Balance

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Valonia
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Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:19 pm

Balance

Post by Valonia »

The moons were both full, and their combined luminescence bathed the land in an ethereal glow. Though clouds were gathering on the horizon, the current visibility made it not only a good night for travelers who wished to make favorable time on the road, but also gave an advantage to predators -- both the animal kind and those of the human variety.

As it so happened, those human predators were the targets of Valonia’s present investigation.

There had been numerous reports of banditry along the king’s highway, targeting the cargo caravans that came overland from Britain. Some of those shipments had been destined for the city of Yew, and so there were more than a few parties invested in the resolution of this matter. It had become the journeyman druid’s task to glean the facts of the situation.

The first part involved finding the culprits. That was the relatively easy part. Valonia had been following the routes for a few days, keeping to an elevated position in the nearby landscape in order to monitor the roads unseen. The caravans came at semi-regular intervals, so it was easy to identify each and trace their path.

The next part involved waiting for something to happen, which was much less predictable.

It was the tenth night of surveillance before bandits finally attacked. The target was a modest expedition: two wagons with half a dozen teamsters and attendants. The druid had been watching from a careful distance when she saw the fires of extra torches igniting as the alarm went up. The sound of arrows whistling, the lowing bellows of oxen, and the higher-pitched human cries drifting on the night air only confirmed the attack.

The woman’s pale eyes followed back the path of the arrows, making out the human shapes among the trees. As near as Valonia could tell, the bandits numbered a good twice than the teamsters, more or less. It would be a difficult fight, as outnumbered as they were.

From a purely strategic standpoint, it would be a bad idea to intervene. The numbers weren’t in the caravan’s favor. Even if Valonia intervened, she was only one person. The aid she could give was limited. Furthermore, taking action now risked some of bandits escaping and reporting the attack to possible others, whereas if she followed them afterward, she might find their base of operations. With that information, and the backing of a stronger force of arms, organized banditry in the area might be completely dismantled. In the long run, withholding action may lead to more lives saved.

…but the sounds of this. The smells of it.

A cry, silenced. The sudden thud of an arrow meeting another mark. She could hear, even from here, the too familiar wet sound of a blade sinking into unguarded flesh. The smell of the burning pitch of the torches. The shouts of the attacked, the cries of the assailants. Real or imagined, the scent of blood -- harsh, bitter, and metallic. Things that had once made her blood race in anger and excitement.

It was a bad idea to intervene… a bad idea for her to intervene. But even now, she was no good at leaving things alone.

Down the hill, she raced toward the road, her nimble feet finding purchase even against the loose stone, and her eyes set on the caravan ahead. As she ran, she let out a sharp, high-pitched whistle. Feet besides her own joined the descent, and though Valonia could not see them through the thick of the brush, she could hear them, their paws scrabbling against the stones, and knew they were there to aid her.

The teamsters had formed a rough circle around their wagons, and the bandits had approached from the front. The light cast from the torches illuminated the wagon, the teamsters, and the direction the bandits were moving toward.

It did not illuminate behind them.

The sounds of the bandits’ own attack made it too easy for Valonia’s approach. And in the pale light of the moons, her solid oaken staff cracked hard against a head unprotected, swept aside an archer’s bow, cracked hard enough on a hand to cause a sword to be dropped. Each strike reverberated through the staff into her arms, returning the force of her own strikes into her body, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself to press forward and maintain the momentum of her staff. She did not cry out in rage and exhilaration, as she might once have. It was in bared-tooth silence that she pressed forward, accompanied only by the sounds of her boots scuffing the soft soil as she shifted her stances, and the harsh KRRAKK! of her staff as it butted against flesh, and cracked against bone.

Her feline companions more than made up for her self-imposed silence with screams of their own. And when they wailed, it sounded like a woman screaming herself hoarse. The unnerving cry further distracted some of the bandits from their assault. As the cats leapt into the fray, claws found purchase in leather armor, and sharp fangs found their mark in uncovered skin. The scent of the predators and the smell of blood upset the cattle used by the teamsters, but there was no solution for that. Not yet. Not until the attackers had been subdued.

Still, the druid’s intervention, and the wailing of the cats, had the desired effect of disrupting the discipline of bandits’ charge. Though Valonia had attacked only a few bandits, it had caused enough of a distraction to allow the remaining teamsters to rally. They returned with their own attack, and eventually the bandits began to flee, not having expected this much resistance – nor from the direction it came.

Not all of them fled at once, however. The last bandit Valonia attempted to attack had recovered from the initial surprise of her appearance. The disarming strike she attempted with her staff only jarred against metal-reinforced wood of a heavy shield, rattling her grip. The bandit pressed the advantage, charging forward with his shield, colliding with her and sending her tumbling backward. She landed flat on her back on the packed, rut-marked earth of the highway, and her staff clattered from her grip.

She rolled to the side, in the opposite direction from her staff, as her opponent’s sword sliced downward, carving off a healthy section of her cloak. She couldn’t retrieve her weapon. Nor could she call to the mountain lions in the distance. She could hear them, and the scuffle they were engaged in, but they were unlikely too far to arrive in time even if she called to them now.

But she remembered the sword of the bandit she had disarmed earlier.

She scrambled toward it, her opponent in swift pursuit. The sword lay half buried among the leaves and detritus, just off the road, and she grabbed at the hilt, raising it with both hands in time to parry her opponent’s blade. His sword blade scratched down hers until it caught against the crossguard. With a practiced motion, Valonia twisted her hilt quickly, using the crossguard to bind his blade. Pushing the pommel forward, she rose from her crouched position, and used the weight of her body to force his blade back, winding her sword to keep his blade bound.

The bandit was either not expecting that, or had not had the training she had, or both. He instinctively drew back, taking his blade with him. He tried to angle his other arm to beat at her with his shield. But with her sword no longer binding his, Valonia was free to bring it hard down toward the man’s ear… then through.

For a moment, Valonia stared at the sword in her hand. It felt good to hold one again… but the weight of it rested too easily in her clenched fist. It would be too easy to find reasons to use it, to find people to use it on. And the ease with which such a blade sank into flesh encouraged too readily its use. The feel of it was comforting… but it was the wrong sort of comfort. She didn’t need the comfort of being able to kill people.

Life was fragile as it was, without people like her making it more so.

She tilted her hand, let the sword fall back to the ground, then wiped her wet hands on her leggings. The blood had soaked into the leather bracers she wore too. Likely on her leather cuirass. It was too dark to see it, nor did she have the time to check her attire, but it felt unpleasantly wet. But discomfort was the least of her problems.

She turned to the caravan and the remaining teamsters, some of whom kept their weapons drawn and ready. It made sense to her. They didn’t know her from any of the bandits, after all.

And, really, they weren’t wrong.

The woman raised her hands defensively and spaced apart, trying to make it obvious she was not reaching for a weapon.

“Hold. I am Journeyman Valonia of Yew,” she said. “I have a writ in my satchel if you need to see it. I am here to see the King’s Justice done.”

One of the teamsters, presumably the foreman or leader, held up his torch to better look at her. In spite of the extra tears in it, the cloak she wore marked her as a druid, as he could see the golden scales sewn onto the green fabric near the lapel area.

“A druid then?” he asked.

“Aye. Been following you for the last several days,” she explained. “Investigating the bandit matter.”

Before the man could respond, one of the other teamsters approached him. “Boss, Cobb’s dead. Tanner’s shot, but should live.”

Valonia studied both men, then glanced over where the bodies lay.

“I will take this into account when I pass judgment.” She then nodded her head in the direction of a bandit laying face-down on the ground. The slow rise and fall of his back indicated he was still alive. “And I would take custody of that one and any that still live. They may have information I need.”

The foreman studied her. “That all sounds good, but let’s see that writ first.”

She complied, lowering her hands, and retrieved the scroll casing from the satchel at her side. She held it out to the man.

The foreman unrolled it, skimmed the contents quickly, and focused on the woman’s name (as she had said it) as well as the seal of the High Court of Yew near the bottom. He hadn’t truly doubted after seeing the sigil on her cloak, but it was still better to be safe. Anyone could be anyone out here. And just wearing a cloak didn’t make a person what they said they were.

Still, his doubts soothed, he gestured to the people behind him, and they lowered their weapons.

He rerolled the scroll and tossed back over to her. “Do as you like, milady, we won’t kill him off for you. But I doubt there are survivors here. We picked off several of the filthy who-… er… bandits ourselves,” he said, correcting his speech in the presence of what he presumed was a lady, and not someone who had said far worse in her time. “I think whoever survived escaped into the forest.”

Valonia had been worried about that. But there was no cure for it now. She would just have to let things play out from here.

“I will handle that,” she replied simply. “They shouldn’t trouble you this night.”

“Good to hear.” The foreman nodded at her. “You hang ‘im high, druid. For Cobb, and for all this trouble. And if ye need anything else, let me know. Otherwise, I hav’ta get the wagons moving again.”

True to his word, he and his teamsters made preparations for the remaining trip to Yew. The only thing Valonia requested of him was a goodly length of rope, which the foreman was more than happy to provide. Whatever weapons the bandits had dropped, the teamsters claimed for their own. He had offered Valonia the sword she had used, seeing she did not have one of her own. She refused with an emphatic “No.” and reclaimed her staff. With that done, and with further exhortations from the foreman to ‘hang the bastard from the nearest tree’, the caravan left the druid to her mission.

Valonia dragged the man off the road, secured him to a tree with the rope, then sat back on her heels, considering.

The bandits had taken a life, though they had lost more of their own in the process. She counted four bodies and one captive, out of the original dozen or so bandits that had attacked. And there were likely more bodies in the forest, as Valonia had not investigated the cats’ quarry. That meant she could reasonably estimate that perhaps seven or so bandits remained. Those were poor numbers for a presumably organized group.

Still, the important part was to determine what balance here was. An eye for an eye? A life for a life? They had still plotted banditry. They had still taken a life. In short, they had taken a life while engaged in an unlawful activity. Surely there was little else left to investigate.

But something about the situation simply wasn’t adding up in Valonia’s mind. The frequency of the attacks -- in the same general area, no less. The poor coordination. The lack of martial discipline of the bandit she had fought. The ease with which the attack itself was disrupted. It was tempting for Valonia to believe her abilities were so formidable that they had turned the tide… but in truth, she shouldn’t have been able to thwart this so easily.

One of her mountain lions, Alvor, came back carrying what appeared to be a piece of a leather glove in his mouth. His brother, Cole, had a red face and muzzle. Neither appeared injured, and both appeared in good spirits.

“Six left, perhaps?” the druid mused aloud. Those numbers were extremely poor for a raid of this kind. Practically half their numbers? Had she assumed these people were more organized than they actually were?

By the time the captured bandit began to stir, the clouds had begun to gather in earnest. It would rain soon, the druid knew. But rain would not affect her mission, and she could tell it was unlikely to storm.

While waiting for the bandit to awaken fully, Valonia had already dragged the bodies off the road, and she had done the best she could to cover them with their own cloaks or shields. Some remained uncovered, simply because she did not have the material to do so. The presence of the cats kept other animals at bay, though she could hear the howls in the distance. The scent of blood and bodies were drawing other creatures, ones she had not befriended. They would have to be wary.

When the bandit awakened, Valonia questioned him about the location of the others of his team. At first, he was resistant. But when she showed him the bodies of his comrades, his resolve seemed to crack.

Some had been his friends, others his family, he explained. They came from the same farming community, but blight had killed their crops. With debts to pay, mouths to feed, and no crops with which to sell or use, they had turned to banditry.

It was as clear an admission as any. Still, Valonia asked the man to take her to his village. She wished to see the truth of it for herself.

It was raining by the time they reached the small hamlet, and Valonia had drawn her hood up over her head. While the drawing of a druid’s hood was usually an act that preluded the dispensing of justice, it did also serve to keep the rain off. Still, the sight of the hooded druid meant only a smattering of individuals came to meet them, for the rest were afraid to face consequences. It was only until Valonia’s charge explained the situation that the remaining bandits revealed themselves.

They knew they had been found out, but the villagers’ opinions on what to do differed. Some suggested fleeing, perhaps further into the forest. Others quietly suggested keeping secrets secret, a not-so-subtle hint at killing the druid for intervening.

“Others know I am investigating, and your activities had already been known,” Valonia returned evenly, undaunted by the numbers against her, for many were old, or too young, or infirm. These were the ‘reinforcements’ she had been worried about? These people practically reeked of desperation. “If you flee, or if you kill me, there will be others sent. And they will not be investigators, but soldiers. To run now means to lose your homes, lose what remains of your livelihoods, and possibly lose your lives. Anywhere you would run is far more dangerous than where you are right now. Lay down your arms and hear me out.”

Perhaps the prospect of facing worse circumstances won them over, but they complied. They lowered their weapons to listen… at least for the moment. A druid trying to dispense the King’s Justice was less likely to murder them than beasts of the wild or a monster hiding in a cavern, after all.

“You have killed in pursuit of unlawfulness. Yet the acts were born from desperation. In return, several of your own kith have been killed. You have lost far more than you have taken,” said Valonia. “I do not see that it would be just or fair to demand more death to remedy this situation.”

The villagers seemed surprised by that, but Valonia had been honest. Not only did she NOT think more death would resolve the situation, but she did not see that additional corpses would add anything productive either. And while imprisonment was the traditional sort of punishment meted out, it would do little to address the underlying situation. It would just contain able-bodied people, rendering them useless for other tasks.

"Still, you have gone against the law. Recompense must be paid." The druid considered her next words, then continued. “Therefore, I propose a different solution to meet Justice. As you made travel unsafe for people passing these roads, so you will take upon yourselves the duty to make it safe. There is already a fund for road maintenance, and I will speak to city officials about providing a portion of funds to your village to ensure continuing efforts.”

This was more political than she really cared to get, but it truly seemed to her to be the best solution.

The villagers, surprised by her suggestion, murmured among themselves. They had clearly suspected a different outcome.

Valonia raised a hand to still them. “This is not to pay you for your misdeeds, but to ensure the underlying cause has been addressed,” she was quick to clarify. “And I will also propose a waystation be built here for patrolling guards. This will ensure the road may be further secured, and also provide for your safety due to your lessened numbers.”

And ensure that they did not resort to banditry again, though she did not say that aloud. She wasn’t entirely sure if a guardpost would happen, but she would be true to her word and suggest it nonetheless.

The villagers seemed to consider her words. And in the end, they thanked her for her solution, even if some of them seemed wary of the idea of introducing guards to their small community. Still, none made great protest. They seemed slightly confused by her suggestions more than anything.

As she was leaving, one of the bandits approached her. And with some trepidation, asked why she was helping them. They had broken the law, after all.

Valonia considered that for a moment.

“There is more to justice than law,” she said simply. “There is a balance I lack the words to explain. But just as I expect recompense from you, so too does it require recompense from me. Everyone has debts. This is mine.”

With that, she drew the hood from her head (for the rain had ceased), and continued on her journey.
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