The Trial: Journey's End

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 35: Sinners

...Highway of Tears...Devor Side...

When morning came, Neia was still awake. "UP!" She shouted in the reverberating voice that had brought terror on the battlefield. Little ones wailed at the sound, and she instantly felt her skin tingle with a hint of regret at the frightful awakening.

"Sorry..." She uttered, chastened by the cries of children, and putting a less fearsome note into her voice, "But we have to move. You have two minutes to gather water, but then we go."

She waited as Mu'Trieu approached, her little hooves throwing up dust clouds inches into the air on the crude road. The peasants were quick to follow her directions, and Neia lifted the little minotaur onto the front of the undead horse, then mounted it herself just behind the little girl.

Mu'Ulm was quickly by her side, and when the horse began to move, those who moved too slowly in the waters, scrambled up the banks and fell in with their fellows.

"You could have given them more time." Mu'Ulm suggested, then followed by asking, "Why didn't you?"

"You're worried? Mr. Hornbreaking town burning bandit lord?" Neia asked with a blood crusted eyebrow raised up dubiously.

"That was necessary to survive. You want proud stories, find prosperous lands. There's no pride left in my country, you do what you have to in order to survive, or you don't survive." Mu'Ulm groused at her, but didn't meet her stern gaze.

Neia let that hang in the air, then gestured with her head turned to one side, back to the following rescuees. "Same here. Any extra time I give them, is an extra chance the Devor have to possibly pursue them. I told you, Mu'Ulm, I'm not a god, I'm not Kiril's Angel. I'm just Neia Baraja. A damn good soldier, a damn good speaker, and yes I have an impressive resume of blood... but I have no idea what they'll send. Golems? Magic casters of great power? An entire battalion? Scouts I can't detect? Even if I fight, even if I win against any of those, then we'll be throwing lives away here, lives I took the time to rescue. Taking a chance like that to have an extra two minutes of drinking time is reckless in the extreme. I won't make the same mistake twice." She said coldly as she thought of the stump of a man she delivered to Nazarick's hands for his part in the debacle at Wenmark.

'I hope he's still screaming. One day soon, Sudaj, I'll have to visit you.' She thought as her hate ran hot in her veins, and her grip tightened enough on the bones of the undead horse that a few cracks appeared.

Mu'Trieu craned her head back so that she was looking straight up at the bloody human that was taking her in, only to see her staring straight ahead with the implacability of a statue.

She snapped her head down and looked ahead, frightened briefly, 'She scared mama's killers. I want to do that.' So, in her own small way, she glared silently ahead until the fear was gone and her heartbeat slowed in her chest.

Mu'Ulm walked quietly beside his commander, the silence between them was somewhere between stern and amicable, and the peasants behind, picked up some measure of the tension and instinctively kept their distance.

So it went for the next three days, until they spotted the end of the forest and the open lands beyond. Each night she told Mu'Trieu a story ripped from the pages of her life, with none of them getting enough sleep, and if Neia slept at all, Mu'Ulm found himself wondering when it was.

He didn't see a hint of the bright blue eyes, but in the time with the peasants, he told them stories about how he'd met her, why she was in prison, what she was doing while there, everything he knew.

Occasionally on the long walks, the minotaurs would ask about the Sorcerer King she served, which always made her happy, and so they did it more frequently, with one approaching to ask a question, letting her speak, and then enjoying the warmth of her passionate voice as she told stories of her coming into his service, and her time in the war against the Slane Theocracy.

Sometimes she made them laugh, as when she spoke of her clumsiness with her wife before they were together. Sometimes she moved them to tears, such as with the story of the death of Gustav Montagne, who died a hero to save his soldiers from an impossible enemy, while on an impossible mission. Or the destruction of Wenmark, the wrath of the divine falling upon it for its many sins. But most of all, when she spoke of the war's later period, she held them transfixed with her explanations of the brutality that were inflicted by both sides of the conflict.

"...I won't excuse what I've done, I'll pay for it, one way or another, because I was in charge, I was responsible for what happened. The weakness was mine, and others paid the price. That is why weakness is the gravest sin, it births all others, not only for ourselves, but for those around us. Your country is an example of this, it is steeped in that deepest of sins, it abandoned you to die, where the strong would have had the power to act justly and protect you, or save you, or avenge you at the least. But you too are guilty of this sin. If you were strong, you would hold your children at home, not here on the wrong side of the border. You must grow strong, or there may not be another to come and save you next time." She stared hard at her listeners, her powerful evangelist voice grabbing at their fears and hopes and squeezing tight enough that it would never let go. "My country sinned, and it nearly died, I imitate my god's greatness, if only as a mere shadow, by coming for you. But if you do not grow strong, where will you be next time, if nobody comes for you?" She pointed at them for emphasis, the tiny red points of her eyes loomed like a mountain of doom as they imagined the next raid.

"You can't stay with us... at least for awhile?" An older peasant asked hopefully.

"No." Neia answered, with a regretful shake of her head, "I'm a prisoner still, and am going to turn myself in when we get back over the border. Mu'Ulm, I assume, has to go back as well, at least for a time. I can't stay. But..." She said optimistically, "I understand a temple of my lord was being built, if you send a request for a priest-teacher, then no doubt we can send at least one to each of your villages. Martial training is part of our worship and devotion, the pursuit of strength of all kinds, the betterment of ourselves, guides our lives. My instructors made a legendary army out of peasants, I wonder what they can do with you?" She proposed open endedly, and let them drift into imaginings of vengeance, her potent voice bringing thoughts to mind that had long lain dormant beneath the weight of hopelessness. Embers within the breasts of the minotaur peasants, began to spring to life.

The border grew closer and closer, and as it did, they grew steadily happier with every step, in the distance, they could hear the sound of minotaur lowing and wailing for the lost.

As the sound grew louder, little by little, a thought occurred to Neia. She looked over and up to Mu'Ulm, "I want to test them."

"How?" He asked doubtfully as he looked down at her from where he walked by her mount.

She gestured out to the open land in front of them, "They cry out for the lost to come home, thinking it can't be so. Here we are on the other side of the border, not far from being in sight of them. If they hear their loved ones crying out in return, in defiance of expectations... will they gather the courage needed to cross over... or won't they?"

Mu'Ulm looked thoughtful. "What if they do... or don't?"

"Then I'll know the extent of their sinfulness." She replied with a shrug, and looked down at Mu'Trieu, she patted the little girl's fur lightly. "What do you think, Mu'Treiu, will they come, or won't they? I'll make you a bet, if they do, I'll make sure you get two stories tonight, if they don't, you get only one, and don't ask for a second when I tell you to go to sleep."

Mu'Trieu thought that over with the intensity that little children brought to everything of great importance to them, and finally replied, "M'Kay, but if I only get one, I get to pick what kind of story!"

"Deal." Neia said and wrapped her arms around the little girl and clutched Mu'Trieu tight against her armor, staining her fur with flecks of blood as she did so.

Neia looked over her shoulder where the peasants walked behind, "Answer their cries." She said, "Tell them that you live."

The first to call out was a young bull male, barely a teenager, but he was joined by more and more, until the entire band was lowing and crying out, and silence answered them from the other side of the border.

Back and forth their wordless calls carried on the gentle breeze of the summer day, and Mu'Ulm looked hopefully ahead.

Minute after minute, until they saw distant tiny dots of minotaurs gathered together like a military formation, or a chorus as they heard the impossible, and answered it in turn. Not far from them, stood an 'actual' military formation, if Neia were right in judging the glinting of the light to be from steel weapons.

But nobody crossed the border.

Mu'Bin stood stock still as he watched the impossible unfold before his eyes, first it had begun with 'hearing' the impossible. Minotaur voices beyond the border, for hour after hour over the last few days all he'd heard were the wails of the bereaved as they walked the hated Highway of Tears.

The summer sun was high in the sky when all that changed, at first it was thought to be a mistake, when his fragment of the patrol, his little squad, heard it. First he thought it was mere imagination, but he felt the fur on his body start to stand on end. A nearby peasant stopped in midwail and their disbelieving eyes held one another, then came another. And those peasants who came close to the border, stopped in turn. A knot began to form, they turned and shouted to those distantly behind them, calling them over with hasty gestures, jumping, shouting, waving for them to come closer, and the knots grew of soldiers and peasants alike.

And they wailed as one chorus, and when the silence came, at first they thought themselves collectively deceived by worthless hopes, only to hear the faint sound beyond grow loud in return.

Unsure of what to do, the squads of soldiers that formed up the company, remained with the peasants and formed up near them, holding their weapons at the ready in the event it was some kind of trick or trap.

But it grew closer, and though they grew more on edge, among the peasants who were gathered nearby, there were occasionally those who shouted, "I know that voice! It can't be!"

And hesitant steps and stamping hooves began to grow in number, until at last... Mu'Bin saw dots appear, and though small at first, they grew.

"It's... it's a miracle... by the hair of Kiril's chin..." Mu'Bin whispered breathlessly, the wails grew louder and louder, and stragglers from farther up the road, who were only now hearing the noise and seeing the unexpected knots of their people gathered together and calling out... they hastily rushed to join them and find out what was happening.

Word spread wildly to the latecomers, and wild pointing and waving beyond the border as Minotaurs danced and stamped the earth for joy. "A miracle!" Was a common cry, and Mu'bin, did the one thing that he could think of to do.

"It's them... those two mad fools... those two divine angels... those heroes, those nightmares... whatever they are..." He uttered as he recognized the undead horse on which one of them rode.

They were looming larger now, and he felt as if he was beholding giants... the agents of god... so he fell to his knees, and prostrated himself before a servant of the true divine.

"Go, they're in front of you, no reason to keep them waiting." Neia said, and raising her hand into the air, she lowered it in front of her as if ordering a charge of soldiers. 'I much prefer this type of charge, to the usual sort.' She thought to herself as the peasants who could run, did so, storming over the distance that separated them from their loved ones. 'Disappointing that none had the courage to come closer, but... unsurprising. If weakness were water, they'd be swimming in a sea of it.' She pondered, and when Mu'Ulm looked down at her, she felt certain he was reading her very thoughts.

Mu'Trieu however, saw only the lost bet, "Awww, only one story." She pouted a bit, and Neia stroked the length of her snout.

"Don't worry, I'll make it a good one." She said sweetly, and went on to giving the little minotaur girl headpats, which seemed to make her happy as the horse trod behind the now more distant rescuees.

She watched from atop the horse as joyful reunions were had, as Minotaurs rubbed noses, embraced, and tossed little ones into the air to catch them, in a way that made Neia wonder if it was universal.

The soldiers however, behaved very differently as they saw the hundred and fiftyish peasants collide with loved ones that had been mourning them. They saw the white ax, the impossible armor, the massive shield of Mu'Ulm, and the human with the piercing eyes that looked impeccable as a mountain peak, and one by one they prostrated themselves.

They held that posture, weapons laid out in front of outstretched hands as if offering them over as a gift or sacrifice, right up to the moment that Neia and Mu'Ulm approached. The clip clop noise of the undead mount's hooves sounding vaguely minotaur like, it was easy, without looking, to think one was being approached by a pair of minotaur champions.

"Get up." Neia said in the reverberating voice of an evangelist. It wasn't a request, it was an order. An order Mu'Bin was halfway through obeying before he realized it.

He stared at the bloody demon woman, with the adorable minotaur girl seated in front of her snacking on some small thing, and at her side, a minotaur champion so tall that even though she was mounted, he would still have to look down at her to meet her eyes.

"I've done as I promised. Your people are back. You can arrest me now." Neia answered fatalistically, to gasps of horror from the rescued peasants and their families alike, and gasps of disbelief from the soldiers themselves. Mu'Ulm instinctively raised his shield and went for his ax as if to protect her, just as the gate opened nearby, stopping all action and sound in an instant.

...Fortress of Last Home...

Mu'Anik sighed with relief when the messenger arrived in his private office the night after the patrols had set out for the Highway of Tears. "Orders are to burn all correspondence and return to the capital at once." The brown clad minotaur said, and this, Mu'Anik was happy to do. He yanked open the drawer, burned anything he'd written about the human prisoner, and then swiftly packed a bag with what he'd need. Throwing loaves of bread and a few pieces of jerked meat, some cheap military grade wafers of flattened bread that was tougher than the loaves but more compact.

His dingy and dirty office meant even most of the food was far from clean, but while the brown clad messenger waited patiently with arms folded behind his back, Mu'Anik demonstrated more efficiency and care than he'd exercised in years of leadership to ensure he was ready to go in a timely fashion.

"OK, I'm ready to go, is there a wagon to get me back, or a carriage? I assume I'm needed quickly." Mu'Anik answered hastily, and the messenger nodded.

"Yes, we have to get you to where it is safest, assuming that one lives, we can't let her find you." And so he led the commander of 'Last Home' out into the darkness, a small wagon pulled by two large minotaurs was waiting around the exit they took, a hole in the wall Mu'Anik hadn't repaired, that was made on the first raid by the Devor that he'd lived through, back when he still had fire enough in him to fight back.

A brief wellspring of shame sprang up in his gut as he used their place of attack as a way to get out without being noticed, and so save himself. He got into the back of the little wagon, and the messenger sat across from him as the wagon started to move when he tapped the front a few times.

He pulled out a wineskin, and took a long swig, then held it out to Mu'Anik. "Ah, good stuff, it's a long ride, want?"

Mu'Anik huffed gratefully and took it, they passed the skin back and forth several times before he realized there was a problem. Every time he took it back, it was the same weight in his hand as when he'd handed it over to the messenger. 'He's not actually drinking it... what...' He began to wonder as his head spun, and he fell into black unconsciousness while the wagon bumped along.

He heard the wagon stop, and the messenger say, "Get the rope, we bind him first, we'll do the rest on site." Then Mu'Anik heard nothing else.

Not until he awoke to sunlight peeking down at him through the leaves of the evertree, and he pissed himself with fear when he realized he was beyond the border of the Minotaur Kingdom.

He tried to move, and his hands wouldn't move. He tried to get up, and found his feet were bound together and secured to a large, thick tree.

His eyes darted around frantically. The wagon wasn't visible, but the pushers were, and so was the messenger, he sat on a rock a few feet away, drinking from a white wineskin. "This one isn't tainted." He said as he offered a swig out to the confused Mu'Anik, who now hesitated and kept his lips closed when approached with the drink.

"Go on, everybody should have one last drink before they die." The messenger said almost sympathetically.

Mu'Anik reluctantly parted his lips and drank a swallow's worth before it was withdrawn. "It is good stuff, now, on to why you're here. You were given a simple job, get one damn human killed, not 'make her a hero' not, 'lose track of her' all you had to do was use her, let her lose her life, and let that be the end of it. Instead, because of 'your' failure, Mu'Fidelius now has to be concerned about the Sorcerer King thinking our kingdom was out to assassinate his daughter while she was in our care during her trial."

"Well... weren't we?!" Mu'Anik snapped, "I've been getting rid of the problems of the Kingdom for the royal family for years, this is what I get for it?" Mu'Anik's voice had a bitter fire in it, and a hint of dread, as he saw the pushers get out large hammers and start to approach.

"Well, yes we were, but... we can't have anyone 'knowing' that, and we definitely can't have anyone alive who could say that order came from the High King." The messenger's voice was conversational and banal as he took another swig of his wineskin.

"But just so you know, this isn't your reward for doing all those things for the Royal Family, this is what your reward is for 'failing' to do so, with such gusto that you could very well have been the cause of their being toppled from power. The reward of good work, is more work. The reward of shitty work, is no work." The Messenger answered and moved back to the rock from which he'd come, stretching out his legs and tapping his hooves idly on a broken stone.

Mu'Anik struggled in his bonds, "Fuck you! Fuck you all! I was loyal... this can't be it! This can't be! This can't be! I won't accept that it ends like this!" He thrashed and thrashed in his bonds.

"Oh, they're not going to kill you." The messenger replied. "Not at all, the animals of the forest will do that, if you simply 'die' you might be resurrected, but if your flesh and bones are consumed, so that there's nothing left of you, well you know what kind of predators live out here."

Mu'Anik' tried to scream as the cart pushers loomed over him, "Please!" He managed to get out, before he felt his jaw shatter, leaving only gurgling cries, before the next blow broke his left arm, and then the one after that, his right. They beat his limbs over and over, breaking each of them several times, and did not spare his hands, so that the misshapen things couldn't even 'grab' anything anymore. He thrashed ever more wildly, until he couldn't anymore, and he was a lump of broken, tenderized flesh and pain.

It was then that the messenger approached his groaning form, as he tried to cry for mercy, he felt, though could not see through eyes that were now swollen shut, the touch of a blade at his stomach. He tried to shrink away from it, but bound as he was, he could not. The messenger, clearly an expert at his craft, opened up the flesh and pulled out a piece of Mu'Anik's intestines, leaving them exposed to the air.

He wiped his hand clean on Mu'Anik's fur, and stood up. "You'll be dead in a few hours, the predators here are kinder than either we or the Beastmen in that way. They'll hear your cries, tear you open, and before long, there will be nothing left of you in this world but the fading memory of your name. Goodbye."

The messenger then snapped his fingers and pointed to the way out of the forest, leaving Mu'Anik still writhing where he lay. 'Think... think! You've got to get out of this! There has to be a way?!' He moaned and tried to stifle his cries, but he heard the growl close by, followed by another, and another.

'Not like this! Not like this!' He thought frantically and tried to let out a fierce roar that he no longer had within him, and then he felt the teeth, and the beasts of the evertree forest got their way, and he barely had time to beg for death, before they granted his wish, and Mu'Anik, died.