Death and Taxes

As Timber's Bend fell into the background, the sun setting on the road ahead of him, Suldur turned back for one last look at Timber's Bend.
He had spent years building his station under the rule of Duke Rykard, and when he left to gon his crusade at the First Bulwark, he left Suldur behind to suffer Johann's whims. He should have known better - he should have taken Suldur with him. He was as good a soldier as any in the Duke's army, and loyal to a fault, but when Rykard left him, despite his fervent protest, the resentment began to grow.
Johann was never a good man, and even worse as a lord. Capricious, greedy and spiteful, Johann planned immediately to oust his elder brother upon his departure. Suldur knew this would be painful for the people of Timber's Bend, but his duty was to the crown, and Johann wore the crown. At first, the work was heartwrenching - mothers cried, not knowing how they would feed their children, fathers fought with the brutes that came to collect when they wouldn't pay, and the brutes...did what brutes do. Suldur always found collecting taxes to be distasteful. The people paid willingly when Rykard was in rule, but Rykard was generous.
The next several months slowly twisted Suldur. It started with the resentment at Rykard, then the resentment at Johann, stress from being ordered to oppress the people of his own home. It had to get easier, eventually, and get easier it did. Every wailing woman and tearful child, every beaten father and son slowly hardened his heart until, before he knew it, his eyes were blind and his ears deaf to the deeds of his own hands. How long he went on like this, he didn't know, until one fateful day, he was rocked awake.
That was the day Elamen Jabberkinsie came to Timber's Bend.
In the time he worked for Duke Johann, Suldur became very good at catching the town's so-called tax evaders. Ocassionally, one would skip town, and it fell to Suldur to track them down, and either extract their final dues, or to return them for incerceration in debtor's jail. When Elamen and her entourage ran, Suldur had a sense that things would be different. In the moments before the first strike, there was a sort of electric charge to the air that never came with his standard arrests. Even more, he didn't expect that her guards would risk their lives for her freedom. When they left him, beaten, nearly naked in the wilds beyond Timber's Bend, it was like being abandoned by Rykard all over again. They didn't even have the decency to simply kill him and be done with it.
Suldur was done being content with what Fate handed him. This 'mercy' was the last insult. Suldur returned to Timber's Bend long enough to gather equipment, and a dozen of his best men before pursuing. The next months were grueling for all of them. There was constant study and gathering information about their prey, learning their habits and travel patterns. Chamsport was yet another deadly trip. Suldur lost nearly half his men, and would have died himself, if not for a mysterious figure that offered him yet another chance, in exchange for a "significant death". Atonement was sent to him as a supervisor of sorts, to ensure he made good on his deal. He knew exactly who he would extract that payment from.
The chase continued, south to Aetheria, and on to Thrumgol - The Rush. Atonement offered to lead a capture mission. To bring Elamen to him for a proper execution, as was his right. Things didn't go quite according to plan, but the prize they brought him made the way for an even more appropriate setting to complete his deal, and free himself from the months of discrace, and this new deal for his life.
Returning to Timer's Bend felt like a mistake as soon as he laid eyes on Johann again. The months without him felt quiet, almost like freedom compared to the renewed weight of his presence, a loathsome, spiteful creature, strong only so long as he bought the swords of every arm in reach with money juiced from the common folk like withering fruit. It grated on him. Though he had returned with all but a guarantee that his charge would return to Timber's Bend, Johann rewarded his success with patronization, as though he had only succeeded because he was "the Duke's man".
They learned about the ambush. This was not expected, but it was still well within the allowance for the plan. They survived the ambush. This was fully expected - Suldur knew that the few soldiers Johann assigned to the ambush wouldn't stand up to Elamen's guards. When they arrived in the courtyard, they sat down for dinner, and Elamen herself performed for Johann. This part, Suldur admitted, was a toss-up. They would either have dinner, praying for Johann's mercy, or they would draw steel, and he would be free to set his hounds on them immediately, and free himself from this whole mess. After dinner, Johann declared their debt to him void, and set them free.
This was not the plan. This was not the deal. As he set them free, Johann turned to Suldur with a foxlike grin. He knew Suldur had a desire-no, a need to snuff a life by his own hand, and he meant to take the opportunity away, just to spite him. His face said it all. That smug, grotesque leech of a man though that, because the money flowed through his fingers, that the world existed only to entertain him. Without Johann's soldiers at his back, Suldur knew he wouldn't defeat Elamen and her guards. Johann, however, was attended only by a single bowman, and Atonement was at his side.
Strangling the life out of the Duke didn't feel good. There was no ecstacic release, no cathartic sense of freedom. He felt the Johanns' windpipe collapse under his thumbs, the sickening scrape of cartilage under his skin, and then, for good measure, a twist, and Johann's light was gone. Suldur was free to do as he will. He leaned over the bannister to observe the party below him. The conversation following was perhaps the most unplanned part of this whole ordeal.
She didn't want revenge. She didn't want to execute some form of misplaced justice on him for what he had done, what he had been doing to Elamen and her party the last several months. It broke him when he realized that really, she only pitied him for having been playing a losing game. He set his hound on them, if only to get them out of the fortress, so that he could make his own escape. He heard Rykard's horn on the hill, and he wouldn't be in the city when they arrived. He couldn't, after killing Johann.
"Redemption." Suldur grunted as he turned toward Sravine. Changing your path towards the path of light? It was a fool's notion, surely.
"What about your deal, Suldur?" Atonement caught his ear from the second horse, "You need to pay up."
"I've paid," Suldur snorted, "A Duke's death is as significant as any. The halfling means nothing in comparison. It was your master that failed to clarify what 'significant' meant."
Without a word, Atonement melted into the shadows of the woods beyond Timber's Bend. Suldur felt a sense of release as the teifling's presende faded. He took a deep breath, and felt almost invigorated as his lungs filled near to bursting with air for what felt like the first time. His eyes stung, his shoulders ached, and hel slumped forward in his saddle. With a gentle kick, his horse started on the road toward the capital. Suldur reached into his cloak, and hefted a large, clinking sack, and let his mind wander finally, toward the future.
There was a long silence before, with a tired finality, he muttered, "I think it'll be a bakery."