A Warrior's Redemption

by Guy S. Stanton III

  *****

  I entered the village of men subconsciously looking for the man who had caught my attention earlier. I had tried to ask a passing man for help, but the man had just hurried away from me with fear written all over his face. Puzzled by their behavior, I decided to leave. I was almost out of the village when the man I had seen earlier motioned from behind a hut for me to follow him. Curious, but wary of a trap, I followed him at a distance.

  He led me to a group of trees near a little brook on the edge of the forest. We were out of sight of both villages. He snapped his fingers and gave a come hither motion. The little girl he’d had with him before came out from some reeds she’d been hiding behind and stood in front of the man.

  Putting his hands on the girl’s shoulders, the man said haltingly, “You must leave now and take the girl with you!”

  “Why? Am I in danger? Is she in danger?”

  “Yes!” The man said, nodding his head vehemently.

  “In danger from whom?” I asked. The man shook his head violently, refusing to answer my question as I saw fear intensify in his eyes.

  “With your permission, I’ll have your horse saddled here with the young girl waiting for you tonight. Come before dark! You must go and take the girl with you!” With that said, the man hurried away from the hiding spot with the girl.

  “Where are all the boys?” I asked to his retreating back, but he didn’t answer me.

  Spooky little man I thought. He didn’t seem to be all there upstairs. One thing was for sure though, he loved that little girl. The girl couldn’t be much older than about six.

  I started to leave the cove and then stopped myself. If there was some element of truth to what the man had said, it would be good to have Flin hid where I could get to him. I tied Flin to a stump and made my way back to the women’s camp or at least the outskirts of it.

  The little girl came out from behind some reeds after she saw that the big man had left. Flin turned his head and nickered softly at the girl. As she drew closer, Flin sidestepped away from her before she reached him.

  The girl pulled a long carrot from her sleeve and held it out to him. Flin nickered again and, after a moment’s hesitation, ambled up to the little girl. He snuffled her head, blowing her hair everywhere, which caused the little girl to giggle.

  Flin leaned down and took the carrot from her hand and ate it noisily. After Flin was finished, he looked down at her hopefully. She didn’t disappoint, as with a little grin she pulled out another carrot.

  I pulled away from the tree I had been peering around and, smiling, I continued on my way to the outskirts of the village. Flin was in good hands.

  I looked around the perimeter of the village to see if anything could be learned of any possible danger to us that would validate the little man’s fears for the girl’s safety. I was about to give up and reenter the village when I saw John slip out of the village. His actions were those of a man who wished to remain unseen.

  He moved deeper into the forest and I followed after him from a distance. An hour later, to my shame, I had to admit to myself that he was more adept at alluding pursuit than I was at tracking him, which surprised me because I was pretty good at tracking.

  I had lost him within five minutes of entering the forest. I was headed back to the village for the evening feast, when I heard a sound that stopped me in my tracks. After a moment of intense listening it became clear to me that what I heard was the sound of a horse browsing.

  Following the direction of the noise, I soon found its source. John’s horse stood saddled in a hidden alcove of the forest. No one was around. Scouting the area, I found a grassy knoll that had a depression in the grass where someone had sat for a long period of time. John? Perhaps he had wanted to avoid the lusty afternoon back at the village as I had. Why else would he come out here? Did he sense danger too and, if so, why had he not informed me of it?

  Probably thought I’d be busy whoring like the others were and past caring about such things. I got back to the village as the evening shadows began to grow dark, only to find that the feast was already in full swing. I made my way carefully past the bare female bodies to Seth’s side and sat down.

  The evening wasn’t without its share of lusty entertainment either. Several girls were moving sensuously to the rhythm of a savage beat being drummed out by several older women on old looking drums that appeared as if they had seen long service.

  Seth and the other men were completely absorbed by the entertainment, as if they couldn’t get enough of it to satisfy themselves to look away for even a moment. Seth did notice me as I sat down beside him.

  He turned to me, putting an arm around my shoulder as he did so, “Tell me brother, why did you miss out on enjoying yourself this afternoon? It doesn’t get any better than this!”

  At my expression, Seth exploded optimistically forth with, “Don’t worry there’s still tonight. That one!” He indicated the blond leader. “You’ve got to try her and that short brunette over there. You wouldn’t believe what she can do with her….”

  I stopped Seth mid sentence, “Seth, what you do is your business, but you should be on your guard around these women! Something isn’t right around here! Don’t you feel it?”

  “You know me boss, I’m always on my guard,” Seth grinned half jokingly, turning his attention back to the dancers, which were taking it up another notch in intensity.

  I ate till I was full. Admittedly the food was very good and it helped to ease the miserable experience I was having overall.

  Suddenly John got up and left the feast. He had sat quietly on the far side of the fire all during the feast without saying anything. He hadn’t seemed interested in the girls at all and strangely enough they hadn’t been interested in him either.

  More of the women joined the few twirling dancers and things were getting wilder and more out of control by the moment. Some sixth sense within me started sounding out an internal alarm bell. I slipped out from the fire’s light as Seth, unable to restrain himself anymore, leaped to his feet to join in with the dancers.

  Slipping past the last few women at the edge of the feasting area, I headed towards where John’s horse was located, figuring that I would find John there. Several minutes later I heard a sound behind me. I had just crossed a moonlit clearing in the forest. Wheeling around, ready to face one enemy or several, I instead saw one of the women from the camp. She was tall and of a darker skin color than most of the other women, and yet she was very beautiful. She moved towards me, her gaze direct and admiring.

  “You are the man I wish to mate with. You will make me strong daughters.”

  Somewhat taken back by her statement, I was speechless as she approached with all the grace the feminine form can offer. She reached behind her and undid the fabric concealing and supporting her breasts. The fabric fell to the ground and I swallowed reflexively.

  This was getting way out of control in a hurry! I stared at her, spellbound, as she glided toward me. As she reached me, she turned and pressed back against me grabbing my hands as she did so and before I could think as to what she might be doing with them, she brought them up to cup her full breasts, even as she rubbed back against me with her bottom.

  “You like Kana?”

  Trying to figure out my course of action, let alone control my rampant senses, was hard to come by in this moment, but I tried. All that seemed to matter in this moment was fulfilling the pent up need I had been repressing for years.

  You need to focus Roric! You need to be careful remember? Remember what? Why you’re in the forest? John! It had been something about John hadn’t it? The horse in the woods, his strange behavior and his horrifically bad choice of coming to this village of tempting hedonistic women!

  These women were dangerous! They had completely stolen my hard won sense of self control from me ever since I had gotten here and I was tired of it!

  I thrust Kana away from me, although every carnal part of
me wanted what she was offering. Stepping back from her, I fought to bring my breathing back under control. I could feel the blood pulsing through my veins, as if it was boiling inside them.

  “I need to go! No offense meant, some other time maybe.”

  I turned, wanting to get away from the scene I was creating before I embarrassed myself even further. My training as a warrior saved me.

  I heard Kana say behind me, as if she was spitting out venom, “The Vanah are not refused!”

  Vanah?

  I heard the noise of steel grating, as it would on a knife sheath as it was withdrawn from it, and I reacted. My hands flew to my waistband and the daggers stashed there.

  I felt her breasts touch my back and her strong right arm came over my right shoulder as her hand grabbed my chin and pulled it back for the killing slice. I had my left hand going up with a knife and I was almost too late. Her left arm whipped over my shoulder, her hand holding a knife to slit my throat. As the blade slid across my throat, it met the steel of my knife blade instead of the soft flesh of my throat and before she realized what had happened, the dagger in my right hand was buried to the hilt in her side.

  She gasped aloud, reeling back from me, holding the mortal wound in her side. Disbelief marred her beautiful face as she fell to the ground, her remaining life pulsing out onto the forest floor.

  “You are indeed a great man to not have allowed yourself to fall for the erotic wiles of the Vanah. I’ll give you that much of a compliment at least, Roric.”

  I wheeled around toward the voice. Across the clearing sat John on his horse.

  “What’s going on here, John?”

  John laughed, “I too am a great man, even though your grandfather chose to ignore it. This book that your grandfather and you would so casually have destroyed if not for me, is the answer to our prayers! It holds the keys to eternal life!”

  He held the big book up that he had somehow taken from the central pedestal without me noticing.

  “Its author is probably Satan himself or someone mislead by him, you fool! What knowledge do you hope to glean from it that’s worth your soul?”

  “Spoken like a true believer of the Valley Lander version of faith. Your grandfather would be so proud of you! It’s a pity that you’re going to die here, so far from your new home. You should have enjoyed the pleasures presented by the women while they were offering them to you! Now they’ll just take until there’s nothing left to give! Farewell, I have a great commission before me and masters to please. But let me say how grateful I am to already have been rewarded with the demise of the last cursed offspring of your grandfather's sanctimonious family.”

  He pulled his horse around and goaded it into a gallop towards the forest, but not before I had thrown my daggers. I knew that they had landed when I heard him cry out painfully, but he remained in the saddle and was gone from sight within moments.

  I ran through the forest to get to Flin. I had to stop John and destroy that book! Reaching the hiding spot where I had left Flin, I found him saddled and ready along with the girl and her protector.

  The man was completely frantic. “You are late! It has begun! They will come hunting for you!”

  “What are you talking about man?” I yelled, as I reached out and shook him violently, trying to make sense of him. For a moment he was more afraid of me than anything else and he blurted out the truth.

  “The she devils come and get you! They torture you and then drink your blood while you live!”

  Iciness closed in around my heart at his words and as the full realization of John’s treachery came to light. I let the man go and fairly leaped onto Flin’s back, pulling him around towards the camp, but the man blocked me from continuing.

  Tears in his eyes he held up the little girl in front of him, “Please! You are a good man! You take my Zarsha with you! So she not become a she devil too!”

  I couldn’t resist the plea in the man’s eyes and I leaned down and grabbed the girl up into my arms and then ducked Flin around the man and galloped for the other camp.

  I pulled up in the trees and left Flin tied to a tree in the dense thicket of the forest with a slip knot. I left the girl in the saddle. I pointed a stern finger up at her as I said, “You stay right there!”

  Eyes wide with fear, she nodded vigorously and I regretted my harsh tone of voice immediately. I hadn’t made it three steps towards the camp when I picked out the sounds of pain mixed in with the raucous celebration of the women’s high pitched squeals and caterwauls.

  I made it to the edge of the clearing without being spotted and stopped in my tracks, unable to believe the savagery of the sight that met my eyes. My three companions were tied upright, spread eagled between tall poles I hadn’t noticed before. They were completely naked and covered in blood from hundreds of nicks and cuts. Most appalling of all was the sight of the women and what they were doing to the men’s bodies.

  They were literally licking the blood from the wounds, moaning as they did so, all the while making fresh cuts with small knives they kept in their hands. When the blood flow slowed in a spot, they moved on. They were literally becoming drunk on the blood of the men!

  I had never seen such a spirit of unholy debauchery before, not even in the arena. The two soldiers were already slumped in near death, not even moaning anymore against the pain, as their very life was sucked from them. Seth was still conscious and somehow his eyes found mine and I saw his bloody lips mouth the words, “Forgive me!” and then more forcefully, “Run!”

  The blond that he had taken a fancy to earlier, stood up before him. An inhuman look of insanity gripped her jubilant face as she grabbed his hair and pulled his head back and slit his throat wide open. She dropped the knife and thrust a goblet under his chin to catch the rest of his blood. Dropping his drained head, she drank from the cup, spilling its contents down her naked body. Finishing, she dropped the cup and with arms outstretched she screamed shouts of glee that were sickening to behold.

  Unable to stop my body’s reaction to what I had seen, I leaned against a tree and lost the contents of my stomach onto the ground as I vomited violently. Straightening again, I looked once more upon the scene. All three men were dead for sure now. I needed to get out of here! The savage need to stay and avenge my friend made it hard for me to leave though.

  Just then a commotion broke loose among the women. Four women came hurrying in from the forest carrying Kana’s lifeless body. I started to move back into the forest, but one of the women spotted me and screamed an alarm to the others as she pointed at me. I turned tail and ran.

  They would cut me off before I could reach Flin and the girl, so I led them away from them, hoping to be able to double back to them later. Running as stealthily as I could through the dense thicket, I still must have sounded like a marsh buffalo crashing through the heavy underbrush to their trained ears.

  They were everywhere with their flashing torches. I started to double back and managed to duck out of the way of several of them. I thought I was clear of them, until I heard the snap of a twig breaking behind me. I wheeled around to face the danger, and my quickness of movement saved me. The blond who had killed Seth stood not twenty feet away with a blow gun to her mouth.

  I felt the dart whiz past me, nicking the top of my shoulder as it raced by. I drew my sword to charge her and cut her down before she could fire another dart at me, but instead I felt myself pitch forward onto my knees clumsily after just a few steps. Things got dizzy and I felt my back hit the ground hard as the blond shoved me over backward with a foot to my shoulder. The hard hit helped me to refocus my scattered thoughts.

  The blond, confident of her supremacy, placed one bare foot on my chest and craned her blood stained face back to give a jubilant whoop, as she had done with Seth. Anger pulsing through my sluggish senses spurred me to awareness and I reached up and grabbed a handful of the poison darts she had hung in a waist belt around her hips and rammed them into h
er muscular stomach.

  Her whoop of victory came out more of a strangled gurgle as she looked down at her stomach and then at me, with a look of both horror and abject hatred. She fell onto her side on the ground as her body went into convulsions and then went still.

  I felt like I could breathe easier and I managed to get to my knees. I tried to get to my feet but that wasn’t happening. My head felt like it was separate from my body and my body responded to my head’s commands as if from a long way away. I crashed through the underbrush, half crawling half stumbling, knowing only that I needed to get away as fast as I could so that I could recover from the poison rioting through my system. It was good to stay awake and moving. Must keep moving!

  I felt wetness against my hands and arms. Was I bleeding? Was I in a trough of my own blood? No, that couldn’t be, and from some recess of my still functioning brain came the answer. Water. I was in a swamp. That was good, they couldn’t track me here. There was a lot of water. It was so tempting to lay my head down into the warm folds of the water and go to sleep. I was so tired. I’d rest for a moment. Just a moment though, I thought sleepily to myself.

  Rain pounded down on the swampy part of the forest into which I had crawled. My head was propped up against a tree trunk above the stagnate green slime of the water. I didn’t hear the horse approach or feel it tug me with its teeth as it gripped my tunic firmly at the shoulder and began to drag me further into the swamp.

  Pain threatened to steal the warm rest I had garnered for myself. ‘Go away pain, I’m busy,’ was my last thought before darkness overwhelmed me.

  For over two hours, Flin kept pulling Roric along through the swamp by keeping hold of his tunic at the shoulder with his teeth. There was an upraised grassy knoll in the swamp, which was dominated by a large shade tree and it was to this that Flin dragged Roric.

  Flin pulled his master under the shelter of the tree, away from the pounding rain and let go. The little rider on his back slipped down off the saddle and in the process fell the last several feet to the ground. Flin reached around to snuffle her head once, as if to see if she was hurt, but she was alright.

  Little hands went to work and soon there was a small fire going despite the rain. The little hands found the cut on Roric’s shoulder and paused there for a moment. She left the fire and ventured out into the storm. She came back minutes later with a toad and a couple of leaves from a Catafy bush. Mercilessly smashing the toad and leaves together with a rock on top of a bigger rock, the girl added tree moss to the concoction.

  Then she placed the concoction over the fire on a piece of bark. Pulling the bark off the fire before it was consumed in flame, she quickly stirred the gooey paste with a small stick. Taking the stick, she placed a bunch of the slimy green gunk onto the furrow mark across Roric’s shoulder. As the potion came in contact with his skin, Roric came half alert out of pain, but the little girl put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down as best she could. The girl waited for a while and then leaned down to listen to Roric’s chest. Seeming satisfied, the girl got up and approached the big black stallion. The object of her fascination was the saddle bags and the blanket roll, which were high up and out of her reach on the stallion’s back. The big black horse looked down at her and seemed to understand her intent. He laboriously got down onto his knees and then rolled onto his side. The little girl quickly got the blanket roll from behind the saddle and the saddle bags and then stood back as the big stallion rolled back up to his feet. The girl reached into her pocket, pulled out a familiar treat and handed it up towards the big head, with no fear in her actions as Flin accepted the carrot from her. Leaving Flin, she came back to Roric. Sweat was beading up on his brow, which she wiped away. She unfolded the blanket over Roric and then ducked under it too. The girl laid her head on the big muscled chest of her new guardian hoping that the strong beat of his heart wouldn’t stop.