table of contents – (spoilers)
The squad of Choke, Peep, Knuckle, Pinch, and Dom were ready to go out when Barrelmender came to the barracks to take command of the men. The mission was pressing Gotthilf, the bowyer and fletcher, who still owed them some arrows. This would also serve as a general probe of the Bristlenook area, the first time they would be returning since the incident with the white hart and the skeletons.
The five had already planned the mission in general terms over breakfast, so when Barrelmender arrived, they set out immediately. As was usual for a patrol, they were all mounted and fully armed and armored. Just as the last time they went to Gotthilf’s cottage, they went by way of the wide lumbering tracks all over the north ridge, known collectively as the North Ridge Trail. After they had slipped passed the lumberjacks at work and were approaching Bristlenook, the tracks ended abruptly, and they continued on a natural trail through the old-growth forest.
Having spoken to the lumberjacks about this matter, it was clear that this was the demarcation between the forest that could be lumbered, and that which could not. This made it a border, of sorts. It definitely had the feel of one. That its existence was not founded on the authority of the king they served, but on that of some other power was a stark concern.
The squad took their time moving carefully to their objective. Peep and Pinch alternated working point on horseback. Choke followed at a distance with his lance and shield at the ready. Behind him was Knuckle with his longbow in hand. At the rear was Dom, also with bow in hand, who focused his attention on the trail and forest behind them. It took them just over an hour to reach the approach to Gotthilf’s cottage on the outskirts of Bristlenook.
They stopped on the trail down from the North Ridge, keeping in the forest just inside the edge of the cottage’s clearing. Everyone except Choke dismounted and handed their reins over to Dom, who would take over Gabe’s normal role of minding the horses and guarding their rear. Peep and Pinch then slipped off into the woods to work their way around the side of the clearing. The area was not particularly large, so Peep had decided that Choke only needed to give her five minutes to get into position.
Once he had a notion that the time had elapsed, Choke nodded to Knuckle and Gabe. He rode alone out of the forest and down the trail towards the cottage. At the edge of the forest, Knuckle stepped up to the side of a good tree for cover and readied his bow. Just as the last time they had approached the cottage, three huge, ferocious dogs came snarling and baying up the trail towards Choke. They had the look of wolves, and there was no doubt they would be capable of killing a man. With them charging, Choke stopped Nike roughly sixty meters from the cottage. The beasts were well-trained, or just innately knew their business, and stopped about ten meters short of Choke and Nike.
“Hello! Gotthilf! Hello!” Choke shouted over the din of the barking and snarling dogs.
The man had stepped out of his abode with a notched bow in hand before Choke could even finish the hail. It seemed that he probably had not realized who it was he was dealing with until he was outside, because his posture suddenly went from cautious to alarmed. However, before he could react further, Peep and Pinch popped out of the forest together to his right at a range of about fifty meters.
Peep gave a shrill whistle to make sure Gotthilf noticed them.
“Drop the bow!” she yelled. “Drop the bow and call off the dogs! Do it! Now!”
Gotthilf did not obey her command. He ducked low and whirled back into his cottage, giving a quick series of shrill whistles as he did.
“Fuck,” Peep said as they heard the sound of the cottage’s heavy door being slammed. She and Pinch started running straight for the cottage.
“We just want to—” Choke began shouting. He cut his words off as the three dogs came charging straight at Nike.
In a situation such as this, with natural predators on the attack, there was no need to direct Nike’s response. The warhorse had been trained to fight if not directed to flee. Choke’s job was simply to keep his seat and fight along with him.
The first of the dogs came straight at Nike, but halted just short of the front hoof that Nike flicked out at its head. Working as a team, the other two dogs cut around to the right, attempting to come in low on the horse’s flank. Against a normal horse, this attack would probably have been terribly effective. However, these mutts had never encountered a properly trained warhorse with its man-at-arms in the saddle.
Choke stabbed down at the lead one with his lance and clipped it a glancing blow, taking a nasty gouge out of its flank. The dog yelped and skittered away before running off. With the other dog closing fast to come up at his belly, Nike pranced back and reared up high, coming down on it with both this front hooves stamping. The dog could barely yelp as its brains were smashed out.
The original lead dog now slipped in on Nike’s left flank, snapping at his hind legs. Nike screamed and hopped forward, lashing out with his rear hooves. Choke could not tell if Nike had been bitten, but at least he did not fall. The kicks missed the dog, but served as a stout deterrent on any further attack on that line.
Up at the tree line, Knuckle had been waiting on his longbow, but had not had a clear shot. As Nike hopped away from the dog at his heels, Knuckle was able to loose an arrow. He grazed the dog’s hind leg. The dog yelped and turned to scamper off into some brush.
While this had gone on, Peep and Pinch managed to get halfway to the cottage before Gotthilf sent an arrow their way from a side window. This sailed high and wide in a manner that did not suggest it was aimed to hit. Even so, it served its purpose as both Peep and Pinch ducked low and cut laterally to seek cover. They hit the dirt as Gotthilf slammed the window’s shutters, which had a good-sized cross-shaped, arrow slit in them. Gotthilf sent a second arrow out that in the general vicinity of the compost bin Pinch had taken cover behind.
“Fuck off!” Gotthilf yelled.
“Asshole! We just wanna talk!” Peep yelled back.
“Lick my ass!”
Following this, there was a pause before the sound of other shutters being banged shut on the cottage’s other sides.
“I don’t think he wants to sell us any bows,” Pinch called to Peep.
Peep ignored Pinch and raised herself up from behind the log bench she was behind to aim carefully and put an arrow through the shutter’s slit.
“Hey! People living under motherfuckin thatch roofs should mind their fuckin language when they’re talking to the likes of me!” she yelled.
“So, what? Yar gonna burn me for not kissing yar ass?” Gotthilf shouted back.
“I dunno yet! Keep this shit up and maybe ye can persuade me!” Peep returned.
It was quiet then. Up at the trail from the ridge, Choke was still at the treeline on Nike. Peep could just make out Knuckle inside the trees. Peep stuck her fingers in her mouth and issued a loud burst of whistles to signal that they should sit tight where they were.
“So, ye said yar here to talk, but if that’s so, what the fuck ye doing popping out at me on my flank like that?” Gotthilf said out his window, his volume and tone almost conversational.
“Didn’t know what kinda reception we were fit to get,” Peep answered in kind.
“What? And ye think a move like that is gonna improve it? Whad’ye want?”
“Whad’ye think, asshole? We paid for arrows up front and ye’ve only delivered half. Did someone tell ye to cut us off, or are ye just a fuckin thief?” Peep asked.
“Fuck you! Aint nobody tells me what to do!”
“So yar a fuckin thieving prick, then! Where’s our fuckin arrows?”
“It aint like that! I delivered half the order, sure. But ye aint up even up there to receive them. Just that drunk-ass raven yelling at me about cluttering up his shitty church. So, what the fuck? then I get to thinking that yar probably not even coming back. So what’s the fuckin point of delivering goods to a surly-ass priest who don’t even want them? I figure if ye come back, and ye fuckin give a shit, ye’ll come out here to get them.”
“Oh, is that so? So why the fuckin reaction when we do, then?”
“Fuck you! How the fuck am I supposed to know who the fuck ye are? I come out half sun blind, and alls I see is a couple giant goons set up to kill me! And then you two pop out on me! How am I supposed to react? Smarten up!”
“No, I don’t think I will. So ye got our arrows in there?” Peep asked.
“So what if I do? Ye think I’m gonna give them to ye after ye come here heavy and kill my fuckin dogs?” Gotthilf raised his voice again with real emotion.
“I think it was probably just the one killed. That’s what ye get sicking them on us!”
“Me? Fuck you! That’s on you! Ye fuckin ravens and king’s men all the same! Ye ride in and take whatever ye want! Trample anyone ye want! Just because ye can!”
Peep laughed. When she responded, her tone was cheery:
“Well, shit, Gotthilf, ye got us all figured out already! And here I thought I was gonna have to explain it to ye. But ye forgot one other thing: we got the King’s coin. Ye like that well enough. So quit being a fuckin asshole, open up, give us our arrows, and then ye can sell us a couple of bows! Ye can even charge us a fuckin premium on account of that dog of yars. I don’t mind paying ye something extra for that. So, whad’ye say?”
Gotthilf stayed quiet. Peep waited for a while before continuing:
“Or, ye can piss me off now and see what happens. Because ye owe us, and I need those fuckin arrows. But, either way, I’d just as soon get on with it. So what’s it gonna be?”
“How do I know yar not just gonna kill me?”
“Because we don’t kill cretins, ye mental midget. And unlike some people around here that I could mention, we keep our word. So open up and give us what ye owe us, or face the consequences,” Peep said.
“Fuck! Fine! Fuck ye all for this! This shit aint right!” Gotthilf shouted.
“People keep saying that like it matters. Shake a leg, buddy!”
There were some receding incoherent shouts and loud muttering from inside the cottage as Gotthilf seemed to leave the window. Pinch was nearer to the front door, so Peep gestured for him to cover the front. Pinch crawled off through the grass to get an angle on that. Peep raised herself up a little from behind her cover. When there was no response, she dashed up to the side of the cottage and crept up under the shuttered window. She could hear more muttering and then the loud sound of the front door being unlatched.
“Okay, assholes! I’m coming out. May ye die of a blight of yar assholes if ye fuckin kill me!”
The door swung open, and Gotthilf stepped out of his cottage with his hands raised. Pinch popped up from behind a raspberry patch with an arrow notched. Peep crept up to peek around the corner of the cottage.
“That’s real good, man. Keep walking out a ways,” she said quietly. “Good enough. Don’t move.”
With an arrow notched, Peep went around the front of the cottage and quickly looked inside. It was empty. Peep gave a whistle and waved for Choke and the others to join them.
“Ah, fuck. Ye motherfuckers killed Shaggs!” Gotthilf sobbed as he stared up dead dog at Nike’s feet.
They were all silent until Choke, Knuckle, and Dom rode down with Peep and Pinch’s horses. Gotthilf stifled an awful, guttural sound as he beheld his dog’s blood and tissue on Nike’s front hooves and fetlocks.
“I see you are grieved, sir,” Choke said. “You have my sympathies, but not my apology. Your dogs attacked my horse. We defended ourselves. Your other two dogs were lightly wounded and ran off. I am sure they will be fine. They seemed robust creatures.”
“I raised and trained Shaggs from a pup,” Gotthilf muttered low through clenched teeth.
Knuckle answered this one, his voice tight with aggression:
“Then yar the one to blame. Ye sent him at us. So shut the fuck up about it already.”
Gotthilf shot Knuckle a murderous glare, but held his tongue.
“Where’s our arrows,” Peep asked.
“Inside.”
“Knuckle: go with him and get them. Also whatever bows ye have to sell. Bring them all out,” Peep said.
Knuckle dismounted and pulled his warhammer. He pulled Gotthilf’s buck knife from its belt sheath and dropped it on the ground. Then he prodded Gotthilf towards his cottage door with the warhammer. This earned him another glare, but Knuckle only needed to raise his hammer up with an eager gleam in his eye to quiet the man again. They both went into the cottage.
“Pinch. Dom. Watch our flanks,” Peep ordered.
Both men nodded and moved to either side of the cottage to hunker down in some cover to watch the forest surrounding the clearing.
“I think I’ll stay mounted,” Choke said.
“Good call. It’ll make ye an easier target than me,” Peep grinned up at him.
“Indeed. I couldn’t hear much of what you were saying from up there. Why was he so hostile?”
“He claims he didn’t know it was us.”
“That could be true. He shot at you, though, didn’t he?”
“Yup. But he wasn’t shooting to hit anything. Just posturing up,” Peep said.
Choke nodded. “How did you convince him to open up?”
“I suggested that I might burn down his shack if he didn’t make good on what he owes us.”
“I figured it was something like that. That seems to be the role we are adopting out here.”
“It is what it is. They need to learn. And we need them fuckin arrows,” Peep said, her voice cold. “Okay, here he comes.”
Gotthilf came out of the cottage carrying three bundles of arrows: two of longbow war arrows, and one of Peep’s custom shortbow ones. Knuckle was right behind him.
“There we go,” Peep said happily. “Set them down right there. Were’s the bows?”
“I only got two fuckin arms, ye know! And yar man there won’t help!”
“Oh, no shit? Ye mean he didn’t fill up his arms like a dipshit so’s ye can pull a move? What an asshole, huh? Get the fuckin bows,” Peep laughed.
“We are paying him for whatever we take,” Choke said, once Gotthilf and Knuckle were back inside.
“Yeah, of course. And I told him he can even charge us a premium on account of you trampling his dog.”
“So it wasn’t just a threat of burning to get him to open up, then.”
“Carrots and sticks, I suppose. And I aint one to hand out many carrots, as ye know. But, in this case, he was locked up pretty tight, and if I burned that shit down, we aint getting the arrows neither. And I don’t think we wanna be here battering the door in while he sneaks out through his ditch tunnel to pop up someplace and backshoot us. So, there was that.”
“I was not suggesting anything negative, Peep. I just find it interesting that you’d avoid telling me that you did anything but threaten horrible murder. And that you seem to be ashamed to have done so.”
“Well, I don’t want ye thinking I’m going soft here, or nothing. What with bringing Lenny back alive. And, ye know, that whole Reece business,” Peep smirked.
“Reece? That was soft, was it?”
“Fuckin rights! I didn’t cut his fuckin balls off before killing him. He got off light!”
“Well, if you say so. Ah, here they are,” Choke finished, as Gotthilf and Knuckle came back out from the cottage.
Gotthilf carried a large roll of tanned hides. He set this down on a table under the overhang of the roof and unrolled it. Inside were four unstrung bows, each wrapped in its own supple deerskin hide. As he unrolled these to reveal the bows, Gotthilf covered the rough wooden table with the hides. There were two heavier deer bows and two shortbows that were only just a little heavier than Pinch’s original, underpowered bow. Each of the bows had several strings with them.
“That’s all ye got?” Peep asked.
Gotthilf glared at her. “Folk around here usually take pride in making their own, so I don’t need many on hand.”
“Yeah, so I’ve been hearing. Only people that aint worth a shit buy bows, right?” Peep smirked. “But, before ye go getting smug about it, just know that being worth a shit to folks the likes of you don’t mean shit to me.”
Peep grinned at Gotthilf until it seemed he was about to respond.
“Okay. Back off, I’ll check them out,” she said flicking her fingers his way.
Peep took her time handling each of the bows and looking them over carefully before stringing them. She gave each of them a few full pulls.
“Alright, then. These are solid. Ye do good work, man!” she said as she began to unstring them.
Gotthilf nodded proudly even despite himself.
“We’ll take them all. Plus whatever arrows ye have for them,” Peep said. “How much for all that, plus the dog. And don’t go getting greedy, now.”
Gotthilf goggled at her for a moment before he got his wits about him.
“Uhh… Okay. Four silver each for the deer bows, and two each for the rabbit shooters. So that’s twelve for all four. I guess I got about three dozen deer arrows and about the same for the littles, so another two silver for all the arrows. So fifteen total.”
Peep whistled. “That’s pretty steep.”
“Hey! That’s the price. Now if someone’s gonna come and buy the whole lot, I suppose we’d make a price. But ye killed my fuckin dog and said ye’d try to make that right. And yar the ones threatening to kill me here, so you tell me!”
Peep looked to Choke, who sighed and nodded.
“Okay, man, ye got yarself a deal. Fifteen silver for the lot,” Peep said.
She spat in her hand and stepped to Gotthilf to offer it. He begrudgingly spat in his hand to shake on the deal.
“Pack it all up nice to go on the horses. Quick now. We’ll sort out yar coin while ye do.”
“Alright, but that price don’t include my hides here. I’ve got some sack cloth I can wrap them in,” Gotthilf snapped.
“Fair enough. Get on it. Knuckle: ye stick with him. And be as nice as ye can. Poor guy’s suffered a bereavement, after all.”
Knuckle snorted in laughter and followed Gotthilf back into the cottage. Peep and Choke each pulled out their money pouches.
“As the unit’s officer, this is my expense. These shall be my bows, for the unit,” Choke said.
“Okay, fair enough. But I’m the chief scout, and I’m gonna be running the archers. When they’re archers and not in a shield wall, that is. So I’ll kick in. You go the eight, and I’ll chuck in seven.”
“Sounds good. Thank you, Peep.”
Choke counted out the silver coins and handed them down to Peep. She combined them with hers and fanned them out on the deer hides next to the bows.
“Fuck it,” she muttered. “This is a nice hide and we gotta shake a leg.”
Peep dropped another silver piece with the others, and pulled the largest hide out from the others. She then wrapped up the four bows together in it.
“We got the bows! Hurry up with them fuckin arrows!” she called into the cottage.
Gotthilf and Knuckle soon came out with the bundles of hunting arrows.
“I’m taking this hide. I left an extra silver for it on the table. Don’t be a dick about it,” Peep said to Gotthilf.
He looked over the coins and nodded. “Okay. Are we done?”
“Guess so.”
“Good. So we’re done then. Don’t come back. If ye do, ye’d better be fixing to kill me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Peep said, before turning to Knuckle: “Help me tie these down on everyone’s saddles. Spread them out.”
Choke dismounted to help and they got busy loading the bundles of arrows and the bows on the backs of everyone’s saddles. It was a tight fit and took some doing. As soon as they turned their attention away from him, Gotthilf gathered up his coins and hides and went back into his cottage, slamming his door on them.
When they were almost finished loading the horses, there was a low whistle of alert from Dom’s flank. Peep left Choke and Knuckle to finish up and skulked over to Dom.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Exactly. Up,” he said nodding upwards.
It took a second to spot what he was indicating. High up above, what looked to be a large eagle was flying with a half dozen crows. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss. However, something about it soon seemed off to Peep. It took her just a second to figure it out. They were flying together, almost in formation. Normally, crows and raptors flying close together would be in some manner of conflict, if not outright aerial combat.
“Fuck,” she whispered. “That aint right.”
They watched the birds for another half minute, or so. There was no doubt: they were flying together as a group, and circling overhead. They were well outside of bow range.
“How long they been there?” Peep asked.
“I noticed them just a few minutes ago, but didn’t think anything of it. But then I noticed they seemed to be buddies, or some shit. They’ve been circling overhead since I noticed them,” Dom said.
“Good call. Good spot. It’s fuckin time to go,” Peep said.
She and Dom fell back to the horses at the cottage. As they did, Peep gave the whistle signal to bring Pinch in as well.
“We good to go?” Peep asked Choke.
“Just about. What is it?”
Peep pointed up at the birds overhead. “More bird fuckery. That’s how the shit started last time we were here, remember? That bunch aint meant to be friendly with each other.”
“Okay, that’s it!” Knuckle exclaimed as he finished tying down the last bundle.
“Nice and easy, now. We go back out the same way we came in. Let’s go,” Peep said, her voice hushed and full of tension.
Muse Vassal 