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The
bandit camp was in a small nook in the hills, deep in the forest. A much
smaller stream ran through it than the one that flowed along the southerly
road, but it was still deep enough to have a couple of trees cut down and
thrown across it for makeshift foot-bridges. There was a scattering of tents
around, but for the most part, the bandits appeared to just be sacked out on
the ground wherever they had passed out drunk around the fire. Tasha could
smell the faint scent of the fire's embersmoke from her vantage point on top of
the hill, and though there were some early risers among the bandits, she had
ventured so close that she could hear a symphony of snoring coming from the
camp. There was still a twilight dawn overhead, mostly hidden by the canopy of
the trees above her. She had made her way around the entire camp on her little
reconnaissance mission, and was shocked to find the camp had less than twenty
men in it. She had been expecting more. She made her way back down the far side
of the hill where she found Buddy waiting on her with the horses.
"Did you see?" asked Buddy. "They have a raiding party out, the camp is almost
empty."
"I noticed there weren't many men there." she replied.
"The horse pen is almost empty, too." pointed out Buddy. She hadn't thought of
that, and nodded thoughtfully, thankful for his experienced eyes. "They also
keep more wagons here than this, there must be fifty men in the raiding party.
They must be going after another town somewhere."
Tasha
frowned. "What town would he go for, do you know?"
Buddy shook his head no. "Fat Murrah is just smart enough to not crap where he
lives. It won't be close. "
"Fine, then. We stick to the plan, and we can find out what we need to know
from them." She turned back to their horses and began to make the final
arrangements. Buddy walked over to her.
"What manner of priestess are you?" he asked, quite seriously.
"What is your meaning? Asked Tasha. "I do not understand your question."
"Well, I mean I've never seen a priestess use weapons like you. Hey! And magic,
even. And this is just...wrong." he said unhappily, eyeing what she was doing.
She smiled to herself, imagining what he must be thinking about her, and then
turned to him with a grin on her face.
"I am the Valkyrie Defender, Tasha Lightfoot. At your service."
Buddy looked at her first with suspicion, and then, the more he thought about
the old tales, the legends of Valkyrie warriors, his face began to slowly break
into a grin. He reached out and quickly raked his fingers across her glaive,
snatching them back quickly when he received a nasty shock. He shook his
fingers as though to sling the stinging back out of them, and laughed.
"Don't touch the glaive, knave!" said a surprised Tasha as she tried to contain
a genuine belly laugh at his face. "Never touch a Valkyrie's weapons, they‘re
protected!"
"I know!" said Buddy, still laughing and shaking his fingers. "That was why I
did it! That was one of the things I'd heard about Valkyries, and I had to
know..."
"By the spirits." she said, shaking her head. "You don't need enemies, do you?"
Buddy was beside himself, questions boiling up in his mind faster than he could
think to ask them. He shook his head. "Most people think the Valkyrie are gone.
None have been seen in Cardia for countless years. By the gods, we still have
dragons here, but not Valkyries. So why did you come back?"
Tasha had come here, not to Cardia, but specifically to Talon's Nook, because
she had been told to. And then she had been teleported directly onto the northern
road leading into Talon's Nook by the Ancestral Spirits. But she was in a mood
this morning, and looked at Buddy with all the earnest that she could muster.
"Well, we leave you alone for a couple of hundred years, and look at what you
let the place come to." She shrugged. "You've got bandits on every road, how
uncivilized of you."
Buddy wasn't fooled by her dry wit. He broke into a broad grin. "Ah, so you're
here to clean up? You're here to be a sword wielding tavern wench? I though
that the gods were hard on me."
"Well, I'm not quite a tavern wench." said Tasha with her own grin. "I don't
flirt with my customers." She turned back and finished tightening up the ropes
on the horses. "Are you ready?" she asked, and even though Buddy had only met
her the day before, he could read the difference in the question by her tone of
voice. She was back to business again.
"You bet!" he replied energetically. "Wait for the signal, stampede the
horses."
"How long do you need to get in position?"
Buddy shrugged. "Ten minutes, give or take?"
"Okay. No rush, it's going to take me longer than that to get in position
myself." She turned back to him, and put out her hand. "Spirits protect you."
"May fortune fill your pockets." he replied as he briefly took her hand in the
peculiar human custom, then flipped his hood up and faded into the woods.
***
Buddy made his way into the woods, his magical elvish cloak blending perfectly
into the night around him. He moved quickly and quietly through the underbrush
around the outside of the camp, where it hadn't been trampled down yet. He
picked his steps both rapidly and carefully, making almost no noise as he
worked his way around the camp to the horse pen. Fortunately, not many of the
men passed out drunk near the pen, so it was easy going. Until he saw the coin purse. He stopped,
looking at it hanging off the side of the snoring man. He couldn't believe that
no one had stolen it before, and found himself wanting to ... borrow it. He had a
couple of seconds, right? Tasha had told him not to hurry, right? Of course
there was time. He took another quick look around, to make sure that the four
men already awake in the camp were paying attention to something other than
himself, then smiled. Maybe fortune was going to fill his pockets, after all.
He eased over to the sleeping man, picking his steps carefully and moving
slowly, until he crouched over the slumbering form. The purse, laden with coin,
was tied tightly to the man's belt, and Buddy studied the knot carefully to
make sure that it wasn‘t some form of slip-trap, then pulled his dagger and
slit the string, palming the purse gleefully for a second. Then he froze as the
man rolled over and opened his eyes, looking at Buddy for a confused moment.
The man's eyes sprang open wide as he recognized his coin purse.
"Hey!" said Buddy happily, an even tossed in a little wave. Then he was seized
from behind by strong arms, and a hand clamped down over his mouth.
Tasha finished her preparations, then began to slowly, quietly, lead the string
of five horses closer to the bandit camp around the hill. Again, her heart was
pounding with excitement as she carefully thought out her attack, going over
the plan again and again, seeing the results in her imagination. Then a voice
interrupted her thoughts, a voice from the past, and she was carried back in
time in her head to the training fields outside of Defender Keep.
It had been a windy day, and the twelve of the girls still in training had been
spread out across the field, swords drawn and facing each other across the
circle. Tasha had been sparring with Lezlie, who was not a strong sword arm but
had quickness and guile. She had proven more than a match for Tasha that day,
and in doing so had angered Tasha to the point that the swordplay had gotten
frantic. They had clashed, swords clanging against each other as they circled,
warily, throwing thrusts and swings, until Lezlie had disarmed Tasha with a
deft move and a flick of her wrist. The practice blade had flown from Tasha's
hand, landing in the ankle high grass. Tasha had still been looking at it
perplexed when someone cuffed her painfully in the ear, knocking her to the
ground with a cry.
"You are defeated. Get on the ground and act like it, corpse." said the
gravelly voice of Sage Archen as she stepped around into Tasha's line of sight
and stood glaring at her, her oaken staff--Rod Of Spoiling, she had named
it--still held out where she had clubbed Tasha upside her head. She kept her
sharp gaze on Tasha for a moment, as Tasha fought the tears that sprang to her
eyes when the first throb of pain set in like a seige machine bashing away at a
city gate.
"As if it weren't bad ‘nuff you were wailing away at Lezlie like a lumberjack
chopping a tree, you let me sneak up behind you and do as I pleased. And damned
lucky for you that I pleased to knock sense into you rather than plant my blade
to it‘s hilt, or you'd not be hearing a word of this lecture ‘cept from the
Ancestral Spirits--were they of a mind to explain it to you before they cast
you into the void for being useless." She held Tasha's gaze a moment longer to
let her disdain seep in, then looked at the other girls.
"Training is complete for today. Lezlie, very good job reading your opponent
and letting her defeat herself against your defenses. Your progress is very
evident. See you all in the morning in East Field for glaive training at 7:00
of the rooster."
She turned and looked down at Tasha where she lay in the grass. "Get up,
corpse. Next time, try and use your head for something other than a failsafe to
keep your jaw from hitting the ground with surprise. Your pride will kill you
and everyone who's depending on you, if you can't temper it with some common
sense."
"Yes, Sage Archen." she had replied at once, standing.
"You simply must learn control, and situational awareness. For your abysmal
performance here today, you will report to the mess hall during supper hours
for scullery work the next two days, instead of eating supper yourself. Now go,
and consider how your arrogance and thoughtlessness have been your undoing this
day." Sage Archen had turned her back and left without waiting for a response.
Only when Sage Archen was safely on the other side of the heavy oaken door did
Tasha allow one single tear of pain to roll down her cheek, but whether it was
from her cuffed ear our her singed pride, she couldn't have told you.
Tasha had indeed thought about it a great deal, and though there had been
hundreds of such lessons, such scoldings throughout the course of her tutelage
at Defender Keep, this was the lesson that came back to her this morning as she
approached the bandit camp, leading the horses. She could almost smell the
heather that had scented the fields that hot summer afternoon so long ago. The
troublesome part of it was that she couldn't figure out why. No matter how she
thought about it, the connection between the lesson and what was in front of
her remained obscure. Then all hell broke loose in the bandit camp, and it
suddenly didn't matter anymore.
What Tope, the bandit who'd grabbed Buddy hadn't counted on was that Buddy was
not actually a human child, as he had so closely resembled from behind.
Instead, he unknowingly took it upon himself to grab the Lockatock settlement's
champion gruller--three years in a row Buddy had carried home the prize sow at
the end of the Spring Cotillion. Then the raiding party came, and now there
would never be a prize sow again in Lockatock settlement. 38
There would never be anything, ever again.
Had the bandit seen the look that blazed up in Buddy's eyes over the top of the
hand clamped across his mouth, he might have let Buddy go and run, but the
Fates were not so kind to him. When he grabbed the kid, the kid dropped the
little dagger that he'd been holding, which the bandit took for a good sign
until the kid suddenly jerked out of his grasp and spun, hitting him in the
kneecap with that damned funny little walking stick he was holding. Molten pain
erupted in his leg, which he acknowledged with a very shrill cry, and before he
could even begin to fall, the little bastard had spun around and hit him in the
other kneecap, even harder. Both legs went out from under him, and he hit his
head on a rock as he fell, knocking him blessedly unconscious. He'd never even
had time to reach for his weapon.
Buddy hopped out of the way as the man fell like a tree, screaming right up
until the rock incident, and Buddy heard the clamor going through camp, shouts
and cries of alarm. He turned and crowned the guy he'd been pick pocketing,
who'd witnessed the first guy go down in stunned silence and was just now
reaching for his weapon. The gruller stick knocked him out cold, and he flopped
back down, as Buddy scrambled for cover.
Then he cussed and ran back out, scooping up the coin purse that was the cause
of the fuss. After all this trouble... He took off running for the horse paddock
as an arrow snicked through the brush beside him. It seemed like a good time
for that distraction that Tasha had wanted, now that he thought about it.
Tasha couldn't have agreed more. She slapped the lead horse on the ass with the
flat of her blade, causing it to bolt. The other horses startled, too, and the
mass of them, tied together, shot down the gully towards the bandit camp, their
morbid cargo bouncing jauntily in the saddles. She watched them go for a brief
second, then drew her glaive and took off running as well, following them in.
Scurvy John and Eld Bradlet were the first two on their feet when Tope let out
his short but piercing scream. John had his sword in his hand by the time he
was on his feet, but even so Eld had nocked an arrow and let fly at something
that he'd seen.
"What was it, Eld?" he asked, looking around.
"I though it was a dog until it took off running. Then it looked like a kid."
"Was that Tope screaming? No kid did that."
"Wouldn‘t think so." agreed Eld, then turned. "You hear horses?"
"Yeah, but..." Scurvy John trailed off for a thought, staring away from the path
into the camp. "Who'd be comin' from that direction?"
"Gotta be trouble." said Eld, who could just now make out the horses. "Riders
coming in!" he yelled, keeping his eyes on them. It was yesterday's raiding
party that hadn't shown back up last night, but something was wrong with the
way they were riding. He couldn't make it out through the thick underbrush at
the back side of the camp; he could only identify them as the raiding party
because he was getting glimpses of the stupid red sashes that fat Murrah
insisted they all wear. But the riders themselves...
The horses shot out of the scrub at the back of the camp, and Scurvy John
nearly dropped his sword, stunned. The raiding party had been decapitated,
their bodies tied into the saddle. Their heads had been rammed onto the saddle
horns, and they had been tied in a manner so that they were cradling their
severed heads with both hands. Eld managed to dive out of the way, but Scurvy
John was so unnerved by the sight that he stood rooted until it was too late.
The horses rushed past him, but the rope that tied them together jerked him off
his feet, dragging him along with them until a hoof finally caught him and
stomped him loose. He rolled under the last two horses in the morbid
procession, and rolled out from under them dead. By then a second man had been
caught up in the ropes. Eld picked himself up off the ground when the raging
horses were past, holding his bow uselessly by his side as he watched them tear
the hell out of the camp on their way through. Then there was a very brief
glimpse of a red mailed fist, and everything went black.
Buddy could move pretty fast when he wanted to, and this morning he found the
desire almost overwhelming. There was a pounding of large feet close behind
him, so he was pretty sure that he was being chased. And he would have bet his
new coin purse that it was an angry run, judging by its sound. Buddy ran just a
bit faster, heading as fast as he could for the horse pen, when all hell broke
loose behind him as Tasha's little diversion tore through the camp. The angry
pounding feet faded away, and Buddy dove through the split-rail fence
headfirst, hitting the ground already rolling back onto his feet on the other
side, and vanished under a horse as the bandit that was chasing him looked back
and forth from the commotion behind him to the thing that looked like a kid
who'd apparently beaten Tope senseless. He opted to stay out of the horse pen,
uh, just in case, and instead turned for the safety of numbers and headed back
onto camp.
The rush that she had felt the day before had been nothing compared to this.
She was aware of her feet thumping the ground as she ran, but in her mind
everything was in slow motion, and she felt as though she were flying instead
of running. The horses, pretty thoroughly spooked, should have outrun her, but
she found herself keeping up with them at first, and had to slow her speed. Her
nerves were singing with the energy of a thousand dead Valkyries, the Ancestral
Spirits. The High Fever was the term for it in the sanctity of Defender Keep,
but the girls had known it by its field name--Battle Lust. As she summoned the
power, so it flowed into her, through her, saturating her body and thought. She
was taken by it, consumed, used. She was a channel for it. A focal point. She was only vaguely aware of
leaping through the hedgerow, no more than twenty feet behind the horses.
Big Bill called himself Big Bill because his name was William, and he was big.
Being something of a dullard, he had always thought that it was a pretty clever
thing to call himself. Everyone else just went along with it because he was
big. But this morning he was both big and hung over, and having been jerked out
of a pleasant dream by Tope's scream did nothing for either his being a dullard
or his hangover. He sat up in time to watch Eld shoot at some kid who must have
been stealing something, and was considering just laying back down when horses
exploded out of the bushes. He watched the demise of Scurvy John with some
amusement, and then an explosion of red and flesh landed beside Eld and knocked
him out with one well-timed shot to the jaw. Big Bill perked up as he got a
better look at her. She was young, blond, and beautiful, about eight or nine
hands high, dressed in a flowing red robe that didn't quite cover up the fact
that she wasn't wearing much else. As she stood there for a second looking down
at Eld, Big Bill gathered up his sword and stood up, taking the time for a
comfortable yawn and stretch before he began making his way toward her,
grimacing at the taste of last nights ale in his mouth. He hated waking up early,
even if he woke up to a good fight. But since he was up anyway, and since he
was the best fighter in camp, he brandished his sword over his head and gave a
mighty bellow, drawing the attention of the girl.
She stopped her rapid
progress through the camp--and the men--to give him a tight glare, her face
pinched and flushed, her chest heaving, her eyes slits that gave up nothing but
studied coolness. As she stopped, some of the other men took advantage and
surrounded her, nervously holding their swords in her direction more as though
to ward her off than to fight. She held Big Bill's gaze for a short moment
more, then turned her attention to the circle of men who had surrounded her.
Big Bill saw a tight smile cross her lips, and suddenly she was moving again,
fast as a cat in a pack of hunting dogs, sword slashing faster than the eye
could follow, the square throwing weapon in her left hand knocking weapons
aside as they were swung at her. He watched in stunned amazement as the sword
in her right hand severed arms, legs, necks. Where seven men had stood in her
striking distance, five fell so close in sequence as to almost be in unison,
and when the other two fled her onslaught, she threw the glaive straight
through one of them and her sword through the chest of another. No one else
approached her, and she turned her attention back to Big Bill as she summoned
both weapons back to her, still smiling her tight and deadly smile as they flew
back to her and she snatched them out of the air with a deftness that was of
the Gods. No sooner than the glaive had seated back into her left hand, it was
in the air again, whizzing at him. He made an attempt to duck, just barely
hauling himself out of the way, but felt a stinging blow to his sword hand as
the glaive sailed by, and realized that his sword was split in two. He looked
amazed at the pieces, realizing that it hadn't shattered due to the hit. It had
been cut cleanly, as though a blacksmith had driven a mighty chisel through it
fresh from the forge instead of finishing it. As he stood transfixed by the
sight, she made the funny little summoning motion with her hand, and he heard
the whisper of the glaive as it came from behind him and exploded through his
chest on the way back to her. His last moment of clarity on this plane of
existence was wasted as he summed up his life.
"Oh, ****." he said, and the grainy soil of the camp rushed up to
meet him as darkness folded in.
Buddy sat astride one of the horses where he could get a better view of Tasha's
work as she began to run down fleeing bandits without mercy, her glaive
flashing through the woods like a lightning bolt, cutting down screaming men.
By the time he had gotten to the gate of the horse pen, the camp had been
completely broken, bandits fleeing in all directions. Seeing that there was
nothing left to be gained by stampeding the horses in the pen, he had quickly
hauled himself atop the closest one so as to not miss the show. He had been
raised on legends of Valkyrie priestesses, and as he watched the deadly efficiency
of his new friend, his main thought was that the stories didn't do anything to
reflect the true and horrible nature of the Valkyrie order. Blessed by the Gods, put into existance to
protect those who cannot protect themselves. Then something occurred to him
that was truly sobering. Tasha wasn't using the powerful battle magics that the
legends were replete with, and when he took account of her age, he suddenly
understood that she was a very new Valkyrie. What the hells would she be
capable of when she was truly powerful?
He shivered at the thought, and even though his race was brave to the point of
foolishness, quietly considered sneaking away while her attention was
elsewhere. But to do that, he would have to leave his new horses, and they
would fetch two bags of gold the size of his new one that now rested on his hip
where he had tethered it to his belt. He cupped the new bag of coin comfortably
in his hand, and a slight smile crept across his lips. 'Well,' he thought to
himself, 'the right thing to do, of course, is to at least see to it that the
horses get sold to someone who will take care of them.' His mind made up, he
climbed down from the back of the horse to gather leads for them and tie them
together. Tasha had just about spent herself anyway, the few men that had made
it out of camp alive tearing through the woods in every direction at a pace
that made it impossible to follow them.
Tasha watched the last man that she could see vanish into the underbrush around
camp, the moving bushes giving his position away for a moment before he was
swallowed by the forest. Then, as quickly as it had come, the battle lust
faded, leaving her with only her heavy breathing and the stink of blood filling
her nostrils. She looked at herself, only now realizing that she was covered
from head to toe in great patches of gore. Turning her attention back to camp,
she saw nothing moving except the old man she had knocked out, so she made her
way towards him, wiping her sword and glaive off on the clothes of fallen bandits
as she went and sliding them back into place as she reached the fallen archer.
Eld shook his head to try and clear the ache that had settled there, hand going
to his jaw and rubbing the spot that felt like it had been slammed by a
blacksmith's hammer. Maybe even the anvil itself, as though a giant had seized
it up and tossed it in a fit of pique. Then a shadow crossed him, and he looked
up into the face of the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. He forgot
the pain in his jaw for an instant, taking in the apparition in front of him.
She was dressed like no woman he had ever seen, a metal chest plate that
covered little more than her breasts, attached to an armored cover for her
sword arm. Gauntlets of finely meshed plates covered both her hands, and boots
of the same finely meshed plates covered both her legs up to the knees. She
wore a crotch plate that looked like a chastity belt to him, and a cloak that
ran down to her ankles was tossed back over her shoulders for freedom of
movement. The entire ensemble was colored a bright red to begin with, and to
top it all off, she was covered in great patches of blood from head to toe,
making her look as though she had rolled across the floor of a slaughter-shed
in wild abandon. A large cross hung between her breasts, fastened to a heavy
gold chain. He held her severe gaze for a second, then looked around at the
camp.
He and she were the only ones left alive for as far as he could see, and he
felt himself swallow out of nervousness.
"Your name is...Eld." she said to him, her gaze unwavering. He simply
nodded; his attention riveted upon her.
"You are new to this band of brigands, less than two weeks in the camp. Is
that right?"
"How did you know that?" Eld managed to croak.
"Valkyrie blood knows much of the hearts of men." she stated flatly.
"You are no bandit yet. You have never spilled innocent blood. It is one
of two reasons why you still breathe upon this plane of existence."
"Wha... what's the other reason?" He asked, ashamed of the tremor
that he heard in his voice.
"You are going to tell me all that you know about the bandit leader Fat
Murrah. Then you're going to help me leave him a message and follow me back to
Talon's Nook."
"If we do that, Fat Murrah will show up with his forces and burn Talon's
Nook to the ground like the God Golamesh had stomped it flat with his mighty
foot." said Eld, working his jaw to ease the ache in it.
The girl looked down at him, her mouth folding up into a slight smile that
didn't reach her eyes as they held him pinned where he sat on the cold ground.
"That's what I'm counting on." she said, sounding almost happy about
it. "Ancestral Sprits help him, that's what I'm counting on. On your
feet."
Copyright 2008 J. Brown
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