Table of Contents – (spoilers)
Choke, known more widely by his Stronian name, Bartholomew, was the newly appointed apparitor for the magistrate of Bristlehump. Not five minutes after his appointment as such, he stood in the back yard of the Bristlehump church and worried about it. His three deputies, Otilla, Pinch, and Knuckle stood with him. The degree to which they were worried was not clear, and certainly mitigated by the ale and marijuana they continued to indulge in.
It was Thursday, which meant they had been in Bristlehump a full week. Given how hostile the folk of Bristlehump had been to them, and the condition they had found Brother Cornelius Barrelmender in, they had done very well for themselves indeed.
But still Choke worried. He worried more now that he was Barrelmender’s apparitor than he had at any time before, when things had seemed much more dire. This was not lost on his compatriots.
“Come on, Choke, lighten up!” Peep said, jostling him good-naturedly.
“Yeah! No doubt!” Knuckle agreed as he exhaled a huge hit of weed smoke from Peep’s pipe.
“This is no time to celebrate,” Choke said, walking away from his fellows a few paces. He desperately wanted to saddle his warhorse, Nike, and take a long ride by himself to clear his head. However, with their situation as it was, with an Outfit bounty on their heads, to do such would be foolishness bordering on suicidal.
“Fuck man, if this is how yar gonna act when ye get everything ye want, we oughta try to disappoint ye more!” Peep laughed.
Gabe came out of the kitchen door and joined the squad.
“I got the Brother his jug of potato wine. That’ll be him sorted for today and tonight, I reckon,” Gabe said.
“Wonderful,” Choke muttered.
“Well, whad’ye want? The guy’s a fuckin sot,” Peep said. “At least he’s drinking in the church, now! And he did sign them papers and he put on a great show for Dixon. He done good!”
“He took Rodolf’s evidence without casting any truth spells. As far as I know, that is irregular,” Choke said.
“Well, what do ye know about it? Is it irregular? How the fuck should we know? He’s the magistrate, he took the evidence, and he made ye his apparitor. And he told ye to do as ye please, because he won’t lead anybody ever again. Now he’s getting blind drunk. What could be better for us?” Peep asked.
“I understand how exiting it must be for you, Peep, to have free rein to do whatever we want. But doesn’t that worry you? With him in that condition, we are now responsible for this entire place,” Choke said.
“Yeah? So? It’s not like we weren’t already. And we know what we gotta do, right? So, fuck it. Let’s party today and worry about what we’re doing tomorrow. We earned it!” Peep exclaimed.
“I suppose you are right. But why wouldn’t he cast any spells?” Choke continued to worry, like a dog licking one spot of itself raw. “No truth spells. And with that alcohol sickness coming on, why wouldn’t he cast Remove Disease to give himself relief?”
“Maybe he didn’t have it prepared,” Pinch suggested. “Clerics need to pray specifically for the spells they have each day, right?”
“Yes, they do. But Remove Disease is a relatively low-level spell. And for any parish priest, an absolute necessity to keep prepared. It is vital for their service to the community,” Choke said.
“Yeah, and Barrelmender clearly is really into that. Besides, who says he can still cast spells?” Peep said.
This gave Choke pause. Peep continued:
“I mean, Stron gives him his spells to cast every day, right? With the way he’s been carrying on, maybe Stron stopped doing that.”
“Yeah, no doubt! If you were Stron, would you give that guy spells?” Knuckle laughed.
“That is blaspheme, Theodas!” Choke snapped. “None of us can, or ever will, be Stron! It is blasphemous to say it!”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry. But ye know what I meant, right?” said Knuckle.
“I do. And you are right. It is clear that he has fallen completely,” Choke said, visibly relaxing.
Choke’s anxiety of being adrift in a world of anarchic freedom left him as he contemplated that there may have already been dire consequences for Barrelmender. Indeed, within Choke’s conception of the world, to be cut off from Stron’s favor was the worst thing imaginable. And in this realization, Choke came to another: his mission from Brother Willem was no less than to redeem this broken man. Further, he recalled Peep’s first impression of him, communicated in her usual simple and selfish way: Barrelmender was their priest. However, before he could be such, he had to be fixed.
“Right,” Choke said, his sense of clarity and purpose restored. “Give me that pipe, would you?”
However, the fates have a malicious and comedic sense of timing. Choke had only just exhaled what was going to be, for him, a debilitating hit of weed, when a clamor rose at the south gate.
“Well, fuck,” Choke coughed. “What is this now?”
With Bristlehump being rather small, it was not far to the south gate, so the noise there was plainly audible in the church yard. First there was a series of shouts, followed by a long ringing of the alarm bell that was hung there.
“Gear up!” Peep said as she bolted to the kitchen.
They were still armored, so all they had to do was grab their arms. Choke ran to the stable to bridle Nike and Peep’s horse, Gorgeous Boy. He and Peep mounted bareback and followed Pinch, Knuckle, and Gabe who all ran out to the square.
The square was near full of people, who were all staring worriedly southwards as they chattered to each other. There was Stadnick the stablemaster, Otto the blacksmith, Bill Cornmasher the general store keeper, and Royce the tavernkeeper, along with their families and lads. As well, there were the women, children, and oldsters from the village houses.
The squad hurried to the south gate, which they found wide open and unattended. Through the open gate, they could see the freight yard. Work there was disrupted. The men were mostly standing and staring up the Cowslip Creek hollow in the direction of Tully’s brothel. A few men were starting to walk and jog that way.
Peep and Choke rode ahead, with the others running behind them. The squad soon found the cause of the ruckus. About halfway between the Crotch and Tully’s Brothel, a small crowd of folk had clustered in the middle of the track. They parted as Choke and Peep rode up.
There, lying facedown with a single longbow arrow through him, was Rodolf.
The crowd backed up further as Pinch, Knuckle, and Gabe joined them.
“Oh, shit,” Pinch said.
Choke’s mind was now well-throttled by the weed high and he simply sat on Nike and stared down at the corpse. Peep, however, was better accustomed to operating normally in such a condition. She dismounted and tossed her reins to Gabe. Then she took two long strides towards a member of the crowd and stabbed her finger at him.
“Munge! Don’t ye fuckin move, ye motherfucker!” she barked at the corporal, who was standing with his two spearmen.
“Hey!” Munge yelled back, pointing a finger of his own. “Don’t ye be laying this on me! I was on the gate, and this man passed through it safe and sound!”
“Yeah? We’ll see! Don’t go anywhere!” Peep returned.
Munge looked like he might have something more to say, but decided to hold his tongue.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Pinch said as he knelt down next to Rodolf.
The peasant was obviously dead. The shot had taken him in the left side, just behind his arm and below his shoulder blade. The arrow was buried almost to its flights in him, with its bloody point exiting just under Rodolf’s right pectoral. Kneeling over him, Pinch noticed something odd about Rodolf’s face, and heaved on his shoulder to roll him onto his side to have a better look.
“Oh, fuck!” Pinch said.
Everyone leaned in to have a look themselves.
“Subtle,” Peep commented.
A big, barbed fishhook was stuck through both Rodolf’s bottom and top lips, puckering his mouth into a kissing shape as it skewered them together.
“The fish dies because it opens its mouth,” Peep said.
“Oh, fuck,” Pinch said as he stood up and looked around.
In this area of Cowslip Hollow, between the village proper and Tully’s, there were some big chestnut trees to provide a canopy overhead. There were little cottages here and there on the south side of the dirt track, with the Cowslip Creek running along just to the north. Behind the cottages was the steep rise of South Hill, with its forest. The forest was not dense here, however, with it being well grazed by livestock and culled for basic firewood.
“Okay, so he was walking home, right?” Pinch said, gesturing towards Tully’s down the way. “The arrow took him on the left, which meant the shooter was in the trees over there,” he pointed to the forest behind the nearest cottage.
“Lines up about perfect,” Peep agreed.
Any further discussion of the scene was disrupted when Lieutenant Dixon joined them with his six men. This time, he was mounted. His mount was a basic riding horse that seemed a farm nag compared to Nike and Gorgeous Boy.
“What’s going on here?” Lieutenant Dixon asked before making a show of noticing the corpse. “Oh. Someone shot poor Rodolf. What a pity.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it!” yelled Munge. “I was on the gate, as everybody seen! And he passed through it safe and sound! And I was still on it when they come running yelling that he got shot!”
“Shut up, Corporal,” Dixon said.
“Ye don’t understand, man! This Stron Fire lady said she’d burn me up if anything happened to this asshole, so you gotta—”
“Shut up, I said!” Dixon yelled at the top of his lungs. It was quite impressive.
Munge did so, but squirted a stream of black stugroot spit the Lieutenant’s way.
Dixon chose to ignore this and instead turned his attention to Choke, who was still mounted bareback on Nike.
“Well, I suppose this mess belongs to you. What with you being magistrate’s apparitor, and all. And with you being the one to get the poor wretch into the trouble in the first place,” Dixon said with a sneer.
Choke was way too high to deal with this, so he just stared at Dixon until the man looked away. Pleased that this had worked so effectively, Choke swiveled his gaze to glower at the tree line behind the cottage.
“Alright, so let’s get the official business outta the way then!” Peep called out loud so that all in attendance could hear. “Did anybody see Rodolf get shot? No? I didn’t think so. Right. So, who was it that ran to get the soldiers at the gate?”
Peep had not paused after asking her first question, but this time she waited for a response. After a long silence, she clucked her tongue Munge’s way.
“Munge, my lad. It seems no one came to get ye at the gate! That can only mean that ye were here at the scene of the crime all along!”
“What? No! Fuck off! I weren’t! It was…” Munge frantically looked around the assembled peasants. “Her! Yeah, that one! With a couple others! Definitely her!”
“Oh, is that so? Okay then, lady, it was you that went and got him, was it?” Peep looked at the woman who was now trembling in terror. “Yeah, okay. Good enough. Ye can all fuck off now!” she shouted at everyone. “All of ye! Soldiers, too! Piss off! Go on! Get!”
The assembled folk began to drift away, but were brough up short by the arrival of Rodolf’s wife and children, who ran up breathlessly and collapsed screaming and wailing upon his body.
“Okay, great. And now this,” Peep said, throwing her arms up in disgust.
Everyone stood around silently and watched the scene of grief.
“Well, this is a fuckin bummer,” said Knuckle loudly.
Sergeant Wagner and a couple of the soldiers laughed.
“Motherfucker!” bellowed a new voice, powerful and rough, giving full vent to its owner’s rage.
Everyone looked to the voice, which turned out to be Bob, the teamster lead foreman, come from the freight yard to see what had disrupted his men’s labor.
Knuckle’s hand dropped to his warhammer in the thought that the big man had cursed him for his insensitivity. However, this was not the case. All of Bob’s focus was on Rodolf’s corpse and his grieving family.
“Cocksucker!” screamed Bob, as he struck the calf of his knee-high, iron-capped, ox driver’s boot with his heavy leather ox clout.
“That motherfucker! The black-hearted motherfucker!” Bob yelled into the abyss. Then his rage focused itself and he pointed his clout up at Lieutenant Dixon. “Ye lot have gone too far with this one!”
Dixon looked back at Bob with affected shock. “Me? I will thank you, Bob, to remember your place.”
“I should remember my place? I should! My job is to move lumber south! Yar job was to protect those people!” Bob pointed to Rodolf’s family.
“You forget yourself, man!” Dixon shouted back as he dropped his hand to his sword’s hilt.
The soldiers with Dixon all tensed and shifted their stances aggressively. While the teamsters standing with Bob outnumbered the soldiers almost two to one, they were no match for the armed men. Even so, they stood with their foreman to face Dixon and his men.
Choke wheeled Nike to face Dixon as well, and dropped his hand to his own sword’s hilt. He had not brought shield or lance with him, but even bareback with only his sword he looked formidable. As Choke did so, his people firmed up. Peep and Pinch already had bows in hand, and they both drew and notched arrows. Knuckle pulled his greatsword from its back mount and unsheathed it.
“Now what did I say just now?” Peep yelled. “All of ye’s piss off! If ye aint gonna help these folk deal with their dead, ye need to clear the fuck outta here! Now!”
Lieutenant Dixon did not hesitate. He turned and rode for town, leaving his men on foot to run to catch up. Once the soldiers were on their way, Bob hawked loudly and spat after them. Then he clouted his boot-top again and walked back to his freight yard with his men. He had not looked at Choke or the rest of the Pekot Bunch once during the entire fracas.
Choke sat on Nike and watched all of them leave. Then he turned back to watch the drama of Rodolf’s family. A number of local women were now comforting them, as another was bringing a small cart to load Rodolf onto.
“Okay, so yar gonna stay here and hold this down, are ye, Bartholomew?” Peep said. “I wanna check out where that arrow was shot from. Pinch, yar with me. Knuckle and Gabe, watch Choke’s back. Keep it tight now.”
Peep and Pinch moved to the tree line obliquely from the likely shooting position, crossing behind the nearby cottage to enter the bush. There, they paused for a long moment in a crouch to watch and listen to the woods around them. Then, slowly, they crept up on the spot from behind.
To the side of the cabin, there was a trail that went further up into the bush. Next to that there was a big tree with some low bushes around. The spot was ideal for the shot that had taken Rodolf.
Of course, the archer that had killed Rodolf was long gone. However, he had not left without a trace. Stuck into the earth behind the tree were five more longbow arrows. They had been placed there in a neat line, as archers are prone to do, to be easily at hand for fast shooting. As well, at the base of the tree, upon one of its wide roots that had been worn flat by years of people and animals stepping upon it as they entered the trail, there was a little pile of river pebbles.
The pebbles were round and smooth and of a flat shape that would make them ideal for skipping. There were five stones in total, and they had been neatly stacked, one on top of another. The small one on top was round and made the little pile seem a tiny woodland gnome, or some similar creature, no more than ten centimeters high.
“Well, this is cute,” Peep said quietly.
“Five arrows. Five stones. Five of us, including Gabe,” Pinch said.
“Yeah. Subtle as a fishhook. Points for style, though.”
“Sneed?” Pinch asked.
“Oh, indeed.”
Peep looked over all of the arrows’ fletchings carefully. They were all finely made and utterly normal. She pulled one of the arrows out of the ground to take with them.
“All right, then. Game on, man,” she said up the trail to the bush. Then she nudged Pinch and the two of them moved back to join the others.
Muse Vassal 