Without the peasant women in tow, Speranzi at first thought they would bypass the village entirely. However, rather than staying on the main road, she watched Corwin guide his wagon to the little single wagon path that turned toward the rising smoke beyond a low hill.
“Why are we going to the village?” Speranzi asked as the wagon rolled on, “The rescues decided not to stay with us, not that I blame them.” She gave a slow shake of her head, “They probably just want to forget everything, that’s how it usually goes. So what’s the point of going through there?”
“Villages tend to be fairly poor, they lack a lot of goods, they make good hosts and they’re quick to spend. I can pick plenty and maybe even book some passengers. There are always a few young men and women looking to try their fortunes out in the world.” Corwin said. There was no laughter when he said it, and Speranzi knew why.
She said nothing about it, though she cast her eyes up at her companion, the prior critique of his decisions no doubt still on his mind.
‘I can’t turn down a revenue source, regardless of where it leads.’ He reassured himself, and added to that, ‘I can give them good advice, it’s up to them whether they take it or not.’ Down at his side, Sperenzi walked with the casual ease of someone who knew there were no threats around her. The vicious expression and her soul-swallowing cruel eyes would betray nothing of her real thoughts if she did look up at him.
But she didn’t need to in order to know what she would have said. ‘Profits before principles…’ Or something to that effect, ‘If half those boys end up as bandits and the rest either become guards who hunt bandits or common city thugs, and one or two trudge back to their village as dejected failures… well what’s to be done? They’re going to go anyway, at least coming with me they get there alive!’
It let him sleep at night, and that was good enough.
“So why’d you spare that one?” Corwin finally asked as if to strike back at her unspoken criticism.
“You mean the former bandit who is right handed with both hands, survived an arrow to the kidney, and can use two martial arts for at least ten straight minutes? You’re right. She’s useless. I should throw her away.” Speranzi answered and flashed the rarest of smiles up at him, dripping with sarcasm thick enough to drizzle it on hotcakes, the answer embarrassed him enough to make him blush.
Speranzi shook her head, “She’s got a story that would make the gods interested at least, you know how I love a good story. And besides, I have personal reasons. Either way, in this line of work she’s got a good chance of dying anyway. I might as well get some use out of her first, right?” Speranzi shrugged her arms and shoulders. “I’m as principled as my circumstances allow me to be. One former bandit won’t make me lose sleep at night, not if she can keep some of the others alive a little longer.”
“I still don’t like it.” Corwin remarked to his hired bow.
“Who knows what the gods ordain, perhaps she was meant for this end? The gods are choosy about who they spare and who they slay. She should have died that night, but she didn’t. She could have died in the test. But she didn’t. They’ll decide her end, and mine, and they are ever just in their ends. They delivered her from her fate, perhaps it is a sign that they’ll deliver me from mine.” Speranzi ground her teeth together when she finished speaking, and to that, Corwin could add nothing.
Stories of people born cursed by the gods and finding favor and redemption through piety and service were plentiful in the lands of men, and it wasn’t hard for him to conclude that Speranzi probably clung to those stories like a child clung to a blanket.
Any further words they might have traded were stopped cold when Speranzi raised her hand. “Call a halt, Corwin.” She ordered, “There’s a noise up ahead, a riot? Or fighting?”
“You can hear-” He stopped, it was very faint, he couldn’t tell what it was, but then again… ‘It’s not unusual for more experienced warriors to gain greater senses as well as greater strength.’ No sooner had the thought come and gone than he gave a somber nod and raised his fist above his head to call a halt.
No sooner had the wheels stopped turning than Speranzi hopped up to the wagon in one smooth motion and waved her soldiers forward.
Skana hesitated at first, seeing riders leave their places to approach their commander, ‘Do I go too or…?’
“Screw it.” She groused and hopped down to chase after the others and then pushed her way as gently as she could between the rumps and flanks of horses until she got to the front where she could stand near to their commander.
“Something is going on over there, and I don’t know what, but that sounds like a really angry village, someone…” She pointed down at Skana, “you. You should be a decent scout. And you should be able to talk to them if there’s a problem, they’re peasants too after all. Go over and see what the trouble is, if it’s a fight, pull back after gathering what you can. But don’t throw your life away on something stupid. The rest of you, fan out and protect our client.” Speranzi’s orders were brief and to the point, as such, Skana embraced them with equal speed.
“Ma’am! I’m on it!” She didn’t hesitate, and took off immediately at a run toward the top of the hill.
“Say what you will about her past.” Speranzi remarked as she watched the woman’s back as she raced up to where she could get a clean view. “But she is eager to prove herself.”
“She’s still a bandit.” Corwin mumbled and watched as the horsemen drew their swords and positioned themselves close to the wagons, the merchant apprentices and the handful of laborers quickly hid out of view, pressing their bellies and faces to the wagonbeds.
Speranzi didn’t answer him, she only pointed to the wagon he sat on, “Just hide yourself.” She said and drew an arrow to ready her bow and wait for whatever potential trouble found its end with her.
Skana felt her heart seize up in her breast when the finger of the leader of the Black Quivers was leveled between her eyes, but on the order to move there was nothing to do but obey.
So she raced up the hill with her heart leaping from frozen like it was cast into a winter-stricken pond to racing like a rabbit being chased by wolves.
Skana’s ears picked up the noise of a single screaming voice above all others, the words were muffled to her at first, but the obscurity of the words did nothing to hide the raw terror and pain within. ‘I’ve heard those screams before…’ She realized, and thought back to the way the demihumans would torment their human victims before killing them for food.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The hot, sticky feel of saliva dripping on her cheek, its slimy feel sliding over her skin as she lay secured to the altar waiting to be devoured as a mockery of the ancient gods of men… the feel of ursine claws cutting into her shoulders just to savor the sound of her screams, the feel of her shaking, the fear she would experience as she was made ready to die…
In moments like the present, the past was a hair’s breadth away. As she ascended the hill, the screams became clearer. “I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t doooo ittttt!”
‘How I screamed to the gods for mercy… how we all did… begging for salvation that never came…’ It was almost laughable, looking back. After all, every captive there had seen or at least heard the screamed prayers of their followers as the altars were blasphemed by the demihumans, and none of them lived. ‘None before me at least. None until I begged for ‘anything’ to save me…’
It was a mockery of a prayer screamed out to the laughter of the captors until their horn blew and word of the human liberators at the walls forced the demihumans to delay satisfying their hunger.
She set that thought aside as she finally crested the hill and saw into the village below. At a glance it was like any other, with wide fields in every direction and woods beyond where villagers hunted and gathered wood, a winding little river cut its path through the land where it would gift water to the Long River as a tributary. The little cottages were of rough cut wood, a little better than the frontier, with thatched roofs of straw, likely over wooden planks secured to frames. Even the house of the village chief was obvious, being slightly larger than the others. A small well near the center, and a low wall better fit for keeping goats and cows in than keeping bandits out.
And a small building of stone that marked the place of the village priest.
One difference however, stood out. A stake twice the height of a man, a man secured to it with his hands behind his back, and a mob forming a curve shaped around him.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t! I stayed the night! I left in the morning because I was traveling, I wasn’t running away! Please! Please, you have to believe me!” He yowled his innocence, but if anyone believed him, they weren’t about to say it.
The mob was less intelligible, exhorted by a white robed man Skana recognized as a priest, had a hand on an older fellow who was hunched forward and supported by a walking stick.
Skana turned her back to the village and waved her arms back and forth over her head. Her sense of disgust was as palpable as sawdust on her tongue. ‘A mob. I hate mobs… they’re worse than bandits, at least bandits want to get something, mobs exist just to destroy and leave nothing.’ She nearly spat into the dirty road, but instead she swallowed her disgust and waited while the wagon train rolled forward again.
True to her expectation, Speranzi was moving up ahead of her charges, her bow still had an arrow nocked and ready for the draw, “What is it?” Speranzi asked, but she needn’t have.
“It looks like they’re executing a murderer.” Skana said, raising her arm and pointing a finger toward the little mob of four dozen people. “Or maybe a thief? Village justice is iffy sometimes. People who don’t have much, they protect it fiercely.”
Speranzi responded by putting away her arrow and slinging her bow. “Have them come up faster, then tell my riders to come ahead of the wagon.”
The tortured wailing went on while young boys and girls rushed around the stake with small baskets, and it became obvious to Speranzi what was happening. ‘Stoning to death. A bad way to go.’ The noblewoman thought as she descended the hill.
Stoning as a brutal end, depending on the mood of the crowd, the mercifulness of the overseer, and the toughness of the damned, it could end quickly with a few rocks to the head.
Or?
Or it could be dragged out, starting with rocks thrown at legs and feet, shattering bone and eventually flesh the body forced to stand on shattered limbs until they were forced to the ground. Or if the breaks were not bad enough, adding the arms, hands, the gut and ribs, avoiding the head or throat and any merciful end. With the right stones a person might take a full day or more to die.
The children of the village were almost done gathering the thrown stones into little woven baskets to be handed back over to their parents, and as Speranzi drew closer she could see that the victim’s limbs were bruised and cut up and down his legs, a gash in his face showed where a rock was thrown astray by a poor hand. But the intent was obvious.
This one was to die in agony.
“Hellooooo!” She shouted and waved ahead. She kept her walk slow and steady and relied on the air to carry her drawn out words.
‘Okay, you should have sent Skana ahead.’ She thought with a mental groan as she came closer. But she knew why she hadn’t.
Uncertain at first, as she came further into view and she was visibly armed, their bodies shifted about as they looked left and right to their neighbors for strength, guidance, and instruction.
A stranger was one thing, an armed stranger in full armor was another. To set them at ease she waved again as if she were seeing old friends and called out, “Hellooooo!”
Hesitant hands went up, down, then up again to return her wave, she could see them lean in to murmur to one another. Even if she couldn’t hear their words she knew what they were asking.
Her casual air despite the scene was enough to cause even those who had never left their village for more than a day’s walk distance, to ask others who had never traveled any farther, to ask if she were known to them.
With Fortress Myen within reasonable distance at least it was conceivable, though her armor differed too much from those soldiers to be mistaken for one, it was an open door of possibility they could not close.
She didn’t need the gift of foresight to know that door would shut when she came closer, and she was right, but it had the intended effect.
They froze and turned away from her, putting their hopes on their aged chief and the priest to come and speak to the stranger who was fast coming into their midst.
The little crowd stood aside, intuitively recognizing the stride of someone who didn’t expect people to stand in their way. Not being especially tall, Speranzi took longer steps that took years to ingrain as habit, they were not longer by much, but enough to minimize the loss of distance to her height. She also took them faster and walked with shoulders back, her hand noticeably on the hilt of her sword despite her calm air.
“Hello…” She scanned the crowd as if she were unsure whom she was looking for, and as if there were not a wounded, sobbing man tied to a stake not thirty paces from where she stood. “Chief?” She said like it was a guess, “And village priest.” She added, neither of the pair looked at her directly more than once.
“My name is Baroness Speranzi Jadara, commander of the Black Quiver company. My soldiers and the merchant, Corwin Amber, are about to arrive.” She pointed toward the rising hill she’d left behind, “And they’re hoping to remain here for a few hours or so at least to trade and set up shop before we move on.”
Only while the pair looked anywhere else but at her face and sweat sprang to their brows, did Speranzi appear to take note of the groaning man whose legs were shaking as if they were on the verge of breaking where he stood.
“But, I see that you’re busy with,” she inclined her head past them and like they were eager to have a reason to look away from her narrowed and fixed gaze, they looked at their victim, “this.” She finished. “What did he do? I don’t often see villagers execute their own people.”
The village chief looked with blinking, imploring eyes at the priest, and the white robed figure threw back his hood and pounded his staff on the dirt. “Murder! Murder most foul!” He shouted melodramatically and whirled on the convicted man as if he were an actor on a stage, and the bound man but a prop for his performance.
“The village welcomed this traveler! Allowed him to stay the night! Yorig even hosted him! Gave him the trust of a guest! And this… brigand, this blight on mankind… took the life of his host, robbed his house, and fled before dawn!”
The priest leveled his wooden staff at the conflict, his entire body shaking with anger, “He committed the ultimate crime, and must pay the ultimate penalty!”
Speranzi closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. ‘Why are the priests of the gods always so dramatic?”
The priest went on and on, launching into a full blown sermon for his flock, his staff occasionally shaking as he leveled another accusing gesture at the groaning, sobbing figure who stood waiting for death.
“...And despite all the goodness poor Yorig granted this stranger, he was slain. Now his widow must mourn and we must go on without him!”
As the priest finished his rant, the wagons drew near and Skana approached the mob.
“So… how’d he kill him anyway?” Skana asked as she took in the scene herself.
“He took a mattock and bludgeoned Yorig to death while he slept!” The priest shouted, spittle flying from his lips, and the crowd’s angry rumbling went up again.
Skana snorted and scratched her head. “That one? I doubt it.”