(( Content warning: mildly grisly. ))
...One year, one month ago...
Winnie may have been peeved with Ryheric for maiming the Bannerless warrior, Wen, and there had been a dispute caused between them on the field. These men only understand blood, he had told her.
Tarsorel had urged Ryheric to retreat from this mess. The headstrong young leader had refused. Instead, Winnie now bore Wen's severed arm reverently as a page boy as they moved into the camp under the grisly symbol of warning.
Tarsorel had faltered, and so Ryheric stood face to face with Marcon, put in the ill-advised position to negotiate with the Bannerless leader.
"... Tars has an offer for ye."
Seeing as this entire situation was all Tarsorel's fault, it seemed fitting to Ry that the soldier would take responsibility towards fixing the issue. Ryheric continued. His voice easy for the swindle, at least. Donning the role like a comfortable cloak.
"He is goin' t'offer ye twice the bounty on Lav if ye are leavin' her be. If ye are also lettin' yer gripe with Tars go he will triple it."
Tarsorel, standing behind Ryheric with the others, completely surrounded by Marcon's Bannerless warriors, kept his expression neutral as the ex-soldier's mind obviously raced.
"Wha' say ye t'tha' Marcon? I see ye got a warband here, yer a busy man. Save yerself some trouble roughin' up the fringes." Ryheric prompted after some tense silence.
"Tarsorel here? He will pay fifteen thousand silver for the girl?" Marcon ran his fingers through his hair while Lavendara paled in the background. He then demanded.
"I want half up front."
Ry looked the pathetic, cowardly, greedy Marcon over. The man even now hid behind his guards who had refused to carry out Ryheric's death order when they'd entered the camp. These men recognised the warlord's sword at his hip. They saw the severed arm of their best fighter on brazen display. They did not dare.
Ryheric then turned over that curved, twice-chipped sword, holding the blade and offering the hilt to Marcon. He had nothing else of value except Boltin and his lute, neither were present. He stepped forward to give the sword to him. His stance both at ease and ready.
"There's yer half. Ye don't come after Lav again afore we get ye the rest." Ryheric said.
"Deal." said Marcon. He began to take Ryheric's sword.
Reckless disregard for himself had Ry intending to honour this bargain at first, with or on behalf of Tarsorel, and for his friends. But something happened in that moment.
Ryheric watched that sword, his sword, rightfully won when he was seventeen, change hands. He saw in peripherals the Bannerless lower their swords. He remembered how Winnie had addressed him after maiming Wen. Defeating one's enemy was success in Harad, and Wen would have gladly done the same to any of them, yet Winnie had dared to berate him for it.
He remembered Tarsorel accusing him of being some brainless servant of the enemy. Never thinking for himself, a zealot serving the will of a cruel master.
And yet here was Tarsorel's former mercenary master. Simpering, cowardly, pathetic. Nowhere near as formidable as Gazakh. And had Ryheric served? That was a question to be reckoned with much later.
How was Tarsorel any different than Marcon? How could he talk upon Ry's nature after hiding this dark skeleton of his own? How could Tarsorel suggest they flee from his former boss who had threatened Lav's freedom and life, after Ryheric had slain Gazakh for threatening Tarsorel's?
Ryheric felt bile rising in his stomach in primal disgust as his sword continued slipping away because of Tarsorel, this weak man of the West who placed himself in a fatherly role, and called himself "soldier". The same man he'd fought and killed Gazakh to spare. The same man he'd taken a blade to the gut and almost died for, because of Tarsorel's drinking.
But something else flared in him too.
He'd just made a deal. But also, he had given a prize. His prize, one of the three possessions he'd learned to want to keep forever, to this sorry excuse of a leader. For what? To buy safety?
No. There was another way to buy safety here.
Like lightning, and as decisively as he'd ambushed the hapless Wen, Ryheric drew the kukri Silver had given him. While Marcon was in the weak and off-guard state of accepting that beautiful sword, the half-Haradrim youth instantly slashed open the Bannerless's leader's throat.
There is another rule, after all. The Bannerless warriors quite aware of it due to some parallels of culture:
No man touches a warlord's blade, unless he is dead.
Marcon choked, writhed, gurgled and dropped to his knees, then fell forward. He was dead before he hit the ground. Red pooled swiftly upon the dry, cracked dirt about Ryheric's boots.
Ryheric stepped back from Marcon during the Bannerless leader's death throes, with his curved sword back in one hand and the kukri bloodied in the grip of his other.
He could hear and sense Tarsorel, Winnie and Lav tensely shift their weight where they stood behind him. Far off, he knew Cwennie watched in horror down the shaft of her nocked arrow. But this was not a moment he could consider what the good Rohirric maiden would think of him.
Tarsorel had surrendered peaceful terms here the moment he had suggested they flee from this weasel like cowards.
Ryheric was many unsavoury things, but no coward. This was a warrior's domain, the tension and potential for violence thick in the air. Red and raw. Their survival against this many swords counted on Ryheric's presence in the next few heartbeats.
He paced a small circle, defiant and daring any of the Bannerless guards to take up the challenge with him if they had a problem with what was done. The head was off the snake, now. Would they shed more blood over it? His every movement and that viper-fang of a blade assured them; this man would take a lot more blood than he spent.
None opposed him, as the hues dulled back. Some of Marcon's more loyal followers fled the scene like the lowly bandit scum they were, leaving Ryheric there with the rest of the Bannerless group who stood down when he backed away with his company. No longer the hunted. Instead, now like a wolf pack retreating on their blood-won terms.
The Bannerless did not trouble Lavendara or Tarsorel again.
((Huge thank you to Tarsorel for running these plots, of which this is only one small snippet where Ryheric had a feature moment.))
