Chapter 8

Since he was awake, he decided that he should get up and get an early start this day. He took care of his morning needs and ate the rest of the cold rabbit from the night before. He then carefully broke down the camp and packed his bags, making sure he didn’t leave anything behind. He stopped before getting the straps set on his shoulders, took a deep breath then slid his arms into the loops of leather. He quickly slipped the pack back off as the previous day’s walk had worn his shoulders raw again from the chaffing of the straps. The padding had worn down again so he opened the part of the pack that held his dry clothes and pulled two small strips of leather from the pocket. He wrapped them around the straps to add a bit of padding over the sore spots of skin. He knew he would need to do a better job of mending and repairs soon. Carefully, he sat back into the heavy pack and slowly stood up. He settled the straps and bounced a little to make sure of the seating and pulled the straps tight. With the straps set, he leaned forward on the walking staff and pushed down on it. With only a slight bit of struggle, he was up and managed to get moving through the woods back to the road.

He could see the new tracks from the recently passed ox cart and figured that he would catch up to the cart in an hour or so. He started walking and set a steady pace that he had learned wouldn’t tire him as quickly as the previous days at the start of his journey had. It was just over an hour after he started when he noticed the birds had gone silent ahead of him that he began to worry.

Stopping, he released the loop on the sword and pulled his bow around and carefully strung it. Once he had an arrow nocked and ready to pull and loose, he moved on. He soon spotted why the birds had gone silent. An overturned cart lay beside the road, smoldering slightly where a fire had been lit but failed to fully catch. He saw a man’s body on the road, several arrows in his back and sides. By the wagon was a boy child of maybe five, his throat visibly cut. ‘This must be the cart I heard early this morning,’ He thought. He checked the father and was surprised to find him still living. The man looked at him and groaned faintly.

“Come back to finish what you started I see.” He could barely speak as his lungs were rapidly filling with blood as he breathed in and out, fresh blood flecking his lips with each exhalation.

“No sir,” Andrew replied. “I’m just a traveler on the road and I just found you. What happened here, or I should more to the point ask, Who did this to you and your family.”

The man looked at him with glazed eyes as he was fading fast. “They hit us just after sunrise. We were on our way to the Crossing to trade for goods we needed for winter.” He gasped painfully, “Took wife and daughter, killed my boy and shot me full of arrows for trying to save them.” Blood was starting to bubble from his mouth as he spoke. “If you can, save them. Farm about ten miles back up the road. It’s yours, just save them.” He gasped a few more times, blood now flowing from his nose and mouth. Andrew heard the rattle of the last breath and the eyes seemed to darken as the life faded from them.

Andrew wasn’t quite sure what he should do now. The mans dying request was to save his wife and daughter, plus gaining a farm along with them to boot. First things first he thought. Un-shipping his pack, he quickly set it to the roadside. He picked up the boy’s body and laid it near a large stump next to the road. Next, he pulled the man’s body, he didn’t give his name, so that is how Andrew thought of him. He laid the bodies out and said a silent prayer to the Goddess of Death to watch over these two spirits and then covered them in stones, making shallow cairns for them. He fashioned a marker from a few loose sticks then returned to the overturned and partially burned wagon. He didn’t see any draft animals so he figured the bandits had taken them as booty.

Further examination of the area around the wreck, he found a small basket that contained a few loaves of hard travel bread. They were still wrapped and unspoiled so he added them to his food pack. The next item was a small box with a woman’s dress and children’s clothing in it. He sorted out the boy’s clothes and left them with another box that had the father’s clothes in it. He tied the small bundle to the lesser loaded cross pole and re-seated the pack in preparation to continue down the road. He knew to keep a sharp eye out to where the bandits had holed up. Andrew wondered if this was the group that had hit the village and been part of the folks that had attacked his family’s home. He didn’t hold out to much hope at finding the woman and girl alive, but he had to make sure, and somehow end the threat these animals posed to travelers.

He didn’t have to go far. About ten minutes later he saw a recently cut track off to the right leading into a thicker portion of the woods. He thought it odd that they didn’t have anybody watching the road. He continued past the trail for a few minutes then went into the woods, heading in the direction he suspected the killers had a hidden camp. Making sure he could find his pack without difficulty, he set it down and covered it with a few leafy branches that had fallen in a recent storm. He seated his quiver, drew on the buckler, rechecked that the bowstring was set and wouldn’t come loose at a bad time. Once he felt set, he made his way towards the area he suspected the camp to be. He needn’t have worried, he could smell it long before he saw it. Smoke, mixed with animal and human waste, it was not a clean camp.

Staying in the brush, he sneaked up to the edge of what appeared to be a small woodland glade. He did a quick count and saw seven small one-man tents scattered about. The center tent was the largest. It was big enough for most of the party to stay in if need be. As he worked his way around the camp, studying it for details, he saw something that made him boil with rage. The small nude body of a young girl child maybe seven or eight years from the looks of her had been thrown out of the nearby tent to lay in the sun. He could see even at this distance the blood covering the upper and lower half of her body from her throat. It had been cut open. He could also tell she had also been brutally raped from the blood on her legs. Her head though looked as though it had been twisted halfway around in an attempt to rip it off the small body afterward. ‘These monsters die now,’ thought Andrew savagely as his rage over the treatment of the child burned in his soul. He heard a woman’s voice cry out in agony, it came from the main tent, so the mother must still be alive. Securing his bow on his back, he low crawled to the nearest tent making as little noise as possible. He slowly lifted one edge and saw a sleeping form inside. He could hear the faint snoring of a man sleeping.

Andrew brought his sword around and lifted the edge of the tent a little more so he could slide partway in without waking the sleeper. Once in position, he slammed his free hand down over the mouth of the sleeping man and drove the sword across his throat, cutting the windpipe and arteries in one swipe. “Thank you, master, I needed that,” whispered in his mind. “Hush,” he thought back at the sword. The weeks on the road, he had gotten to know the sword very well and some of its history.

He drew himself out of the tent and crawled to the next in line. Again a man was sleeping in it. ‘These must be the night guards,’ he thought as he slashed the second man’s throat open, sending his soul for judgment by the queen of the dead. The next few tents where empty, so he made his way around to a small makeshift corral. He saw several horses, mules, and two oxen. ‘Those,’ he thought, ‘Those must have been pulling the wagon.’ He made it under cover just as the tent flap opened and a man stooped out and pulled up his pants. Andrew waited out of sight to see what this killer would do. What he heard next really angered him.

“Damn you, idiots, I told you not to kill the little brat, we could have gotten good gold for that one.”

A voice from another tent yelled back, “She kept getting loose from the ropes and bit me, she wasn’t worth the trouble.”

Andrew noted the location of the hidden man and watched as the one from the main tent headed towards what must have been his own. Andrew waited and watched, growing sicker in the stomach each second as the man picked up the corpse and tossed it to a dog that was tied to a pole. Strangely enough, the dog had ignored him and refused to go near the body right away. He heard it whimper and cry a little as it pulled at the rope around its neck. That was when he realized the dog had most likely belonged to the family as well. “When you get hungry enough mutt, you’ll eat what we toss you until you go in the pot yourself that is.”

He shuffled off to a tent near the corral and climbed in muttering about lazy fools and worthless idiots. Once the flap was down, Andrew slid up to that tent and drove his sword down through the leather where he felt the man’s chest should have been. He was rewarded with a grunt and a groan, the tent suddenly started acting as if it wanted to get up and walk away. Andrew pulled the sword free and drove it in higher up. This time only a faint squeak issued forth and all the thrashing stopped. “Nice stab my Lord, right in the nuts, “ said the sword with an evil chuckle. Andrew pulled the sword free once more and watched for a few seconds as the blood seemed to soak into the metal of the blade then fade away. He also noted the scars from the poison were fading rapidly with the fresh infusion of blood. “I haven’t fed this well in decades, Master. Please do go on, continue with the mission.”

Andrew felt a little dirty with the attitude the sword was exhibiting. He would deal with it later, right now he just hoped he wasn’t too late to save the woman’s life. He moved to the tent with the hidden man in it and drove the blade down into it as hard as he could. Again a grunt from the tent, but nothing else happened. He pulled the sword free and saw more dark blood on it, so he knew it was a good strike. “Liver, love the taste of liver blood.” Andrew ignored the commentary this time. He decided it was time to deal with those in the main tent. He drew his bow around, made sure the string was set, knocked an arrow and waited. He didn’t have long to wait. The flap pulled back and another man came out, this one nude except for a belt with a knife showing on it. He had the woman with him, dragging her by the hair. She didn’t struggle which worried him.

When nobody else followed them out of the tent, Andrew drew back the string part way then pushed the bow away as he had been taught. He came down on the target and set his aim a little low to allow for the arrow jump as it cleared the bow. As he released, he could see the arrow was a little low, but would still seriously hurt the target. He was surprised as the man turned at the just the instant the arrow arrived and took it in the waist, right in the kidney. The man looked down and his right hand released the woman’s hair and he felt the arrow in his side.

The woman feeling herself free, fell to her knees as her legs did not have the strength to hold her up. She started to drag herself away from her tormentor. This happened to be towards the dog and her daughter’s body, though she hadn’t noticed them yet.

The man pulled at the arrow or at least tried to pull it free. As soon as he pulled, his knees buckled from the mind-numbing pain he suddenly felt surge through his body. Without a sound, he fell to his knees, doubled over and curled into a ball on the ground. The only sound a faint whimpering as of a child that had fallen and skinned his knees.

The woman saw the dog and her daughter and tried to raise herself enough to crawl towards them, but wasn’t able to muster enough strength to do so. Andrew could see she was bleeding from her lower half, not like she had been stabbed, but just torn open from the abuse of the raping she had endured. He wasn’t sure what to look for, but he knew rape on that level was bad for a woman’s body, worse on what looked like the seven-year-old girl. What the one man had said though had sealed all their fates. Slavers, they are slavers and had to die.