----Dreams lie; all who face them know this, and yet it was unbelievable truths that had brought her here. Champion of Dreams; Champion of Sorrow, of memory and mercy. Yet as she stood there in that damp dungeon, surrounded by the husks of what few neighbours remained, she couldn't understand why any god would choose her as a paragon of mercy. The virtue did not burden her. The weakness held no place in her heart.
One prisoner, a bannerman of the false 'Duke', lay before her, bound in chains. All others had been put to the sword out in the field. Only he was kept for information.
"Your name," Ashtik grimly demanded. The wrought iron door shuddered open. She and the blacksmith alone entered while all others watched from outside.
The prisoner stuttered, but he didn't answer.
"Tell me," she whispered, kneeling close. "Before I take your tongue."
"I-I'm sorry... It's just... I've never met a Champion before," he stuttered.
--"Don't worry. You'll never face another."
"I- When they told me a... a Champion would interrogate me-" the skinny man choked out. "I just- I didn't think you'd be..."
"Be what?" Ash demanded once he fell silent.
"Be such a fine piece of ass," he smirked, his fear gone in a blink. "I mean, damn. The gods really know how to pick 'em."
"Cute," Ash answered without smiling. The next noise to ring out from behind his cocky little smirk might have been music. He screamed and screamed as she sliced away at the tip of his ring finger. He screamed all the more as she cut it off at its stem.
"You stupid cunt!" he spat through a freshly cracked tooth. "When the Duke gets back here, he'll save you for me."
--"Is that so?"
"Aye," he cackled through pained breaths. "I know he got away... Why else would you keep me for questioning?"
"I don't think you're in any position to ask me questions," Ash whispered. "But feel free to ask him all you like."
The smith took his cue, and a terrible crunch echoed through the stone cell as his weighty hammer shattered the man's knee.
"I'm not sure you'll like his answers, though," Ash mocked.
"I'll- I'll kill you bitch," the man whimpered. He couldn't even finish the threat before his left foot burst beneath the iron. "ARGH! Fine! What do you want to know?" he screamed as the first tears rolled down his dirt-covered cheeks.
"I already asked," Ash whispered. "Your name, now."
--"T- Tobias!"
--"Lovely. Very well, Tobias, where are you from?"
"I- I'm from Duke's Crossing," he answered between pained breaths.
--"The Eastern border? Why would you attack your own countrymen? The... 'Duke', he was Tevran, no? You fight alongside your enemy?"
"I- I have no enemy," he said weakly. "I only wanted... what we all wanted. Gold. Enough that our children need never starve as we did. The Duke, he found me in a- a slum. My country never fought for me, so why would I care that he was their enemy? He's a better man than you, 'Champion'."
"I am no man at all," Ash scoffed. "And nor is your Duke any longer. I saw to it personally."
"Bullshit!" The word cost him a finger as Ash's dirk gently slipped between knuckle and bone.
"Oh, you're running low on those, Tobi," Ash smirked as she threw the severed finger aside. "A clever boy might speak when spoken to."
Though her voice was quiet and hoarse from damage, she spoke clearly and with a strange confidence she had never quite held before. She spoke as though she were some other woman; some darker woman.
"Who was the woman he had in his tent... Tebea?" Ash asked, lost in the memory of scented hair and blackened lips.
"Th- The whore? I- You really were in his tent," Tobias realised, and again the hammer fell for his out-of-turn speech. This time, it was his right foot reduced to a bag of blood. She could see he was fading already. His skin had taken a tone as pale as Tebea's had been.
"Stay with me now," she whispered. "It's nearly over. Answer the question."
"She was... Some Ahpic whore," he said through a shellshocked haze.
--"Ahpic?"
"The old people of Tenpi," the smith interrupted.
"The pirate islands?" Ash recalled.
"Aye," he grunted, his reddened eyes never wavering from Tobias. "On the southernmost end of the world, too. No reason for a Tenpic waif to come this far north, whore or not. But... Sparrow, how is this relevant?"
"Right," Ash nodded, her focus returning to the matter at hand. "Tobias, look at me," she gently ordered, forcing his gaze with her steel hand. "My people want you dead. We have a bishop here who will heal you, should I wish it. Give me a reason you ought to live past this day."
"I- I don't want to die," he whispered.
"Nor did my sons," the smith spat.
"Nor did Sir Carolet," Ash nodded. "Have you nothing more to say?"
--"Sons... I- I want to see my son. He's- He's just turned ten. I w- I was putting him through school. He wants to be a- healer... Better than his old man. I- I have gold. You can have it all... It will be my debt to you. I know where the Duke keeps his hoard... Enough to fund an army."
"Gold?" Ash scoffed. She wrapped her steel hand around his throat and tore him from the wall, dragging him along the floor. A path of blood followed behind every step.
----Her black hand dripped red as she pulled Tobias to his mangled feet. It must have been the first time sunlight had kissed his skin since the attack. Despite losing his fingers and his shattered bones, the beast tried to mask the sun from his eyes.
"Sai-Weleg! What is this?" The Elder called from afar, the fat baron at his side.
"Closure," she simply replied. The sound of steel pulling from leather creaked against the great stone walls. Within the shimmer of her bloodied dirk, Ash saw purpose. She placed it against Tobias' heart and pressed hard enough to draw a first bead of blood. The little droplet spread across his fine silk shirt in the shape of a butterfly.
He cried a beautiful cry and begged her absent mercy with whimpered words.
"Ashtik, stop this!" The Elder demanded. "He may be of worth!"
"I've interrogated him; he's not. Our people call for his blood. Is it not my duty to give it to them?" Ash said, twisting the dirk ever so slightly.
"This is not duty; it's cruelty! Vengeance! Aye, the people may call for his death, and it may be on you to grant it, but this should be done solemnly. It should be a burden to take a life, Sai-Weleg. Even one as wicked as this," the Elder pleaded. The whole camp appeared at his plea. First, the smith's wife came to his side, then the millers and their daughter stepped aside the Elder.
Ash hadn't yet seen them all. Not even her parents. Tilak towered above all others, even in his reduced state. A fresh scar was worn with obvious pride over his eye. He didn't call out but sat atop a woodcutting stump to bear witness to all that would unfold.
"I- I'm supposed to, what? Pretend that I don't want to do this?" Ash sneered, her gaze wobbling between her father and the Elder.
--"You're supposed to try and find another way. If this be the only route, then so be it. But if he knows anything of value, is it not best he lives?"
"Very well," Ash sighed. "Tobias. Earn your life with pretty little words."
The pale runt couldn't manage a whole sentence. He stammered of hidden gold and promises of betrayals. Every word uttered was as worthless as his life. Each breath he drew, an insult to the good man who drew no more; to the sons of the smith; to her home.
"He knows nothing, so we move along to the other thing. Ask your people their will," Ash ordered.
She lavished her fiery gaze over these men and women whom she had known all her life, and who she had never been brave enough to utter a single word to. Now she stood almost as a performer, cast in a pantomime of justice, demanding their participation.
The Smith spoke first. "Blood, Sparrow. Let it be blood." Then his wife doubled the count, and the miller came next with whispered demands of "blood," slipping his tongue too.
Each vote was slowly cast, and blood came of all. Not a man or woman, child or elder, cast for mercy. That was until a single little voice whispered at her back.
"Please," she said, tears on the word. "No more blood. Enough have died."
The child stood close to Ash's back. Close enough to reach a hand out and ease the pressure of her dirk. It hadn't dawned on the fresh Champion how deep the blade had already been buried. A hair deeper and any vote cast would be truly redundant.
Ashtik turned, and Evara could barely stand. Her hair, a shaggy mess; her tearful little eyes glazed from drink.
Had any man or woman cast that single vote but for Evara, Ash would all but have ignored it. But here and now, her sister's mercy weighed more highly than the bloodlust of the whole world, let alone the remnants of her little village. The one contrary vote had cast something vital into Ash's first taste of righteous fury: she knew doubt.
"I- After everything he did? You want him to live?" Ash whispered, the dire confidence of her pantomime shed like broken armour. All that remained was the same hollow frame the huntress had always been when before a crowd.
Her voice quivered with each attempt at rebuttal and protest. She wanted this man dead, of that she had no doubt, but was that desire enough justification for her to kill an unarmed prisoner? Was vengeance sufficient cause for murder?
"It will be murder, afterall," she thought. No excuse could be contrived. No battle or sense of self-preservation could be declared as casus belli. This would be optional, cold. A choice to take a young man's life – a father's life – for no reason aside from whim.
The pure and holy fury of a chosen one... Destroyed in an instant by a single plea.
"I just want to go home," Ev whimpered, her voice drowsy. "I don't feel well, Ash. Please just let him go."
The malice of the crowd, the benevolence of her sister, or some third path, the wise and experienced path.
Ash looked to her father and the Elder. A dark glance passed between the two. Where a moment ago the Elder had held Ash with such disgust, now he looked at her with something else. Not something kinder, but something older. He looked at her with pure – and terrible – understanding.
"What is your vote?" Evara asked as Ash's voice failed.
The father looked at his daughters, the youngest with a warmth of pride, and the eldest with tragic duty. Tilak couldn't even glance at the young man as he bled out on the floor. He looked, instead, at the crimson midday sky and emptied a deep, soulful breath. "Blood," he finally whispered with such an appalling shame.
"Blood," the wise and pleading Elder agreed.
One vote, no matter how righteous the voter, could not drown out the will of all. The Sparrow-Knight drew her dirk high above the killer and brought about swift justice, or whatever history would call it.
Evara whimpered more than Tobias. She jolted back, but she didn't run away. Ash could see it in her eyes; she didn't blame her. She didn't hate her, but the pity in her gaze was so much worse. That Evara looked at her like a victim, rather than the killer she truly was now, caused so much more grief.
But in the end, all that was just something else she would bury this day.
----"Sparrow!" the fat baron cackled before the blood had even dried. "Quite the performance, but we have business to make. Come along!"
"My lord," the Elder protested. "Allow her some grace, I beg you. It is no small thing to execute a man."
--"Temujin! You know as well as I that these things happen! Tis' no excuse to neglect your duties. Come ride with me, Sparrow. You'll quickly feel better with the wind in your hair."
"M'lord," Tilak said with a bowed head. "We are grateful for all you have done for our village, and for lending your surgeons to my daughter, but this has been a terribly long day, and my daughter is but a huntress, not a politician. You will do much better to discuss with both sisters, once the younger is sobered, that is."
"Aha!" the baron cackled as he overlooked the fresh corpse and saw the half-sleeping sister as she rested her heavy head atop Ash's shoulder. "I'm not sure I understand why I need both sisters, but I do well know what it means to have drunk past the point of uselessness. Very well. I shall have you ride with me on the morrow, Sparrow."
"Thank you, m'lord," Tilak bowed.
"Yes, yes," he dismissed. "Now, Temujin, come with me. I want you to explain all this in my study."
--"Very well, my lord."