Back home they either hung criminals, or made them work off their debt. Paying back the victims was considered the proper thing to do; public humiliation and shame were supposed to make a person think twice about doing something like that again—and let everyone in the Wick know who had done the deed.
To be left out in the open with every part of one’s body—except for where the wooden manacles held the person in place—exposed to the elements, and any passing stranger who thought heaping abuse on you would be a grand old time felt excessive…it sent a shiver running through her. How did being shamed like this in front of strangers who would likely never see them again do anything to prevent future transgressions?
“Locals over here,” the Key Warden grunted, pointing to the left side of the road, “outsiders over there,” he finished, pointing to the four, staggered rows of rough-looking men in their various pillories on the right side. Then he turned as if to walk away.
“You’re not going to bother to introduce us?” Falon asked, lifting a single eyebrow at him in what she hoped was an appropriately significant look. Trying to hide her disapproval of this barbaric New Blood practice, she crossed her arms and tapped a foot.
“Lieutenant, these are the Prisoners,” he said in a loud, carrying voice, “Prisoners, the Lieutenant.” With an explosive, braying laugh, he shook his head and walked away.
“Well…that could have gone better,” John the Page said with a sigh.
“They should just kill them or let them go,” Falon said with frowning disapproval, “shaming people in front of strangers won’t do anything to stop them from robbing again.”
John choked, but Falon continued anyway.
“Or let them go with a warning, but what purpose does it serve to have the men on this side,” she said pointing to the right side of the dirt path, “stuck in a pillory?”
“Many would consider Lord Lamont quite lenient in this form of punishment,” the Page wheezed, thumping his chest where something must have gone down the wrong pipe.
“I don’t see it,” Falon said shaking her head.
“Most other Lords would have killed them, or at least had them maimed,” John disagreed.
“What purpose does this serve other than to humiliate them?” Falon waved her arm to encompass the outsiders.
“Most of these people aren’t event thieves, or else if they are all they took was a crust of bread, a melon rind or something of that nature,” the Page retorted, starting to sound outraged. “That’s hardly enough to kill a man or take his hand over!”
“Then what are they doing in here?!” Falon exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air and stomping her feet in frustration.
“Why, to show others the error of their ways of course; this scene isn’t for the benefit of rehabilitating those of us here,” came a heavily accented voice off to her right. It was the sort of voice that sent a shiver down her back, and it wasn’t a shiver of fear, “it’s to teach those of you so recently gathered here for war, the error of crossing the Lord in his own Demesne,” the man said as she whirled around to see who was speaking.
Giving herself a shake to get rid of the effects of his accented voice, she stomped over to the foreigner in the pillory. His hair was too long and hung down around his face, concealing his eyes.
“Did you say something?” she demanded just to be sure, letting a touch of anger color her voice.
Stormy blue eyes lifted up to meet her angry gaze, and those eyes were so deep that a person could get lost in them if she wasn’t careful. They were set in a face that would definitely be considered handsome if not for two days’ worth of scraggly growth, and the dirty smear stretching from his forehead down to the side of his strong jaw-line.
For a long moment all she could do was stare, unable to take a breath. She figured she finally knew what the term roguishly handsome meant when she had read it in one of her sister’s hidden books that she had inherited from Mama Cink, but only now did she truly know the meaning of the term.
Then the swarthy skinned man had to go and ruin everything by opening his mouth. “You heard me, pretty boy Lieutenant,” the foreigner spat, scorn dripping from his words, “your Lord’s a wanker who likes to throw innocent men in his stocks just to puff up his own ego and make it easier to control the men.” The ugly disdain on his face for both her and her Lord was the final straw in dismissing the spell cast by his good looks and accent.
“It’s a pillory, Prisoner,” she said hotly, “you can tell because your legs aren’t also bound.”
“Yeah right,” he sneered, “bloody barbarians and your stupid, foreign words. It makes me want to wash out my mouth with soap each and every time your primitive words issue out of my throat.”
“That can be arranged,” Falon growled with rising fury, both at herself and this deceptive looking man, “although I doubt there’s enough soap in this entire camp to clean your filthy tongue!”
“At least part of me would be clean after standing here for three days, while a bunch of ignorant barbarians and their children throw rotting food at me,” he said in a sickeningly sweet voice with a mocking smile on his face.
“Did you say something, Prisoner?” Falon demanded pulling out her new Shri-Kriv and holding against his throat, “because I didn’t quite here you the first time. Did you just slander our Lord and call us Barbarians?”
“Whoa! Easy there, fighter,” Stormy Blue Eyes said in a much more reasonable voice, although a mocking twinkle seemed to have taken up permanent residence somewhere in his eyes, “I don’t think I speak your language as well as I thought.”
“You seem to understand what you’re saying just fine,” Falon growled, furious at the way he kept scorning her people, “I can tell.”
“So what you gonna to do,” he asked with a lift of his chin, causing a small bead of blood to drip from the edge of her blade, “kill me here? Like a sacrificial goat?”
“No, we don’t sacrifice things around here anymore,” Falon said flatly, “Blood Magic’s for the Cold Northerner’s and…Imperials,” she finished with dawning understanding. The swarthy skin and blue eyes; he had to be an Imperial!
“Too bad that makes a beardless youngster like you—” he said only to be cut off.
“’Blood and Iron,’ isn’t that the motto of your Empire,” Falon demanded, leaning in close.
“It’s ‘Blood and Steel;’ and that’s the motto of the Regiments, not the Empire at large,” the man corrected, rolling his deep, blue eyes.
“Do you know how to read and write?” Falon asked eagerly.
“That chicken scratch you call letters?” the man laughed.
“We use the same alphabet as you Imperials, ever since the New Blood came to these lands,” Falon snapped, and then for added emphasis, pressed her blade in close.
“Yes, I can read and write your tongue,” the Imperial admitted hastily, while trying to lift his head and draw further away from the blade, “although the spelling might be more phonetic than proper. I can also do sums in my head without an abacus, but so could a dancing monkey I saw in a wandering circus troupe. What does it matter?”
“Can you fight too?” Falon asked with rising excitement, “With sword and spear I mean.”
“Yeah, and I can pleasure three maidens all at the same while standing on my head,” snapped the imperial, failing to notice Falon’s suddenly furious blush, “what is this, an interview? Get lost, No Beard, and take your little lackey along with you.” Capping his words off with a derisive snort, the Imperial closed his eyes.
Spinning on her heel, Falon gave a jerk of her head telling John to follow her.
“Earth and Field,” the Page cursed as soon as they were out of earshot, “who does that bloke think he is?”
“Drop it,” Falon said stiffly, as she led him to the opposite side of the little dirt road in the middle of the muster field.
“No one insults our Lord and calls us barbarians,” John said hotly, “especially not some throat cu
tting, goat-worshiping, stupid, Imperial!”
“I said forget him,” she replied sharply, “we need to find a clerk; a scribbler of words.”
“We?” John said with rising hope evident in his voice.
Falon gave him a withering look. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“But you said ‘we’,” he grinned, doing a hop skip and pumping his fist as if he was already in her service, “that means you’re at least considering it!”
“Focus on finding us a Clerk,” she growled. Suddenly realizing that she was pointing at him with her Shri-Kriv for emphasis, she carefully wiped both sides of the blade on her pants and then, just as carefully, she sheathed it.
“Yes, Lieutenant—I mean, Mister Rankin. He’s over here!” The Page declared, dancing his way between the rows of sour-faced or broken-looking men, until he came to a stop in front of a rotund looking fellow.
“What do you mean, ‘he’s over here?’” Falon asked, coming to a stop before the designated pillory and raising an eyebrow at John.
“Oh, well…you see,” John had the grace to look embarrassed before taking a breath and plowing forward, “as soon as the Captain said you needed your own Clerk, I immediately thought of him.” He waved a hand grandly in the direction of the man between the nearest set of wooden planks.
“Just don’t take my hand,” the man moaned, “kill me first, but please don’t cut off my hand!”
“Who is this?” Falon stared bug-eyed at the man John seemed to think would be perfect for a job as her Clerk.
“Says his name Tug, but everyone knows him as Tug Bad-Scales,” John said with the hint of a lip curl as he looked down on the other man, “on account of he’s known for his weighted scales.”
“He’s a cheat?” Falon asked, wondering why she even bothered to feel surprise. After all, she was there to find a criminal who knew his sums and letters, should she be shocked that a man she had been led to was such a man?
“My scales are good,” the rotund man in the pillory moaned lifting his head to look blearily at them, “the hinge in the top was just a bit rusty. I swear I’ll oil it real good next time, and clean the rust without fail!”
Falon raised an eyebrow; it didn’t take a world-wise genius to spot when a desperate person was lying through his teeth. “I’m not here to talk about false weights in the bottom of your scales,” Falon said as ominously as she could. Which, after hearing herself do so, she was forced to admit was not very ominous at all.
The man Tug, known as Bad-Scales, didn’t seem to notice how unconvincing she sounded. “Please, you have to talk with the Bailiff; there’s been some kind of mistake,” pleaded Bad-Scales. “I’m not tough like a warrior, or young like you and able to bounce back in a day or two. The knotted rope after two days standing here in this pillory is more than I can bear!”
Glancing at John out of the corner of her eye to gauge his reaction to this, Falon observed a look of thinly concealed disgust, followed by a flash of contempt flitter across the Page’s face.
“Is this really the best you can do?” Falon demanded.
John’s brow wrinkled and he frowned at her. “Look, Lieutenant Falon, I can’t work miracles or anything; if you think you can do better, then by all means,” he said with an elaborate sweep of his arm, to indicate the rest of the Pillory.
“Better?” the rotund man before them said his head snapping up quickly. “Why, there’s no better man for whatever you’re looking for than Tug Scale-Master, formerly a wandering merchant before he settled down to the simple life of a market trader!”
“You don’t even know what I’m looking for,” Falon snapped, leaning back to avoid the spittle flying from Tug’s over-eager mouth.
“Whatever it is—so long as it avoids the use of a blade—then Tug’s your man!” the man locked in the pillory cried. “I’m a man of many skills. A paragon in a town, and the master of the road; there is no one and nothing I cannot help you with!”
“Also desperate, I see,” Falon scowled.
“Give me a chance and I shall astonish you with my wit. Hand me a task, and watch as it is done so quickly that you stand amazed. Demand a procurement, be it horses broken to the saddle, or willing female bondservants, and your Tug—” Falon gut him off before he started to make her sick.
“There’ll be no procuring of young women,” she said sharply, determined to make this point early, and emphatically.
“Of course, of course,” Tug agreed, jerking in his wooden prison as if to fall all over himself. “No young women…older ones perhaps, who are used to whatever life you are…” he trailed off when he saw the thunderous disapproval on her face. “Not even so much as a seasoned cook for making us scrumptious victuals around your men’s campfire?” he asked weakly.
Falon felt her face hardening at this latest bit of weaseling, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out a good reason to hire a top notch cook.
“How do you know I have fighting men to feed,” she asked harshly instead and the man known as Bad-Scales looked surprised.
“Why, yon Page did call you ‘Lieutenant,’ did he not?” Tug asked almost rhetorically, and then hurried to press his point, “and if you are down here looking for a man of my caliber and wearing the lofty rank of a Lieutenant, then of course your war band must be nearly as numerous as the grains of sand upon the beach!”
Falon could feel the moment her skeptical look turned into one of pleasure at his words, and gave herself a shake. First she was all but taken in by a pair of eyes, and now this odious man tried to bend her to his cause with words!
“Flattery will get you nowhere with me, Fat Man,” she growled just to prove that she could—as much to herself, as to the others present.
“Mercy!” he cried. “I am a master of the fair deal and a decent hand with scribing letters for the masses too, but nothing more; I am not a thief. Spare me from my crimes and these false accusations!”
Falon blinked at this impassioned, if slightly ludicrous plea. Really what kind of person would deny, admit, and then yet once again deny his crimes all within the same sentence? Still, according to the Captain, she did need to hire a Clerk. Then she remembered something her older sister had told her years earlier, back when a much younger Falon had asked for a story, and she had a wicked idea.
“I might have a job for you,” Falon said determinedly.
“Anything,” Tug yelped, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.
“I have need of a Clerk for the duration of my service with the Militia and the…” her mouth twisted with two parts wryness and one part eagerness, “Fighting Swans.”
“Yes,” cried Tug, “oh please, yes; anything to get me out of here.”
Half disgusted with herself for having such mixed emotions over her new rank and position in the militia, Falon looked at Tug as severely as a fifteen year old girl could look down on a much older man. To her shock, Tug actually cringed as she did this. Falon made a mental note to recreate the look when she had access to a mirror, and see if she could determine whatever it was in her face that had such an effect.
“I need someone good with both his letters and his numbers,” she explained strictly.
“That’s me, Lieutenant,” Tug said with a winning smile, “my work with the scales means I’m good with my numbers, and writing letters for the Post Riders to take back to the villages for their relatives living near the Keep means I have kept up my skills with the alphabet.”
“Wonderful,” Falon sighed, and not wanting to do it but feeling like she had no choice with both John and Tug looking at her, she closed her eyes.
“Make the necessary arrangements with the Key Warden,” she said to John.
“Thank you! You won’t forget this bit of generosity, Lieutenant,” Tug said to her with glee, “Goodman Tug always keeps his promises, and I give you my word I won’t let you down.”
“Goodman?” John asked sounding incredulous, causing Falon to turn to him with a searching look.
“But of course,” Tug said looking concerned, “the Lieutenant here has given me a reprieve, freeing me from being pelted by the rotted food of my fellow Goodmen and Goodwomen, and saved me from the knotted rope!”
“Yes,” John said slowly as if speaking to an idiot, “but you weren’t found innocent.”
Tug suddenly looked concerned. “I assure you, Master Page, that it was all one big misunderstanding.”
“So until your crimes are considered paid for, you cannot lay claim to the title of Goodman,” the Page said sternly.
“Master Page, please be reasonable,” begged the former Scale Master.
“What are you two talking about, John?” asked Falon.
“Until he’s paid his debt to his Lordship and society as a whole, this man must bear the mark of a Villain,” John replied.
“Nay,” squealed the rotund man in the middle of the pillory, “I’ll be good; there’s no need to shame me!”
“It’s nothing less than he’s deserved,” John assured her.
“I’d rather face the rope,” cried Tug, jerking around in his wooden prison.
“Really?” Falon said taken aback.
This caused the scale balancer to hesitated before hanging his head. “Oh, if you must,” he muttered under his breath no longer looking like the histrionic man of just a few seconds ago, “I’d hoped to avoid this, is all.”
“Don’t let these charlatans and two bit hucksters deceive you with their sob stories and quick smiles,” the Page hastened to assure her, “the Mark is the only way to make sure they don’t just run off at the first opportunity.”
“What is the mark?” she asked, suddenly intensely curious.
“Should I tell him, or do you want the honor?” John said with a grin.
“Oh, go ahead,” Tug said glumly.
The Blooding Page 18