Without Rhythm (The Lament)

by P. S. Power

  She'd have felt worse except the man fully deserved it.

  Mara hopped up in the carriage and picked up the small woven basket covered with a heavy napkin.

  "What's this?" She sniffed at it, but looked at Clark closely, as if expecting a trap of some kind.

  "Lunch. For you. Martha from the galley made it up. Pran asked her to." He sounded neutral about it, but Mara pulled the covering off and smiled happily.

  "You know, I think I could get used to this having an apprentice thing. She can be rewarded by doing the walking guard while I eat then too." There was a strange look on her face when she said it, but Clark nodded.

  "I'll do it going in. Pran doesn't have a Kinetic pistol yet. You two can share the duty on the way back here later. Right now I want Pran in the lead wagon with Paul, on rifle." That was already sitting on the front seat of the thing, and looked to be the same one from the night before, or its twin. She tried to keep her mind attentive the whole time, but the news that someone was going to even try to talk to the school council was distracting her a lot more than it should have. It was a chance.

  Still, she had a job to do in the moment and had told Mara that she'd try to commit fully. If this wasn't what it meant, she didn't understand the idea at all. Her mind kept struggling under the load of new information and things to pay attention to, but Pran kept after it, trying not to fail on her first real day as an apprentice. It was good practice if nothing else, because everything benefited from being able to pay attention, right?

  The trip was more interesting this time, with a lot more to see, including Clark, who moved in a strange fashion, running and walking, sometimes stopping dead still, vanishing from view every thirty feet or so, which she only noticed when he moved directly in front of them. He'd appear about five feet away from where he should have been, which was the real point. It wasn't magic, he was just not doing what was expected. If she relaxed her eyes and looked down, so that he wasn't directly in front of her field of vision it was a little easier to track him, but still hard. Her eyes wanted to find the direction he was going and follow along, but that wasn't happening very well at all.

  At the same time she had to try to keep her mind on everything around her, in case of attack.

  When it came she almost didn't get the idea at first, the half dozen men waiting for Clark to be in the back of the convoy, near the rear wagon. They were good enough not to shout or anything when they came out of the trees, wearing leaves and branches to make them look like bushes. It wasn't perfect, but she didn't notice them until it was almost too late.

  She shot without thinking, not expecting to hit anyone at all, her thumb flicking the safety as if she actually knew how to use the weapon.

  "Hold! This is a Guardian convoy and you're surrounded. Come out now or face the consequences." She waited a beat, looking back just enough to realize that both Mara and Clark weren't there anymore. The Judge wasn't either. That could mean anything, but hopefully she didn't have to fight all these people on her own.

  "Attack! They can't kill us all!" One of the voices screamed, an older man it sounded like. Carefully, not really knowing what she was doing, Pran pointed the rifle at the man, then forced a low laugh. She was pretending to be a guardian after all.

  "You mean that the one apprentice in the front can't kill us all, don't you? There are two things wrong with that statement." She called this out very loudly her voice firm, stalling for time.

  "The first thing is assuming that I can't. You'd be very wrong there. All I can do is kill you, or get you to surrender. I'm not personally good enough to take you all alive yet otherwise. The second is that if any of you do anything right now other than surrender, you won't get to take another step. Lie down on the ground and throw any weapons you have away from you, or die."

  It sounded all tough, but she couldn't back any of it at all. That she'd hit the one man was totally luck. It made her look pretty good and his moaning gave a realistic air to her threats, but they were pretty empty. Right until the first man that had yelled ran at her.

  The second shot took him in the chest, about ten feet away from her, a long knife falling from his fingers.

  "I warned you. Now, lie the hell down on the ground, weapons thrown away from your body, or I will kill you. Do it. Now!" She stood, trying to pay attention all around her, waiting for the next attack, weapon aimed at the closest man. He did what she said, but two others tried to rush the lead wagon, which didn't work to well at all, both of them falling after a deep sound shook the air.

  The men were still alive, but face down on the ground, each having gotten hit in the back.

  "Or we could just do it that way. What's with you people, never doing things the easy way. It's like you want to be beaten." She tried to sound smug about it, instead of shaky and like she wanted to wet herself. It sort of worked, thanks to good projection. She leaped from the wagon, running toward the only man left standing, mainly so the landing wouldn't hurt her legs too much, but apparently being rushed with a weapon like that got a response, since he threw his own weapon down, a cudgel like she had at her own side, not a blade or more dangerous thing at all. Mainly for show then, most likely.

  "Good. Now lie down like your friends and put your hands over your heads where I can see them please."

  It seemed a little over the top for a single rapist to Pran, all these people coming to free him, but maybe they were there for the others? It would be interesting to find out.

  It was Clark that threw the men into the back of the prisoner transport, not bothering with restraints, but he did take time to check each for weapons and even found a few. There was no rebuke or anything from the man, not even for her poor acting skills which hardly seemed to influence the men at all. Later, if she got a chance, she'd have to look at her performance and see what could be fixed. It was the problem with improvisation. No time to practice first.

  The poor team of horses pulling the already heavy wagon had to work even harder now, pulling ten people instead of four, but they made it into town easily enough, with no more attacks from the woods. One of the men seemed to be dying in the back, no one stopping to care for him, afraid that further attacks would come. The second one she'd shot. The first one had been hit in the leg, but seemed healthy otherwise. Pran felt guilty about it, but had only been acting on instinct. Hopefully it wasn't the wrong thing to do.

  The man in the back of the wagon that was shot through the middle was still alive when they got into the town square, the civilian Doctor sent for immediately by Mara, gesturing to a young boy who ran away as fast as he could go. The town guard came out a few minutes later, all of them holding clubs, looking ready to beat someone. There were six of them, marked by a blue badge on each of their dun colored shirts.

  "So, if it isn't the Creedy brothers playing bully boys again." The man in front was a strong looking fellow, with a nose that looked like it had been in more than one or two fights and hadn't cared if the face went along with it anymore. It looked huge, but not long, swollen and fat in the center of the guards head.

  "What did they do this time?"

  It was, oddly, Paul that answered, not one of the others.

  "Rape for one, attempting to attack a government transport, or prisoner convoy for the others. Those are the charges. Unfortunately for them the Judge herself witnessed most of those things happening. Kind of hard to beat that in court. We should set the trial up." He sounded hard suddenly, in charge of the situation, rather than just like a wagon driver.

  The men responded to it quickly, assembling the Mayor and the Town Council in a few minutes, the wagon with the cage in it pulled to the town center. For some reason half the people in the town came out, many of them with weapons of their own. A few doing things like hitting their hands with sticks, which seemed remarkably threatening for some reason.

  One of the men walked out and growled something that was too quiet for Pran to hear, his voice low enough to only reach those immediately around him.
It got a low roar of approval from the listeners.

  It was easy enough to work out what he'd suggested, when the chant went up.

  "Kill them... Kill them..."

  The angry man stepped forward, a big square cleaver in his right hand, cocked back as if ready to go to work on the men right then, even if he'd have a hard time reaching them through the bars. It was something that could be done, but it would be way easier to take them out first, one by one.

  "Those dogs have ruled this town for too long. They raped my Jenny and now we need to make sure none of them ever does anything like that, ever again."

  From the way his slightly yellow teeth pulled back, Pran didn't figure he meant by running them out of town either.

  Chapter six

  Jenny, it turned out wasn't the woman from the night before at all, but a totally different woman that the Creedy brothers had used that way. They had a pattern, which was to do whatever they wanted, then claim that they were the ones in the right and use force to control how things turned out afterwards. That or lies.

  When you had enough people on your side it seemed that it was easy enough to come up with an alibi. That or an excuse.

  "Look what they did to Yarl!" One of the brothers yelled from the cage.

  "They framed him for rape, then beat him once he went with them lawful and proper. We can't allow that. We all seen him be beat, us what went to make sure he was alright and got arrested for our trouble. They did the deed right in front of us."

  There was a groan from the crowd then. A few men started to move toward the cage, clearly ready to stop the lies once and for all. Pran knew it was wrong, but she could kind of feel for them anyway. After enough abuse anyone would want to do something to stop it, wouldn't they.

  Judge Claire walked to the front of the crowd, Clark going with her. Mara moved back, away from them, and stood on up on the second heavy wagon, her Kinetic pistol out but not aimed. Just for symmetry Pran did the same, rifle in hand, ready to shoot again from the seat of the main wagon if she had to. Even if that meant she was a killer.

  That part hit her all at once, even though the moaning man in the cage was clearly still alive. A wound to the middle like that would be hard to treat, if the Doctor wasn't very good. The woman that came to tend him didn't seem to be working very fast either. If he died no one would blame the woman that was working at a steady pace not really trying. No, it would all be on Pran for pulling the trigger.

  That was part of her job now, at least she thought it was. No one had really sat her down and explained it all yet, had they? It was probably a dangerous thing, leaving her to do whatever she thought was correct without instruction. She could just go around killing people or something. It was insane and left her feeling shaky and unsure of her part in things, but so far no one had complained about that part of things. It was coming no doubt, but even the Creedy's weren't trying to claim she was the bad guy.

  "Hold!" Clark's voice rang out powerfully, a deep thing that could be felt in the chests of anyone standing within about fifteen feet. It got people to stop, that was for certain.

  "Heed the Judge!"

  Claire nodded and waited for everyone to be silent, which, except for some moaning and complaining from the brothers in their cage, everyone managed to do pretty quickly. When that was done, she waited still, looking at everyone closely in turn.

  "We do not kill without attempting to find a better method first. That is not our way. This is a world of peace and law. If these men have done what you claim, they will be found guilty and punished properly, retrained to be useful members of society."

  There was a bit of muttering then, but no one tried to move toward the Judge, so Pran didn't point her rifle overly. It was a real fight to do it through the fear she felt, but Mara had told her to stay alert all the time, so she struggled for that state, trying to notice everything. It wasn't really possible in a crowd like this one, even given that they weren't moving a lot, because there was too much going on. Hopefully trying would count for something. If nothing else it seemed to keep the shaking down to a mild tremor.

  "Now, we need to set up. First we will see to the case of Yarl Creedy, accused of the rape of Meridith Foil. Please bring the accused and the accuser forward."

  The first part, the accuser coming to the front was easy enough, though the woman, who was in her forties, looked pretty bad. Her face was battered and bruised and doubtless the wounds that showed were only a small part of the damage done. The emotional scars would take a lot longer to heal. Regardless, she walked forward readily, even as the other towns people looked away in shame.

  Yarl Creedy was a different matter. He refused to leave the cage, surrounded by his brothers for protection.

  Claire waved at them, a single calm gesture.

  "It is a crime to interfere with a trial. I guarantee that this will be fair and impartial. It is the duty of a Judge to see to that, no matter what personal feelings might come."

  Everyone seemed to know that, because the crowd nodded, as if it were only fact. Pran had heard things like that, as well as other things, such as that Judges could read minds and couldn't be lied to. Even Claire had hinted at that last one earlier. Still, the brothers didn't move and after a minute no one else did either. It was an impasse. The trial couldn't start until the man was standing on his own, facing the Judge, but his brothers wouldn't allow that to happen.

  Pran pointed the rifle at the men in the cage, holding it to her shoulder as if she knew how to do anything that exacting with it at all.

  "You have thirty seconds to comply or I will shoot each of you in turn, until Yarl is free of the cage. This starts... Now." Her voice was powerful as well, yelling as she was, managing to not gasp halfway through thanks to her training as a singer.

  One of the brothers helpfully explained their position.

  "Screw you! You aren't taking our brother you witch."

  Pran nodded. "Twenty seconds."

  It came out sounding cold and remorseless, which was a good act. Of course when they got to zero she'd either have to back it up or someone else would have to come up with something. She didn't look at the Guardians, knowing that they had to see the flaw in this plan. It was probably illegal even. They weren't the Town guard after all. She was probably overstepping tremendously.

  "Fifteen. I will shoot, gentlemen. If you doubt that you really haven't been paying attention today. One way or the other we're having a trial. What you're doing won't stop that, it can only make things worse for you all."

  She got to five before they started to move, Yarl coming forward toward the metal gate at the back. Paul was getting the door, but something looked wrong. The men in the cage were too close to the door. More so than they had to be, even cramped in like they were.

  "Hold!" Pran hadn't realized that the voice was her own until a full second after she spoke.

  "You men, other than Yarl, move back now! Paul, don't open the door until they turn and face the other way." She waited tensely, but Mara, still standing on the far wagon added a few words that seemed to help a lot.

  "Apprentice Pran... If they don't comply instantly, shoot them." She sounded less fun at that moment than she normally did.

  "Understood, Guardian Mara."

  After that the men started to shift back and did turn around to look at the horses, even though she personally was called a few names before it happened.

  After Yarl was out of the cage, standing on his own feet and unfettered in front of Claire, she started asking questions.

  "Yarl, you stand accused of rape. Do you deny these charges?" Claire stared at the man, looking through him, into him somehow. It was like she had made him the sole focus of her world. It was so intense that everyone else started to do the same thing after a few moments.

  Except the Guardians, who watched everything that way.

  "Wasn't no rape. She wanted it. Came to the alley just to meet with me. Regular like, once a week for years we'd meet there for it. I
think some of her kids are mine even." The man sneered at the Judge, as if daring her to call him a liar.

  That was the wrong thing to do.

  "So you admit that it was rape and that you targeted Meridith personally? You watched her for weeks, learning the route she took home?"

  The words were so direct that Yarl took a step back, surprised.

  "I ain't said no such thing!"

  "It is well known that only the truth may be said in front of a Judge. Your guilt has been spoken to me clearly. All we're seeking now is information that will determine this for those listening, so that they may know what you've done as well." She turned to Meridith then.

  "What do you recall of the events?"

  Yarl tried to interject as the woman spoke, her words telling them all about how she'd been late at the basket shop, meaning she had to walk home in the dark. Then how she was pulled into the alley and had a knife put to her throat.

  "I begged, ma'am. I told him I have a husband and kids. He beat me then and made me... He tore my clothing and..." She sobbed pulling a handkerchief.

  "Lies! She liked it! I felt her go into the throws, clenching against me like a woman will!" Yarl practically screamed this, which instead of being ignored got a gasp from the crowd and one of the men to step forward as if ready to kill the man anyway.

  "True." The word from Claire made everyone go still then, except the raped woman who sobbed more and started shaking.

  It took a few moments to work it all out, but Pran tried to focus on the people watching, especially the man with the meat cleaver, who'd spoken of Jenny earlier. He seemed particularly angry and was edging ever closer to where Yarl stood. He kept the weapon out of sight, holding it behind his back as if that would fool anyone that had seen it.

  "That is a common reaction during rape, a physiological point that has no bearing on the crime itself. Continue please, Meridith."