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Thread: The Slaver

  1. #31

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    The wagon lurched forward. The horses, urged by the driver’s lash, hurled themselves along the rutted road, blind to all but the biting whip. Soldiers and bandits fought at the cart blocking the road. On the horses ran, dragging the wagon behind them.

    “Ain’t gonna make it,” shouted the man sitting up front with the driver. One hand gripped the seat to keep from being thrown off by the heavy, bucking wagon. His other reached between his feet for a cocked crossbow.

    The driver yelled, as if his fear and the snapping lash would make the horses run faster. Arrows chased the wagon, cutting through the tarp, thunking into the forest side of the wagon. Elena and Octavia huddled together on the wagon bed, pressing themselves against the vineyard side of the wagon.

    The driver pulled reins to the side, fighting to turn horse heads, direct their movement to the side of the cart in the road. They could make it, there between the cart and the vineyards. He knew it. Horse necks arched but like blind, fearful beasts they charged into the cart and the men fighting around it.

    The sudden stop threw Elena and Octavia against the front of the wagon. The men flew from the seat as if snatched up by a giant bird. Cracking wood and snapping bones. Pitiful cries of horses screaming, tangled and broken in the wreckage. The wagon listed, one of its front wheels broken off.

    Elena pushed aside the pillows and overturned chests that had fallen over octavia. “Mistress! Mistress!”

    Octavia groaned and pushed to her knees.“I’m not hurt,” she said. “Are you?”

    “No. We have to go!” Elena took Octavia by the wrist and crawled to the back of the wagon. Around the wreckage men fought. They snarled and tore at one another like dogs in a pit, their teeth the steel in their hands, biting, ripping.

    The two girls froze. A shadow pulled itself into the back of the wagon, the silhouette misshapen and fuzzy behind the curtains. The wagon rocked beneath the shadow’s weight. It was the weight of a man, but its grunts were that of a pig snuffling in the dirt for mushrooms.

    A troll, thought Elena. A tumorous troll wearing the bones of men for armor, come to claim her as his own before the redcap goblins could get their hands on her. She and Octavia backed away from the curtain careful to make no sound.

    The shadow jerked down the curtain, flinging it aside. For a moment the girls and the man stared at each other. The girls stared, breathless and tense as two faeries beneath the confused glare of a troll who had not expected to find dinner in the old oak tree. But seeing dinner was to be hand, the troll grinned at his good fortune.

    “C’mere, bitch,” snarled the man, his dirty hand grabbing Octavia’s slim ankle.

    Octavia screamed. She kicked with her free foot but it only made the man laugh. Her hands reached for Elena.

    Elena took Octavia by the wrists, pulling , but was dragged along with Octavia to the back of the wagon. “Let her go!”

    Another man’s weight climbed onto the back of the wagon. A shadow rose up, sharp and distinct against the dying sunlight. Out of the shadow a scraped and bloodied handed reached, tangled in the bandit’s hair and jerked the head back. The point of a dagger erupted, angry, dark and dripping , from the throat.

    Hands clutching at Octavia’s ankle now clutched at the gurgling throat.

    “Esteban!” shouted Elena. She pulled on Octavia’s wrists, helping her scrambling mistress away from the dying bandit.

    Esteban twisted the dagger, left it lodged in the neck, and shoved the man away. The man fell to the side, throat gushing. Elena stared up at Esteban Xavier de Rosa. His young face carried the resignation of a man knowing he would not see the morning but determined to fight through the night.

    Huddling with Octavia, Elena asked quietly, “Estaban?”

    “Hide, if you can,” said Esteban. “It is the fairy time and there are monsters all around.” He took the dead man’s short sword and left the wagon, lending his snarls, his shouts, his biting steel, to the bloody dog fight swirling around the wagon.

    “Esteban!” Elena crawled to the back of the wagon but Octavia held her back. “Let me go!”

    “No,” shouted Octavia If we go out there we’ll get found.

    “We’ll get found if we are in here,” said Elena, trying to tug free of Octavia but instead falling to tears. “They always find you no matter where you hide.”

    “Maybe not.” Octavia reached tentatively to the dead man and with a shaking hand drew the dagger from his throat. She gazed at the wet, glimmering blade, and set the point against Elena’s neck.

    Elena clenched her eyes. Her breath hitched. Octavia slid the blade under Elena’s leather collar and sawed through the knots holding it on, the knots tied by her cousin Guy, marking the peasant girl as his. Octavia pulled the collar off, cut it in two and tossed it away.

    “Mistress?”

    “They’ll r@pe a slave,” said Octavia. “Maybe not if they think you are a cousin to me. Elena Pelucia de Ruiz. Remember that. Maybe they will ransom us.”

    Elena repeated the name and nodded. “Yes, Mist- I mean, cousin.” She looked out the back of the wagon. The snarls and howls of bandit dogs outnumbered those of soldier dogs. “Sir Guy will come for us. I know he will.”

    In the dimming light beyond the wagon wreckage a young cavalier fell. Like so many young cavaliers, he had come to the banner of Sir Guy De Leon seeking glory. He had come with his blonde hair and his fitted scale leather armor seeking a name longer than Esteban Xavier de Rosa. Instead he found only the fairy time and the monsters that live there.

  2. #32

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    In the dining hall, Guy sat in the high-backed chair intended for the governor. For so long had he been motionless, leaning forward in the chair, elbows on the table and forehead in the palm of his hands, that house slaves and servants passing by the door thought him asleep. To Guiterez, Guy looked as if in penitent prayer, the high back of the chair looming behind him like the façade of a carved, wooden cathedral.

    Guy neither slept nor prayed. He listened to the war council debate swirling around him. Sitting with Guy, Graecus and Guiterez, were landed gentry from the vineyard estates, city elders, obsequious little bureaucrats and a few of Pelucium’s wealthiest merchants. They all thought their words mattered in the war council. Guy did not bother remembering their names. To him only the voices of his fellow cavaliers mattered. He had, for the most part, already made his decisions before the council convened.

    The council was simply to placate the landed gentry, city elders, bureaucrats and merchants; It was to give them illusion of choice. In the end, they would have none.

    With Vacil dead, who would govern Pelucium? One of the nameless men sitting around the table? Word had to be sent that the city needed a new governor. But Guy did not care. He killed the Governor, his Uncle, and watched the light leave his eyes. That his cousin Octavia was on the road to Cordava by the time he returned to Pelucium was in a way a blessing. He would not have to give Octavia the lie that an assassin had killed her father as well as her mother. At least she was safe.

    Where was the grand Duke? How many men did he have? Would he bypass Pelucium on his way to fight Count Chazar? Guy Guiterez and Graecus knew the answers. The scouts had told them that the Grand Duke marched with the bull. They came for Pelucium in a large central force, the bull’s head, flanked and preceded by two smaller forces, the horns. Gore, encircle and destroy. Marching with the bull required large numbers, the scouts estimating between two and three thousand. A hundred horsemen and a few town militia could not hope to hold Pelucium against the charging bull. And, if they knew the strength of the Grand Duke, the Grand Duke likely knew theirs as well. Already scouting parties had skirmished. The bull was closer than any of the landed gentry, city elders, bureaucrats or merchants suspected.

    Pelucium would be a quick prize for the Grand Duke and be made a supply point for his army. Guy could not let that happen.

    Guy raised his head and sat back in the cathedral chair. “Thank you, gentlemen. We will convene again tomorrow to weigh our options.” He did not look to the landed gentry, city elders, bureaucrats and merchants. His voice, and his casual dismissal of the group with a hand, was enough to prevent any further discussions.

    When only the three cavaliers remained in the dining hall, Guy asked the old sergeant, “Will everything be ready in time?”

    “It will,” said Guiterez. “The wagons are gathered near the grain stores. Give the word and we will seize all that we can and burn the rest.”

    “The stores, the mills, the grinding stones. Everything is to be destroyed.”

    “There will be resistance,” said Graecus.

    “Then the resistance will be cut down,” said Guy. “I want nothing left that can aid the Grand Duke.”

    Graecus did not argue the matter. This was a rare time when he and Guy were of a like mind. A hundred cavalry could not defend the town and the militia could not be counted on to do anything in a fight except die. When the Grand Duke arrived, the town would roll over and piss itself like a frightened dog. Men who had grown rich under Vacil’s governorship would cast their loyalty to whomever promised to keep them in coin.

    “How close are they,” Guy asked.

    “Three days,” said Guiterez. “Maybe five if they slow for scavenge.”

    “I would not,” said Graecus. “It is obvious the outlying villages favor the Grand Duke and with Pelucium under-defended, he would be a fool to not press his advantage.”

    Guy nodded. “Tonight, then. Strike camp under pretense of us leaving to lure the Grand Duke’s army away. Once it is dark we will seize the storehouses and leave for Chazar’s keep with all we can carry. Burn what is left. The same for any farms and estates we pass along the way. Leave only soot and ash in our wake.”

  3. #33

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    Elena and Octavia stumbled through the woods, blindfolded and their hands bound by strips of cloth torn from their dresses. Rough hands pushed and tugged at them, guiding them. Crude voices admonished them to a faster pace and cursed whenever one of the girls tripped over the unsteady ground and had to be helped up.

    These were not horrid little redcap goblins who would take the girls into their spider holes and force them to squirt litters of goblins until their hips burst. These were men, and though their hands and their dicks had been stayed by Octavia telling the men she was the daughter of Governor Magistrate Vacil de Leon, that Elena was her cousin, it would not last long. At least not for Elena.

    Elena knew the men would eventually see the difference between her and Octavia. Elena with her linen dress and Octavia with her satiny one. Octavia with her precise, trained speech, Elena with her coarse peasant tongue. The name Elena Pelucia de Ruiz sounded important, almost important as Octavia Amada de la Cipriata Leon y Zorgassa. But that would only stall the rough use and Elena found herself dreading the abuse when these men found they had been deceived.

    The clawing of branches and twigs at the girls’ arms and legs stopped. A small fire cracked and popped nearby. Elena recognized the dull smell of things cooking which had been pulled from the ground, potatoes, onions, carrots. Rough hands gripped the girls’ arms and arrested their movement.

    “Wait here, I’ll get Lucio .” It was the voice of the pig-faced man, the one who had dragged Octavia and Elena from the wagon and thrown them to the dirt beside the road. He had stood over them, leering as the others looted the broken wagon and the corpses of the men who were supposed to protect Octavia and Elena.

    Only the imperious manner in which Octavia informed Pigface and the others she was the Governor’s daughter, and Elena her cousin, kept the girls from being dragged into the woods and left there with bruised thighs and slit throats. Pigface and the others had never seen Vacil de Leon or his daughter, Octavia. But Octavia spoke with such confidence and the condescension of privilege, promising unimaginable punishments if she and her cousin were harmed, that the men did not doubt her.

    Elena said nothing then, and had not spoken since, for fear of being found to have none of the same confidence and disdain.

    Someone tugged down the blindfolds, leaving them dangling like bandanas around the girls’ necks. Elena glanced up then cast her eyes down. They were in a camp, of sorts. A small fire heated water and vegetables in an old tin pot. A half dozen lean-tos, good for nothing more than shade, ringed the small clearing. A few women, as ragged as the men, stopped to see what their men had brought back.

    “Who are they,” asked a man standing in front of Octavia and Elena. He reminded Elena of a farmer in her village, Harold, with his pot belly and horseshoe of hair that wrapped the back of his head.

    “I am Octavia Amada de-”

    Lucio held up a hand to command silence from Octavia. “I did not ask you, girl.”

    “How dare you! My father is the Governor Magistrate of Pelucium and-“

    “Shut her up,” said Lucio. Pigface jostled Octavia’s blindfold up to her mouth and twisted it tight. Hearing Octavia’s pained whimper, Elena closed her eyes. “Now, who are they,” Lucio again asked.

    Pigface laid a heavy hand on Octavia’s shoulder and forced her to her knees. “Vacil de Leon’s daughter,” he said then nodded aside to Elena. “And her cousin.”

    Lucio regarded the girls and scratched his potbelly. He looked to Elena. “Well?”

    Elena nodded her head but kept her eyes cast down.

    “There’ll be nineteen hells to pay once the Governor learns they’re missing,” said Lucio. “But maybe those nineteen hells will pay us some gold scratch if we bring them back. For now, tie our little golden goats to a tree and keep the mouthy one gagged. I don’t want to hear her bleating all night.”
    Last edited by Guy-de-Leon; 1st August 2015 at 23:01.

  4. #34

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    Guy and Sergeant Guiterez sat on opposite sides of a small campfire, Guy on a stump and the sergeant on a pine log. Other campfires dotted the night, spread across the field like little orange and red stars that had fallen from the sky. Crickets sang to one another in the quiet night, their songs overshadowed by the occasional laugh or shout from one of the other campfires.

    Sergeant Guiterez stretched out his leg and rubbed at the old arrow wound. “You think Sir Graecus is lying ?”

    “Not for certain,” said Guy, “But, I have my suspicions.”

    Sergeant Guiterez looked to the manor house at the far end of the field. Behind one of those lit windows was Graecus, in a room he had demanded from the owner. Damned if he was going to spend another night as a barbarian in a tent if there was a down mattress and pillows available. Guiterez looked back to Guy. “Arrogance does not make a person a liar. Take you for example.”

    Guy grunted. “True. But there are too many things I find difficult to believe.”

    “Such as?”

    Guy leaned forward, resting elbows on knees and lacing his fingers. He looked across the fire to the only man he trusted. “First, he too readily agreed to the price. He made a show of being offended but he agreed to more than would otherwise be paid for a hundred lances. Second, his insistence on getting town militia from Pelucium. Half of them would run and the other half shiit themselves if committed to a fight. And finally, his agreement that we should abandon Pelucium and burn our way to Chazar’s keep.”

    “As you say, the town militia would be useless. But, we hundred lances could not defend a town against as many men as the Grand Duke has. We have no choice but to retreat to the keep.”

    “We won’t be able to defend the keep, either.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Graecus likes to crow and strut like a red-feathered cock before a fight, and like that cock, he is always eager to be thrown into the fighting ring so he can cut and slash his enemy. Not now. He is willing to run, leave nothing behind for the Grand Duke. He wants to get back to the keep because he knows Chazar does not have the men to meet the Grand Duke in open battle.”

    Wavering fire shadows shadows seeped like ink into the rugged lines on the old sergeant’s face. Everything Guy said, Guterez had already considered. When Sir Graecus first arrived seeking help, Guiterez had his doubts but he said nothing to Guy. He said nothing when Sir Graecus diverted the cavalry company to Pelucium or when the decision was made to leave nothing behind for the Grand Duke’s army. Guiterez said nothing because he knew this would likely be his last chance for campaign glory, his last chance to sit in the saddle and feel in his chest the growl of thunderous, charging hooves. He said nothing and now he was ashamed to have put himself above the company.

    “What do we do?” asked Guiterez.

    Guy tossed a twig into the fire. “We continue on. We’ve committed to the fight.”

    “It has been fifteen years, Guy. What if she is no longer committed to you?” Only the older cavalier with his grizzled, stubbled chin was ever so direct with Guy, so able to peel back the thick veneer of indifference in which Guy had varnished himself. As much as Guiterez wanted to seek his last battlefield glories, he knew Guy wanted to seek the one woman who had ever melted away the varnish to touch what was beneath. In the court of Duke Etona they called her the Black Nightengale, and when alone Guy would run his fingers though her dark hair. Now, she was Countessa Sofia Chazar di Cobron, wife of Count Chazar and untouchable.

    Guy’s hawkish eyes peered through the fire to his sergeant, mentor and friend. “Then I will bleed for the gold rather than for her.” But Guy knew that was a lie. He would always bleed for his Black Nightengale

  5. #35

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    Ransom had been arranged. One of Lucio’s men brought word that a price had been agreed upon and with an hour, Octavia and Elena were being led through the woods to an exchange point near one of the vineyard villas along the road to Pelucium.

    But that did not stop Octavia complaining about the indignity of being tied to a tree for three days or of being bound and having an old canvas sack thrown over her head for the march from the camp to the exchange point. Octavia’s assumption of noble privilege had saved her and Elena but now it threatened to undo them.

    They had stopped and were told to sit. Elena leaned back against a fencepost. Somewhere across the vineyards, crows heckled and argued with one another. Elena plucked at the twine binding her wrists behind her and quietly suffered in the sack’s stifled air, heated by her own breath and the harsh late summer sun. She said nothing, just as she had managed to say nothing for three days. Elena closed her eyes and silently prayed Octavia would, for once, be quiet. Was it not enough that they were being returned? Why did Octavia have to risk angering these men?

    Octavia refused to sit and stamped her foot. “I am gagging from the heat. Take this sack off my head, now!”

    “Shut up,” said Pigface, grabbing Octavia’s upper arm and shoving her on her ass. “Shut up or I’ll give you something to gag on.” The other men chortled.

    Octavia kicked blindly at Pigface but her foot found only air. “Guy will gut you for that. He’ll gut all of you!”

    Yes, thought Elena. Sir Guy de Leon, the butcher of Riverbend might just gut them all. But he would not do it for a sack over Octavia’s head or for her being shoved to the ground. He would gut them when he learned of the groping hands that fondled his cousin at night after she was blindfolded and gagged. He would gut them for his cousin but would not gut them for Elena. She was, after all, just a slave.

    Elena had expected more than the roaming hands and the lewd promises. Travera’s men after the Seige at Zirva, and Guy’s men after he had chained her to the back of the cook wagon, had used her for so much more than a thing to fondle. Unlike Octavia, Elena did not whimper or try to squirm away from the hands. Finding no pleasure in Elena’s lack of discomfort, the hands roamed even more eagerly over Octavia.

    Maybe if Elena had acted frightened or reveled in the anonymous touches, Octavia would have been spared them. Maybe it would not have mattered. Maybe Sir Guy will pay his cousin’s ransom but leave her to these rough-handed men. Maybe he would take her back. She wanted that most of all but knew it never mattered what a slave wanted. Elena closed her eyes. Maybe if she wanted it bad enough…

    “Here they come,” said Lucio.

    Elena heard the tramp of hooves on the packed earth road, the harrumph of horses, the creak and clatter of and old cart. The bandits murmured with anticipation and gave one another congratulatory elbow nudges.

    “They had to bring a cart to carry the ransom,” said Pigface.

    “And to carry the girl’s back,” said Lucio. “They don’t need a cart for a stone’s weight of silver and a quarter of gold. Get them on their feet and take the hoods off.”

    Elena blinked and squinted against the sunlight. Six horsemen, two abreast and three deep came up the road. Behind them, a drover rode an old cart pulled by a mule. And above them, a Green Stag banner, sign of the Grand Duke, hung loose in the dead summer air.

    “No,” said Octavia, her haughty, nobility gone. She looked, pleading, to Lucio.“You can’t give us to them.”

    Somewhere across the vineyards, the crows laughed.

  6. #36

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    Lucio took Octavia by the arm and stepped forward. “Like we promised. The Governor Magistrates daughter.” He nodded over his shoulder to Elena. “And her cousin.”

    Pigface placed a broad hand between Elena’s shoulders and pushed her to stand beside Octavia. Elena’s fingers plucked nervously at the twine binding her wrists behind her back. She glanced up to the men on horseback and then quickly down again.

    The cavalry sergeant leading the Grand Duke’s men tapped a spurred heel against his horse. The beast stepped forward, the scales of leather barding rasping against one another. “And how do we know you speak the truth,” asked the sergeant.

    “The girls told us who there are, sir,” said Lucio. “We took them captive from a wagon leaving Pelucium not four days ago.”

    The sergeant looked to the girls but seemed unconvinced even with Octavia squirming to be away from Lucio and her reticence to be given over to men under the Grand Duke’s banner. The sergeant called over his shoulder. “Lazar, ask your questions.”

    The standard bearer rode forward. He was unarmored and dressed in a cut sleeve doublet popular in the northern courts of Zingara. He carried no weapons. Everything about him, his face, his hands, even his horse seemed cleaner, more well-kept than the cavlarymen he was with. The bright green sash pinned with a broach to his right shoulder marked him as one of the college of heralds.

    “What is your name,” Lazar the Herald asked Octavia.

    Octavia wrenched her arm out of Lucio’s grasp, glaring at the balding man. She then looked to Lazar. “You are not any of my father’s men or any of the men who follow my cousin, Guy.”

    Lazar gave the green stag banner a slight shake. “How very astute of you,” he said and a few of the cavalrymen chuckled. “But, the daughter of Governor Magistrate Vacil de Leon should be capable of answering such a simple question with her full name.”

    Octavia said nothing. Lazar looked to the sergeant and shrugged. “Without an answer we cannot be certain.”

    “Then we have no compromise,” the sergeant said to Lucio.

    Pigface grabbed Octavia by the hair, wrenching her head back. “Tell them who you are you stupid bitch.”

    The sergeant made a motion with his hand for the cavalry and wagon to turn around. The bandits looked to one another, to Lucio, to Pigface. The ransom, more gold and silver than they would see in ten years, was about to leave. Pigface’s drew his knife and set the point against the divot in Octavia’s collarbone.

    “Tell them,” demanded Lucio.

    Octavia whimpered, too frightened to say anything. The Grand Duke’s men paid her no mind, turning to leave when Elena said quickly, “She is Octavia Amada de la Cipriata Leon y Zorgassa!”
    The sergeant stopped the men with a barked, “Wait.”

    Lazar turned his horse back, looking at Elena. “And who is her mother?”

    “Altona of Zorgassa,” said Elena. “Her father, Vacil de Leon. She is cousin to Sir Guy de Leon, Knight Commander of Skalvo Forikajo, Cavalier of the Third Rose, Fifth Courtier to Duke Etona, Champion of the Boar, Honored of Cordova and Hero of Green Bridge.”

    “And who are you?”

    “I am her cousin, Elena Pelucia de Ruiz,” said Elena. She cut her eyes to the whimpering Octavia and the knife point balanced against her slender throat.

    Lazar pinched his sharp chin, considering Elena. “The lineage, as recited, is adequate. The honors afforded to Sir Guy are in the correct order. It is known that the Governor Magistrate’s daughter is a dark-haired girl of marriageable age.”

    “Well,” prodded the sergeant. “Are the girls who these men claim them to be?”

    Lazar’s dark eyes shifted between the girls. He had not heard of Elena Pelucia de Ruiz. He was certain the name was fabricated but could not determine why. With both of the girls being of the same age, both with rich back hair, Lazar could not say for certain which was the real Octavia. He nodded. “I believe the girls to be who their captors claim.”

    “Cut their bindings and send them over,” ordered the sergeant.

    Pigface cut the twine binding Octavia’s and Elena’s wrists. Elena wrapped her arm around Octavia’s shoulders and started to guide Octavia to the cavalrymen. They were not Guy’s men but they were cavaliers and Elena had no doubt she and Octavia would be safer in the hands of the Grand Duke’s men than common bandits.

    Lucio held out a hand, stopping the girls from walking the short distance to the armored horsemen. “And the ransom? We are owed ransom for these girls.”

    The sergeant snorted derisively. “Of course. Give these their geld.”

    The cart drover drew back a tarp and pushed two small coffers onto the ground. Gold and silver spilled out, glimmering in the noon sun. With triumphant whoops and shouts, the bandits rushed to the coin.

    The drover then threw a hammer and nails to the ground and pulled the cart away. He helped Elena and Octavia onto the back of the cart and with Lazar riding at the side of the cart, drove the cart back toward Pelucium.

    “Where are you taking us,” Octavia asked Lazar.

    “Pelucium,” said Lazar. Seeing the confusion in her face, he told Octavia, “What is left of the city has fallen to the Grand Duke. It was burning when we arrived. We saved what we could.”

    Elena looked up, to Lazar, concern in her voice. “And Sir Guy?”

    “He was the one that ordered the city burned. The Governor Magistrate had no say in it. By all accounts he was assassinated prior to Sir Guy burning the city.”

    Octavia wailed and Elena comforted her. Lazar regarded the two girls, one with the calm demeanor he had come to expect from nobility, the other seeming to mourn the news. He was still unsure which was Vacil’s daughter. She was the one they had paid for. The other, Lazar could not account for. There was no familial connection between Ruiz, de Leon and the city of Pelucium.

    The armed horsemen turning and forming a wedge in the road reminded Lazar that it did not matter which of the girls the ransom was for. Lazar and the mule-drawn cart with its dark-haired cargo plodded on toward Pelucium, while five cavaliers charged back down the road to remind Lucio, Pigface, and the others that peasants did not demand ransom for nobility.

    In the days that followed, crows pecked at the corpses propped up along the road. They were drawn by the stench of carrion and the glimmer of silver coins nailed to the foreheads of their rotting meals.

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