The Reality of Exectioners

We had been riding quietly threw farm country, I could see we were making our way to a village, and from a distance I could see one of the cages The Marked One had talked about, and it had an occupant.  He saw it too and sighed heavily as we approached. We reached the gate to town and the man in the cage started wailing, The Marked one hopped down and tied up the reins.

"You can wail all you like judgement has come and it matters not to me." I could tell it actually mattered to him by the way his voice had changed, where as before I heard emotion in the rasp, now it was just dead, like a prepared speech he'd given several times before, which was probably true.

"Please you have to just let me go I didn't do anything wrong." The man was pretty raggedly dressed, apparently whatever he did included a town beating on top of the imprisonment.

"I'll know in a moment." The Marked One didn't have some kind of power infusion, or weird eye thing or even a flash he just looked at the man and then unlocked the cage.

"Thank you!" He started to walk off and then quick as can be my companion snapped his neck.

"Before you ask, yes its better for them to think they are free if only for a moment before it happens." I wasn't going to ask because it did seem like the more humane way. We had amassed a little bit of a crowd, the villagers did not look pleased to see their executioner.

"Murderer." One called out and spat in his general direction, others had the same idea. It seemed strange that they would be mad at their own justice system, when they were the ones who put the man in the cage in the first place.

"I give you these horses and this cart their owners no longer need them." That didn't seem to make the crowd any less angry.

"I think we should go." I've seen angry crowds, they don't suddenly calm down, if anything they do the opposite.

"That would be the wise decision." We made our way from the gate, the young man's crumpled body and the horse cart the only indications we were there.

"Will they follow?"

"If they are smart they will not."

"Is this how things usually go with you?"

"No, though this particular village I have visited several times as of late."

"Ahh, how do you know they will have someone for judgement?"

"I don't, but again this particular village I personally have had to judge several times."

"I'm starting to rethink this whole Marked One business being good."

"Oh really? Because I was thinking you'd want to sign up, had my speech ready to go and everything." So ended my dream of becoming a marked one. I mean I'm already marked, but I'd rather they be internal failings and not external. In case anyone's wondering by internal I mean within my soul, not like actual markings inside my body, that would be gross.