“Hand her over, and no one gets hurt!” The shouting militiaman gave off an unimpressive, forgettable air. Neither fat nor thin, with less muscle than most men in Grace’s village, obviously not used to heavy labor.
Stephan barely spared him and his company a glance before seeing through all the things wrong with them.
They were clumsier and nowhere nearly as dangerous as the paladin-lookalikes had been after a month of training. Their bearing was sloppy; they gripped their swords like little boys holding their sticks, afraid someone would steal them, and the leather armor was an ill fit, hanging loose, probably never made with a specific man in mind.
Stephan didn’t run towards them. He walked, calmly and deliberately, confidently. Not because he feared he would cause a scene, nor to gain an edge. No, he wanted to give them enough time and to see if they would sense the danger he posed.
In his torn clothes, none spared him a look as they shouted at the terrified villagers, bullies bullying the weak. Richard Bowyer got out of a building, but whatever he was about to say died before it passed his lips as Stephan reached the leader. He grabbed the man’s hand holding the sword and pulled down.
The thug screamed as Stephan mercilessly broke his wrist. The rest of his gang only turned towards Stephan as the man was falling to the ground, cradling his arm.
One of them swung a sword at Stephan. He batted the blade away with his own, then slammed the flat of the stolen weapon against the thug’s temple. Bone cracked, and the man would have perished had Mercy not kicked in. Still, he crumpled to the dirt like a doll while the others charged at Stephan.
Steel flashed to his left. He ducked under the slash, then ran another attacker through the gut with such force the handguard slammed into the man’s abdomen. Without thinking, Stephan took the gasping man’s weapon, at the same time knocking another out with a fist to the side of the neck.
The two remaining men, terrified like rabbits caught in the open, dropped their weapons and fled. A futile effort. Stephan caught up with the first in three strides and Mercy kicked in once more after he struck him with the pommel on the back of the head. A heartbeat later, the second suffered the same fate.
Before anyone could shout, all six attackers were on the ground, one of them dying.
“G—Lady Saintess,” Stephan shouted, deciding then and there Grace needed to become a symbol, not a village girl. “We have wounded men here who might need your attention.”
Is it all right to do this to her? By making her the Saintess, I’m doing what gods have done to me.
He disregarded the thought immediately. Nobody would forget Grace. She would still have her family and a normal life, or at least a semblance of one.
A woman screamed, and the village folk gathered once more, less than an hour after the last disturbance. Richard stared at Stephan in fear and made the sign to ward off evil, no few villagers joining him.
Then Grace came running. She looked with horror at the man clutching the hilt of a sword, its other end sticking out of his back.
“Try to heal him if you can,” Stephan said, “I’m about to pull the sword free. You ready?”
She nodded, face pale, and then blood sprayed as he jerked the blade out. Grace’s hands glowed as she pressed the golden light to the wound, blood crumbling to dust on contact with her.
The crimson flow slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely, and Stephan was under the impression her healing was better than his was when he had first started out.
“The light flashed again,” she said.
Stephan registered her gaining a level, but his mind was otherwise occupied. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. In fact, he focused on wanting his blessing to trigger and save their lives, but apparently there were limits. There was no nonlethal way to stab someone in the gut, while other, blunt force attacks seemed to work fine without him having to hold back at all.
“What are you?” Richard’s voice trembled.
“I’m a bodyguard of the Lady Saintess. I will be her blade and her shield. As for what she wants and what she can do, we shall discuss that at length in private.”
Stephan gave Grace a look, and she bit her lip but nodded, moving to heal the other enforcers.
“We have to detain these men,” Stephan continued. “We need rope or shackles if you have any.”
Nobody moved. It was one thing to fetch him a hatchet, and another thing entirely to bring him rope with which he would bind the baron’s men.
He saw the youths he suspected had become Knights move to comply only for their parents to grab them and stop them from acting.
Stephan looked at the stunned crowd, Grace’s parents included. He was no Harold Harrington, but even he knew what he needed to do.
“Are you fine living the way you are?” he asked. “Look at your lives. An old man is going to die because he had to forage instead of having enough food to provide for himself and his family. Outsiders come and steal your daughters, they take whatever they want, your dignity along with it, and you just let it happen?”
The crowd stirred, but not in the way Stephan expected. Mothers grabbed their children and kept them close. The younger men clenched their fists, with parents shushing the newly appointed Knights, young women sent him pleading looks, but most everyone else avoided his gaze. But not all. Some of them grew angry.
Not with the enforcers, nor the baron, but with him.
“And what would you have us do?” Richard shouted, standing behind a woman with children, using them as a shield. “Attack the baron? Even if we kill him, there’s a noble above him, and the king above them. What do you know of any of it, outsider?”
The mature men, and especially the elderly, muttered in agreement, but none dared speak the words too loudly or clearly. They were angry with themselves, but even angrier at Stephan for forcing them to face their reality. For ripping the blindfold they had bound their eyes with.
“I know that it’s only a matter of time before a drought hits!” Stephan surprised himself with what came to his mind, but he remembered one that was terrible when he was a child and when his parents had been especially nervous and quick to slap. “Or a long winter, or a late frost. Will your lord understand your plight when it happens? How many will starve or freeze for no good reason?”
“And what will change if you become the lord?” Richard shouted, face red with righteous fury, but he still kept the innocents as a buffer between him and Stephan.
“I have no intention of becoming your lord,” Stephan said honestly. “Even if we overthrow the king, I’m not interested in ruling your kingdom.”
Wait. What would happen if they got the King? One land ruled by the King, the other by the Queen. Could that work?
It seemed like it should; the only question was why the gods hadn’t arranged things that way.
“Liar!” the red-faced Richard shouted, and Stephan was under the impression that the villagers were close to attacking him.
He raised his hands in peace, the bloody sword still in one, and the crowd stepped back and went silent in an instant, even if it wasn’t what he had intended.
“Muriel and I will leave in the morning, and we’ll take everyone willing to join us.” He glared at the young Knights’ parents. “And nobody’s stopping anyone from going if they want to go.”
“You can’t tell me what to do with my own son,” a woman shouted despite her fear.
“He has a class. He is a grown man and he can make his own decisions.” Stephan took a good, long look at Alfred, then moved his gaze to Miles, whose parents didn’t seem as set in keeping him home. “While dangerous, conflict and battle will be their chances to grow and excel. And they will have the Saintess with them. Consider what you want to do, and what you want your future to be.”
He deflated, seeing how his speech failed to do much more than turn the village against him. Instead of rousing their morale, he had turned them hostile.
“That’s all I had to say. We’ll be out of your way tomorrow morning.” He pointed the bloody sword at the militiamen. “These men will stay here for the night, or I kill them right here, right now. Now, bring the rope.”
Nobody moved. Except for one of the militiamen.
“Get him the blasted rope!” the man he had ran through shouted louder than Stephan, strangely, the only one with the courage to resist the baron. Or the only one cowardly enough to follow Stephan’s orders.
Whatever the cause, his shout got people moving, and Stephan bound the militiamen, then scanned the crowd for Robert.
“You,” he pointed at the man still hiding behind women and children. “They will spend the night in your house tonight, and in the morning you’ll be responsible for them. Understood?”
The village chief’s face twisted, but he didn’t dare say anything. He nodded curtly, then had others help him carry the unconscious enforcers to his home.
“That could’ve gone better,” Stephan said when Muriel approached him.
“I dunno,” she said, “it could’ve gone much worse if you ask me.”