21st Day of Spring, 514AV
14th Bell
Just Outside Sunberth
14th Bell
Just Outside Sunberth
The wagon had been recently attacked; that much Nate could work out by himself. The blood from the still bodies around it was red and wet and steamed in the humid air. Crows still circled and called to each other joyously, wheeling back and forth, flitting from and between gouts of greasy smoke from the endless garbage fire.
More obviously, there was still some life there in the gutted carcass of former commerce.
"Stop the wagon."
"Nate, we're behind as it is-"
"We won't be long, and besides," the big man said with a quick, familiar grin just before he hopped down onto the cobbles, "The Three Borough Boys are always too quick when it comes to strippin' these things. Probably left a few things."
That certainly set Bryan's eyebrows shooting upward in silent contemplation, as Nate knew it would. The ol' Sunberth fallback: play on greed. Never fails.
For his own part, he started moving towards the ravaged conveyance, sliding his mace out from his belt and down at his side. The fearsome weight of it was a reassurance, knobbly head swinging lightly back and forth despite his grip. Battered and pitted about the flanges and weaves in the metal, it wasn't a pretty weapon, but in the hands of a normal-sized man it could crush a skull or break a limb.
And Nate wasn't normal sized.
His own hand fingered the kukri at his back but he let it be. Always leave something in reserve, that's what Lippy Eddie always told him before the fights in the Way-Back-When. Don't let them see everything you've got. Let them plan around what they can see... and just when they're committed, you hit 'em with the rest.
Nate wasn't expecting much trouble from a cart of corpses, but you never knew-
"... water..."
The single sign of life left in that site of slaughter and theft wheezed up at him, holding his stomach within himself. Nate looked down and the delirious, dying man thought it chilling how brusquely the huge fellow eyed him and his mortal quandary. In fact, they flitted over him with indecent haste, moving on to the cart itself a moment later... and the corpses still draped across them.
"... please... w-water..."
"Don't see much point in wasting water on dead men," Nate said, tone grave but words heartless, quick hands rifling through pockets slick with blood and bereft of joy for him, "Damn... fucking Boys are getting more thorough..."
"... p... please... I-"
"Oh, alright, alright..." Nate grumbled and rifled around between the driver and his guard until he found a sticky, stained waterskin. He handed it down to the man and trembling fingers took it. "Not like they're going to need it, after all."
A few deep slugs and the doomed traveler felt like he had been restored. Were he one to succumb to such blind hope, he may have believed it... but when he looked down at the steaming, stinking pit of back blood and pus and jagged flesh that they'd left him with... the educated part of his mind sighed and shrugged its shoulders.
"I'm... going to die, aren't I?"
"That water helped your voice, at least," Nate remarked conversationally, ignoring the dying man to clout Bryan around the back of the head instead. "Check the cart, y'idiot. Nothing under the seats."
"I told you before, lad, when I was a boy, I found-"
"Cheva's fuckin' cunt, that was one time, when you were a kid, and every time after that you've found fuck all!"
"Well how d'you know that if you never let me check?"
He was going mad. Surely, that must have been the case. A thousand leagues from home and the dry, cool home of parchment he knew, Denis thought his mind had broken utterly. Was he seeing some theater duo instead of scavengers? They jabbered and snarled back and forth until the older man with the orange whiskers scampered off, grousing and grumbling, to claw through the back of the already-ravaged wagon.
"They took... everything... killed... the men..."
"Yep, didn't bugger around with witnesses," Nate said airily, shaking his head a little in professional critique. "No need for it, y'know. Leaving bodies lying everywhere like this. But you try telling some of these kids that, eh? Knife you just to make sure the blade's sharp."
"Can... can you...?"
The big brute' eyes softened for just a moment, but that was all. He knelt down by Denis and gently pulled his hand aside, ignoring the wincing and the shuddering flesh. Nathaniel was hardly a sawbones but he'd been around wounds a plenty since he was just a scrap of bones clawing for pennies. He inspected it from a few angles, taking a swig of the liberated water... and then shook his head.
"Not without a sawbones, and you've not got any coin left, have ye?"
"W... Well... I could... er..."
That big, brutally honest face stared him down until Denis looked away. Nate knew what was coming: the waterworks. The full reality of what the future held for Denis had arrived... and there was precious little of it. Thin shoulders bobbed up and down and like always, the big man felt... awkward. Uncomfortable. He knew he should console the man, like Kay would, but really... what was he to do?
Sawbones'll want at least ten or twenty gold-rimmed to sort him, and that means the rent will go wanting. No... not worth that. Not for some stranger.
She would think differently.
Nate bore his teeth for a moment and resisted the urge to punch himself in the temple. Gods, how he hated that woman for her insidious, treacherous, outrageous crusade to make him... decent! Nate didn't know how she could have even survived this long in Sunberth. Taking in strays-
Like you.
-being charitable without thought of reward-
Like she showed you.
-not thinking practically, or pragmatically, or even wisely; sacrificing that all on the altar of "doing the right thing". Stupid, bloody unworkable philosophy, doubly and triply so in the fat old whore that was Sunberth.
"Ah... fuck..."
"'ere, what's this?"
Bryan held up the odd little dish with the triangle sticking onto it, frowning as he saw Nate slide his arm under the dying man. A groan that seemed to rip from his throat like a saw would have made any other man wince but Bryan just rolled his eyes and growled: "Fuck do you think you're doing?"
"Syna dial."
"Eh?"
"That. S'a Syna dial."
Having one of those unfortunate moments he'd regret later - when the left side of his brain that wanted to know what his newest trophy was overrode the right side that was loudly asking "What the fuck is that big shit doing putting trash on the wagon?!" - Bryan frowned at the odd little device... then noticed the tiny numerals etched into the edge of the top.
"Oh... how's it work."
"Put it on the ground at the right spot, and Syna's rays hit the triangle-" he talked as he worked, laying the groaning, bleeding man atop their cargo of sacks and bags "-and when they do, the shadow tells you what time it is."
"Oh... well, what-hey, what're you doing?!"
"Taking him to a sawbones. Still got time."
"Gods, man, are you fucking mad?!" Nate tried to move around him but the skinny carter stepped defiantly into his path. "Oi?! I'm talking to you! Boss won't be happy! Wasting time, getting blood on the goods, us interfering with-"
He didn't hit him. He didn't even hurt him. Nate just hefted his mace... and rested the gnarled, dented head made of steel on the smaller man's shoulder. Eyes just as cold and hard looked down at him, and when he smiled again, they didn't thaw a degree.
"Tell him I threatened you. Think he'd believe that?"
Bryan flashed a glare at the big man. He was a Sunberth lad, too, and having some big brute get growly with him didn't make his breeches drip piss like most others. But he knew when the idiot had an idea in his head, and once it was there... well...
"... yeah. And I think you'll be out of a fucking job by tomorrow." He huffed and jumped back up to his seat, Nate resuming his position. A few flicks of the reins later and the horses were plodding off back towards the docks, leaving the blood and blacken behind them, the crows to return to their feast. "Not a smart idea, boy. Everyone's got rent to pay..."
Nate nodded thoughtfully at that, running a hand over his close-cut hair, feeling the strata of old cuts and bumps under the scratchy fuzz. Money, ah, well... that was the eternal struggle. But would old Strabo fire him? Nah, probably not... well, maybe... but if so, well...
"Oh, I dunno..." He said quietly, and with a glint in his green eyes that made Bryan both frown and turn away. "Always a way for a man to make money..."
He cracked his knuckles, though it would be bells before he'd need to. It felt familiar, and... oddly justified, in a way. Perhaps even divinely-prescribed. He would do a good deed because of Kay, and so he could do one for her in return, and make sure they kept the roof over their heads... Nate could be Nate.
But just because it was necessary. No other reason. No, he was well outta that. Honest.
Yeah. Sure.