The young woman crouched, her forearms resting on her thighs, her murky blue eyes taking in the gruesome scene. A dagger dangled from one hand, still wet with blood as she had the kindness in her stone heart to finish off one man who was dying too slowly. He had been impaled on a broken tree limb, in a rather vulnerable if not fatal place on his body. She spat at the roots of the old oak and turned at the sound of foot steps.
"Just them four," Eluf said, sucking on his crooked teeth as he looked at the carnage. He rubbed a hand through his greasy long hair, tied back in a tail. "We'll get rid of 'em, toss them near the wolves den."
She nodded, standing up and scratched her scalp, her long hair in two tangled braids, the same mousy brown as his. Annaliesa turned to her brother, "Divide up their belongings, I know Owen there had a woman, I'll make sure she gets his weapons."
This was not the first time they had found fellow raiders stuck to the trees in the most sadistic ways, often not quite dead. She licked her chapped lips and narrowed her gaze, they had never found much evidence of anything other than a set of foot prints of a man with good boots and not much else. From some of the unfortunate survivors she heard rasped words of a bearded man and this last one had uttered one word before she cut his throat to relieve him of his misery, "Bree."
Her lips curled in a sneer as she looked in the direction of the town on the hill, their time would come. The farms were already falling and now they had more support and aid since they had sworn their oath to the Old Man. Annaliesa was still unsure of bonding themselves with the one called Sharkey, she preferred the freedom of doing what she wished but her brother had insisted and he was leader. There was no denying the weapons and armor they were given were much better than the patchwork of rags and rusted blades they had scavenged in their flight from their old territory.
"We need to find this...'Tree Man'," she said, walking back to where her brother sat on burnt out wagon, a relic from a previous ambush that had gone much better than the previous night. "That's what they're calling him, the Tree man. He's making everyone skittish and not want to go out. We can't slacken the pressure, you know that."
He smoked lazily from a stolen pipe, grinning at his sister, "He's one man, sure he's a sick bastard. I almost envy he's not on our side."
"He's a problem, Eluf, one I aim to fix," she said, kicking a broken wheel hub. "I'm gonna find out who he is, where he sleeps and who he fucks, because the time to cut down the tree is here."
Annaliesa smacked her fist against her palm, her eyes blazing. The one man vigilante was becoming a ghost, a haunt that the more superstitious and imaginative brigands claimed to be a vengeful spirit, but she did not believe such children's stories. "He's real and he can bleed, I'm going to make sure of that."
"Liese," her brother said, using her childhood nickname, "It's dangerous to go into Bree, you have the Watch and a damn lot of bounty hunters. Nothing we need is there, not yet. We weaken them from without, they can only stay behind that hedge so long. The Boss says so, we cut their supplies and winter will do the rest."
She paced back and forth, her worn fur boots tied onto her slender legs with rawhide strips, the soles patched twice over. "I'm not gonna be the next one stuck up on a tree, Eluf! I'm gonna find this asshole, by myself if I have to."
He sighed smoke through his nose, "I could never keep you from doing what you want, but don't be stupid. Take a look around, listen. Don't draw the Watch and for fuck's sake, don't try to take him on by yourself."
Annaliesa bristled at that, "I can fight, I've been doing it almost as long as you."
"He took four men out on his own. No other footprints were found," Eluf said, clenching his fists, the veins of his wiry arms standing out. "He's not to be taken lightly. Just recon, got it?"
The young woman looked down sneering and finally nodded, "Fine! My brother losing his guts is hard to watch. Getting as soft as those farmer's bellies!"
The other brigands watched the pair of siblings bicker, smirks and chuckles following the last insult bandied by the girl.
Eluf bounded up and snatched his younger sister by her hair, yanking her close and he whispered harshly in her ear, "Shut your mouth, bitch. You know better than that in front of the men."
He shoved her away and went back to his pipe, "Remember what I said."
Annaliesa stumbled, her scalp burning from where had yanked her braid. She bit back her retort, her eyes blazing with both angry and embarrassment. She had no right to speak to their leader that way, even if he was her brother. He was right and she turned without another word, stalking off to gather what meager supplies and coin she would need for a few days in town.
