Chapter 2: Seven Years Later

For the past six years of constant war I have served as my General’s Sergeant-at-Arms using my surname Argun, knowing that my given name Tomas had become unwise to bandy about. Even after today’s victorious battle my euphoria in ending the campaign was already beginning to ebb away.

I glanced at the women and children we’d just released from the Bandits’ whorehouse in the northern Badlands, where the outlaws had grown powerful during the power vacuum which the Queendom was only now cleaning up.

Firstly we fought a wearying three-year war before finally driving the Republic of Zenobia from the occupied Eastern Provinces. Then the battle-honed army spent these last three years clawing back other territories that had been lost to adventurers sensing Shanija’s potential collapse, or had fallen out of Royal control. This campaign in the outlaw regions of the north was the last bastion of the Bandits to fall.

The women and children waited silently, sullenly, for the promised hot food, fresh water and administrative processing to either return them from whence taken, or to somewhere they could pick up their lives in freedom again.

Realising what these women and children had gone through during our hard six-month siege, took away all my pleasure of hard won victory.

I could see that most of the whores had been marked by dagger scars of initial runes on their faces to denote their bandit ownership, some unfortunates marked by a succession of owners.

All were seriously malnourished. It was clear that before the Bandit inner stronghold fell to the final assault with victory in favour of the Queen’s Regency of Shanija, that the Bandits had fed their fighting men first from their stocks before allowing their womenfolk and children to scavenge for leftovers.

Some children and women showed the distended bellies of those who suffered the most serious deprivation; some, I knew, were too far gone to be saved, even with soups and stews that the Queen’s Army field kitchens were hastily preparing to supplement the fresh water, bread and sweet biscuits already brought into the pulverised stronghold by cart.

As I ran my eyes ran over the huddled creatures, mostly women and girls, as even the young boys over ten years old were drafted into the fighting, I heard a sharp gasp from one of the otherwise silent ranks of women.

Being a keen hunter, my skills honed by years of conflict in the service of the Queendom, I narrowed down where I thought the exclamation had came from ... to a crouched down woman whose back was turned towards me, while she clasped desperately a young boy and three younger babies in her arms. The boy stood looking over his mother’s shoulder and regarded me with a defiant, hostile, look.

“Hey you,” I commanded across the dozen or so unwashed bodies betwixt me and the woman, “you, the woman with four young children, turn and face me ... now!”

The woman’s shoulders slumped, releasing the tension of tightly holding her children to her bosom. She turned slowly to face me. As her left cheek came into view, I saw an old but angry looking scar of a gash running diagonally across her cheek from upper lip to the top of her ear. As her full though rather emaciated face emerged below her close cropped blond hair, her eyes lifted to look at me. A wan smile appeared as her lips curled up fractionally at the corners.

“Hail, Tomas,” she said quietly but steadily, as defiantly as her son’s look, “You appear well, considering the passage of time and circumstance.”

“You!” I was shocked both to recognise her and her appearance so different to the beautiful adolescent girl she was when I saw her last. “My lady, I had not expected to see you today, nor to see you again, after you ran away from me.”

“Nor I the same,” she smiled back sadly, “though I did not run away from you or my duties, Tomas, I was taken. You could’ve done nothing except die in vain, they were too many waiting for me upon the forest Rides.”

“Is there anyone else here in your party?”

“No, just the five of us.”

“Ja’rild,” I turned and spoke to the nearest guard, a young man still in his teens but I regarded him as a good and reliable soldier, “Escort this woman and her four children to Number Three interrogation tent. Stay with her until I relieve you, do not allow her to be interrogated by anyone bar me and see that no harm befall any one of them. I’ll organise hot food to be sent there directly. Do not let them out of your sight.”