Vol.7, Ch.4, P.4
“Aagh…!” yelled Ville.
“S-s-serves ye reight! Sackless, sucklin’, sprog o’ a silver-spoon, ye!”
Hissing and spitting into Ville’s back was the small and unsightly rogue: the very same who had so railed against the Stenmarks’ misuses. Perhaps owing to his size, the manikin had managed to miss both rock and lordly wrath; and springing from beneath the bodies of his fellow footpads, he had thrust into Ville’s loin a sudden dagger.
“Hngh… nnghhaaah!!” so struggled the son of Stenmark. But lo! only shallowly did delve the brigandly dagger; and so wrenching himself free, Ville roared and wrought upon the rogue a sharp stroke through the torso.
“Bwokkh…?”
The little brigand, blenching and belching blood, gawked down upon his now-gashed breast. And then he fell to his face. Ville meanwhile, fraught all at once with the weight of his wounds, buckled to his knees. There, he tried to muster his strength, that he might finally save both fiancée and family. But then his vision vanished, and he collapsed.
“Ville! Ville, my love!” cried Raakel.
Her husband-to-be ought be breathing yet. Breathing, and thus deliverable. Wishing this dearly to be so, Raakel writhed under the burden of the overbearing bole, pushing and striking it to dislodge her legs however she could. But it was vain. As with a hart stuck in a hunter’s snare, Raakel then squirmed and wailed on, trying desperately to rouse Ville if just by her vaulting voice. To her horror, however, the one to stir was the small and severed brigand instead.
“…Hh!”
Raakel gasped, beholding the gaunt and meagre man shiver back to life. Up onto his elbows he hove, and forthward now he wormed, straining, dragging. And his eyes were stretched wide as he went, fixing themselves unblinkingly ahead. Clouded with death they were; but deeper therein, as with a blaze beating away the winds of winter, they burnt with a bitter envy and enmity.
Through one, he lived again his long and loveless life. O, the torment, the humiliation that did pock its pathetic course! And the days, the days, spent despising the Hammer that did strike and string this churlish Chain of his!
And then through the other, he recalled the coach when it had wheeled down this rugged road. How devilishly luxurious it was, how sickeningly lilting with song and silly laughter from mouths that knew never the sting of starvation!
Indeed, this last stroke of his, this mad clinging to this mortal coil, seemed a revenge in the wreaking. Like whips at his back it spurred him; like a fire aflood it filled him. Even as it poured and painted a bloody trail across the earth, his dying flesh dared fail him not—but lugged him surely to the nearest sword that entered his sight.
Terror seized Raakel. “Nnhh!” she moaned, trying once more to unmoor herself. But nay, still would the yoke-like bole not yield. Hope, however, lived yet in her eyes, for just past the crawling criminal, there appeared now another figure, whose name Raakel next cried:
“Lars!!”
The lad of a lordling, too, was alive all along! Scuffed and scathed he was all about, his raiments ripped to rags, but there he stood; stood… and merely stared down at his unmoving brothers Allan and Greger. And frozen upon his face was complete stupefaction.
“Lars, dear lad! Your brothers! In faith, they live yet! Save them! Save us all!” Raakel cried after him. As it happened, there at the boy’s feet lay the body of another brigand, gripped yet in whose fingers was hilt and blade. “Take up the sword, Lars! The sword!”
But Lars did nothing. There like a statue still he stood. Meanwhile, a ways behind him, the manikin crept onwards, nearing his own murderously sought sword.
“Lars! I beg of you, please!” implored Raakel. Again, Lars did not give, save for the tears starting now in his round and reddened eyes.
“Hh… hic…” he began to snivel. His cheeks became wet. Tears trickled to and down from his chin. This plight, this catastrophe, was too far beyond the boy’s daily life. And utterly whelmed by the woe of it all, he could do naught but stand and suffer in his soul.
But Raakel would not give up. “Lars!! Lars!!” she repeated, her voice by now a shrill and shattering noise. And as it echoed under the scorched sky, so did the ghastly brigand gain the sword at last. And taking it, he quaveringly hauled himself up. Though his knees threatened to fail, at the last did he find his feet by the support of his new sword. “La—ars!!” Raakel screeched on. But no matter what, the Stenmark scion seemed undisturbable. Yes, he snivelled and sobbed. Yes, he shivered at the shoulders. But the lad was lost.
Only the manikin now was on the move. His riven torso redly drooled. His sword dragged along the dirt. And driven by the dreadful fires yet flaring in his heart, he shambled on: on and on and on, past the petrified lordling, and towards the noble body that was Allan’s.
“Lars…! Lars, Ville! Anyone! Please…!” whimpered Raakel. But the sun only watched on, and the winds coursed without concern, as the half-dead wretch arrived at Allan’s side. And then, holding his hilt in both hands, he trained a sharp tip downwards, below which lay the Stenmark prince in precarious peace. “Noo—oo!!”
Far did fly that scream of Raakel’s. Far, but only to find no heeding ear. And then…
—Shrrkh.
…did notched iron impale the heir’s heart through. And stuck in place, the blade gurgled, sinking deeper and deeper into the dirt beneath the body, whence at once began to pool a puddle of blood.
“Ah… aahh…”
Raakel, aghast, lost her breath. Her lips quivered. Her eyes quaked. And the baneful brigand, abandoning his blade as it stood spitting through flesh and earth, started towards the next noble: a slumbering Greger.
“Lars… Yoná help you, take up… take up the sword…” implored a forlorn Raakel. Indeed, at Lars’s feet lay still the hopeful weapon. The vengeful varlet was grievously gashed; the boy needed only brandish it once upon him to end this evil. But alas; even as Allan lay stabbed in his sight, and withal Greger in grave danger, Lars remained deaf and still as any stone.
Presently, the ugly rogue came upon Greger. And reaching down, he took with both hands a boulder bigger than could a better man carry with confidence. Yet carry, heave, and hoist it he did, up and aloft, his slashed bosom sputtering profusely amidst the effort. But baulking it, he lurched, and cast the boulder smiting down.
—Grrack.
And whence it struck, there was now Greger’s crushed skull and spilling brain.
“…”
Raakel could not scream. Not anymore. Even as the delirious little brigand next shambled her way. Even as his feet so stained in slaughter scraped and stumbled nigh.
“Why… why…?” wheezed Raakel. And just as she could scream no longer, neither yet could she move one bit. The tree upon her seemed intent to continue the torture.
And before long, the brigand was beside her. There he stood, staring dumbly down upon her for a red moment.
“Ghh… hh… hic…”
Raakel herself now began to weep. Ill-able to endure the dark eyes, she turned away to sob in despair. And as if stirred by some thought, the blank-faced brigand bent down to the bride-to-be, spied about her, and peered straight into her face.
“…”
The man’s stare licked her all ’round. Raakel quailed and quivered. From shoulder to elbow to wrist, the tremors of terror raced. But when they reached the tips of her fingers, Raakel felt some other thing.
It was a bough, broken off from the very tree that entrapped her. And it was solid as stone. Was it a hardwood, perhaps? Nay; that mattered not to Raakel at that moment—
—whose lips now pressed, whose throat now rumbled, whose sobbing now was swallowed unto silence. Whatsoever it was that her fingers found, she cared not for its name nor form; only that it was hard and true—and weighty enough to blast open a skull.
“Hh… hic… hhr… hghrr… hhrraa—ahh!!”
And twisting violently, Raakel swung aloft the bough even as she lay.
—Brukkh!
Thus resounded the strike beneath the bleeding sunset. And the little brigand, bludgeoned by the bough, now had for a crown a scattered scalp.
“…”
And with a face of awe, he fell, and finally succumbed.
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