Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Ease!” Speranzi called out when she saw the white flame shoot up into the sky, and the bows of her soldiers relaxed, their nocked arrows lowered, not one of them removed the arrow to put it away.

“Micah!” Speranzi called out, “Give us light!”

[Nova] He cast the spell while holding his hand out away from his body and above the heads of his compatriots, and after one brief glow on his hands a ball of white shot out and floated past the tight ranks of soldiers.

The pulsing white glow turned the dark of the early evening into a new dawn and let Speranzi see the slow steps of Skana and the…

Before Speranzi could say anything about the weeping, shaking, and bedraggled lot of elves, she heard Corwin’s voice behind her. “What’s happening here?!” He shouted as his wagon drew close, “Is it safe?!” He called out, his heart thudding in his chest and the young elf boy with him already shaking like a leaf in the breeze.

Speranzi stepped out of her formation and looked over her shoulder in the direction of Corwin’s voice, “Safe? Yes! What in the ninth hell of confusion we’ve got here? I’ve no idea. Just stay there! Soldiers, circle the wagon and defend… just in case.”

She strode away from her lines and threw her bow across her back again, her steps carrying her swiftly to where the sword bearing night watch walked and the gaggle of wounded, weary, and broken slaves staggered.

“Just a guess, ma’am, but I’d say it’s runaway slaves.” Skana jerked her thumb over her shoulder, “They were trying to steal food, they got caught, and now some of them are wounded.”

The pleas for mercy were already coming up from the desperate band of captives, and for a moment, Speranzi almost gave her order. But instead, ‘I don’t get many opportunities like this one… so?’ She asked herself and asked Skana directly.

“What do you recommend we do with them?” Speranzi asked and brushed past her newest subordinate to get a look at the elves up close, her soldiers responded to her unspoken command and began yanking their captives by the collars and forcing them into line, neither men nor women were immune to shrieking as they were dragged into place and shoved down to their knees with sword tips at their backs. Those carrying the bleeding wounded swayed and clung so tightly to the groaning and bleeding wounded that the only thing that kept them from falling completely were the same hands that were forcing them to their knees.

“Brigandry is punishable by death. Same for robbery on the highway. But,” Skana approached behind Speranzi and lowered her head in shame, “if you spared me…? They’re obviously starving, my mother once said that the difference between a hunter and a monster was need and greed. Hunters killed deer for pelts and meat and the things we needed the deer for. But monsters just killed because they liked it.”

“They attacked my men, shouldn’t I put them to death for that?” Speranzi asked.

“Please…” A desperate little whimper came from a young man who clung to a wounded figure in his arms, “We never hurt anyone…”

As Speranzi searched their faces, they looked away, though as they did so, despair washed over them, a few grasped sweaty, trembling hands together with their neighbors.

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“I guess, but again, you let me live. Desperate and scared aren’t the same as vicious and evil. You gave me a chance…” Skana answered, the weight of that was like a millstone around her neck and she thought privately, ‘It was more than I deserved.’

“Prisoners, then.” Speranzi looked down at the line of weeping elves who would not look back at her and called over her shoulder, “Micah! Get up here and cast some healing magic!”

While she waited, and the tenor of the weeping among the tan, kneeling captives changed from despair to a smidgen of hope, Speranzi said, “You’ll be coming with us. Whether you’re shown mercy or not, depends on what we find along the way.” She stepped closer, so that even at her inconsiderable height, she towered over those who knelt in front of her, “If you’re not telling the truth, you threw away your chance with me before we even met.”

“It’s not a lie!” The chance for mercy seemed to embolden the one who spoke his earlier plea, he attempted to raise his hands as if he were going to pray, only to stop when the tip of the sword at his back pressed a little closer, and he yelled out the words with almost violent denial.

“We just want to go home! To get away from that living hell! To get away from all you people! Don’t you torture us enough?! What do we have to do to escape you?! Is death the only way out for us after all?!” Tears ran down his face as he complained against the unfairness of it all, “We never did anything… anything but be born elves! Okay, we tried to steal some food… we got caught… we lashed out because we were afraid! We just don’t want to be hurt anymore!” He raved and ranted, shouting up at Speranzi until the hand of the sword bearer at his back grabbed his blonde hair and yanked his head back.

“Wait!” Speranzi held her hand out as the sword touched the front of the elven male’s neck. The male was spasming, gasping, grunting as he tried to look at Speranzi and found that he could not, his tongue darted out to lick his lips.

“You’re all just monsters, in the end, just do it… and fuck… you…” He gasped as if he were not begging for mercy just minutes before.

By then, Micah was near at hand and crouching over the injured, the faint soft blue of his healing spell engulfing the bodies of the injured.

“You may be right. But for now at least, this monster is merciful.” She said to the male and then raised her eyes to the soldier.

“Relax your sword, he’s no threat to anyone. Bind their hands for now, we’ll work out how to keep them properly later, it’s not that long down the river to Wenmark from here.” Speranzi said, and then blinked with surprise when the most horrific and despairing wail came up from them all, as if the weight of the city’s name was a mountain they could not hope to carry even one step more.

It was enough at least that they laid down in the grass and the dirt, limp as the newly dead, life was only evident at all because only the living could weep.

Save for the sheen of wetness, their eyes became dull and listless, and as Speranzi looked down at them, it was in its own way, eerily familiar. She closed her eyes as she recalled the hollow looks of the rescued prisoners of the Demon God and his armies.

Their bodies riddled with illnesses that magic hadn’t been expended to cure, wounds that nobody, not even the injured, cared to fix, the whites of their eyes large and empty, looking at nothing.

In the back of her mind as Speranzi idle snapped out an order to Skana to have the prisoners secured in the center of the camp, an order that even the commander herself barely paid attention to, something gnawed at her. Something she was very unfamiliar with.

‘Getting free food, shelter, everything handed to them… who runs from that? What is he even so upset about? He’s lucky, they’re all lucky… look at them now, running away they’re starved and injured, scared and lost… why leave their masters for that?!’ The thoughts and arguments in her head ran around like wild beasts, trying to trample that unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling.

‘One corrupt human and some fearful ones is one thing, but a whole city? Never. And the scriptures tell us that those who stand outside the will of the gods are not to be believed. Their mouths are full of lies, and lies will bind like chains around our souls.’ She quoted the verse to herself, and just doing so, helped her calm that slight stirring in her heart.