Beneath the sun the two men laid, one atop the other with steel and blood linked between. Sweat dripped from lifeless limbs and ragged breath filled but one. Sieg turned his gaze back up, to face the shock and horror. The suntanned Giordanan men floated about him, no strength in their feet to drive them on. They held spears at the ready but were repelled by the ghastly sight. Honor eschewed, etiquette as dead as their chief. Whether to rage or cry, they did not seem to know. But all called Sieg the betrayer.

Vita struck. Age and power gave her composure. The sight of blood did not stun her as it once had, but she did not trust the bandits which stood beside her. Faith laid only in herself, so she was the one to lash out. Her tail swung, more like a river crocodile than the anaconda her serpentine half mimicked. Flesh and scale slammed across Sieg with the force of a battering ram.

The boy flew and struck the stone. A bandit jumped to skewer him as he landed across the sand. Vita had to pull the man back, throwing him to the ground before Sieg’s rolling thrust could spill his bowels. Up Sieg went, to hands and knees as his stomach spilled out his throat. The sweet mess of wine and acid splattered beneath him as the emissary descended to the makeshift arena.

“You’re going to fight me?” he asked, wiping his chin of red stained vomit.

“You impudent little insect. You arrogant ape. Did you grow up in the woods? Was the sense beaten from your skull? Do you not understand who I am? What your place is in this world? I can work magic you couldn’t even comprehend!”

“No, you can’t,” Sieg said, and didn’t deign to look at her. He stared at the bandits which crowded behind the serpentine woman like children to their mother’s skirt. He laughed. “If you had the strength to, you would have just killed me. You angels don’t speak, not like this. I happen to be quite familiar with what is and isn’t possible for you.”

Vita raised herself up like a viper about to bite. She scowled down at him with bare rage. A very striking figure for the boy, as she had yet to clothe herself. “Everything is possible!”

“What? From one goat and a dead drunk? I bet you barely had enough power to rebuild your body. Why else would you still have a monstrous half? What are you going to do? Spit at me?”

“I will curse you.”

“Go ahead and try. How much time do you have, anyway? Shepherd is going to notice soon enough.”

Vita hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “What does she have to do with this?”

Sieg held out his arms, his chest bare of defenses. When she didn’t strike him down, he said, “There’s at least one soul you didn’t gobble up. What are you going to do if he tells the reapers about you?”

One of the bandits craned his head up and said, “She is the daughter of the goddess, you foreign bastard.”

Sieg set his gaze on the talkative bandit and asked, “But which–”

“You like to talk, don’t you, boy?” Vita asked, cutting him off.

“That I do. I’m almost as good at it as I am with a sword. Of course, it helps when I have the upperhand.”

“Blasphemer,” one of the other bandits said, and he glanced to Vita. they all seemed raptly attentive to the pose of the angel. They expected her to avenge their chief for them, the fools.

Vita huffed. She brushed her hair back and let the sun illumin her face. AS the moments passed, vitality continued to creep through her body. Skin that had been subtly pallid became flush with golden life, but that transformation was not without cost. She was disarming herself of the very ability needed to fight Sieg, and both of them knew it. A half step to proper negotiations as she said, “What a godless land this has become.”

“It’s a speck of desert ruled by criminals ousted from their homes. What else would you expect?”

“This was a city once,” she said, crossing her arms. “Nearly lost to time but now I have returned. Thanks to the good faith of these people and their years of sacrifice. It is not something I will give up lightly.”

Sieg began to relax his shoulders. “You may do with these ruins as you bloody well see fit. Why you would want these men as inhabitants… well, I can only guess.”

“I suppose they’re not much of a bandit troupe without a chieftain, now are they?”

At last the other men caught on and realized that she was selling out their honor. “My lady! You can’t mean to let him leave?” one demanded.

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“Put your spear down,” she ordered.

“There was a vendetta!”

“Muharib is dead,” Sieg barked at them. “The oath is broken. If you want revenge, well…” He grabbed the front of his shirt and tore it off, letting the innumerable little cuts and slashes shred the fabric. It ripped free, fluttering away in the wind and bared his chest to them. Upon his breast sat the divine sigil of his stigmata, the same language that adorned Vita’s bones. The runes circled around his heart in patterns and geometries of ineffable purpose. Muharib had such a marking across his own chest, but his was not even one third the complexity of my pupil’s blessing. By the difference in size alone the bandits began to realize the gulf between them and the mere boy before them.

Vita clicked her tongue and scowled. She could read the marking as well as I could and was under no illusion as to its power. “So that’s how you survived a sword to your heart.”

“It’s a pretty useful trick, ain’t it?”

Still, the bandits gnashed their teeth. Their blood boiled and the death of their dear leader spurred them on. They spread out to either side and pointed their spears. One even apologized to the emissary. “Our honor won’t allow him to leave,” he said.

The doctor appeared along the hidden path, strolling down as he barked at him, “Let him go you idiots. You bunch of fatherless bastards who don’t know strength from foolishness. Honor is worthless in the grave. Shepherd has been trying to teach that to you people for nearly a thousand years, but you just don’t quit it.”

Sieg broadened his stance and put his heels to the rock behind him. The sword he had stolen from Muharib was in rough shape, but it was the tool he had. “It’s hollow men indeed that can’t live with shame. You aren’t such noble creatures as you pretend to be. If you must meet your goddess, then come. If you have better sense, then let me leave with my trophy.”

“Step aside!” the doctor bellowed at the wavering men. “Don’t you have anything to live for?”

Vita too said, “Put your spears down you idiots. If violence is all you’re good for, I think I should have to find new people to live here. Perhaps I should let him gut you all like pigs, but I’d hate to see the goats languish to the crows.” I suspect by this time she had already comprehended my ploy with the bird, for I circled overhead, gliding from heat rushes to updrafts, with eyes upon my pupil.

I confess, I was considering killing her. The sacrifice of a goat let me marionette a bird for a day, but the sacrifice of an angel? There were many things I could have done, had I taken the risk of angering her mother. But for a forgotten child, yet to cry out for help and return to the goddess’ embrace? In such a godless land no less. I still wonder if I should have. Perhaps I would have been able to do something different at some crucial moment. But such a choice was not my pupil’s to make, and this is his story, not mine.

“Just attack me if you’re going to. One way or another, the banditry here is over. The choice is yours: die, or give up and become priests. Even if you think you can take me, my friends are coming to get me already. I’m just waiting for a horse to ride.”

One of them did think he could take Sieg. He screamed and dashed forward, spear raised. I’ll never know what peculiar circumstance led to his making that decision. Perhaps he was in love with Muharib, or perhaps he had some form of brain damage. Both things were common and neither spoken of. Either way, he overcommitted to his first stab. Before anyone else could focus their wits, Sieg had closed with him. The bandit tried to pull his spear back and shove him away but it was too late. Sieg cut him from groin to shoulder then kicked him to the ground.

Two other bandits stumbled to a stop, faced once more with their own mortality. Sieg stared them down, fresh blood sprayed across his chest and face.

I finally judged the affair to be over, and signaled to Leomund. The northerner along with his brother rose from their hiding and walked to the edge of the pit. To announce himself, Leomund lobbed an ax down to the sand. He sent it spinning through the air and let it slam into the dirt before Sieg’s feet. The weapon was no ordinary war ax. Those are quick and hooked, good for tugging shields aside and smashing through helms. He sent a long bladed thing, more fit for chopping firewood or clearing brush than for battle.

“Run away, boys. The berserkers are here now,” Leomund said as he slowly drew out his greatsword. He let them watch inch after inch of fine, crucible steel emerge and shimmer in the light. Well oiled and stout enough to cleave straight through their spear hafts. He held a troll-killer’s weapon and had the hulking physique to use it.

Sieg let out his breath and relaxed his stance as the bandits fled. They turned and ran and scrambled up the stone walls like scampering monkeys. Even the angel cowed away, circling the sand and rising to the upper ledge as she eyed him carefully. I suspect he looked somewhat similar to the men that had burned Ennia’s Crossing so many centuries ago and she considered the risk of attacking him purely to sate that ancient hatred.

I landed the crow upon his shoulder and stared her down.

“What’s that for?” Sieg asked, pointing to the ax.

Leomund grinned. “Isn’t it obvious? We need his head to get the bounty.”

The boy paled and looked over at his earlier handiwork. The blade was indeed the width to cut through a man’s neck. He wetted his lips and checked to see if Leomund would laugh and say something else, but the northerner didn’t. So he pulled the headsman’s ax free and kicked over Muharib’s corpse.

The doctor held his tongue and watched. He did not turn away from the bloody scene he had helped orchestrate. I suppose that made him the most honorable man in the whole encampment, but it earned him no regard from his peers. It took Sieg three tries to break through all the muscle and cartilage, to split the vertebra and rip the head off. Had he not already puked, he would have again.

Vita tried to slither away as he wrapped the bloody head in his scarf. The boy was preoccupied thinking about how to preserve the thing long enough to deliver it for the bounty, but I had grander plans. I alighted the crow between Vita and the town and stared her down.

I didn’t kill her that day, but I did make her work for my leniency.