Rud and the Damsel

Chapter 3 - The Rescue

Rud had seen the wagons coming and was dismayed when the second turned off onto a side road at high speed, nearly spilling the passengers. When the first wagon stopped at the dock across the street, and the yelling started, he thought it was just stupid townspeople's business and none of his.

Even when they overpowered the well-dressed man, Rud still did nothing. He chuckled to himself that the man would not look so refined tomorrow when he woke up as crew on a keelboat.

When they pulled a woman and two children from the wagon, Rud could not believe his eyes. The woman and young girl were screaming while being dragged into a warehouse, the pistol shot into the well-dressed man's head, and now the despair-filled eyes of a young boy who Rud knew was about to die came into sharp focus.

Rud's past flooded back from a dark, long-buried place. He heard the echoes of his mother and sister's screams in the screams of this woman and young girl. He saw himself in the young boy, felt the despair and pain again from when his father, mother, and sister were murdered, and no one helped.

Rud's grief had turned to pure hate for those who killed his family and especially for those who promised to help but then refused. Now the same thing was happening to another young boy, but Rud would not be one who refused to act.

Still locked on the little boy's eyes, Rud's right hand reached inside his coat, grabbed one cord of his shepherd's sling and pulled the sling from around his neck. Rud always had his sling and kept it draped around his neck with the braided cords inside his coat. In one quick, well-practiced motion, the sling was out, and his right thumb slid into the loop end of one cord. The knot on the second cord was trapped between his right thumb and forefinger.

His left hand reached inside the leather pouch kept handy on his belt and retrieved a smooth, round pebble. He put the pebble in the sling's pouch. It took four swings before the right velocity was reached, and Rud let the knot slip from his thumb and forefinger, launching the pebble toward its target. Rud caught a glimpse of a dark pebble with a flash of white as it traveled the distance from the sling's pouch to the captain's head.

Rud was already moving as the pebble struck the captain, penetrating his skull and killing him instantly. The dead captain tumbled forward over the boy and into the river beside the body of the well-dressed man.

Knife out, Rud quickly covered the distance to the other captains who, with no stomach for watching the boy shot, were walking back to their boats. The captains turned, surprised at the heavy splash of the dead captain falling into the river. They saw Rud only seconds before his knife pierced the closest captain's rib cage.

Rud crashed into them. The combined weight of Rud and the stuck captain knocking them all to the ground. The two living captains were pinned under the weight as Rud quickly raised his knife over each of them. Their eyes were wide with disbelief as Rud plunged his large knife first into one and then the other.

The boy was still on his knees when Rud scooped him up and dropped him in the cart. The boy cried out, "Mother, Patience!" and pointed out where the woman and young girl had been taken. Rud briefly thought to take the boy and run but found his feet already moving towards the warehouse. He heard muffled screams inside as he got closer.

* * * *

When the two men dragged Patience into the warehouse and started ripping her dress, Patience knew what they were planning to do and was paralyzed with fear. She was jarred back to reality by her mother's angry screams. She looked at her mother, who was fighting back against the three men who had pulled her from the wagon.

The anger in her mother's eyes shocked Patience as she had never seen anything but love and kindness in those eyes. The ferocity with which her mother was fighting back made Patience ashamed not to be fighting as well.