“But the closest tough, he hadn’t been expecting much in the way of resistance, he’s slow to react. He whips his own weight around on the end of his lash, but the captain’s already slipping left, takes the weight a glancing blow on the temple. Then he whips his flail around, taking off the top half of the tough’s head. Another tough moves in, lash ball coming down, but the captain steps into the blow, catches the leather with his free forearm, ball spinning around, and the captain’s flail is on the move again, coming down hard. Snaps the tough’s collar bone like an old broomstick. Drops him like a stone. But the lash was still wound around the tough’s wrist, pulled the captain off balance some before he wrenched if off the tough’s arm. The other two, if there was any time to bludgeon the captain bloody, that was it. But they seen enough. Both tear off into the dark, lash balls trailing behind them like tails, not looking so tough after all.
“Now Gless and me reach the captain. The boy he broke is sitting in the dirt, cradling his busted shoulder, spit bubbling on his lips, saying please over and over like it might do some good, eyes full of the wide fear of one about to be murdered. The captain is staring down at him, flail in one hand, a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite read. Gless asks if he wants us to kill this one, or give chase to the others, clearly expecting to hear yes to one or the other, maybe both. The captain ponders for a moment, then says, ‘No. Let them run. Let them run.’” Vendurro did a fair imitation of Braylar. “‘And as for this one…’ he leans over, the wicked heads of his flail dangling just in front of the not-so-tough, who closes his eyes and sets to mumbling some prayer or other. Then the captain tosses the lash ball into his face; he cries out as if struck a mortal blow.
“When he finally opens his eyes, the captain is already striding toward the inn, Gless moving fast to keep pace. I look down at the dumb prick, can’t resist saying, ‘You got more luck than any low bastard deserves. It was me you tried thieving, you’d be as dead as dirt.’
“I catch up, Gless and me flanking Cap, looking into the shadows for anything else that might want to tussle, but it’s quiet. Halfway to the inn, Gless asks the captain what he said to the toughs, just before pulling his flail, and I admit curiosity got me to wondering too. Cap was wiping the blood off the cut on his temple, stops and looks at Gless like he’s daft, then says, remembering-well, why don’t I let the captain here tell it?”
Glesswik rolled his eyes. “Awfully big of you.”
“Remember what you said, Cap?”
Braylar swallowed before replying, “I told them I’d never seen such tiny flails before.”
“That’s right. Just like that!”
The whole table laughed, and after the merriment died down, Glesswik looked at the captain. “I never did understand why you let that one live. The one on the ground, that is. Seemed… out of character, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Uncharitable, Sergeant Glesswik. Most uncharitable.”
“Oh, I mean no offense, Captain. None at all. Fact being, it’s actually a compliment of sorts. You’re the hardest plaguer I ever met. Not so much nasty as just… hard, like I said. Half the reason we follow you, I’m thinking. Anyone in this company would die twice for you, if they could, because they know that if anyone crosses us, that’ll be the last thing they do, maybe their whole family, too.”
Hewspear ran a finger around the rim of his mug. “I believe what the good sergeant is getting at is that it isn’t your affable demeanor or endless ribaldry that endear you to the men, but your absence of mercy for those who oppose you.”
Mulldoos laugh-snorted. “Ribaldry, he says.”
“My apologies, Mulldoos. I’d forgotten your intolerance for weighty words.”
“Only intolerance I have is for windmills like yourself.”
“A windmill doesn’t spin simply to hear itself spin. It performs a service.”
Mulldoos said, “Then I stand corrected. You and the windmill got nothing in common.”
While Lloi remained generally quiet, the Syldoon continued telling tales, often punctuated by a curse or a shove or some expectorating. I looked over at the Hornmen a few tables a way, and their behavior wasn’t much different, and might actually have been worse. These exchanges must be what passes for friendship among the soldiering kind, at least when primed with ale.
One Hornman in particular seemed to have upended more cups than the others. His speech was slurred around the edges, and his cheeks and nose looked almost painted red. Earlier, I noticed that he nearly came to blows with one of his own. Now, returning from relieving himself, he brushed shoulders with a man heading in the opposite direction. This seemed inconsequential enough, but the Hornmen grabbed the other patron by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall.
Another Hornman jumped up and pulled his comrade off, though it took some prolonged and intense encouragement to persuade him to return to the table.
The scene nearly convinced me to wait, but my bladder couldn’t have been more full, so I planned as circuitous a route as possible around the Hornmen table and made my way outside. After returning a short time later much relieved (again skirting the Hornmen table with due care), I discovered the Syldoon in the middle of another… lively discussion.
Drawing on a disquieting wealth of experience with death and dying, they were arguing the worst way to go. Vendurro volunteered drowning, especially under ice. Mulldoos countered that burning trumped it, and described a corpse he’d seen with blackened skin broken open in fissures, revealing the pink flesh beneath, like a hog that had been roasting too long. Lovely. Glesswik described a man he’d seen pressed to death in a public square, the administrators turning the screws of the device extra slow, screams carrying on for half a day before the end.
After a pause, as everyone at the table was imaging that awful ending, Vendurro said, “Oh, that’s rough. To be certain. But seems like we ought to be excluding torture and the like. Not really in the spirit.”
“In the spirit? Gods be drunk! What are you going on about? Why should we exclude them?”
Vendurro looked up from his mug. “Those are designed to cause damage. Usually slow. Got no other end.”
“And weapons do?” Glesswik asked. “No, the captain mentioned dying slow from a spear in the gut, you didn’t say nothing about that. You whoreseon-you’re just bitter yours wasn’t worse, is all. You’re a bitter little bastard, you are.”
“Battle wounds is something different,” Vendurro maintained.
“How? You tell me how, I’ll buy your next drink.”
Vendurro thought for a moment before responding, “Torture, the dying bastard’s got no say, no chance. Can’t defend hisself at all. No hope. Any battle, a man’s got some say in the finality of the thing. And if he doesn’t, gets struck when he’s looking the wrong way, well, he knew that was something possible when he set to marching. But torture, it’s not, that is, I can’t rightly say, it’s just…”
Glesswik smiled broad, victorious. “Nope. No drink for you. We said death. Worst death. Nothing at all about cause.”
Hewspear had remained silent through this exchange, but he leaned forward and said, “You lads are thinking small. While those are without question poor ways to die, they’re too brief by half to be truly considered.”
Mulldoos shook his head. “Here we go. This ought to be good. Go on, go on, can’t wait.”
Hewspear ignored him and continued, “You’re sons of the plague-every one of you has seen its ravages. But the last plague was nothing compared to the one that preceded it. I’m guessing not a one of you is old enough to remember that one. When I was a boy, half my village buried the other. Elders and babes were taken in equal measure, and all those in between too. Oh, make no mistake, I’m confident that burning and pressing are painful. Intensely. But they don’t last for days or weeks. My father and I outlived my brother and mother. My brother was young, so he didn’t last as long as most in the village. Fevers, boils that rupture, phlegmatic poisons spilling from the w
ounds. Vomiting. Coughing fits, so long and hard that blood vessels burst in his throat, to give the watery bile a bit of color. His whole body itching, as if he’d rolled in nettles or rashleaf-we had to bind his arms, so he didn’t tear at his flesh, which was already a mess of pus and blood. This went on for eight days, each worst than the last. My mother lasted twice as long. There are countless awful ways to go. But I would take any of them over a bad plague. Truth be good, I won’t see another in my lifetime. You young pups won’t be so lucky.”
Our table sat silent while conversation hummed all around us, large and drunken. Finally, Glesswik muttered, “Leave it to Lieutenant Drizzlethorn over there to take the fun out of death.” He seemed genuinely disappointed that the macabre topic was at an end.
Mulldoos banged his mug on the table. “All you whoresons have the wrong of it, even old venerable father plague, there. Worst death? Seems you all are forgetting about that skeezy bastard, Rokliss.”
It took a moment for everyone to react, but when it happened, there was a raucous explosion of laughter. Vendurro slapped the table. “Oh, Rokliss. Now there was a twisted son of a whore. Oh, gods, I’d forgotten about him.”
The laughter rolled on, all save Lloi, who looked at the Syldoon soldiery around her like a mother ready to scold impertinent children. Clearly, everyone knew the tale but me.
Vendurro didn’t wait for me to ask. “Rokliss was in our company. Good soldier. Better than Glesswik, not so fine as me.” Glesswik shoved him and Vendurro nearly toppled off the bench, laughed, and continued. “Patron of the arts, he was. Real somber. Pious as a priest most days. But he had a thing for whores. Nothing peculiar there-soldiers have appetites, most have dipped their wicks in a whore a time or ten. Even them that’s married.”
Glesswik added, “Especially them that’s married.”
“So, no judgment on whoring. But the thing of it was, Rokliss had a peculiar hunger. Liked his whores big. We’re not talking a little extra stuffing or padding, neither, but busting the seams big. The fatter the better. Plenty of ugly whores in the world, but not many big enough to satisfy the appetite of Rokliss. So when he found one he had a preference for, he became a right regular.”
Mulldoos raised his mug in mock solemnity. “Andurva.”
The others hoisted their mugs as well. Vendurro said, “We ribbed him something fierce, but Rokliss never minded. Seemed to take a queer pride in his amorosity. We asked him why he didn’t rent a grain cart and pull her along behind us on campaigns, but old Rokliss, he said that he might have been a deviant, but he had limits. He’d only visit Andurva when we was stationed close. And so he did. But besides loving his swollen whores, he also loved his strong wine. Big appetites, Rokliss had, but bad combination.”
The laughter carried around the table again, and Vendurro let it run its course, a huge smile on his face. With a true storyteller’s patience, he waited for it to quiet enough for him to go on. “Well, one night, Rokliss didn’t come back to the barracks. And that just wasn’t like him at all. Like I said, real proper soldier. So we set off to track him. Checked a few taverns on the way to be sure, but we pretty much knew where we’d find him holed up. Case you hadn’t guessed, Andurva’s room at the Golden Griffin. Thing of it was, we had no idea at all how we’d find him.”
More snorts and chuckles. Vendurro rapped his knuckles on the table three times. “Whoremaster knocked on Andurva’s door. No answer. So he apologized to us, over and over as he sought the key, getting more agitated by the second. Finally finding it, he let us in. And there they were. Andurva slumped over him like a pale mountain, her hands wrapped around his ankles, snoring as loud as three men. And underneath was poor Rokliss. Head buried under her massive thighs, most of him hidden under the avalanche, except for his skinny legs. For his own sake, I’m hoping Rokliss went black first. Or at least at the same time. However it played out, passing out while licking the nether regions of the fattest whore you ever laid eyes on is a mighty bad thing to do. His last breath had to be the worst ever drawn.”
The table exploded again, and even Lloi couldn’t stifle a laugh. When the chance presented itself, I asked what became of Andurva.
Glesswik replied, “The captain’s generosity, that’s what.”
I feared the worst, but Hewspear added, eyes twinkling, “The whoremaster was horrified that one of his girls had taken the life of a Syldoon, however inadvertent. He summoned the bailiff, and was intent on having her hanged.”
“Would have taken a ballista rope,” Mulldoos said. “And that might have broke.”
“True enough. Vendurro sent another soldier back to summon the captain, Mulldoos, and me, and we arrived just a few moments after the bailiff. The flummoxed whoremaster was screaming at Andurva, who, as you might imagine, was weeping, now that she’d been sufficiently roused to discover she was being charged with the murder of her finest patron. But, upon hearing the story, and the condition the pair had been found in, it was clear Rokliss had obviously brought this upon himself. Captain Killcoin assured the whoremaster that Andurva’s life wasn’t required to satisfy us, and would in fact displease us greatly if he insisted. The whoremaster argued she shouldn’t have been so drunk, and accident or no, the death of a Syldoon was on her hands.”
Vendurro amended, “Thighs.”
“Indeed.” Hewspear continued, “We convinced the whoremaster that we wouldn’t hold her nor himself responsible. Once his fear and anger were assuaged, he calmed, but still discharged the poor girl immediately and told her to quit the city. Which she did. The captain paid for her passage by cart to the next closest city, advising her to sleep more lightly.”
“Must have been a big cart,” Glesswik said, “pulled by a lot of oxen.”
Mulldoos raised his mug again and lead the toast. “To Rokliss, then. Dumb whorelicker that he was.”
Everyone else joined even, even Lloi, though with less enthusiasm. “To Rokliss.”
The Syldoon really did seem to have an unhealthy fixation on all things whorish. Their breed of camaraderie was crude, coarse, callous, and whatever other alliterative pejorative I could summon. Cruel? Perhaps. But there was another quality there as well. Or lack of one. There was no preening or pretension at the table. Their rough humor made no excuses for itself.
Most of the patrons I’d penned for were doing their best to elevate themselves, to impress, to solicit the attention of the caste above. And though it was difficult to admit, even to myself, but my own experience was little different-growing up a bastard, I was always conscious of what others thought, and did my best to overcome any prejudice and earn as much approval as possible, especially since my own livelihood depended on me pleasing and placating my benefactors.
The Syldoon couldn’t care less what anyone thought of them, and that was refreshing. If gross.
Perhaps with a patron like the captain, I could focus on events for once, on history unfolding, on something truly significant.
I was thinking on that when I heard some commotion to my right. The curly-haired Hornman who got into a scuffle earlier was banging on a table, yelling, “Gods and devils, man, you think I want to throw my life away for that bastard? And we don’t have to. That’s what I’m telling you. Incompetent, cockless bastard.”
I jumped at the word, though he clearly hadn’t been talking about me.
The Hornman next to him looked around, and realizing his friend was attracting quite a bit of attention, laid his hand on the man’s shoulder to try to quiet him down. The curly-haired soldier slapped it away. “Lay off.” He looked around the inn, eyes red with drink. “You think I give a horse’s shit what any of these bastards think? I don’t. They can rot. The lot of them. The whole lot.”
A woman nearby whispered angrily to one of the men at her table, who promptly shook his head no.
The surly soldier noticed this silent exchange. “Your skinny bitch there got a problem?”
The man ignored the glaring woman. “No, Hornman, no. No one here has a
problem.”
“Good. That’s good.” He tapped the hilt of his sword. “That kind of problem only got one kind of solution.”
A tall soldier with wild yellow hair said, “Our friend is drunk, he means no harm. Didn’t mean no offense to the woman nor yourself. Our apologies.”
The curly-haired man turned on his companion. “Apologies? Don’t you apologize for me, Scolin, you whoreson.” He started to rise out of his chair but Hornmen on either side restrained him.
He tried unsuccessfully to pull free. “Off me, you poxy bastards! Nobody tells me when to, who to… when to speak. You hear me? Not you, not no man, and for certain, not no uppity wife of no cuckolded prick like this weasel.” To the woman again, “That your problem, skinny bitch? Not getting enough good cock?” He grabbed his crotch. “That problem I use the other sword for.”
So much for refreshing.
Syrie appeared at their table. “Now then, now then, what’s the problem here? Mugs empty again, that it?”
The curly-haired soldier grabbed a mug off the table and turned it upside down, emptying half a mug of ale onto the floor. Syrie jumped back to avoid the splash as he said, “That’s right, you ugly calf, empty again. Fill it.” One of the other soldiers laughed.
Scolin said, “Don’t pay him no mind, missy. None at all.”
She grabbed her skirts in one hand and knelt down, pulling a rag from her apron. “Not the first time these boards have tasted ale.” Her voice was pleasant enough, but her eyes were narrow and her jaw tight. She finished wiping up what she could and stood up. “Now then, maybe some hot food would help soak up some of this ale, eh? Would you gentlemen be needing some supper then?”
The curly-haired soldier said, “We’ll be needing some more ale to soak up the ale,” and he laughed.
The other soldiers joined him, all but Scolin, who said, “Food would be fine. Another round as well.”
“Short enough.” She turned and headed back to the kitchen. She emerged a short time later, tray laden with steaming food, and her father handed her two fresh mugs of ale. Another boy who I assumed was a brother trailed behind her, and it became immediately clear why he remained out of sight most of the time. All of his features were horribly asymmetrical. The left side of his face was several inches higher than the right; eyebrow, nostril, lips, ear-all horribly aligned. Body as well. Both his left arm and leg were shorter than the right, and he walked with a noticeable hitch.
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