Chapter 9

The pain woke me slowly. Every breath I took felt like knives cutting into me. I lay still and tried to assess the damage. At least a couple broken ribs for sure, the guard must have taken to kicking me after I passed out. I felt like I was covered in bruises from head to toe, and judging from the wetness of my pants I’d pissed myself. Running my tongue along the inside of my mouth verified that I had indeed lost most of my teeth. I’d lost my baby teeth naturally at a much younger age in my last life, and I know Hammer had all his adult teeth by five, but I'd never lost a tooth in this world until now, and now I’d lost almost all of them at once.

I was reminded of my time as an infant, eating was going to suck for a while again. Try not to choke, I reminded myself. Speaking of which, I spit out a tooth I’d discovered wedged between my cheek and gums. It joined a small puddle of blood in front of my face. I heard the muffled sound of laughter that seemed to be coming from the next room. Where was I?

I tried to open my eyes, but my left eye was caked shut with blood and wouldn’t open. My right eye showed me a storeroom. There were a couple of chairs stacked in front of me, too nice for the brothel. The inn maybe? I heard laughter again, it actually seemed to be coming from above me. Ah, the inn’s basement then.The inn was almost the only place in town with a basement, so that had to be it. I tried to sit up and discovered my hands were bound tight behind me. I lay back down in the sticky puddle of my own blood. It hurt too much to move, my breath rasped in and out with every inhalation causing me more pain. I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute. I passed out again almost immediately.

I came to when a couple of big loggers picked me up off the ground. They carried me effortlessly between them by my bound arms. As if just one of them wouldn’t do the job fine by himself, as small as I am. “Careful boys, no need to rough him up any more than he already is,” said the mayor, following behind us as they walked up the steps. The light as we came through the door at the top of the steps briefly blinded me.

The inn was well lit by a large number of candles and lanterns, but both shuttered windows were dark, so it must be night. The tables and chairs in the room had been pushed to the edge of the room and a large number of men stood in a circle around the open floor. The loggers carrying me walked to a chair opposite the hearth and sat me down roughly.

I groaned in pain as it jostled my various injuries. Someone behind me pushed me forward, sawed away at whatever was binding my hands together, and they came free. I drew my hands in front of me and tried to rub the feeling back into them. They were a bit purple but seemed to be getting their color back as I tried to rub the numb useless things back to life. I noticed that the pinky on my left hand was snapped ninety degrees sideways, obviously dislocated. That’s gonna hurt when I can feel it again. I looked around the room with my good eye and saw that most of the town’s more prominent businessmen were in attendance, sitting or standing in a wide circle around the periphery of the room. Even Jeck was there, grimacing at the sight of me.

I was starting to get the feeling back in my hands. I was right, my pinky finger is killing me, I thought to myself. I clenched my hands as much as I could and released them. Finally, able to feel them more or less, I grabbed my dislocated pinky finger with my opposite hand and snapped it back into place with an audible crack. This got a wince from most of the men watching. I didn’t even flinch. What’s a little more pain at this point? I Just looked up and mumbled through my broken teeth and swollen lips. “What brings all you fine gentlemen out on such a pleasant evening?”

I heard Cutter start laughing and glanced to the side to see him sitting with Anvil and the mayor off to my right. The mayor looked pissed and stood up. “We’re here because you murdered a nobleman, son, and murder has consequences in this town.” He sat back down, righteously, crossing his arms over his chest. I rubbed at my left eye, managing to remove enough blood to unstick my eyelid and blinked heavily a few times. While doing that my hand brushed my nose and I realized it was bent out of place. I crunched my nose straight with a practiced hand and went back to rubbing at my eye. It seemed my eyeball itself was intact, though the surrounding tissue was swollen so much I could barely see out of it anyway.

Fuck it, not like I can make this situation much worse. “Four things,” I responded. “One: I’m not your son, asshole. Two: It was self defense, fuck him. Three: If murder had consequences in this town then Jeck and Cutter would be sitting in this chair along with who knows how many others of y’all. And four: I thought I wasn’t allowed in your fine establishment?” I grinned at the mayor cheekily and felt blood running down my chin from my scabbed lips as they cracked open and bled. The mayor’s face grew progressively more red as I spoke and Cutter’s laughter got more and more uproarious.

“Love this kid,” managed Cutter through his laughter. “Definitely Fucker’s boy, no question.” That got a grumble of assent from a number of the men in the room. I heard the words “bastard” and “Traveler” among their mutters.

“First witness,” the mayor ground out between gritted teeth. The guard that had beat the shit out of me took a seat in the chair in front of the hearth opposite me. “Tell us what happened in your own words, guard Tarza,” said the mayor.

“The count’s son, Lord Tyg d'Lake, had paid the brothel keeper good gold for that boy for the night, and the boy killed him. What more do you need to know?”

“Bullshit!” yelled Jeck. “The boy turned him down flat, and I would’ve only gotten half if he HAD taken the money. You find any gold on the boy? No! So that’s obviously a lie!”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The mayor nodded. “True, the boy barely had a handful of coppers on him when he was brought in. Guess this one’s a liar, bring out the other one.”

“Now just wait a minute!” yelled the guard as he was dragged from the chair and the other guard took his place. Tarza was unceremoniously expelled out the front door, and it was closed behind him. I could hear him yelling incoherently from the other side.

“Guard Leoc, please tell us what happened in your own words.” prompted the mayor calmly.

The guard took a second to think, “I was with a whore upstairs when I heard my lord yelling for his guards. By the time I got outside he was bleeding bad, and Tarza was kicking the shit out of the kid. I yelled at Tarza to help me with my lord, and we tried to stop the bleeding. There was a little fire going out there so I used a burning stick to cauterize the wounds, but the cut to his thigh nicked that big artery, and there ain’t no fixin’ that once it’s cut.”

“Got that right.” stated Cutter, nodding knowingly.

The guard nodded back appreciatively. “My lord was yelling about how the kid cut his dick off and how that big dog ate his dick. Then he started getting woozy from bleeding and just kept repeating ‘ate my dick, it ate my dick’ over and over until he passed out and died right there out back a tha brothel.” He shrugged. “That’s pretty much it I guess.”

There was a brief silence, and then everyone cracked up laughing. “He ate his dick!” and “Dickeater Dog” were stated with hilarity by a few men and the laughter kept getting louder. The guard looked a bit chagrined but couldn’t help a small smile himself.

“Thank you guard Leoc, that’ll be all,” said the mayor. The guard nodded, got up, and stepped back to the wall where he’d been standing previously. I guess he doesn’t get kicked out if he’s not a lying asshole. “Mister Jeck, if you’d please take the witness chair.” Jeck nodded and took a seat. “In your own words if you please, Mister Jeck.”

Jeck thought for a bit and then began, “Well, Nameless came in and ordered food like he does sometimes when he has the coin. I got him some of my delicious stew and an apple like he likes, and he’d just started eatin’ when that nobleman came over, sat down, and bought him a drink. Something about a ‘drink for him and his friend’. Nameless drank tha drink, told the lord he wasn’t his friend, and went back ta eatin’. Nobleman asked how much for Nameless for the night and I told him Nameless don't whore. The Noble dropped more gold than I ever seen before on the bar and said he wanted Nameless for the night. Nameless told him he wasn’t for sale. Then the boy grabbed his apple and ran to his room right quick. Never seen the boy leave stew behind before, so I think he was pretty rattled. The boy came down later when his Mother went up to use the room with guard Tarza. Boy went out back through the kitchen. After that, I was workin’ the bar when the nobleman came down from Ann’s room, drank a drink, and then went out back to piss, or so he said. Couple minutes later he’s screaming for his guards and they come flyin’ down the stairs and go runnin' out.

By the time I went out back to see what was going on, Nameless was beat bloody in the woodworker's yard and the nobleman was all, ‘ate my dick, ate my dick’, and then he was dead and I brung the boy straight over here so that guard Tarza wouldn’t murder him while he was passed out.” Dang, guess I owe Jeck for saving my life. Who woulda thought.

“Thank you Jeck, that’ll be all.” said the mayor magnanimously.

“Delicious?!” whispered one of the surrounding men loudly. The men, by and large, chuckled in agreement.

“Alright Nameless, your turn.” The mayor gestured to the chair. I laboriously dragged myself to my feet and limped over to sit back down. What an asshole, like I couldn’t testify from the other side of the room. “In your own words, boy.”

I nodded, “I came back into town from training with Knick Redwater and got paid my three coppers right about where I’m sitting now. I took my hard earned coin back over to Smudge’s since I’m not welcome here.”

I explained how I’d bought my food before the nobleman propositioned me and was flatly refused before I’d made my escape. I mentioned how as I was leaving I heard the nobleman beating on Ann for not being able to get him hard. Told them about cooking up my sparrow on a little fire I made out back and how he’d attacked me from behind, wincing as I rubbed my swollen left ear. I explained how I’d woken up just in time to avoid having my face raped. I mimed how I’d cut his dick off with a quick slash from my sheath to a point just to the right side of my head with the blade held vertical, to which Cutter nodded and muttered, "rising tide." And then I drew a spinning parabola in the air with my finger to describe the high arc the man’s genitals had taken before being snatched out of the air by Dog. I told them how I ran, got boloed and beaten, and then woke up downstairs spitting out what was left of my teeth. The men looked at each other as they considered my story murmuring amongst themselves.

“Sounds about right,” said Cutter to general agreement from the rest of them.

The mayor stood up. “So, we in agreement that this was self defense?” he asked, looking around at the gathered men. It seemed to be a general consensus. Even the guard was looking kind of apologetic about the whole thing.

“Fuck that noble anyway. He buggered my second son up the ass, year before last, and the boy ain’t been right since,” firmly stated one of the loggers. “I say we let Nameless off scot free. Hell, I’ll buy him a drink.” Some of the men laughed but most of them didn’t.

The mayor shook his head, “No, even if the lord DID have it coming to him, the boy laid a hand on a noble. If we do nothing, the nobility will come down hard on the whole town, and that’s trouble you do NOT want.” This got general agreement again. Even Cutter was nodding, though he didn’t look happy about it. “Since it’s a noble that died, we’re pretty much left with two options. Option one, we just execute the boy, much as it’d grieve me. And option two, lashes and exile.” I felt my face blanche. Oh, fuck. “All in favor of execution?” A half dozen or so men muttered their assent. “Lashes and exile?” The majority stated their agreement. “Lashes and exile it is. How many lashes?”

“Twenty,” stated a logger.

“Fifteen,” from Dav, the woodworker from the house next door to the brothel.

“Thirty,” said the wrinkled old orchard owner. “Don’t want the nobles to think we went easy on him.” A few men muttered about how he had a point.

“It’s the boy’s tenth birthday tomorrow,” said Cutter slowly. “Ten seems appropriate, and explainable to the nobility if they ask. We can tell them what a shitty tenth birthday he had in order to make it seem more cruel and to emphasize his age. That makes us look hard on folks that hurt the nobility and makes the noble look like an asshole for fucking with a kid.” And that got the majority of men agreeing with him. Even the old orchard owner winced and agreed that that was a good story.

“I vote we all agree the boy magically escaped when nobody was looking!” I yelled frantically in vain, though I did get a few chuckles.

And so it was decided I was to get ten lashes for my tenth birthday present.