Everyone with enough clout to say that they were in charge, be it of a town or a kingdom, had been confounded as to how no fewer than fifty bandits could survive the northern wastes. “There’s no water!” they each said, and everyone understood that no water meant no crops, and while they certainly plundered merchants in the area, they didn’t take fifty people’s worth of food.
These people each had the short sightedness common to humans, for they only know the world as they see it and not as it once was. The so-called northern wastelands were once quite fertile, with proper irrigation. A great river flowed south through the land, birthing a green carpet between the hills. The lesser tributaries still feed into the meager Snake River, but the proper watershed was long ago diverted west and led by way of canal into Isthmus Lake. This was so long ago that there was an isthmus connecting the fortified island to the shore, but of course not after such a change.
Pure hubris that the petty lords of the Central Kingdoms would snub their noses at these bandits while completely unaware that Snake Road was in fact a riverbed their ancestors dried up.
All this is to say that no one should be surprised the bandits found a plethora of subterranean structures to live within. That they had more wells than they knew what to do with. It’s not uncommon at all for such criminals to capture women and bring them back, but what was remarkable was the mundaneness of the camp duties for those women. They farmed.
I took this in from the eye of my crow. Sieg came to as the temperature dropped. The bit of sand left his nose and leaves rustled. At first he thought he had been brought to some lord’s castle, that he had been trotted into a great hall. The sweep of sandstone carvings and the echoing hooves came from tunnels, not from masonry. Generation upon generation of workmen had scooped stone away from the land like so many ants.
The bandits were no different, but they quarried their rocks out to build fortifications. They had walls and watchtowers. They blended their handiwork in with the landscape and hid in plain sight. It was no wonder that the knights of the north had never managed to find them. And yet, if they had simply looked at a map from a few centuries back, the camp would have been openly labeled as a trade city.
The troupe of reconnaissance bandits had trumpeted ahead with bird calls, crying out for a doctor. The posse of Giordanans were lucky enough to have one, and the man met them within a shaded courtyard. He was too old to fight, and kept his beard long and gray. “How many?”
“Only one,” the leader said, hopping off his own horse to help untie Sieg.
“Injured?”
“Survivor.”
The doctor frowned and tutted. He got on his knees as Sieg was laid down and took the boy by the head. “Hey, can you hear me?”
Sieg swallowed and nodded, trying to keep his eyes focused on the man. For him, the doctor was little more than a phantom of gray, but he had no fear of dying. “We were attacked.”
“I see that. Got you good, and the others better, eh? But hey, you always had an ugly nose anyway. Now you’ll at least look like a man who fights, right?” As he spoke, he rubbed his thumbs gently across Sieg’s face, feeling the crack of bone and tissue. “Woman, some plugs.”
The mere touch had caused more blood to gush from the boy’s nose, but he had seen enough life in the eyes to be satisfied. The doctor let his assistant, a dark haired woman, kneel down and stuff his nose full of cloth strips. With those, his nose certainly had the proper pig-like look. The doctor’s attention shifted down to the maroon patch of cloth binding Sieg’s stomach. Gingerly, he peeled it back. “Don’t want to give this too much air. Bad spirits will get in.”
“The knights though. I need to speak to the chief. Need to warn him,” the boy insisted, keeping his eyes anywhere but the little urn of medicinal salve and the sewing needle the doctor had on hand.
It was the bandit who saved him that knelt down and grabbed him by the hand. With a heavy slap, palm to palm, he said, “You survive first. Then we will have our revenge. Don’t worry.”
The doctor said, “He’s not going to die. This isn’t so bad. Cut him up, sure, but it's shallow. Look here, you can see the muscle still in one piece. This didn’t pierce his bowels. He’ll be on his feet in no time.” As he packed the herb infused cream through Sieg’s wound, he spread it out and cleaned it.
Sieg screamed like razors were being dragged across his nerves. “I’ll be on my feet now!”
“Shush,” the assistant said, and stuffed the neck of a wineskin to his lips. “The sickbed is no place for bravado. Keep your strength for living.”
“No, he’s right,” the bandit said, rising and pacing the room. “Sew him up and help me carry him to the chief. He’s the one that should say what happened. There’s much we will need to do, and little time to do it.”
The doctor shook his head. “If he wants to get himself killed, he had better do it where I can’t see him,” he said, but the man was already stabbing the needle in one side and out the other, dragging fine thread to a tight cinch.
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“I’m not going to die,” Sieg said, wiping spilled wine from his chin. He had barely been able to taste it over the blood.
“You’re young. You’ll be fine,” the doctor said, as calm as a butler in the countryside. Then he started the knots to hold it in place. He pulled the wound so tight the skin buckled and the boy whimpered and bloody cream seeped across his gut. Then it was done. He and his assistant wiped it off and wrapped fresh bandages around him, tying them tight as well.
It was only then he noticed a hint of something beneath the remains of Sieg’s shirt. A bit of black across the skin which shouldn’t have been there. The doctor wiped his hand across, frowning and moving the cloth back.
Sieg grabbed him by the wrist and pushed his hand back. Despite the pain, he pushed himself up. “Help me up,” he ordered.
The doctor didn’t move. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips and considered what he had thought he had seen. It was the bandit who obliged Sieg, and took him by the arm. The older man dragged him up and pulled the boy’s arm across his shoulders to take his weight. “Come on then, I see battle has made you stronger. You’re lucky you didn’t break. You’re going to go far, you just need to focus on staying alive, yeah?”
The way Sieg was dragged through the main strip of the camp drew everyone’s attention. The call for a doctor had started the stir, but that was but a spark and this was the kindling. The happy little band of thieves found themselves faced with their own mortality. Some balked, with blank and ashen faces as they looked at my pupil. Others glowered and nurtured rage. They sought refuge in thoughts of revenge. But each of them saw only what they expected to see: the very bandit they had sent out the night before.
Utterly inconceivable that a doppelganger had taken his place.
These deluded bandits trailed after Sieg, drawn in as they marched through the dead riverbed to the temple. Contrary to all that is holy and sanctified, the temple reeked of rot and wine. The sculptures that had been delicately extracted from the stone lacked all paint, all gilding, all color save the white feces of birds. This profane mausoleum no longer had doors, the front staying open like a snake’s maw.
The chieftain of the bandits, the charismatic core of the group and the one with a thousand silver talons riding on his head, dat upon the steps of the dias. The carcass of a goat dangled behind him, strung up from the ceiling and dripping blood across the altar. Muharib welcomed them with a wave from his wine goblet. “What happened?” His words were controlled. They echoed through the shadows of the temple.
“There was a massacre,” the bandit leader said, helping Sieg deeper. The stench of blood pervaded the air, able to make even a desert feel humid.
“Where are the others?” Murahib asked, rising to face them. He was tall and strong, but we knew him to be an older man. His first life had been in the holy city of Tavina, using the magic of his stigmata to aid the farmers. That work had made him strong. His collaboration with the temples had made him wise. Seeing his wife hanged for theft by northerners had made him cruel.
The bandit leader spat on the ground. “Dead. Killed, all of them. I’m not sure they killed any of the bastards, but it looked like a hell of a fight. One of the buildings got torched. You should have smelled the filth. Shepherd has plenty of souls with her now, that’s certain.”
Sorrowful eyes turned to Sieg. Muharib reached out, but stopped short of touching the bruising across the boy’s face. His gaze went to the bandages, to the line of blood oozing into them. “We’ll have to avenge them. Who did it?”
Sieg wasn’t close enough to the man to do anything to him, not yet. Even if he was getting his strength back with every breath, the ruse was not so simple and he not so simple of mind. “Knights. They were in blue with steel bowls for helms. Yellow emblem. I’m sorry, I couldn’t see much. It was so dark.”
Muharib put up his hand. “That’s enough. Only one army looks like that… It seems we have some ferrets to put down.” I should like to take this moment to offer an apology to the Ferrets of the Grass Sea for smearing their reputation.
Sieg swallowed and nodded. He leaned himself forward to get closer to the chieftain and spoke while his mind worked a different problem. He didn’t have a weapon, and to his surprise, the bandit leader had taken his sword off as well. “They left after setting the fire. No prisoners. Headed west when–” he gestured with his head at the leader “--arrived.”
“West? I suppose they must have, but that’s deeper into Giordana. They’ll be trapped… we’re between them and safety…” Muharib scratched his beard, and the more he did so, the more he smiled.
The bandit leader scowled. “We must have just missed them! I thought I heard horses.”
Sieg swallowed. He shuffled his feet and cast glances. Sweat beaded on his forehead. When he spoke next, he faked a cough and both men grabbed him by the shoulders to hold him upright. A moment later, he cleared his throat. “The thing is… the timing.”
Muharib frowned and cocked his head. “What about it?”
“It was just after dawn,” the leader said.
Sieg shied away from the other man and said, “It seemed like they knew he was coming.”
The idea gripped the two bandits. It consumed their attention as they both considered what he was implying, that someone in Muharib’s cadre was betraying them.
The bandit leader let go of him and backed off, hands in the air. “Chief! He is delusional from blood loss. He should not be here. I’m sorry, I should not have brought him. The man speaks nonsense.”
Muharib kept Sieg steady, but his attention was on the other man. “I’m not going to punish a man for speaking of a concern.”
“It was merely dawn. Of course they would flee at dawn, when the light of day would reveal them!”
And so the two of them went, but at the same time, Sieg had fixed his problem. While no sword had been brought to Muharib’s presence, that didn’t mean no weapon had been brought. Giordanan men of violent natures had a certain custom. They kept with them always honor blades, so that they might bloody themselves upon an oath. It might be for trade agreements and the such, or to swear vengeance that must only be paid in blood and flesh. A Giordanan vendetta is thus a frightening thing they carve into their own skin.
But the honor blade is like any other piece of steel.
It was sharp and sturdy and when Sieg rammed it into Muharib’s chest, it cut between the ribs and right into the man’s lungs.
But, Muharib didn’t die. His stigmata didn’t let him bleed out so easily.