The manhunt

Clad in red hoplite armor and red cloaks, they gathered up their supplies, bags, and javelins. Their breast plates were clean and filled with gleamy scratches. Shoulder pads, leg and arm protection, as well as a red varnished bristle helmet were fastened once more as they made themselves ready for a long march. The familiar smell of steel and boiled ash wood was polluted by whatever lay on that coal and had been smoldering for quite a while now. It was disgusting and as he walked by, he saw what they had placed on the incense burner.

In the middle between the candles and in front of the figurine on a burning coal, human foreskin was smoldering, the soundless starting signal of an approved manhunt. But the dried junk which was burning was not the part of the perpetrator they were chasing. Varion wasn’t in on the details as this mission was a punishment. He could only assume what kind of a creature must’ve befallen Ashrain for the magistrate of the city to hand over jurisdiction to a unit of warriors most fearsome.

They left the peristyle through the back where each of the eight priestesses filled her field bottle from the small well which drizzled down the hill and cheered. The sacrifice had kindled their bloodlust and a predominant hassle had furnished the former grave moods with hunting spirits.

Except for one priestess, he did not discern a single mood close to his pondering. They were treating this like a celebration similar to a boy ascending into manhood or a festivity of a wine god. And as they declined for the hunting feast to begin, Varion at the rear of the pageant of steel and valor, he heard them exclaiming loud and clear.

“Let’s castrate this bastard of a rapist!”

#

The bastard’s name was Persilaus of Creteia. He was a middle-aged officer––former officer of the Inaeids, Varion’s future company. But in contrast to most warriors of Inaea, who led the defense and vanguard of the Ashlandic army against the bordering mage dominance, Persilaus had used his jurisdiction in a corruptive means. 

He’d been appointed to hunt down Crod’s Lot, a band of thieves and pillagers who had settled somewhere near the border of the Forest of Trials where they robbed lonesome travelers on their way to and from Ashrain and forced them to climb a tree. Once these poor fellows had climbed high enough, the bandits would use them as aiming practice for archery. The casualties were too small in number and too light in coin with no connections worthwhile mentioning and so the higher state officials had ignored them.