It was a new day, and Dallen allowed himself the faintest of smiles and satisfaction at what he was about to do. It wasn’t much, but if he didn’t smile at his little act, he would start thinking too long about why he even had to do it in the first place, and would boil up a violent anger instead. And that wouldn’t do anyone any good — so he went with small satisfaction.
Lomund, Ernolt, and Graf were hanging around a few other of the baron’s men in the small range within the upper walls, in the shadow of the great stone keep. Graf watched Dallen with dull eyes, seeming to be the only one who noticed him. So Dallen grabbed their attention.
“Oy!” Heads snapped towards him. Ernolt’s weasely little face scrunched up, and Dallen had to fight the urge to chuck the item he held right at his dome. Instead, he tossed it underhand towards Lomund. The big man caught the small leather pouch with a soft thud and the sound of clicking metal.
“What the hell is this?” Lomund looked down at the pouch in his hands. He pulled the drawstring open, peering inside. Dallen could see a hint of the copper coins shimmering from within.
“Irne’s tax payments,” Dallen said, resting his hands on his belt. “Found that little stash of hers that we were looking for.”
Lomund cocked an eyebrow. Ernolt narrowed his eyes with suspicion.
“You found and took that all on your own?” the little man asked. “Didn’t think you had the stones.”
“Not about stones,” said Dallen. “Just patience. Been watching the house for the last few days, figuring Irne might come back to visit it after getting away. Figured she might’ve had a stash somewhere of the coins she could scrape together from working with old Kitz.”
“We’ve been watching that house for a few days as well,” said Ernolt, still full of suspicion. “Didn’t see the girl at all. Or you for that matter.”
“Well,” said Dallen, “that’s the point, isn’t it? I saw you near the house — you lot are hard to miss. Which means Irne saw you, and knew to stay away. If a hunter wants to catch his prey, he can’t scare it off by letting it know he’s there.”
Ernolt’s face twisted up a little more, but Lomund spoke before the little shit could get another word in.
“We tore that place apart looking for anything valuable. Didn’t find anything close to a stash of coins.”
“That’s because it wasn’t in the house. Little Irne hid it in a well concealed crack in the nearby cliffside, behind some bushes. Never would’ve found it myself, if she hadn’t gone right to it.”
“Heh. Crafty little one.” Lomund tossed the coin bag up and caught it, weighing the contents.
“There’s enough in there for her missed tax payments. Plus a little extra — I think of it as a collection fee.”
Lomund nodded his head, and the mood of the group seemed to shift towards approval. Except for Ernolt, who scowled and scoffed, but said no more. And Graf, who just watched Dallen, dull-eyed and stone-faced.
“Good work, that is,” said Lomund. “Though I gotta say, Ernolt has a point…I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Dallen gave Lomund a smile, hoping it would hide the rising ire behind it.
“What can I say? Sometimes I surprise myself.”
In truth, he didn’t have it in him — if “it” was stalking and shaking down a little girl for a meager bit of coins that she didn’t even have. But Dallen had found another way to get the baron and his thugs the coin they wanted: by stealing it from him and selling it right back.
Dallen had taken note of the long stretches of empty halls throughout the keep. In the recent days, he’d taken to slinking around them unnoticed — not a hard thing to do, since the baron didn’t have enough men to patrol them, or didn’t care enough to. Eventually, he’d found what he’d been looking for: some abandoned corner of the keep that still had some fine, forgotten items scattered about it. There had been a chest with dusty jewelry and fine plates piled within.
Then, it was just a matter of waiting for a traveling merchant to pass through the town, which had taken a few days. He didn’t look like he had a lot of wares or a lot of coin, but that didn’t matter much. Dallen had sold the jewelry to the merchant for an outrageously low price, which the merchant was all too happy to accept. Then, Dallen warned him that, if he kept following the road south of here, he’d run into bandit territory. The man had been so thankful that he threw in another few coppers. It was enough for Irne’s payment, and a little left over for his troubles.
When Dallen finally had the coins, he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in fury. It was a fine trick, sure enough, but all he could think was why the hell he had to even do it in the first place. The baron had sent a group of armed men to shake down a little girl — meanwhile, he lived in a keep so big and useless that he had fine wares lying around forgotten, each one worth more than most people in this town made in a year. And to get the stupid bastard to leave the girl alone, Dallen had to steal his own jewelry from him, sell it to a merchant, and then hand the coins back to the baron with a smile. What Dallen wanted to do was punch the baron, Lomund, Ernolt, and all the rest right in the mouth. But that would have just earned him a few punches back, and at the end of it, they’d still want their missing money from Irne. It was better this way. Smarter. The best he could manage, with the world such as it was.
The baron’s men looked behind Dallen, at someone approaching.
“There he is!” Lomund shouted, a little disdain creeping into his voice. “Took you long enough, lad!”
Dallen turned, and saw a boy in a guard’s uniform carrying an armful of satchels and supplies. It was the same boy Dallen had seen when he’d first been released from his dungeon cell, he realized. Bant, the coward optimist. He opened his mouth as if to respond, but nothing came out before Ernolt cut him off.
“Those look heavy for you, boy. Give them to the real men before you hurt your little self.” The other men snickered, and the boy shamefully averted his eyes as they took the supplies from him with no hint of a “thank you.”
“Where are you headed?” asked Dallen, watching the men. They were clearly gearing up for something.
Lomund slung a heft satchel over his shoulder.
“South of here, by the road. Meeting up with some of our lads from that way.”
The Shapeless bandits. Dallen felt that strange fluttering in his guts.
“Will Hadrir be there?”
The men grew quieter at that. Maybe it was just the mention of Hadrir’s name. Maybe it was the strange hunger in Dallen’s voice, that he didn’t even realize would come out.
“No,” said Lomund. “He’s still out doing devils know what. They’re a few of his top men, though.” He paused, watching Dallen carefully. “Why? You fancy coming along?”
The fluttering feeling at Hadrir’s mention was dying down, but Dallen still felt a strange urge to go.
“Don’t think they’ll be mad at me? For splitting open their friend’s jaw?”
Lomund flicked the quickest of looks towards Dallen’s gloved right hand.
“Maybe this’ll be your chance to apologize. Oddly enough…I think you’ll actually find them surprisingly forgiving. Or…at least surprising, anyway. Come along if you want to. Long as you don’t start any new fights.”
“You should stay back,” Ernolt said, jabbing a finger at Bant. “You’ll just embarrass us.”
The men began moving, brushing past Dallen and the lad, who watched them from the sides of his eyes. He looked like he wanted to hit one of them. Dallen could sympathize; he’d had to fight that feeling before. The boy didn’t move, when the rest of them passed. Just slumped his shoulders in defeat.
“Devils, boy,” said Dallen. “You really gonna stay behind just cause those pricks gave you shit?”
Bant looked up, face scrunching up with a foul look as if to respond, then quickly fading back to defeat.
“What else can I do?” asked Bant.
By the deep hell, he sounded pathetic. Dallen had the urge to slap him, as if that would toughen him up. But there were other ways to do so. And if he didn’t learn it from Dallen, he’d learn it a much more painful way from the other guards.
“What else can you do?” Dallen asked. “Do whatever the hell you want, that’s what. And fuck what those empty-headed bastards say.”
“That’s…easier said than done.” The boy sounded downright dejected.
“Aye. That’s true enough. But the sooner you learn to do it, the better off you’ll be.”
“Yeah?” said Bant, raising his face and apparently finding some modicum of guts. “And if I do what I want, and they decide they want to break my legs for it?”
“Fair point again. But you joined the business of town guard, right? You volunteered to have a spear in your hand?” He shrugged. “Don’t carry around a weapon if you aren’t willing to fight with it, lad. Either stick up for what you believe in and learn to fight for it, or throw it out quick and join in with the other bastards here. Right now, you’re getting the worst of both paths.”
Bant thought for a long moment, but his face only fell a little more.
“I just…I thought when I joined up with the guards, the others were supposed to be on my side.”
Dallen sighed.
“Well…sometimes when we take up duties, they end up being a great deal different from how we imagined them.” Memories flashed. Back to Callia. And the dark days towards the end. “Sometimes, we end up fighting those we thought we’d fight beside.” He shook his head, wanting to leave. He started off, past Bant, who still stared at the ground.
“For what it’s worth,” Dallen added as he passed, “going into a meeting like this, I’d rather have a coward with a decent head on his shoulders than ten dumb brutes who swing fists before they start thinking, just cause the latter’s too hard for them.”
He kept walking, and after a moment, heard Bant’s footsteps following behind.
Ernolt shot a foul backwards look when the two of them caught up.
“Didn’t I say you should stay back, boy?”
Bant didn’t respond, but he at least kept his eyes forward and his chin up this time. Though Dallen could still see his mouth tightening uncomfortably. When Ernolt didn’t get a reply, he scoffed and slung the satchel off of his shoulder.
“Well, if you’re gonna follow us, you might as well make yourself useful.” He tossed the satchel to Bant, who just managed to catch it in both arms. “You can handle one little bag, can’t you Bant?”
Again, Bant didn’t offer Ernolt any response. He slung the satchel over his shoulder, tightened it down, and kept his head forward.
“Shouldn’t be much of a problem for you,” said Lomund, “but if you’re coming along, try not to talk much when we meet with Hadrir’s men. Just stay quiet, hand over the satchel with the rest of us, and don’t get any of your noble notions in your head.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that Lomund,” said Ernolt. He turned his eyes to Bant again, a wicked grin growing across his face. “These are hard men. I’d worry more about the lad pissing himself from fright.”
A few of the other men chuckled at that, and Bant’s face grew red. But he still kept his head forward, trying not to give them a reaction. Dallen sighed and shook his head from the back of the pack. It was a step towards seeming less like a coward. But it was still a long way from changing the way these men thought of him.
They walked for a little longer with scant conversation, a few miles south of the town. Over a distant hill coming up on the road, a twisted tree rose at an odd, bent angle. Like a bone that had been broken and never healed quite right. Over the winds that whistled across the broken land, Dallen could hear the distant sound of something thumping repeatedly into wood. It grew gradually louder as they approached the tree, and as the baron’s men rounded the turn in the road, Dallen saw that a small group of men was spread out below the shade of the leaves.
They were dressed like the one he’d brawled with in the tavern. Decent clothing and armor, mismatched on the individual, yet somehow making a consistent look across the whole of them. Some stood; some sat on rocks, sharpening a weapon or whittling a piece of gnarled wood; one layed out across the grass, hands behind his head, possibly asleep. And one stood with the others, back to their visitors, and tossed a hatchet with practiced form at the bent trunk of the tree. It hurdled across the space and stuck into the wood with a satisfying thunk, embedding itself next to a few others all in a tight formation.
“A fine day for throwing axes,” Lomund called, stepping to the front of the approaching group. The other of the baron’s men started unloading the supplies they’d brought with them. “How do you do, Olad?”
Olad turned to face them, one hatchet still in his hand. He was a lean but muscled man, with messy hair like straw and pale blue eyes set deep in his face. He had a casual, absent smile on his face, and let his head hang lazily to one side.
“A fine day indeed” Olad said. “A fine day to feel fine — which I do, since you asked.”
He tossed the hatchet up into a spin, catching in his hand again. The other bandits rose and came to stand right behind Olad, facing the baron’s men. They stood atop a small section of jagged, raised earth, about waist high. It contributed to the sense that the bandits had power over the group of town watchmen. Dallen wondered if that was intentional. But who knew if bandits were smart enough to think of such things.
“You should be happy with what we’ve brought,” Lomund said, as some of the baron’s men handed the satchels and supplies up the short cliff. “Should be everything you asked for.”
“I’m sure it will be,” Olad said, not bothering to spare a glance toward the bags. His words had a casual slurring to them. Like he had always had at least a bit of liquor in him. “The boss’ll be back from his hunt some time soon. Then we should be all ready to move in.” His grin widened, and he raised his arms like a preacher. “And our houses shall be joined in holy matrimony.”
The other bandits snickered, and the one checking the bags looked up towards Olad.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“All here.”
Olad clapped his hands together.
“Excellent! You never disappoint, Lomund. And that baron of yours.” Olad’s smirk pulled up at one side, as if he’d said some brilliant joke that only he knew about.
“You fellas gonna stick around town tonight?” asked Lomund. “Come for a drink at the tavern maybe? Remember: when you drink with the baron’s men, you drink for free.” Lomund himself smirked now, and bandits and guardsmen alike nodded and chattered about the idea.
Olad nodded slowly, eyes narrowed, as if mulling over the offer. Then his gaze snapped towards Dallen, still with that same grin.
“We might stop by…will he be coming?”
The two groups quieted as they shifted their focus toward Dallen. Tension crept into the space that talk had left. Dallen only offered Olad a grin in return, and spoke casual and clear enough for the whole group to hear him.
“Oh, me?” Dallen shook his head, still smiling. “I don’t drink. Haven’t touched the stuff in years.”
If you don’t count the few drinks I’ve had every other night the past few weeks just to help me get to sleep.
Some light — and some nervous — chuckles spread through the groups at that comment. Dallen saw it in the bandits’ faces — they knew him, or knew of him, as Olad did.
“That’s not the story I heard,” the bandit said. Then he shook his head, lazy smile still unwavering. “Poor Erred always did have a knack for running his mouth and not knowing when to stop. But…he won’t have to worry about running his mouth much anymore.” Olad paused, looking up to the sky as if in thought. “Won’t have to worry about eating solid foods much, either. Did you really do all that with your bare hands?”
“Just one hand,” Dallen said, raising his right. The Maker’s strange material was hidden beneath the hide glove, but it still had weight to it. Dallen could feel the eyes plastered to it with wonder, fear, probably a little hatred.
Something about their faces spurred him to say more.
“What’s the matter, lads? There’s lots of strong folk in these lands. You’ve never seen someone do something like that before?”
“It’s a rare thing,” said Olad.
“Aye. It is. But…you have seen something like it before, haven’t you?” Dallen rested his hands on his belt. “After all, I hear your boss is one strong fellow himself.”
Olad’s eyes narrowed by the slightest amount, but the rest of his expression remained unchanged.
“I’ve seen Hadrir do something like that, yeah. He usually has the decency to fight with a weapon though.” He held up the small axe in his hand, waving it. “Makes the kills quick and clean, you know? If he wants them to be.”
The air between the bandits and the baron’s men grew with a creeping tension, but Dallen kept his eyes firmly fixed on Olad. His voice was steady and intense.
“I hear he’s a sight to see in battle. I hear…he’s been blessed by the remnant powers of the Shapeless God.”
Olad only smiled wider. With pride, perhaps.
“He’s a vicious man in battle. Like nothing you’ve ever seen.” Olad raised a finger. “But, more importantly, he’s an even stronger leader. He knows the ways of the Shapeless and lives them to his bones. We don’t just follow him cause he’s unbeatable in a fight. Though…that doesn’t hurt, does it, lads?”
The other bandits nodded and grunted their approval, though their bodies didn’t relax much.
“You follow the Shapeless as well, then?”
“That we do.” Olad swept his arms out, gesturing to the other bandits. “We live by the Way of the Unruled. We are our own masters.”
“Your own masters, yes…” Dallen repeated softly, thinking. He wasn’t sure if his next question was a smart one to ask, given the circumstances. But for some reason, at this exact moment in time, he found it hard to give a shit.
“There’s something I’ve always wondered,” said Dallen, raising his voice again. “You follow a creed that says you shall follow your own will, right? That you won’t ever be bound by others? How does that work out, when you’re all following along behind this Hadrir fellow?”
The air between them was dead quiet while Olad watched him, as if trying to judge whether the question was goading or legitimate. Maybe it was a little of both. Lomund shot Dallen a glare and whispered loudly to him.
“Bloody devils Dallen, have some fucking tact.” He cleared his throat and spoke loudly to Olad up on the short cliff. “Pardon my friend here, Olad, he’s new to these parts and doesn’t—”
“It’s a fine question,” said Olad, nodding his head. Some of the bandits with him watched Olad, clearly not feeling the same. Some of them had their hands on their weapons already. Olad leveled the one in his hand, pointing at the group. “Let me first answer your question with a question of my own. For all of you lot. Why do you follow that baron of yours?”
The town watchmen shifted, looking uncomfortable and unsure.
“Come on now,” said Olad, “it’s not a trick question. You follow the baron’s orders, you uphold his laws, you protect his keep. Why do you follow them?”
One man in the back spoke up cautiously.
“Because…I mean…well, he’s the baron.”
“He pays us,” Lomund said. “A lot more than anyone else in the village makes.” Others nodded and mumbled in assent.
“Ahhhh,” said Olad, as if this was a major revelation. “Money: the great motivator. I wonder though: would you still follow the baron if he didn’t pay you?”
The town guards did not respond, looking away from Olad and mimicking thinking, but Dallen thought the answer was fairly self-evident.
“But,” continued Olad, pointing to the first one who’d answered and feigning confusion, “you said you followed him because he’s the baron, right? Regardless of the money, he was always the baron. He was always going to be the one giving the orders, right? I mean there’s other ways to make money, even in a place like this.”
The baron’s men were all listening intently now, waiting for what Olad said next. And Olad ate it up, like a preacher who was just starting to whip his congregation into a proper fervor.
“This is the way of the old Empyre, my friends.” His grin widened with every word, and he began ambling from one side to the other atop the small cliff. “Those who built it weren’t just building a nation — they were building the world’s greatest prison. A prison of the most diabolical nature, for they had convinced everyone within that they deserved to be held in cages!”
The bandits scoffed and shook their heads in disgust, Olad most of all. The baron’s men were still quiet and focused, some of them shifting around at what Olad said. Bant looked like he was about to be sick.
“It’s amazing, really,” continued Olad. “Entire nations of people following the nobility and the damnable Empyreals simply because they thought they had to. Entire legions of men marching to war, against their will, based on a fabricated obligation. Smoke and wizard’s glass! I’d be impressed, if it weren’t all so revolting.”
“Pretty words,” said Dallen. “How’s your little band different from that though?”
Olad pointed at him with a wide, lopsided grin, as if Dallen had said just what he was waiting to hear.
“I’ll tell you how, my knightly friend. Let us use an example to illustrate such differences.” He turned to the baron’s men. “Tell me, what happens when a soldier in one of your armies decides to leave his service?”
There was only a brief pause, followed by some mumbling.
“Well,” one of the baron’s men spoke up, “he’d be a traitor.”
“He’d be hunted down,” added Lomund.
“Strung up maybe, if he’s caught,” said Ernolt.
Olad nodded his head at the contributions.
“Branded a traitor, hunted down, thrown in jail, and possibly killed for it. Punished swiftly and brutally. And the worst part,” Olad shook his head, as if distressed. “The worst part of it is: if he does manage to escape, and evade capture the rest of his life, he lives that rest of his life with a nonsense guilt for having made his own decision for once. All because he has convinced himself that what is right and what he wants are two separate things.”
Dallen had to keep himself from scoffing at the idea. It was a simple appeal to indulgences. Of course the right thing to do didn’t always line up with what you wanted to do. That was a lesson children learned when they were young; it was a simple part of being a responsible adult. But he was still interested to hear more, and Olad was clearly willing to share.
“Do you wanna know what happens tomorrow if I wake up with a sudden change of heart?” Olad continued. “If I suddenly decided I didn’t want to follow Hadrir anymore?”
“Supplant him?” asked Dallen, prodding Olad with a guess that was only half a joke. “Stab in his sleep maybe?”
Lomund shot Dallen another indignant look, but Olad and the bandits chuckled at it. Certainly wasn’t the reaction Dallen was expecting, but it was intriguing.
“I could certainly try that,” said Olad, still chuckling at the idea. “I don’t think it’d go over too well for me though. Do you, boys?” The other bandits shook their heads, apparently finding the very concept a humorous fantasy.
“If I wanted to though,” continued Olad, “I could wake up tomorrow morning, decide that this whole business wasn’t for me, and walk right out of the camp. And none of them would try to stop me.” He scratched his chin. “Unless I swiped something of theirs on the way out of course. But a man’s got a right to defend himself from theft, don’t he?”
“So that’s the crux of the Shapeless God’s followers?” asked Dallen. “A lack of loyalty?”
Olad suddenly grew deathly serious. He leveled a finger at Dallen.
“Exactly the opposite, my friend. Ours is the true way of loyalty. We follow Hadrir because of his strength. Because we wish to be part of this group, this brotherhood. Because we value what that brings us. Most importantly, and most differently from your old Empyre: every day we wake up, and we make the same decision to stay on. That is the defining feature: that we always have that choice, but always make the same one. That is true loyalty.”
The baron’s men were whispering excitedly to one another now, and Olad raised his arms once more, hatchet held aloft, tilting his face upwards towards the sky.
“I do what I do every day because I love it. And in doing so, I am freer than any man under the Highest Order of the Empyre.”
The town guards were talking amongst themselves now, more excited than ever to be working alongside Olad and Hadrir’s other men. It made sense: dangle a little promise of freedom in front of a man’s face, and he’s likely to start salivating for it.
Of course, Olad’s promise of freedom was as much of an illusion as the perfection of the Empyre was.
Ernolt piped up.
“So…you think we should be able to do whatever we want, whenever we want?”
“Don’t you get it, friend? It don’t matter a shit what I think.” He sighed. “But if you’re really dying to know my opinion on the matter: I think any moment a man spends not doing exactly as he pleases is a moment spent not living.”
The baron’s men nodded as if it was sage wisdom. Ernolt had a satisfied grin, and thought for a moment. Then he promptly spun around and backhanded Bant across the face with a plated glove. The young boy sprawled to the ground, and a rush of sound came up from both groups. Gasps in alarm, exclamations of confusion, then some laughs and even cheers.
Bant stumbled back to his feet. There was a red mark and a bleeding cut across his cheek. His fists were clenched tight and trembling. He’d dropped his spear and seemed to have forgotten it. It seemed like he was fighting back tears. Of anger or pain, Dallen didn’t know.
Dallen’s own body was tense. He surveyed the faces of the bandits and town guards. It was evident that they did not have even the slightest intention of stepping in.
“Come on boy,” Ernolt was saying, wide, stupid grin across his pallid face. “You obviously wanna hit me back, you have for a long time. Well you heard what the man said, didn’t you? If you want to hit me, do it!” He tapped his cheek, right in the same spot where he’d hit Bant. “Come on, I’ll give you one for free.”
Dallen watched the boy. His fists were clenched tight, somewhere between raised for a fight and down at his sides. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out were stutters. Hot tears welled up in his eyes.
Devils, Dallen was sick of watching it.
“Come on lad,” Ernolt was saying, tapping his cheek. “I’m offering you a free hit.”
“I’ll take that offer,” said Dallen. He was next to Ernolt before the man could notice him, focused as he was.
Dallen gave a quick jab with his right arm to Ernolt’s ribs. A light, but solid punch. He heard a crack as knuckles met bone, and Ernolt wheezed, his eyes bulging as he keeled over.
The little man stumbled back, coughing out choked grunts, and squinting one eye with pain. The men around them were growing rowdy now, but a feeling of uncertainty crept in. They didn’t know which way it would go. And frankly, Dallen didn’t either.
Frankly, he didn’t much give a shit.
Ernolt finally coughed enough to find his words, turning to Dallen with a wild anger.
“What the fuck did you do that for you prick?”
Dallen shrugged.
“Wanted to. You were offering. Seemed like a win for both of us.”
“Why you piece of—” The little man pulled a knife from his belt, and some of the baron’s men finally made a move to stop him. They didn’t move fast enough though, and Ernolt bolted towards Dallen with abandon, waving the blade around.
Dallen had always found it funny how easily men lose their reasoning. Hadn’t they just moments ago talked about how Dallen had split a man’s jaw open with just a punch? That had been a far bigger man than Ernolt was. And Dallen wasn’t drunk out of his mind this time.
Ernolt lunged at Dallen, swinging wide with his knife. Might as well have sent Dallen a letter expressly communicating his exact intentions and preffered method of disembowelment, for how easily Dallen could read him. He stepped calmly to the side and batted Ernolt’s knife hand away.
Ernolt’s wrist twisted and the knife flew through the air and to the ground. Little shit didn’t even have a decent grip on it. His stance was weak, too, and he stumbled over his own feet with barely any help from Dallen.
Dallen had seen it before. The bastard had spent so long picking on those who couldn’t fight back, he had no idea what it was like to actually be in a fight. Ernolt stumbled to the ground, landing hard on his knees and falling to one shoulder, trying to grip at his ribs and wrist at the same time.
Pathetic, Dallen felt himself thinking. Far too easy. It was an odd voice that his mind took. Not quite like his.
“Ack! You little—” Ernolt breathed in sharp between his teeth. “You bloody little shit, I’ll gut you for that!” He pointed to the guards with his good hand. “The fuck are you waiting for, grab him!”
Dallen tensed, right hand hovering near his sword. All went quiet, save for slow clapping from the short cliff above. Dallen turned his head to see Olad, that same lazy grin still on his face.
“Good show!” he called. The other bandits grunted their approval. “The Way of the Unruled also values strength above all else. You seem to be a man well acquainted with our ways.” He gave Dallen a nod, which immediately sent a flare of anger through him.
Wonder if you’d still appreciate that strength if it was tearing you in two, you half-mad bastard.
Some of the other town watch were helping Ernolt up, the situation having resolved for now. Ernolt still glared venomously at Dallen between the winces of pain, but Dallen had better things to worry about. The whole encounter left him with a sinking feeling in his chest. He was starting to worry just how dangerous these men really were. It wasn’t just that they abided by no code, as so many other bandits he’d known did. They did follow a code, and it encouraged them to partake in their worst, most base desires. They cheered for violence between people they claimed to align themselves with. They might burn the whole town down and anyone in it, if the fancy took them.
“Well, it’s been fun chatting lads,” said Olad, stretching his back. “But we’d best be going now. Ready up for when the boss comes back. Keep an eye out for us at the rest tavern though; we might drop by, if we fancy it.” He threw them a wink, dropped the hatchet into a loop in his belt, and turned with the rest of his men to head out.
The town guards turned to leave as well, and Dallen lagged behind at the back of the group. Ernolt kept glancing backwards, giving Dallen foul looks. Dallen knew he should keep an eye on that, in case the little bastard tried anything again. But he found it hard to care.
Bant lagged behind with him, also keeping an occasional wary eye on Ernolt. Mostly, though, he just started at the ground. The cut on his face had dried up, and the skin around it was beginning to bruise. Devils, did the boy ever look anything but afraid?
“Thank you,” Bant said, quietly. It took Dallen a moment to realize that the boy was talking to him. It made him feel sicker.
“I just did it to prove a point. And knock the little shit down a peg. You’ll need to learn to fight your own battles, eventually.”
Dallen thought for a moment, and stifled a grim laugh.
He claimed Bant would have to fight his own battles. But Dallen had learned to do that, and it didn’t make him much happier, did it? Didn’t get him very far. Just made him — and probably Bant, for that matter — a few more enemies he didn’t want. Almost made him a few allies that he wanted even less.
“Either that,” Dallen said, “or learn to run away from your battles better.”
Maybe that was the saner option. For Bant, and for Dallen himself.