On Death's Honor

Chapter 33: Old Friends

The ride back to Canden was cold and bleak. Still caked in blood and gore, I nudged the exhausted gelbeast through the countryside, glancing over the remains of torn, split bodies and limbs. Freezing rain pelted the ground, continuing the anthem it had started two days prior. The great wall remained relatively untouched, but the land before it was nothing but a mess of mud, blood, and splintered, shattered buildings and wagons. Someone had attempted to throw coverings over the bodies, but I guessed there either hadn't been enough to go around or the animals and weather blew a good chunk out into the wind. 

I passed the body of a man, his intestines trailing out of his abdomen where blood frozen solid kept his insides stuck to an equally unwavering patch of stone and rock. The fact that his eyes were still intact told me that not even carrion feeders were brave enough to feast on these cursed people.

There were dozens upon dozens of others like this man, all trailing up to the wall. It looked like people had tried to flock to the gates when the attack first started, but the city refused to open them, forcing the victims to flee or take up weapons against otherworldly creatures. Some had been dismembered limb by limb, while some had been trampled into the ground by the beasts Mutnya had created, their skulls and chests crushed to the extent that identifying the body would be near impossible.

This was the madness I allowed. Even with the cold and rain, the stench hit my nose like a grievous accusation. 

As we neared the gates, the gelbeast I rode reared back, her nostrils flaring as she shook her massive head side to side.  I tensed my legs around her.

"Easy, girl, easy," I murmured. Still, she wouldn't settle until she retreated quite a few paces away. Looks like I was going to have to walk. No matter. Giving the beast a gentle pat on her flank, I hopped down, my muscles sore and aching from riding bareback and everything else. "Go on. Enjoy your freedom."

One of us had to.

A few faces peered down at me from the wall, but if they were at all bothered by my disheveled appearance, they didn't let it on. Internally, I groaned. After what these people just went through, they should have been wary of approaching newcomers covered in death, and the fact that they weren't told me that they were expecting me.

Without a word, the gates were drawn open. I hesitated for but a moment, muscles tensing. With an eerie sense of warning, as if I was about to walk into a trap, I grinded my teeth and forced my legs to continue. I wanted to sleep. Clean myself off, find somewhere quiet and undisturbed, and let my body do the one thing it hasn't been able to do properly in weeks. A part of me was aware that I'd be faced with a whole slew of issues once I did - once my mind had the chance to catch up with the past week's round of events, the nightmares would never leave.

It'd be nothing I wasn't already familiar with handling, at least.

The opening to Canden was strangely quiet and deserted, not at all unlike the remains of a raided town or village. It was the sort of quiet those left alive produced, a type of air that held its breath in both equal parts of expectation and horror. Decorations from Ruve's weeklong celebration still clung to nearby buildings and littered a bit of the streets, colors of orange, brown, and red dotting what would have been an otherwise gray landscape.

Feeling a set of eyes on me, I squinted through the rain, turning to my left to see the soldier from days prior - the one that took me to see Caen - staring at me, leaning up against the wall beside him. He was wearing practical chainmail armor, but he left his head bare, so that his hair was matted to his skull. The older man did not seem at all bothered by the weather, however.

He gave his head a brief nod of acknowledgement, but remained otherwise silent. I decided to follow suit, heaving a sigh as I faced the main road and continued walking. There were no tending bodies, no sign of victims from the massacre suffering with massive wounds.  If I listened carefully, I could hear crying from the buildings, but it was so faint that I wondered if I was maybe imagining it, a mere trick of the wind.

I stopped when I noticed a familiar figure standing further up the road in front of me, donned in a hooded white cloak that always seemed to hold its shape, no matter the weather conditions. I wanted to say something snarky, something so casually arrogant that it'd grate on the woman's nerves. I didn't, however. Not because I was a grown adult and knew better than to insult my higher uppers, but because I had so little energy to waste wracking my mind for words that may or may not come.

So we stood in silence, the rain easing to a gentle drizzle even if it hadn't lost its stinging chill. Finally, steeling my nerves, I continued my trek down the street until we were within talking distance of each other.

"Glad to see you could join us," the runkist said lightly. No matter how hard I tried peering beneath that damn hood, I could never see her entire face. I shrugged.

"You wanted to see me?" I replied, scowling slightly at the notable exhaustion that lingered in my voice.

The runkist nodded.

"Come. I need your help with something."

She didn't so much as wait for me to comprehend what she said before turning on heel. To say that was unexpected was an understatement. What could she possibly need my help with now, of all times?

This situation just kept getting better and better. However, with my boots squishing with each step I made and my clothes rubbing harshly in places all over my body, I decided that the quicker I entertained this she-demon of a woman, the quicker I could find somewhere to dry off. So I followed her, daring after a few moments to step up next to her side. Questions that survived my tired state of mind threatened to move past my lips, yet somehow I held them back. There was something about the way my old mentor moved that signalled something was off. I couldn't quite tell what, exactly, it was - she didn't sound much different than she usually did when she spoke, and she walked with a curt brisk pace as she normally did. So what was it?

I wasn't sure which part of the scene I saw first, the massive wooden post in the middle of the clearing or my old friend standing at the edge of the square, waiting for me and the runkist. Craen watched us with a jar of a particular dark substance in her hands, balancing a small wooden box between the lid and her chin. She looked one step closer to simply fading away altogether, swaying slightly on her feet as if the rain threatened to carry her away. I was surprised to see her up at all, after the massive amount of power she'd used to stop the nymphtan raid days prior. The runkist next to me must have something to do with that.

Heart pounding in my throat, I tore my eyes away from the woman to stare at the wooden post, which consisted of two vertical beams hammered solidly into the ground, supporting a horizontal one that currently had a woman I didn't recognize suspended by her bonded hands. A crowd of people watched in a wide berth, their eyes cold and unwavering at the woman's obvious defeated nature.

"Wrenva." The single word cut deep into my skull, enough to make me realize that I had stopped in my tracks while Bonosoli kept walking forward. She was now looking at me over her shoulder, silently gesturing me to continue.

She wanted me to help with an execution. An outsider's execution, at that.

I opened my mouth to object, even though nothing came out. Staring at the runkist, I couldn't shake the suspicion that I knew what she was doing. This was some sort of payback, a lesson after what happened on the last night of Ruve as much as it was an execution. I faintly recalled Mongrey the stable master say something about a man being set for execution, and I wondered if this woman was some sort of accomplice.

Please don't make me do this, I silently begged the runkist. They'd already stripped the prisoner woman of her clothing, so all they were waiting on was the blood and the bug.

Bonosoli didn't say anything. Instead, she gave a flick of her wrist, and the rain stopped mid-fall within the square.

"I bring to you the nymphtan slayer," she called out to the soaked, grave people, walking up to take the box from Craen. "Today, she will finalize the justice your fallen deserve."

~ 1541 Words ~