Elysium

Chapter 12: The Students

I had lost the sense of directions soon after we were marched from the shrine of the goddess down the stony stairs guarded by nagas, and back to the path. There, we turned to the right, continuing the path to where we had been going before we had decided to take shelter for the night at the shrine.

Red Lefuet and his men didn't take risks. Our hands remained tied behind our backs with straps throughout the long march, and we were not allowed to speak to each other, or even to the vigilantes who were hawkishly guarding us. If we tried to whisper, someone promptly hit us with a scabbard or threatened us with a battle-knife. Most of the vigilantes were young, their youngest were not older than Max and Roland. In my mind, I hated Lefuet, Master Osir, and whoever had brainwashed these youths to serve the cause of tyranny. Yet I wasn't sure which cause that was. Lefuet had described himself as a mercenary, even though he had mentioned the Templar Master Osir's name at the shrine.

The vigilantes kept a fast pace and forced us to the same in spite of our tiredness and my limping leg. Lefuet himself was often lagging behind the others, as he was wounded. He didn't fail to curse the name of his former assistant Nick at any of our few breaks. Nick would pay dearly for his betrayal, Lefuet swore.

"You saw what kind of man he is!" Lefuet complained to us during a break. "You may hate me - I understand that - but how could you ever trust anyone who's betrayed his master? Once a traitor, always a traitor. You get it? He shot me with arrows - me! They actually hurt! What did I do to deserve such pain? What good did it do, to shoot me, what gain?"

I hoped Nick and Brynhilde had managed to escape as far away as possible. Maybe, through some miracle, they could alert help for us from their folks. Or at least bring a word to the abbot. After all, the abbot should hear about the betrayal of his now deceased night watchman.

"And because of you", Lefuet went on, "I lost both of those henchmen who turned out to be loyal - Radu and Caliban. Now I have to rely on the men provided by Master Osir. Or rather boys than men. Straight from the training, I presume. Most of these guys are just dilettantes, noobs. Radu, on the other hand - oh, that was a fine man, an old hand in smuggling. Had killed men with his bare hands, and at least one woman. You believe me? A fine man. It's not fair to end such a man's life just like that. A life that was redeemed with deeds - acts and experiences! The damned Siegfried, engineer of souls. To hell with his souls!" Lefuet used his walking-stick sword to angrily smite and cut an innocent creeper, which was just trying to reach the low-bent branch that would have been the first host in its gentle stranglehold. "The world indeed doesn't treat me fairly. Then why should it expect any justice from me?"

Max, Roland, and I could only communicate with each other by quiet looks - and even they worked only when we were in the light of their torches. Therefore, I concentrated in assessing our adversaries. There were exactly ten of the vigilantes. They had been twelve, but two had been killed in the battle - one of them, Edgar, shot by Lefuet himself. Apparently to take away Nick's bargain chip. The headman of the vigilantes, whom Lefuet had called Lupu, was a robust man and looked strong. He had brown eyes stalking under thick brow. In those eyes, I saw locked-up feelings and thoughts that would seldom be formulated in words.

I had also heard the names of two other vigilantes - Allan and Bogos, who had captured me outside of the shrine. Allan was blond and short-haired, but his build-up was athletic, and apparently, he was quite well trained in ninja arts. After all, he had surprised none other than Brynhilde on her watch on the roof of the shrine. Bogos was dark, slim, and trim, and his hair formed a strange crest on his crown. He could not be much older than Max and Roland. The seven others all resembled each other, more or less, although they seemed to be from various ethnic backgrounds. Some were lighter, others darker, many seemed racially mixed. They wore similar black clothes, the only details being in their weapons and belt buckles. All those whose buckles I saw had an image of a wolf there. A tribal symbol of a kind, or an insignia of the group? I smiled to myself tragicomically as I remembered how we used to call the youngest of us in the scouts as wolf-cubs. These were kind of wolf-cubs, too.