The Trial: Journey's End
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 27: The Company of Sin
"Is it... is it dead?" Mu'Anik asked hopefully. 'If it dies, there's no problem.' He thought optimistically.
Mu'Bin looked up with fury on his face only slightly removed from the berserker state Mu'Anik had seen on minotaur faces a few moments earlier. "She lives." He said as he knelt down next to the small human, her chest rose and fell, and her bloodsoaked face was at peace.
'Shit.' Mu'Anik swore in his mind as he kept his face neutral.
"Well, it's dangerous, put it down so it doesn't kill you when it wakes up." Mu'Anik ordered bluntly.
There was a rumble among the impromptu honor guard that carried the limp frame back inside the walls, a rumble that disturbed the careful order that Mu'Anik had cultivated for twenty years of dealing with Devor raiders. The disturbance was manifested further by the bringing of battle axes to a guard position one after another.
Mu'Anik withdrew within. 'What the hell do I do now...?' He wondered as he closed his office door... and locked it for the first time since his occupation of Last Home began.
The bloodsoaked nightmare lay surrounded by the group of minotaurs who had fought alongside of her, while the rest of the minotaurs went over the battlefield and gathered up the corpses of friend and foe alike.
Mu'Bin frequently turned around and knelt before the body of the unconscious human, and looked for signs of life. Each time relief swept over him to see that yes, she did still live.
Each time he uttered, "She lives." He felt the relief in his breast, echoed by those around her who kept her at their backs.
He looked up at the sky every now and then, watching the sun travel the distance, drawn by Kiril's chariot across the sky. 'Kiril, lord of strength and battle, god of power and death, we give thanks this day that you have given us your angel, to ward our lives. Now she rests, and we do not know for how long, but we will guard her till she wakes.' He offered up his prayer to the sun, and listened to the conversations of his fellows who worked around the fortress of Last Home. More than one approached and asked after Kiril's Angel, each time he replied, "She lives, but sleeps."
Finally as the sun reached its apex, and Kiril's power was greatest, the bloody angel shot up to a seated position.
The honor guard spun on their hooves and knelt. Mu'Bin lowered his head and spoke first as her sky blue eyes stared around her in incomprehension.
"Angel of Kiril, your servants thank you for the blessings you have bestowed upon us. Thank you for coming, and for preserving our little lives for the day we could behold the spirit of war once again. The field of Last Home will be holy ground for ten thousand years..."
Neia raised her hand to stop him.
"Hold on... I'm not Kiril's Angel. My name is Neia Baraja, I am the General of the Sorcerer King's armies in the west." She said, and equal incomprehension met her in the brown eyes of the minotaur. "I've also been called 'The Scourge of God', 'Demon of the West', and... fuck it, those names don't mean anything to you, never mind." She said as she realized his uncomprehending expression had not changed. She pushed herself up to her knees and stood up the rest of the way.
She rubbed her bloody forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, "OK, look, I'm the war criminal on trial in Menowa. Does that help?" She asked.
She looked around, there wasn't a comprehending expression on a single one of their faces. "OK... look, I'm just... just call me by my name. Neia. I'm a servant of His Majesty, the Sorcerer King, the god of justice and strength."
"I just heard, "Kiril's Angel" again, but alright... Neia." Mu'Bin said from his kneeling position.
A memory tickled in her brain, "Wait... what was your name?" She asked him with interest.
"Mu'Bin." He said, trying to put boldness into his voice.
"Alright... Mu'Bin, I seem to recall hearing something about some other people being taken, explain." Neia ordered brusquely, her face still stained with dried blood, like much of the rest of her body, but framing blue and sparkling eyes.
"L-Lady Neia... our people are beset by Beastmen. They raid periodically, we warn the villages when they're sighted near the border, but they always manage to take a few. The aged, the stubborn, the pregnant, the very young, the sick or injured who can't run. When they don't take enough, they come and raid this fortress, we're like a larder... always replenished and used to augment their food supplies." Mu'Bin explained patiently.
"I see, so... how long till we chase the raiders down, or did your soldiers already go out?" Neia asked bluntly, and the upturned faces went down.
"We don't. They're going to... be eaten, or used as breeding stock to feed more of the beastmen of the Devor." Mu'Bin sighed, "As... as long as we don't counter attack over the border, they don't invade farther, they take no provinces, and limit themselves to raiding villages and towns that spring up close to their lands. No minotaur force has crossed the border of the Devor Empire armed in almost two hundred years.
"What?!" Neia roared in a reverberating voice, and the aura of her god crashed down in a rage. There wasn't one in the courtyard still on their hooves.
Her eyes turned to a whorling black as her mind flew back to the atrocities of the Slane Theocracy... but worse, as those were captives in an alien nation, but this...?
She took out her sword that someone had sheathed, the blood was still on it, and she got even more angry... the intended decency had revealed sloppiness.
Mu'Bin felt his bones quake with the force being brought down on him, and glowing red points in black greeted him as she placed a hand under his chin and brought his face up to look at her again.
"Have minotaurs become such sinners... to be so weak... you must be corrected... your sin... consumes your very souls..." She stabbed the tip of her sword into the earth at her feet and cradled his head at the jaw in both of her bloody hands.
"You cry out for redemption... your whole kingdom..." The anger was gone, but the pressure was not, there was only the abject tranquility of the voice of death whispering to him. "I will bring god's redemption to you."
"Someone... someone in this kingdom, sought to make me into a slave warrior, to use me to fight for you. What sinful weakness in the powerful, what sinful weakness in the commander here, what sinful weakness sweeps the land of the minotaurs... you must all... be corrected."
She released her hold and the pressure cut off, those frozen in place, found they could move again as Neia went and cleaned the blood off of her sword with a stray piece of cloth.
"Now, which way do they go to get home?" She asked as she sheathed her now clean sword. "Someone bring me my arrows, I'm going to need them."
Mu'Bin looked at her as if he were seeing an illusion, like he was caught in a dream, "I... I don't know, none of us here know the paths farther east."
Neia frowned. "Fine. I'll need a guide."
She activated a brief message spell and connected to Pandora's Actor. "I need something." She said bluntly to the treasury guardian.
"Name it, mein gutes Fräulein." He replied.
"Ask if there are any minotaurs in Kirakira prison who are from the east, and get Mu'Ka's permission to send one to me as a guide... armed. Please provide him with some... suitable equipment, not the trash this kingdom uses right now. Oh and... a scroll for undead horses, I'm in a hurry." Neia's messages were clipped and brief.
'Vat has happened mein Fräulein?' He asked her curiously.
'Sin. Terrible sin, and it must be corrected. I will tell you everything later, I swear it. But for now, I am pressed for time.' Neia answered.
Pandora's Actor clearly took her seriously, because a few minutes later, she found herself staring up at a familiar behemoth.
"Mu'Ulm!" She said and stuck out her bloody hand. He looked down at her and took the smooth bloody skin in his own.
"You've been busy." He said in a blunt sort of way.
"Well, being a slave warrior is messy." She grinned a predatory grin. "Glad to know he sent you, and..." She looked him up and down, "You look good."
He wore a black breastplate etched with white glowing runes, had a heavy round shield in his left hand, and a midsized white ax at his side.
"Marvelous equipment makes the minotaur, but how am I here and why am I here and where are we going?" He asked her, cutting straight to the point.
Mu'Bin watched this happen with open mouthed awe. From out of nowhere, a minotaur that towered over minotaurs had seemingly appeared, and spoke to her with deference while wearing equipment that was on par with the best of royal gear or better.
Tumult was ruling over the courtyard and a minotaur rushed over with a bundle of arrows that was shoved into Neia's quiver, which earned him a nod he would boast of for the rest of his life.
That tumult brought the gray furred minotaur Neia recognized as Mu'Anik back outside.
"What's going on?!" He shouted below.
"I'm going, that's what." Neia shouted back up.
"What?! You can't leave!" He jabbed his meaty finger down at her, "Someone stop her!"
Nobody moved. "Get out of my way, and keep that gate open." Neia uttered, as she brushed past to a small open space and as Mu'Ulm handed her the scrolls when she extended her hand. She quickly used them both, and from within the earth rose two large horses of bone and scraps of flesh.
"Where do you think you're going?!" Mu'Anik shrieked down at her in dismay.
"I'm going to kill them all, and save the lost sinners of your kingdom." Neia said calmly, "Then... after that, I'll be inquiring about whether it was made known that I was being sent here to be a slave warrior. And you can explain why you tried to have me killed." She added as she smoothly mounted the horse.
Mu'Ulm did the same, though with much less grace, "Now, show me how the Devor take their captives east, I want them to sleep in hell tonight." Neia spurred her mount toward the gate, followed hastily by Mu'Ulm who held onto the damn thing for dear life.
"Shut the gate! Shut the gate! Shut the gate!" Mu'Anik shouted from up above and gesticulated wildly, but the gate was not shut. They rode out and left the Fortress of Last Home, far, far behind.
"What the hell did I just see happen...?" Mu'Bin wondered in abject awe. His mouth agape and his eyes fixed on the backs of the pair that had wasted not a moment. The bloody monster, and the big one.
They left the fortress behind, silent but for the shouting of one frantic old fool. Neia rode easily, her legs clinging tightly to the side of the bones and tattered flesh of the unliving beast, and her hands holding tight to the scraps of a mane.
She glanced over her left shoulder to see Mu'Ulm more 'laying' than seated on the mount, and she threw back her head and laughed, the light of the sun striking the bloodsoaked cheeks of the Black Paladin, she teased him lightly, sitting up in the saddle and opening her arms as if to embrace the wind.
"What's the matter, Mu'Ulm?! Never moved this fast before?!" She shouted to him, and he struggled to even shake his head.
"N-No! Minotaurs can't ride anything... or couldn't!" he bellowed out over the beating hooves.
"We'll slow down soon enough, just tell me where to go and we'll ease off when we catch up." Neia said loudly enough to be heard over the din their mounts made.
They ate up ground like a brushfire ate dry grass in high summer.
Mu'Ulm was less than happy. He clung desperately to the dead beast, glad of the bones he had available to cling to, in life it must have been an enormous horse, but even then he was sure it couldn't have carried him. But now, as a dead, or rather 'undead' beast? He was easy to manage, and it was relentless, tireless, and moreover it terrified him to move with such unnatural speed.
He could only watch the ground race past under him and dread the moment he was going to tumble to the ground and get brained by the damn thing's hooves for his trouble.
The saving grace of it all... was a kind of slowly building thrill at the newness of it all, 'How fast these things move... it is... otherworldly. What could cavalry with such things do...?' A brief vision filled his mind, of hundreds, even thousands of his kind, armed and armored and riding on undead horses to confront the Devor... the horror on their arrogant faces... it made him want to weep with bloodthirsty joy.
He glanced up and looked at the back of the woman in front of him, she lay low atop the horse now, giving her even greater speed, he couldn't see her eyes, but he didn't need to. The relentlessness was in her every motion, she didn't look anyway else but forward. Blood soaked every inch of her, stray droplets fell behind, but mostly she was covered in the dried and encrusted substance.
'She killed Devor... she did and guided others in doing what we've dreamt of truly doing since the days of our grandfathers great grandfathers... and... oh by Kiril, that's what... she was serious, for fucks sake Mu'Ulm, how could you be so dense... she's going to attack the Devor on their own fucking ground...' Mu'Ulm's thoughts were whirling wildly.
'I'm out of prison... I'm on open ground again... I could ride away, with this gear on my body I could become a bandit god... I could lead her out there and abandon her, let her get eaten by the Devor, hide in the hills for awhile till nobody is looking for me... then emerge and make my mark... with this marvelous stuff I could maybe carve out my own little state and fight my way to a noble title bestowed by the Ard Rhi to buy me off...' Old ambitions stirred, old thoughts came unbidden to his mind.
Neia's back was vulnerable. 'Could I do it, get beside her... bring my weapon up, and down on her unprotected head or neck? That old bastard might even reward me.' He swallowed hard as the ravenous and rapacious obsessions of his former life beyond the walls of Kirakira prison beckoned him back the way he'd come.
His hand reached to his side, over his waist where the white ax waited, if she knew what he was doing, she gave no sign, he began to move his undead horse closer, slowly catching up with her as he spurred it forward.
'I will make you truly great...' He remembered what she'd said. 'The Minotaur Kingdom will be restored...'
He thought of the teachers she'd brought to him, the time, training, equipment, the change she effected in just days... and the respect she'd shown to him when he'd fallen at her feet. Too, he thought of what it felt like to receive such impossibilities, and remembered a saying from his youth, 'The Pride of Kiril, bearer of the sun, are the honest scales, the blunt of tongue, and the bold of deed. The shame of kiril are these, the coward and the glutton, the weak tongued, but most of all does he loath the oathbreaker.'
He bit his tongue and glared ahead angrily and moved his hand away from his weapon and went to grab the neck of the horse for a better grip. Crushing the self hatred that rose with the temptation, as surely as he crushed the temptation itself, and forged it into purpose to make up for what he had nearly done, and would never speak of.
"This way!" He shouted as they approached a great hill. "Up this, then stop!" He shouted, and they dashed madly up the grassy hill, when they crested the top, he stopped and looked around.
"By Kiril... I had forgotten..." Mu'Ulm said softly as he managed to sit up on the stock still horse.
"Forgotten what?" Neia asked with some concern as she turned and looked up into the eyes of the behemoth of a minotaur.
"How... how beautiful it all is, my country, the open land, the hills, the rivers and trees, my homeland, open in what feels like an endless expanse... to chase the horizon and never catch it and there be ever more. Over two hundred years ago, my country took a month to walk across for a full grown minotaur. Or so the stories say. Then..." He pointed to the east where a great wide road cut through a thick forest, "They started taking everything, now that forest is the border, allowed to grow mostly to mock us and our history of taming the wilds."
"When I was a young bull, I used to sneak over to show how brave I was, my friends and I made a game of it, to show our courage we'd creep over the border and whoever gave into their fear last, was crowned 'King of the Everwood.' Children's games..." He snorted bitterly.
"We had the bad luck to play that game the day a Devor raiding party showed up, all my friends were caught, I survived by hiding, by now... they're either breeding stock or dead and shat out in a hole somewhere. That was seventeen years ago, I think." Mu'Ulm said solemnly.
"I am glad to go again over the border... and this time I will survive by other means." He said in a cold, seething rage.
He looked down at the bloodstained monster of a human beside him, who sat silent and resolved as she took in the view, her eyes hard and calculating.
"Never thought I'd come this way with a human." He said thoughtfully.
"How about coming this way with a friend?" She asked through blood stained lips.
"Never imagined that either but... I'm open to trying new things." He said with a rough, huffing laugh that brought a fierce, broad grin to her face.
"Let me tell you one piece of wisdom that I have always followed. Decide what to do with it for yourself." She said calmly, "Then we go do this."
"If it is about weakness being a sin..." He began, only to stop when she laid her red hand on his brown fur at the forearm.
"No." She said evenly, "A saying I learned in my god's home. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' We shed sweat together in prison, we wore the same chains, we had the same cells no different than one another, and were bound by the same walls, but now we are going to shed blood together. To take a life... I have often treated it as a trivial thing, but I know better. It is a heavy thing, and not to be done without reason. To do so with another of one mind, forges bonds among my people that are not lightly broken. A great man once destroyed himself, to save a comrade who had gone beyond reason. He drew her away from well deserved death, and in return she destroyed his life, and many others also. I never forgave her for that. What begins here... will echo through the ages of your kingdom, far more than even my little skirmish back at the fortress. Do not make me regret my faith in you... and I will be proud to call you brother."
Mu'Ulm listened patiently, but offered no answer except to draw his blade, "My people also have a saying, 'Don't fuck with an ass you can't kick.' He winked down at her, and then nodded in the direction they needed to travel.
As her serious, even grave, face, gave way to a humorous and savage smile, he pointed ahead to the road in the distance. "We ride like we have been for that, and turn down that road, we'll catch up to them soon, I've heard stories of desperate minotaurs chasing after them to take back a wife, a husband, a child or a parent, most never come back, but those few who did, before they ended their lives in despair, talked of a place that had been a well used encampment. A fortification, nothing fantastic, mainly meant to keep captives 'in' not opponents 'out'. They after all, don't ever expect to be attacked."
Neia laughed, "We'll teach them the error of their ways then." Neia said, and spurred her horse forward.
"Yes, yes we will." Mu'Ulm added as he did his damndest to imitate her motion and again clinging on for dear life as they tore up clods of dirt and grass as they raced toward the road Mu'Ulm pointed out.
