Chương 423: (416) 6.30. Make Him Suffer

"Welp, that settles it. I'm gonna kill him."

"Calm down, Spur, take a few deep breaths," Witherson said, frowning at the Commander as he paced back and forth in their small deliberation room.

"To clarify, nobody here knew Golrim had this planned, correct?" Vin didn't miss how she looked at him specifically, and he rolled his eyes.

"No, Golrim didn't run this by me any more than you guys did your plan. Why would he even do any of this?"

"That much is obvious enough," Spur said, groaning as he stopped pacing and plopped himself down in one of the chairs. Rubbing at his temples, he shook his head.

"He's taking care of his own loose ends. Just like how I talked about Curash potentially being a smoking gun, Golrim must have decided he himself was as well, despite the fact I told him we would take that risk. In one fell swoop, he turned this entire trial from one surrounding Curash's fate to one surrounding his own. Damn it I hate when he uses that brain of his without asking us first!"

"To be fair, the only way this would work is if he did it this way," Alice pointed out.

"Now, if anyone were to ask us about Golrim and his connection with the Red Dawn, we can honestly say we were just as surprised as anyone else when he came forth with the truth during the trial. In his own annoying way, he's actually looking out for us."

"And potentially getting himself torn to shreds in the process," Spur drawled, shooting Vin an appreciative look.

"Nice job stopping that angry mob in its tracks without hurting anyone. Every time I start wondering why we keep you around, you go and do something awesome like that, and I forget about those thoughts for another month."

"Gee, anytime," Vin said, looking between his fellow council members.

"So are we seriously shifting targets from Curash to Golrim now?"

"We sort of have to," Alice shrugged.

"You saw the Bands' reaction. It looks like they understand fully well what a soul-bond means. Sure, Curash could have killed himself rather than go along with Golrim's orders, but that's not really much of an argument. Rather than get mad at Curash for not offing himself, now they have a far more justified target for their anger."

"The real question is how the Bands feel about the discovery that Golrim and Curash created the Red Dawn in order to help their people as a whole," Phil added.

"If you ask me, we should bring that dwarf in here to deliberate with us. Otherwise the Bands probably won't be happy with any decision we come up with."

"That's not a bad idea," Spur muttered, looking around.

"All in favor of doing so?" Five hands went up, and Spur nodded, poking his head out of the door and requesting someone go grab Vurnon. While they waited, Spur sighed.

"That damn, Golrim… I don't know how he planned this… I don't know if he even could plan this. Part of me thinks he just saw an opportunity and made a snap judgement call. One way or another, regardless of what we do with him, he'll be getting an earful from me once all this is said and done." There was a knock on the door, and Vurnon stepped through, grunting as he nodded at the five of them.

"You wanted to talk?"

"With Golrim's surprise reveal, the trial has changed," Spur said, getting a nod of agreement from the dwarf.

"We thought it only fair that the Bands had a say in whatever consequences there are to Golrim's actions."

"How do the Bands feel about things now that Golrim revealed why he formed the Red Dawn in the first place?" Alice asked.

"Well, we're not happy," Vurnon snorted.

"Though that much was probably obvious. Golrim practically led the village with Kym at his side. We all knew he was a little shady. You can't really be an advisor to the king without having some skeletons in your closet, or being a weirdo like Kym. The revelation that he was leading us and the Red Dawn all at the same time… It hurts more than anything, you know?"

"We can't even imagine," Witherson agreed.

"Though what hurts even more is that the damn math-lover is right," Vurnon continued, surprising all of them.

"Look, I might not be the cleanest tankard in the drawer, but I'm not stupid. Golrim was right about how things would have turned out if the worst of the worst criminals weren't rounded up and separated from the rest of us. There were some people in that prison who…" Vurnon shuddered, his face paling even at the thought as he cleared his throat.

"…the point is, even if it pisses me off like nothing you can believe, I understand. And while not all of the Bands do to the same degree, from what I can tell, most of us at least agree that it was for the best."

"Well… that's good!" Spur said, his face lighting up as though they'd been thrown a life raft. Vin knew Golrim handled the vast majority of the logistics behind actually running a town containing thousands of people, and he had no doubt Spur was terrified of losing that resource.

"What we can't forgive is him hiding the fact from us," Vurnon continued, all but growling as he clenched his fists.

"And that's less good," Spur sighed, rubbing his temples again.

"So you're not mad about the killing so much as you are about the lying? Seriously?" A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"We spent these past couple of minutes talking things over more carefully after learning the truth," Vurnon admitted.

"It's hard to believe, but Golrim wasn't lying. Not once did the Red Dawn ever catch us truly by surprise. We always had enough of a warning to prepare ourselves, and we'd even commented at the time how strange it was that the Red Dawn was so sloppy and uncoordinated. Knowing that Curash, and thus Golrim, was making them that way, makes a lot more sense."

"So what do you want to do about it?" Vin asked, curious as to what was to happen to the Logistician. His own relationship with Golrim had started out quite interesting before turning into what it was today. He trusted Golrim almost as much as the rest of the council at this point, which was pretty wild seeing as the man had practically started out as an enemy.

"Well, first we wanted to kill him," Vurnon admitted.

"No, really? I wasn't getting those vibes from the giant angry mob," Spur drawled.

"You're a lot different on your own, huh?" the dwarf asked, shaking his head as he continued.

"Anyway, we don't necessarily want him dead anymore. We want him exiled."

"I don't suppose there's any way we could convince you to accept some other form of judgement?" Witherson asked.

"Golrim has been a huge asset to Terra these past few months. Perhaps we could arrange some sort of house arrest instead?"

"You misunderstand," Vurnon said, chuckling darkly.

"We want him exiled from our village. We want him to see us celebrating our holidays from back home. To hear our voices on the wind as we tell stories about our shared traumas around the campfire. To know that the last few surviving members of his entire world are less than a mile away, and yet completely out of his reach. Those are our demands.

Ever since Kym left, Golrim has been spending more and more of what little free time he has over in our village, talking about the old days both in prison and of our former kingdom. We're going to take that from him. Anyone who survived that hellish prison is capable of shrugging off even the worst physical punishments we could come up with, but with any luck, this will hurt him beyond belief."

"…That is surprisingly dark of you," Spur said, nodding slowly as he thought over the idea.

"But those are terms we can accept. All in favor of making it so?" Six hands went up this time as they all voted in agreement, and Spur smiled, obviously relieved to have had this unexpected problem thrust upon them solved so quickly. As if he'd almost completely forgotten, he turned toward Vurnon one more time.

"What about Curash? Any thoughts regarding him?"

"That's tricky," Vurnon admitted, frowning as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"While we don't hold what he was forced to do against him, now that we know he's soul-bound to Golrim, we also can't just act like nothing happened and welcome him with open arms. Not just because seeing his face fills us with anger, but because there's a chance he could still be working with Golrim, regardless of what he says. Just give him the same treatment. Exile him from our village and ensure he never sets foot within it.

I guess with the condition that if The Roamer ever comes across a way to remove the binding on his soul, maybe he'll be allowed in one day."

"Done and done," Spur said even as Vin made a disgruntled noise.

"Soul magic is no joke!" Vin argued.

"Even I'm not planning to mess around with it too much."

"Please. How many soul spells do you have so far?" Alice asked.

"…Alright, three if you include the one I just made the other day, but that's beside the point!"

"Regardless of Vin trying to downplay his magic addiction, I think we're officially done here," Witherson said, ignoring Vin's continued protests as she took Vurnon's hand and shook it.

"We appreciate your help, Vurnon. Thank you for speaking with us and volunteering your time. Can we assume you'll help make sure the Bands understand why the six of us came to the verdict we did?"

"Yeah, I'll do what I can. After not really punishing Waltz for shooting twenty-six people, the Bands were pretty appreciative," Vurnon admitted, having the decency to blush slightly.

"I know nobody got killed, but seriously, twenty-six people? We were freaking out thinking that he was going to get the noose."

"I guess it almost worked out for Golrim that there was such a big incident," Spur muttered, shaking his head as he clapped the dwarf on the back and walked over to the door.

"Come on, let's go give everyone the news. After that, I have half a mind to dismantle the courthouse entirely so we never have to go through any of this again." Taking their positions up high once more, this time with Vurnon at their side, Spur waited for the crowd to go silent before motioning for Vurnon to step up and address everyone. Vin thought that was a wise move to allow the Band to address his own people, and he waited as the dwarf cleared his throat and projected his voice.

"Thanks for waiting, everyone. Well… we decided Golrim and Curash are to be exiled from the Bands' village. Never to set foot on our land for so long as they live. They're Terra's problem now." Unlike the declaration regarding Waltz, there was a notable mixture in reactions to the news. Many of the Earthers seemed relieved or confused as to how this was any sort of punishment at all, while a non-insignificant portion of the Bands looked genuinely upset.

Vin could only assume those were the ones who had suffered the worst at the hands of the Red Dawn, and his heart went out to them. He couldn't imagine how it had to feel seeing the two people entirely responsible for the creation of the Red Dawn walk away largely scot-free from all this. Even if their actions had been an overall good thing for the people from their world, that didn't replace any of the treasured lives that had been lost.

"There you have it folks, that brings the trials and excitement of the day to an end," Spur said, raising his arms and making a shooing motion toward everyone.

"Which means we're done here! Shoo! Get back to doing whatever it is you all do all day!"