Heedless of my shoulder injury, my arm was wrenched painfully down, splitting open the wound again as my hands were bound in front of me. I could tell from the blood seeping through the bandage. Hadra was going to be pissed.
I was hauled through a small host of glaring soldiers who looked as pissed at me for ruining their fun as they were at the beaten man being dragged behind me for his supposed crimes.
Where had all of this hatred come from?
I turned back to glance at Pretyr and Owinda. I was still concerned for him, but he seemed to be walking okay. One of his eyes was swelling shut, and his mouth was bleeding a lot. I hoped that was just from his bloody lip and not from the punches I’d seen him take to the stomach.
Owinda was apoplectic.
“Let me go! L-Let me go!” she screamed. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and neither has Pretyr!”
Mevery, the man holding onto me, cinched the painful ropes as tight as he could and then proceeded to push me, making me stumble. I glared at him but he wasn’t even looking at me, instead glaring back at Owinda.
I thought he just wanted to get away from the screeching girl.
“Gag the girl! Fuck! She’s making my ears bleed!” someone shouted, and a peel of laughter echoed throughout the crowd of soldiers.
I chanced a glance back just as Owinda’s cries were muffled, but not stopped, by some sort of cloth. A garment from the room, carelessly torn. She continued screaming through the gag. She was terrified.
Perhaps I should be. There were still tears in my eyes, but I wiped them with my shoulder and fed anger into my gut instead. These fucking assholes.
“Hurt her, and you’ll regret it,” Pretyr hissed at the man before he was yanked forward.
I heard a grin and a sudden smack. Owinda’s muted screams went silent. I chanced a glance back and saw the man sling the girl over his broad shoulder, grinning at Pretyr. She was gasping, the hit having stolen the breath from her lungs.
These were Tacurians. People from my own nation. What the fuck?
I watched Pretyr’s eyes go colder than winter and shivered.
The soldier seemed unafraid of the woodworker, but I was. Pretyr had no particular talents to speak of. I would not be nearly so confident on the other end of that glare, though.
I would’ve been more worried if the situation were a bit different. If it were a different time of day, on a different day, perhaps I would be terrified. I would be taken to the General’s camp and judged there. But the general wasn’t at his camp. He was going to be announcing the draft any minute, and there was only one logical place he would do that from.
As expected, the men began walking us toward the bar. It wasn’t a long walk as the town was quite small, but it did have quite a few little houses, and each house had its own gardens for spices and vegetables that they might want to add to their meals. Each one also had people and villagers were more curious than cats when a small procession of soldiers was dragging bound prisoners through the streets.
The small crowd of onlookers began to swell as people peeked out of their doors.
“Mera!” Came a sudden, horrified shout, and I saw Hadra, looking on with shock, coming from where the north road met the highroad. It seemed she was on her way to the bar, her arms loaded with bandages. Her mother was right beside her, looking at me with a grim countenance.
“Mera?” someone else called from behind me.
“What are you doing to Mera!?” I heard someone shout. I glanced forward and spotted Elsee, dashing off ahead towards the bar. She was going to get someone.
People who’d been rubbernecking when Pretyr’s house was being ransacked suddenly perked up and noticed that it was me. I counted and was surprised to find that this particular mob had only included eleven guards. It seemed like so much more when I’d tried to break through them.
The village was filled with a lot of people who knew me, and none of them looked happy.
I grinned a little as the first man stepped into the soldiers’ path. Nemmikel. The old fool. He wasn’t alone, though. He was joined by Eskra, a girl of about eleven, who loved to hear my stories. More names and faces of my family and friends began to block the soldiers, glaring defiance, regardless of whatever I might’ve done.
“Get out of the way! By order of the Tacurian Army!” screamed the jumped-up sergeant. I grinned as I felt him grow anxious as more and more angry faces gathered in front of them, slowing them to a halt.
I saw Benethan’s mother, Ikara, pointing at me and telling her son to do something. Benethan strode forward and joined the crowd. He wasn’t wearing armor but the presence of a soldier dissenting against the treatment of one of Pemolar’s Hill’s own residents emboldened the rest.
This… this was what I had been building. These people who actually cared about me. So much so that they were standing up to soldiers for me. Admittedly, half of them here had been veterans of the Summer of Bone and the wars before, and they were not cowed by the armor these soldiers wore.
My eyes were wet once again at the show of loyalty.
I could almost feel the guards regretting their decisions, but the people didn’t do anything. Just stared, and blocked the way, the implied threat of violence washing over the misty morning air.
I saw Burnom, holding a damn club, and Gwiredel, the mousy little patenteer, standing side by side, glaring daggers at the soldiers.
“Get out of the road!” shouted the sergeant, real fear present in his voice now. “This is army business, and these are–!”
“Hey! You let Pretyr go right the fuck now!” came a sudden shout. Travmetis stepped through the crowd, as if taking ownership of it. Pretyr wasn’t exactly well liked in town, but Travis was the only other Woodworker in town, and he was Pretyr’s best friend.
He was holding a menacing axe, drawn and ready to use. I’d made it for him. To my surprise, he had a newly lit need bubble. He must’ve fulfilled whatever he’d needed the axe for.
“Uhm… S-sergeant Haminal?” asked my captor, nervously.
I watched Uraleka step up beside Travis. She didn’t have the massive warhammer, but she was a big woman, and she cracked her knuckles like she was ready for a fight.
“Mera!” came a shout from behind the crowd, and I saw Elsee’s father Mularet poke through the crowd, too. He was even braver than Travis, walking between the two like a captain taking charge of a platoon. Just a carpenter, but deadly willing to protect his own.
“Boy,” Mularet said to the panicking Sergeant, just loud enough to be heard over the voices of the crowd. He tugged the blade of a carving knife partway out of a leather sheath. “Let our people go.”
The sergeant was a man grown, but in that moment, he looked petrified. Had he done this before? Had this group paraded Eschal citizens around Potato Gully, and been unpunished? Other towns further to the south? What had made him think this was okay?
“What in the blasted hells is going on here!?” came a new voice, bursting through the crowd and pushing over a few townspeople as he bowled his way into the middle of the two groups.
Mevery tugged me to the side, and I tripped, falling into the solid body of one of the soldiers. They jumped, like they were ready to be attacked. My arms burned from the sting of the rope.
When I recovered, I saw the new figure and did not recognize him. I did recognize his ensignia, though. Another High Bannerman like my Uncle.
The man was wiry and thin. He was one of the few people I’d seen wearing a breastplate and full armor instead of the usual leather jerkins, and he walked like he was more comfortable in it than he might be in regular clothes. He had a thin moustache and a pointed nose.
He didn’t glare at Mularet, but he did demand answers, and I didn’t think the sword at his side was for show.
“Your men have wrongfully detained our people,” Mularet said. “I suggest you let them go.”
The man was not even slightly afraid of the crowd. He glanced over them, turned to Pretyr, saw Owinda, who was only just managing to get her breath back, and me, before he grimaced. Rather than turn back toward Mularet, he glared as his eyes found the leader of the soldiers.
“Sergeant Haminal. I might’ve guessed. Are you addled in the head, or just a complete moron?” he said, his tone laced such profound disgust that I thought he might’ve been hit with pepper paste.
That was not the way I was expecting this to go.
“You’ve somehow managed to piss off an entire town. Do you really think that any of these people would inspire so much loyalty if they were Eschal spies!?”
“N-No, High Bannerman,” he said.
“You stupid fuck. Do you have any idea how–! I can’t even–!”
He kept cutting himself off. He glanced at the crowd, whose anger hadn’t lifted by an inch.
Suddenly, I realized exactly why he looked so enraged. The general was about to call a draft. He was about to forcibly enlist villagers for the first time in over fifteen years.
There were about twenty townspeople in this group here surrounding eleven soldiers. Word of this would spread faster than any draft call could possibly fly. Nothing traveled faster than gossip and the village would be talking about this for the next decade.
The Bannerman was thinking in terms of the potential recruits today and harvests in the future. These soldiers had just predisposed our entire village to finding ways to skip the draft. They couldn’t have made our youth less likely to want to join if they’d been trying to, and no matter how many willing volunteers there were to help the country and protect their home, there was no forcing a country kid into the army if you couldn’t find them.
There might be talents that could help with that, but I doubted it.
I saw his dilemma as plain as day.
“Release them, you imbecile! You’ll all be demoted for this, assuming the General doesn’t decide to simply hang you and be done with it!” he shouted, looking at each and every soldier, cataloguing them. I saw him notice Benethan and nod approvingly at his position in the crowd.
The asshole sergeant jumped to obey, and turned, untying the bonds around Pretyr while Mevery focused on my own. I winced, holding back a scream as the rough rope hurt more sliding off my wrists than it had going on.
The High Bannerman turned back to the villagers, a resigned expression crossing his features, before he addressed Mularet. “Is it safe to assume, that the next time we visit this town we will find your fields nearly barren, and your village filled with only the very old and the very young?”
Well. That was blunt.
“What do you think?” Mularet hissed, as I was released.
“Gods be damned! I think that every army has lackwits, but that’s no reason to sabotage our chances of winning this war,” the High Bannerman hissed. “Eschal has proven quite formidable and it seems they’ve found a way to turn the Rift in their favor. I’d beg that you not take the actions of a few to be the actions of the whole. Your sons and daughters fill this army’s ranks too.”
I twitched. Had this altercation changed my mind about skipping the draft? I was one of the very few people who had a way to get out of it legally. I could just go tell Captain Retham I was the one influencing Hadra and off we’d go.
But did I want that? Did I want this awful division to spread?
I sensed an opportunity here. A way to mend rifts, and a way to make friends among people who would theoretically be fellow soldiers in a few short hours.
“High Bannerman,” I said, drawing every eye. I thrived here, in front of a crowd that was listening. It wasn’t… quite the same as the bar. I felt a thrilling lift in my stomach as Hadra and Uraleka both gestured for me to shut up.
I ignored them.
“Young Lady?”
I made a show of stepping out of the group of soldiers, forming a triangle between myself, the High Bannerman, and Mularet. I rubbed my raw wrists to generate sympathy while speaking loudly enough that everyone could hear.
“I’m sure this was all a misunderstanding. Men and women such as yours don’t just beat defenseless citizens on a whim.” I said bluntly.
That was a lie, I was pretty sure. Pretyr, Travis, and the furious Owinda suddenly glared daggers at me. I moved on quickly.
“I’m certain there have been Eschal spies, otherwise your men wouldn’t be so quick to find any potential threat, and so proactive about eliminating them. Am I right?”
“You… are correct,” he replied, irritated.
“Your soldiers made a mistake here, High Bannerman, but it was just that. A mistake. Pretyr has been a good friend and a loyal Tacurian citizen for more than ten years, while Owinda and I were both born right here in Pemolar!” I shouted.
“What is your point?” he asked.
“We cannot punish your men for being overzealous in their pursuit of Eschal spies. Instead, why don’t we forgive and forget? All of us have reason to be angry at the Eschal, for sure, but not the people who left it.”
“You’d… accept that? Why?”
“It’s as you’ve said, Sir. We’re in a war, and unless I miss my guess, I’ll be called to serve in the army very soon. I intend to do so. I’d rather not have a group of people who already hate me at my back.”
The man paused, considering me for a moment.
“As you say, Young Lady. May I have your name?” he asked.
I smiled, looking over the soldiers who suddenly looked like they’d been tossed a lifeline. A need bubble formed over Mavery, and Sergeant Haminal’s heads. I was watching the requirements for them plummet in real time as well. Something to prevent them from being confused.
“I’m Elmerina Farmer,” I said.
He inclined his head, smirking. “Marnakus’s niece. I am High Bannerman Presken. I think you’ll do well, in the army.”
I would’ve blinked, but I did not want to show surprise here. There weren’t very many High Bannermen and it was no surprise that Markus might’ve spoken of me.
“I intend to. Rett? Travis? Pretyr? Do you agree?”
I got reluctant nods from Mularet and Travmetis, but Pretyr looked understandably livid.
“I’ll agree on one condition,” he said, before turning around. The motion wasn’t fast, but it was powerful and shocking in its suddeness. The woodworker’s broad arm snapped out and a sudden scream echoed throughout the town.
He’d just broken the nose of the soldier who’d hit Owinda.
“Now I’m satisfied,” he said.
Surprisingly, High Bannerman Presken snickered.
For negotiating on behalf of a group, you’ve developed the new skill Diplomacy!
Your Diplomacy skill has improved by 3 points!
Huh. So that was how you got it. ---- End Chapter ----A/N: I feel like ya'll are either going to love this chapter or really hate it.