The Forecast Ascension

-1- 

The sound of metal piercing flesh came as a blessed relief, an end to the horror of the last three hours. Miranda shifted position, taking care to not draw attention, and settled in behind the rock formation that kept her concealed. She warned them not to take the road through the pass. It was prime ambush territory. Still, it was difficult to not feel a pang of guilt about what happened. To sit in hiding, listening to the girl’s screams, and not feel sorrow or remorse was unthinkable.

Miranda pushed the recriminating thoughts from her mind and picked at her fingernails with her knife. There was no dirt left, all that time with nothing to do but keep silent and hidden saw to that, but it kept her mind occupied. Sure, she could have tried harder to convince them to abandon their donkey and follow her. It would not have helped. They were too stubborn to relinquish their material possessions. She could have gone with them, tried to protect them, but Miranda knew it was folly to think she could defeat five bandits in an ambush.

The bandit leader yanked his spear from the girl's chest as the life drained from her eyes. He was not going to get away with this, none of them were, but Miranda had to fight smart. She had no intention of suffering the same fate as the girl, pinned beneath their sweaty bodies as they took turns on her.

Miranda waited until she was sure the bandits were gone before emerging from behind the rocks. The scene on the road below her was every bit as gruesome as she pictured. The girl's clothes, ripped and muddied, lay scattered across the path. Her broken body lay at the centre of the scene. Fighting the urge to vomit, Miranda turned her eyes away from the girl. The boyfriend’s body was face down in a slowly spreading pool of blood next to her. The bandits forced him to watch as they violated his beloved before slitting his throat. He had told Miranda they were running away from home, to get married, and this was the first day of the rest of their lives. Miranda warned them their first day would also be their last. There was no comfort in being proved right.

Leaving their bodies in the dust of the mountain road, Miranda continued along the goat path she told the runaways to take. It was unlikely another ambush awaited, the bandits would have cleared the bodies if they sought another victim, but Miranda was taking no chances.

The sun was low in the sky when Miranda stepped from the goat path, sliding down the rocky slope to the main road, and entered the valley below. The bandits were a good mile ahead of her, despite Miranda making as much haste as safely possible, and it would take most of the remaining daylight hours to catch them. Perfect.

Patting the dust off her brown leather breeches, Miranda set off across the valley. She slowly closed the gap, hugging the treeline to avoid standing out should the bandits look back up the valley. The distant sound of their voices became clearly recognisable as speech. The smell of the stolen donkey became distinguishable from the other valley smells.

With the sunlight fading, the bandits moved to the side of the road and began setting up camp. Miranda watched with incredulity from the shadows of the treeline as they pitched tents and built a fire. The lack of precautions taken betrayed their arrogance. Exposed on all sides, the campsite was far from ideal and entirely indefensible. During her journey down the mountain and across the valley, Miranda worried the bandits may prove to be too difficult a foe to overcome. Seeing their preparations up close, any illusion that she would struggle to exact retribution was dispelled.

As the bandits drank and celebrated a successful day, Miranda reassessed her plan to dispose of them. Her original idea involved sweeping through the campsite and murdering them as they slept. It was the least risk approach, dealing swift justice and disappearing before anyone was the wiser, but lacked a certain vindictiveness. Miranda wanted them to suffer. She wanted them to experience terror.

Pulling her hood over her fiery orange hair, Miranda crept forward. All but one of the bandits were asleep. Now was the time to strike. Drawing a dagger, one of a set with dull, muted steel that would not catch the light, Miranda approached the sentry from behind. Her hand closed over his mouth as the point of the dagger pierced the flesh of his throat. An attempt to call out was denied as the blade severed vocal cords.

‘For all the women you've wronged,’ Miranda whispered as the bandit’s eyes went wide.

Studying the sleeping forms of the other bandits as she sheathed her dagger, Miranda knew it would be easy to kill them all where they slept. Too easy. Emptying the wineskins the bandits left lying on the floor, Miranda drained as much of the dead bandit’s blood into them as possible before returning them. Leaving the body in the middle of the campsite, Miranda receded into the trees and waited for morning.

The sound of angry shouts woke Miranda just before dawn. One of the bandits, waking to relieve himself, discovered his dead comrade and was attempting to rouse the others. Miranda closed her eyes again, suppressing a laugh when the bandits discovered her wineskin ruse, and waited. She was sure they would not think to look up when searching for her. Even if they did, the chances of spotting her were slim at best, camouflaged as she was by her mottled cloak amid the boughs of the trees.

After a morning of fruitless searching, the bandits broke camp and continued down the road. With nothing to drink, they could ill afford to spend the day searching for the killer of one of their crew. Undoing the ropes that secured her to the trunk of the tree in which she hid, Miranda dropped to the forest floor and continued to trail her quarry. Her antics proved successful, as the bandits were constantly checking the road behind them and the woods to their right. It forced Miranda to hang back, slowing her progress, but knowing they were spooked felt good.

That night, Miranda slipped into their camp once more. Amazed at the shoddiness of their defences, in spite of the previous night, Miranda sidled up to the solitary sentry and slipped her blade between his ribs. A second blade came up, punching through the bandit's lower jaw and skewering his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Checking that the man's garbled attempts to cry out drew no attention, Miranda forced the bandit out of the camp and tied him to the willow tree she selected earlier. She would need to work fast as the bandit was losing blood quicker than Miranda would like. His strength was already draining, evidenced by the feeble resistance made when gagging the bandit and binding him to the tree, and Miranda wanted him awake for as much of what came next as possible.

Away from the attention of any early rousers, Miranda proceeded to craft a message for the other bandits. She began with the hands, breaking the fingers that groped the girl's flesh. Next came the penis. With a deliberately slow sawing action, Miranda cut through the bandit's flaccid member. He passed out, the combination of shock and blood loss taking its toll before Miranda was done. Removing the dagger from his jaw, Miranda loosened the gag and forced the severed appendage into the man's mouth. There would be no doubt in the minds of his colleagues that this killing was a direct response to the way they forced themselves inside the girl.

Finally, as the bandit's chest ceased to rise and fall, Miranda took the dagger from his ribs and used it to prise out his eyes. Fluid flowed down his cheeks as the first eyeball popped, pierced by Miranda's dagger as she teased it from its socket. No more would those eyes look upon women as prey, as playthings to be used for gratification and discarded. Working more delicately, Miranda removed the other eye intact and left it hanging against his cheek.

The rising sun was turning the sky a ruddy amber as Miranda cleaned and sheathed her daggers. There would be no sleep this night. Miranda took a strip of jerky from her dwindling rations and retreated to her chosen hiding spot. Her positioning gave her an unobstructed view of the willow tree and a partial view of the campsite. Unlike the bandits, Miranda knew how to scope the terrain and pick her battlefields accordingly. The trapper training her father gave her was not just for rabbits.

Miranda did not have to wait long for a reaction. Alerted by the change in bird calls from the direction of the camp, Miranda lifted her head and watched the scene unfold.

‘Blazes,’ the bandit leader cried out as he approached the corpse at the willow. ‘What is going on here?’

‘I told you, that girl was a witch,’ his colleague replied, nervously glancing around as he drew his sword. ‘She summoned a vengeful spirit on us.’

‘Give it a rest with your superstitious goblin-groll,’ the third bandit said as he conducted a more thorough review of their surroundings. ‘We’ve got a cowardly thief tailing us is all.’

‘Look at the state of him!’ the second man wailed. ‘This was no robbery gone wrong.’

‘Enough,’ their leader snapped. ‘Spread out and find whoever did this.’

‘No way,’ the superstitious one said, backing away from the tree. ‘I’m getting out of here.’

Miranda watched the bandit leader unhook a mace from his belt and swing the spiked metal ball into the back of his colleague’s knee. The bandit collapsed to the floor, screaming as the leader casually looped the mace back onto his belt. The third man moved in to finish the job but stepped back at a signal from his boss. It was an obvious ruse. The two bandits walked away thinking Miranda would take the bait and finish the job herself. No such luck. Miranda’s patience would easily outlast theirs. Two-to-one odds were not insurmountable. Even so, there was no need to risk it. She was well hidden, with an escape route made easier by a reduction in the number of potential pursuers, and facing no urgent need to move. Except for the pressure on her bladder.

As soon as the bandits were settled into their ambush, Miranda crept away and relieved herself behind a rocky outcrop. Relishing the comfortable feeling of an empty bladder, Miranda finalised her plan of attack as she buttoned her breeches. By now the herbs she sprinkled into their drinking water before taking out the sentry would be taking effect. The dosage was too mild to knock them out completely but would make them sluggish. A club to the back of the head was enough to finish the job.

The bandit leader was the first to regain consciousness. The shock and anger on his face as he realised he was strapped to a log was priceless. The panic that eclipsed both of those expressions upon seeing Miranda twirling his mace was beyond description.

‘Please,’ he said as he struggled against his bindings. ‘I’ll give you anything you want. Just name it.’

‘Funny,’ Miranda replied, nodding towards a bloody mess to her right, ‘your colleague made the same offer. How do you think that went?’

Seeing the bludgeoned remains of the bandit he left for dead only hours earlier made the bandit leader strain harder. It was no use, Miranda’s knots were too secure to be loosened by his wriggling.

‘After tying up you and your friend here,’ Miranda continued, waving a hand towards the other unconscious bandit, ‘I went back and finished the job you started. Crippling him sure made that easier. Thanks for that.’

‘Please. I'll give you anything.’

‘As I said to your ex-partner before breaking his other leg, I've seen what you like giving to women you meet on the road. I'll be having none of that.’

The sound of bone and cartilage breaking as Miranda brought the mace down on the bandit’s knee was drowned out by the man's scream. The uproar was enough to rouse his unconscious comrade. Miranda smiled as he realised the predicament he found himself in. Face down on a fallen tree, the man was trapped in an ‘all fours' position.

‘If it's any consolation,’ Miranda said to nobody in particular as she walked over to the second bandit, ‘your colleague was only half right. I'm no spirit, but I am vengeful.’

Taking the bandit's sword and placing the tip between his buttocks, Miranda gradually leant forward. The sound of metal slicing through his leather trousers made the bandit squirm. Miranda paused, allowing the terror of knowing what would come next to permeate every cell in the bandit's body.

Both men were pleading for their lives. A futile gesture. Nothing would sway Miranda from her course.

‘I heard her beg,’ Miranda said, directly addressing the bandit before her as she pushed forward again. ‘For hours she pleaded with you to stop. She begged you to let her be. Did you?’

Blood was flowing from the man’s rear as Miranda forced another inch of the blade inside him. She doubted he heard a word she was saying, so loud were his screams, but the words needed to be said. She needed to make her motives known. If the girl’s spirit was listening, it would know justice was served and be free to transition to the other side.

‘Know now that your crimes are counted. Vengeance be done.’

The man’s screams ceased as Miranda rammed the blade in to the hilt. The bandit leader's eyes went wide as she turned her head to look at him. The fear was so strong she could almost taste it. Miranda gave him a sadistic smile as she released the grip, leaving the sword buried in the fresh corpse. Without a word, she walked over and smashed the mace into the leader's other knee.

Casting the weapon aside, Miranda walked over to the campsite and the stolen donkey. While the bandits were unconscious, she had loaded up all the supplies, filling the donkey's saddlebags. With the assault over, Miranda stroked the donkey’s neck to calm it. The smell of blood had it agitated but not enough to make it flighty. Miranda attributed its stoic disposition to being too old to make much of an effort for anything.

Satisfied the donkey was under control, Miranda untied the reins from the stump that served as a makeshift hitching post. The ropes linking the log to the saddle pulled tight as Miranda guided the donkey away from camp and onto the road. The sudden shift startled the bandit leader. From his position, he was unable to see that Miranda had bound him to the donkey while he was unconscious.

‘We’re six days from the city,’ Miranda said as the bandit bounced and scraped along the rough track that passed for a road. ‘Let’s see if you last that long.’