** WATTYS 2018 WINNER **
Not one person in the history of the world ever said being Deathsworn was an easy thing. Fun, sometimes, and completely your fault, but never easy. You have one rule that you obey, unless, of course, you want to die.
Your l...
It was always the screamers that got to Hoff. Always. The damned screamers who didn't have the good graces to die quietly; to leave the world with the dignity they'd lacked whilst they lived in it. They cried and they whimpered and they bleated and they promised this and that. In the end, they all made the same sound. That beautiful, blissful, brilliant sound of silence.
After the screamers came the cursers. These were mostly the warrior types; the ones that thought they could talk their way down from the timber by challenging combat of one sort or another. Hoff didn't mind the cursers so much because they were entertaining. They hurt his ears far less than the screamers and, at the very least, waited for after the drop before they soiled themselves. The books never say anything aboutthat when they tell you how men die.
He nudged his palfrey forward, right up to the edge of the timber. Behind him, the mountains swept outward; innumerable spires and valleys that braved the bitter cold of the west for century after century. At some point – Hoff didn't really know when – the steep slopes that decorated Scavania would become the sleek hills and lush plains of Green Country; the heart of the Empire and a place he'd heard a man could exhale and not see his own breath. Hoff had never been to Green Country, but it had to beat enduring Scavania. Its women weren't as fierce, its ale not as strong, but it was flat and it was warm. Dreams for another day, Hoff thought. Today was not for dreaming. Today was for working.
He adjusted his woollen cloak and ran a gloved hand through his dirty blond beard. It was nice and bushy now, just in time for the thick of winter. When the snows fell and the rivers froze, he would be thankful for the bastard thing, even if it did make him look ten winters older than he actually was. His palfrey whinnied impatiently and Hoff realised the stumpman was waiting for him beneath the gallows. He took in the five condemned properly for the first time. Two screamers, three cursers. That's our lot and call me Emperor if it ain't.
The two screamers had already started with their unabashed begging. Hoff found it amusing, what a man might say when he thought it could save his neck. He'd heard it all before though; the two today had as much distinction as the wind. He reckoned the cursers were a safe bet, too, though they normally refrained from making noise until it was their turn.
Hoff regarded the first, a heavy-set Mountainman of fifty winters or so; grey hair thinning to bald and cheeks blue with the bite of the breeze. His eyes were working as quickly as his mouth was. Come on, up here on the edge of the map? With this view? Plenty worse places to die, old man, Hoff thought to himself.
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'You have been condemned to death by Haeorl Magni of Halvard, for crimes committed on his land. If you have any last words before you meet the Elders, say them now.' It was a speech Hoff had been delivering for twelve years, give or take. In twelve years, he'd heard precisely no last words that amounted to anything significant. It was his duty to ask all the same.
'I've got gold, lord! Gold, buried under the ...'
Hoff let the pleas fade like snow in summer and waved his right hand down. The stumpman did his job and the Mountainman said no more. He gurgled, he choked, he choked, he gurgled, but he said no more. It's difficult to talk when your neck's half-broken.
