strokinit Chapter 633 The Ambush - Part 4
Chapter 633 The Ambush - Part 4
"Ser Patrick?" Rofus prodded, when he'd been quiet a while.
There was his own road too, though. There were people that Oliver owed more than complete strangers, people who had recently saved his life. They expected things from him, a certain level of strength and justice.
The country collectively decided that these bandits needed to be dealt with and it was the country that Oliver now served, even if many of the nobility seemed to view him with the same revilement as the criminals that he executed.
It was not his role here to think.
He drove his sword through the man's chest with as little of his intention forecasted as he could. He would kill, but it wasn't his intention to make the man suffer. The man didn't even seem to notice the sword in his chest, not until he was already strongly within the throes of death.@@@@
Oliver Patrick the executioner didn't wield power enough to make moral judgements. Perhaps the Oliver of the future would, but that was a problem for future Oliver. For now, he would do his duty and he would do it without remorse.
He left the body leaning against the tree as he cleaned his sword off using the furs of the man's shoulder.
"I'm going to scout this encampment," Oliver told the rest of them. "If his intelligence is right, it shouldn't be too much of a distance. I'll be far less likely to be seen if I go alone. Besides, I can move more quickly like that."
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Brushing past a few thick trees, he saw the rising of smoke. Then the tents seemed to emerge out of the forest out of nowhere – and then there were people and voices and the air of frigid dissatisfaction that hung over them.
On the outskirts of that camp, Oliver stood tight by a tree, taking what time he could take to drink it all in.
The man estimated a hundred people, but there must have been twenty or more tents. It made sense, if they'd all come from different areas and they weren't particularly comfortable with each other, but it was still a stark contrast from the efficiency of the military encampment.
It reflected what the bandits really were, even more clearly than the words that had come pouring out of the dead man's mouth. They were just villagers armed with axes, desperate enough to steal.
Several communal fire pits burned and skinny men – many of them unshaven and unwashed – hung around fires. They seemed like smaller Yarmdon men with their hatchets swinging from their belts, but there wasn't a shield in sight to confirm that image.
As Oliver watched, he caught a glimpse of goats and chickens and cows – not many of them, but they were there, tied to the trees, with pitiful amounts of hay and feed in front of them. It was clear that they'd been stolen in a haste. The bandits certainly didn't have the means of looking after them.
He caught sight of women as well. Some were dressed as the men, in Yarmdon fashion, their fur coats and their gloves held tight with string and ready for action. Others bore bruises and bloody noses. Some had ropes about their hands, tied to trees and left in the cold with far too little clothing to keep them alive for long.
Slaves, in other words.
"Seems they took far more than just cattle from those villages," Ingolsol noted gleefully. He loved things like that, Oliver had learned. He loved to see the worst of people. He loved to see their sadistic little desires, as well as the brutal states of the downtrodden, as he delighted in their suffering.
"Maliciousness and greed are short roads," Claudia said with a sigh.