The carriage jolted and bounced along the road beneath the spring sun, the fine horses’ hooves muddied along the rural path. Brother Aggrustial Layorm sat beneath the carriage’s roof, gaze facing forwards, hands at ease upon the Boar’s Tome, resting his lap, adorned in his priestly vestments. Beside him sat Sister Girl Faress in her trainee uniform, Boar’s Tusk pendant dangling from her thick neck, her shoulders wide and her face making her seem far older and far more male than she truly was, her dirt-brown hair in plaits doing little to hide it.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ she asked, turning to Brother Layorm.

  ‘Relax, Girl,’ he replied, ‘patience will guide…patience will…patience is good and a good thing to have.’

  ‘Do you even know if we’re going in the right direction?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, taking the map the Sisterhood had given him, ‘according to this, we are only…I want to say a few hours away…wait, hang on…no, wait, I’m holding it upside down…no, wait, I was right the first time…umm…we’ll get to Handor before the end of the day, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘Good, I’m getting bored.’

  ‘The Boarmother didn’t get bored, and you should not either,’ Layorm advised, taking a few seconds to mentally congratulate himself for granting a piece of wisdom and not stumbling through it.

  ‘She spent fourteen years stranded in the woods, talking to pigs. Of course she got bored.’

  ‘I will not allow a trainee priestess of the Sisterhood to speak in such…such blasphemies.’

  Girl rolled her eyes, and began to fiddle with her holy pendant.

  ‘How about,’ Layorm began holding the Boar’s Tome out to here, ‘you rehearse some passages. The ones about faith when surrounded by nonbelievers will be particularly useful.’

  ‘I already know them all,’ she claimed as she took the book.

  ‘It never hurts to…remember and…umm…learn.’

  ‘So this town doesn’t have a temple?’

  ‘Not one currently in use. It’s near the border to Jorat, so Berelianism is already less popular here, and apparently the people here worship some other heretic god.’

  The trainee priestess flicked absentmindedly through the pages. ‘Why’ve they sent us to convert them?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not even an official priestess yet, and you’re-’

  ‘I’m what, Girl? Bald? I understand that the first glance at a man without a single hair on his body may be jarring, but they would be fools not to-’

  ‘No, I mean you’re-’

  ‘A man? I know that women are regarded more highly than men in our religion, and rightfully so, but that does not mean a man cannot spread the word of the Boarmother. In fact, in Babirusa 8:14 there is an example of-’

  ‘I mean you’re not that good.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You stumble with your words a lot when you’re giving sermons, and it really makes it hard to follow.’

  Layorm drew his mouth to a line and did not respond. When one is insulted, it is wisest to refrain from retaliation. If only he could have said that out loud without stammering or losing track of his words.

  The journey continued in silence for some time, Girl looking at the pages of the Boar’s Tome, probably not actually reading anything, and Layorm sitting in pensive quiet, hoping he could pass off his seething stare at the woodland scenery around him as meditation.

  After a few hours, the carriage came to a clattering halt, the horses neighing and the two people inside being tossed around like fish caught in a net.

  ‘What is going on?’ Layorm cried, and within seconds the carriage was surrounded by men. Men in ramshackle armour, leather straps over singular plates of steel, wielding a variety of different blades and rough expressions.

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  Girl shrunk away, hiding on the floor of the carriage, though she was very much still visible. At this moment, Layorm realised that a few of the men were holding the horses, preventing them from moving and running away.

  ‘Step out of the wagon!’ one of the men shouted.

  Layorm raised his hands in surrender, and began to step out of the vehicle.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Girl whisper-shouted at him.

  ‘Showing mercy,’ he told her as he continued to make his way out of the carriage.

  ‘What have you got?’ another man asked.

  ‘Feel free to have a look,’ Layorm told him, ‘take all that you want.’

  Once the priest had removed his way from the vehicle, a particularly burly man grabbed him and held him at bladepoint while a few others rummaged through the carriage’s cargo hold. Their rations, spare vestments, vials of blessed water, and particularly the small case of gold they took with them were all taken within an instant. Once the hold lay vacant, the men started to inspect the rest of the carriage, slashing at its seats knocking into the wood, searching for anything hidden.

  Layorm flinched as he saw one of the men pull Girl up her knees by her hair, looking around at the others with a grin on his face.

  ‘How about we take this one too?’ he asked to uproarious laughter.

  ‘Is that a lad or a lass?’ one of the men asked between cruel cackling.

  ‘Looks like the baldy tried to dress his lad up like a lass!’ cried another.

  ‘I can assure you,’ Layorm began, voice shaking, ‘she is a girl, and a priestess-in-training, in fact.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ the man holding her by the hair said, his face contorting into a gnarled grin, ‘we can put a bag over her head and make use of her the same way. Doesn’t make a difference to me.’

  Layorm’s heartbeat would not slow down, and his muscles would not move. He wanted desperately to throw the man’s blade aside and charge forth, rescuing Girl and spouting some Berelian wisdom in the process, but he could not. He could not even bring himself to attempt it.

  As more of the men climbed onto the carriage, abandoning their posts around the horses, filling their pockets with whatever goods they could, circling Girl like a pack of wolves, the young trainee gripped her Boar’s Tome, rose to a standing position, and smacked the man grabbing her hair across the face with it.

  He fell back, lost grip of her hair, and landed amongst the seats. He made a vague cry for something, and the man holding onto Layorm let go of him and jumped aboard the carriage as well. Still, Layorm could not bring himself to do anything.

  Just as the men were about to grab Girl, she lunged forward and grasped at the horses’ reins, and whipped them, causing the horses to shoot forth, taking the carriage, and all of its inhabitants, with them.

  Layorm held out a hand and made a slight jog, imagining himself rescuing Girl, only for him to see her throw herself out of the side of the moving vehicle, landing in a crumpled heap of cloth and hair on the ground, Boar’s Tome still in her hand. The carriage, carrying all dozen or so of the men, disappeared into the distance.

  The priest rushed over to the young woman, still lying on the ground, and crouched down beside her.

  ‘Sister Girl, are you injured?’ he asked. ‘I would’ve gone in to help, but they had me held at swordpoint, and I would’ve hated to harm anyone-’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Girl replied, vitriol in her voice, as she rose to a standing position, ‘I hurt my arm and my leg, and my scalp still stings a bit, but I’m fine.’

  ‘I am so deeply apologetic for what they did to you, what they said to you, what they said they were going to do to you. It was awful.’

  ‘It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Just some bandits. I doubt they’re affiliated with anything. Just a group of men looking to make money and not much else.’

  ‘The exact type of people we need in our sermons,’ Layorm remarked.

  ‘Why did you let them take everything?’ she asked.

  ‘Worldly possessions are not everything, Berelia famously lived without them for many years, and diplomacy is always preferable to…preferable to violence.’

  ‘You almost let them kidnap me.’

  ‘Did…did the Boarmother not break bread with thieves like them?’

  Girl scowled, but said nothing more on the matter.

  ‘At least the book is safe,’ said Layorm, pointing at the Boar’s Tome in her hands.

  ‘And our lives,’ she replied.

  ‘That too. Now, we must be careful from here on out, as we’ll be travelling on foot, and may encounter individuals like those again. Luckily for me, I kept the map in my pocket.’ The priest took out the map, but didn’t unroll it just yet. ‘Before we get going though, it may be best to get a small amount of rest.’

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ she said, ‘and it’s clearly not safe. We need to keep going.’

  ‘Very well,’ he replied, ‘now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some…business to attend to, in the forest.’

  Without another word, Layorm scampered off into the trees until he could not hold it in anymore. He came to a stop, placed one hand against a tree, and the other on his knee, and proceeded to vomit all over the shrubbery.

  He returned a minute later, to find Girl rubbing her injured limbs.

  ‘Apologies,’ he said, ‘I needed to excuse myself. Now, to Handor!’