kill you in a heartbeat. Now drop the bag, and get your friend to leave the furniture too.” Lucien said, not a single trace of emotion on his face.
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The man gulped, and felt it dig into his skin. Not enough to hurt him, but enough to let him know that he would really die in an instant if he tried to pull something. He started sweating. “N-no need to get so rough. Here, I’ll drop it.”
He dropped the coin purse onto the ground and looked over at his friend, eyeing him desperately, telling him to drop the furniture.
Seeing everything that was going on and the fact that both of the strangers had swords, John knew they were outmatched. Smartly, he placed down the old furniture, careful not to damage it any further than it already had been. He then quickly bolted, disappearing around a corner and leaving his friend behind.
The man, seeing John flee so quickly, wanted to swear, but forced an ugly smile onto his face. “Can I go now?”
“Tell your boss that I’ll pay back what this woman owes. I think its clear that she won’t be able to pay it back, so this is the best option your boss has.” Lucien ordered, and only when he received a little nod did he pull the sword back.
The man ran away, not daring to look back at all.
Sliding his sword back into its scabbard, he picked up the coin purse and walked into the decrepit little house. Seeing the woman still curled up on the ground, he went to give her back her money.
Hearing the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor, she flinched back and started shaking. “I’ll get you the money. I’ll get you the money. I’m sorry.” Tears were streaming down her face, and she didn’t even dare to look up.
She didn’t seem to hear what had happened, and didn’t even dare to look up. Instead, she chose to cower and beg for forgiveness.
Lucien sighed and laid the coin purse down in front of her before walking back out. “Go help her calm down,” he said to Lynn, who nodded and went inside.
Lynn spoke softly to the woman at a volume Lucien couldn’t hear, but whatever she said seemed to be working. The woman slowly stopped shaking and was now wiping the tears from her face.
Wanting to give her a bit more time to calm down, he walked over to her furniture and started carrying it back. It was a significantly harder task for him than it was for John, considering he only had one arm.
It took three trips in total to bring the furniture back inside, with the table being the most difficult. He had to wrap his hand around the single leg of the table and carry it on his shoulder to make things easier. Good thing it only has one leg. Would’ve been a pain otherwise.
By the time he put the table down, the woman was sitting on one of the stools and drinking water out of Lynn’s waterskin.
“Thank you. Thank you.” She looked at the two of them gratefully, her voice cracking as she didn’t know how she could possibly repay them.
“We were just doing what we should,” Lucien said, offering her a piece of dried meat.
She ripped into like a starved beast. She gobbled down the food so fast that she started choking, but that didn’t stop her from continuing to devour every speck of food she had been given. She washed it down with water, not caring about the taste.
It was like she was possessed, and it was only when there was nothing left that she looked up at them with her face flushed red from embarrassment. “Sorry. I-I haven’t had meat in months,” she mumbled.
“It’s alright. Here, have some bread too.” Lynn said gently, handing the woman some more food.
She began to eat a bit slower now, careful to not choke on it this time. But it didn’t satiate her hunger one bit. She had gone starving for far too long.
She wanted to ask for more, but even though Lucien and Lynn were being nice to her, she knew better than to take too much from strangers. That’s how she wound up in this situation in the first place.
Lucien offered the other seat to Lynn, afraid that it would break under his weight. Instead, he chose to squat down so that he could be on eye level with them. “Do you mind telling me what happened?”
“I don’t even know where to start,” she said hesitantly.
“It’s okay. Take all the time you need,” said Lynn.
This was the first time someone had shown any concern for her situation in months. She was touched. Looking into their eyes, she decided to bite the bullet and tell them. “I guess it started when I was seventeen.
I was living with my parents at the time and I was in a relationship with the boy next door. His name was Robert. We were young, and reckless and... I got pregnant. My father disowned me and kicked me out. Robert and I found a place we could call home and nine months later our son was born.” She reminisced about back then, when they were a little family, and smiled.
But slowly, her smile faded. “For a while, everything was good. It was a bit difficult to juggle work and the child. We had no one to rely on but ourselves. But we managed. That was until about a year ago.
We wanted to try and give our child a good education, so we both picked up some extra work. Robert couldn’t handle it. And one day he just, left. I haven’t heard from him since. Everything quickly went downhill from there.
It was impossible to afford the rent for that place on my own, so I moved to the cheapest place I could find. Which was this.” She gestured to the shack around them.
“I couldn’t afford to send my son to school, and I didn’t want to let him stay here alone, so I brought him to work with me. We received too many complaints and my boss eventually fired me. I haven’t been able to find a proper job since.”
Lynn was fully engrossed in the woman’s story, and was struggling to hold back her anger. Her anger at the woman’s father, at Robert, and at her boss. And at all of the people who pushed the poor woman down instead of giving her a helping hand.
Lucien, on the other hand, was a lot calmer listening to it. He had a less idealistic mindset than Lynn. He was well aware of how awful people could be to each other. He looked at the woman with pity and empathy.
“I could only find work picking up odd jobs for people, but that was barely enough to keep the two of us from starving. With my physical condition how it is now, there weren’t many jobs I could do. I had to borrow money a few months ago just to stay afloat.”