Chapter 7: Strayed

Everyone in the charity kitchen watched these two men disrupt their evening meal.

Tybalt grabbed the large man by the back of his shirt and pulled him to the ground, over his chair. The man fell flat onto the floor. Tybalt leapt on top of him and began to strike the man’s face. Punch after punch rained down upon the large man. He lifted his forearms to block the fury of Tybalt’s strikes, but could not avoid every hit to his skull. He wiggled beneath the smaller man, who had the advantage of surprise. As Tybalt lifted his clenched hand far above his head for another massive strike, he felt someone grab his arm. Reflexively, Tybalt ripped the hand from his arm and pushed the person.

Tybalt slowed his fury enough to realize that he had thrown the woman he was defending. Her hazel eyes, once bright with hope, had darkened. She looked at him with uncomprehending horror. She pushed herself along the floor, trying to create distance. Her eyes stayed upon him as her mouth gapped and quivered.

In the slight moment where Tybalt cooled his anger, understanding that his fists had been streaked with another man’s blood, understanding that he had created a public spectacle in a place of peace, he understood the folly of his action. Yet, in this brief pause, the large man had his opportunity to counterstrike.

The flesh of the man’s palm seized Tybalt’s face and tossed him from the man’s stomach. The man rolled onto his side and struggled to his feet. As he did so, Tybalt, forgetting his battle-rage, crawled closer to the woman he had opened his soul to. He inched closer and closer, only to see her scramble away with renewed horror. This man that he had hugged mere moments ago had transformed into a monstrous excuse of a man.

The man grabbed Tybalt’s shoulders and pulled him backward, half-lifting his assailant. Tybalt took to his feet with only enough time to dodge a heavy blow to his head. The blow glanced his cheek only with enough force to knock his head into a different direction. The strike had been sufficient to snap Tybalt back into combat. He took a few keen steps backward, causing a few members of the crowd to give him more space. They gathered to watch with an uncertain pull of resistance or assistance: they did not know if they wanted to throw themselves into the fray to stop this brawl, or to make it larger by helping the party they believed most innocent.

Tybalt took to the balls of his feet. He moved deftly like a boxer in the ring. His years of wrestling and bare-knuckle boxing rippled through his muscles. His right calf, the injured shank, stung and posed itself a hinderance to his fighting ability. He ignored it the best he could. If he allowed this pain to master him, he would not be able to avoid further injury, or, perhaps, even death.

The large man spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. He lunged with a grunt, stretching his hands before him. He wanted to strangle the little man who interrupted his evening meal. Tybalt slipped from the man’s grasp, and, instead, reached with his thumbs for the large man’s eyes. Grabbing hold of the man’s face, Tybalt squeezed. The large man howled with primal fury. With unprecedented force, the large man grabbed Tybalt by the waist and threw him over the serving counter. Spoons, ladles, and a pile of metal food trays clattered and clanged. The kitchen staff ran from the scene, preferring to wait out the combat.

Tybalt groaned. He tightly squeezed his eyelids to regard a sense of order of his spinning world. When he opened his eyes, he saw the large man standing on the serving counter. The man jumped into the air. His foot cut through the air, aiming to squish Tybalt’s head into a pulp.

Tybalt brought his arms to his chest and rolled from the stomp. He could feel the floor shake from the man’s strike. The totality of the large man’s heft went into that strike. Tybalt pulled himself to the floor, holding on to the ledge of one of the stoves. As he struggled to stand, the large man threw a brutal punch.

The blow connected with Tybalt’s face. He felt the orbit bone around his eye crack. The pain shot through his body with more than he could handle. Tybalt screamed in pain. His body could not take another hit with such force. He needed to end the battle. He needed to kill this man.

Tybalt squared himself to the large man at the very moment two men came behind him and seized him by the arms. Tybalt twisted and turned in their grips. He freed one of his arms, only to feel more hands gripping onto him and pulling him down. The only thing he could see was a similar drama around the big man, although, he seemed to have more success with throwing off people holding him back. Yet, with six or so men subduing him, the brute fell to the floor and couldn’t rise. Tybalt, on the other hand, had been pushed and harried out of the daub-and-wattle building.

Men pushed him through the door and into the street. They pressed him against the wall of an adjacent building. Tybalt’s face pressed against the salvage metal wall, feeling its cold smoothness irritate the broken bone around his right eye. He yelled as the men kept him against the wall, checking his person for any weapons.

“I have nothing,” Tybalt yelled. “Nothing!”

The men took the knapsack from his back and looked through it.

“What’s this then?” a young man asked, holding up the kitchen knife he stole from the homestead.

“That’s my knife,” Tybalt admitted, “I wasn’t going to use it. Just let me go. I won’t bother you. I won’t come back.”

“You better not,” a gruff voice responded. “Let him go.”

Tybalt adjusted his coarse linen outfit, starting at a trio of men. The gruff voice belonged to an older man with a circle beard, while the other two were younger. One of them had a small moustache hair sprouting from his upper. The moustached youth held Tybalt’s bag aloft. Tybalt snatched it from the youth’s hand, slinging it onto his back.

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“You simply had to get into a fight with Otto, eh?” the older man said. He slipped a thin cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He offered a stick to Tybalt who dismissed the gesture. He hated tobacco. His brother smoked consistently and cloaked the both of them with its grime. “Piece of advice: Next time you see him, run. He’s not the man to forgive.”

The other young man gave Tybalt’s wooden cane back to him.

“And neither am I,” Tybalt said, taking the cane. He walked from these peacekeepers. Clearly, the outskirts of Carrion Hill had their own militia to keep order in this sprawl.

Tybalt hobbled slower than he had earlier in the day. The fight had worn him down. He needed to rest and to actually eat. He would probably need to kill a few more hours until he could return to the men of Corvus. In the meantime, he simply allowed himself to drift back to the campsite without any particular hurry.

As he moved amid the dwindling crowd, he reached a public campfire. Several vagrants had quietly congregated around the flames, keeping them warm in the falling night. He lowered himself into an empty space among them and stretched his legs. He massaged the muscles around is injured leg. The amount of exertion he had placed upon it over the last day and a half have done nothing to help it heal. He remembered when he and his brother had gone hunting for deer years ago. They gunned down a hearty stag. When they butchered the animal, Bassian noticed that the hind leg had an oddity about it. It became apparent that the stag had, at some point, broken its leg, but survived the ordeal. It kept struggling for life, running upon a bad leg, never really allowing it to heal properly. Of course, the stag knew nothing of medicine and rest, of the proper setting of bones. Instead, it lumbered on with its pain, allowing time to suture the wounds, to bind his bones back together. Tybalt felt a little like that stag. His body tried to repair itself, but situation after situation arose and he never allowed it to rest. Luckily, the wound was not a fracture or a break, but merely punctured muscle. Still, the excitement in the soup kitchen caused the minor scabbing to break. The bandages around his calves drank the crimson blood it was given.

No one in the circle spoke. The fire kept flickering. One at a time, each person would add a little fuel into the fire, usually only a stick or two. The main block of wood at its base kept the fire going. Tybalt stared into its flames, allowing his previous hours to play within his head. His mind processed all the hardship, played it before his eyes, so that he may draw his attention to it. It called to him to sort these memories, to make sense of these difficulties. Tybalt did not wish to dwell upon them. He shoved them into the darkness of his mind, of his soul. There, they would fester and grow ugly in its neglect. They required the light of consciousness to be freed from their weight.

From the corner of his eye, Tybalt saw the figure of a beautiful woman. He looked only in time to catch the grey of the woman’s headscarf disappear behind a building. He startled, half lifting himself from the fire, but he relented. It was no use. He would not find her. Even if he did, she would not want to talk to him. Tybalt gazed back into the fire. His thoughts from the evening frothed in his consciousness once again.

“You, again!?”

Tybalt lifted his eyes to the see the seven-year-old girl from the day before.

“Do you have any stories yet?” she asked. She sat beside him.

“Go away,” he said. His tone was neutral, but the girl frowned regardless.

“If you’re not nice to me, I won’t talk to you again.”

Tybalt pressed his lips together in silence. He looked at the others in the circle. They seemed to be whole ignorant of the passing conversation. He knew they listened carefully.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s better,” the girl said with a smile. “So, what’s your story.”

Tybalt hummed to himself, wondering if he should tell the tale of his evening combat. He decided against it.

“I don’t know if any of my stories are suitable to little girls.”

“That’s okay,” she said, “I’ve heard everything there is to know about life.”

“You’re awfully young to know everything,” he said

“But I do. And that’s a fact!” she said slapping her knees with both her hands. She lifted herself from her spot around the circle. “I’ll be going now.”

“You didn’t ask anyone else about their stories,” Tybalt said, motioning to the rest of the circle.

“Oh, I already spoke to them. I told them I would keep their secrets.” She gestured that her lips were zippered shut. “Isn’t that right, Agata.”

A woman on the other side of the fire nodded her head. Agata exuded the confidence of someone who still believed in their power in the world despite their circumstances. She had a certain fading elegance to her features, an indication of a different life much earlier. She did not see herself as hopeless, but, rather, trapped in a unfortunate situation, temporary as it was.

The girl skipped away from the group.

Two figures around the circle leaned to whisper something to each other. Someone whispered something to Agata, which made the woman laugh. She covered her laugher with the palm of her hand, a sign of modesty.

Suddenly, Tybalt felt no longer welcome. He felt as though the intrusion of the girl had marked him aside from his present company. They all knew more than him. Rather than stay and face their quiet judge, he contemplated leaving. When her caught sound of the rumble of motorcycles, he took the moment to excuse himself from their presence. He gave a slight bow to no one in particular and made his way to the Corvus campsite.

When he approached the campsite, he saw Erik removing his helmet and walking into one of the tents. Njall, the giant, knocked the kickstand of his bicycle. He sat straddled over the machine, waiting for something to happen. The other men seemed absent from the campsite.

“Ah, friend!” Njall said. He pushed the visor of his helmet over his head. Its beak like shape peered over his forehead. “You will be wanted in a few moments.”

“Me?” Tybalt said. He could not imagine what they wanted with him.

Njall said nothing, but merely tilted his head in a manly nod.

Tybalt leaned on his cane. His hopes had been that the men would welcome him for the night and that he would be able to eat with them a proper meal before going to sleep under their protection. Erik had seemed to take a liking to him, and he would try to use these good graces to his advantage any way he could.

Erik emerged from the tent with a bundle of cloth in the cradle of his arms. It contained more than simple fabric.

“Ah, Tybalt,” Erik said. He turned to his motorcycle, strapping the bundle to his front fender. “Just the man I was looking for.”

Tybalt remained were he stood, only to be beckoned by the leader of the gang. He approached the man slowly, feeling, once more, as though he was being led into a trap. He knew the savagery of humanity. Everyone wanted something from everyone else. He himself only used Erik and his men as a means to fill his belly, find safety for the night, and, hopefully, a way to enter Carrion Hill.

“I have a favour to ask of you,” Erik said.

“Of me?”

“Yes, that is, if you still want to enter the city.”

Tybalt nodded in the affirmative.

“Good, good.” Erik said to himself, “Then, you shall have it. First, however, I need your end of the deal.”

“And what is that that?” Tybalt asked.

“I need you to kill Odvar.”