Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Law of the Land, Law of the Sea

Lots of people have said this in much more eloquent ways than I can - so I'll just say that having a knife in your back hurts.

I hadn't actually started swallowing gems to make sure I'd always have a few spare thaums nopony could take away from me, but I did keep a few of the things nearby - so moments after I woke up, my assailant had been volared up to the ceiling, adherere'd spread-eagled against it, dormired into unconsciousness, and if I'd known a spell that would have turned him into a pigeon, I probably would have used that, too.

Other than taking care of him - I was rather bewildered and confused. I didn't know where my glasses or goggles were so everything was blurry, I had a knife sticking out of my back, the pups were bawling, and ponies and diamond dogs were running around and shouting.

"Everypony... Shaddap!" Captain Red strode into the area. Most of the antics came to a halt. Red started barking orders to individuals, such as, "You - don't move!" to me, "Micro - doctor her up," to our resident scientist, and "Check for other infiltrators," "Lift us into the air," "Get one of the local head honchos here," and other captainy things.

I was still rather distracted by a knife sticking in my back, and sighed in relief - mental, if not necessarily physical - as Micro carefully removed the thing. "I don't know what sort of metal this thing is made of - bog iron just hammered out? - but it's flaking off... lots of flakes in the wound. I need to get 'em out fast, to minimize infection - so instead of trying to use tweezers, I'm just going to shrink myself down and pull 'em out with my own hooves. Try not to move."

I remembered another spell I knew of, and cast "Pax" on myself - and sighed in relief as the pain... well, it didn't go away, exactly, but it didn't demand my attention quite so insistently. I was also suddenly much less squicked out by the idea of a miniature pony pushing her way inside my flesh - maybe I should rename that particular enchantment the 'hippie spell'.

Red grabbed hold of my head with two hooves, and aimed my gaze at her - I realized she'd been trying to get my attention. "Missy," she said, "stay with me. I want to put him in the brig. I need you to let him down now."

"Right. Right. One second. Gem please?" She hoofed one into my hoof. "Thank you." I looked up at the bipedal wolf, and glared a bit. "Nullu - waitasec. Shouldn't somepony be holding him to keep him from falling? Or are we doing a 'bad cop, worse cop' thing?" Red sighed, and flapped up there herself. "Nullus magicae," I stated, and he caught his weight, handing him over to at least two of our Guard ponies as he woke up and started struggling.

From behind me, I heard a tiny voice, "I think that's all the contamination. Bad news is I think he nicked a kidney. Good news is I should be able to do some stitches, and then magic can do the rest." I relayed her request for surgical thread and such... and, once she was done, out, and back to her normal size, I started running through some of the Latinesque phrases I'd used on Athos after goring him. This time, Micro started writing down notes on her observations for which ones seemed to help best.

---

After a while, Micro said, "As long as you keep some bandages on, it should be safe enough for you to move around. What's left is pretty much just a flesh wound - and I'd rather let your body heal naturally, for the rest of the way. We've got no idea of the long-term effects of these spells - as just one potential problem, we don't want you to have to rely on them for every bit of healing you do."

"So," I said, as she went about taping some gauze into place, "I seem to remember somepony mentioning the brig, right?"

"No," came Red's voice, as she turned the corner.

"No?" I raised a brow at her.

"No, you're not going to the brig to do... anything."

I tilted my head. "I'm not disagreeing - but I am curious why I'm not."

"Because this ship is still flying the Equestrian flag - and Equestrian law still rules, here. Which means, as captain, I have a certain legal authority - and while we may not have enough ponies aboard for a full civilian trial, that wolf does still possess certain rights under the law."

I hmfed a little. Before coming to Equestria, I'd thought of myself as being on the libertarian end of the political scale; and had tried to retain as many of those principles as I could, even while working directly with a pair of Princesses and their government. I felt a minor urge to regain some of my political cred by declaring all ties between me and an imperfect government were severed - but my political leanings were subordinate to my rather larger desires to minimize existential risks... and on that scale, it was still worth my while to keep working with the two alicorns whose magic pushed the sun and moon around Equis; and, thus, to let Red keep running things her way.

"We also," I said, "have the right to self-defense. So how about a quick truth-zap, with the only questions being to see if he knows of anyone else getting ready to attack any or all of us? If we're in danger - it seems a good idea to know about it. And if we're not - the violation of his rights will have been the minimal required to establish that."

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. "Are you sure? Aren't you the one who was writing those letters to the Princesses about how the truth spell should be considered assault?"

I shrugged. "Rights are the things you don't do to others, because you don't want them done to you. If I ever sneak aboard a ship to try to murder an innocent person in their sleep, and I get caught - I think I'm kind of okay with that ship's crew truth-zapping that insane version of me to find out if they've got more attackers to worry about."

"I can work with that. Still - stay here, I'll grab a truth wand and take care of it. I don't want the two of you anywhere near each other yet."

---

"Don't worry," I said to the greymuzzle, the same one I'd talked to just after the duel, "your children, whom you swore your oath by, are safe. He attacked me, he didn't insult me, and so your promise to restrain him from insult remains unbroken."

Red had pulled out the round-table format again, with everypony involved sitting around. This included her, me, my assailant (with ropes binding him to his chair, and more keeping his jaw shut), a couple of the local greymuzzles, and plenty of guards between us all to make sure nobody had any opportunity to attack anybody else.

'I do not understand,' said one of the wolves. 'If, as you say, he was caught in the act, why not just kill him and be done with it? What do you need us for?'

I answered, "For various complicated reasons that would take too long to get into right now, I'm currently trying to minimize the number of deaths I'm involved in."

Red gave me a momentary glare, then turned to the pair and added, "The laws aboard this ship are that while the use of lethal force in self-defense is... possible, if discouraged if non-lethal alternatives are available; I am not to kill a prisoner who is safely contained, and not posing a direct and immediate threat. This does leave me with a few options. One is to keep him in our brig until we return to the land I came from, and then hand him over to the judges and jails and so on there. This is... not necessarily the best option, as it's likely to be some time before that happens, if ever, and there are the purely practical annoyances of keeping him fed and so on. Another option I could choose is to hand him over to the local justice system, to be dealt with however the local system deems fit. You're here so I can find out what that system is, so I can make my choice."

'You're sure you don't just want to declare blood feud and kill him?' At my expression, he sighed. 'Fine, fine. If you want to complicate it - you can offer him the chance to avoid a feud by paying you weregild. For an ordinary freedman, that would be around,' and there the translation spell stuttered a bit, and I 'heard' several meanings at once, including 'two hundred coins', and 'nine hundred grams', and 'fifty thousand dollars'. The wolf continued, 'But for an individual of your obviously noble bearing... it's five times for a noble isn't it?'

'I thought it was three times.'

'I thought three times was for priests.'

'Wasn't that six times?'

After a bit of back and forth, they ended up going with five.

"So," I said, "if I make the demand, and he doesn't, or can't, pay it... what then?"

'Then he becomes your thrall,' a word which the translation spell also helpfully overlapped with the word 'slave', 'until he can pay off the price he owes. And if he tries to run from that - he becomes outlaw, and can be killed by any who meet him without them owing any weregild.'

"In that case," I said to Red, "shall we ungag him, and ask him if he can pay that off?"

"I'd really prefer that to getting involved in slavery," she said. "Okay, let's find that out."

She nodded to Berry Blast, whose horn glowed as she unthreaded the ropes around his muzzle. He opened and closed his jaw a few times, before saying, 'The two of you,' to the elders, 'are forgetting something. She's a cow.'

'So?'

'So the Edicts of Lord Firebough are clear. Wolves are people, and you have to pay weregild for them. You have to do the same for griffins, and ponies, and dragons, and there's a whole list. But he made another list of things you don't have to pay weregild for if you kill them: rabbits, and fish, and birds... and cows. I don't owe weregild for trying to kill her. At most, I owe a fine for attempted poaching.'

The two greymuzzles looked at each other. 'Um,' said one.

'Er,' said the other.

'Didn't think of that, now did you?'

He looked quite pleased with himself, so I cleared my throat to get his attention. "In case you've forgotten - we haven't handed you back to them yet."

'Oh.' his grin disappeared.

"Captain," I said, "a quick word?" We stepped out of the room, and once we were far enough away from sensitive lupine ears, I said, "I don't care about the cash, or what the local system does to him - but if we filed an appeal, or whatever the local equivalent is for getting the rules changed, that could help us have an excuse to make contact with the local lord high muckity-mucks."

Back at the table, Red asked, "Who would we have to talk to to get cows moved from the one list to the other?"

My attacker objected, 'That doesn't matter! The law is what it is, and you can't go around charging people for laws made after they did it!' Red gestured, and he was quickly re-gagged.

'Well,' mused a greymuzzle, 'the boy has a point - but not as much of one as he thinks. Lord Firebough can change his edicts in whatever way suits him. If he wants people to have to pay weregild for killing talking cows, he can do that. If he wants to make the boy your slave, he can do that. If he wants to eat all of you, he can do that, too.'

"I'm not sure I like the sound of this Lord," I muttered.

The other greymuzzle shrugged. 'If you can kill him, you can always take his place and start issuing Edicts of Lady Missy that are more to your liking.'

"... I'm both tempted and repelled by that idea. Aren't there any more peaceful ways of handing over power?"

'Well - some Lords do say they want one of their kids to inherit when they're killed.'

'Usually a pretty quick death sentence for the kid, though.'

'Especially if they've got siblings.'

"Leaning further to the 'repelled' side, now."

'Are you sure? With this ship and your magic, it should be pretty easy for you to take out Firebough, and we could do with a Lord - or a Lady - who doesn't snack on her freemen so often.'

'Well, if she needs the ship to kill old Flamebreath, then she wouldn't last long once her Captain decided to take over, now would she?'

'Shush, she's obviously smart enough to have something on her Captain to keep her in line, and besides, the Captain's only a pony, not a real carnivore...'

Mindful of pulling on my back, I leaned forward to rest my forehead on the table, instead of banging it against it.

Comments

[terrycloth]

Because of course the local lord is a dragon.

[ArTic]

Firebough hmmm, interest gained with this new "lord" added into the mix.
Also, weird name fire and trees don't really work well. Best guess this guy is going to be crazy, and maybe a dragon.

[Liqwidice]

Well they did call the local lord "Old flamebreath". So I'd go with him being a dragon.

[Corona Blaze]

1246916 aye, but he's an Alpha diamond dog, not a Wolf or Diamond Wolf[or Lunar Wolf, as Aoi likes to call their 2-member species]

[AppleTank]

Face desk. Man, these cultures are weird.

[Destructorspace]

1247090
Still better than horn-stuck-in-desk, or worse, horn-stuck-in-hoof. That just sounds painful.

[AppleTank]

1247573
50 cases of horn stuck in hoof have been reported due to obnoxious individuals going across Equis. Watch out, and stay your hooves. Seriously. We're running out of beds.

[Themaskedferret]

Really liking these greymuzzles. Old guys are almost always worth amusement. Any chance of better descriptions of them down the line?