Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6

My trip to see the Counselor went about as well as you might expect.  Lots of screaming, followed by death threats, and finished up with a lot of tears.  At least he wouldn’t bleed to death, since I cauterized the wound.  That’s what caused most of the crying.  On the plus side, I was pretty sure he was learning his lesson.  Don’t do bad things, or they happen to you.

I was still waiting for some kind of title that said ‘Bringer of Karma’, but it hadn’t happened yet.  Maybe on one of these worlds, I would meet the hidden requirements and get the title.  If it even existed, of course.  That’s how I had gotten all of the ones I had already.  Either as a reward for completing a quest, or just randomly after doing something.  They had no rhyme or reason, so far as I could tell.

At least they gave bonuses to my skills and abilities, when I managed to get one.  Right now, I was using the title ‘Bloodletter’ to remove the stains from my clothing as I walked.  I had gotten it after cutting the throat of a wereleech on my seventh planet.  That had been a really rough year, even if it had been great for leveling my stats.  Everybody hates leeches, and the human-sized versions were even worse than they sounded.  The title I gained gave me the ability to wash ‘bad blood’ off of just about anything, as long as it was still fresh.  It only worked on blood, but with my job, it was still a lifesaver.

By the time I made it back from visiting the Counselor, everyone was waiting for me in the common room.  As I opened the front door, the shouting coming from inside cut off abruptly.  From the sounds of things, several people were very upset.  All eyes turned to me as I shut the door quietly, pulling it closed and latching it gently.  Being quiet didn’t seem to diffuse the situation very much.

“What happened to ‘I’ll be right here when you get back’, sir?”  Corporal Leedy appeared to be angry with me.  It might have been the sarcastic way he said sir that tipped me off.  Or the way he was swinging around a set of shackles in one hand, and a bared sword in the other.  “You have been gone for an hour!”

“No, what I said was, ‘I won’t run off yet, I promise’.  And I didn’t run off.  I’m still in town, aren’t I?”  I pulled off my pack and dropped it near the door.  If things were about to get a little spicy with the Wardens, I didn’t want it weighing me down.  “Besides, I did tell you exactly what was going to happen.  I finished my breakfast, and then went and saw a man about changing his ways.”

“Oh?  Who did you talk to?”  The Private spoke up, covering for the suddenly pale Corporal.  “Was it a nice chat?”

“It doesn’t matter!”  The innkeeper nearly exploded in frustration, his features twisted and angry.  “Why are you even talking to this criminal?  Just arrest him, and give me the bounty!”  His eyes flickered to my heavy pack and weapons.  “I’ll hold on to his belongings for payment of the damages, and the unpaid bill he ran up while staying here.”

“Don’t listen to him!  The warrior paid double the going rate for staying the night.”  Jess spoke up for me from behind the bar, earning herself an angry look from her boss.  “What?  He saved your life, Frons.  You should be thanking him, not trying to get him arrested!”

“Charging me double didn’t cover the cost of breakfast this morning?”  I shook my head and rested my hand on the hilt of my ninjato.  “Do we need to have a sit-down about the right way to treat paying customers?  We still haven’t had our discussion about fair business practices, and now you are compounding the issue.”

“Enough!”  Corporal Leedy pointed his sword at me, and despite his frustration, its tip didn’t waiver.  “Private Murphy, please go and check on the Counselor.  See if he is still alive.”  He turned, pointing his sword at the innkeeper.  “And you, stop lying!  It’s clear that this man was not actively trying to unlawfully steal bounties from the Guild, so stop pushing him to be arrested for Guild violations.”

“But what about carrying enchanted weapons?”  Frons pointed at the mace dangling from my belt.  “Magic held by anyone without a guild sign means immediate arrest!”

“I haven’t confirmed if he has magic or not.”  The Corporal turned to look back at me.  “But there are plenty of other reasons for me to arrest him, so for now, please go about your day as normal, and let us do our job!”

“Fine.”  The innkeeper stomped his foot like a petulant child, and stormed off to the back.  He grabbed Jess on his way out, pulling her along behind him.  Before they disappeared behind the curtain, he turned and looked back at the Warden.  “Don’t come crying to me if he magics you into a toad!”

“A toad?”  I shook my head, heavily debating on just turning around and leaving.  “I’m not a sorcerer, or a druid.  I won’t be turning anyone into animals.”

“You.  Sit.”  Leedy pointed to a chair in the center of the room.  “We have more things to discuss before I decide what to do.”

I propped my staff against the wall next to my pack before walking over and sitting down.  There was a bracelet that I thought about grabbing from one of the pockets lining the outside of my pack, but I decided against it.  If the Corporal was going to check for magic somehow, it would set off whatever tool or spell he used immediately.  At least inside the lining of the pocket, nothing would be able to detect it.  As far as I knew, anyway.  This world might still surprise me.

“Now, what would you like to talk about, Corporal?”  I leaned the chair back on two legs, ignoring the creaking protest of the cheap wood.  “I’m an open book.  Ask me anything.”

He waited until the Private walked out the front door before saying anything.  “First, before he gets back, is there anything you want to tell me about what you were doing while you were gone?”  Leedy sat down in a chair opposite mine, just barely out of easy reach.  Instead of leaning backwards like me, he sat on the edge of the seat, his sword point digging into the floor between his feet.  “Did you really do something to the Counselor?”

“I haven’t lied to you once.”  I had to pause to hold back a yawn.  It was shaping up to be a long day, and it was barely after breakfast.  “When I said I was going to cut off more of his body parts for assaulting women, I meant it.  You won’t do anything to him, so I did my job, and Judged him for his crimes.”

“And just what is your job?  I thought you were just a traveler from far away, not doing a job.”  Leedy paused, squinting at me.  “Wait.  I don’t even know your name yet.”

“That’s because you haven’t asked until now.”  I leaned forward again, dropping my chair onto all four legs.  “My name is James, and I’m the Chief Justice of the Order of Judgment, tasked by the gods to balance the scales on whatever world they decide to send me.”  I frowned, thinking about the newest quest I received, when I stepped onto this world.  “And I am on a quest to find the ‘Silver Star’, whatever that might be.”

Corporal Leedy laughed, then stopped when he saw I wasn’t smiling.  “Wait.  You’re serious?”  He squinted at me.  “There wasn’t a lie in anything you just said, but my ability only tells me if you know you are lying.  It doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Well, I might be crazy, but that has no bearing on reality.  I was sent here to right the wrongs of this world, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”  I leaned back again, almost hoping that the chair would break and cost the innkeeper a little more money.  “The ‘Silver Star’ thing is new for me, but I’ll figure that out too.”

“Everyone knows about the legends of the Silver Star.  You aren’t the first treasure hunter to try and track down the Lost Airship of Princess Starnight.”  Leedy waved his hand in a generally northern direction.  “It was supposed to have been lost in the mountains north of here, but no one can make it through them without freezing to death.  Otherwise, the single most important mixture of magic and technology would have been found ages ago.  It’s probably nothing but a pile of splinters by now.”  He stood, stretching his lower back.  “The storm that caused it to disappear was old news when my father was just a youngling, still trying for the Guild Academy.  Besides, you won’t be heading north anytime soon.”

“Oh?”  I rocked back a little farther, subtly balancing without my feet touching the ground.  It was a display of very advanced balance and physical ability that could have been considered showing off.  “And why is that?”

“Because I’m going to arrest you, to stand trial for assaulting the Counselor.”  Leedy stood, pointing his sword once again at me.  “At first I thought you were making some valid statements, but now I know you’re just some crazy treasure hunter.  Stand up and remove your weapons, then place your hands behind your back.”

“No, I don’t think I’m going to let you arrest me right now, Leedy.”  I didn’t move, maintaining my balance.  “Don’t you want to see what the Private has to say first?”

“That isn’t necessary.  It’s obvious what you are now, and my job includes making sure people like you don’t go around disrupting the peace.”  Corporal Leedy took a step forward, closing the gap between us.  “Now, on your feet.  I will force you to comply if you don’t listen.”

“Oh, I’m listening alright.”  I rolled backward out of my chair and sprang to my feet.  I pulled my ninjato free of its sheath, the runes along its length glowing a subdued red.  That told me there were a whole lot of enchantments on Leedy’s gear.  At least it wasn’t glowing blue or green.  Those would have signified something much worse.  “I think you just don’t understand the position you’re in.”

“You want it the hard way then?  Fine.  That works too.”  Leedy’s armor seemed to brighten, and his sword suddenly darted for my legs as he lunged forward.  To a normal person, it would have been so fast that reacting in time to stop him would be nearly impossible.  I was not a normal person.

I shifted my hips, taking the blow on the metal haft of the mace hanging from my hip.  I could have slashed Leedy across the face with my sword, but I held back.  Instead, I slapped him with the flat of the blade.  On the ear.  Which I knew had to hurt like the dickens.

“Now Leedy, you should stop before someone gets seriously injured.”  A thin trickle of blood from his earlobe was proof enough that I had already won this fight.  He knew it, I knew it, but his pride hadn’t given up yet.  Another lunge, this time aimed for my face, forced me to spin out of the way.  I used my ninjato to guide his sword to the side, forcing an opening to his midsection.  Once again, I didn’t take advantage of it, instead poking him in the chest hard enough to stop him in place.  Three inches higher, and it would have been buried in his throat.  “I mean it, Leedy.  Knock it off.”

“Warden’s Wall!”  The Corporal didn’t listen to reason, instead activating some unknown device or spell that forced me back into the tables and chairs behind me.  I wasn’t expecting him to have such a strong defensive ability, so I was unable to counter it before I was tripping over broken furniture.  At least some of the innkeeper’s stuff got broken.

While I was unbalanced, Leedy threw the shackles at me.  They were heavily enchanted, and somehow snapped into place around my wrists when I raised my sword to block them from hitting me in the face.  The shock must have shown on my face, because Leedy let out a low chuckle.

“That’s right.  There’s a reason why the Western Wardens are feared across the wilds.  We can bring down any foe, kill any monster, and capture any criminal-”  He was cut off by the scream of shearing metal, as my runed ninjato sliced through the enchanted chain connecting the two bracelets of metal.  It was an awkward angle for me to cut, but my magic-eating sword had no problems dealing with the thick links.  The more magic used when making something, the easier it was to cut through.  While swords weren’t my first choice in weapon, when I had found this one there was no way I was going to pass it up.

Slicing off the bracelets around my wrists only took another second, and when I was done the clinking sound of them falling to the ground seemed to break the hold on Leedy.  He rushed forward, swinging his sword at me like I was some kind of tree that he desperately needed to chop down.  Since I wasn’t a tree, it didn’t go like he wanted.

Each swing of his sword I blocked with my ninjato, though I refused to move my feet.  I was once again showing him how outclassed he was, using my maxed stats to overpower him.  I didn’t know yet if this world had stats and classes like some of the others I had been to, but I would guess they were in the high teens or low twenties.  Double what a normal person on my Earth could manage.  It was still only half of where I was now.

Finally, I got tired of fighting.  I didn’t want to kill him, so putting him down to cool off seemed like the best option.  I waited for him to wind up for a mighty downward slash, and drew forward enough to crack him across the jaw with my elbow.  He dropped to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut.

“Well, that was quite a show.”  Private Murphy was poking his head inside the inn, and stepped fully inside when he saw I wasn’t going to finish off his leader.  “Did you have to hit him so hard?”

“He wasn’t listening.”  I shrugged, and moved to the bar to get an ale.  The burst of physical activity had caused me to work up a little sweat.  “I take it you talked to the Counselor?”

“Yes sir.  He told me to not get in your way, and under no circumstances were we supposed to try and arrest you.”  Private Murphy walked over to check on Corporal Leedy.  “Is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be fine.  Just let me drink this terrible excuse for an ale, and I’ll check him over.”  I took a long drink, and got a refill from behind the bar.  “Did the Counselor say anything else?”

“Well, he wasn’t much for talking sir, but he did say he was sorry.  Kept repeating it over and over, mumbling it under his breath.”  Murphy shivered, a faraway look in his eyes.  “I don’t know what you did to him, but I hope I’m never on your bad side.”

“Me too, Murphy.  Me too.”  I finished my ale and knelt down next to the Corporal.  “Before I help him, can you tell me of any towns farther north?”

“Oh, sure.  If you go down the eastern road to the next town, there’s an old trail that heads north.”  Murphy used the butt of his halberd to draw a rough map in the sawdust on the dirty floor.  “There’s three or four little hunting outposts in that direction, but you gotta look out for the were-beasts and undead.  Not to mention the ogres, goblins, and such.  I even heard a rumor of some witches living in the foothills of the mountains, though most people don’t go that far north.  It’s too dangerous.”  He drew another line, going farther east from the intersection with the northern path.  “If you go another three days this way, you could visit Greendown.  It’s a proper city, and finding a guide would be easy.  You might even be able to hire some folks from the Hunter’s Guild to help you handle the really bad stuff.”  He looked me over, pointedly observing my lack of armor.  “It’s a good place to find some proper gear, too.”

“Thank you, Murphy. I appreciate it.”  I touched Leedy on the forehead with my index finger, tracing an invisible letter ‘J’ before drawing a circle around it.  My very first profession, Healer, kicked in, and a trickle of energy left me, causing Leedy’s head to glow a faint yellow.  “Now, I best be off, before he wakes up.”

“You’re a healer?”  Murphy took two steps away from me.  “Why didn’t you say you were in the Healer’s Guild?  That would have shut that innkeeper up right quick.  And the Corporal wouldn’t have tried to arrest you, that’s for sure.”

“I’m not in the Healer’s Guild, Murph.  Not yet, anyway.”  It was definitely something I needed to check into once I got to this Greendown, especially if it would help me cut through the political red tape of the region.  “Thanks again.  I’ll be sure to check out the city before I venture any further north.”  I got up after making sure Leedy was going to be okay.  “See you around, Murph.”

Murphy winced at my shortening of his name before looking down at the unconscious Corporal.  “I’m sure I will, sir.  I’m sure I will.”