Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:47 pm
The owners of Myrken's market businesses were jolted into waking late last night as, in the square, violence exploded. All many could do was watch as a dozen men in mismatched clothes with covered faces flocked onto a passing coach and promptly tore it into pieces.
It was over in less than five minutes.
At the end of it all stood the remains of the carriage belonging to Aloisius H. Treadwell, town councilor, toymaker, and priest. His horse was missing--soon to find its way home this morning come light--and his driver was dead with his head smashed soundly with a brick brought caving down by a brutish hulk of a man. Any money and valuables were taken, ranging from the Councilor's own money pouch to a basket of food and wine under his seat.
The Councilor himself was found after the group dispersed. He was pulled from the wreckage, battered by too many blows to count and unconscious, and promptly rushed to the Rememdium.
Witnesses accounts will generally be the same when people get around to being questioned: many were awakened to the sounds of the coach itself splintering and shattering, although town crier Jack Alldale recounts, in his own warbly fashion, that "Ol' Tread'ell di'n't 'ave a chaince; 'e was all a-snorin' insi' as all'em fellas smashed down onna 'is coach!"
But, unknown to all in Myrken Wood, there is more to this. There is some assurance, if only to the comatose Treadwell, of protection, of security, of safety, and, ultimately, of life. A familiar booming, rolling voice--familiar to the portly priest, only, being of the one whom he worships--came into the dreams of the snoozing old man before the first of thundering, pounding blows resounded. Its words were simple; their outcome was not.
"Fools will make you suffer tonight, little Aloisius, but fear not, for now, until you wake, you will know nothing save glory."
Thus, as Treadwell's beaten body is hauled in an emptied apple cart to a hospital bed, the old man's soul gazes out over an endless plain and, pausing but a moment in initial confusion, finds itself sitting at an equally endless table stocked high with an infinite feast: a glutton's paradise.