“How long do you think before we hit the next village?” Nua asked thoughtfully.
“Another hour, is that where you want the ambush spot to be?” Solution asked with a licking of her lips.
“Close, the way into the village is narrow, that means, for those coming ‘back’ from the North, the way ‘out’ of the village is narrow. More than likely, the village is already dead, so… no casualties in the way, we’ll use it to lay a nice trap for them.” Nua said matter of factly.
“And the rest of the time?” Solution inquired, “It’ll be a few days before they make it back this way, depending on what they do with their wounded, maybe longer.”
“We practice, train, practice, and prepare the ambush, and then we repeat. We’re not done, until Bracer is on his knees and begging me for mercy.” Nua massaged her knife lovingly as she spoke, “I haven’t forgotten what his band is guilty of, and I want to make them pay.”
“We are catching up to him, are you sure you don’t want to do a good forced march and catch up to him?” Solution asked the question smugly, with her nose turned up in the air in a haughty fashion.
Nua shook her head. “No, I’m not a Baraja, to go charging in all on fire, and that won’t help me achieve my goals. Let him weaken himself taking the Prince for me, once he’s done the work, we can finish him here.”
Solution looked over her shoulder, the twenty five slaves in armor were walking a fair bit behind her now, they’d obviously slowed down. “They’re getting tired.”
Nua shrugged again. “Then they need to get stronger, we’ll purge their sins eventually, and I can let them rest for awhile when we get to the village.”
“If you say so, but if anyone drops, I’m eating them.” Solution said in a tone that told Nua she wasn’t ‘entirely’ joking.
‘Death is near.’ Yersin whispered after a time.
‘I’m not surprised, feels like it. And I’ll just bet those birds circling up ahead aren’t doing so because they like the view. Looks like Bracer visited.’ Nua answered calmly.
‘And if there are survivors?’ Yersin asked with a hopeful, hungry inflection in his voice.
‘Depends on the survivors. Could be I give you some mana, could be not. Be patient awhile and see.’ Nua answered impatiently.
‘Fine. But I reserve the right to want them dead.’ Yersin said snarkily.
‘Right granted, but the decision is ‘mine’ and no other’s.’ Nua answered commandingly, and Yersin went silent until they reached the remnants of the village.
“Search for survivors.” She barked forcefully as they came through the narrow pass of roadway between the thick, thick brush and trees on either side.
The weary soldiers stomped in with slow, steady pace, weapons at the ready, listening with care for any other possible stragglers.
Corpses lay scattered about, mostly in piles, some lay where they fell, birds picked at the wounds and cawed defensively at the interlopers to their feast.
The stench of mud, blood, and shit was everywhere, burnt out and fallen stilt homes were scattered everywhere. “Bigger village, and… looks like they put up a fight, doesn’t it, Teacher?” Nua said from atop her horse as she looked around where the bodies lay.
“If you want to call it that, pretty pathetic if you ask me, but yes, they got a number of bandits before they were taken down.” Solution agreed with her student’s assessment. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
Nua looked around, her horse moved with slow, indifferent ease under her direction… “They came in through the pass like we did… and stopped there.” She pointed to a clustering of feet. “Then they began to circle out to surround the village.” She said as she followed sparse tracks in the soft earth until they stopped. “But they didn’t finish, something happened, no way to know what, maybe a villager out late taking a piss saw them, maybe someone made a noise, but the village was warned in time to rush out of their beds and make a stand.” She cantered farther inward, “It caught the bandits off their guard, the villagers came at them here.” She pointed to a knot where a lot of bodies lay fallen over. “The village had them outnumbered, and managed to get around the bandits. But the bandits had champions, probably more than one.” Nua pointed to where some villagers died with swords in their backs, or through blunt force trauma. “My guess is, Bracer had a big one on his side, at least one.”
“How do you know that?” Solution asked with a pleasant smile disarmingly resting on her face.
Nua pointed to where some bodies had clearly slid to a stop. “Someone threw those.”
“Then the fighting ended around… there.” She pointed to a spot where several pairs of feet had stood, and a large number of footprints surrounded them. “Then that one was stabbed, and after that…” Nua gestured out to where the unarmed bodies were. “Well, after that they took off after the survivors, brought them back here, and abused them all in one way or another until they finally killed them, and that was it.”
“How’d I do, Teacher?” Nua asked proudly.
“Not bad, my student. But just one thing.” Solution said glibly.
“Teacher?” Nua asked with a furrowed brow.
“Hey! This one’s still alive!” One of her soldiers said with a shout over the keeled over body.
“That.” Solution said with a wink.
----------------------------------------
...Previous evening...
“If you were stronger, she wouldn’t be hurting right now.” Bracer mocked the girl who lay weeping while his hips thrust against her sister. The last wail did it, it sent him over the edge, and when he was done, he got up. “Most losers in this world, they die. Whether you count yourselves lucky to be the ones that don’t…? That’s up to you. But… I got a little something for you bitches.” He said as they lay in the dirt, useless knives kicked well beyond reach.
If they understood him or heard him, he wasn’t entirely sure, but… he was confident this would get their attention. They didn’t understand entirely what he was getting at, until the leather collar was put around the first of the pair. As soon as it was understood what he was doing, the one he was crouching over began to flail, her little arms and legs kicked up and down while his knee pressed into her upper back and held her painfully in the dirt.
Her sister tried to crawl over to her to help, only to reach her too late, and the Gordine Knot was secured. He then took up the second leather collar, and repeated the act with her, with equal efficacy.
They tugged and tugged, but could not work the knot or pull the collars off. He felt the stirring excitement as he watched them struggle and asked himself, ‘Can I manage another round with them? No, probably not, I did promise Beren that we’d hit that last village, and if we want a night attack we need to get going. I guess I can play with these two afterward. But… one more thing I can do to them.’ Bracer grinned and went to crouch in front where they could both see him.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“I have a secret for you two. It isn’t just wearing those that makes people into property, far from it, if that were true, people like me could just run all over the place slapping collars on strangers and that would be the end of it. No city anywhere would survive since travelers would be getting kidnapped all the time… instead of just sometimes like when they run across me. With me so far?”
They were silent, but attentive, hopeful, it was pretty, with their wide open eyes still red from crying. “Good, you do understand. No, to be tools that work, it’s paper at play. See, you have to be registered somewhere officially. And officials won’t register anyone from an unauthorized merchant or without the seal of state belonging to a Prince. However, there are ways around it. We’re going to where the Komestran Prince is being held, his seal will be going with him, a little ‘permanent trophy’ of the God-Emperor of the Tlalmok Empire. Since nobody knows where you’re ‘actually’ from, all I need do is put that seal on a few official documents, put a few drops of blood from you on each so that you can ‘always’ be identified, and then?”
He held his arms out wide as if to embrace a great truth and stared down his hooked nose at the pair.
Their eyes welled with tears again as they began to understand.
“Exactly, you’ll be ‘official’ slaves for the rest of your lives. And after I’ve captured the Prince and handed him over to the Tlizin, you might remember him, he’s the one who took your mother and big sister away to be eaten? Well then with what I’ve made from the sale, I could buy a hundred like you, so…” He clapped his hands together, “Hold hands now, while you can. Because I’ll sell you off in different cities, and you’ll never… ever see each other again. And nobody will ‘ever’ believe your crazy story about being captured by a smuggler and then sold off after a scam like this on ‘this’ side of the border. Oh and… just so you know, I won’t be selling you for the pocket change you’re worth. But just so I have some trophies to remember you by when I use your replacements.”
Their sobs kept him happy the entire time he barked his orders thereafter and ended the break. When they were back in the sacks and hanging balanced off either side of his horse, he hummed a happy tune for the entire ride to the village, and he kept humming it when they reached the place in the middle of the night.
The moon was concealed by clouds, and droplets of rain were starting to fall when they moved out of their road and started their usual move to surround the village. It was a practiced maneuver, one they’d done a hundred times in their collective lives at least. Bracer looked around, a slightly larger village, perhaps three hundred families. ‘Still not a problem, it’ll just take a little longer to kill the place off.’ He mused and watched his bandits drawing out their swords in total silence. Allied by the night and the exhaustion of the day’s labor, the villagers had no idea that they’d been building it all up for Bracer’s personal comfort, or that they’d been raising their young men and women for the purposes of bandit sport.
‘Well, if they don’t like it, they shouldn’t have been born peasants.’ Bracer laughed at his own privately thought joke, and was so amused by it that he did not notice that behind him, one of his playthings had worked her gag loose.
“Bandits! Smugglers! It’s a raid! It’s a raid! Wake up! Wake up and fight!” She screamed and screamed and screamed into the darkness, long before the bandits themselves were ready in their positions, villagers shot up out of bed, those with weapons, rushed for them, those without, improvised by grabbing kitchen knives and pitchforks. They charged out to defend their homes and families, while others grabbed children and took them to try to escape.
“Protect the village!”
“Stop them!”
“Where are they!”
Bracer swore. “Fuck it! Kill them!” He shouted, and he spurred his horse forward with his toys bouncing left and right against the flanks of his horse. His bandits followed his lead, prepared or not, they still had experience, and the villagers had little.
The rain began to come down harder, and the bandits who had torches at the ready, threw them into the homes they rushed past, fire began to offer light to easily see by, and the desperate villagers rushed into the fray while those unable to fight, or without the courage to do so, fled. Some fled for their lives, some fled for the lives of their children, but the downpour began in earnest, and made the fighting even more chaotic as men and women slipped in mud. Bandits, unable to employ their usual strategy, began to die off as peasants in greater numbers worked around them.
Bracer however, was in no mood to argue numbers. He charged his horse through a stubborn knot of them, knocking half a dozen flying, breaking limbs with the impact of his mount, before leaping down and cutting them apart with his sword. Beren was doing the same, but he was picking them up and either throwing them, or using them as clubs to beat their neighbors to death with.
‘I almost missed this kind of fighting.’ Bracer thought grimly, ‘Slaughtering animals is just… boring.’ Though if there was a difference between the two states, it wasn’t evident, he gutted his way through their numbers, sending limbs flying off into the mud and men and women fell screaming and clutching at stumps, getting in everybody’s way until they stopped moving and could be stepped on for stability.
With the few exceptionally skilled under Bracer’s command, the end result was quickly made obvious, and peasants began to drop like mayflies, until only three still stood near the center, and the village burned down around them.
They began backing away as the bandits surrounded the trio the way they’d intended to surround the village, and began to close in. They squelched through bloody mud and bloody puddles, kicking aside limbs. Three farmboys, big ones, gritted teeth and bloody faces, Bracer recognized them during the fighting as three who’d been aggressive and… not half bad.
He raised his hands as thunder clapped in the sky, his bandits stopped advancing and Bracer stepped in front of his men.
“Your little village put up a helluva fight!” He said with a cocky grin. “But it’s all over now, at a guess, we lost about twenty and may lose a few more to injuries before tomorrow. So… how about you join us.”
“You’re… kidding, right?” The biggest of the three replied. He was a brawny man with thick muscles and an ugly face.
“Nope, why would I kid about that?” Bracer tapped his sword up and down on his shoulder, “We need to get our numbers up a bit, and you three fit the bill.”
The three young men traded wary looks. “And if we refuse?”
“Then I kill you and you rot here.” Bracer shrugged. “You can come with me, and get all the women, men, boys, girls...farm animals, whatever it is you like, as well as money to spend and booze to drink. Or… die here and have lived your worthless lives digging up dirt and harvesting crops that other people take from you anyway.”
Two faces looked to be wavering. “No way!” An apple faced and red haired young man snapped reflexively. He steadied his grip on the sword, and after thunder clapped again and lightning flashed and struck the house behind him, sending it bursting into flames, he again spouted his refusal. “This is my home! You killed my home! I’d rather die than follow you!” He twisted his hand anxiously around a sword that he must have never held before.
He looked from one to the next of the two with him and their wavering looks. “Come on… guys…?” He muttered.
“If he doesn’t join us along with you two, you have to be the ones to put him down.” Bracer said as he came closer. He moved like moonlight over water and his every gesture spoke of his familiarity with death.
“Come on man… I don’t want to die here…” The largest of the trio said nervously.
“Come on yourself! He killed our neighbors, friends, maybe families…!” The young redhead replied angrily, as if they didn’t know what had just happened.
“And I don’t want to join them!” The other of the trio added, he brought his hand up and wiped the rain out of his face, for all the good it did as the downpour began to peak and the fires began to die.
Bracer brought his sword up off his shoulder and leveled it to the three. His left hand on his hip, he gave the order. “Kill that kid, or die with him.”
The middle of the three stared unbelievingly to the left and right as his friends mouthed a brief ‘sorry’ and shoved their swords into his stomach.
Yorig felt the stabbing pain of betrayal in his gut far more keenly than their swords. His eyes filled with tears as his stomach filled with steel. He staggered back, off their blades, his own fell from nerveless fingers, shock filled his face, his mouth opened, he looked up at their frightened faces…
...ten years earlier…
Yorig brought the wooden stick down on Nagru’s knee and pushed him off the rock. “I’m king of the mountain!” He shouted, raising his sword in triumph just in time for Tenbu to give him a flying shoulder from another rock and knock him off in turn. He hit the ground, rolled, and stood up. “Not bad! But you’ll see, if bandits ever come, I’ll be the one they don’t get past!” Nagru and Tenbu grinned toothily, “You say that…” Nagru replied, “But we’ll see how it really goes one day…”
Yorig looked at Nagru and Tenbu’s faces, he felt blood coming out of his mouth as he fell to his knees. They looked down at him with utter pity, perhaps remembering the same game they’d played as children not a bowshot from where he’d fallen to his knees in the mud right then. Yorig brought his hands around to his stomach and clutched it.
“Why… WHY?! It wasn’t supposed to be like this!” He shouted, though he was fairly sure it came out only as a gurgle, because they didn’t answer.
He toppled forward with his face into the mud. “King of the mountain…” He muttered into the mud, before he lost consciousness.
Bracer watched the boy fall, and gestured to where his band stood. “Now, we’re going to hunt down the rest of your village, and if we catch any of them, well… you’re going to have to take a turn too, with whatever we do with them, you’re either one of us in everything, or you’re one of them and you end up like your friend there.”
Their faces paled, but they didn’t object. “Go get’em boys! That’s enough of a head start!”
Shrieks and yelps and charging feet echoed almost as loud as the cry of thunder as they charged through the muck and after the fleeing villagers. Bracer himself however, waited back with the two new recruits, as he didn’t want them getting second thoughts. ‘One turn on a girl they grew up with, and there’ll be nothing left of them, they’ll be ‘committed’ then, and I’ve got them for good. A year after that or better, and they’ll be just like the rest of this trash mob of mine.’ He thought smugly as he went to where his toys were already weeping because they saw their useless warning.
Bracer went to the one on the left, saw no gag, and slapped her hard across the jaw. “It failed, bitch, but you did cost me a number of my men. Brave, brave and stupid. But you didn’t save a single one of them, my bandits are expert trackers, they’ll hunt down all of them in hours. And just because you decided to try to play hero… well… I’m going to ‘really’ make it hurt you this time.” He grinned maliciously and gripped her jaw tight, she whimpered, but said nothing more.
The next three hours were spent herding captives back to the village, and wiping them out. It was only when the two newbies admitted that, ‘yes’ Bracer had them all, that the ones that still lived were made to scream in earnest as the bandits made sport of the ones they wanted.
With swords at their backs, the two young men did as they were told, and took their turn like everybody else, eviscerating whatever decency was left in their souls while the body of Yorig lay still kneeling, slumped forward into the mud.
When they were done, and there were no survivors, Bracer made his order quick and cold. “We’re not waiting, we can’t camp well in this fucking rain, and thanks to how long you idiots took finding the ones who ran, we’re behind schedule. I gave you the rut I promised! Now give me the march! We’re going to go for the next nine hours before we rest, and then we’re going to hit the Prince’s position two days later! Anyone says anything other than ‘Yes Bracer sir,’ had better be much more skilled with a sword than I!”
“Yes, Bracer Sir!” They shouted, including the hollow eyed new recruits.
The trudging began in the rain, and did not end until well after the sun rose in the sky the following day. Then and only then, did Bracer let them make camp, and only then did he take the time to make his toys scream for him again.