Mongrel

They made it through Darkside without issue, aside from the occasional pedestrian jeering or making a rude gesture. It was clear that Will had long since run out of gas, though, and Mongrel made sure to step close to him so he could catch the lad if he fell.

“Maybe I should carry the girl,” he said as they made their way through the dark, abandoned streets of Topside.

“No,” Will growled, and took another labored step, foot wobbling as he tried to find purchase on the uneven cobbles.

“Why not? This is slowing us down, son. We’re gonna be home by Midsummer if you keep on like this.”

“Because I don’t trust you,” Will said simply, in a surprisingly conversational tone.

Ouch. Suppose I deserve that a tiny bit. Still stung, though.

Will staggered against a wall, slid down until he was sitting, then spent a good while catching his breath, sweat dripping from his hair into Sam’s face. With a groan of effort, he set her aside, nearly dropping her in the process, so that she was propped up against the wall. She stirred weakly, but didn't wake.

Will took the medicine bag out of his Inventory and opened it in his lap. He extracted three small vials that glinted in the dark, unstoppered each in turn, and downed them all at once. He tried several times to stick the empty vials back in their compartments with clumsy fingers, failed, and threw them aside instead with a growl. Once he had stowed everything back in his Inventory, he was down to just 1 AP, since extracting an item from one’s Inventory cost 1 AP.

Christ. Things had to be bad if he was acting like that. The kid was always getting on at Mongrel about being careful with his glassware.

“What was that you were chugging?” Mongrel asked.

“Stimulant,” Will replied, gritting his teeth.

“That looked like a lot.”

“It’ll keep me moving for a while.”

“And after? What are the side effects?”

“I’ll get very very tired. But that’s a problem for later.”

Will tipped forward to stand, but couldn’t get higher than all fours. Mongrel had Number Three help him to his feet, then they both helped him get the girl draped over Will’s shoulders, a more energy-efficient distribution of weight than carrying her in his arms, if slightly less romantic.

Mongrel went to take that ridiculous sword off the lad’s hip so he didn’t have to worry about tripping over it, but Will told him off with a hard look.

“Where’d you pick that thing up, anyway?” Mongrel asked, frowning at the silvered scabbard.

“I Soulbound it,” Will replied, and started walking.

“You Soulbound it? When did you…” Then he noticed the amber crystal burning on Will’s left arm, raised to hold his woman steady. “You leveled up, you little bastard!”

“I did.”

“So you picked up Soulbind at Level 15?”

“No. I got Cancel.”

“Then…”

“I got Soulbind at Level 13.”

“You never told me that!”

Will glanced back in Mongrel’s general direction, then turned his gaze ahead again. “You never seemed particularly interested, so I saw no need to keep you informed.”

“Saw no need…!” Huffing, Mongrel went scampering after his protegé. “Kid, we’re supposed to be a team!”

Will barked a bitter, joyless laugh. “Yes, we were. I suppose we both have things to be sorry for. I’m sorry for not telling you what ability I chose at Level 13, and you’re sorry for nearly killing the only person I’ve ever loved. Guess that makes us about even, eh?”

“Point taken. Don’t need to be such a little pisser about it. I was gonna give you a share of the winnings and everything, you know. It’s not like I wasn’t thinking about you at all.”

Will halted, teetering this way and that to keep his balance. “Stop talking,” he said. Calmly. Softly.

Mongrel snorted. “Yeah? Or what? You gonna put that fancy new sword through me?”

Will looked back. His face was entirely devoid of emotion. “Stop talking, Matt.”

His hand didn’t so much as stray toward his weapon, but the point might as well have been grazing Mongrel’s neck for how quickly the mood shifted. Similarly, Will did not need to make his threat plain. There was no ‘or else’. With that one look, Mongrel understood exactly what would happen if he opened his mouth.

So he kept it shut, and replied only with a small, slow nod.

Will turned and kept walking. The rest of their trek through Topside went by in complete silence.

I might have messed up worse than I thought, Mongrel mused, rubbing at his neck.

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* * *

Reaching the end of Topside’s main street, their flight was impeded by the closed-shut city gates, great oaken doors set with a bar thick as a man's waist across the length of it. On the outside, Mongrel knew the iron portcullis would be down to act as an additional layer of defense.

The silhouettes of men moved against flickering firelight inside the gatehouse, which lay atop the gate itself. He could make out faint, tell-tale sounds of men bored at their posts—bantering, laughing, the occasional hawking and spitting.

Mongrel did not like their chances of sweet-talking those doors into opening. The easiest thing would be to simply scale the walls and drop down on the other side before anyone got wise to what they were doing, but Will was in no condition to be performing any acrobatics, even less so with the human-shaped baggage he was carrying.

They couldn’t go over, which meant they had to go through.

Mongrel waited for Will to start talking. As the silence stretched on, Number Three screwing his finger a full digit into his nose out of boredom, he eventually realized that the lad was expecting him to handle the diplomacy.

Mongrel swallowed.

Maybe that means he’s done pretending I don't exist, at least.

He didn’t think there was a very good chance of that.

The gate guards had still not noticed their presence. “Hullo up there!” Mongrel called through cupped hands. The voices up above went quiet. Figures stirred, and a few moments later someone peeked their head over the chest-high wall of the gatehouse.

“The fuck are you!” came a man’s voice, accusative. “Gates are closed until morning! Fuck off, before I ram a spear up your arse!”

“A tempting offer, sergeant!” Mongrel called back—he guessed it was a sergeant he was speaking with—and forced himself into an easy posture of false confidence, hand resting on cocked hip. “But I’m sad to say that me and my partner here have places to be! So if you’d go ahead and open this thing a crack, we’d be right grateful!”

“Not a chance! No one goes in or out of this gate after nightfall—Brimstone’s orders. Do you not even know that much, you dense fuck? You wash up yesterday or something?”

“I’m well aware of the rules, my friend! We’re only asking you to make one teeny-tiny exception.”

“Forget it! Go away!”

“‘Fraid I can’t do that!”

“You mother—” The head disappeared from the wall. A short while later, a man came hurrying down the steps of the staircase set into the stone barrier that led down to street level. He held a swinging lantern out before him to light his path, and he was grumbling under his breath the whole way down. Mongrel could not make any of the words out from where he stood, but he could guess the gist of it.

With a strained grunt, Will flipped the girl off his shoulders and back into his arms, where she covered up his sheet. Smart. Showing his level would no-doubt help prove he was somebody the guards ought to think twice about disobeying, but his pitiful one remaining AP would certainly not inspire any fear.

The sergeant—a Level 8 Laborer—was out of his gambeson, wearing just a rumpled undershirt on top of his trousers. He had a sword in his hand, and thrust his lantern in their faces, leaving Mongrel blinking at the light.

“Right, then,” the man growled. “Who the fuck are you two clowns supposed to be? These doors don’t open for anyone—not the Nightmare King himself—except by Brimstone’s say-so.” He looked down at Number Three, and his head jerked back in surprise. “And what is that?”

“That, my friend, is a chimpanzee. He’s with me.”

Number Three began a fearsome snarl, but Mongrel smacked the back of his head, and his expression became a gummy smile instead.

“I don’t give a fuck who he’s with. You’re all leaving right this moment, or this is going to get nasty.” He clanked his sword against the side of his lantern for emphasis.

“You might want to revise that attitude, friend,” Mongrel shot back with his signature winsome smile. “You’re talking to Matthew Caldwell, esquire. Gentleman and business mogul.”

The sergeant blinked at him, brows slowly coming together in a scowl that was equal parts puzzled and annoyed.

Mongrel sighed. “And Brimstone’s very best friend—you might have heard of him.” He jabbed a thumb in Will’s direction. “William Greene. Master One-Eye. The Misfortune. Butcher of Drownport. A beloved child has many names, as you know, and I can go on until we find one you recognize if you want.” He’d made up that last one, but it sure sounded scary enough.

The sergeant’s gaze drifted onto Will, and he opened his mouth to spout something vitriolic, no doubt something to the effect of them being filthy little liars. Then his expression slowly slackened in mute recognition when he saw that one sutured-shut eye. “But…”

“Open the gate,” Will instructed, and managed to put a fair bit of authority in his voice despite the fact that he looked about a second or two away from falling on his head.

Mongrel moved over to the sergeant’s side, flung an arm around his shoulders. “You may note a certain pallor in my friend’s complexion—the cold sweat on his brow. You see, it’s been a few hours since he’s killed somebody, and he’s starting to get that itch again. It’s a nightmare living with him, I tell you. Now, far be it from me, a humble businessman, to tell an upstanding officer of the law how to do his job, but I do recommend that you comply with the Butcher’s request, and do so quickly. He doesn’t like the word ‘no’, you see—takes it very personally.”

Mongrel felt the man go stiffer and stiffer under his grip. Eventually, the sergeant’s gaze drifted down to the unconscious woman in Will’s arms, the blood all over his clothing, and the man's throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Is she…?”

“Dead?” Mongrel laughed. “Oh, nonono. Not yet.”

“Yet…?”

“Well, he likes ‘em fresh, you see. It wouldn’t do to kill a woman until you’ve had the chance to enjoy her a little. At least, that’s his philosophy on the subject. He’s terribly partial to redheads. You have no idea the trouble I go through to keep procuring them for him. All the pleasure houses refuse to rent girls out to us these days on account of my friend's habit of not returning them, so we’ve had to resort to buying them wholesale from the flesh auctions. Expensive, expensive, expensive. We’ve been running around all day trying to find a girl that would suit his tastes, so by now he’s a little… pent-up. Eager to get home and unwrap his present—you know how it is.” Mongrel clicked his tongue. “But look at me talking about my own problems! How rude of me. Go ahead, sir—you looked like you were about to say something.”

“Ah…” The sergeant cleared his throat, eyes fixed on Will. The lad stared back through his one eye, dark as sin and hard as steel.

“What’s the holdup, sarge!” called a man from atop the wall, out of view. “Can’t handle a couple of drunks on your own? Need us to come down and rescue you?” There was scattered laughter at that.

The sergeant spent another moment deliberating, rolling his pursed lips, then rammed his sword back in its scabbard and cried hoarsely: “Open the gates!”

There was a pause up at the gatehouse, laughter quickly dying off. “What was that, sir?” the same man called back.

“I said open the fucking gates! Gin, Casper, Hubermann, get your asses down here! Rest of you, I want you raising that grill!”

With an unbroken stream of equal parts orders and threats, the officer eventually got a couple of lads down to help him lift the bar off the doors and heave it off to the side. Mongrel kept expecting someone to come to their senses, to be staring down a length of sharpened steel any second, but soon enough he found himself staring through the gaping portal instead, overlooking the ever-charming view of the giant dung heap that was the Outside.

“I will be reporting this to my superiors,” the sergeant warned as they wandered through. “There will be consequences.”

“Knock yourself out,” Will muttered, passing the troop of militiamen without sparing them a glance—though he did yank the lantern out of the sergeant’s hand—leaving the man stunned beyond reprisal—and passed it to Mongrel. “Of course, that’s what they said in Drownport, too.”

No one offered any retort to that. The gates began to close the second they were through, men scrambling like their lives were on the line.

Mongrel wasn’t so sure they weren’t.