“What’s thy name, churl,” Sir Orisin demanded into the short silence.
“Sorry, Sir,” the peasant said knuckling his forehead abruptly, “me name’s Uilliam.”
Once again, Sir Orisin gestured to Falon. Flushing from the collar up, the peasant, Uilliam, turned to her and opened his mouth to no doubt apologize or repeat himself.
Falon waved him off. “Just answer my question…Uilliam,” she said, reluctant to use his name but not having a choice. “By what right did you take this farmer’s produce, and in what condition will I find his wife and daughter when I’m done with you?” She gave him a cold look when he hesitated.
Then Uilliam took a deep breath. “We offered what few copper scubs we still had, and free labor for enough food to feed us while we was here and another three days,” Uilliam said, crossing his powerful arms beneath his broad shoulders defensively. “We ain’t eated a proper meal in two days. So when the farmer laughed in our face, called us birdbrains, and threatened to raise a posse of the local militia against us,” he took a deep breath and then met her gaze evenly, “I’m not too ashamed to admit we got a little hot, and he was the one was run off. But we did offered to pay first, before it went bad like.”
“A likely story,” Falon scoffed, wondering how much if any of it was true, “what about the mother and daughter? Are they untouched—or even still alive at this point?” she asked harshly.
The peasant colored. “The mother’s shriller than a banshee but she’s fine,” he hastened to assure her.
“And the woman’s daughter?” Falon asked flatly, refusing to be diverted from the fate of both women.
“Any touching been done…been consensual like,” the big man muttered.
“What?!” Sir Orisin growled.
“Look,” Uilliam said before throwing his hands in the air, “why not just talk to them direct? This is getting’ all muddled.”
Falon was taken aback as the peasant turned his head.
“Bring out the goodwife and her wee bairn,” he called out, “there’s some worries for their health.”
The raven men chuckled and a pair ran off. “We’re rough men, Squire,” the man said twisting his shirt in his hands, “but we’re farmin’ folks, too. We done only took enough to keep life in the body like.”
Falon grunted but couldn’t help but look, along with everyone, else as a fat woman and her stoutly-built daughter were escorted out of the house and urged out between the two armies.
“That’s my Mia,” the farmer shouted back from the safety of the swan battle line, “what have ye bastards done wit’ her!”
Seeing her husband, the goodwoman’s head swung up like a dog catching a scent.
“Just where ye been, ye cowardly devil dog in human form?” she shrieked with a voice that would have put any harpy to shame. “Leaving me here with all these ruffians so as you could go and visit the milk maid, I reckon! Leaving me the poor woman whose borne your fruit to fix up six pots of stew,” she held up eight fingers to show just how many pots she’d made. “Six!” she repeated angrily.
Falon coughed and covered her mouth at the woman’s patent inability to count.
“Shut up, ye old shrew,” the farmer shouted as he shook his fist, “I done never touched the maid, and besides, I bet you liked whate’er they did to you!”
The goodwife shrieked with outrage and, grabbing her dress, she hiked up her skirt to around her thighs. Ignoring the men on either side, she started charging across the squash patch, threatening death and destruction with every thunderous footstep.
“Like I said before,” Uilliam said sourly as he emphatically worked his finger in his ear as if to remove excess earwax, “she’s got a powerful set of pipes.”
Still shaking his fist, the farmer stepped from the safety of Falon’s company and started shouting something incoherent back at his wife.
His words were just starting to make sense when his wife’s fist hit him square in the jaw, sending him to the dirt. Shrieking like a banshee, and yelling like a harpy that was fit to be tied, the woman pounded his face a few times before he flailed his legs beneath himself and managed to turn the tables.
The farmer had his arms around her neck, and she had just gotten her hands around something else better left alone in public when they were pulled apart by the men nearest them.
“Unbelievable,” Falon breathed, starting to see why the man would have sent his sons to safety and left his wife to the tender mercies of a band of bandits. There was clearly no love lost in that marriage.
The farmer’s daughter sidled up to the parley group. “Ye called me?” the daughter asked, and Falon did a double take. This woman—cause she had to be in her late teens, and thus older than Falon—had the exact same purplish birthmark under her left eye as the farmer himself.
Unable to help herself, she pointed at it. “How can your Father not see the resemblance?” Falon said with equal measures of disbelief and disgust at the odious little man. Then a thought occurred to her and her brow wrinkled, “Unless he’s got a brother or cousin with the same mark?”
It took the daughter a long second of confusion before she realized what Falon was talking about, and then she snorted. Although her hand seemed to unconsciously drift up to touch the ugly looking purple splotch on her face.
“Nope, none of the family ‘cept me gaffer had the purple patch on his face, and he was dead long afore I was born,” the daughter said and then extended her hand, “name’s Mia.”
“Mia, daughter of Mia,” Falon said, thinking ‘how unoriginal,’ and extended her own hand in return, “must be confusing.”
“Pa took one look at my face and must have known he’d never get anything out of me ‘cept a big dowry he’d have to pay to get some man to take me off his hands, and first thing he did was declare I was me mother’s daughter and none o’ his,” she said stoutly. “The name followed soon after.”
“Disgusting, heartless, little man,” Falon said direly.
“Oh, except for the patch, it weren’t far off,” Mia, daughter of Mia, shrugged, “Ma was the dirty maid until she married him. There’s some as say for a time, until she lost her figure, no one else would have him,” she stuck a thumb out in her father’s direction, where a pair of men were needed on each side to keep the married couple away from each other. “So ‘cept for the mark it’s not that hard a stretch.”
Falon looked at the other young woman with pity in her eyes. There, but for the grace of the goddess, might she have been.
Mia shook her head and produced a smile that was missing some teeth.
“When did he find out?” Falon asked, wondering if he beat his daughter too and that was why she was missing some of her teeth.
Mia gaped at her and then laughed, “Find out? He knew it from the beginning to end. How do ye think they paid for the new barn,” she asked, now pointing to a barn that looked at least as old as Mia herself. This must be the ‘new’ barn.
Falon drew back, utterly dumbfounded.
“Now thou know some of how it feels to sit in judgment over a village, as its Lord,” Sir Orisin leaned in close and chuckled.
Falon tapped herself on the chest as she coughed, not at all liking the idea.
“I hate to ask,” she said, favoring duty instead of any one of half a dozen comments on this families domestic situation that were just burning on her tongue, “but I have to ask: have you or your mother been harassed or accosted in any way, shape or form?”
“Oh, no one would touch mother even if she wanted,” Mia said with a wave of her hand. “Although she done swatted a few hands and heads wit’ her soup ladle.”
“A soup ladle,” Falon deadpanned dully.
“But as fer me,” Mia squirmed from side to side and twisted the hem of her dress.
Falon’s eyes refocused and she leaned forward, prepared to hear the girl’s account.
“I got me eyes set on a likely looking lad what can touch me anytime!” the younger Mia declared,
her eyes blazing.
“What?!” Falon and the two men with her burst out.
“Oh, aye,” the Farm Daughter said getting a pugnacious expression on her face before her eyes defocused and she smiled, “I knew he was the one when he offered me silver for some honey preserves.”
“Silver!” Uilliam exploded with outrage and surprise.
“Silver—for honey preserves!” Mia’s eyes gleamed. “I tested it myself and now we’re plannin’ to run off to Raven and get hitched!”
Falon covered her eyes and Sir Orisin was left to manfully carry on the conversation.
“My dear, why would thou do something like that with a man thou doth not even know?” he asked.
“Oh, I know ‘bout everything that needs knowin’,” Mia said with a wink. “Checked it meself, I did, first thing! And o’ course, father won’t let us gets to married here, so as we’ll just have to run off to his place.”
Sir Orisin faded off into silence at this declaration and Falon found herself tugging on the fake beard just to feel the pain of it as a distraction, and only noticed she had been doing so when several hairs pulled free in her fingers.
“Figures,” she muttered. Now she was going to have an ugly patchy looking fake beard, instead of just a fake beard. She should have just gone with the spell version. The last of both Duncan and Ernest’s fake beards had already fallen off, but her fake beard was still going strong. Vanity, thy name is woman, Falon chastised herself. If she hadn’t been so enamored by the idea of a fake, removable beard, she’d be beard-free by now.
With a start, she realized everyone was now looking at her expectantly. Feeling like throwing up her hands into the air and declaring a pox on both their houses, she had to fight the urge to order the Ravens attacked and slaughtered as a prelude to having the farm burned to the ground.
“See,” Uilliam said a touch desperately, after the silence had become painful, “no harm was done.”
Again they waited, but Falon was still shaking her head and thinking. “Well…there is still the matter of the burning outbuilding,” Sir Orisin pointed out. “That leaves the smaller matter of the theft and vandalism.”
“That,” Uilliam said defensively, “’twer just Ulgar goin’ into the turkey coop, looking fer some eggs, when he dropped his torch.”
Falon was beyond disbelief at this point and glanced at Sir Orisin who was shaking his head and looking fed up with this entire thing.
“Look, Squire,” Uilliam turned to her desperately, “we’ll rebuild the coop and work off any of the food we done ate; we wasn’t even supposed to be here. Our man with the map died after the battle tween Prince Hughes and that bastar—” he cut himself short, “I mean, Prince William. An’ we used the map for firestarter—by mistake, o’ course. Then thy army started sendin’ out patrols looking fer us, and to stay ahead we kept having to go further and further north until now we’re all mixed up and turned around. Just point us to Raven lands and we’re gone.”
“Even still, banditry is a hanging offense,” Sir Orisin said and lifted a hand, “and I am saying that after having listened to this entire sorry tale. No kingdom can have wild bands of enemy peasants starting fires, running off the land owners, and eating the countryside bare.
Yeah, Falon thought bitterly, eating the countryside bare was a privilege that belonged only to its own people.
“Mercy,” Uilliam pleaded, throwing himself on his knees and clasping his hands together, “we’ll do whatever it takes. Most of us are just younger sons, or farm hands with nothing to go back to. All’s we want is to keep our necks un-stretched and atop our shoulders. We’ll do the needful, whatever it takes to make this right, I’m beggin’ you.”
“Why should I?” Falon asked, genuinely curious. Even though her heart panged with the words and left an empty spot in the middle of her stomach as she continued, “You have nothing of value to anyone except possibly the farmer, who’s made it very clear he wants nothing to do with either you, or your labor. Of what value are you to anyone or anything alive? For all I know, as soon as I turned you loose, you’d just go right back to raiding farms along the back roads.”
Still on his knees, the giant peasant looked like he was about to weep. “We’re good men in a hard situation, Squire,” Uilliam said, “I know thou aren’t hateful of Ravens just ‘cause we’re from another Kingdom, ‘cause of that Knight there. Give us the chance; if there’s land of thine that needs working, why we’ve got strong backs to work it and no families to speak of that would miss our absence. Plus, we might not be good at it, but we can fight to defend those lands from anyone you would ask us to.”
“You want me to give you farms now, is it?” Falon asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“From begging for thy life to begging for farms is impudence of the first order!” Sir Orisin cried, his face turning red. “Even if they are mine countrymen, I am now duty-bound to advise thee against them, Squire Rankin! These are bandits indeed; would thou have me teach them a lesson?” he demanded.
“No lesson is necessary,” Uilliam said backing away with wide eyes, “I weren’t tryin’ to offend, we was just offering our services now that our Lord is dead and Prince defeated.”
Falon felt sick and the Raven Knight started to pull out his sword. She lifted a hand, “Hold, Sir Knight,” Falon said with a firmness she didn’t feel. But if there was one thing she’d had to learn in the lead-up to the battle, and after it, it was that she had to appear confident and like she knew what she was doing even when she hadn’t anything more than the faintest clue.
Sir Orisin roughly shoved his sword back into its sheath. “Apologies,” he muttered, “I did not mean to infringe on thy prerogatives.”
She didn’t know what she was doing but she couldn’t just let this band of hapless squash thieves whose worst crime so far was that one of them fell in love with the farmer’s daughter, and another one burnt down his chicken coop. She was sure there were worse crimes than that which she would never hear about, but loosing her semi-trained men on these haggard looking survivors of Prince William’s dishonorable refusal to accept his losses with dignity just didn’t sit right. Maybe someday when she was a hardened warrior—
She stopped, purely horrified at the road her thoughts had just headed down. Her military service to her lord had been a terrible accident but to think of it as anything other than temporary felt almost treasonous, as if she was betraying herself. She wasn’t some hero woman of the Old Blood, riding at the head of her savage war band! What’s more, she had absolutely no intention of becoming such a woman!
Dresses and petticoats, she thought fiercely. A life as a spinster—or with a husband, if she was insanely lucky after being ruined by warfare—was the life for her. It was all she asked of the gods.
She looked at the Raven militia leader, on his knees in the mud, and her indignant train of thought was derailed causing her shoulders to slump.
“You’ll do anything to make amends for your recent life of banditry and invasion of peaceful farms,” she asked, just to make sure, “including work for a new lord?”
“We’ll do the needful,” Uilliam said with a deep, shuddering breath, but his eyes locked on her own with a desperate intensity. “We can read the leaves blown by the wind, and they says we’re dead men against thy forces.”
Falon’s mouth tightened and her insides clenched until she felt like she like she was a jug that was about to explode. “Just to be clear,” she asked firmly, “you and your men of the Old Blood.”
“Farm-bred and Blood-raised,” he said steadily, as if he might be proud of it under other circumstances.
“So you have no issue taking orders and instruction from women, sisters and such,” she raised a hand, “if it becomes needful to obey a command I issue you.”
Uilliam looked uneasy and then shrugged tensely before nodding. That seemed to be his only answer on the subject and Falon figured it was the best she was going to get.
“Then I am prepared to
overlook your crimes—” Falon began.
“Thank you,” Uilliam burst out, interrupting her as he began to grovel.
“But,” Falon said sharply, “there are conditions.”
“Yes,” Uilliam said less happily as he looked up at her.
“In return for sheltering you from the consequences of your actions, I will require a few things,” she stomped her foot firmly. “First, whoever it is she’s got her eye on will need to marry Mia. That’s non-negotiable—I mean, so long as she’s still willing.”
“As you say, it will be done, Squire,” Uilliam agreed.
“Next,” she lifted a finger, “you will put to right anything that’s been damaged on this farm, to my satisfaction.”
The threadbare-looking Raven leader nodded agreeably.
“And also, because if I simply set you free, you’d probably turn back to preying on the farmers,” Uilliam made a sound of protest but quickly settled under her gimlet eye, “with no food and no money, you’d probably have no choice,” she said and he settled slightly.
“We’d do our best to just get back home,” he interjected mildly.
Falon snorted but came up short of calling him a liar. The best of intentions, measured against an empty belly, was a bad bet. Even a Squire’s daughter, who had never been away from very far home until recently, was wise enough to see that coming a mile away.
“Regardless, it seems clear to me even if you somehow managed to survive off honey doo, desiccated dandelions and the good intentions of the universe, you’re almost certain to run into a patrol with a far less lenient officer than myself,” she said with emphasis. “Such an officer, seeing a band of raggedy-looking men armed with farm implements and not belonging in the area willing to claim them, is certain cut you down or string you up for bandits,” she said flatly. She didn’t know if it was true but it sounded like something a Lieutenant would say.
The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Page 17
