This bandit was a withered old coot who looked vaguely familiar for some reason. Had I perhaps done a poor job of killing him at some point too like Lomo? "I ain't sorry about a bloomin' thing!" he declared.
Lomo cuffed him into the ashes at the edge of the fire. "You wanted to confess. Now get on with it!"
"My-mail!" I wheezed at Gerta, fingers wrenching vainly at the buckle. "Get it off!"
Her eyes widened. "Now?"
The bandit picked himself up and brushed at the new smudges on his ragged trousers. "Well, I suppose I could say I'm sorry about impersonating a goatherd last night so I could sprinkle your magic shrinking potion on Hallah Iron-Thighs' mail."
"That was very wicked of you!" Lomo said and then the two of them guffawed.
I recognized him now, as the scene before me was being rapidly blotted out by swirling darkness of impending unconsciousness due to lack of air. He was the smelly lout who kept hovering behind my back at the tavern. Magic, I thought weakly. Lomo had used one of his bandits to magick me, the rotten bastard! I could feel my veins bulging, my face turning purple. My fingers wrenched at the buckle, but it must have been jammed in the fall I'd taken earlier and wouldn't give.
"Hallah, they're going to hear you!" Gerta whispered disapprovingly.
"Yes, ducks." Lomo walked around the boulder. "You really should be more careful."
"Don't worry, Hallah!" Gerta sprang to her feet. "I'll save a few for you to kill!"
The first buckle finally gave and my mail popped open down to the second buckle, giving me a bit more room to breathe, though not nearly enough.
Gerta charged, but her balance was off, courtesy no doubt of the lump on her head. Lomo thrust out his foot, then turned to me as she went down like a poleaxed buffalo. "What about you, ducks? Is there something you'd like to confess before we throw you into that convenient bottomless crevice over there? It's best to go out with a clean conscience, you know."
With a creak, the second buckle opened. I gulped air into my straining lungs. Gerta was sprawled on the ground at Perchis Dal's feet, a new lump on her head beside the earlier one, making a matched set. I was outnumbered thirty to one. Lomo had my horse and my sword. Even my trusty mail, veteran of years of fighting, had let me down. Maybe this was the Change of Life after all and I'd worked too long at this exhausting, dangerous business. Maybe it was time to hang up my-
"Can I go now?" Dal ducked his head. "You can keep the donkeys and hymnals."
Lomo whirled and shoved him to the ground beside Gerta's limp form. "Get on with the confessions!"
Dal's head hit Gerta's scabbard with a sharp crack. His eyes fluttered, then he sagged like a windless sail. The bandits surged forward, aghast. "Lomo, you killed our priest!" one of them cried. "Now, how are we going to confess?"
My fingers wrenched desperately at the last buckle and finally with a squeak, it gave. My mail split open along the side seam and I drew in a blessed full breath.
"You promised us hymns and sermons and confession!" A hulking brute seized Lomo's shirt and hauled him up onto his toes. "Otherwise, we'd never have followed you. Now, we've finally caught something at least close to a priest, after all these months, and you bash his blinkin' head in. I think we need us a new king!"
A chorus of assent went up on all sides. Lomo looked decidedly nervous.
"First, though," the tall brute said, "throw that meddling Iron-Thighs broad down the crevice. We was doing fine until she showed up!"
"Yeah!" They advanced on me, a reeking, unkempt mob, unsatisfied repentance blazing in their eyes.
I raised my chin, remembering whose daughter I was. No bunch of priest-deprived bandits was going to take me down! A true warrior is never without resources. If they wanted a sermon-
"Brethren!" I cried. "We find ourselves brought together by fate tonight, out here, underneath these brilliant and, I can assure you, all-seeing stars!"
They paused, slack-jawed.
"Some of you have not always led, shall we say, admirable lives," I said with as much authority as I could muster. "Of that I think we can be certain."
One of the worthless band whimpered.
"Down on your knees, dogs!" I crossed my arms and looked uncompromising. "It's time to make amends!"
Three of the closest knelt. "Wait a minute!" Lomo cried, still hanging by his shirt from the brute's fist. "She's not a priest!"
"You never take presents to your mothers, do you?" I tapped my foot.
Two more dropped to their knees. Their eyes looked suspiciously red. "This is stupid," Lomo broke in. "Don't lis-"
His captor rammed him facefirst to the ground, then knelt, folding his hands piously. Lomo sprawled limply and barely breathing in the fire's dancing shadows.
"You slurp your soup and eat with your mouths open! You curse and burp and never ever share!"
Five more knelt, openly sobbing.
Gerta stirred. I put my foot in the middle of her back to hold her in place. "Raise your eyes to the stars and confess all the nasty, dirty, rotten things you've ever done!"
The holdouts knelt along with the rest of my congregation and commenced airing their dirty laundry. It was a loud and most enthusiastic list. I eased my foot off Gerta's back. "Get up!" I whispered urgently. "We have to go!"
Her hand twitched.
"Now would be a real good time!" I said.
The confessing faltered and the bandits' feral eyes once again glittered at me in the firelight. I whirled back to them. "Do you call those sins?" I cried. "By all the powers above, you are a pathetic bunch! I thought you were men! My grandmother has committed worse crimes than that!"
They raised their eyes and went back to it with a vengeance. I shuddered at the transgressions mentioned; by all accounts, they had been a very naughty lot.
Gerta groaned, then hitched herself away from the fire, one agonizingly slow bit at a time. I reached down and slipped a hand through Dal's belt and dragged him out of the light. "Find the horses," I told Gerta. "I'll collect our swords."
She nodded groggily and lurched off into the darkness. I put my hands on my hips and strode through the crowd. One of the appropriated hymnals lay open close to the fire and I picked it up and examined the inside cover. Oh, ho! I thought. If we ever got back to the lowlands, both King Mytchell the Extremely Picky of Damery and King Bentley the Culinary of Alowey would find this very interesting! I shoved the volume into my belt.
Then I recognized Gerta's sword, Gut-Spiller, on the hip of a rugged blond fellow. "Slackers!" I cried. "Put your backs into it!" I whacked the yellow-headed thief across the shoulders and sent him reeling, at the same time deftly filching the sword. My nose wrinkled as I turned away. By his pungent odor, he apparently hadn't bathed since birth.
"Do you think confession works if you mumble?" I said. "I can't hear you!" The noise level climbed another notch. "Straighten up, you lily-livered wuss!" I told another. "You look like a leaking sack of feed!" I spotted my sword, thrust through Lomo's belt. He was lying across it. Damnation! I worked my way around the babbling throng until I was looming over him. "Fall on your faces, worms! Beg forgiveness of the almighties!"
Most of them did, but several, including Lomo's attacker, hesitated. "What we got to do that for?" he asked, as all around him confessions were shouted into the dirt. "I never heard of no priest saying `Fall on your face!' "
I could fight him, of course, but then I'd have to take on all thirty of them, not a practical choice at the moment. "Say," I said, dropping my voice into a honeyed lower register and leaning closer. "You are a big one, aren't you? I could go for a fine full-sized fellow like you."