Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Under the branch of an oak tree, two corpses hung rotting in the sun.

A thick, black swarm of flies buzzed around the decaying flesh.

”Who are they, ser?” Owen asked, his knuckles turning white as his hand nervously gripped the horn hilt of his shortsword. Vilon noticed he was trying his best not to gag at the smell.

From the nearby village, the distant, peaceful sounds of daily life drifted through the warm air, a dog barking, a woman calling out.

”Probably robbers or bandits,” Vilon replied, leaning forward in the saddle.

Chestnut, thoroughly unbothered by the stench of death and delighted by the brief reprieve, was busy munching greedily on a patch of sweet, wild clover beside the rutted path.

A piece of rough-hewn pine hung by a frayed rope between two of the corpses, three words crudely carved into its surface. It likely contained the exact answer to Owen’s query, but as neither the knight nor his squire possessed the noble art of reading, the wood remained a mystery.

Vilon waved a heavy, leather-gloved hand to fend off the fat bluebottle flies that were straying from the bodies to circle their heads. ”Whatever they did, the crime must have been foul enough for them to leave them up to rot unburied.”

Either that, or someone simply decided they looked guilty enough, Vilon thought. He knew well enough how swift and blunt justice was in the countryside: it was usually carried out on a diet of local gossip, hanging the nearest strangers first and then waiting to see if the livestock stopped disappearing afterward. Some men needed precious little excuse to stretch a rope. Some were even looking forward to that.

The unfortunates hung side by side, swaying gently in the afternoon breeze. All two were missing their noses, a hollow darkess where the cartilage had been. Vilon knew that after the the eyes, a man’s nose was always the first delicacy the ravens picked off. A massive cloud of the black birds had erupted from the oak when horse and rider first approached, but instead of fleeing, they now perched expectantly on the higher branches, cawing softly.

They were merely waiting for the knight and his squire to move along so they could resume their feast.

”Whoever they were, ser... they look half-starved,” Owen observed, stepping a fraction closer to get a better look at the middle corpse.

Vilon instantly extended a long, booted leg, pushing his squire back by the shoulder. ”Keep your distance, lad. Sickness and death always ride close to rotting meat. There’s a reason soldiers burn the dead after a grand battle.”

Though, observing the corpses closer, Vilon had to agree with the boy’s assessment. Without their tunics, the men’s ribcages protruded sharply like the wicker frames of fish traps. Beneath the mottled green and yellow skin, there was precious little flesh left.

”It might be they stole a loaf of barley bread,” Vilon mused.

”And they hanged them for a single loaf?” Owen asked, his eyes widening in sheer bewilderment. Clearly, life had been peaceful enough back in his home village for such brutality to shock him.

”You’ve never lived through a proper famine, clearly,” Vilon replied dryly as a fat fly landed on the open, black mouth of the man on the left. The tongue was gone, too, more raven work. ”When food grows scarce, men will do anything for a single morsel. Be it earned, begged, or stolen. I hope to the gods you never have to witness one, Owen. Famines are a nasty business.”

The knight tilted his head, inspecting the sunken, bloated bellies of the hanged men. ”Though... it isn’t even a proper famine for these folk yet.”

”Why do you say that, ser?”

”Their livers are still intact,” Vilon replied matter-of-factly. ”During a true starvation, those are the first parts a desperate man carves out of a corpse. Easy to hide in a pocket, easy to cook fast.No one wants to be known as a man-eater.But when times call, they appear.”

Vilon snorted a thick glob of mucus from his nose and spat it hard into the muck at the base of the oak.

Owen looked first confused, then utterly horrified as the graphic reality settled into his mind. It was one of the many bleak truths of the world Vilon had hoped the boy would be spared from learning so soon.

”No matter whether they were thieves, outlaws, or just poor bastards in the wrong field,” Vilon said, gathering Chestnut’s reins, ”it’s clear this village doesn’t mind the stench of rotting flesh on their doorstep. Do not give the locals any reason to wish us harm. Keep your eyes open and be ready to defend yourself if need be, but do not go whipping out your steel out of fear. A village will always outnumber two travelers on foot.And something is strange about it.I would gladly ride past, but this is the only village we sighted after days.’’

He nudged Chestnut’s flanks with his heels. ”Now, off we go. I’d like to have our business done and our bellies filled by evenfall. But we won’t manage that if we stand here all day counting flies.”

Taking the cue, Owen fell into step beside the stallion, casting one last unsettled backward glance at the swaying figures before picking up his pace.

The rutted dirt path wound gently down the slope of the hill, carrying them away from the shadow of the hanging tree and toward the settlement below. As the distance closed, the oppressive smell of decay gradually gave way to the rich, comforting aromas of rural life, damp earth, woodsmoke, and the less pleasant sharp tang of manure.

The village was a small, quiet place, sprawling lazily along the banks of a shallow creek. Its low-slung buildings were constructed entirely of dark timber and rough stone, their steep roofs thatched with yellowing hay that caught the golden afternoon light. Smoke curled lazily from a dozen stone chimneys, drifting up into the clear sky.

Along the grassy verges of the road, fat, woolly sheep lazed about in small clusters, chewing rhythmically on the turf and barely bothering to raise their heads as Chestnut’s heavy hooves clattered past. Children in oversized woolen smocks played in the dirt near the doorsteps, while a pair of old men sat on a bench outside a barn, quietly mending a leather harness.

On the surface, it looked like a picture of peaceful, rustic solitude, yet as Vilon rode deeper into the center of the hamlet, he could feel the unseen weight of cautious, watchful eyes tracking their every move from behind narrow wooden shutters.

”Ser,” Owen started, his voice dropping into a guarded whisper behind him.

”Lad?”

”Across the road we’ve passed... all those burnt fields and black ash where houses and crops used to stand,” he muttered, carefully stepping around the tall grass along the roadside, a habit drilled into him by his parents, no doubt, for that was where snakes lay in wait.

”Aye, dozens of them,” Vilon replied absentmindedly, as the bronze bell around a grazing sheep’s neck chimed softly in the cold breeze.

A man couldn’t ride a league down this highway without seeing the scars. Once, these hills were the rich crownlands of the Prince of Oizen. Now, all that remained of those golden days were heaps of charred timber and desolate ash. The sun of Oizen had set in blood, and the falcon banner had risen in its stead.

The folk who survived were immeasurably poorer for it, though perhaps in time, as the years softened the horror, they would come to accept their new overlord.

”Why is that, ser?” Owen pressed, jogging half a pace closer to Chestnut’s flank. Even the horse seemed spooked by the air around. ”How come this village was left standing? I thought the Hounds burned everything the sun touched on this side of the south.”

”Keep your tongue behind your teeth, lad,this is not Yarzat. Here people don’t sing of the victories of the falcon.” Vilon cautioned, casting a sharp glance toward a nearby cottage.

Truth be told, he didn’t know either. It wasn’t as if the hamlet were tucked away in some hidden glen; the main road led straight to the creek running through its center. Any scouting party or vanguard marching through the valley could hardly claim to have missed it.

Still, a knight could not simply admit ignorance to his squire, lest the illusion shatter. ”Perhaps in their haste, the war-bands simply chanced to bypass it or ignored it,” Vilon ventured, stroking Chestnut’s mane. ”Or maybe a nearby garrison held the road, and the raiders judged it wiser to steer clear?”

”Or maybe the folk here proved something that the other villages could not, or would not even attempt,” a hard voice interjected from the shadows of a barn.

The low words were punctuated by the sharp, heavy rattle of iron links. Whoever he was ,he was well armed and armored.

”And they made themselves far wiser and smarter for it. Which is rare in these parts , I assure you.”