CHAPTER 39: BAD OMEN

***

"Achoo."

"Bless you." "Bless you captain."

"Good lord this winter. Why did they have to send us here at this time? How long will it take these idiots to gather around already!"

The burly man in a leather armour and thick fir coat cursed as he, along with his guards stood in the middle of the village on the cold winter day.

The sky was a flat, pewter gray, hanging low over the fields like a lid pressed against the world. A bitter wind blew in from the north, sharp as knives, carrying with it the scent of smoke and distant pine.

The wooden paths, slick with frost, cracked underfoot as villagers trudged by, their breath clouding in the air like ghostly steam.

Snow had fallen in the night, not heavy, but enough to dull the colors of the world. The thatched rooftops of the village were dusted white, and the trees stood skeletal and still, their branches glassy with ice.

Soon the villagers gathered in the village centre, huddled in their shawls and coats, standing close by, more for warmth than fear, or vice versa.

Rubbing their hands and warming their red cheeks and ears they waited with bated breaths for the purpose of the sudden visit of the soldiers.

"Everyone has gathered, my lords. Is there something you need from us? Is it about the... harvests, has lord count sent for word of mercy?"

The old village chief took lead as the tension in the air steadily coalesced.

The captain’s face scrunched up as he glared at the village chief, seemingly annoyed at the mere mention of mercy, but closed his eyes as he took a deep breath before saying,

"Shut your damn trap old man. You think I’ll come out to this down trodden place for such menial tasks!"

"P-please forgive me my lord. My incredulousness has-"

"Oh just shut it! These filths just.. tch.

Now listen here! There are things that we need to know about a certain incident a couple weeks ago. During the last full moon there was bad omen found settling in around this part of the world.

By the decree of the royal house you’ll now report to us if you found something suspicious at all that you remember about that night. Do you all understand?"

The expressions on the villagers’ faces dropped to absolute horror at the mention of bad omen as they frantically talked among themselves animatedly about every bad thing in their life in the past few days that came to mind.

Soon the place was filled with noise resembling the most busy of the market places during harvest as if the doom of winter had subsided in an instant.

"Silence!"

The burly captain glared at the ensemble as his mood worsened more and more.

At the time when he was supposed to spend his time wooing the noble ladies of the wealthy houses and resting from all the fatigue of the summer skirmishes in the wild, he was tasked with this useless task by the superiors while they spent their nights in taverns and brothels in the city centres.

He hated every bit of this downtrodden place and its filthy mannerless people. Frustrated with it all he banged his legs on the ground, sending a shiver down every villager present.

As the captain came out of his mind, he just glared at the people before beckoning another soldier with a pen and some kind of recording tool in his hand to come up.

"You’ll now line up and give him your testimonies. Is that clear!?"

"Yes sir."

The villagers mustered up their feeble voices to proclaim.

"Fucking better."

***

"And then, and then the next morning, that is the morning after the full moon, my hen crackled thrice backwards. I swear by it." -The villager

"It crackled backwards?" -The soldier.

"I swear by it!" -The villager

The soldiers have a side eye towards the captain, while the captain just looked on with dead eyes at the same stupid sentence a fourth time already.

"Right, anything else?" -The soldier with a roll of his eyes.

"And, and, and.. what else... Yes! It gave out a black egg!" -The beaming villager

"So do you have it right now?" -The soldier

"No." -The deflated villager.

"Uhmm... alright... you can go back now."

•••

"Birds do sneeze. Nothing wrong with that." -The soldier.

"By the holy sea, they do!" -The shocked villager.

"Yes..." -The soldier sighs for the 100th time.

•••

"The old baker was buried just that night. But the next time I checked upon it, the dirt was flat! And then, I saw a black cat cross the baker’s shop thrice one day."

"When was he buried again?"

"The night. The night of the moon."

"Really? You know his son didn’t say anything about it."

"That’s it! He is possessed! They are what the moon cursed."

"Yeah... yeah.. wrong department but ok. You can go back now."

"You must believe me!"

"Yeah I do, I do... I wrote it down so just go back now." The soldier showed the villager the text, to which the villager nodded as he went back.

The soldier snickered under his breath as he won the bet with himself as the villager could indeed not read.

"What’s so funny?"

"N-nothing captain. Just... Do we really have to take everyone’s testimony? You know nothing is going to come out of this..."

The captain hearing this just glanced at a young man standing a little behind them, dressed in a finer, more fancier looking robe as he scanned the villagers with neutral eyes.

"Trust me I’m the last person who wants to be here, but it is what it is. I don’t know what caused them to send someone from the royal knights themselves but it must be big. Just write everything down. It isn’t us that has to go through this anyway."

The soldier also glanced at the fancy man sneakily before writing down everything.

Just as he was writing something down he heard a deep voice close to his ears,

"It is her. She is a witch."