Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Chapter 23

“Vampires?”  Jess backed toward the door, stepping away from the unconscious villagers.  “I thought we were dealing with bandits?”

Leedy thought for a moment before moving for the door.  “I’ll go ask the people that were on the roof before this all started.  I’m pretty sure they’re hiding in the sheds behind the building after ‘Mr. Judge’ over here blew the roof off earlier.”  He left, leaving Jess and I by ourselves in the former waypoint building.

“What do we do now?”  Jess was still keeping her distance from the injured.  “Should we go outside too?”

“You can if you want.  I’m going to finish healing these people.”  I pricked my finger with my pocket knife, causing a spot of blood to well up so I could draw a healing circle on the villager Leedy had been speaking with.  My new healing speed was fast enough that the tiny wound was already closed before I even touched his forehead.  “No matter what’s going on, we’ll need to get them back to their homes before we can finish our trip to Greendown.”

She let out a long sigh before coming back to help me.  “Sorry.  I’m letting my fear override my better judgment.”  Jess started sorting through the room to try and find clothing and shoes for the villagers to wear.  What they were in now was soiled enough to make burning them the only real option.  “It’s just…”  She trailed off, looking down at her feet.  “It’s just, ever since we fought those vampires in the clearing, I’ve been worried about running into them again.”

“I understand.”  I finished my healing spell and stood up as the breathing of my patient turned back to normal.  “Think of it like this.  You know a stove is hot, so you don’t touch it with your bare hand.  But, you still use it to cook.  That’s because you understand the danger it represents.”

She gave me a slow nod of understanding.  “You’re saying I need to ready myself, and have the necessary tools prepared.”

“Basically.  Remember, victory doesn’t care about right and wrong, or good and evil.  It favors the prepared.”  She didn’t need to know I was basically ripping off a quote from my home world.  After all, I might be the first person on this planet to say it.  That basically gave me dibs.

“Wise words.  But I’m afraid words won’t help us much now.”  Leedy came back in and dropped a large sack that jingled as it hit the ground.  “According to the survivors, this group was getting paid to provide fresh food to a vampire nest somewhere nearby.”

“Odds are, we’ve already run into that nest.  That means we don’t have any extra enemies to deal with.”  I moved over to the last patient, pricking my finger again so I could heal them.  “We just have to wait for them to come to us.”

“They said there’s always at least one vampire with the group out there now, and there could be more.  I’m not willing to risk their lives on the possibility of there being several bloodsuckers coming here.”  Leedy started haphazardly scooping up the loose items inside the room into a few sacks laying around.  “We need to get them back to safety behind the walls of the village as soon as possible.  Help me grab anything of value.”

“You’re robbing the robbers?”  Jess raised an eyebrow.  “I didn’t expect you to do something like that.”

“Not for me.  It’s for them.”  Leedy motioned to the survivors.  “They deserve some kind of compensation for what they’ve been through.”

The three of us got to work, collecting up what we could.  After the first of the survivors started to stir, we grouped back up with Cross and Murphy to make a plan.

“We all know this group is going to move slowly.”  Leedy looked over Murphy’s shoulder at the small cluster of people huddled near the sheds.  “Even the uninjured are malnourished and weak.”

Cross nudged his way in front of Leedy.  “Don’t forget about the rest of the bandits.  They’ll eventually come back here, and I don’t think any of them will be happy.”  He motioned to the treeline in the distance.  “We could set up some traps to slow them down.  It won’t take care of all of them, but it should keep them from catching up to us.”

“No.”  I pushed my way through the group and sat my pack down against the wall of the cabin.  “I’m not willing to let them escape judgment.  The rest of you take the survivors to the village.  I’ll wait here for the remainder to come to me.”

Jess shook her head sharply.  “I’m not leaving you here to fight them on your own.  You don’t even know how many there are, or how strong they are.  And what if a bunch of hungry vampires show up, wanting their payment of blood?”  She sat down her own pack next to mine.  “You need at least one person to stay with you, to watch your back.”

I looked at the three Wardens, who seemed equally determined to stick around.  “Fine.  One person can stay, but it shouldn’t be Jess.  Even her small amount of magic could save lives.”  I motioned to Cross, who was giving me a sour face.  “He should stay.  Fighting in the open will be easier for him with only one hand, and if anything happens on the way back to the village the three of you should be able to handle it.”

Leedy and Murphy instantly agreed, which forced Jess to grudgingly accept the plan.  Cross didn’t say anything, which we all took as him being okay with it.  As Cross moved to the treeline to set up traps, and Leedy and Murphy got the survivors ready to move, Jess pulled me aside.

“Are you sure you can trust Cross to watch your back?”  She turned to put her back to the treeline, in case the disgraced Captain was trying to spy on them.  “It’s pretty obvious he isn’t going to try very hard to help you.”

“Do you remember what the vampire said in the clearing?”  I waited while Jess thought for a moment, but she shook her head no.  “They marked him somehow.  In case it’s the same group, I don’t want them to be able to track the group back to the village.”  I snapped my fingers, causing a jolt of lightning to dance across my knuckles.  “And it isn’t like I really need him to watch my back.  Unless there’s an ancient vampire running loose, I should be just fine.”

Jess let out a long sigh.  “I still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, Jess.  You just have to listen to what I say.”  I smiled to take the sting out of my words.  “Besides, I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve you haven’t seen yet.  I’ll be fine.”

One of the newly-revived villagers came stumbling out of the waypoint door, and Jess rushed to help them.  I decided it was as good a time as any to catch up with Cross.  I had no doubt Jess and the two Wardens could figure out how to wrangle everyone by themselves.

The disgraced captain was easy to find, considering how loud he was cursing at the contraption he was trying to place on the ground.  I made sure to make plenty of noise to let him know I was approaching.

“What do you want?”  Cross didn’t look up from his task.  “Come to gloat over the man you crippled?”

“Oh, shut up.”  The urge to smack the man was hard to ignore, but I pushed it down.  “Would you rather I had cut your head off instead?”  I waited while he used his foot to step on the base of the trap and levered it open with his remaining hand.  “We’ve been over this.  I could have killed you, but instead I judged that you could redeem yourself.  Was I wrong?”

Cross stood up, his hand gripping his sheathed sword hard enough that his knuckles were white.  “And what gave you the right?  You are an outsider, who doesn’t know our ways.  You don’t understand how things work.”  He shook with rage, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.  “So you come here, on your high tower, and decide that you determine right and wrong?”

“First off, don’t you dare try to convince me that what you have become is good and righteous in any way.  Just because you could get away with acting like a huge twat-waffle doesn’t mean you should, and you know it.  The shame in your eyes tells me so.”  Taking a deep breath, I let out a long sigh.  “And second, to answer your question, when did it become my job to decide who to punish?  To determine who lives, and who dies?  Do you think I want this job?  Do you think I had a choice?”  I shook my head, pushing down memories of the worlds I had already visited.  “I could say it was the gods who saddled me with this responsibility, but that wouldn’t be the full truth.  Those truly responsible are people like you, and the ones that pulled your strings.”

“What?  I never–”

“Yes, you did.  The moment you thought your actions would go unpunished, you became the kind of person who lords their power over those who can’t defend themselves.  Well, Cross, I’m here to balance the scales.  I’m the judgment the universe sent.  I’m the person who ensures you reap what you sow.  And a rotten harvest it was, Cross.”  Suddenly, the sound of a branch snapping in the distance reached our ears.  “I thought for a moment that the corruption didn’t run to your core.  Now is your opportunity to either prove me right, or decide I was wrong.  Will you take your punishment and choose to become a better man–and protect those people who are running for their lives–or become a bitter soul I should have put out of their misery?”

Cross didn’t answer me, instead walking past me back into the clearing.  I followed, happy to see the back of Murphy disappearing down the trail.  They had managed to get the prisoners out just in time.  Behind me, I could hear the sounds of several people moving through the dark forest.  Cross had disappeared between the small huts near the rear of the waypoint, and I twisted my spear-staff to eject the tip of the blade free with a quiet snick.

The occasional shout told me the returning bandits and potential vampires weren’t aware of our presence yet, so I ducked behind a pile of debris left over from the roof I had blown off the building.  A screech of metal followed by a scream of pain silenced the bandits.  One of them had found a trap.

“Oy!  What idiot decided to put traps out here?”  Silence was the only answer to the voice coming from within the forest.  “Hey!  Somebody better answer me, or they’ll pay for it with their heads!”

“Silence.”  The second voice cut through the forest like a knife.  “It smells like smoke.  And death.”

It was obvious the vampire had spoken, and I could feel the malevolence and wrongness it put into the region like a pressure on my chest.  This one was old, and old meant powerful.  Leave it up to me to find a true opponent with only a single one-handed warrior as backup.  Oh well.  Looks like it was time for some good old-fashioned fisticuffs.  Or, explosions and stuff.  That might work better.