Sinful actions with no alternative

The head of the bolt loosed from Eleanor’s crossbow pierced all the way through the bearded man’s throat, and as he keeled over onto the floor, a pool of blood bathed the ground beneath him.

I froze.

I knew before coming here that we would have to kill, and I thought I had made peace with that. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have suggested such a ridiculous distraction.

But now, when the reality of death faced me down, my nerves weren’t one tenth as steady as I had expected. Even when Alice was almost killed, the faint hope of her survival was enough for me to keep my head on just straight enough to get by. But this guy? It was certain, unambiguous: no one could survive that.

For a moment, I just stood there, watching. Watching him writhe in his final moments of agony as he suffocated on his own blood. It was an enrapturing horror, something impossible to look away from. Something that held my attention and terror so firmly, that it near led to my own death.

The sound of steel against steel brought me back to my senses, as Alice parried away a sword blow that otherwise would have killed me dead.

“Barry, do not lose þy fokus now! þy very lyfe ys at risk here!” She said with a tone of absolute urgency. She managed to drive back the first of the swordsmen, the one who had damn near killed me a second ago, forcing him to engage her instead.

“R-right, sorry!” Panicking, I drew the sword Eleanor had loaned me and ducked out of the way of the incoming horizontal slice, just narrowly dodging a death blow from the second swordsman.

He recovered quickly and swung down vertically, an attack that took all of my strength just to block with my own sword. I could tell by his build alone that he was stronger than me. Between that and the fact that I had never fought with a sword in my life, it was clear who was at the disadvantage.

He continued pressing me with attacks, attempting to force me into a corner. I prioritised dodging over blocking to avoid numbing my arms, but his speed was relentless. There was no room whatsoever for a counterattack, and it was beginning to look like just a matter of time before he’d incapacitate me or worse.

And the worst part: his plan was working. The longer I fought back, the closer I got to the corner. Eventually, I found my back completely against the wall. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. This was the end.

“Argh! …bastard!” The swordsman cried out suddenly, sinking to the ground in pain. I knew what the cause was, of course. Even in the heat of battle, the characteristic ping of a crossbow was hard to miss. And, sure enough, embedded in the swordman’s side was a bolt.

“Cheers, Eleanor,” I called up to the girl in the window, “you really saved my sk-“

“Pay attenshon!” She shouted, and a moment later, a sword just barely missed my head, as I used the small amount of space left to me to just about avoid my own death. Without a second thought, I stabbed with the sword in my left hand and pierced the swordsman’s heart, retracting my blade as he fell, bleeding out. It took only a few seconds for him to lose consciousness. He was dead.

I had taken a life.

It was a truly awful feeling. I had thought I could mentally prepare myself for it, but no amount of preparation could lessen the burden on one’s soul for having killed their fellow man. I was an idiot to think otherwise.

“Barry? Art þou well?” Alice asked, having finished off the guard she was fighting a few seconds prior. She seemed remarkably calm.

“…even with a crossbow bolt in 'is side, 'e tried to fight back. 'e was desperate not to die. And I killed 'im.”

The pool of blood beneath his body was enough to make me suffocate on my own guilt. How could I have truly believed I’d be able to shrug this feeling off? It was crushing.

“…I see. þis… was þy ferst, wasn’t it? Human lyfe taken, þat is?” Alice asked.

“Was it not yours?” I replied.

“…a few years bakk, araund my 19þ winter, a man tryde to… assolt me. He was stronger þan I, and much hevvier too. Myne only opshons wer to aksept my fate, or cut his þroat wiþ þe knyfe consealed wiþin myne attire. I saw myne opporchunity, and I took it. He was dedd befor enyone couldst hear my call for help.” She looked distant as she recalled, a waver in her voice and a melancholic expression on her face. “I cannot say I regret myne actions, nor do I þink an alternative truly eksisted, but I could not sease being rakkt wiþ gilt. A human lyfe taken at my hands, an unforgivable sin in my hart.”

“But… you seem so calm about it now. What changed?” I asked.

“…‘Twas words from my faþer, of all people,” she confessed. I was taken aback: she had never said a good word about her dad, or not to me at least. “Wenn I spake of þese feelings of gilt to him, he told unto me þat þe gilt was good; it proveþ þat I have þe sensibilities of a virchuous person. But he also told me to feel no shame for my decishon, for if we cannot take sinful acshons in þe face of no alternative, we render ourselves enslaved by an eþical code þat would never pay us bakk in kynd.”

“Tch. Of all the people to talk about bein' rendered a slave.” Just hearing the word ‘enslaved’ in relation that bastard left a bad taste in my mouth. “Still, I see 'is point. Even summfin as heinous as killin' another person is sometimes the best option, and you shouldn’t be ashamed for taking it.”

“Aye, ‘twas one of very few þings þat man haþ sayd wiþ merit. On þis front, I believe his wisdom true.”

Taking advice on how to feel about killing someone from a man who sold slaves… how pathetic I felt. But I couldn’t deny the value of the words. Though I was wracked with guilt and grief, they did ease my heart just a tad.

“Myte I remynd you two þat we have little tyme? Arþur can only distract þe priest for so long, you must act now,” called Eleanor from þe window.

“R-right, sorry Eleanor. Alice, let’s get a move on into the cellar.

“Of course, tyme ys of þe essence.”

Alice and I walked across the blood-soaked floor to a door at the very back of the room. A door downwards, into the church cellar.

We descended the stairs down to the cellar, to find a cage in the dead centre of the room. Inside the cage were the two men, stripped down to their underwear and covered in bruises.

“Christ… what did they do you?” I said, practically running over to the cage.

“Who… who art ye? Asked one of the two men inside, holding his bruised arms and rubbing up and down. It was pretty cold in the cellar, so with no clothes on they must have been freezing.

“We’s 'ere to save the two of ya’s. You can thank us in a bit, d’you know where the key is to this door?” I asked.

The man pointed some way off to the right, at a desk against the cellar wall. Alice happened to be standing right beside it.

“Ah, perfect, Alice, grab the…”

I trailed off, realising Alice’s attention was taken solely by something else. Something else she had seen in the table.

“þis… docyument. ‘Tis a bill of sale. From þe Edelweiss family to þe Igris church. For þree hundred slaves.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Three hundred? For the church of all things? Is that really how entrenched this world is in slavery? It sounded absurd, but considering what I knew about this place, not so absurd as to be untrue.

Still, we were on a time limit.

“Alice, the key,” I prompted again.

“Ah- of course, my mistake.” She quickly scanned over the table and found the key, before throwing it gently to me. As I unlocked the gate to the cage, I noticed her slip the bill of sale into her pocket as well. I imagine there was information in there that could be useful to us, thought it may have also been personal for her.

I opened the gate of the cage and beckoned the two men inside to follow me, slowly and silently. With Alice taking point and me guiding the prisoners, we exfiltrated the church and made our way back to reconvene with Eleanor, praying to every god imaginable that we hadn’t been compromised.