Justiciar

Orephus, Justiciar of the Banished, hunts down traitors in the bloody aftermath of the Battle of Archangel's Rest.
***
The winter season Archangel’s Rest slowly receded. The great snows blanketing the consecrated world’s upper hemisphere receded. The melting snows revealed the tragedy that had befallen this world. Battlefields of frozen corpses, ruined war machines, and charred villages dotted the pale landscape spread out beneath the flight of Banished Phantoms.
Orephus braced a shaggy paw against the rim of an open troop bay. The Banished Justiciar forced himself to gaze upon the ruin of a once great world. The carnage spread out across the snow plains steeled the Justiciar’s spine for the grim task before him. Orephus’s pelt and the layers of padding inside his bulky armor shielded him from the chill of winds buffeting the Phantom. Archangel’s Rest was inhospitable in the best of seasons, but it had been home to millions of Jiralhanae.
Soft lands breed soft cubs, an old Jiralhanae adage went. The Banished sought out hard tribes from hard worlds to forge a future for the Jiralhanae. Whatever promise had once been held in Archangel’s Rest was lost now. Another crime of the Created. Orephus blood burned in his veins. The Archon and her pantheon of false gods were beyond his reach, but their accomplices were not. Justice would be done for Doisac and Archangel’s Rest and every other despoiled world.
“Justiciar, transmission from the Legion of the Crimson Banner. Chieftain Ubitus has the priority targets in custody. We’re clear to land.”
Steady, Orephus cautioned himself. Rage was well and good in a warrior, but today’s duties called for a clear mind. He faced the speaker, a captain named Odysseus. This warrior stood a head shorter than the half-dozen Jiralhanae standing in the Phantom’s troop bay—he was human, as were four more of the warriors in Orephus’s retinue. Odysseus, like many human warriors in the Banished, had discarded his birth-name and taken on one more pleasing to Jiralhanae ears. Apparently the name had some significance in human folklore. Odysseus wore his thick hair in dreadlocks that draped over his red-daubed combat armor, mirroring the stylings of Orephus’s own clan. The captain had fought long and well to earn that particular honor. Orephus had braided the first cord himself, a great honor to bestow upon an outsider and an alien.
Orephus liked humans, or at least the killers hard enough to survive in service to the Banished. They were far more intelligent than the Unggoy, less arrogant than the Sangheili, and more honorable than Kig-Yar. One good warrior like Odysseus was worth a dozen Unggoy plasma-fodder. The humans would make excellent vassals—once their homeworld’s empire was made to answer for the calamity it had helped unleash upon the galaxy.
“Land,” Orephus said tersely. “Let’s put an end to this hunt.”
The Phantom’s pilot obeyed, bringing the dropship down for a smooth landing amidst an assembly area teeming with Banished troops. The Crimson Banner was one of three legions Orephus had marshalled from the garrison-world Abstinent Solitude to pacify Archangel’s Rest. The Banished forces had spent the past week systematically annihilating the remnants of the warring tribes who had brought Archangel’s Rest: both the reviled traitors who had pledged their blades to the Created and the rogue clan that had preyed upon their weakened villages after the Kru’desh Legion departed this frigid world.
Orephus held no grudge against the Kru’desh. They had brought war to the Created and that was to be commended. But justice must be meted out. The Justiciar leaped from the Phantom before it settled onto the snow. Odysseus and the rest of Orephus’s bodyguard hurried behind.
Chieftain Ubitus awaited the Justiciar’s arrival along with an honor guard of his finest warriors. The grizzled warrior bowed his armored head at Orephus’s approach. “Justiciar. All fighting has ceased. This world is free once more.”
“Well fought, chieftain. This victory belongs to you and your legion.”
“It’s no challenge hunting vermin like this. The enemy was broken long before we arrived.”
“You have done our people a service all the same.” Orephus turned his attention to the two Jiralhanae prisoners who knelt in chains beside Ubitus. The first was a gaunt warrior in disheveled armor: Alaric, leader of the despoiling bandits. Alaric stared back through beady, conniving eyes.
“You have beaten me, I admit it,” Alaric said. “You Banished fight like demons. Now, allow me to offer my services—”
Orephus ignored the defeated bandit. He nodded to Odysseus. The human captain stepped forward and fired his Mangler pistol through Alaric’s head. The sentence of death had been adjudicated from orbit weeks ago. Alaric was dead before his body hit the snow. Orephus turned to the second prisoner. This Jiralhanae wore only a leather tabard, little protection against the cold. The prisoner lowered his gaze in shame.
“Well, Lepidus?” Orephus said softly. “Have you anything to say?”
Lepidus shuddered as he met the Justiciar’s gaze. Ubitus’s warriors had beaten him savagely. His face was a mess of bruises and open wounds. Cold and starvation had left the warrior a thin shell of his former self. Orephus searched Lepidus’s face for any trace of the older brother who had once held him in his arms, using his own body to shield him from Doisac’s brutal storms.
Doisac. The homeworld destroyed by the Created Lepidus and his master Irthanus had served so blindly. There was only one sentence possible for such treason.
“We wanted only peace,” Lepidus said feebly. “Forgive me, brother.”
“I forgive you.” Orephus drew the knife Lepidus himself had so proudly presented the day his younger brother had become a warrior. The Justiciar knelt beside Lepidus and drew the blade across his throat in a single swift motion. He held the condemned prisoner as his lifeblood soaked the snowy ground. None of the assembled Banished said a word as Orephus rose with his brother’s body in his arms.
Lepidus felt so very light in death.
“Come,” Orephus said, voice thick with emotion. Thus was a Justiciar’s duty fulfilled. “Let us leave this accursed place.”
Category:The Weekly