Placelle Lamella felt the man before she saw him, in more ways than one. It started just on the other end of the catwalk that bridged the gap in the road, an impression leaking from her periphery of a person who above all was cold and frustrated. She tried to peer in the direction she felt it coming from, but all she could see through the snow that was now showering down in rolling white sheets of fat scattered flakes was the distant shape of the sea fort with its two towers and the shaggy green shape of a spruce tree by the side of the road. Other than that, it was all snow and all sea from the edifice of the rock to the furthest horizon.
Then, as she was passing the tree in front of the seafort, Placelle Lamella felt the man’s eyes upon her. Curiosity passing through him reached her as it morphed into recognition and then panic. Then, she felt the man in a second way when he shot her. She considered he must’ve only had quarter-bore varminting piece or something similar, for the impact was more noise than force, a single spark on one side of her cuirass leaving behind a dimple in the lacquered surface over her left breast. The actual pain came from the spall of the shattering lead ball, tiny shards splintering into her bare arm and leaving behind a spider web of delicate little gashes on her left bicep. The Oathkeeper reacted instantaneously, even as she felt panic surging in the distant impression. The pain was minimal, but a shot like that through her neck would certainly be fatal, not to mention the painful possibility of taking one below her belt-line in the soft spot between her hips the armor did not cover.
Placelle Lamella snapped out her Oath and tilted it up towards the distant tug of emotion. Her eyes rapidly focused on the top of the watchtower and she found the shape of a head and shoulders peering over the top of a parapet above her. Even as she focused on the shape her hands automatically lifted the handgun and covered the shape with its sights. The only thing with any detail she saw was the front post of her sights, and a little fuzzy curvature of the top of the man’s head was the only thing that emerged from behind it. This time she heard the crack of his rifle and the snow on the ground between her legs shot up in a burst at the same time she pulled the trigger.
The panic and fear of her target mingled well with pain. Placelle Lamella lowered the pistol only a hair to see if she could pick the man’s shape out again while she drank in his surprised anguish. Compared to the base emotions swirling around the town, the taste of the thick savory desperation was electric. Placelle Lamella squinted at the shuddering shape at the top of the tower and then felt her face peel into an eager grin as she saw the man stumble over the parapet and tumble screaming down towards the sea. Even as he disappeared from her senses, something in her demanded more and she happily took her left hand from the grip of her pistol so she could gently ease her hammer from its frog on her belt while she advanced upon the entrance of the seafort.
The doors ahead of her burst open and two men with shotguns jogged out into the snow with the guns shouldered. One of them shouted an order of some kind, but the Oathkeeper did not hear it, and responded by lifting her right arm and firing two shots right at his companion. The first man said something else, an exclamation this time, but Placelle Lamella eagerly shot him as well.
The first man she’d shot had died almost instantly with one of her heavy half-bore bullets torn through his heart, but the one who’d given the order was on his back writhing. The Oathkeeper upped the pace of her gait to get nearer to her recent victim with her excitement growing, the roaring voice of the urge inside commanding her to make him suffer even more. He was on his back, screaming for help when she arrived at the door, his legs limp beneath him while he worked his arms in the snow behind himself trying to pull himself up the steps back into the building; though all he seemed to accomplish was pushing more pink and red ooze out of the puckered wounds on his middle.
“Help me! Pick! Pick, she’s by herself!” the man was screaming, and now that Placelle Lamella could hear him she found his voice tiresome and annoying. She knelt over the man and stuck the shaft of her hammer into his mouth. He shook his head as best he could, eyes bulging while he gagged on the foreign object that she pushed harder and harder into his gagging throat as she stared down at him with that horrible, eerie childlike grin scrawled across her face.
The sound of bootsteps shuffling on the other side of the door made Placelle Lamella raise her handgun again and as soon as the portal was darkened with a silhouette she fired twice into the gap and then jerked herself to one side just before a shotgun blast rocked the man she’d been kneeling over. With her hammer out of his throat he was free to scream even louder than he had before with the new wounds that blossomed over his thighs and groin. He smacked the squirting blood soaking his boiler suit while he cried out, like the wounds were hot fire he could somehow put out if he just smacked them enough. Placelle Lamella couldn’t help but giggle in spite of herself. Sheer bliss filled her up as she leapt over the wounded man and threw herself into the door. Another corpse was in front of her and a fourth man was leaping over a barricade hastily made from a table.
“Silly man,” chided the Oathkeeper joyfully, “That’s not cover.”
She fired two more shots into the surface of the table and was rewarded with a cry of pain that made her laugh again. She loved hearing the moans of the dying man outside, the rattling clink of her shell casings on the stone floor, the mournful cries of the man on the other side of the table. To her left she felt courage and leaned back to dodge a lunging thrust with a bayonet. The person who had come out of the little cubby with the stove looked incredibly surprised that she had detected him, but not as surprised as he looked when the Oathkeeper swung her hammer around into his right arm so hard that with a gristly crack it bent inwards and broke the stock off his shotgun. Strawberry blonde hair flashed in his eyes for a split-second before he took a kick to his midsection that sent him tumbling backwards onto the stove, which rocked back and then forth again, dumping hot coals into his shins. A fire started to catch the fur hem of his shearling coat, but what really hurt was the glowing coal that slipped into the ankle of his boot and was trapped against the arch of his heel. Screaming through grit teeth, he tried to pull himself up with his remaining good hand clutched around the front of the shotgun while Placelle Lamella dropped the empty magazine from her pistol, and upon seeing the magazine fall out he desperately fought the pain long enough to choke back on the shotgun still in his left hand in hopes he could get a finger into the trigger guard.
“Nope.” said the Oathkeeper, still grinning. She canted the pistol towards him and fired the round that had been left in the chamber, causing his chest to burst open. Blood poured out of the exit wound and hissed on the stovetop while the assailant jerked and slumped onto the ground. Steam, smoke, and game smell filled the room while Placelle Lamella advanced on the table with the shaft of her hammer pinched between her neck and shoulder. She pulled a spare magazine out of a pouch on her belt and slid it into the bottom of her pistol, then racked the slide and retrieved her hammer.
She twisted it around so the spike on the back was face forward and eagerly hooked it over the top of the table to snag the still-living man who’d ducked behind it a moment before. She looked down at him from above, a cowering youth who couldn’t have been twenty years old. Tear-filled brown eyes looked back up at her through a balaclava while she feasted on his anguish. Not satisfied to just kill perfect strangers, she grasped the top of the balaclava and tugged it off so hard that some of its wearer’s hair was torn out with it. The additional pain seasoned him nicely.
Placelle Lamella looked down into the upturned face of a freckled young man with dusty brown hair so desperately scared for his life that he was unable to form words. She could tell he was trying so hard to beg her not to hurt him anymore, his lips were joining shakily to attempt forming the first syllable and his gullet was forming some kind of sound, but all that came out was weak toneless burbling. With her grin as wide as it could possibly be, the Oathkeeper brought her pistol down on his nose as hard as she could and delighted to hear it breaking. Again and again she smashed his face with her gun, laughing with childlike glee over the new wounds popping up on his forehead, cheeks, and brow; chuckling like a schoolgirl over how the sound turned wet, drooling and feasting while the young man’s consciousness dimmed more and more.
Her pleasure was ruined by the sound of more boots coming down the hall from the left. She left her toy to die against the front of the table by pinning his shoulder to it with the spike of her hammer before moving to the corridor and yanking open the hall door. A train of men on the other side all saw her in the doorway and made different decisions about how to proceed. Unfortunately, the man in front had stopped in his tracks and the man behind him bumped into him. Placelle Lamella lifted her handgun in both hands and held it as steady as she could while she fired all ten rounds into the narrow passage. In the surge of men, one of their weapons went off, but not pointed at her. They twisted and fell in a heap as she jerked herself away from the doorway. She listened to the sounds inside the corridor with her side pressed against the wall for a few seconds after replacing her magazine and letting the slide of her pistol go forward again. They were soft ones, wet ones, sad ones. The emotions from the other side all felt like pain and horror, not a single flash of cleverness or hope. A girlish chuckle bubbled up in her chest and Placelle peeked into the corridor to see the moaning, writhing mass of men. Most were dead, but a couple of doomed survivors were attempting weakly to slither out of the mess. One caught sight of her head peeping around the corner and raised a bloody hand to point at her while his throat wheezed out some useless warning before she shot him through the head and then put a few more rounds into the pile.
She closed the door to the hall once more and moved towards where she felt Arlo to the rear of the seafort. Normally, she would have been a bit more cautious to finish off the man outside and the youngster against the table, but single-mindedness was all she could manage while she uncontrollably feasted on the sheer density of the suffering around her. It drove her mad with ecstasy to feel such intense emotions pouring into her after being so peaceful and calm for so long. It was all she could do not to go back into the other room and play with her food some more, but deeper than that Placelle Lamella knew that Arlo was the most important thing to her. Besides that, she could feel the fading life throughout the seafort, her feast dimming and trickling away. The only people left to feed on were dead ahead, on the other side of the long mess hall.
As she trod closer and closer to the door she could feel Arlo’s fear mounting and rising out of the familiar soup of his emotions. She laid her fingertips on the handle of the door into the next room and sussed out the emotions of the other man inside. He was confident, eager. Placelle Lamella imagined that he thought all was well, that maybe she had been killed by his goons. She considered it to be a nice surprise for him that she should burst through the door, and decided to kick the door open instead of pushing it. As soon as the door flung open she jumped back from it and giggled as a single round from a revolver chipped the stone behind where she’d been standing before.
Confident though he was, it amused her the man would’ve likely shot one of his own men if that man had run into the room too fast. Surprise came through the door, but so too did relief. On the other side of the portal, Placelle Lamella tilted her head at the relief coming off of Arlo until she heard the clacking of the revolver’s hammer falling over and over again while the man squeezed its double action trigger repeatedly, seemingly confused as to why the weapon was not firing.
Placelle Lamella leaned over and peeked into the room to find a fat, shirtless ginger man illuminated by the glow of a fireplace with a burly arm wrapped around Arlo’s neck. As soon as he caught sight of her the man pointed the revolver at her and uselessly tugged the trigger a few more times. The Oathkeeper’s eyebrows rose, but she gave a quick glance first to Arlo to make sure he was safe before entering the room.
“Horrible woman!” the ginger man taunted weakly, throwing the revolver at her. Placelle Lamella caught it in her left hand, and then holstered her own pistol with her right. She tilted her head again, wide interested eyes panning over the strange fat man while she thumbed the latch on the revolver and opened its breech. A shower of spent shell casings clattered all over the floor. Placelle Lamella helpfully turned the gun around so the man could see the exposed breech of the cylinder and mooed, “You had no more ammo.”
The three of them shared silence for a moment, held in suspension. Arlo was powerless to move in the man’s grip, and Placelle Lamella was waiting for the man to make a decision. She was amazed that he seemed to feel no fear whatsoever, only indignant frustration. When nothing happened for almost a full moment, the Oathkeeper tepidly took a cautious step forward. The man still did not move, though he did tighten his grip on Arlo from behind. Placelle Lamella took another careful step.
She sure was hungry.
Finally, the fat fellow roared and shoved Arlo towards her. Playfully, Placelle Lamella danced forward and dropped the revolver. Both of her arms stretched out and with one she gently stroked Arlo’s cheek while with the other she brutally squeezed the fat man’s neck.
“Slide over, Arlo,” she whispered while gently easing her friend out of the way. With both of his hands on her wrist, the big man was able to pry her hand from his throat, but once Arlo was out of the way Placelle Lamella could deliver a good straight punch right to the bridge of the man’s nose.
Both of the man’s hands shot up to cover his face, so Placelle Lamella punched him in the stomach next. To his credit, he did not double over but instead brought down a hammer blow on the Oathkeeper’s head that she was surprised to find was actually able to slightly daze her even at the height of her bloody consumption. Then, the fat little brute grabbed for her holstered pistol and it was time to stop playing again. She wrapped the fingers of her left hand around his wrist and struck him again on the bridge of the nose with a straight from her right. Instead of waiting for his reaction this time, however, she just pummeled him again and again until he let go of her pistol. Then, she brought her knee up into his middle. No matter how hard she hit the ogre of a man, he would not fall over.
So, she shoved him as hard as she could and sent him stumbling into the wall before sprinting after him and pinning him to it with a massive shoulder check that forced a spatter of bile from the man’s mouth all through her hair and onto her left cheek. With her shoulder still pinning him, Placelle Lamella savagely pummeled his bare abdomen, pounding his soft gut while he coughed into her hair. Finally, she straightened up and grabbed her victim by the shoulders so she could whirl him around and run him into the wooden throne in the center of the room. He crashed into it and it came apart as splinters, a ginger blur slashing through the air as the man tumbled over it until his head rebounded with a crack against the stone floor. Placelle Lamella shot another quick glance to Arlo and saw him numbly observing between tented knees from one corner of the room. She twiddled the fingers on one hand adorably at him, and felt a pang of sadness as he flinched away from her.
With a sad sigh, she went back to her work, knelt and took the prone morsel of suffering by his limp wrist and dragged him over to the fireplace. Uncomprehending eyes stared at her through slitted lids when she rolled him over and shoved him head first into the fire. The new horror and pain awakened him from his stupor and the fat man roared as he tried to rise, but Placelle Lamella didn’t let him escape. His gargling screams went on and on while she pressed him into the fire, almost drowning out her manic laughter. He shook and shook, his hair disappearing, his skin turning beet red, his eyes popping and steaming all over, the skin cracking and curling until at last he was wholly overwhelmed by the pain and went out. Placelle Lamella gleefully pulled his still twitching form from the fire and walked back into the front room to retrieve her hammer. When she came back, she pounded the fat man’s charred and blackened head until it was an unrecognizable mess at the top of a scorched neck and shoulders. Blood and ashes coated her trousers, her gauntlets, and some of her face. Bile soaked her hair and sticky drool ran down her chin while she stood there, chest heaving in the silence she had enjoyed making so much.
Placelle Lamella had never feasted so much in her entire life.
And yet, still something deep inside her told her she needed more. She dropped her hammer clattering onto the floor and started removing her gauntlets while she turned to smile proudly at Arlo.
“It’s okay, Arlo,” she cooed down at him, feeling his fear and hoping to dispel it with her loving dedication. “You’re safe. Untrained bandits like them didn’t stand a chance against me. I would never let them hurt you.”
Arlo was shivering with hollow eyes and a drained expression, unable to respond in any other way than quivering his lip.
“I’ll take care of you, Arlo.” she said now, approaching him slowly. She knew better than to reach out and touch somebody in such a state, so she simply lowered her hands, palms upward so he could take them himself. His eyes were like green pits, uncertainly reflecting her hands before he timidly reached up and grasped them. Placelle Lamella pulled him up and wrapped her arms around him. She petted down his ponytail and nuzzled his cheek while she held him close, until he caught sight of the ruined head of the corpse behind her and started to dry heave.
“Don’t look,” she told him gently, feeling the feeling that most women felt when men saw them naked. She moved to block his view and then guided him towards the makeshift bed in the opposite corner of the room. “Let’s get you on the bed and make sure you feel good. You can rest while I clean it all up so you don’t have to see it.”
With a maternal gentleness in each movement, Placelle Lamella guided her Arlo to the bed and helped him sit down. His lip was still quivering, and she was ashamed to see that she had stained his overcoat with blood when they embraced. Carefully, she eased the overcoat off his shoulders and started unbuttoning his waistcoat. Arlo looked down at her hands and watched them work with an odd expression. When she removed his waistcoat, he looked back up at her and said, “I’m not seriously hurt. He hit me a few times on my head, but nothing else happened.”
“It’s okay,” cooed Placelle Lamella again while she slipped out of her boots. She gently laid Arlo on his back and fluffed up a pillow under his head, then stood and started to slip her baggy trousers down.
Arlo looked up at the hem of her shift billowing out from under the breastplate of her armor, the cuirass still glistening with blood, and seemed like he was about to start panicking again.
“What are you doing!?” he demanded while pushing himself upright again. Placelle Lamella put a gentle finger against his lips as she lowered herself onto the bed. Arlo quivered while she stroked his cheek with a gentle, serene smile.
“I just need a little more,” she explained sweetly, “I promise I won’t hurt you. Just let me make you feel good, so I can have a little more.”
She worked her fingers around the back of Arlo’s neck and cradled him, cherished him in her hands while she leaned forward and kissed him. At first, he did not kiss her back. His hands rose to her chest to push her away, but snapped back upon feeling the blood on her armor. She kept their lips locked and stroked Arlo’s side with her free hand. This time, he put his hands on her shoulders but could not muster the strength to push back against her.
She could taste everything he was feeling, such a rich cocktail of inner-conflict and ambivalence. He was scared, he was disgusted, but he was also tempted. She felt good against him, and he was grateful. He was grateful and he didn’t want to disappoint her. She ran her fingertips along his side and then wormed them around to his lower back and caressed him; causing him to finally relent, give in and kiss her back. With their lips locked properly she could feel his desire and passion welling up. Her Arlo was such a romantic man, Placelle Lamella had known he wanted to kiss her. She enjoyed kissing him, too.
It was a sick thrill to touch him and feel the power she held over him, to feel him as a conduit of fear and desperation tinged with background apprehension all being overcome with desire rushing to the surface like a surging tide. Placelle Lamella finally broke the kiss and sighed contentedly while she kissed down Arlo’s jaw and then nibbled the side of his neck.
“Placelle,” he whispered, warm breath right in her ear, “Placelle, I don’t want this. Not here, not like this. Please.”
“I promise it will feel good,” she whispered back, nibbling his neck again and drawing her hand back from behind him to rest it over his manhood. She could feel it, stabbing at her through his trousers, and she delighted in the shiver that ran up his spine and through his psyche as she ran her fingertips along the underside of it through his clothes.
“Please,” he asked again, but Placelle Lamella kissed him quiet and pushed him all the way onto his back. She straddled her Arlo on the pile of furs and kissed him more until something about the whole process seemed to transform.
She was hurting him somehow.
The heartleech sat up and tilted her head on one side while Arlo looked up at her defiantly, hate surging in his eyes. He pointed, one quivering hand at the corpse in front of the fireplace.
“You made me watch you do that and now you want to make love!?” he demanded, almost pouting with indignation and disgust.
Placelle Lamella felt his hatred like a slap across her face and his disgust like a knife in her side. This wasn’t how it was meant to happen. She explained as much to him. “No, Arlo, I just wanted to make you feel good. I’m hungry, Arlo, but I thought…”
He was furious. He hated her and he was furious. Placelle Lamella felt it surging through him and into her, and it sustained her even as it wounded her.
“Get off me!” he snapped, wriggling under her weight.
“No, wait, Arlo, please,” she snapped back now, balling his shirt in her hands with her own sense of desperation welling up inside, “Please don’t hate me like that! I love you, Arlo! I didn’t mean to hurt you! I wanted to make you feel good!”
She realized she was shaking him and yanked her hands away from him meekly while tears filled her eyes. Arlo shoved her away even more so he could get out from beneath her, scathing tones filling every word while he declared, “You are a wild animal. You did not have to kill these people the way you did, and you did not have to force yourself on me. You could have at least waited until we got back to town. How dare you say you love me!?”
“Please, Arlo,” burbled the heartleech. She grabbed desperately at his ankle to keep him from leaving her, “Please forgive me! Please, it hurts so bad that you hate me! I just wanted you to feel good, I promise.”
Arlo shook his foot to get her off of him and looked down at her radiating that disgust and outrage. At last, a new feeling came through him: pity. He sneered down at her and told her, “Because you came to rescue me, I forgive you. We are ‘even’. But you went too far today. I told you no and you kept pushing. Find someplace else to sleep from now on, soul-sucker.”
It had never hurt Placelle Lamella when anybody had called her that before, but now it stung so badly that she wept like a broken-hearted girl and buried her head in the fur pelts piled up on the makeshift bed so she could scream without hurting Arlo’s ears. Arlo huffed and turned away from her, insensible to the long, low wailing moans that followed. He strode past the horribly mangled corpse of Gavin Baxter and through the mess hall.
He strolled past the dead youth leaned against the table while his stomach churned, jogged past the smell of burning meat at the stove and outside. He looked down at the half-frozen corpse on the stairs of the man whose own compatriots had shredded his legs with buckshot, and finally had to bend over and vomit. Steam rose from the snow while Arlo dumped his breakfast and his guts all over and then stumbled away. He could hear Placelle Lamella still crying behind him even as he stumbled into the snow.
She wept like a child in her palace of corpses.
Arlo walked until he couldn’t hear her any longer, but somewhere inside him he still knew she was weeping. He trudged through the snow and crossed the catwalk that crossed over the gap in the road. The sky was grey and white, shaking powder onto his shoulders. He missed his overcoat, though it had given him little warmth. Arlo walked in a dazed stupor past the methroller on the road and just kept leaning himself forward with the sure knowledge he would eventually reach the town. He walked until he met Gainstrom leading a squad of House Guards up the road. They called out to him in the snow, but his vacant eyes stared past them and he walked on towards the town leaving the puzzled men behind him. He walked down icy steps that cut across the switchbacks and crossed the snow and mud-covered road three times before arriving at the Moon and Star once more.
When he got in, Arlo asked that the bottle of rum be left with him and he drank all that was left. He drank himself drunk while the commoners got their boots dirty for him, and when he couldn’t hold himself upright any longer, Abigail took him into the back and laid him out on a sofa with a heavy woolen blanket.
