Naturally, Swick considered killing him while his guard was down, but he decided against it. There was every chance he’d reach him before the man realised what was happening, but none of killing him. He was a warrior of some kind, with a body hardened for battle, and though his raw strength and resilience didn’t seem like much, it wasn’t something Swick would be getting past with his bare hands. His own powers were even less centred on bodily strength than the General’s.

“Sit.” Venka ordered, still not looking up. There was a chair opposite him, clearly prepared in advance, and Swick took it without replying. Eying him, thinking.

“You know I’ve told you everything I know.” He iterated, testing the response of Venka’s face as he said it. They were little, and scarce.

“So you say.” Venka replied. Interestingly, he did not look at Swick’’s face. Which meant it probably wasn’t a test he’d found himself in. One did not sit a man down for testing, and then look away from his expressions when prodding him with suspicion and worry.

“So what do you want me for then?” Swick asked. Venka looked up at that, his displeasure clear.

“What do you want me for then, General Venka.” Swick amended, forcing a smile. It seemed to have about as much effect on the good General as any other expression Swick might have mustered, which was to say somewhere between jackshit and fuck-all. A stony man, this one.

“I have been observing you.” Venka replied, finally putting the quill down. Swick was tempted to express the honour he felt at being deemed more important than a letter on latrine digging, but decided better.

“And I’ve impressed, I should hope?” He grinned instead, still scraping the General’s face for some betrayal of thought or emotion. Both were as irritatingly absent as ever.

“You have demonstrated a rare acclimation to the conditions of my camp.” Venka replied. “You have, as far as I can gather, not shown any particular fear of orcs, nor distaste. You have proven steely and robust in your interactions with them and the…Society of this war party.”

It was a serious observation, and Swick sensed his humour would not be appreciated. He straightened up a bit.

“Can I level with you General?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ve been travelling this world a lot. I mean, a lot. You’d be amazed how big it really is, and how much it shrinks when you have a skyship. I’ve been north, south, east, west. I’ve been as high as I could go before my spit started freezing, and more. Seen things you wouldn’t believe. Lands where giants herd people like cattle, mountains built by colonies of horse-sized insects that eat entire ecosystems. Other things. Dark things, that we haven’t invented the words to describe.” He let his smile drop, feeling the mood for it gone as he revisited memories long buried and sharply recalled. “I’m not scared of a few fucking morons, no matter how big they are.”

Venka studied him. Then he smirked. The smirk turned into a proper smile, which in turn bled to a grin, then finally completed its evolution into a full-blown laugh. Head thrown back, shoulders heaving, the General cackled for a quarter-minute before finally mastering himself.

“Well said.” He sighed, at last. “Truly, well said. So many seem awed by the orcs, daunted. I’ve even heard some say we’re doomed to fall against them before long. All hogwash.”

His lip curled as he glanced over Swick’s shoulder, doubtless to the pair of armoured orcs who stood guard at the tent’s opening.

“Orcs are never going to take this land.” Venka continued. “And it baffles me that people think otherwise. Elephants are bigger than them, horses faster, lions more vicious and many, many things stronger. Yet orcs wear clothes, and speak in their simple, grunting ways, and occasionally learn to smash rocks together until one is pointy enough to use as a knife, and so people mistakenly believe that they will one day build cities of their own. They will not, and they cannot.”

Swick studied the man. As far as he could tell, Venka wasn’t entirely wrong. Orcs were stupider than men, but in the same way that a few men were stupider than men, too. The average simpleton was duller than the average orc, and rather less focused when they set their mind to something.

“Orcs use metal in the wild.” He noted, curious how the General might react. Venka scoffed.

“Salvaged from ours, clearly, or made through simple mimicry of our tactics.I have some theories on how the Orcs managed to evolve what little they have…But that is a digression too far.”

It wasn’t the sort of conversation that tended to inspire a smile in Swick, but he replied with one all the same.

“So what are you digressing from?” He asked. “Something big, I’d guess. A job offer?”

Most men disliked being seen through, General Venka was the exception. He outright loathed it. The man’s good humour was vaporised by Swick’s response, his eyes sharpening as a slight nod shook his head.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Your skills are considerable, and as of recently your previous career as a skypirate seems…Jeopardised. You could make good money from us fighting for our side, and if you agree to do so you will receive a skyship from the Dark Lord’s own expenses as standard equipment, to be crewed by whatever undead, orcs or other units are available.” Venka leaned across the desk, eying him. “You made yourself one of the most renowned criminals in history with a crew of gutter-scum and filth, what do you think you might manage commanding Dullahan, liches, Beladonnan Puppeteers…Even reanimated Heroes?”

Swick swallowed. That crew had been gutter-scum and filth, all of them. But they’d been his. A man had to have a code, else he was nothing more than an animal, and it stung Swick’s to hear his men derided so casually and say nothing against it.

But his code was a convenient and practical one too. He could speak out against indignities when doing so wouldn’t dump him back in the fucking gutter himself.

“And I’d be expected to…Scout.” He guessed. “Raid particular targets, maybe disappear the occasional pesky General…Or Hero?”

Venka’s face moved about as much as ever.

“Of course.” He replied. “I trust you don’t consider such work to be beneath you?”

It would have been awkward timing to decide as much after building a two-decade career off of it. Swick shook his head.

“Of course not General.” He smiled, smiled so convincingly it might have fooled a drunken idiot. Fortunately a rich clever man was the easier mark by far, and there was never any doubt about Venka buying it.

“Excellent.” The General replied, pausing, then continuing. “If so, it means I can inform you about some rather important context to our current march towards the city of Kaltan. You told me my peer, Sphera, remained with your allies, yes?”

Swick nodded, though the question was rhetorical.

“I am almost certain she is within the walls of Kaltan, there is simply no other place for her captors to have retreated, and the reports I’ve heard of Ebonspine Fortress’ destruction all but confirm the presence of that Silenos Shaiagrazni figure. This makes a large difference for our priorities.”

For the life of him, Swick couldn’t think what. They had to be less vicious in their assault for the risk of killing her? That couldn’t be right, surely.

Venka noted his confusion, speaking fast to rectify it.

“Good God man, think it through!” He snapped. “Sphera is a Necromancer second only to our master, with her in the city, it means that our captured enemies can be resurrected once we’ve taken it. Which I estimate will be tomorrow.”

Swick ran cold.

“Which means the Paladin…”

“Can be executed the hour before.” General Venka replied. He did not look away from Swick as this question was asked, instead staring at his face with such focus as might be cast against a sheet of theorems by the mathematician they confounded. It was a fight for Swick not to show any of the dozen warring emotions Venka’s words inspired, all while tucking away the confusion he felt at his own response. Lie now, think later. He got to the lying quickly.

“Why tell me?”

It was a fucking pointless question, Swick had already worked out the answer. But it helped to seem stupider than you were. People watched clever men more sharply than dull ones, cautious ones more wearily than hasty ones. Venka seemed to buy the act as well as he’d bought everything else Swick had handed him.

“Because you will be the one to kill her.” The General informed him, Lightly, casually, as if he were telling Swick to prove his loyalty by leading a few cows out to pasture. As if he were not suggesting the execution of the best person Swick had ever fucking met.

He’d been drinking more than his fill, could feel the laxing touch of alcohol ease the aches of his tortured mind even then, but somehow a headache manifested itself between Swick’s ears. They always found him, whether he drank or not. The more he drank, the more they found him, and the more drink he needed to dull his nerves enough that they didn’t register. They never weakened, once started. Not while he remained conscious. This one would be with him a day at least, and grow harsher by the minute.

“And here I thought you’d suggest something hard as a test of loyalty.” Swick grinned, leaning back, putting his feet up, folding his hands behind his head. Even moving that much worsened the pricks of agony. He’d seen a brain once, a human brain. Some far-Western surgeon had cut it out of a dead body. There’d been folds all along the surface. Swick imagined that some invisible demon was grabbing those folds, now, and using them as grips to wring the whole mass of the organ out like a creased towel. It certainly fucking felt like it.

Venka smiled, oblivious to his pain as people always seemed to be.

“Good, then you may take your leave. I have preparations to see to for tomorrow’s siege, and you need not have any part in them.”

Which was, of course, a very polite way of telling Swick to fuck off so Venka could begin work on things too important for a yet untested man who’d already betrayed one side to be seeing. Fair enough, he supposed, and not the sort of request he was in any position to deny even if it hadn’t been. Swick got to his feet and made for the door.

Outside the tent, it was cold. Early morning. The sun was still far enough from its horizon that Swick couldn’t see much of anything more than ten yards from him, let alone to any extreme of the world’s edge. If they were any fraction of a day’s march from Kaltan, he’d not be granted visual confirmation for quite a few hours. Preparations were already underway to pack up and resume their march.

Swick thought to that, and the notion of trudging along. It wouldn’t be hard now that he’d been unchained from the other prisoners. Certainly, the Paladin would have it worse. His head started to ache again.

Moving back to his tent, Swick tried to think through the bleary, painful clouds of trouble wafting about his mind. It was one of the slow days, the days where every idea he had seemed just out of reach, and every problem just a hair too complicated for fixing.

What Swick needed was wine. Beautiful, brain-settling wine. Wine to blunt his tortured nerves and settle his screaming thoughts. Wine to make the world quiet and easy again. Wine to help him get some fucking sleep before the time came for killing Paladins and sieging cities.

Over the years, Swick had seen a lot of men and women killed. Scum, most of them, but a few had been his scum. In all that time, he’d never once found himself turned against wine.

Some friendships were just unbreakable.