The bandit leader made guttural noises that might've been his attempts to scream, but he was bleeding out so fast he had time to see his veiny stomach wiggling outside his body and collapse making yet more rapid breathing noises. They were the breaths one made right before the end, as a desperate survival plea. Emmanora had heard those breaths many times before; frantic, panicky doggish panting but with a childish whine underneath. It was always the most satisfying part of ending the miserable life of a shitbag slime-ball who had done nothing with their lives but rape and bully those smaller or poorer than them.
The woman stepped towards the four bandits standing with crossbows.
All four of them hesitated in terror of what they had seen before they released their bolts at her. Three of them landed in her chest and one in her neck, but she hardly flinched. She kept walking towards them.
The Forest Priest made a move to rein his horses away and even gave a "Yah!" but another bandit shot him in the forehead, and he tumbled down and under his carriage as the horses took off with it driverless. He lay dead on the ground with one broken and twisted leg over his head.
The woman yelled, "No!" She ran after the carriage with inhuman speed, her body a blur.
Emmanora knelt in the road, now exposed without the shadow cast by the carriage. The four bandits looked to her in surprise. She tossed her poisoned dart into the nearest one's head, he dropped to the ground face first. The other three drew curved scimitars and came at her. She still felt anxious about-face to face combat, but her anger at what had happened to Marlamba fueled her with courage. She stared defiantly into the eyes of the remaining four. She would not run. If it was time to die, so be it. She would not run.
The one who reached her first slashed at her head. She dipped low, a cool puff of air from the wide blade hit the top of her stiff red hair. She pierced his crotch with Heartnail, and he grimaced before going stiff as the blood in his body solidified, and he remained upright, grimacing forever. The remaining two attacked her together. They flanked her and made stabbing lunges at her. She dodged most of them, but one got her in the side of her knee, and another delivered a shallow wound in her right tit. "Fucking assholes!" she snapped. She ducked and rammed Heartnail into one of them who left himself open trying to swipe at her head but a bit too slow. He clutched his side where she'd poked him, and he stiffened and dropped.
The last bandit backed away from her, caution on his face. "What are you? Where did you get that sword, little milg?" Then realization swept over his face, his dark eyes narrowing. "Hey, I know you! You're the little milg sister! You're Liobe's wee little cutthroat sister! She's told us about you! But she said you were dead? What gives?"
"Oh, but not quite!" said Emmanora. "I've got a big surprise for her!"
"Stop!" It was the woman who'd gone after the carriage. She stood staring at the bandit with a peculiar gaze. Her eyes looked haunted and drunk with lust.
The bandit turned to her and giggled at first, but then his face went blank, his mouth fell open.
"Drop your weapon and come to me," said the woman.
The bandit dropped his scimitar and started walking to her. He stopped in front of her.
The woman curled up two of her glass claws underhandedly and held them up to his face. "Now, slowly push them into your eyes until you are dead," she said calmly. "Slowly now, I want to hear you scream."
Without hesitation, the bandit complied, his eyeballs popping as he pushed the entirety of her fingers into his head. He did scream, then she dropped him and shook bits of brain off her hand.
"Fuck!" was all Emmanora could say.
The woman turned to her and said, "No. I'm Aeile. Thank you for helping me. Now, if you wouldn't mind. Can you help me fetch that carriage? There's something very important to me inside."
Emmanora shrugged. "Why not? It seems you could make me anyway, if you wanted."
Aeile turned and started jogging at a normal pace. "I'd rather not if I don't have to," she called back. "I'm really not prone to wickedness most of the time."
"Really?" said Emmanora, smirking. She started jogging after her. "I think there're more bandits. One got away from me earlier, and I was sure he was part of this group, but I didn't see him here."
"Oh, you're acquainted then?" ask Aeile.
"They work for my sister."
33
VENDRONIA
Vendronia rushed over to Ivanos.
The trogs hissed and bellowed guttural sounds of disapproval. She knew it was unwise to assist Ivanos before Yurka, but she couldn't stop herself. Ivanos had been through so much already. She was amazed he had been able to deliver the last blow to Yurka as it was.
He groaned. He tried to look at her through swollen, bloodied eyelids. "I... I... I... Is she? I... I... I... I... I-I didn't mean to--"
"You didn't kill her, no," she told him, dabbing his eye with a clean cotton cloth from her medicinal bag. She'd brought it to the contest for this purpose. She could already see where he would need stitches again on his lip and near his eye. Vendronia turned to look at Yurka who was still crawling through the dirt with one hand pressed firmly on her mauled eye-socket. "She's probably gonna be blind in that eye forever, I think."
Ivanos grabbed Vendronia by the shoulder strap of her blouse and pulled her down closer to him. "G... G... G... G-Go help her! Forget about me!"
Vendronia furrowed her brows. She darted her eyes from Ivanos to Yurka several times.
"Go! Do it!" Ivanos pleaded.
Vendronia sighed and stood up, grabbing up her medicinal bag and went over to aid Yurka. She gently grabbed Yurka's wrist and tried to pull it away, so she could inspect the damage.
Yurka slapped her hand away and kicked the heels of her boots into the dirt to put distance between herself from Vendronia. "Leave me, witch! I need no coddling. All I need is whiskey!" She barked out to the surrounding trogs, "Someone go fetch me a cask of rotgut before I stand up and take out another one of you snaggle-toothed jackasses!"
The crowd laughed at this, but a handful headed off towards the city to comply.
Yurka stood up then, still holding her eyesocket, and made her way to Varl Borlin. She held out her open hand towards him. "Give me the cuck's sword!"
Borlin grimaced. "The contest is still a bit undecided."
"The result is obvious!" she said. "Give me the sword!"
Borlin shrugged and handed it to her. "How do you know if it will work for you with magic the way it worked for the cuck?"
Yurka scoffed. "Even trog men are as stupid as cucks sometimes." She stormed away with the sword in her hand, holding it at mid-blade. She approached Vendronia and Ivanos. "Can he stand up?"
Vendronia looked up at her, empty faced. She looked down at Ivanos. "I don't know."
"A... A... A... A-Aye!" spouted Ivanos. He tried pushing his torso up from the ground with his elbows.
"No, you shouldn't try by yourself!" said Vendronia. She got behind him and pushed up, holding him by the arms which proved difficult because his arms were as thick as logs and nearly as hard despite his age.
He did manage to get up, frowning under his bloodied face. Vendronia stared at him blankly. He looked bad.
"What?" he said. "I'll be fine. Just patch me up again."
Yurka grabbed his right arm and shoved the hilt of his sword into his hand. "You earned it. You should give it a name." She raised his hand with the sword then, high above their heads, and shouted to the gathered trogs, "Ivanos is the victor! Give him glory and a place at the Varl's seat! He is strong like a trog!"
Vendronia could not read much on Ivanos's face between his puffed lumps of swelling, but she could sense his confusion.
"As Fist of the Varl, I appeal that Ivanos be appointed to the rank of Fist to serve alongside me!" announced Yurka.
"I never saw this," said Vendronia in Ivanos's ear. "This is not done. Yurka is an unusual trog. She's always been very. . . different."
Ivanos nodded.
"Come, let's go clean your wounds and sew you up again before anything gets infected," Vendronia said. "I've got to get to Yurka, too. The trogs have some commendable healers, but they mostly rely on me for it because many of them learned from poor sources. I was taught by Ona, the Crone Mother before me. She knew the secrets of washing wounds and making proper poultices. Most trog healers who learned outside the Crone Mother simply douse wounds with whiskey or rum. I've seen a few even pack wounds with dirt."
Ivanos limped along and soon Yurka came to assist him. The three of them walked side by side back into the city and the trog crowd dispersed.
* * * *
Vendronia finished stitching Ivanos's mouth, looping a strand of horsehair up and under and tying it off.
Ivanos winced. It was the first display of discomfort he'd shown in all of her prodding and pricking through his skin to clean it and sew him up.
"Does that feel well?" she asked, hesitantly.
He nodded. "I...--" He winced again and pressed his palm against the fresh stitches. "I... I... I... I... I-It feels a little tight there." He cleared his throat and then sighed, closing his eyes.
She felt now was a good time to ask him about his speech since she had just righted the opening of his mouth. "Have you always had trouble speaking?"
He cut his eyes at her.
"I didn't mean any disrespect."
He cleared his throat again. "W... W... W... W-What do you mean?"
"Your stammer. Do you realize that you have a stammer?"
Ivanos raised one brow. "D... D... D-Do I? I don't hear it."
Vendronia wrung out linen rag in a pan of hot water and wiped the blood seeping from his wound. "I was afraid of this when I pulled the arrow from your head, but I wasn't sure because I'd never heard you speak before. Often when trogs are injured in the head, especially the front, they have changes in their speech or behavior. Some of them entirely change their personality. I think when there is bleeding on the brain or worse, it can do this. It doesn't always happen. Some turn out just fine. But you do have a stammer now, even if you don't know you're doing it, and that may be a clue to further damage. Do you feel like you behave or feel different than you did before?"
Ivanos sat still in contemplation. Some of the swelling on his face had gone down, but it was still difficult to read his expressions. He shrugged. "I... I... I... I don't know. I guess I feel some differences. I used to care an awful lot about serving under an honorable king. Now, I don't believe there is such a thing. There was once, when I served King Rygon of Ironwood, but those days are gone, as is Ironwood. T... T... T... T-The world is full of nothing but corruption and petty theatrics of what real King and Queens used to be in my youth. There is no honor. Or perhaps there never was, and I'm the one who was disillusioned. I don't care anymore. I'm serving the King of Scion. If for nothing more than to help rid the world of the poisoned fools who now inhabit it. Maybe, the Scion King will bring a better breed of mankind."
"Is that what you see?" Vendronia asked.
"It is," he said simply.
She wondered if he knew he hadn't stammered the last. "You could be right, I suppose. I don't know how I feel about all of this. There are other things that haunt me, and I don't think they are related to the Scion King." She stared off into the corner of the bedchamber. "I think I murdered my Varl and his Fist."
Ivanos's eyes went wide.
"I think I'm changing into a beast in my sleep. I have dreams I run with strange red wolves with needles for hair. I'm like them but still run on two feet and bigger. We hunt and kill things. When this happened last, I woke up and Varl Torvul and his Fist Adon were dead. Mutilated in their sleep by a beast. I lied and told the trog commanders that a monster came and attacked Torvul and Adon and that I fought with it and banished it with my magic." She wiped a small tear away from her cheek. "I thought they would never believe it, but they did, and then I appointed Borlin as Varl and Yurka as Fist. What have I done? I don't know what is right or wrong anymore. I wish Crone Mother Ona was still here to guide me. She would know what to do. You're the only one I've told about this, the only one who knows I change into a beast."
"W... W... W... W-Why me? Why tell me?" Ivanos asked.
"Because we share another secret already." Vendronia got up from her seat next to Ivanos and peered out the door from the bedchamber. She shut the door and sat down next to him again. "I've said nothing to the trog about the Scion King either. I don't know what they might do if I had."
"S... S... S... S-So how do they explain your new magic abilities?"
"They think all my magic comes from the Witch God. Our culture prohibits them to question the Crone Mother. Honestly, I'm not sure the Witch God gives me any real magic."
"C... C... C-Convenient for you. That they presume."
"Yes. Isn't it?" She patted him on the knee. "You get some rest. You will need it. Yurka and I are making a plea to promote you to the rank of Fist. It is a great honor. It will be the first time in trog history a kingdom born has served in the trog army and the first time there has ever been two Fists. You will be a war commander."
Ivanos nodded. He said nothing more. He rolled over on his side and adjusted the pillow under his head.
She let him be. She needed to attend to Yurka next and then be off to bed herself. The other healers had probably already tried to mend Yurka, she would need to see what damage they'd caused and make sure Yurka was cleaned properly. Though Yurka, and she had never shared more than a few words between them, she felt sad for Yurka losing an eye. She would never be the same and suffer in battle without depth perception. As bravado as the trog woman was, it likely hadn't occurred to her.
* * * *
She ran with the pack.
Through the wood she dug her foot claws into the earth, sniffing the air for fresh meat. The pack followed her cues, and she led them farther, all the way back to the Red Wolf Army Camp. The camp appeared deserted when they arrived, but among the filth of human excrement and rotten refuse left behind by the army, she smelled blood in the air. Her heightened hearing picked up three humanoid-sized heartbeats and two larger ones, likely horses. Then, voices.
"We cannot sit here idle for long," said a gravelly old man's voice. "Trogs won't sit in Nodet content with the spoils of their victory for long. Their bloodlust stirs them like a rutting caribou bull. They will move to raid the next closest settlement. Red Wolf Keep, and we're sitting here three of us at our post smack dab in the middle of their path to it. We've no means to defend ourselves other than a few shoddy snares and pit traps. I say we get the fuck out of here, tonight!"
"The King has met with Eurovoth's Lord Commander of Arms," said a lively voice, rich with dismissive optimism. "They're massing armies in the south and heading to Red Wolf to defend the Kingdoms. There's some kind of treaty happening. The kingdoms are forming an alliance against the trogs. They got a new magi that can set fire to whole armies in a blink. And they'll be heading this way soon. I've only left Red Wolf Keep a couple days ago. We don't need to worry about the trog for long."
"How many?" asked the older gravelly voice. "I mean, the first regimen was four hundred, the second wave eight hundred. How many men do you think they will send?"
"The last conversation I overheard mentioned five thousand, and there are twenty thousand more nestled in the keep defending it with a magi."
"Great Blackened Suns! I don't think the population of Nodet was much more than five thousand! They're serious!"
"Indeed."
The voices reverberated from a small tent that glowed a dull orange in the night from the lamplight within. They'd covered it with a bit of foliage, but the light inside betrayed the attempt at camouflage. The tent was still several yards away. Vendronia stopped in her tracks and halted the pack.
Sensing her rouse for caution, they sniffed around on the ground. There were eight in the pack, four females and four males. They flanked her now, two of either sex on both sides. Though she was still a large s
omewhat humanoid shape, she instinctively knew they shared a gestural language with her. A language she already knew. She merely thought to tell them to look for snares or pits and her hand made the motion pointing to the ground and drawing circles in the air. They set out and found them right away. A trench full of stakes ahead, about nine yards long. They sussed out five different snare traps with wire nooses for strangling. More snares they found would release large logs barreling into a trog ribcage from high up. Once they uncovered all the danger in the area going towards the tent, Vendronia gave the signal for the pack to follow her. She led them inside to sate their appetites. Catching them by surprise drinking spirits in their sleeping gowns, the real red wolves ravaged the three Red Wolf soldiers, making a mess of their corpses. They left only husks behind.
Vendronia wiped blood and flesh away from her snout and went to the tethered horses next. She gestured to the pack to stay away from the horses. The horses began to scream and rear up in terror when they saw her bestial appearance. She ripped the ropes holding them to posts in the camp, and they bolted away into the night, clopping hooves echoing in the distance.
She motioned for the pack to follow her back into the forest and to the city of Nodet where they left her at the edge of the forest and watched her transform as she walked toward the city.
34
KAZIMIR
Kazimir struggled to stay mounted on his camel as it galloped away from the city of Zexultan.
The Vanguards of Scion Page 22