Bronah Zoors
by Malachi Baird
Copyright© 2024 by Malachi Baird
Fantasy Story: “Bronah? Oh, you’ll have no problem catching up with Bronah. He don’t run from a thing. He walks toward it with purpose and conviction. Question is, you sure you want to? You know how real smart folk tell you that some stuff you have when you get whelped and other stuff gets taught you? When it comes to killin’, he got it from both sides. You seen his arm?” - Ardavrin Gendelam, Town Guard, Pelnagarmo
Tags: Ma Fiction Crime Farming High Fantasy Vignettes Western Revenge Violence
The skeletal figure squinted out from under his wide brimmed hat through a crack in the slants of the boxcar as the locomotive wound it’s way around the eastern edge of the Sikalsa Flats. It was indeed flat here, he could see for miles. It wasn’t the best of soil though, too much water someone once told him. He found that a little twisted and somehow familiar, a land being killed by the very thing that gave it life. It was mostly unpopulated being far from anywhere, but a few tried to make a go of it here, scratching out a living growing rice. It felt like the few buildings that he did spot, cottages and sheds mostly, got put there by mistake. He shrugged inwardly. It was a little harder to approach someone in the open, but it also left them nothing to hide behind. A farmer paused in his labours to watch the passing train. He didn’t envy them, but then they probably wouldn’t envy him either.
It was a different way to travel, this train. He hadn’t taken one before. There was only one railway in Thuvor Republic. There were seven stops on the route. When he’d gotten on at Pelnagarmo there were two others already stowing away. He hadn’t seen them at first, they had hidden behind crates at the other end. But once they were out of town, the pair had made their presence known by explaining to him that “No one rides the rails for free, even if you’re not sitting in one of them fancy seats they have up thar!” Bronah tended to travel light and had never been a man of means, but now he had a little more than he did. He moved some boxes to cover up the blood where he had slit the first one’s throat with his hunting knife. The second had preceded the body of his friend out the door of his own volition. And he had been alone once more.
The next stop would be his but it was still a few hours away at the far end of the lowlands the tracks skirted. Just like the train, the next time he set foot in Keldamoori would be his first. He’d seen it on a map of the different stations of the line back in Pelnagarmo when he had first arrived. It was built on the Sikalsa, a large river that flowed down from the mountains and through the area he was passing now. He could see the sun shimmering off of it’s surface in the distance. He’d have to follow it back some from town to get where he needed to once he arrived. He pulled the handbill from the breast pocket inside his duster and looked at the face portrayed there. His face. His name, Bronah Zoors. And a price beneath it. In truth, he was rather fortunate to still be on his journey. If it weren’t for a guard named Ardavrin Gendelam, he’d either be swinging from a tree or in a cage waiting to be.
He’d known him as a child back in the Manskoosa before his father had moved the family up into the hills. They’d been good friends back then, them and others. It was only by the odd shaped birthmark on his neck that he recognized him back in Pelnagarmo. He had grown some, filled out, seen things, much like Bronah had. Well, except for the filling out part. Oh, he was strong enough but tall, taller than most, so it didn’t seem like he was at first glance. And no matter how much one fed him, and he could eat a lot at one sitting, it never showed up on his body. Ardavrin, he’d always had the opposite problem. So it was a bit unexpected to see him in the uniform of a town guard.
Gendelam had spotted him in the station and had steered him to an exit as quickly and as quietly as he could, keeping the greetings of long separated companions subdued. They then had walked along a trail until they came to a broken down bridge that had not been repaired in what seemed like years. The guard told him a bit of his life, how he had set out from Manskoosa looking for adventure and ended up with a spear and shield in a rail town four years ago. He insisted he hadn’t given up his search but Bronah sensed that somewhere deep within him, he had.
“Haven’t found a good woman yet,” he admitted with a smile, “but don’t really want to. It would only tie me down to a place. If I did get hitched, she’d have to be special. She have to want to move about, like me. What about you Bronah? What brings you here?”
“Just walkin’” replied feeling the lie of his companion.
The uniformed man squinted at him conspiratorially “You know you’re wanted in these parts right?” he informed his friend pulling a wanted poster out of his jacket as the two sat down on the end of the bridge.
“Not stayin’” Zoors muttered.
“Well, some things haven’t changed about you I see. You’re still as ugly as sin and people still need to drag words out of you with a team of horses.”
“Don’t much talk.”
“As I was saying,” the shorter man agreed with a touch of sarcasm raising an eyebrow. “It says here you’ve killed multiple men. That’s something they hang folks for here.”
“Evil men. Done evil things.”
“What happened to you man? Last I remember your Pa teaching you how to use that monster of a crossbow he used to carry around with him. The one you could take apart. Even you struggled with it at first. We were good friends. Then you moved. Where did you go?”
“Korlamachee Hills.”
“Korlamachee Hills, why that godforsaken place? Nothing but bandits up that way I hear.”
“Pa was one.”
“You Pa was one of the bandits?” Ardavrin asked incredulously.
“Boss.”
“The boss bandit?” he repeated even more surprised. “Boss of who? Not the Korlamachee Cutthroats? Your Pa was Black Junah?”
“Yep. Evil man. Done evil things.”
“Wait ... where’s your Pa now?” the chubby guard interrogated his eyes narrowing.
“Dead.”
“How? How did he die?”
“Burnt.”
“You saw this with your own eyes?”
“Was there.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” he followed up.
“Pa was drunk. Always drunk. After killin’ Come home. Hit Ma. Hit me.”
“And then what?”
“Ma din’t wake up.”
“And then.”
“Pa hit me. Passed out”
“How did he burn to death?”
“Woke up.”
“Horse kick me hard! Can’t you string more than three words together at once? What then?”
“Was in bed. Snorin’”
“OK?”
“Dragged Ma out. Took the bow. Busted the lamp. Jammed the door.”
“Devils be damned! You burnt your Pa alive in his bed?” he cursed, his eyes widening with the admission of guilt.
“Ma and me. We watched. He screamed. We heard him. We watched.”
“And her? What did you do with your Ma?”
“Buried her. Walked away. Din’t go back.”
“How old were you when this happened?”
“14.”
The Pelnagarmo sentry shook his head trying to absorb what he had just heard the man he thought he knew confess to. This was bad enough, but the handbill had said murders. More than one. He almost wondered if the people who issued it knew about the first.
“Was this the first time that happened, your Pa doing that to the two of you?”
“Nope.”
“How many times had he come home drunk and gotten violent?”
“A lot. Lost count.”
“Why didn’t your Ma ever pack up and leave, take you with her?” he queried. “He was not always home obviously.”
“Fear. Scart of ‘im”
The shorter Manskoosan nodded. He’d seen that before. Someone knowing they should run but too scared to do it. “Anyone else ever see this?”
“Plenty. More than once”
“Who Bronah? Tell me who?” Gendelam pressed leaning forward.
“Cutthroats. They watched. They laughed. I saw.”
“They never tried to stop it?”
“Evil men. Done evil things,” he repeated with finality.
The uniformed man slowly turned to his the man he used to hang out with as a boy. “Are the Cutthroats still up there in the hills Bronah?” Ardavrin questioned with a sudden increased clarity.
“Nope.”
“What happened to them?”
“Split up. Some here. Some there.”
“How many of them were there? How many bandits were in your Pa’s gang?” he pushed piecing things together.
“40, 50. Was different.”
“And how many have you killed?” the man with the spear grilled, his questioning coming to a point
Bronah looked at his childhood friend sideways and the town guard swallowed as if he wished he hadn’t asked. The tall man slowly rolled up his right sleeve and showed the other a series of narrow burns on his arm between the wrist and the elbow. Gendelam counted 27 of them. “You do that to yourself every time you kill one of them?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Pennance.”
“Pennance,” the sentry repeated with a nod of understanding. “You won’t be turned from this will you Bronah? You’re going to hunt every one of these men down and kill them aren’t you?”
“Evil men. Done evil things.”
Zoors watched Ardavrin used his spear to push himself to his feet and followed him up, towering over him by almost half a foot once standing. “You said you weren’t staying in Pelnagarmo. Where are you trying to get to now?”
“Keldamoori.”
“Keldamoori,” he nodded once more. “One of these men there?”
“Yep.”
Gendelam squinted into the early afternoon sun. “The train from Ooshkeevey should be arriving soon. The next stop it makes is your destination. I need to take the main road over there back into town. Back the way we came is side trail that leads to the back of the rail yard. There will be boxcars on that incoming locomotive, there always is. I’m supposed to patrol that area when the train is in the station to make sure no one hops onto one of those. I’ll make sure I’m looking in the other direction. You get my meaning?”
“Yep.”
“Keep this Bronah,” he stated handing him the handbill. “Call it a souvenir. I hope whatever demons have your soul watch over you, friend. I’m not sure the gods will want much to do with it.” With that the town guard walked away.
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