Jeff Salyards - Scourge of the Betrayer

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 wounds. 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.”