Swick’s flight through the street was not as long as he might have hoped. Whenever he tried something clever, tossing a blood-crusted object high to translocate away, it was blocked as a Magus wrapped it in some shield to halt its path, or an archer shot it from the air using the same preternatural dexterity common among Kaltan Rangers.

He was a rat in a maze, desperately fleeing towards some exit. And with every passing moment, he was becoming closer to being a trapped rat. Swick didn’t feel any great weight of fear, but he felt no hope either. His chances weren’t good, anyone could see that.

And so it came as no surprise to him when one group of blade wielding mercs drove him right into the waiting weapons of another. Thirty on one would have been manageable, at his best. Even when the thirty were each as good as these men. Thirty on one with his injuries, and reinforcements coming, was not. Swick gave up, and they were quick to bind him.

They didn’t take him as far as he might have expected, their base of operations apparently was located just a few hundred yards from Bal’s. Unlucky, then. There’d never been a chance of them missing the sounds of battle.

He didn’t bother trying to mount a resistance, just surrendered. Swick was done and captured either way, he reckoned there was no use in getting chained up with a few broken ribs when he could just pack in without a fight. Fortunately, the Red Finger Crew was not in a particularly vindictive mood, because they let him keep the remainder of his health as they escorted him away.

Their base of operations was a fairly neat one, as far as disorganized rabble banding together as mercenary killers went. A big street that they seemed to have entirely rented out. They had a nice little perimeter set out, complete with wooden barricades to mark it out from the surrounding areas and hastily constructed outposts where unlucky sods would keep watch. In the center they’d erected a large pavilion which Swick imagined was serving as their main living area.

But there wasn’t much imagination required to take note of that particular fact, because he was the one who’d introduced the system to them all those years ago. He almost felt proud to see it surviving so long after the fact.

His former comrades shoved him into the pavilion, and Swick was quickly bound to the floor in iron shackles so thick that they might have held a building aloft, and certainly would have resisted the pull of his meager strength. It was overkill, even without his injuries. But Swick couldn’t blame them for the caution.

It didn’t take long before Swick met the man himself. Surrounded on all sides by over-eager mercenaries, he was, if anything, surprised to live for the brief span One-Eye even took to arrive. He entered with all the grandiosity a common merc could muster. As much as Swick himself had, once, all those years ago.

A big man, One-Eye. Standing taller than the tent’s doorway, and almost as wide as that of a common building, he ducked in as a great mountain of vascular solidity. His arms were bare, and betrayed lumps of iron-dense muscle clinging to every inch of them, skin tanned and weather-beaten, tough and calloused. Scars criss-crossed it everywhere, save for the hand.

The hand was red. Pure red, as stark a crimson as Swick had seen anywhere but pools of fresh arterial blood, and revoltingly wet. He actually saw the tendons and tissues move as the fingers shifted, veins jumping, ligaments bunching. It was a study in anatomy, and a practice in holding one’s stomach contents in place.

And it was Swick’s damned fault, like so much else in the world.

“Alright, Captain.” One-Eye grinned, wearing the face of a man who was more than just pleased. Triumph lit his expression, bringing that rare illumination that seemed to stand in balanced opposition to all the darkness of life at once despite its fleetingness. Swick couldn’t blame him, his was a grudge older than some adults. And it was more justified than most.

“I’ve not been your Captain for a while.” Swick noted. One-Eye smiled.

“And we drink to that lovely fact every night, believe me. Don’t we lads?”

A round of grumbled agreement rang out among the room, unanimous and downright eager. It would’ve been enough to hurt Swick’s feelings, were it not so completely understandable.

“Can’t say I blame you.” He shrugged. “Lots of folks I’ve fucked over less’d be perfectly fine to do much the same.”

One-Eye seemed surprised, but not taken aback. It was a dull, scarcely-felt sort of response akin to a man finding one more piece of beef in his stew than he’d expected. About as intense a reaction as Swick had ever gotten from the man.

Save for the time he’d hidden behind him to take cover from that skin-rending curse responsible for ruining his hand. Or the time he’d called that Kaltan’s bluff, only to find he actually was a Ranger and have it demonstrated with an arrow in his ally’s eye. Or the time he’d drunkenly agreed to hold that pass in the Siege of Tibiltar, where One-Eye had lost a bollock to a stray trebuchet stone from the attackers.

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Come to think of it, those occasions weren’t nearly so rare as they ought to have been.

“Do you know why we’re here?” One-Eye asked, suddenly. His voice was soft, and it was all Swick could do not to piss himself the moment he heard it. One-Eye’s voice was hard, gruff, pointy. Except for when he was truly enraged. That was when it got soft, like the muscles in a tiger’s legs slackening the precipitous instant before it bounced. His heart was like a drum, and he had to fight against the instinct to gnaw off his own hands for freedom as he answered.

“That’s a deep question, isn’t it?” Swick smiled. “I’ve never been a religious-”

One-Eye’s fist was not a Hero’s, but he was a big man and he had no small measure of Vigour pumping around in those corded veins of his. It knocked the wind from Swick, and he gasped for more. Eyes watering, head spinning, pulse pounding in each ear. All Swick could do was regret two facts; that he’d chosen to divert his power into translocation instead of sticking to the path of raw physicality, and that his former subordinates had so carefully scraped and cleaned all the blood from his battleground and hiding place after capturing him. There’d be no escape.

“Always were a joker, weren’t you?” One-Eye said, cheerily. More cheerily than before, come to think of it. It was almost as if he enjoyed beating the tar out of Swick.

“Sense of humor.” Swick gasped. “Important-”

“-For when everyone you know keeps dying.” One-Eye finished, face darkening. “Aye, I know. I remember when you first told me that, the day we met. I think about that a lot. Think about how stupid I was, then, not to realize what it said about you that being your ally was such a dangerous task. But not as stupid as I was later, to stick around, eh?”

Swick could tell he was expecting an answer, but for once he couldn’t think of one. He took a moment, caught his breath, bit back his pain. Spoke without bothering to think.

“You’re right.”

It didn’t surprise him to hear his own words, but it sure as hell surprised One-Eye. The man might have caught a whole nest of wasps in his mouth for how long and wide it remained open.

“You’re right.” Swick replied. “And in more ways than you know. I’m scum, always have been. A cowardly, conniving piece of shit. I run from fights, I run from responsibility, I run from guilt. And when I can’t live with all the running, I run right down a bottle to bury it. I got people killed, I got you maimed. I…”

Swick recalled the moments before the crash, the mix of horror and faith in his crew. How misplaced the latter had been. How One-Eye’s brother had been among the men to believe in him.

“I killed your brother, too.” He whispered, eyes dropping under the weight of his shame. “I haven’t had a drop to drink in months, haven’t…Stabbed a single back either. It took that for me to realize what was wrong with me, how both bled into each other.” He swallowed, all humor dead and buried already. “Devrin,” Swick continued, using his former friend’s first name for the first time in a long time, “I’m sorry.”

One-Eye paused, and so did the room.

The silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, then thickened even further until no knife in the world would have managed to even scratch its stony surface. Just when he thought the pavilion might erupt with the conversational pressure, One-Eye spoke at last.

“Aye, well, that’s very big of you to admit Swick. Really, I mean it. Congratulations. The hardest part with tackling addiction and dependencies is always recognising your own problems, and it really is easy to get trapped in a cycle of reliance like you did without even realizing it. It’s brilliant that you managed to snap yourself out of yours, especially after so long.”

Other voices cut in, at that, all as eager and earnest as One-Eye.

“Aye good on you, mate.” One merc said.

“Keep it up lad.” Added another.

It would have been rather touching, had it not been so bizarre. Fortunately One-Eye brought things back to more familiar territory before Swick could begin to further disconnect from what reality seemed eager to tell him was happening.

“I’m afraid that doesn’t excuse the people you hurt, though. Your problems were yours, not ours. And you let them affect you to the point of ruining things for everyone around you. That demands an answer, my friend. Blood asks for blood, and all that, aye? Some scores can’t be settled with silver.”

“Only iron.” Swick echoed, licking his lips. They weren’t dry. Moments from death, inches from ruin, and his lips weren’t dry. Well that wasn’t a surprise. He’d stared the reaper down enough that it was almost mundane, these days. And the years of boozing had dried his mouth out more than fear could ever have managed.

There came a time, a man just got tired. No two ways about it. Would he like to live more? Sure.

But that didn’t look like it was going to happen, and Swick had come to terms with that fact a long time ago. You had to, growing up in a racket city. Because the end was after you from the beginning.

One Eye moved. Swick didn’t see how, he wasn’t looking, but he heard the sound of a heel scraping on paved street as his mountainous weight shifted. It slowed the world, quickened his thoughts, brought the idea in an instant where before it might have taken slow, sluggish seconds.

You got used to staring down death, in a racket town, but if you ever got out of one, it was because you’d got even more used to sending it packing the other way before it could close in on you. Had to be quick, after all. Had to be Swift.

“You’ll regret killing me if you don’t listen first.” Swick blurted out, wincing, fully expecting One-Eye to smash his brains out anyway. It would’ve been the smart thing to do, given their history. Swick had always been a good talker.

But the man hesitated, maybe out of sentiment, maybe because he was just that slow of a learner. Either way it was an extra few breaths.

“Listen.” Swick repeated. “And listen well, because I have a job offer you’ll probably be interested in. And the best part is I won’t be your boss.”