shoulders and kicks my backside, saying, ‘Go fetch him or spend the next tenday digging latrines.’ Now, seeing as how we were in a city, I almost asked if he got permission from the mayor for those new latrines, but I kept that to myself.”
Glesswik burped and added, “Good thing, too. You’d still be digging them.”
“True enough. So off I went. But I wasn’t about to go fetch the captain by my lonesome, so I pull Glesswik with me. It was late then, after curfew, and the streets were mostly deserted. Watch should have been out patrolling, but if they were, we saw no sign. We round a corner, getting near the tavern, and not too far ahead of us, we see four street toughs barring the captain’s way. Now, not sure how it is where you’re from, but in Graymoor and most cities like them in these parts, the street toughs like to arm themselves with lash balls. Long piece of leather, one end looped around the wrist, the other tied to a weight of some sort. Sometimes iron in the shape of an egg, sometimes a small bag full of lead pellets, sometimes a little stone wheel, like a tiny millstone. Quick, quiet, easy to hide, and more than capable of cracking a bone or three. Handy in a street fight, not handy for much else.
“Now, these toughs, they drop their lash balls, practically in unison, like they been practicing the move for effect half their years, thinking they got themselves an easy mark, lone man staggering. The captain, though, he starts to laughing, looking at the weights and the leather lashes, laughing like they popped daisies out of their sleeves. Hand on his knee to steady himself, he’s laughing so hard. Then he straightens and says something we can’t hear. Gless and me, we start sprinting, but before we even make it halfway there to help, the captain rips that wicked flail off his belt. Flips the handle up with one hand, snatches it out of the air with the other. Most nights, he does that smoother than silk, but that night, he caught it on the belt hook some.
“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
