Untie her and give her something to eat: 46%
Kestrel frowned in Sienna’s direction. Nothing about the Gang’s treatment of their captive had really sat well with her ever since she’d brought the poor mare back. The earth pony had suffered plenty at the Gang’s hooves, and it looked like she’d suffered plenty back when she was with the Vipers to boot. Maybe it was time for a little bit of mercy.
She stood up and approached the captive mare at an easy pace. Sienna didn’t react to her presence, not at first. It was only when Kestrel’s hooves came to a stop in front of the bound mare that she stopped shivering for a moment and warily opened her eyes. They glanced up at Kestrel’s face for only a fleeting moment before they darted back down to the ground. No words left her lips.
Kestrel sighed and drew her knife from its sheath. Sienna wilted as she heard the noise of metal on leather, but she didn’t look up. There was no pleading for her life; whether she was too scared to say anything or ready to accept her fate, Kestrel couldn’t say. What she was not ready for was the blade to sever the ropes holding her legs to the wheel. She gasped and fell forward, lacking anything to hold her upright anymore, and struggled to lift her face from the dirt.
“Get up, you sorry thing,” Kestrel said, offering a hoof to Sienna. The mare looked at it with distrust and fear, and she wrapped her tail around herself as if it would protect her. Kestrel only rolled her eyes and scooped up the mare in her forelegs, dragging her to her hooves. Sienna whimpered as her stiff muscles stretched from use for the first time in nearly a day, and then Kestrel was slowly leading her back to the fire, back to Silver and the stew.
The rumbling from Sienna’s stomach as she set eyes on the stew practically boomed like a cannonade over the rolling fields of Gallopsburg. She was hungry, no denying that, and simply seeing food seemed to drive away her fear for the time being. Kestrel had to wonder just when exactly she had her last good meal, because the mare had either been starved for food when they found her the day before, or she just had a hunger that would put even Roughshod to shame.
“Sit,” Kestrel ordered her, and Sienna did just that, sitting on the dusty ground on the opposite side of the kettle from Silver. Silver tried to smile at her, but Sienna hid her face and looked away. Kestrel wasn’t surprised; it was she and Silvie who foalnapped her anyway and brought her back here. If she’d been captured by Sienna’s gang, then she’d certainly be wary of anything her captors tried to do with her… though she had a feeling the Vipers wouldn’t be nearly as nice or fair.
She ladled out some of the stew and set it in a tin bowl, then placed it in front of Sienna. The young captive flinched back, but Kestrel nudged it closer with a wing. “Eat,” she ordered again, raising an eyebrow when Sienna failed to move. “I know you’re starving.”
“N-No,” Sienna stammered in a quiet voice. “It’s poison.”
“Poison? Celestia’s sake, filly. She look poisoned to you?” She pointed a feather in Silver’s direction, then helped herself to a bowl. “Quit your fussin’, girl. If I was gonna murder you, I’d put my damn knife between your ribs and watch you squeal like a stuck pig. So you gonna eat your damn food, or what?”
Kestrel didn’t wait for a response. She took her own serving back to Silvie’s side and sat down, and when she turned back to their captive, Sienna had finally lifted the bowl to her lips and sucked down the broth like she was a dying mare in the desert. Which, Kestrel mused, wasn’t too far off from the truth.
She let Sienna finish off her meal before saying anything more. She saw Miss Irons watching from the wagon, disapproval stamped across her face, but she didn’t much care. Let her fuss all she wanted; it wouldn’t change a thing.
When she saw Sienna staring longingly at the kettle, Kestrel finished her own lunch and tossed the tin aside. “Don’t get any ideas,” she growled at Sienna, making her shrink back. “You only get one, not two. Not ‘til we know what to do with you.”
“And… w-what are you gonna do with me?” Sienna asked.
“Don’t rightly know yet. Depends.” Kestrel leaned forward and tapped her hooves together. “I know you and my big, ugly friend had a few words today. You and him and his hooves.” The look on Sienna’s face made it pretty clear that she understood who Kestrel was talking about. “Now, I wanna know what he asked you, and what you told him. I’d rather hear it from your mouth than his; frankly, I trust yours more.”
Sienna swallowed hard, and her hooves pawed at the ground. Kestrel knew a few thoughts about escape crossed the young mare’s mind, but she didn’t act. Not yet. “He… well, he asked about the Vipers.”
“Your gang,” Kestrel concluded. “What did he ask?”
“How many of us there were,” Sienna said. “I told him fifty or sixty.”
“Fifty or sixty?” Silver asked, she turned a worried look in Kestrel’s direction. “That’s… that’s a lot.”
“Shush, Silvie,” Kestrel said, holding a wing in her direction. “Until you master your poker face, I’m gonna want you to stay quiet and outta this. In fact, why don’t you go find where Roughshod went off to? Leave our guest to me.”
Silver hesitated, but she eventually stood up and cleared out regardless. Then it was only Kestrel and Sienna, with Miss Irons eavesdropping from the other side of camp. Kestrel frowned down her muzzle at Sienna and tapped her hooves together some more. “Fifty or sixty,” she echoed, deep in thought. “That’s a lot more than what I heard.”
A flicker of defiance sprang up in Sienna’s face. “It’s the truth.”
“It’s a damn lie, is what it is,” Kestrel barked back, and that flicker was gone. “I been talkin’ to the Sheriff. I know all about you. He tells me you got no more than forty ponies in that gorge. Given how he dealt with the other gangs ‘round here, I’m inclined to believe him.”
Sienna was silent, but Kestrel knew she’d rattled her cage with the accusation. Hopefully she’d be more cooperative with the rest of the questions. “What else did you tell him?”
“He asked me who our boss was,” Sienna said. “I told him he’s called Rattlesnake.”
“You know this Rattlesnake well?” Kestrel asked her. “Gang like that, I doubt your boss really knows who you are. He probably don’t even know you’re gone.”
Sienna shivered. “No,” she admitted. “He don’t care about me much. Don’t think about me.” After a second, she added, “I think about him, though.”
That caught Kestrel’s attention. “And why would that be?”
“He took me from my Da when I was real small,” Sienna said. “Maybe ten years old. Da had the fever, he couldn’t stop him. Rattlesnake said he saved my life, otherwise I woulda got the fever too. Said I had to pay him back, though. So I did…”
“Paid back… how?”
The silence was Sienna’s answer, and it told Kestrel everything she needed to know.
“Dear Celestia,” Kestrel muttered under her breath. Sienna had only been ten when Rattlesnake had taken her away. She looked like she’d been with the Vipers for fifteen years, based on that. “You never try to run?”
“I was too scared,” Sienna admitted. “I got the courage one night, though. Made a break for it while he was out stealing that gold. A cougar found me when I stopped to rest. It nearly ripped my throat out. I was screaming and crying for my life as I tried to fight it off.” She touched the white scars on her face, going from her nose and cheek all the way down to the side of her neck, and then a few more around her shoulders. “I don’t know how I got the gun, but I shot it. But I was bleeding so badly I knew I was gonna die if I didn’t do something. So I went back. Rattlesnake didn’t care that I was bleeding to death, he just tossed me a rag and some whiskey and told me to deal with it. So I did, and I ain’t ever tried to run again.”
Kestrel shook her head in sullen disbelief. “You’re tougher than most, I’ll give you that,” she said. “Ain’t many mares your size that can fight a cougar back with only their hooves. Though I guess we did you a favor, getting’ you outta that dump.”
“It doesn’t feel like much of a favor…” Sienna murmured. Her eyes wandered back to Kestrel, and the pegasus could see the fear and hurt in them. “Why won’t you just kill me? I know you’re gonna. Stop making me suffer, please, just… just do it already. I don’t want to go through anything more. I can’t take anything more. I’d rather die than go back to the wheel and have that stallion threaten to rape me more.”
“He ain’t gonna do that no more, I’ll make sure of it.” And Kestrel knew she would; she barely tolerated Roughshod anyway, and she knew Roughshod barely considered most mares to be anything more than objects unless they were tough enough to fight back. Sienna was not. It made Kestrel’s skin crawl just thinking about the brute.
“Then what are you going to do?” Sienna asked her. “What now?”
1. Send her back to the wheel. She got her meal and she did her talkin’, but we better secure her back up again. Just cause she spun me some sob story don’t mean I can trust her any more than before.
2. Let her loose. She can either run or stick around, don’t much care. But she deserves better than what we been givin’ her, that’s for sure. Mare like her needs to make her own decisions.
3. Try to recruit her. She’s tough as nails, I’ll give her that. My life’s been a sob story of its own, and she reminds me of myself, some. We could use more crew like her. [Attempt to recruit SIENNA to the Gang]
4. Shoot her. She’s askin’ for death, it would be a mercy to give her what she wants.
(Confidence Required: 45 Votes)