C.O.W: Chapter 8

Herrier stormed down one of the main roads in Harrillen, just trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else was beginning to become a bit of a problem. It had Reisern back into the problem after being out of it for the last ten years. His own bad luck now meant that he had also got himself caught up in invasion territory whilst he spurred the horses for his cart to go faster than ever before. The whore would help him get even with everyone though, show that he was not to be troubled with. There was no other way he had told her in the nicest possible fashion, inside he gritted his teeth and thought about the ideas he would do to make her wish she'd never made those mistakes. How dare she stab him, it was unfathomable and not only her but her kind, the other whores, would die aswell in his wrath. He wondered if it was maybe too much to cut her throat and hang her from her neck in such a way that she would bleed out and the noose would not snap her neck instantly for the insult she had cost him. No, he decided after ten seconds, it was not too much, but should that be a suitable punishment when he finally got around to it? Being hung drawn and quartered was always one that got the crowds going and, after deciding that the slums would be the best place to execute her publicly there was sure to be a crowd to get going. Especially with what he had to do afterwards a public execution would surely put him in a strong position. He smiled to himself as he thought of all the possibilities that could even misconceivably be taken as justice for what she had done. The rats and a bucket of hot coals worked well, they always made him feel laugh inside, watching the victim squirm around just as much as the vermin did. Herrier liked that sense of cruelty and power, he felt it gave him the upper hand in what he wanted to do, and the best thing was: he always got what he wanted. No, he thought, if it was to be public it couldn't be the rats, that was more of a private treatment for his enlightened eyes only. Then, for the reason that it simply wouldn't create a stir big enough for his needs at all, a simple public hanging just would not be enough. Maybe he could hang her from one of the city gates instead of the hangman's area's; he knew more than enough guards to get the opportunity to do so. Drowning was seen, he remembered from one of Moss's speeches on how to kill P.O.W's from the war, a humane way to die but he didn't want this to be humane. He wanted this to show his power of the city, assert his dominance over the slums, and not in control of the ever elusive queen of whores. The queen of whores who would be the first to protect this one unlucky girl, she would bring herself out in the open and then he would have her too. Herrier savoured the thought and pictured it in his mind; the greatest achievement in his career, what a sight it would be. If the slums could be cleanses of the crimes that riddled its claustrophobic and dark alleyways then he would have to do it himself, and not under the influence of the crowns rules. The law was nothing in the slums, it was a pathetic pile of trash that was almost as bad, if not just as bad, as the criminals who roamed around after night and very commonly in the daytime aswell. When he cleansed it he would rule it with an iron fist, and anyone who even thought to step out of line would be dragged off and killed for his pleasure in the most painful, violently disfiguring way he thought of at the time; and if that couldn't be done, then he would make it possible. He smiled to himself, with an iron fist.
All this time that Herrier thought the pleasures that must await him back home and what he was finally about to achieve with his life he forgot about the road and, suddenly as he turned sharply into a corner he saw smoke rising in front of him. Realising that the time had passed two hours while he had thought, time was now even bending to his positive thoughts and ideas, he looked up to get his bearings a bit better. A signpost protruded out from the ground just a score of metres from his feet. He hastily looked down it, a lot of infuriating and pointless long names that he'd never heard of before lined the sign post, then he saw one that he noticed and could use to get his bearings. He looked up and saw that the place he'd seen on fire was the city he knew of, Gomatz, and it was only two miles away from him. He was eight days out of the palace city in Harrillen, if he followed the road to Harrillen for four days he would come to a turning near to that village inn he'd torched on his way down here from his home. From there it should be easy enough to remember his way back home, now he just needed to get to the highway on the other side of Gomatz without being noticed by any of the soldiers in the city who were almost certainly still there pillaging the houses and raping the surviving woman from the attack. In the end they would all die, it was one of the fundamental rules of war; If they're not on your side you can't trust them, and if you can't trust them then they should die. Immediately, as he moved further up the road he saw the damage wreaked on the city; whole buildings lay in rubble with great burning rocks from catapults embedded in them, the wall was a wreck and had been graffitied upon with the blood of the dead citizens. It read: 'death be to you beyond these walls' and from even two miles out Herrier saw the heads of the dead defenders on the remnants of the wall. Sorset saw the uses for things that other people did not, maybe it was why he liked them so much, liked their loose codes of conduct, their man to child ratio, their currently huge army.
The things he did not like about Sorset were their cavalry troops and their conviction to battle, they always wanted to kill their enemy, whoever that was. Against Herrier's luck a platoon of horses was headed his way. Instantly Herrier spurred his cart onwards, taking a slip road onto a road that ran around the city. 'Play with fire, you get burned at some point whether its intentional or not'. Herrier hissed and swore under his breath. Then he sighed and relaxed as the cart began to speed up from the momentum of two horses as a pose to just one. 'What people don't say in that is that it's how you take the burning that matters, like a man, or like vermin' he sneered as he finished it off 'and I'm not vermin'. He reached over to the passenger's seat where it was possible for someone else to sit in if Herrier was ever in a good enough mood to allow it, if he was ever in a good mood at all. A large heavy crossbow and a quiver of crossbow bolts lay untouched on the seat there; a sword also where he had made a temporary strap for it. He dropped the quiver around his head on a piece of string and, whilst using his left hand to steer the horses and drive the cart he notched a bolt to the weapon in his right hand. Leaning back into the shot Herrier gave himself the perfect aim for a shot with time to wait before the mounted soldiers came even close to within range of his advanced firearm weapon. From his distance far away from the marauding army troupe he could analyse the soldiers perfectly. Sorset cavalry was some of the best in the world though they had not made a known charge in close to two decades. Ten years before the end of the century war Valiquet had made a poison which was spread into Sorset and, miraculously killed all of the mounts in the country. Consequently no expense was spared for the horses they'd gained since when actually in combat, all horses wore full body armour. Chainmail and a tunic defended each horse in the Sorset cavalry and made it a foe to be reckoned with that just wouldn't go down without a fight. He counted the silhouettes of exactly one score of cavalry soldiers as they came to the top of a rise just five hundred metres out of the city. Two of the soldiers Herrier saw held long lances well over one and a half times the size of a normal man, knights of the army he presumed; knights were an elite class in any armed force, rarely seen but deadly in stature and respected much on the same level as the commanding officers. If he could take maybe one or two of them down then they would flee before they really troubled him. Knights wore relatively expensive armour, in this case a crude Sorset half plated, half chainmail armour that ran as a chest piece and as leggings. For the most case they also wore a nicely fitted, and probably well padded, helmet with a visor that actually shut as a pose to soldiers visors which either didn't shut at all or, if they could get one, actually didn't have a visor at all to save them to horror of cutting a broken, unusable visor off. Alternatively they could salvage a dead soldiers helmet if it was in good nick but then they complained about it not being 'their' helmet, or the stench of a different person who was probably from a different country, had different beliefs and got on their nerves. Herrier thought he saw six of the riders with bows slung across their back, at first it annoyed him but then Herrier realised that they would only be wielding short bows due to the fact that they were on horseback. To use a longbow on horseback would be suicide; the horse would run amok with the bottom end of the bow constantly sticking into its long nose and it would take far too long for the archer to load the weapon, aim and fire. In any case the fact that he was in a cart and able to fire a crossbow gave him the distinct advantage of being able to fire well before their bows came into range. The other twelve riders in the squad were charging on ahead, they looked lightly armoured in simple chainmail armour from Herrier's position and, already having drawn their weapons from over hundred metres beforehand Herrier could see they were lightly armed. Single handed swords and axes only available to them, partly due to their being in a paid army, they spurred their mounts on, faster now. They would never reach him without their armoured horses getting tired, and as soon as they came within range of Herrier's crossbow they'd be falling like flies.
From behind the bulk of the cavalry Herrier saw something shoot up into the sky, surely the archers didn't actually think they had a chance of catching him from their current position. Arrows indeed flew up into the air and Herrier watched them with an offhand view as they whizzed into the ground, rather predictably, over forty feet behind him. In the back of the cart came a mumbling but underneath the hay it would be screaming and swearing, 'fuck the whore!' he thought vigorously as the cart raced on. He waited for one or two more seconds as the horses practically rolled down the hill with a furious velocity then, when he thought that one unlucky soldier was within range, Herrier squeezed the trigger and sent the bolt flying. It hung in the air as it drifted along, almost swooping down on its target as it grew closer, it span just a little in the anti clockwise direction as it sped through the air and finally hit home. A perfect shot, the bolt pierced the skin just inches lower than the man's Adam's apple yet not quite at his ribs; the soldier involuntarily retched up blood and jerked his head backwards due to the still strong force of the arrow, his leg muscles went limp and he rolled backwards off his frightened steed. The horse whinnied and reared up to kick its front legs in the air, behind the animal other soldiers were reaching the dead body. Angered at the death Herrier could hear rage from the soldiers pursuing voices as he hastily fitted a second bolt to the crossbow's drawstring. Being reeled in by the Sorset cavalry Herrier leaned back again to aim a second shot at an unlucky unfortunate. The Sorset archers had now reloaded their own bows and sent a second volley through the air landing in the ground, though considerably closer to Herrier it had to be said, with another burst of speed like their last one they would be firing into the back of the cart with their next volley. The last melee cavalryman safely manoeuvred around the kicking, frustrated, lonely horse as the archers came close to it from behind; the rest of the cavalry swordsmen were making a sprint for him and were now half the way between Herrier and the archers as he took his shot. Taking his time he placed it neatly in the weak spot of a soldier's chainmail armour; the connecting point between torso and arm. The bolt tore through the soldiers muscles and as Herrier turned back to face forward in the cart and reload his crossbow again he took in the badly built road. It led directly through a small wooded area immediately in front of him and Herrier snapped up the reigns of the carriage horses and pulled them to one side to stay on the road. The carriage swerved violently and its wheels lifted off the floor as it twisted around at near enough top speed; not quite enough to send the cart sprawling it shocked Herrier to the extent that he would have to concentrate on somehow negotiating the trees that were steadily becoming thicker. An arrow thudded into a tree beside him, 'Shit!' he cursed and peered around to see how close his pursuers were. Behind him one of the two knights was leading the charge forward with four other cavalrymen, behind them he could see four of the archers notching their bows, now in range of him. Of where the other horsemen were Herrier had no clue. There came another thudding sound and another arrow hit into a tree just a few yards in front of him sticking well into it. Almost immediately came a whiz and a third arrow flew past, this one shooting over his head and through to the undergrowth at the side of the road. As he looked around again he saw that the other Sorset horsemen had aimed their mounts into the small wood, knowing that he could not with his cart they could now pull up to him with ease or take him down from behind, he was surrounded. 'You will not kill me' Herrier thought inside his mind 'you will not take my life or the prize of killing this whore at your disgression, that is my honour! Mine and mine alone!' Anger flooded through Herrier once again as he remembered one of many vows to never be taken alive.
Herrier ducked his head back down as two more arrows flew overhead and almost took out one of his horses. He picked up his loaded crossbow once again just as a Sorset cavalry swordsman came out into the path in front of him, instantly the bolt cracked out of the oak weapon and, at such close range, cracked into the soldiers head piercing a weak iron helmet to do so. Instantly, by nothing more than habit, Herrier pulled out a bolt from his quiver and fitted it into position in the smooth groove of the crossbow. The horse of the dead man frenzied as Herrier rushed past and stood itself up on two feet; arrows rushed in, aimed for Herrier they inadvertently killed the horse instead and the large animal fell blocking the road. Dropping the crossbow back into position on the passenger's seat Herrier drew out the four foot blade longsword ad sat back to wait for the Other soldiers to come close enough to regret it. He felt five arrows thud into the right side of his cart and one on the left, none from directly behind though as he made a latest attempt at suicide, turning into another heavy corner at such a fast speed. His gaze moved to the front of him, half expecting another man or more than that number to ride out of the undergrowth and cut him off. He saw no-one there, and just in front of him, he estimated around eighty feet ahead the road left the wooded area he was still in. All the time though the knight just behind was catching him up, now though as he looked around Herrier saw the wood getting denser and the other soldiers backing off, chasing behind the knight. The archers had stopped firing aswell, placing his sword back in position he reached over for his crossbow. Thump. He had been stupid, he'd forgotten about the archer on the other side of the cart, just keeping up with it and he had narrowly escaped with his life. He pulled his crossbow up as his hands gripped around it and squeezed the trigger. The string, tense as a bull seeing red, shot forward and propelled the steel bolt forward at the incoming soldier. Reacting by instinct the soldier drew his reigns in and the horse jumped up and took the arrow in the neck. Tumbling to the ground the archer notched an arrow to his bow only to realise he didn't have a shot on Herrier. He turned and whistled loudly, catching the attention of his companions who shot over to pick him up. Fumbling wildly to reload his weapon again Herrier kept raising his head to the armoured knight who was coming increasingly close to the cart. Bad enough he would be in melee combat soon enough himself by the look of things but the knight could easily put his lance into the hay and take Herrier's glory of killing Stella away. Getting ever closer to the edge of the wood Herrier made one last push in his bid to get free. Sunlight would shine on him if he was able to get out of the tree's and there wasn't too long to go now. On either side of the road around Herrier aswell a small bank was created by years of pushing the soil up making him getting flanked considerably harder. Now directly behind the cart though the knight fell in behind it and raised his long lance up to make a stab at the cart. The weapon, if lowered, would be long enough just itself to reach beyond the small cart, thus easily able to reach him. Adamant in his will Herrier turned and, keeping the reigns in his free hand, slowly came to his feet on the seat of the cart, facing the knight knowing that the archer would not be able to catch him any more. Drawing his crossbow up before the knight had a chance to lower his lance from its high position Herrier fired on the knight just at the exact moment he left the tree's and felt the sun on his back again; the closest follower of the knights having lost his horse and now way back on a friends mount Herrier shot forward tearing up the road behind him, his breath panting and his pulse racing.
The knight sat on his horse in the middle of the road halfway between sunlight and the tree's due to the sun's current position; the horse had stopped almost immediately as Herrier had fired the shot and hadn't moved since, weirdly it now stood where it was and bent down to nibble at the grass. The knights visor was down and, protruding out of it, was a large steel crossbow bolt that had broke through the metal visor. Blood seeped through the rest of the helmet and seemed to drip slowly. Other than that it looked like the knight could well be asleep on his mount, albeit in a rather unusual position in the middle of the road. Within a minute the rest of the cavalry troupe came up behind the knight and lined up behind him, the other knight positioning himself at the front of the line. Suddenly, after another minute, a creak came from inside the knight's suit of armour and, picking up speed as it went the armoured corpse keeled over and fell off its horse finishing by falling splat into the ground and rolling over to show the death wound coming out of the helmet. Herrier was well off in the distance by the time the soldiers turned around not too long afterwards, heading back to burning Gomatz to deliver the bad news to the rest of the army.