He could hear the guards passing close on the other side, hurrying to take cover, and knew they were wasting too much time. He grabbed the kid and jumped down the well, grateful for the thick gloves that let him slide down the rope quickly to the bottom.
Bone dry.
He had lost his bearings so his hand smacked into the rough stone walls at first, the kid still crowded against him, before finding the opening that led down to the reservoir it once shared with the Palace. He had to duck to move forward, but the darkness encroached on them fast.
“Toss me the Flame, Brat,” he said.
“If you need light, just say so,” the kid argued back.
“It’s odd enough that it glows like it does, but the blue is way too telling if we run into anyone,” he explained.
He could have just yanked it away and let the kid pout, but he didn’t intend to keep the kid in the dark forever. Kids weren’t big on common sense and that one could bite them in the ass. The oversight, not the kid.
“Why do you think it turns blue like that? And… and kills people,” the kid asked.
“You already asked that and I’d wager it’s shaped like a weapon for that reason. Now hush. I need to hear what the hell is down here with us,” he said quietly.
“Did you hear something?” Brat asked, making him realize he phrased it wrong.
“I won’t if you keep—” was as far as he got before something wrapped around his ankle and yanked him straight to the ground.
The impact jarred him enough that he dropped the Flame, instantly plunging them into darkness. Still being dragged forward, he fumbled for his sword and drew it, hacking indiscriminately towards whatever had grabbed him.
“Mister, what happened?” Brat keened, knowing something was wrong.
“Find the damn Flame!” he ground out, clenching his teeth to keep from biting his tongue.
He felt his sword connect and a whine of pain pierced the tunnel. The pressure on his ankle loosened and he took the opportunity to yank himself free, rolling back onto his shoulders and kicking back up onto his feet.
“I, I can’t see anything!” Brat complained.
“That’s the fucking point!” he shouted back, hearing something whiz past his head, a rancid heat at his throat. He threw his shoulder up to protect his neck and felt large jaws clamp onto his shoulder.
The light guards under his cloak held up but dented painfully into his skin. He heard another screech as he once again hit whatever attacked him. It had only reeled back for a moment, a wet warmth spraying him as it clamped on again. This time, he grabbed onto some huge scaled head. Without seeing, he stood a better chance of keeping it where he could attack it.
At least he thought so until he felt the massive body wrapping around him and realized it was a giant snake constricting him. He hacked at it with ruthless swings, hearing its enraged cries of agony. It worked its jaws in a chewing motion, causing him to cry out too, but he felt with his hands that the jaw was not completely latched onto him. He slid his sword into the opening, growing dizzy from the squeezing sensation that was numbing his lower extremities and drove his sword up into the roof of its mouth.
With an excruciating scream, he felt the thing grow slack, but it wasn’t dead yet.
A blue light suddenly bathed the tunnel and he almost wished he couldn’t see the huge crested snake still. He gathered his wits, digging the sword deeper, aiming for the base of its brain.
Brat screamed and he knew he had to think fast.
“Close your eyes, kid. Whatever you do, don’t use the Flame. I might not come back if you do it again,” he instructed, as carefully as he could with the exertion of carving into the creature.
He couldn’t see where the kid was, but he knew he found the spot he was looking for when the creature went limp and crashed to the floor.
He shoved away the tail that still pinned him and saw Brat kneeling across the chamber, eyes closed and great wet rivulets coursing down those cheeks. The kid sobbed but held still.
He felt a twinge in his chest and knew he didn’t deserve the trust this kid so freely gave. When he gently touched Brat’s shoulder, the kid’s eyes shot open as they jerked with fear.
Seeing him, the kid launched up, wrapping their arms around his neck so fiercely that it nearly knocked him backwards. He stood there awkwardly as the kid wept with genuine relief before his hands moved of their own accord. He stroked the kid’s back, patting it.
“I’m covered in blood, kid,” he reminded.
Brat sniffed and let go, wiping away a trail of snot before holding the Flame out to give back.
“I felt it this time, whatever comes out and takes souls. I felt it and I held it back,” the kid said, the need for approval there mixed with a weary pride.
He nodded and patted the kid’s head.
“You did well,” he said, nodding as he cleaned his sword on his tunic before re-sheathing it.
Brat tried to peer around him to get a better look at it and he blocked the kid, grabbing their arm and pulling them further in.
As they descended, the tunnels grew damper and he knew they were headed towards the reservoir. They reached a large bank of water and he stopped the kid, watching the still surface for movement.
Once the silence had grown thick, he stepped into the water, walking to where it met his waist and started cleaning off the sticky coagulant of drying blood. The tunic was done for so he tossed the cloak onto a dry ledge and set about unbuckling his guards and the pile grew. He peeled off the tunic, hissing at the pain in his shoulder and he heard the kid gasp again.
The bruise on his shoulder was pretty dark already and the teeth had pierced in a couple of places but the wounds were already done oozing. The shallow slashes still on his body from the fight in the catacombs were inconsequential.
Brat waded closer, frowning up at him.
“Poisonous?” the kid asked, and the grim look on the kid’s face made him smile.
“No… Grab another tunic out of my pack,” he told the kid.
He finished splashing water on himself and the kid came back with a little vial and some clean bandages. He started to protest, but the kid shot him a look that reminded him of one his own. Their mom was gonna hate that.
The kid started dabbing drops of the salve onto the wounds and when they were satisfied, the kid wrapped it with all of the skill of a doctor. Reminded him once again that the kid hadn’t had an easy life.
He rotated his shoulder despite the protest of muscle and nodded as the kid went to get him another tunic. The kid came back and he reached out, wiping a streak of blood from the kid’s cheek. Brat flinched at first, then seemed to soak up the kindness as if to save it for the times it came much scarcer.
Once again, after shrugging on the tunic, the kid helped him back into the guards, even banging out the dented one so it wouldn’t reopen the fresh wounds.
“How much longer is this tunnel?” the kid asked, clearly anxious to get out of there.
“It’ll be a few hours before we get to the storeroom it branches into. Even if we get there quicker, we’ll have to wait until sundown to head in. Until the King turns in, we run too much risk of being seen,” he told the kid.
He hadn’t really planned on divulging any of the plan to the kid, but he figured Brat earned it by now. He still had no intention of scaring the kid with the dangers ahead, but he could see the kid was already starting to get the gist of it and anything that kept Brat calm was ideal. It was about to get a lot worse.
They reached the cap covering the well in the storeroom, but he was relieved to see it wasn’t sealed just covered. Nevertheless, he could still hear a faint commotion coming from the kitchen servants that were still cleaning up after the evening meal. He hunkered down under the cap, Brat following suit, and he dug out more of the rations he had bought in Central Market.
He tossed the kid the bigger bag and the kid ate, nerves stealing away the urge to even attempt that absurd whispering.
>
It didn’t take long before the wait had the kid fumbling and scuffling with impatience and he couldn’t just keep plugging the kid’s mouth with food to distract them. He could distantly recall killing a pet that way. First time he learned that some things would literally eat themselves to death.
“Hey, mister, how did you get the scars?” the kid asked now.
It wasn’t exactly the sort of story you told a kid, but this one was a little tougher than most. Whiny and weak and clumsy, sure, but not the sort to faint at a story.
He had been fourteen years old when the Triumvirate of Rathbern had murdered his parents.
His parents were aristocrats, thought themselves top tier in political circles. They rubbed elbows with all the ‘right people’ until they became the wrong people.
As a young lord, he had spent his days fencing with those ridiculous little epees, riding horses, and picking fights with the lower classes. He had been brought up to always believe he would be a wealthy heir, titled and peerless, and none had ever thought to teach him anything else.
The night they had been murdered, he had snuck out to boff some duke’s daughter and he had started to climb back up into his window when he saw the men stabbing at the pillows he had bunched up to resemble his sleeping body. He had fallen backwards, nearly breaking his own neck as he fled. In an abandoned barn on the edge of his parents’ land, he hid uncertain of where to go. He had tried to return, wondering if his parents knew that someone had tried to kill him when he overheard the truth.
His parents had been labeled traitors, their bloodlines sentenced to execution and they knew that he was at large. He had tried to turn to a young boy he had called a friend, but the kid not only refused out of fear, but told the Knights of Rathbern where he was hiding.
He wasn’t sure how far they would chase him, but he made his way down the western coast, selling off what jewelry and finery he had on his person just so he could eat. A pampered life hadn’t taught him how to budget or haggle, so by the time he made his way down to Northern Uther, he had exhausted his resources.
From the get-go, he learned he was pretty bad at stealing and had only been lucky enough to have the quickness of youth on his side to get away. It had never occurred to him to sell his body until he had passed a brothel, surprised to see young men plying their trade as shamelessly as the women.
Well and good. At fourteen, he only saw stars in his eyes at the prospect of wealthy women that paid him for something every teenage boy was eager to give. He had waltzed into that brothel, puffed up on the idea of easy money and had offered himself up, sure he was going to be the golden boy of whoring.
His first job had been to entertain a ‘visiting dignitary’ from Orendon. He had been scrubbed up, oiled and wrapped in nothing but a length of white cloth, blindfolded and sat in a chair. He sat there so long waiting that his ass had gone numb and he had thrilled at the sound of the door opening and closing, footsteps taking their time to reach him.
He heard nothing but the heavy sound of breathing until a finger tickled up his inner thigh, finding its way up. He was semierect by the time the hand clasped around him.
Large, rough hands.
In the urgency of shock, he had knocked the chair out from under him as he shot up, pulling away the blindfold to see a pudgy bald man frowning at him. In his panic and rage, he started to bludgeon the man with his fists. He beat the man bloody and had fled through the second story window when the man’s guards had burst into the room.
His ankle had been sprained as he leapt through the window, still repulsed at the thought of the man’s hand wrapped around him. He shook with terror, running as hard as he could. After running for hours, he had thought he was in the clear, had found his way into a granary and tore up burlap sacks to bind his swollen ankle. The last thing he remembered there was the sound thump to the back of his head.
Water dripping onto his forehead, he woke in a dank prison cell. He made a lot of noise, biting down on the urge to announce a bunch of titles that were more likely to get him killed than freed. The name he had known his whole life was useless to him.
When the guards did come, he was hauled in front of the man who had thought to touch him and given a choice before the courts.
Fight or die.
Coliseum fights were nothing new to him. His father had taken him to many. Men fighting men to the death. Times had changed and when he was led out to the arena to fight, he saw the enclosure, far larger than any man would need.
The door rattled on its hinges, the scraping of claws and the gurgling sounds of hungry growling… They’d tossed him little more than a pigsticker of a knife, laughing as they fled.
This was no fight; it was a feeding.
Before the fight even started, he knew he was dead. He had pissed down his leg in fright, but the laughter of the onlookers had sealed something in him and his thoughts shut down.
He felt a feral thrill as the door crashed down like a drawbridge and the Gardell charged out. The enormous black dog was easily twice his height, its foreleg alone bigger around than he was. Its lip quivered into a slobbering snarl as it lunged back to leap.
The first useful thought he had was that the beast had a scar over one eye, rendering it useless.
When it lunged, he had been quick to congratulate himself for rolling under it. When it spun around, he had gathered a handful of dirt to throw into its good eye.
As it turned out, dirt had a really short throwing range and he had only managed to get it in his own eyes when the Gardell’s breath blew it back in his face.
He stumbled back, not realizing that tripping when he did had saved him from a fatal swipe, but the next had been the one to lay open the left side of his body.
The cheers in the Coliseum told him that his time was almost at an end, but he felt the knife in his hand.
He threw it in the direction of the cheering crowd, hoping he at least killed one of the jeering bastards, but he heard a yelp. His vision was returning and the Gardell was swiping at the spot where its good eye was dripping with a pink mixture of blood and the clear vitreous fluid. He barely had time to wonder at his luck before he charged forward, stepping on the beast’s nose and propelling himself onto its head.
The Gardell tried to shake him off but he had grabbed onto the ear and held tight, reaching for the dagger and yanking it out. The beast’s pitiful cries weakened him for a moment until a growl snapped him out of it. He shifted his position and started piercing the back of the Gardell’s neck repeatedly.
He screamed and stabbed, great blasts of blood filling his mouth and covering him, but still he cried out. He could never remember how long he had spent stabbing it even after the brain stem had severed and the beast died. The guard had been afraid to stop him and the crowd had hushed in apprehension.
He had been tossed out into the streets afterward, only hearing the mumbles that he would be dead soon enough himself. His scars still oozed in steady gushes as his own stupid heart pumped his life’s blood out of his body.
His will to live was stronger than he imagined. He had seen a glow in the distance and had crawled towards it, seeing the smith there at his forge. He had drawn one of the pokers and cried in agony as he started to seal it before he passed out.
Death did not have Rain Maidens waiting for him that time. Death was fire and anger and pain, swirling visions of his parents’ heads impaled on poles but bobbing around with masquerade masks and laughing, a danse macabre. Sulfuric smells and fire crackling with the cackling of some amused demon that hosted the party.
When the fever passed, the man had told him he was touchand-go for a week. He had cauterized the kid’s wounds himself but did not bother with bandages. The severely burned skin would just slough off with them if he tried so the smith had put some strange noxious goo on them to protect them while they healed.
“You got a name, brat?” the man asked.
He thought on it for a minute and shook his head.
&nbs
p; “Don’t need one,” he finally decided.
“Looks like you could stand to take on an odd job or two,” the smith added, tossing a bag of coins that hit him square in the chest. He watched dumbfounded as they hit the floor.
He never learned the man’s name. His life as a mercenary had started and survival was often not what you knew, but what you did with it. As it turned out, he at least had a knack for the most important task he needed to stay alive. The devil’s own luck.
Brat was hugging their legs, nodding as he concluded his story.
“You don’t know my name either,” Brat said with a pout.
“Names are labels you use to make yourself think you know all you need to know. Male, female, strong, weak, all things that carry too many dangerous assumptions. Faces are the things to watch…” he murmured, almost as surely as if it were a mantra. “I don’t remember things for very long. The fever did some permanent damage. Names are one of those odd things I never retain.”
It wasn’t just names that sometimes eluded him, but there were some weaknesses that no one wants to admit, even to themselves. As long as he could get away with faking it, what did it matter?
“So you don’t even remember yours?” the kid asked in awe.
He glared at the kid.
“What I said then was true enough. That was another life and never mine. If I ever took another name, I wouldn’t remember it anyway,” he said, flatly. Whenever he thought of who he was, past or present, it would freeze him to the spot. He stopped trying a long time ago. It was a practice in futility.
The kid pouted, but looked up at the well cap, shuffling to their feet.
“Hey, I haven’t heard anyone up there in a while, have you?” Brat whispered.
He bit back a sigh of admonishment for the stupid whispering again.
“No, but stay put. I’m going first,” he said, carefully pushing the cap up, glad that the hinges didn’t whine in protest.
He winced at the clatter of whatever had been carelessly deposited on the top of the cap. He should have expected that without its former use, someone might have found another.
Brat’s face fell at the thought of being left behind and he caught himself reaching down. The kid’s arm flew up in an instant and he grabbed Brat, hauling them up to deposit them on the floor beside the well, leaving the cap off in case they had to flee. It probably would have been better to leave the kid down there until he had made sure the coast was clear.
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