by RW Krpoun
Marching three ranks abreast to the sound of the elcilik, or Dwarven war-pipes, played by Kroh Blackhand, as neat and clean as field conditions could allow, heads high and the unit standard snapping in the cold breeze at the head of the column, the Phantom Badgers marched into the Grand Crossing.
Starr Brightgift had trotted ahead of the column to warn the bridge guards of their size, identity, and intention of crossing to the camping grounds on the east side, a necessary detail which had fallen to her after drawing the short straw. After completing her task, the little Badger clambered up onto the bed of a tall water-cart which was having its tongue repaired to get a good view of the Company passing by.
They made a bright and bold sight as they marched past, well-armed and equipped. The rank and file, depending on length of service, wore ring-mail (stout leather shirts with two layers of iron rings wired flat to the shirt), chain mail shirts, or even a few felt-muffled breast and back plates amongst the section leaders, plus good iron-bound round shields. Arms were well-formed and generally of individual taste, with most warriors carrying war hammers or lucern hammers, maces, or axes, with a sprinkling of polearms amongst the newer recruits. Every Badger bore some sort of missile weapon, crossbows by preference, although in many cases it was a few javelins or throwing axes as crossbows were expensive. The Company required each recruit to equip him or herself to Company standards, with the Company replacing missile supplies (javelins, throwing axes, crossbow quarrels, slung bullets, and arrows), and shields; ordinary arms and armor of good quality captured by the Company were generally resold to unit members at half their actual value to increase the unit’s fighting strength, and loans were available to new recruits in order to ensure that they were properly equipped.
The standard at the head of the Company was a nine-foot lance with a banner hanging from a crossbar a foot down from the blade and a Draktaur’s warped skull mounted on the point. The banner depicted a snarling Badger in the attack done in misty silver and gray, the stout canvas weighted down at the bottom by brass pendants engraved with the names of the Badger’s battles and campaigns, thirteen in all.
Although the Company had no uniforms, every Badger wore a black leather bracer strapped to their lower right arm; at the top, near the elbow, was their Company Badge, a three-inch disk of pewter or crystal that depicted a snarling, misty badger in the attack done primarily in blue and silver. Auxiliary Badgers wore the badge on a square red patch, Full Badgers wore it on a blue square patch, and Senior Badgers wore it wired or riveted directly to the bracer. Immediately below the Badge was displayed rank, if any: a silver leopard’s head for Corporals, a gold lion’s head for Serjeant, two lion’s heads for Lieutenant, and three for Captain. Below the rank would be miniature copies of any decorations earned, gold studs for participation in major battles or campaign, and silver studs indicating years of service. Starr took considerable pride in her rank insignia, her decorations, and the five gold and four silver studs her bracer bore.
As the Company reached the bridge Starr raced ahead to accomplish her second task, which was to secure a camp site for the Company. A neat sign at the east edge of the bridge directed her to a pole shed. A bearded man in a good mail shirt sat at a traveler’s desk under the shed with a couple armed guards leaning on their glaives behind him, all three wearing a red and gold badge on a gorget at their throats. There were a half-dozen other men lounging about the shed area, all armed and wearing the look of men who made their living where the law was weak or nonexistent.
“Good morning, sir, I am Corporal Brightgift of the Phantom Badgers, and I require quarters for a company of one hundred plus ten animals; the Company is crossing the bridge as we speak.”
“I’ve gotta place you can bunk, little girl,” one of the onlookers quipped, sending hot blood coursing through her face and ears, but Starr merely ignored him.
“Cornet Delort, Bold Foxes Company, currently garrisoning the east fort of the Grand Crossing,” the officer smiled tiredly at her. “As you can see, we’re burdened with no shortage of ill-mannered idiots at the moment, Corporal.” He studied the papers before him. “Here, your Company can have this field here, to the southeast of the rest camp. Do you read Pradian? Excellent, than you can take this paper, it explains the boundary markings on the stakes we’ve placed; your camp site is Gray Crow Seven, right here,” he indicated the place on a map. “Don’t be surprised if you have to eject squatters from the field.”
“Yes, I see. Thank, you, sir. Is there anything else you would advise me?”
“Yes, if you kill any of the loud-mouthed vermin infesting this camp, bury them quickly; we’re concerned about disease.” Delort smiled at her and his two guards chuckled, all three ignoring the ugly muttering from the onlookers.
The Company was already on the bridge when Starr walked back up to the road; someone stepping in close to her caused the little Badger to spin, instinctively putting her back to the bridge’s stone railing. Two of the idlers from the pole-shed had come up behind her, tough-looking characters wearing grimy furs with well-worn weapons at their belts.
“I was wonderin’ what sort of bright gift you might be willing to share with us, blue-eyes?” The spokesman was tall, nearly six feet, with a nose that had been broken several times and a left ear that was nothing but a cauterized stub, suggesting an unsuccessful criminal career in the Kingdom of Arturia or one of the Border Realms states which followed the Arturian model of law.
“Piss off,” Starr sneered, settling her feet, hand close to her sword hilt. Starr had always been what Humans would call a ‘tomboy’, a bold young maid who would go far to prove that her lack of height was in no way translatable to a lack of courage, determination, or skill.
“Ohhhh, lots of spunk in this one,” Broken-Nose cackled. “I like a girl with spirit, I do; lots of...erck.” The rest of the statement was lost as Starr drew her sword with blurring speed and put the razor-sharp point to Broken-Nose’s crotch.
“My sword is called Snow Leopard,” Starr said in a pleasant tone of voice. “It appears to be made of transparent blue crystal in the blade and opaque white crystal in the hilt, but it is actually girmek, a substance my people make from petrified tree sap; girmek, you will be interested to know, once properly worked, is a supple as steel, just as hard, and can hold as sharp an edge. Now, Snow Leopard is what we call of sotan style, or a scout’s sword, as the blade is slightly less than two feet long. I prefer a sotan style because I am a bit shorter than average. If your friend shifts another step I’ll open you up from the hips to your lips.”
“Listen to her,” Broken-Nose urged his friend in a choking tone of voice.
“You can’t see it clearly from your angle, but there is a poem about snow leopards engraved around the sword’s edge, and the blood gutter has a snow leopard engraved on it. The reason the blade feels so very cold is that Snow Leopard is enchanted, both to make its edge much more potent and undamageable, but also to deliver the Leopard’s Kiss once every twenty hours. When I use it, the Kiss can freeze flesh and blood to a depth of about four to five inches. Now tell me, good sir, would you like a kiss?”
“Nothankyou.” It came out as a single word.
Rolf stepped up at her side as the first rank of the Company marched by. “Very well, off with you, then.” Starr sheathed her sword and trotted off to give the map to Durek.
Waiting until Kroh had marched by, the pipes howling and hot death in his eyes for the two men standing red-faced and angry at the end of the bridge, so that he could be heard over the pipe’s mad swirling music, Rolf stepped in close and without warning punched Broken-Nose square in the solar plexus with his full weight behind the blow. As the man dropped, vomiting, to the ground, the hulking Badger jerked his chin towards Broken-Nose’s companion. “Tell your comrade that he was harassing my friend, and tell him that I don’t like people to do that. Tell him the Dwarf playing the pipes will spend the next few days looking for this man in order to kill him. If I see either of
you near my little friend again, I’ll kill you. Understood? Good.”
While Janna oversaw the positioning of the guard posts and Lieutenant Axel Uldo directed the layout of the camp, Serjeant Bridget Iola Uldo set off to arrange for water and firewood, and to see what provisions were available. In addition to providing replacement shields and missile supplies, the Company provided the troops with food, shelter, and a monthly wage, as well as the traditional share of captured loot. One of Bridget’s many duties was that of Company Quartermaster, a task she was hoping to pass on to someone else soon.
A slender, long-legged woman who was just short of her thirty-second year but who looked much younger, Bridget was both fresh-faced and open in her manner which often led people to take her lightly, a serious mistake. Before helping form the Badgers Bridget had been trained as a churchwoman of the goddess Hetarian, mistress of birth and death, choosing the position of Advocate after mastering church dogma and the arts of Amplus Viraes (healing magic) and Ampara Oseta (faith-based magic), an Advocate being a lay-priestess without assigned duties or temple, a wanderer dedicated to furthering their deity’s interests rather than a congregation’s. She had long been the Company’s conscience and peacekeeper, as well as Durek’s primary administrator. She and Axel were entering their sixth year of marriage, both having met with the founding of the Company nearly ten years ago.
A touch above average height, as was common for women who took to weapons-use, as it was hard for a woman of average height to employ weapons shields, and armor designed for men, and wearing her dark hair short but carefully styled to accent her delicate features and hazel eyes, Bridget cut a striking appearance as she strolled through the crowds in the rest site. Wearing a thick green sweater and black wool leggings (she had left her studded armor tunic back at camp), and a polished brass torc such as Elonia wore, with a cloak of green and black done in an ivy pattern over her shoulders the advocate was better dressed than most she encountered.
Her sword-belt of amber plates (once part of an enchanted set, now drained and the rest of the set having been destroyed) supported a sword-rapier (whose blade was enchanted), a parrying dagger, and a sling bullet pouch as well as a belt pouch, but the weapons hardly distracted from the lovely visage.
Mindful of Starr’s encounter with Broken-Nose, Bridget had taken an escort along, in this case Rolf and the unit’s standard bearer, Dayyan Reinert, the fourth Badger to hold that position. Dayyan was of average height but looked shorter because of his amazing expanse of shoulders which easily made him the strongest Human in the Company, and but for lacking the length of reach was a physical match for Rolf. Dayyan was like Rolf in another important regard: he obeyed orders without question or hesitation; the burly young man’s moon-face was perpetually split in a grin, and before fights he was seen to shuffle in place, a sort of childish happy-dance at the prospect of action. Expert with the axe, dagger, and javelin (but having left the latter, shield, and helm back at camp), fearless, and loyal, Dayyan was as good a bodyguard as could be found.
It annoyed the advocate that while she was certainly able to fight as well as any swordsman in the Company and had been decorated for her leadership in combat, the only way to avoid trouble with riff-raff was to drag along an escort of male warriors, but reality was what it was, and she saw no reason to let professional pride get in the way of good sense.
The Badgers were carrying enough dried rations to sustain them on the trip down the Road, and they had supplemented them by game bagged by the scouts, but morale would be helped by a real meal. Any hopes of such a luxury, however, were quickly dashed: many of the food-sellers who had made the trek to the Crossing were sold out, and the rest had raised their prices far too high for the Company budget.
Her primary mission having failed Bridget took a wandering route back to the Badger campsite, enjoying the wide variety of sights and sounds after the impositions of field life. To say that the Crossing was teeming was to do it injustice: there were at least a dozen large merchant caravans, nearly all heading east, plus a score of small entrepreneurs who only had a few wagons or pack mules; in all the advocate guessed there to be more than two hundred wagons, a third as many carts, and perhaps the same number pack mules at the Crossing, along with the attendant merchants, clerks, teamsters, scouts, guards, and travelers, plus the tradesmen, vendors, and artisans who made their living providing services to the merchants.
And there were a large number of hard-faced men like Broken-Nose who, if pressed, would claim to be ‘mercenaries’, travelling in small, well-armed groups through the teeming, nosey crowds. They might call themselves sell-swords, but they were most likely thieves, bandits, and road-murderers planning to make money first on the high volume of travelers flooding up and down the Road, and then to pillage and loot once war spread confusion and destruction across the Border Realms.
Leading the patient Rolf and Dayyan, Bridget ducked between two wagons, ignoring an appreciative comment by a greasy man who was lubricating a wagon wheel, and followed the defensive ditch to her left, looking for a crossing-point over the ditch and the stake-belts beyond. Darkness was not far off, and the rest camps promised to be wild paces not long after. The lithe Serjeant did not fear fighting, but she had better things to do than carve up drunken louts.
She nodded to the armed guard, hardly the first man she had seen standing watch over his master’s goods in such a lawless place, but a step beyond him brought her up short in surprise: sitting with their backs to a pair of carts were a score of young men and women, each wearing a wrist and ankle manacle with a length of chain running between the two that was just long enough to allow them to walk but not run.
“What is it?” Dayyan asked, stepping up beside her.
“Slavers,” the advocate spat, instinctively reaching for the hilt of her sword.
“No, not slavers,” a voice corrected; turning, she saw a bland-featured man whose pointed black beard and mustache were both meticulously trimmed and well shot with gray lounging on the seat of the nearer cart, a loaded crossbow across his lap. “Indentured servants, younger sons and daughters taken as payment of family debts; serve their time to discharge the debt, and they’re as free as you and I, good lady.”
“Slavery is a hanging offense in the Eisenalder Empire, no matter what name you hide it behind,” Bridget informed him icily.
“True, very true, but this is not Imperial soil, no matter what the Road’s name is; the Imperial Highway begins in the Kingdom of Arturia and ends in the Kingdom of Lashar, both states recognizing the legality of indenture-ship.” The man brushed a bit of lint from the front of his well-cut doublet. “In between, I’m afraid, the only law is that which is made with a sword blade.”
“A good point,” the Serjeant gave him a hard smile. “The Hand of Chaos marches to do battle with the Light and you, good sir, find the time to deal in human suffering.”
“I admit, it is a task not thought highly of in certain circles,” the man confessed, bracing one booted foot against the brake lever and adjusting the position of his sword-rapier on his hip. “Still, the same can be said of many professions, and there are always more buyers than there is stock to sell.”
“An enviable situation for yourself, no doubt, to judge from the gold on your person.” The man wore bracelets, rings, and a fine necklace, in addition to a gem-studded belt buckle.
“I do passing well. To judge from your accouterments, I might be so bold as to point out that killing for hire has served your ladyship well in her turn.”
“Business has been good,” Bridget admitted, studying the two additional guards who had come around the cart to see who their master was speaking to. Turning back to the man on the wagon-seat, she smiled. “And I feel it may very well get better quite soon. Good day to you, sir.”
“And you, kind lady,” the man murmured, all trace of humor gone from his face.
“He has ten well-armed guards and a clerk in service, as well as two teamsters to drive his two car
ts, both of whom seem to be capable of fighting,” Bridget checked her notes. “In all, his ‘stock’ consists of twelve women and ten men, all between the ages of sixteen to twenty, healthy and of sound body. We need to do something, Captain.”
Durek looked up from the swirl of engraving on his axe’s blade that he was cleaning with a bone pick; the weapon itself was of the classic izar style, the true Dwarven long axe, consisting of a three-foot haft, single-bitted head balanced by a curved spike on the back, and topped with a short spike to allow it to be thrust in tight quarters, the whole richly engraved. “So this Ebro Reille must die, then, is that it? The Phantom Badgers must engage in road-murder and banditry?”
“He is a slaver, Captain,” Bridget pointed out, her eyes flashing. “I want to rescue the slaves, is all; yes, we will have to kill some guards to take them, and perhaps some others to keep them once Reille comes looking for his captives, but it is hardly banditry.”
“He is correct: indentured servitude is legal at both ends of the Road.”
“Indentured servitude is slavery under a different name, Captain; not one in ten of those captives will ever be freed. No nation that recognizes indentures enforces the release portion of the contract, only the binding portion. The men will labor until their bodies are ruined, and the women will be made whores or mistresses. It is slavery, Captain, you cannot give it a legal title and expect it to be right. Many try to hide Void-worship behind pretty names, but it doesn’t change the evil one whit.”
“Right or wrong, it is the law.” Durek, like most Dwarves, held laws, literacy, and craftsmanship in high regard.
The advocate sighed and stroked her fine-boned chin; she knew it was going to be hard to persuade her Captain, but she had considerable experience in reasoning with him. “But this is the Imperial Highway: neutral ground, without permanent populace or law; the laws of either state at the ends of the Road are no more and no less valid than the laws of the Eisenalder Empire, which prohibit any form of slavery, included indentured servitude.”
