Table of Contents – (spoilers)
In Peep’s cell, Mariola was sitting in the dark on the one stool with her buck knife still clenched in her hands. There was just enough moonlight through the slit window to make her out.
“Is this over?” Mariola asked.
“Is what over?” Peep asked as she pulled the boy’s tunic off and threw it and the cap on the floor.
“The killing. The scouting story. Beth and the boy, and all that.”
“Yeah, that’s over. The story, anyway. And tonight’s killing. But as to killing in general, there aint ever gonna be an end to it. It’s just one after another.”
“We killed him! That man. We killed him, right?”
“The way ye stabbed him up? Yeah, fuckin rights we did. Both of them. Just like we were supposed to. It was a good job. Father M’s real happy about it. Ye done good. Ye moved good out there,” Peep said, now sitting down on her bunk to unlace the moccasins.
“Father? The Father is happy? But… but… we murdered those men!”
“Yeah, we did. Just like we were supposed to. I mean, it was a bit early, but that couldn’t be helped. And I think it’s actually gonna be better this way. In a week, Father M is gonna see that. Wes did him a favor by pushing it up like he did.”
“What? What are you talking about? That was what we were supposed to do? But we just murdered them in cold blood! They never did anything to us!” Mariola exclaimed.
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Father said the man had to go, so he had to go. End of story. Look, Mariola, that’s the gig. And it was fun, right? We should do it again sometime,” Peep said cheerfully.
Peep stood up and contemplated her vest of brigandine armor on the armor rack. Then she shook her head and threw on her under tunic. Next, she put on her weaponbelt, followed by her wolfhead cloak, and, finally, her over-the-shoulder, shortbow and quiver rig.
Mariola came to her senses as Peep was wriggling into the shortbow rig. She set her buck knife down on the small table and rose to help Peep get settled.
“Fun…” Mariola murmured to herself as she did. “That was fun?”
“Fuckin rights it was. Ye said ye’ve killed a man before.”
“Yes, Otilla, I did. But he did do something to me,” Mariola said, her voice taking on a hard edge.
“Yeah, I get how that goes. My first was that way, too. But, if it makes ye feel any better, the two we did tonight were just that sort. So all to the good. Right?”
“I don’t know, Otilla. That… that was horrible.”
“Was it? Well, I guess that’s where you and me are different. Inside, I mean. But, whatever. Look, Mariola: we’re with Stron here, right? And ye know what Stron’s all about. Ye seen it this morning when Billy burned up like a candle in a fuckin campfire. And we work for Stron’s men. Or, I do, at least. And it’s only gonna get better. Or worse, if that’s how ye wanna look at it. So ye need to think hard about that before ye decide to come on with me.”
“Come on with you? How do ye mean, Otilla?”
“On the team, I mean. I’m gonna need someone to help me wrangle all them dazed spastics that are set to follow me around. And, like I said: ye moved good out there. A bit sloppy on the finish, but that’s something we can work on. But we don’t gotta settle any of this right now. We’ll talk more after we’ve finished cleaning up,” Peep said.
“Cleaning up?”
“Yar fuckin covered in blood, woman. Didn’t ye notice?”
“Oh. Right. Yes,” Mariola said, touching the now dried and congealing blood on her frock.
“Yeah. And yar gonna need something to wear. Where’s all yar shit? Is it with the other wailers in the church?”
“Yes. I’ll go get it,” Mariola said.
“Like fuck ye will. Yar to stay here in this room until further notice, Father M said. I’ll go get it. What all is it? I’ll grab all of it.”
“Just a bigger rucksack and a burlap sack. The other women know what’s mine.”
“Good. Wait here,” Peep said.
Peep grabbed the unlit candleholder off the table and took it to the kitchen. In the kitchen was a lamp with its wick set low. Peep lit the candle from the lamp. Then she took a minute to start building up the fire in the big woodstove. When she was almost done with that, Mrs Dunn came stomping into her kitchen in her nightdress.
“And what do you think you are doing?” Mrs Dunn demanded.
“Special orders from Father M, Mrs Dunn. Can’t be helped. I have to burn some clothes in the stove here. And I need to warm up some washing water for me and Mariola. I don’ t mind doing that myself. Ye should go back to bed.”
“Ah! Ahhh!” Mrs Dunn exclaimed pointing down at the floor.
“What?” Peep startled.
“Blood! Someone has dribbled blood all over my floor!”
“Oh. Dang. Yeah, Mariola musta tracked that in. Don’t worry: it’s not hers.”
Mrs Dunn closed her eyes and stood stock still for a long while, looking very much like she might start crying.
“Look, Mrs Dunn, I’ll clean that up. I can’t get Mariola to do it, since Father M has ordered that she doesn’t leave my room.”
Mrs Dunn stood silent for a while more before speaking in a quiet, measured voice:
“I will not trust you, of all people, to clean up blood off of my floor. I will do it. Along with everything else.”
“Well, okay. Sorry, Mrs Dunn. I’ll go get ye some water, anyways.”
Peep grabbed the big water bucket and went outside to the well in the yard. Their three recruits, Dominic, Bev, and Lenny were set up for the night on some simple benches along the church’s back wall. They were clustered together having a not-so-hushed argument, and did not notice Peep coming out of the kitchen. As quietly as she could, which was very quiet indeed, Peep set the bucket down and creeped a little closer to them along the wall.
“Yeah, well, the stables is locked dipshit,” one of them hissed.
“What, we can’t break in? There’s no one watching it. We could be gone and heading home in five fucking minutes,” another said.
Peep stopped about five meters away from them and drew her shortsword as she hunkered down behind another bench.
“Oh, we’re just gonna break in and steal horses and ye think they’re gonna let that go? They’ll come after us,” the first man said. Having listened a fair bit to the trio’s spokesman, Dominic, in his interview with Father Morrenthall in the tower, Peep was now certain it was him talking.
“We aint stealing shit. They’re our fuckin horses!” the second man yelled.
“Shhhh! Be quiet!” Dominic hissed. “They aint ours no more. Ye heard what the sergeant said. They’re kingdom property we’re being allowed to use. If we’re good.”
“Bullshit!”
“Yeah, it is. But that being so aint gonna change how they see it. If we fuck off with three stollen horses, they will fuckin track us down and string us up,” Dominic said.
“Like fuck they will. With all their bullshit going on, ye think they give a shit about us? Besides which, that fuckin priest said one of us was gonna be allowed to go home to get our women. And what the fuck’s come of that? Lying prick. They’ve forgotten about us!”
“Like hell they have. They just don’t give a shit about us. There’s a big difference,” Dominic said bitterly.
Deciding that she had heard enough, Peep slipped out from behind the end of her bench and moved on the three in a low crouch. As she closed on them with her shortsword held low down by her side in her right hand, she flexed her left to activate her forceshield ring.
The forceshield her Stronian Wheel ring generated was an invisible, impenetrable, weightless shield in the same dimensions of a small roundshield with a handle in its center boss. The outer rim of the shield was rounded off just as though it were a real shield. Peep had been practicing and sparring with the shield, so she had a very good notion of where its dimensions were. While weightless, the edge of the shield would deliver whatever force she was able to generate with a punch.
While Peep could not tell one man from the other in the gloom of night, she had a good notion of which one was Dominic. Two of the men were seated on the bench with their backs to the church wall, with Dominic squatting on the ground in front of them to form a tight triangle.
Creeping along the church wall unnoticed, Peep reached the first man sitting on the bench. She punched him hard with her forceshield’s rim at the base of his skull just behind his ear. He fell with a grunt.
Moving laterally away from the wall, Peep stomped on Dominic’s leg at the top of the calf, just behind the knee to buckle it and drop him. As she stepped around Dominic, the third man was standing up. She lunged at him and caught him in the throat with an upwards chop with the forceshield’s rim. He fell gurgling.
Dominic was already rolling to his feet with a knife in his hand. Peep slashed his forearm and he yelped as he dropped the knife. Then she gave him a smart thump upside the head with the shield to put him down.
The fellow she had throat punched seemed like he might have some fight left in him. Sitting on the ground with his back against the bench, he too was going for a knife even as he struggled to breathe. Peep stomped on his groin and pressed her boot down on it as she lay her shortsword across his throat.
“All of ye’s, listen up!” she barked. “I’m Otilla! And yar caught! Lay down or I’ll fuckin kill ye!”
All three of the men now stayed just as they were, motionless. Whether this was obedience, or just a natural expression of their current state, Peep did not know. She eased her boot off the man’s groin and stepped back from him, and he curled up into a ball to fall over with a whimper.
“Miss Otilla… I… I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you!” Dominic finally managed, his voice quivering. “Ye cut me! Ye cut me real bad! I’m bleeding bad, miss!”
“Yeah, and ye raised up on me with a fuckin blade, so yar lucky ye still have an arm.”
Out of the moonlight, the men were still just dark shapes to Peep. She decided she needed some light. She moved over and with the toe of her boot nudged the first man she had stuck behind the ear.
“Hey, bozo, are ye with us, or am I gonna have to slice on ye a bit to wake ye up?”
“I’m okay, miss,” he said, his voice shaking in fear.
“Good. Ye guys have a lamp or candle or some shit?”
“Yes, miss. A lamp.”
“Good. Get it lit now. Hurry the fuck up. Ye try anything fucky and I’ll take yar fuckin head off. Understood?”
“Yes, miss.”
Staying on his knees, the man was soon able to locate a simple tin lamp and a tinderbox to get it lit. He held the lamp up towards Peep with trembling hands.
“I don’t wanna hold it, dipshit. Put it on the bench.”
Still on his knees, the man, who turned out to be Bev, did so.
“Now lay down on the ground. Face down. You too,” Peep stepped over to Lenny, who was still curled up and cradling his balls. “Face down, asshole.” Peep leaned down to smack him on the thigh with the flat of her shortsword.
Lenny rolled over onto his face with his hands still on his tenders.
Peep looked over at Dominic, who was sitting on the ground gripping his right forearm tightly with his left hand.
“Miss Otilla, I’m bleeding bad. I need help,” he said through clenched teeth.
Peep cast a speculative eye over Dominic and the blood around him.
“Nah. Yar gonna be okay for a bit. That aint bleeding enough to kill ye quick. I’ve seen how a bad arm cut bleeds before, and yars aint that. Ye just keep a tight hold of it, and ye’ll be okay for a while.”
Peep then pointed her sword down at Dominic’s knife on the ground, a short hunting knife he had pulled from under his tunic.
“Now I don’t reckon that as army recruits ye boys are supposed to have knives, now are ye?”
None of the three answered.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. So, whad’ye think Lieutenant Pekot would say if we get him outta bed and out here and told him that I heard ye conspiring to desert and that two of ye pulled knives on me when I confronted ye about it?”
“What? No! We weren’t!” Bev yelled from the dirt.
“What was that, ye fuck? Ye don’t tell me what I know!” Peep yelled as she stepped over top of him and stabbed him very lightly in the back of his thigh.
It was nothing more than a poke that penetrated no more than a centimeter, but Bev howled and started thrashing.
“Lay the fuck down, I said!” Peep yelled and stepped on the back of Bev’s neck to stomp his face into the dirt. He settled right down. She waited for a little while before continuing: “Ye shitheads better get this straight now: ye aint nothing but what yar betters tell ye ye are! And ye don’t got nothing coming to ye but what we say ye do! So smarten the fuck up, or I’m gonna start cutting bits of ye off that yar gonna miss!”
It was quiet for a while then. Satisfied that she had the men’s attention, Peep took her boot off of Bev’s neck and stepped away from him to again look down upon Dominic.
“So. I was asking ye: what d’ye think Lieutenant Pekot is gonna do when we tell him about what ye done? Ye know, what with him being a bloodthirsty Scythan raised by fire breathing Stronian black robes, and all. I reckon it’s gonna be a real heavy flogging for all three of ye, followed by a hanging for you, Dominic, and you, Bev. No other way that can go, right?”
Bev sobbed at this. Dominic and Lenny held their tongues, but Dominic looked like he might faint.
“Now, that’s one way we should probably do this, right? Ye know: the law-and-order way. The army way,” Peep said. She jabbed her shortsword Dominic’s way: “So, Dominic: yar the smartass of the three of ye, right? Yar the one that was arguing against running off. And ye were making a good case against it. And I agree with what ye said. I just have to wonder if ye would be doing that if the situation were more agreeable for escape.”
“No, Miss Otilla, I—” he began.
“Shut up,” Peep interrupted. “Now which one of these two fucks was it that ye were arguing down? It was Bev here, right?”
“Miss Otilla, please…” Dominic said, looking up at Peep with pleading eyes.
“Yeah, it was. I don’t need to turn ye fink to know it. Okay, then: Lenny; Bev; sit up the both of ye. Backs against the bench.”
Peep waited until all three men were seated in the dirt in front of her.
“Look at me, ye pricks,” she said.
Peep dismissed the invisible forceshield in her left hand by spreading her fingers to let go of its handle. Then she held her palm out towards the three men with hard intention. The heat of the Holy Fire inside the brand bathed them as though they were at the mouth of a forge.
“I don’t really give a fuck for law and order or the army way. But the three of ye made an oath to Stron. Stron. Now, what ye do about that is yar business. I’m just here to remind ye that yar oath was made, and heard, and that it is real. As real as it gets. So ye’d best think about that the next time ye set to thinking about deserting. Think about how Stron is gonna treat ye when yar life’s run its course and yar immortal soul is dragged before him. D’ye think ye’s gonna take kindly to ye being an oath breaker?”
Peep let them sit with that thought, with the heat from her brand beating down upon them. Then she relaxed, dropped her palm, and sheathed her sword. She stepped up to Dominic, crouched down and grabbed his bleeding forearm.
“Stron, heal this man. Amen,” she said, then giving a little sigh of pleasure as one of Stron’s angels did just that.
“Thank you, Otilla,” Dominic said.
“Thank Stron, man.”
“Praise Stron,” he said.
Peep nodded and stood up and put her hands on her hips. She looked over each of the men in turn before passing judgement.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Bev: yar the one that was set to run off. So, ye can go ahead and do that. Father M said one of you or Lenny would be the one to go and collect up yar families, so I’m deciding that’s gonna be you.”
Bev blinked in disbelief.
“What?” Lenny said, looking from Peep to Bev to Peep again in even greater confusion.
“Yeah. That’s right. Bev is the one to go. And I could give a shit if ye come back. I don’t want ye, and I don’t need ye. So fuck off and never come back, for all I care.”
“But Miss Otilla!” exclaimed Lenny. “He’s the one that was trying to desert! And yar gonna let him—”
“Shut up! It aint about you or yar fuckin families. If he’s yar true friend, he’ll do right by ye and follow through. And if he comes back when he doesn’t have to he might actually be worth a shit. But, as it stands, I don’t want him.
“Ye here that Bev? To keep yar oath to Stron and save yar soul, ye gotta go and get them families and bring them to Bristlehump where we’ll be. But I don’t care if ye do. Yar a whiny bitch, for one thing. For another, yar too stupid to see that Dominic was right about this not being the time for ye to escape. And Lenny here is either smart enough to keep his mouth shut, or just dumb and docile. And either way, that’s better than you.”
Bev glared up at Peep, but said nothing.
“Alrighty? Get yar shit together to leave. I’m gonna go get the key to unlock the stable and yar gonna get yar gear and get on yar pony and fuck off tonight. Ye best not let the sunrise catch ye in town, that’s all I’m saying. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Miss Otilla.”
“Good. Dominic: make sure Bev does as he’s told. Lenny: get that bucket over there filled up at the well and take it to Mrs Dunn in the kitchen.”
Lenny nodded and scampered off to get the bucket. Bev hesitated just a little before nodding and moving to gather his belongings.
“Thank you, Miss Otilla,” Dominic said as he got to his feet. “But, everyone just calls me, Dom, Miss Otilla.”
“Okay then, Dom. Carry on.”
“And what about these knives?” Dom asked, pointing out his and Bev’s knives on the ground where they had been dropped.
“I don’t see any knives, soldier. There weren’t no knife play out here tonight, was there? Musta just been a bad dream.”
“Yeah. That it was. Thank you, Miss Otilla.”
“Right. And don’t ye fuckin forget it, Dom. Ye owe me yar hide.”
“Yes. I won’t forget it. Thank you, Miss Otilla.”
“Right. As ye were, soldier,” Peep said as she left to go get the stable key from Mrs Dunn.
Muse Vassal 