Sword and Sorcery and Martial Arts

Chapter 71 Judgment
On the way to the Highwayman's lair, a few more people wanted to escape, but Rhodes caught them back with the mage ball, and then Hamer smashed their palms with a warhammer. After that, no one tried to escape. move.

"It's here, you have to remember that you promised not to kill me." The roadblocker who led the way led them to a short mountain and pointed to a cave.

"You go in with us." Baron's big hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him in front of him into the cave.

Everyone walked into the cave, and Hammer, who was holding a warhammer, walked at the end to prevent anyone from escaping.

There were lighted torches hanging in the cave, but it was still very dark, and Weber walked in the front to prevent traps and ambushes inside.

Not far away, Rhodes heard women's cries and men's evil laughter coming from the depths of the cave.

After he walked into a room in the cave, he saw that Weber was wiping the blood on the dagger. Beside Weber, there were two men lying in a pool of blood, and several women who were clothed and weeping. Also lying there was a little girl with bruises all over her neck, her eyes wide open.

Rhodes walked over to check her breath and found that she was dead.It's no wonder that the always benevolent Weber would kill him.

They searched the entire cave carefully, and only the two men were left behind, and the rest were a few young women in their 30s and [-]s who were taken captive. They also found a baby's skull on the ground. Several corpses of women who had already smelled.

Now those roadblockers are kneeling on the ground and begging Rhodes to spare their lives. They vowed to change their past mistakes and turn over a new leaf.

"Should we hand them over to the local lord, or just execute them all?" Webb asked.

"If I want to, I can also be the lord here," Hammer said, "I will administer justice."

This piece of land was only owned by the Nord Kingdom last year, and the descendants of great nobles like Hamer can completely allocate the land here.

Baron folded his arms and nodded, and Rhodes had no objection to that.

"Start with you." Hammer stepped on the back of the roadblocker who led the way and said.

"I agreed not to kill me." The man said pitifully.

"I'm not going to kill you, I just want you to explain what bad things you have done." Hamer said.

"We robbed them and took them to the cave to do some happy things..." He was interrupted by a woman next to him who had just stopped crying.

She said tremblingly, "You not only killed my husband, but also threw my one-year-old child to death in front of me, and finally snatched me into this cave..."

"It's not me, it's them. I was coerced by them." The man said immediately.

The roadblockers on the side glared at him angrily, and one of them said, "It's a shame that we used to let you be the leader. At that time, it was obviously you who ordered the baby to be killed, saying that our life would become more difficult if we had an extra mouth. You did it yourself, and you laughed the happiest after you threw him to death."

The leader of the highwaymen wanted to argue but was kicked in the face by Hammer, "I'm not letting you talk now."

"Is there anything else besides these?" Hammer asked the women next to him. He originally wanted to see if these roadblockers had a little bit of repentance, and if so, he could give them a good time.

"You must not spare these bad guys lightly..."

"According to the laws of the kingdom, they should be hanged." Hammer thought for a while and came to a conclusion.

"It's so funny, who do you think you are? Learn from the nobles and judge us?" A highwayman laughed loudly, and he spat at Hamer.

"I am the son of Marquis Lando Smith of Furnace City. In the name of me, Hammer Smith, I sentence them to be hanged under the witness of the Holy Spirit August." Hammer pronounced the sentence loudly, and he wiped the drool off his body .

Hammer and Webb then began to search for materials to build a simple gallows.

"Why not just behead them? Hang them instead?" Rhodes asked, "Hanging is too troublesome, and a gallows is needed."

Hammer stroked his chin and replied, "Compared to direct beheading, hanging is more painful. For these evildoers, they should be executed by hanging."

"Then why not use the cruelest skinning?" Rhodes asked again.

"The skinning is too cruel. Last time I saw it, I didn't eat meat for half a month." Hamer replied.

"Then we only need to make a gallows. Let them go up one by one, and the rest will squat on the ground to watch the people in front of them be hanged. Let them enjoy their last moments before they die." Rhodes suggested .

Knowing that you are going to die, the torment of waiting for death is the most tormenting.

Hammer raised his head and smiled and said, "Although it is a bit cruel, I like it very much."

Baron and Weber wanted to stop it, but in the end they chose to agree to the idea.

……

Hammer hanged the highwaymen one by one according to Nord law, but did not kill their leader.

Because Rhodes swore not to kill him before, although Rhodes doesn't believe in the Holy Spirit, he still wants to keep his promise.

Webb tied him up, fixed him to a stone pillar in the cave, and prepared him to starve to death inside.

Looking at the weeping women in front of him, Rhodes remembered the corpses he saw in the cave.

Fuck his fucking oath, I don't believe in the Holy Spirit.

He took the sharpest dagger and handed it to the woman whose child was thrown to death face to face, and asked her to go into the cave to find the roadblocker and settle her grievances by herself.

But Rhodes was afraid that she would end up being as soft-hearted as he was before, so he chose a few daggers and handed them to the other women with resentful faces to let them follow in.

The pitiful screams continued to be heard in the cave, from the initial shriek gradually weakened to inaudible.

After a long time, those women came out with blood on their hands. As for the life and death of the man in the cave, he didn't want to care about it, even if he didn't die, he didn't bother to go in and give him a good time.

After seeing what Rhodes did, Baron and the others acted as if they hadn't seen anything.

If there are other adventurers, maybe I will have the nickname "Oath Breaker", Rhodes thought in his heart.

In the end, everyone also worked together to bury all the corpses, so as not to make ordinary people living nearby get sick, although Rhodes felt that it would be more convenient to burn all the corpses directly.

It was already dark when they finished doing this. Rhodes and the others planned to spend the night in the cave, but those women never wanted to step into the cave again. In order to prevent them from being attacked by wild animals, Hammer and Webb stayed near the entrance of the cave. Watched all night.

Each of those women had bruises and swelling on their bodies, and they were unwilling to mention what those people had done to them.

Baron and the others also had difficulties in how to arrange these women. Some of them were Nords and some were Imperials, but they were all homeless.

Some of them lived on this piece of land, and then they were broken into by that group of people at night, killed their family members, robbed them of their money, and took them to that cave.

If they were left here, they might be taken away by the army to serve as military prostitutes and live the same miserable life.Or being captured by slave traders is equally tragic.

In the end they decided to go back and send them to Winterfell, so that even if they knew nothing, they could work as a maid in the tavern, and if they were lucky, they could start a family with the adventurers there.

The earliest of them was a woman who was nearly 30 years old.According to what she said, she was taken into the prison just after winter came and after the war last year.But these few months have been an unforgettable nightmare for her. She is still pregnant, but she dare not tell those people, and she doesn't know who the father of the child is.

At night, Rhodes felt that there seemed to be some abnormalities in himself recently, and he definitely wouldn't do this before.

Why did such a change occur when I woke up from that pool, the dark side of human nature gradually broke through the shackles of previously formed ideological and moral values?

With this idea, it took Rhodes a long time to enter the state of Bao Yuan Shou Yi.

The next day, Rhodes and the others took the group of women back on the road.

On the way they gave the horses to the unwell women, and led the traveling horses on the way back to Winterfell.

"Most of the robbers in Nord still have their own principles and bottom lines. I didn't expect these people to have no lower limit." Weber said on the road.

"After I'm going to send you back for retirement, I'll go back to Winterfell Stronghold to ask my uncle for an officer, and lead the army to wipe out all the thieves here." Hammer said to Weber.

"We can be with you," Baron said, and Rhodes nodded beside him.

"I can actually go back to retire after a few years." Weber said, "I can also help you."

"You can go back to retire at ease. If you are lucky, maybe you can find a little girl to marry." Hammer laughed.

"Seeing the situation here, I don't know how many other people were killed by bandits like them. I can't just go back like this." Weber touched the dagger at his waist, "I used to worry that killing would bring harm to my life. This misfortune made my already miserable life even more miserable. Now that I am ready to retire, let me bear these sins for you."

Since Weber came out of the cave, Rhodes felt that his temperament was a little different.

"I have killed many more people than you, and no misfortune has come to me," Hamer said.

"You are still young, it is best not to make some random killings." Weber said.

With the group of women rescued from the cave, Rhodes and the others didn't return to the roadside inn where they lived until night. Before they stepped into the inn, Rhodes felt that the atmosphere nearby was very strange.

The hotel is eerily quiet...

　Sorry, there is only one update today, and now I owe three chapters.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)