“That’s true,” said Elyse, sighing. “Nabu tried to pull a similar stunt on me. Fortunately, his lies were so ridiculous, nobody in Erst believed them… Nobody but the Archbishop of Radiance, who saw fit to strip me of my rank and banish me.”
“You know, we have a lot more in common than I’d initially thought.”
“Beyond the sewer we’ve both been pushed into, you and I have nothing in common. You dabble in dark sorcery, while I serve the Lord of Light. You, Vance Chauzec, are a man who revels in violence and kills men as easily and as remorselessly as any common man would swat flies. I, on the other hand, reject violence, and—”
“You did a great job of ‘rejecting violence’ when you caved that soldier’s skull in with your mace,” I said with a smirk, glancing over my shoulder.
Elyse folded her arms across her chest and huffed. “He was threatening my life. I was acting purely in self-defense!”
“And when you were about to burn our friend Fang to ashes, was that self-defense?”
“He was eating people yesterday. Can you blame me for acting, um, preemptively?”
I chuckled. “I’m just yanking your chain. Forget about it.”
I managed to catch a glimpse of Elyse’s amused smile. She was enjoying the banter, it seemed.
The rest of the day, we talked about lighter topics: our childhoods, favorite foods, the usual. In spite of what Elyse had said about us sharing nothing but the unfortunate status of being victims of similar thefts, she was doing her utmost to get to know me—while pretending not to care.
We stopped for a brief lunch next to a river but made good progress throughout the day and reached the borders of Erst just before dusk. We kept to the woods that lined the vineyards, as we knew the peasants would still be out picking grapes. But we immediately noticed something was horribly wrong. The peasants were shackled, while burly, thuggish overseers whipped the backs of those they perceived as slacking. The overseers wore crude leather armor and had swords in scabbards at their sides. They were also wearing white tabards with a sigil of a golden sun on them. These were Church of Light troops.
“I didn’t know slavery was legal in Erst,” I remarked dryly.
“It isn’t!” exclaimed Elyse, who was clearly as shocked as I was. “At least, it wasn’t when I was still here. These people all worked in the vineyards for their love of the trade and for the pride they took in producing some of the finest wine in all of Prand. This perversion of their passion is the work of Bishop Nabu. His greed knows no bounds. I will have my revenge on that vile viper, and I will free my people.”
“What’s going on over there?” I asked, pointing up ahead.
Just on the edge of the woods, a few hundred yards away, some of the troops were cornering someone.
“All I know is that these sanctimonious vipers are about to enter a world of pain.”
I chuckled; I liked it when Elyse’s feisty side came out.
“Good. Because my dagger is thirsty,” I growled, pulling Grave Oath out of its sheath and flipping it in my hand. “Let’s go show these assholes that the real Bishop of Erst is back in town. Fang, to the soldiers!”
Fang let out an earth-shaking growl and sped off, with my skeletons sprinting along behind him. As we came to within a dozen yards or so, I ordered Fang to stop, and we waited, hiding behind a screen of shrubbery.
Over a dozen Church of Light soldiers had cornered someone, but it wasn’t a peasant; it was a young woman dressed all in black, with clothes unlike any you’d see anywhere in Prand. I’d seen people wearing garments like her before, and they’d come from the land across the Sea of Storms.
Clad as she was in a tight, figure-hugging suit that shimmered in the light, it was plain she had a killer figure. She was petite but had generous breasts that strained against the material of her catsuit. Lower down her body, her round ass and strong thighs and calves indicated an impressive degree of athleticism. I had no doubt that her slim arms were stronger than they looked, and the weapons she wore on her hips—a pair of sais—as well as the curved sword slung over her back, revealed she was a warrior.
Her face, frustratingly, was hidden; a black mask covered everything but her eyes, enhanced with a good deal of eyeliner and kohl. Silky, jet-black hair tumbled out behind her mask and cascaded halfway down her back.
“Come on, love,” one of the brutish soldiers said as he took a threatening step toward her. He sneered and twirled his battle-axe slowly in his warty hands. “I ain’t never seen the tits of a Yengishwoman… Get ‘em out and let us give ‘em a squeeze.”
“Yeah, slag,” grunted another soldier, stepping closer to her, a flail gripped in his hand. “Let’s see how well a Yengish pussy handles a bunch of Prandian cocks.”
My hand gripped my dagger even tighter, and Elyse’s hands around my waist squeezed. I motioned for her to hold off. I figured waiting a little while longer might reveal who this woman was and what she was doing here. If I burst in to help her now, she might run away while we fought the soldiers, and she had me curious.
“Get back,” hissed the woman, her speech colored with that typical Yengish lilt. “I’m warning you, all of you, get back!”
She may have been a skilled warrior, but the fact was that she was outnumbered 13 to one.
“You’re gonna taste the prick of every man here before the sun sets, love,” snarled the soldier with the flail as he took another step toward her, while she whipped out both of her sais and shifted into a fighting stance. “And then I’m gonna cave that pretty little skull in with this flail o’ mine.”
They were all clearly wary of her obvious fighting
