Dead Men.

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Si'anelle of Avelorn
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Dead Men.

#1 Post by Si'anelle of Avelorn »

Bump, the dead artilleryman nodded his head, bump, he nodded again; eyes glassily staring at the sky. Bump.

'You robbing the dead?'

'No,' she said and bump, the dead artilleryman nodded his head once more as if he was agreeing with her.

Raf picked at his teeth while he watched the frail looking woman struggling to drag the heavy corpse across the battlefield at the end of a thick length of rope. 'Looks to me like you are.' He spat to the side before plucking a tidy looking silver dressed dagger out of the mud and thrusting it into his leather sack.

'I'm not,' she told him sharply without pausing in her attempt to drag a full grown dead man wearing leather armour over rough ground. 'Everything of value has already been stolen from them.'

Raf chuckled at that. Lass had some bite to her. Looking back over his shoulder he took note of the drag marks in the moist gritty soil. Woman had to be determined to haul a dead man that far.
'He's still got good boots on his feet, - see a ring there on his finger,' he told her.

'Idiot.'

With a snort Raf closed up the distance on her, slapped the rope out of her thin long fingered hands and hauled her upright by her skinny shoulders. Only she couldn't quite manage being completely upright with the twist in her spine. Now that he could get a good look at her he wasn't impressed. Unhealthy looking pale skin, dull grey eyes, hair like a handful of spider's web. Had a long thin bony face on her that nobody could call pretty.
'Bloody hunchback calls me an idiot,' he snarled at her before he shoved her away from him. Sun was getting up and it was going to be a hot day. Last thing he wanted was to be in a field full of corpses while they were bloating up and starting to get a stink on.
Casting his eyes around Raf thought he could see a deader with rich looking gear just over a short ways and was about to set off to have a closer looksee when the now familar sound of something being dragged reached his ears again. Hah! - the crazy hunchback was pulling on that rope like it was the most important thing in the whole world.
He watched her for a while, wasn't wearing much to cover her spare thin body except for a ragged once white linen shift, feet were bound up with old sackcloth. A scraps of parchment covered in script fluttered from a cord tied around her narrow waist;- Raf couldn't read to save his life, though he still knew what they were.

'Penitent,' he said with a chuckle. Idiot hunchback thought she could save her worthless soul by burying the dead. 'You betta get a move on sister,' he called out in a louder voice, 'All will be rotted away and et by crows before you get finished.' Raf laughed again as he watched her struggle to roll the corpse she'd been dragging into a deep trench he hadn't noticed before that'd been dug in the middle of the battlefield.
'Bluddy Sigmar!' Maybe it was the drink, - how could he be so damn thickheaded this morning? Somebody had to have dug that trench and it wasn't the hunchback. Raf was in the act of swinging his leather sack over his shoulder and taking to his heels when the first arrow nailed him in the thigh. 'Shitting...,' was all he managed to say before two more appeared like magic in his back and his bag of swag crashed to the ground a second or so before he did so himself.

The archer sergeant stood watching arms folded while the Countess steadily began to drag the newest corpse in the field towards the trench he and a dozen of his lads had dug the evening before. An old puckered scar ran the length of one cheek and his habitual scowl of disatisfaction underneath the brim of his battered helmet wasn't quite so severe as usual as he asked the young archer recruit approaching him, 'Her ladyship take any of the bread and water?'

'No sergeant,' he replied, his confusion written all over his face, 'Said she wouldn't 'til she had them all buried.'

'She'll faint away before then,' he told the youngster, 'When she does we'll finish it for her and tell her she did it all herself.'

'But won't Sigmar know?' asked the young archer sounding shocked.

'Not if we don't tell him,' said the sergeant, 'Not if we don't tell him lad.'

30/01/2009
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