Knight's Justice

by P. J. Cherubino

  “I didn’t take a chance,” Astrid argued. “I just knew.”

  “OK,” Gormer said. “I have the same thing with Pleth. That’s what you taught me. I just know he’s our guy for this. He will come through.”

  “OK.” Astrid shrugged. “You got me. Done deal.”

  Vinnie looked apprehensive. “I’d feel better if he had some kind of backup.”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” Gormer claimed.

  “Of course,” Astrid replied. “The man with all the angles.” She leaned back in her chair. “Let’s hear the rest of your pitch, you silver-tongued jackass.”

  “Commissioner Brovka,” Gormer offered.

  “Stop with the half-sentences,” Astrid spat. “What about him? Also, he’s not a commissioner anymore.”

  “Right,” Gormer agreed. “He resigned to take responsibility for not standing up to Lungu sooner. Good on him—he’s a man of integrity. But he needs a job, so how about making him Pleth’s advisor?”

  “Oh,” Vinnie exclaimed. “Gormer, that’s a really good idea. He’s earned my trust. He’s done everything he said he would. He even managed to work with Woody at Keep 52.”

  “And you thought I was just a pretty face,” Gormer replied.

  “Pleth will need a staff,” Vinnie added.

  “OK,” Astrid answered. “I’ll leave that to Pleth and Brovka. Set it up, Gormer. I want daily written reports. We need to get a handle on this before the big meeting with the first lieutenants.”

  “When is that?” Vinnie asked.

  “A couple days,” Astrid replied with a clenched jaw.” They sent word saying they needed to meet first.”

  Gormer’s face looked serious. “Do you think it has anything to do with that plot you busted up last night?”

  It was Vinnie who answered. “It’s likely. When Rupert Danut and his henchmen get here, maybe you can tell us.”

  Gormer sighed. “I’ve been in way too many sick heads lately.”

  “You mean, besides your own?” Astrid quipped.

  That made him smile. “Yeah, well…” His voice trailed off. “Don’t worry. I’ll poke around in their heads for some answers. Benny has a special cell set up. I can read people through the wall and they never see me.” Gormer paused for a moment. “Just one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” Astrid asked, instantly wary. She knew Gormer too well now. He always had something else up his sleeve. She was glad he was on their side.

  “I just have to tell Pleth about his new job,” Gormer replied.

  Astrid sat up in her chair, red-faced. “You mean you didn’t talk to him first? You pigfu—”

  A side door burst open and Astrid vaulted to her feet. The new jail supervisor hurried into the room, wringing his hands.

  “What is it, Benny?” Astrid asked in alarm.

  “You…I…it’s…” Benny stammered. He shook his head rapidly, looking more upset by the second. “Will you come with me? I’ll show you.”

  It took a while to get to the extensive dungeons beneath the fortress. One of the first things Astrid had done was clear the cells of all but the worst criminals. Anyone who had been locked up on Lungu’s political or personal whims had been released.

  Benny was one of the guards who risked his life to rebel against Lungu. Astrid had put him in charge of the jail and tasked him with making things as right as anyone could. They both knew it would be a thankless job.

  “You told me to treat him well,” Benny said as they rounded a corner. The smell of death hit them all immediately. “I did as you said. We kept his cell clean and warm. Good food, but…”

  “Oh, no,” Astrid exclaimed. Inside the cell, the man who had been ordered to hang her lay on the floor. Dried pink foam covered his face and pooled around his head.

  “He poisoned himself,” Benny said. “I don’t know how.”

  “Ceramic tooth,” Vinnie said, pointing to small white flecks in the foam. “I’ve seen these things before. Could have had it for years. When the time came he worked it loose, then broke it open.”

  “Did he leave a note?” Astrid asked.

  Benny handed her a parchment.

  Dear Astrid,

  I am grateful for your kindness and mercy. Please know that I take my life having finally realized a peace of mind I thought was beyond hope. You gave that to me.

  I couldn’t save them, so I gave them as much mercy as I could. Somebody had to.

  Now I can end my suffering and pay for all my failures.

  And so the executioner carries out the sentence on himself.

  I believe with all my heart that you will heal this land. It was too late for me, but it is not too late for this place and its people. I pass from this life with hope. That is all I wanted.

  The letter wasn’t signed. Astrid shook her head slowly and let her hands fall limply to her sides.

  “I don’t get it,” Gormer exclaimed. “The guy woulda hanged you. Why are you so upset?”

  Astrid gently dropped the sheet from the bunk on the dead man. “It’s hard to explain,” she answered. “You weren’t on the gallows with me. He was an executioner, but he was somehow…kind? I don’t know. He wasn’t cruel like the head jailer.” She shook her head. “I thought we had more time, is all. I wanted to see if he could be…redeemed. I’ve met so many people who so obviously needed killing… And I would have killed him, but…”

  “I never understood,” Benny interjected, “why people seemed so calm when they went to his gallows. Right at the end, everyone seemed to relax. It was him. He said something to them that made them feel just a little bit better.”

  “I get it. He wasn’t really a killer,” Vinnie interjected. “He knew he was the only one who could do what he did.”

  “Isn’t this all a little bit twisted?” Gormer asked. “I mean, he wasn’t a fucking hero. His job was to kill people for an asshole.”

  “No doubt,” Astrid replied as she stood. “But things aren’t always so simple. Benny, I have another task for you. Find out if he had any friends.”

  “Friends?” Gormer exclaimed. “He was a fucking executioner!”

  Astrid surprised them all with a sudden laugh. “That’s just what he said. I asked him if he found life strange. He just said ‘I’m an executioner.’ That was right before he pulled the lever. He knew, damn it. He knew that would crack me up. Why did he bother with trying to give me that moment when he thought I would die?”

  “I don’t know, Astrid,” Gormer said. “But it’s not too hard to figure out you’re kinda crazy.”

  Astrid just grinned. “I guess so. But why do I have that ‘walking to the gallows’ feeling lately?”

  “Because,” Vinnie answered, “we just inherited an entire government, and we’ve only just started the work of straightening it all out after almost a month.”

  “Oh.” Astrid slapped her forehead. “Of course. That explains everything.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Meeting

  The first lieutenants decided to meet at the former Raluca estate. Its sixty acres, the sprawling main house, and more than a dozen outbuildings had been abandoned just a week after Astrid killed Raluca in mutual combat.

  The subject of mutual combat was the problem.

  “Astrid doesn’t come from this land,” Lieutenant Morgon said, banging his fist on the long table where all forty of his fellow officers sat. “She comes from someplace far to the east, over the Hunchback Mountains. Word is that she lost her holdings.”

  “Yeah,” Lieutenant Mika replied, “well, she’s holding this land now. She defeated one of us and the Protector in combat, which makes her the Protector now. That’s what the Charter says.”

  “We do many things not in the Charter,” another lieutenant chimed in. “Just because it’s not written in the Charter doesn’t mean it’s not implied.”

  “That,” Mika glared at the man, “is why we are in this shitstorm to begin with. The Charter is the Charter, and we are sworn to
uphold it as written. Protector Lungu was the one who broke that bond, not us.”

  The room erupted into angry shouting. Nobody stood, but they were close.

  There was a reason that the regular soldiers were tasked with holding their officers’ swords in the back room. One unlucky first charge was temporarily relieved of duty to his house and asked to swear fealty to one task—keep the swords out of the hands of the Movers until the meeting was over.

  That was, Mika thought, if oaths still meant anything. She wasn’t a mental mage, but she didn’t need that ability to feel the anger and resentment ready to boil over.

  “The man is dead!” a lieutenant shouted. “Why are we arguing over a dead man?”

  The room quieted, proving to Mika that this meeting was all about who had the loudest voice. Fucking hell. Her world had been well-ordered until three weeks ago.

  She had a great career as the first lieutenant of a stable estate. The keep she protected was in the Southern District, far from border conflicts. She took tribute from farmlands in the hills, and her villagers were more or less satisfied. Now, this.

  “Because, you dripping shit-stick,” someone shouted, “that man happened to be the ruler of this land! I know he’s fucking dead. The question is, was the killing legal? Are we bound to the Charter?”

  Morgon sat there for a second and his face darkened. The room went still, and Mika waited. Just before Morgon was about to speak, she stood and lifted her hands. She didn’t have the loudest voice, but by being the first person to stand she got their attention. It also helped that she was one of the top five fighters in the room.

  “There is no need for insults here.” She didn’t shout, but her voice filled the room. She knew she needed to work fast to leverage this opportunity. “And there is no need to state the obvious.” She looked pointedly at both men as she spoke. “We need to put this to a vote here and now. We’ve decided what the problem is. We need to decide now whether we accept Astrid as the new Protector or not.”

  “And if we don’t accept her?” Morgon asked.

  Mika took a moment to count the faces that seemed to approve of the loaded question. The number was disturbing.

  “Then we will know,” Mika said. “That is all. Once we decide where we stand, we can go forward peacefully from there.”

  Her jaw clenched. To suggest a peaceful solution was a risky move. Many of her colleagues would interpret the proposal as a sign of weakness.

  “Then let’s vote,” someone said.

  “Is that a motion?” another replied in annoyance. Voting to resolve an issue was rare in their proceedings. It was usually credible threats of violence that caused them to compromise.

  “I move that we vote on the matter now,” Atan declared. The motion was seconded.

  More than half the lieutenants present voted not to accept Astrid as Protector. That was it. They stood from the table a bit too quickly, but everyone appeared calm until it came time to retrieve their weapons.

  She didn’t see who did it. One second the first charge was there, the next his head snapped around and blood sprayed from his mouth.

  Someone had snapped his neck with a touchless strike, and it was on.

  They fought with magic and bare hands. Only the small contingent of regular troops had swords, and they used them on each other.

  It was sickening.

  Nobody knew who to fight, so the regular soldiers attacked anyone with a different estate crest on their chests.

  She was happy to see her house missing from the melee.

  If ever there was a conflict to avoid, this was it. She had killed cowards for refusing to fight, but she didn’t consider this a fight. This was idiocy. This was why she had ordered her troops to run like hell if the shit started, then come back in force. Mika could take care of herself.

  The lieutenant from the Estate of Cogol tried to remove her head with a sword he must have taken from a regular soldier. Mika ducked and jumped away from the backswing, then lunged and planted a touchless strike in his solar plexus. When he bent over gasping, she focused telekinetic energy on the back of his head and smashed his skull on the stone floor like a ripe melon.

  Now she had a sword. To save her magical energy, she used the weapon to cut her way through anyone between her and the door. All were fair game. Mika gave not a single fuck about how many enemies she made.

  She almost cut a man she recognized as First Lieutenant Hanif before he took out some idiot who tried to stab her. They were quickly joined by Emil and some of his regular soldiers.

  After fighting so many just to get out of the room, Mika was winded. She didn’t realize her left leg was cut and bleeding until she tried to run.

  Several Movers and regular troops chased them out into a field.

  “Hurry up,” Emil urged.

  “Fuck you,” Mika barely managed to retort.

  “No matter.” Hanif smiled. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “What?” Emil exclaimed as a dozen riders popped up over a rise about a thousand feet away. “We agreed not to bring any extra troops to the meeting.”

  “I didn’t break that agreement,” Hanif countered as he faced the approaching Movers and about thirty regular soldiers, all from different estates. “I didn’t bring them to the meeting. I brought them to the fight.”

  Mika threw back her head and laughed. Her own troops ran toward them. As she’d instructed them, they’d had the good sense to take off and regroup when the shit started to splatter.

  “Am I the only one…” Emil’s voice trailed off.

  “Ah,” Hanif said. “Mika, you better signal to your people that mine are friendly.”

  “Good idea,” Mika replied, then looked at the two different groups of her soldiers that were too far away to hear her shout. “The best way to do that,” Mika grinned, lifting her captured sword. “Is for all of us to charge these fuckwits.”

  At least, that was what she hoped as she knocked the legs out from under two of the closest Movers.

  She wasn’t one for pure power moves. She liked to conserve her energy, but damn it was satisfying to unleash bone-cracking touchless strikes on dickheads like this.

  She had taken out four or five with a combination of sword strikes and magic hits when Hanif’s cavalry smashed through the rest of the enemy. Her troops mopped up the rest.

  “You recognize these people?” Mika asked, looking down at the broken bodies. They had to read the estate crests, since most of the faces were unrecognizable. The fight had gotten personal.

  “I’m counting seven estates here,” Hanif offered.

  “Same,” Emil agreed. He rattled off the names of the estates, and Mika concurred.

  “I don’t know how many on our side got away,” Mika said.

  “We’ll find out soon,” Emil countered. “By how many of our estates will be under siege when we get back?”

  That made all the lieutenants freeze for a moment.

  Hanif ground his teeth and turned to his mounted troops. “I need three of the fastest horses.” Three riders came forward and Hanif considered them. “You and you.” He pointed at two of the three. “Dismount. Give your horses to Mika’s people.”

  Mika understood immediately, but Emil was slow to catch on. She pointed at two of her best riders. “Emil, tell her the passphrase so she won’t get killed when she goes to warn your estate.”

  Emil was visibly shocked and stammered for a moment.

  “You can thank me later.” Mika almost added “asshole” to that.

  “Of course!” Emil quickly gave the rider instructions on the best way to approach his estate and what to do when challenged.

  “OK,” Mika said to her troops, “go warn them. Ride fast, ride hard, and ride smart. If you see resistance, live to fight another day and come back to warn us.”

  Emil gave Mika a dirty look. “What?” she shot back defensively. “You don’t win battles by dying more than the other guy. Fuck your judgmental stare.”

&
nbsp; Emil stood there and fumed, but Hanif smiled from ear to ear.

  The Other Side

  “That bitch,” First Lieutenant Tal said. His broken jaw made it sound like “Thad bissh.”

  “Shut up, you dolt,” First Lieutenant Hagan spat. “You only stuck around because we had larger numbers.”

  Tal tried to curse her, but the pain was too much. Mika had broken his jaw with a touchless strike without so much as a second glance.

  Hagan had seen the whole thing. Tal, the weasel, had only attacked when he thought Mika was outnumbered. Unfortunately—for him—she had seen him coming and dealt with him like a minor annoyance.

  Hagan did not look forward to having Mika as an enemy.

  Hagan got up and made the rounds of the wounded who had been dragged from the field of battle into the meeting room. She found it ironic that the meeting space was now an infirmary.

  When she came back, another group of lieutenants were talking among themselves. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Wilfred here says he knows someplace we can go,” Morgon replied.

  “Go?” Hagan spat. “I’m not leaving my estate for any reason.”

  “Might not have a choice,” Morgon replied. “And anyway, I meant someone we can go to.”

  “For what?” Hagan asked, folding her arms.

  “Weapons,” Morgon replied. “A new kind of magical weapon.”

  “Ha!” Hagan scoffed. She reached out with a touchless strike and broke a bench in half. “We are the magical weapons.”

  “We’re going to need some kind of edge to make this go quickly,” Wilfred replied. “We can’t afford a long war; too much distance between our estates. The villages might not support us. We need power in the form of undeniable force. We give our non-magic soldiers these weapons and,” he snapped his fingers, “instant magic users.”