The wooden stake had been driven into the ground in Oak’s town square. Tied to the post and barely standing was the survivor, Gerome, that Alric had found in the wood. A group of plebeians, commoners who had sworn themselves to the service of the Church, were piling pieces of wood up against the stake as the townsfolk gathered around. Alric was still dressed in his armour as he called out to the onlookers, “This man, this despicable traitor of a man, hath betrayed us all! Once thought a trusted friend and neighbour, he hath turned his back upon all that is good! He hath stained his soul with the grievous sin of devil worship!”
Shocked gasps permeated the crowd, accompanied by angered scowls. There were those who looked on in horror as well, much to Alric’s disdain.
“This new infernal doctrine would insist that we, the children of God, are instead instruments designed by the Devil himself to enact his will! Such depravity shall not go unpunished! But alas, my good folk, if this wretch was turned by such putrid blasphemy, so too could others among ye! They could be in thy midst at this very moment!” Alric was handed a lit torch by one of the plebeians. “To thou, I say this; confess, repent thy sins, and the Father may see fit to spare thee. Cling upon these falsities and thy sentence shall be certain…” He extended the flaming torch towards the pile of wood at Gerome’s feet.
Alric basked in the heat as it overtook Gerome’s body. The crackling and raging of the inferno did not drown out his screeching. Several cheers erupted from the crowd, but for each cheer there was also someone who was petrified in terror. His eyes scoured the crowd and took in each and every one of their reactions. When the screaming stopped, Alric and the plebeians doused the fire with pails of water, sending trails of smoke and steam into the air from Gerome’s blackened corpse. “Those who have been ensnared by the Devil, hear me! Step forward if thou art willing to retake the blessed path! Repent, take penance, and all shall be forgiven!”
For several seconds, silence and inaction reigned supreme. However, just as Alric’s rage caused his clenched fist to quiver, a figure hobbled forward from the crowd. “Brother Alric, I throw myself before you.” The figure, a young man with a cane in his hand, knelt before the smouldering pyre. “My name is Peter…and I seek forgiveness from the Lord for betraying him.”
As he spoke, Alric noticed murmurs in the crowd. Spiteful whispers. Alric took several steps towards the crowd. He pointed at one of the farmers and cried, “Speak not amongst thyselves. Come forth.”
The townsfolk fanned away and revealed a woman with a dirty apron wrapped about her dress. “He’s a filthy coward, he is. Ain’t got enough spine ta stick with it,” she snapped. Two other villagers clustered around the woman, their eyes fixed on Alric.
Peter raised a hand. “Please. Stop.”
The innocent people around them slowly backed away. “Tha Church ‘as been lying to us. We are devilspawn! That is our true nature!”
“What tha bloody ‘ell is goin’ on?” hissed Howard.
Alric watched as the woman spoke, peering out at the commoners who cared enough to listen to her words. “We’ve lost our way. Our minds have been poisoned by tha Church. Tha only way we can be made whole again is by givin’ ourselves over!”
The Thestor was already moving towards the woman in the middle of her response. As the final word left her lips, a steel fist careened into her face. The dull snap of the impact was accompanied by the clattering of her teeth bouncing across the ground. The woman collapsed without so much as a whisper, then stared up at him. Blood leaked from her mouth, but her face was otherwise emotionless. The two men rushed to the woman, helped her to her feet, and steadied her. Alric was seething with the unbridled fury of a thousand suns. “Such disgusting blasphemy! Thou hast doomed thyself, wretch. In the name of God, I hereby condemn thee to the pyre as a demonist!”
He saw a glint of courage in the eye of one of the men as he released her and reached for a sword upon his belt. “You’re not doing shit, Thestor.” He drew the weapon with a snarl.
Peter cried out, “Stand down, Seb! All of you!”
Alric inhaled then took a few steps backwards as he drew his longsword. The crowd retracted even further, leaving Seb, the woman with the bloodied mouth, and a stocky man staring him down. The remaining two promptly brandished their own weapons. “Captain?” Alric snapped. Howard, however, simply remained frozen in place. “So be it,” Alric muttered as he lowered his helmet’s visor.
The woman hucked up blood, then spat it onto Alric’s boot. “We’ve ‘ad enough,” she rasped. Seb stepped forward, arming sword in hand. Alric could tell that the fellow was not formally trained, but he moved with a kind of confidence that the others did not possess. The scraping of dirt on boots, the shifting clacks of Alric's plate armour, and steady breaths of those involved were the only sounds to be heard. Alric rearranged his hands upon his longsword and clutched it at the ready in a half-sword grip; he held it by its handle with his right hand, and the middle of its blade with his left.
If he weren’t outnumbered, Alric would not have been concerned. Despite what most nobles would insist, commoners were not idiots. They knew the strengths of plate armour, as well as its weaknesses. They’d seek to swarm him, pin him down, then either stab through the gaps in his plate armour or fling his visor open and stab his face. Despite the odds, Alric knew that he had no choice. God’s honour had been spat upon; if he were to turn away, if he did not punish those heretics, he would find himself the subject of God’s rage. Such a prospect was so frightening that Alric would dare not even entertain the thought of allowing any of them to leave alive.
Seb started off with a feint, one that Alric barely managed to read in time. The knight angled his sword and throttled it forward to parry the subsequent slash. As the ‘clang’ of steel rang through the air, Alric’s feet followed through with his motions to position himself with his back to the wall of a house. If he let his enemies take advantage of their numbers, they were going to kill him. It did not matter how proficient or well-armoured he was.
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The axeman charged forth. With two hands holding his sword horizontally, Alric raised his blade and it caught the axe by its curved edge, deflecting the weapon and sending it off track. As that happened, the one called Seb lunged onto Alric’s back and clutched at his left arm. “Tha neck! Go fer tha neck!”
Alric roared in exertion as he strained the muscles in his legs and upper back. He managed to send himself and Seb charging straight into the wall of the house behind them with a ‘thud’, knocking Seb free just in time for Alric to react to the woman with the arming sword.
She made a precise thrust aimed at Alric’s armpit, prompting him to jerk to the side. Much like the preceding strike, the sword crashed against the plate and the fabric of the surcoat atop it. In response, he rammed his sword deep into the woman's gut, wrenched it, then pulled it out. Shocked screams flooded the town square as the woman fell to the ground, howling in pain.
Suddenly, a neck-wrenching blunt impact bypassed Alric’s helmet and rattled his skull. His senses were overwhelmed with intense thrums, reverberations, and echoes. Despite the disorientation, Alric managed to see the axeman reeling back to prepare another strike. Before he could unleash it, Peter leapt onto him from behind and snatched his arms. It did not take long for the thug to throw the cripple off and onto the ground with a snarl, but those few seconds were precious.
Alric had enough time to recover and whip his longsword out in a sweeping arc. It drew cleanly through the first few inches of the axeman’s throat, spilling midnight blood over the man’s clothes. He gagged, reaching for his neck. His weapon fell to the ground, bounced thrice, then rumbled there upon the dirt. Desperately clawing for his throat, the demonist collapsed in the puddle of his own blood.
Seb once again launched himself at Alric. The knight slipped on the cobble beneath his feet and was tackled to the ground by the heretic. His back slammed onto the stone and he felt his longsword fly out of his hands. Seb was on top of him as he drew Alric’s own rondel dagger, gripped the weapon with two hands, and dropped it down towards one of the sights of Alric’s helmet. The Thestor’s hands lashed upward like the tongues of serpents and wrapped themselves around Seb’s wrists. The man gritted his teeth as he pressed as hard as he could against Alric’s steel-clad form.
Alric lurched to his left, then rolled all of his weight to the right. The shift managed to throw Seb onto the stone and bring Alric up on top of him. Having traded positions, Alric’s face was plastered with a bloodthirsty grin that none could see thanks to his visor as he wrestled Seb for the dagger. The weapon snapped out of Seb’s grip and Alric twirled it, planted the palm of his left hand on its pommel, then brought it down onto Seb’s face. Very much like how Alric had countered it, Seb locked his fingers around Alric’s gauntlets. However, Alric had an advantage. Being dressed in plate meant that he had an additional fifty pounds of weight compared to the unarmoured Seb. The sod could not fight against that weight forever. The dagger slowly travelled downwards, closer and closer to Seb’s widened eye. He began panting and quivering in fear. With one final effort, Alric shifted his body weight and funnelled all of it through the dagger. An ear-piercing screech played harmony to the wet squashing and crunching caused by the blade as it buried itself into Seb’s eye socket. Alric pulled the blade out, then sent it back into the gaping hole so many times that he had lost count.
Overcome with fatigue, Alric stumbled off the corpse and rose as he raised his visor. His legs wobbled. His arms trembled. His breathing was shallow and ragged. None of the heretics but Seb died instantly. They trembled and screamed on the ground before eventually succumbing to their fatal wounds over the course of minutes. The townspeople with enough stomach to stay were mixed in their reactions. Thankfully, the majority appeared to applaud Alric’s smiting of the impious.
Alric hobbled over to his discarded longsword and reclaimed it. He wiped his sword and dagger clean with the surcoat that was draped over his armour. The thing was once white, but had been long stained grey with blood. After stowing his weapons on his belt, Alric turned to the children. They had been watching intently from around the corner. There was no telling whether or not their mother had spread filthy heretical lies to their ears...so he felt it prudent to ensure their faith. The knight said to them, still exhausted, “Thou knowest now the end that awaits those who sin. Praise God…and thou shan’t follow.”
Josephine and Liam were frozen. Alric couldn't tell if it was fear or awe that seized their very souls, but it pained him not that they needed to watch as he took those men. They were shivering as one of the townspeople warmly embraced them. “Come now little ones. It’s time for bed.” As she led them away, the woman shot Alric a spiteful glare.
“What tha hell was that!?” spat an older man as he stomped over to Alric. He was rather short, but had the broad shoulders of a working man. “Ya can’t just march inta town and cut folk apart! Doesn’t matter what they’ve done! Yer meant ta put ‘em on trial!”
Howard tried to interpose himself between Alric and the angered man. “Halsten, calm down will ya?”
“Calm down!? My fuckin’ son is missin’! He might be runnin’ ‘round with that lot and this stupid fool of a knight killed ‘em all before we could ask questions!”
Alric ignored the newcomer. Instead, his searing stare was locked on Howard. “I should have thee whipped through the streets for thy cowardice. A man of thy station standing idly by while a servant of the Church is assaulted in the streets is a slight against God Himself.”
The threat made Howard turn pale. “T-They…were friends o’ mine. I-I…I couldn’t just…”
Peter came limping over with a terse frown on his face. “It doesn’t matter what you say. What you do is what God will judge you for…and you did nothing.”
Alric sneered. The man had admitted to being an apostate. Worse…a demonist. But not only did he seek forgiveness, he did not stand idle during the skirmish as Howard did. The Thestor knelt, picked up the cane that Peter had dropped during the scuffle, and stood back up. “As heinous as thy crimes are…thou hath proven that thou art willing to risk thy life to redeem thyself.” He handed the cane over and Peter accepted it sternly.
“I understand, Brother. These serpents…they prey on the vulnerable. They teach that we are not alive, that we are nothing but tools of the damned…but I see the truth now. In the forest, with the goblins…I watched people scream and beg for their lives. We must be living…for the dead do not beg. All I wish is to cleanse myself of this darkness and perhaps seek forgiveness from the Father.”
Halsten wiped the dirt from Peter’s clothes and held him gently by the shoulder. “Erik. Was Erik there? Did he…”
“Erik and Sara fled with the others just as the scavengers came. T-They said they were…” Peter paused for a moment. “I can…show you where they went. Take me with you.”