“Guilty with a punishment of forty years of labor service in the City of Sandort,” called out a weaselly-nosed man with a partial sneer. “That’s very generous given that it is the minimum sentence we can impose for two counts of murder.”
The room erupted with hisses and boos, which only seemed to make the man’s sneer grow darker and his brow turn increasingly furrowed. He turned and muttered to the large man seated beside him, “These yokels have no idea how a court actually works, do they?”
The larger man gave a slight shake of his head, not in agreement to the weaselly-nosed man but more out of pity for him. He then slapped the table hard once, quieting the room completely. “My fellows,” he began wearily, “we have been in this room for nearly two full days now, trying to decide the fate of one of our own.” He gestured to the side of him where there sat a teenage boy shackled to the floor with heavy irons. “Kre here is depending on us to make the right and just decision and…”
“The just decision is guilty,” interrupted the first man. As soon as the last word was out of his mouth he dove under the table to avoid a hefty heel of stale bread that had been flung at him from the rafters. “You said no more throwing food!” he wailed pitifully from his hiding spot.
“It’s not food, it’s little more’n bird feed for your little beak you bird brain!” called out one of the folks from the upper deck. After some laughter and claps on the back, the crowd quickly dropped back to a respectful silence, likely due to the large man’s glare as he swept his gaze around the room.
“Now, if we may,” he began in his slow baritone way of speaking, “Braun here is correct. There is a minimum sentence that can be allowed for the crimes being brought forward by the public.”
An elderly man near the front of the hall stood and cleared his throat. The large man nodded to him and called out, “Please speak your mind Master Prandell.”
By this time Braun, also known as ‘Weasel Nose’ and ‘Bird Brain’ by the population of the village in which he presided, had extricated himself from under the table and resumed his seat, which oddly elevated him a bit higher than his two neighboring arbiters despite the fact that he was the smallest of the three. “The court recognizes Old Man Prandell,” he called with a flippant wave. This was his first real opportunity to show Sandort’s City Council that he was ready for more responsibility in a place that was far from this dung-heap of a town and he wasn’t about to cede control of the trial to anyone else so easily, especially not to Art Wylen, the town’s blacksmith.
Braun seemed to be the only person in the room not to notice a second heel of stale bread being readied but a gentle head shake from Art caused the would-be assailant to lower his crusty grenade. Prandell cleared his throat again and spoke with a voice that seemed too loud for his slender frame,
“You continue to say that the public is accusing our own Kre Nevynar of two counts of murder, but there’s not a man, woman, or child here today that is doing so.”
A random call of, “Though there’s a weasel that’s claiming it!” echoed from the loft’s peanut gallery, much to Braun’s irritation.