Story Preview: Knightly Virtues

Falquenne is a disgruntled knight struggling to make ends meet for her family amid post-war chaos. Her brother's past complicates her pursuit of gainful self-employment.

Photo by Ivan Alleksy on Unsplash

It took Falquenne much longer than she would have liked to corner her mark. The mark, Emil, was not nearly as foolish as she’d thought. He was, however, in a lot more trouble than the job description implied. Said trouble did not even include his current predicament: locked in a dusty storeroom far from any other living being than an aggravated knight-turned-bounty-hunter. He shook madly as he stared down the length of her sword.

“Please, I—” His plea was abruptly cut off as the sword was repositioned under his chin.

“I don’t want to hear a word from you,” Falquenne grumbled. She had discovered that she was not the only mercenary after Emil. Not only did he owe an insurmountable debt—the subject of Falquenne’s orders—but someone from the Gunvald family had a bounty on his entire family, which he’d foolishly borrowed the money to extinguish. He’d ordered two bounties with his most recent loan, one for the same creditor of said loan and another for the head of the Gunvald family. Falquenne had been forced to kill the “rival” mercenary hired by the Gunvalds once they’d chased Emil into a dead end. That corpse was situated on the other side of the same storeroom, furthering Emil’s incredible distress.

“If I don’t kill you now,” Falquenne murmured, “your late creditor’s survivors will do it. Failing that, the Gunvalds will torture you to death—they’re all military, so the generals will not even acknowledge your death.” Living under the thumb of a military regime made the knights untouchable—a luxury the Guilfordian expatriates hadn’t enjoyed to the same degree across the ocean, in their homeland. Falquenne had learned this before ever setting foot in Najem, so she didn’t know how Emil could think it would work out. Then again, if the caravan hadn’t left without him to the port town of Froidal, he might have gotten away with it all.

Emil burst into tears. “You don’t understand! My son was ill and my daughter’s husband passed and—”

Falquenne pressed the tip of her blade into his neck as a warning. He fell silent, save the occasional choked sob. She couldn’t believe this idiot had children on top of everything else. Nevermind that he’d been planning to leave them. Perhaps he’d intended for them to bear the brunt of his miscalculations the whole time. They would likely die one way or the other before any of Emil’s newfound adversaries were satisfied.

As Jory often lamented, it was the lax feud legislation in Reislauf that allowed such convoluted affairs to materialize. Such things were unheard of in Utagar prior to the village’s conquest by what is now known as the Slaufine military. Falquenne was quickly learning of the slippery slope that such policies produced. In the end, it made her ends meet, so she couldn’t complain much—as long as her family stayed far away from such things.

She actually pitied Emil. The unfortunate thing was that someone obviously had a vested interest in his family's death. Even if the swordmistress walked away now, someone else—probably multiple “someone elses,” in fact—would come to finish the job. They'd be tortuously messy about it, too. Worse, she'd lose credibility, the only other currency that mattered as a mercenary. She'd be destitute, and have to leave her parents to the auspices of Brandt and the villagers of Utagar. Unacceptable.

Falquenne delicately wiggled her sword to get Emil’s attention. “Where are your children?” she asked.

Emil stopped blubbering long enough to consider the question. “T-they’re in the northern bloc, just outside the circle. Right above the meat cart.”

She recognized the description—there was an obnoxious merchant always selling expired boar’s meat there. “I’ll see what I can do for them,” she said.

Emil got a hopeful gleam in his eyes. “You’ll help us?”

Falquenne gave him a wry grin. “I’ll try.” It was the least she could do. The children hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d be distraught if her own family had to face such consequences for a man’s conspiracies.

Emil began to cry in earnest again. “Thank you, thank you!”

Falquenne turned her back on him. “One more thing, Emil,” she said. “Don’t move.”

Emil obediently held his breath.

Killing a moving target in one stroke was an astonishing feat—impossible without a massive helping of luck. A still one, like her tearful captive, was no trouble. With a spinning flourish, she neatly separated his head from his body.

Falquenne left the storeroom. She made a beeline for Emil’s home, but got no further than the aforementioned meat cart. Several men, presumably employed by the Gunvalds, were already escorting his children out. She could only hope they’d be employed as servants or simply killed. None of the other options were particularly appealing and the generals would not intervene on their behalf, just as she’d told Emil. Their fate was sealed the moment he crossed a knight. With a curiously heavy heart, she trudged back to Bryn’s lodge to speak to the taskmaster.

Falquenne lumbered inside, having barely the energy to greet Bryn. “The taskmaster in?” she mumbled.

Bryn’s eyebrows knitted at the unusual display of exhaustion. “Go right on in,” she said.

“Thanks.” The swordmistress pushed the door open and walked through.

The taskmaster was an austere fellow, probably another foreigner. Many of the powerful or power-adjacent individuals in Najem seemed to be foreign. Falquenne surmised it was a feature of the stratocracy, rather than a mere coincidence. Unlike Guilford, heritage meant nothing in Reislauf. She couldn’t determine the taskmaster’s ethnicity because his face was concealed by a helmet. The helmet was constructed in a style she’d never seen before—completely solid, save the eye-level grid that allowed him to see. Between that and his penchant for placing lights behind him, no one knew what he looked like.

The taskmaster sat cross-legged on a cushion with his feet under his knees. “You have returned,” he said. “I take it you were unable to collect?” His voice was fairly nondescript—male, but not deep enough to be notable and having only the slightest of accents, which for all Falquenne knew could be from one of the surrounding villages.

Falquenne acknowledged his greeting with a shallow nod. “I killed him,” she said. “His family has already been taken into captivity.”

The taskmaster nodded. “Understood,” he said. He handed the swordmistress a hefty satchel of coins. “The client thanks you. Are you ready for another case?”

Falquenne wanted to eat and go to sleep, but there was no guarantee the taskmaster would be around when she was feeling better. She nodded mutely.

“I saved this for you, considering that you would do quite well to leave the city. Go to Utagar. Find Brandt, and kill him.”

Falquenne couldn’t believe her ears. “Come again?”

“Brandt,” he repeated. “He lives in Utagar—kill him.” The taskmaster was silent for a long moment. “Are you troubled?”

Falquenne gathered herself as well as she could. It didn’t seem to be taskmaster’s custom to give an assigned job to someone else, but she wasn’t going to risk appearing any more suspicious than she likely already did. She shook her head.

“Very well. May the goddess be with you.”

Falquenne nodded grimly. She turned to leave, but the taskmaster spoke once again.

“I forget that you are new—you work like a consummate professional. All fees are forfeit to us in advance—thus, if you have a conflict of interest, you are free to resolve it as you please, so long as we are not involved during the completion of the task or any time thereafter.”

“Understood,” Falquenne said. Bern had warned her of that. She left the room. Upon visiting her usual seat at the bar, she noticed the plate of food. It had to be for her since no one else was in the building at the moment. If she wasn’t about to be sick, it’d be the perfect time to chat up Bryn. Falquenne’s hands shook as she counted the coins for her meal. She left them on the counter next to her untouched plate and exited the bar.

The swordmistress walked aimlessly through Najem, subconsciously weaving through the crowded streets—sometimes jostling others without apology. Her mind was awash with concern for Brandt, but even more so with confusion. Her brother was sullen and altogether useless now, but he’d never been corrupt in any fashion. There was only one person in the city who could possibly answer her unasked question.