“By the gods …” Said Markus as I strolled up the slope again. He probably spoke about my red attire and I couldn’t help myself but twirl around once, just to give him a nice view from all sides. “… is that part of the gut?”
“What do you mean?” I asked out of curiosity while I held my belly. Everything seemed fine so far and even my dress in this area was completely intact.
“On your head.” I went through my hair with my fingers and indeed found a slimy part of some unidentifiable organ in it.
“Eww.” I threw it towards Markus who hurried to dodge and sadly did it in time. The disgust on his face was glorious. I still had to pay him back for insulting my height after all.
“And this is?” Markus pointed behind me to a bandit who took me as a meat shield against Markus.
“A stray bandit I picked up.” I said and stepped to the side as I honestly didn’t want to be someone else´s shield if Markus chose to attack.
“What have you done? Have you ever thought about the consequences a bandit in the army could have? Are you even thinking?!” Just as expected, Markus wasn’t entirely convinced of my new subordinate.
“How dare you to say something like this in front of my subordinate!” And yet, I didn’t want to deal with this right then but tried everything to shoo Markus away. He didn’t react to my attempts at all but rather proceeded to question me.
“A bandit? Since you entered the army, you found no suitable person and now this?! This bandit that is weaker than Mary?” Weaker than Arthur´s wife? I looked at my subordinate once more to evaluate his strength correctly. He was already out of breath just by climbing the slope so far. Yup, definitely weaker than Mary. In frustration, I comforted myself with the knowledge that his strengths laid somewhere else.
“What´s your problem?” I said, quite agitated by Markus.
“You don’t know him at all! The plan was that nobody survives.” Markus said and somewhat had a point. The task was to eradicate everyone and leave nobody alive.
“If I may introduce you: Nobody.” I said with a smirk.
“Rot in hell.” Said Markus while I nearly laughed. Purgatory was already quite nice, so I just had to wonder how good hell would be.
“He won against me. I am a woman of my word, so I didn’t have any other choice, did I?” I claimed and pointed to the one eventuality I couldn’t discard completely since the very beginning. If I was beaten, I couldn’t follow the plan anymore.
“He won? What did you two do at that table? Writing poems or what?” asked Markus while holding his hand dangerously close to his sword.
“No, that would be ridiculous. We played Blackjack.” Markus' face fell as I said that. It took him several seconds to collect the pieces of his reasoning while he gave his best and stopped himself from striking me and my new subordinate down.
“This isn’t funny anymore.” Markus said as he finally found the ability to speak again.
“It never was …” I claimed and pulled the corners of my mouth down with my index fingers. He got even angrier as he saw that, but still didn’t pull his sword out of the scabbard. I didn’t mind adding a bit of extra blood on my dress though, so if he really wanted …
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“For fucks sake … you explain that to Arthur that your bandit now is part of your unit.” Markus said.
“He is not my bandit! And he has a name!”
“And what is his name?” asked Markus. I had troubles remembering the name of my subordinate, mostly because I probably never heard him before.
“… Bob.” The name seemed fairly plausible to me as a bob would certainly look like my subordinate.
“My name is Tom.” Said the former bandit while looking at me as if he couldn’t believe it. My guess was pretty close though, I dare say.
“… if he turns out to be a failure …” Markus said while shaking his head.
“Don’t worry. I am a master at failure management! I do it all the time! And now leave me alone, I need to change dresses.”
“Wash yourself first.” Markus said, hopefully in the dark of how often I did wash so far. While the number didn’t go to zero, it was pretty close.
“Thanks, dad.” I answered with sarcasm and watched how he stomped away. Markus was still furious, but I knew he would calm down after some time.
After that, I was walking in a random direction, hoping to find the spot a soldier told me about earlier this day. Since we arrived here three days ago, I was never once at the pond to wash, because I just couldn’t stand the sight of water. Strangely enough, blood wasn’t an issue at all, or rather felt exhilarating on my skin, at least until it dried up.
“Say … where is the pond?” I finally gave up after ten minutes of walking around aimlessly and turned around to ask Tom who still followed me like a loyal dog. Embarrassed, he pointed in the opposite direction. “Great …”
“I thought you knew the way.” No Tom, I didn’t and he knew. I assumed he would say something if I was wrong. Angry, I stomped past him and made my way back. Under Tom´s lead, we found a little pond soon afterwards where my clothing was already prepared for me. Markus, or whoever ordered it, luckily also didn’t forget the washcloth I asked for. Still a bit angry about Tom´s earlier mistake, I pulled my tattered dress over my head.
“What are you doing?” asked Tom while turning around to look away.
“I´m going to wash. Duh.” I answered, not really getting what he wanted.