Eventually I fell asleep as the exhaustion of the past days finally caught up to me, although it was an uneasy sleep. I don’t recall all the details, but I do recall that my fantasy went up and beyond the possible outcomes of the coming day, ranging from the beast I had run from suddenly attacking the town and the desperate townspeople turning to me for aid, up to being hung on the plaza for threatening some bigshot noble I haven’t even seen. Oh, and then I think there was another short episode, where the noble in question was one of those stunning ladies, desperate for some affection. Though I may just imagine having dreamed that, as I said, the details escape me. And of course none of these things actually happened. Especially not the last part.
Either way, when morning eventually came, one of the guards came in, causing a lot of ruckus, rustling everyone from their sleep violently. I swear to God that he had one heck of a sadistic smile on his face as he stood in front of my cell with his cronies. Unfortunately for me, I’m not a morning person to begin with and since the last days had been somewhat rough, my body refused to wake from the noise alone. Hence, he and his ‘friends’ helped me on my feet with a lot of yelling, pulling and some well aimed punches and kicks, where you wouldn’t see the bruises later. Come to think of it, I sure hope that no woman was dumb enough to marry that dude...but then again, he knew far too well where to hit me without having had some kind of practice. Aw crap, now I’m actually feeling anxious to having gotten out of there without teaching him a lesson about how to treat people right. But I’m once again getting ahead of myself.
They
dragged me to the local ‘Hall of Justice’, where a distinctively
bored looking elderly man was handling the little squabbles people
saw themselves unable to resolve without help. And he was doing it
quickly. During the two hours I waited for my turn, he handed down
judgment on two thefts, three adulterers (the two men who had cheated
on their wives got a slap on the wrist, while the woman, who had
cheated on her (apparently important) husband, got dragged to the
pillory) and five cases of ‘neighborhood squabbles’, mostly
involving plants overgrowing to the neighboring garden and the fruits
thereof. And it was easy to see the pattern in his decisions. ‘Men
before women, nobles before peasants, wealth before poverty’. There
was nothing ‘just’ about these procedures. I’m not even sure,
if the ‘thefts’ actually happened the way the prosecutors
claimed. Conveniently enough, there was not one ‘credible’
witness testifying for the accused, only a ‘bunch of no-good fools,
who are likely in cahoots with the perpetrator’. In both cases,
mind you.
So yeah, long story short, when they called up my
case, I was just about ready to get my ass handed to me, despite
having done nothing than climb a carriage that was not my own. I was
a nobody with not a penny to my name and none to vouch for me. The
only thing I’ve actually had going for me was my gender, but I
highly doubted that this would help me any either.
So, the
‘honorable Master Titus’ picked up the report of the incident and
said something like, “This here states, that out of nowhere you
came charging in like a gone mad Robion (apparently some kind of bull
as I learned later), charged into the guardians of the esteemed Lady
Mesmera’s carriage, laying waste to their ranks, then climbed atop
the carriage like a Moriat (apparently a local kind of monkey) and
then perched atop it, peering into the distance as if you were a
Troglobar (an exotic animal, akin to the Merkat. Yes I did visit a
menagerie later to figure out what the heck he was comparing me
with). What do you have to say in your defense?”
Now, I of
course did see that question coming, but I’ve never been the most
eloquent person in my real life and I sure as heck wasn’t one in
this world either. But you’ve got to give me some credit for
trying.
“Your honor, I wish to extend my deepest apologies for
my reckless and disturbing behavior. I assure you that I’ve meant
neither the brave guardsmen of the carriage, nor the people within
any harm. You see, I was merely on the run from a dreadful beast I
had encountered in a nearby cave. Thankfully it did not give chase,
lest these brave warriors would have had to fend it off in my stead.
I never would have forgiven myself, if they had actually gotten hurt,
because of my cowardice.”
...is
probably what I should have said. It’s what I prepared to say. I
rehearsed it in my head so often, that I still know every word today.
But as I said, I am not a very eloquent person and despite having had
more than enough time to prepare my defense, I found myself unable to
speak for multiple seconds, trying to collect my thoughts. A
classical case of stage fright. Can you believe that?! I was standing
on trial, my very fate hinging on my words and not a single sound
escaped my lips.
In a movie I once watched, one of the
characters said something I had known a long time before: ‘All your
worries and fears will disappear once you actually start to sing.’
Ah
yeah, I should probably mention this, seeing how you don’t know my
past life, but I’ve been a rather decent singer in my time. Nothing
spectacular, mind you, but good enough to turn some heads. Back then,
I managed to brush my fears of failing and making a laughingstock of
me aside, open my mouth and sing. And it is true. If you manage to
hit the first tune, everything else works and all of a sudden,
‘failing’ is no longer an option. But this was just for
entertaining others. Right now, there was actually something riding
on my voice resounding through this room.
“Well, Mister?!” the judge reinforced his question, apparently quickly running thin on his patience.
What followed next, was one of the brave, and I dare you to spell ‘brave’ as ‘s-t-u-p-i-d’ I’ve done to this day.
I took
a deep breath and unloaded all the crap I had witnessed ever since
coming here, starting from waking up naked, getting decked in the
face, getting lost because there’s no actual streets or signposts
in this backwater wannabe country, falling down into a cave, getting
chased and then getting arrested, because I was running for my
life.
The real problem however was, that as if a plug had been
removed from me, a bunch of words regarding this very ‘hall of
justice’ and its proceeding flowed from me. Words I should rather
not have said.
At the end of my speech, the judge, whom I had
called a number of unflattering things (a biased, and corrupt
double-standard bastard was among them I believe), looked like his
head was getting ready to explode.
The guards tried to stop me, of course, but I had enough of being pushed around at that point and and sent three of them to the ground before they even realized what was going on. What was more, the people in the audience actually got involved in the scuffle. And it was not me whom they were fighting. On the contrary. They helped me, wrestling down the guards.
In the chaos I saw ‘the honorable Master Titus’ trying to make an exit stage left and some piece of reason still left aside within me told me to also get out of this. Because up to that point, it had only been unintentional assault. Now it was sparking a bloody revolution by accident.
I punched, ducked and tackled my way towards the grand gates, when all of a sudden someone screamed, “Fire!”
The
following minutes escape my memory, but when the rush of adrenaline
finally passed, the hall of justice was burning brightly, people were
running all around me and at least two dozens of guards were trying
to get the masses back under control.
To this day, I don’t
know who actually caused the fire, but I sure know whom they pinned
the blame on. In fact, I have the wanted poster with my description
and my charges here with me. It’s a good thing that their
proceedings are as sloppy as their justice system. They didn’t even
bother to ask me for my name and, according to this poster, I’m a
at least 2 meters tall hunk who supposedly took down ten grown men
all by himself. Needless to say, they never caught me with this
description.
Nevertheless, I left the town as soon as I asked
someone for directions, this time making extra sure to ask for
landmarks to look out for.
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