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"I need to have a talk with him." I tried to pull myself closer to the Captain who was smothered in between a group of men around a bleached table. Their heads were huddled together and facing down on what I could only see segments of, but figured was a map. And of this group and of this map, I saw Vincent only briefly. A small snapshot between the wrinkled faces of the guards and captains.
"Just please, let me in." I said.
But the two guards in front of the pointy-hatted camp looked down at me, their eyes darkened and the bags growing larger and larger the more they spoke to me.
"No one's allowed in."
"I need to find someone to help the southern front. That's it. Just a couple guys. A team."
"Not now." They said with a voice so horrible, so damn petrifying and fatal that I was taken aback.
I tried poking, tried putting my hand but they pushed me back. The wind drifted and moved the flaps. There he was; Vincent and somewhere in there, Soveros and someone else. An anemic looking man? Someone pale and tall and bald without eyebrows, whose eyes were thin and who had his hands to his back. Neither wearing the uniform, nor seperate from this very private meeting with the other Squad Captains and city officials.
The albino man, that bald guy…I think he looked at me and smiled. The flaps closed in on his face.
The guard stepped over the gap, the other picked me up by the elbow and shoved me back.
“Leave.” He said.
So’s I did just that. I went back to my cart where the random-stuffs (loose armor pieces, random grains, arrow shafts) sat scattered on the floor and I went over to my corner of the cart and kicked a mountain of books down. Some with loose papers that scattered, others with yellow colored notes that now drifted in the air like feathers.
Why go through all the trouble?
I could have just left.
Fuck. I threw a pillow across the small room and it struck the wall with a pompf, scraping down and laying flat. Feathers fell without grace, without any rotation or pirouette. They fell flat around me. Spread out. And made small shadows against my even smaller lantern fire.
The day was already dusk, the twilight was just about teetered into night.
My heart paced. I went against the wall and slid down until my ass touched the floor and my knees touched my chest. It’s always been like this, ever since I was young. The mess of thoughts of what-if’s. The mess of thoughts of what-has-been. My breathing paced, I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Maelisaurs. The kids. A destroyed home. The old man. Vincent. The bald man. Soveros.
I cradled myself and went up and down. It’s always been my bad habit.
Another burned village. Another child. Another mother. I should have tried to save her.
I stood. Paced. Sat. Stood. My heart rushing still. My hands at my face, dragging my skin and slapping my own face as I called myself stupid, stupid. I must have seemed insane if anyone saw me for however long I did this. I stopped about the center of room looking down at the child’s tantrum around the cart.
I breathed in heavy.
I needed to beg, didn’t I?
I left the flaps of my camp open, I left my sword there. All I had was my silver. That's all I've ever been, just a wallet.
So's I went around the camp, running across with my used-to-be-straight hair in a mess of split-ends and shapelessness that it looked like I was a damn scarecrow with glued on hay that just went every direction hair shouldn’t have gone.
I went to some man, a member of no importance with a scar across his neck. Walked up to him, my legs shaking. I took out some silver and grabbed his hand trying to put a silver in his palm. "I'd like to hire your services."
He reeled away; "Bugger off, black cheeks."
The silver fell, I kneeled over and plucked the coins from the floor.
So's I sucked in my lip and tried again. With another person. In another camp, some paces away.
The oldest trick in the book, door-to-door selling. Though, it was more like door-to-door buying but you get the point.
Went to another. A group of lined archers who were taking their arrows out of the red-centers of target boards. "I have a job for you and I've got silver."
They turned to me - the four - with sleeve-less right arms and the number three sown into their left breast, "Sorry, Captain already gave us orders."
“To what?”
“To not talk to you.” One of them said. The bow string pulled back on his bow, and he fired an arrow past me and into the board.
So’s as you could imagine, I was running out of options and running out of places to run. Felt like I did circles around the camp. Every soldier I spoke to looked with disgust, every soldier with a kind of contempt. Some, maybe wanted to help, but obligations to their units had them think otherwise and my pride being dragged across didn't make me feel so hot either. It was like watching yourself die, in a way. At least a part of you, each time having to ask, each time bending my head and offering my hand and my full bag of money.
Each time a decline, each time a disappointment.
So's there was nothing left but to ask that fucker - the ones in the group near the campfire (had they not moved in the days here?) who had called me a jackass, who had insulted me in front of my face. Gabralto.
I went up to them. And I didn't want to think about it, my twitching eye couldn't keep still, the damn fucking gut feeling in my stomach wouldn't go away. A falling feeling, like bowling balls dropped from my throat to my stomach and each one hitting the other, and me feeling the reverberation. I paused as I walked, stuttering each few feet I got closer. I was ten feet away, maybe, when the drop in my stomach became too great. My foot pivoted. Fuck this.
I turned to leave.
That's how it was last time right? When I saw them, eaten. I just...I just ran.
So's that's what I should have done here, right?
I did a full circle back straight towards Gabralto, sitting on a log by a campfire. My throat closed, it felt like concrete down my esophagus. I should have left.
“You’re talking to me?” Gabralto spat some shells from his mouth. “Your balls finally drop or something?”
My face was hot. I clenched my bag of coins.
"I'd like to buy your services." I brought the bag of coins to my chest-level. "There's a one hundred and sixty silver in here. Split amongst all of you, that'd be twenty each."
"Look who's come around?" The middle one said to the rear of Gabralto who had a bastard sword by his waist and whose brown hair was buzz-cut.
"I heard you've been going around like a starving dog?" Gabralto said. "Asking for help, are you? Why should I help you?"
"I need men in the southern front." I said. "It's not that well guarded so’s I was just thinking-"
"You'd hire your own little militia then?" He said. "He wants us to defend the slums. Thieves and whores.”
They laughed.
“And orphans.” I said. They paused and looked at me. “There are children there too.”
“Ah yes. The Mudd people, they’re called. Nameless, family-less wretches.” Gabralto said. “What’d we lose by ignoring them?”
"You don't understand. We can't -" It's like I couldn't stop my brain from thinking, from forming images gruesome and quick and loud. And the words, so clear in my skull. Not again. "I just need help, alright? And if I'm paying who cares?"
"Alright." Gabralto nodded up and down. "You want my help?"
He stepped closer.
"Lick my shoes then."
Oh no, god damnit. Now my eye was really twitching and my fingers gripped into a fist. My lips shut tight. I didn't want to. Who the hell would? I shouldn't have. By all manners of reason I should have let it and the kids go and gone far away from this carnival-show.
"What's wrong? Do you need my help or not?" He said and shook his foot.
My neck went hot, a heat so wide it stretched to my lower back and covered me whole with a membrane of anger. Heat so hot it was almost cold, numbing.
Gabralto licked the back of his hand. "Do it like that, like a cat."
My knees shook as I bent them down. I was sweating but the sun wasn’t out and the wind was cool.
“Almost there.” Gabralto said.
It felt like I was going to vomit, though there was no particular disgust to the sight or smell.
I reared my head down.
“Stop.” Someone said. To my rear. “I’ll help you instead.”
This someone who sat by a tree with a long leather strap that ran down his long blade, slicking against the edge.
Gabralto’s face went flat.
"Of course the fools would be in it together." He said.
I raised my head, then my knees and took a few steps back.
“Did’ya see black cheeks though?” The goon on the left laughed. “He was gonna do it. He was really gonna do it.”
“Yeah, he was.” Gabralto laughed.
It was like permission, because the other started hollering too.
“Not even an ounce of pride in you, is there?” Gabralto said. My shoulders went up, defensive.
Gabralto leaned into me and whispered in my ear. “You’ll never be anything. Just shit underneath my heel.”
He turned around and waved his hand.
“Come on, let’s go.” Gabralto said. Him and his little posse, all loud and dragging their steps and laughing. And I think I heard the laughter grow further within the camp like wild fire. The worlds greatest joke, us.
I rubbed my elbow and felt my shoulders rise and whole body tighten up close. My eyes almost afraid to meet the strangers. This massive of a man. Of dark complexion, with hair in a ponytail behind him and as strange an accent as I had. The left side of his face was dotted with a few moles and there was a star shaped scar on his left shoulder of lighter tone than the rest of his dark, mahogany colored skin. Uniquely though, for such a massive man, he had small features. A little nose, little lips and little ears that seemed odd considering his squared head.
He ran his giant arms down a long blade. A blade that I couldn’t quite measure at the angle it was at, but I guess was the size of me. He gripped a leather strap and tightened it against the edge of his blade and ran it across again. It whipped the floor from the tension.
I walked towards him into the edge of a forest, around this man sat an ax stuck in a tree. Around that ax, what looked like five logs and probably more considering most of them were sharpened into spikes and other traps.
I looked up to him. He put his eyes on me. Green colored, with what looked like kohl rubbed beneath his eyes but in the growing darkness, it could have just been his natural skin.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked him. "Are you stupid?"
"I can take it back if you’d like." He said.
“You’re right. Thank you. But I need to know why.”
"I helped you because you looked so pathetic. That's it." He said.
“What’s your name?”
“Kal.” He said.
"I’ll pay you."
"Keep it. You look like you need it more." He said. “I won’t accept payment, consider this a gift.”
"A gift?"
“The gift to be your champion, no?” He said.
“Right. Right…” I said. “Do you belong to any of the squads here?”
“No. None have taken me in.” He said.
“So that’s why you’re helping me, you ain’t got much else to do.” I said.
"Whether or not any of them take me in does not change my duty as a crow.” He said. “I am obliged to protect the weak, as are you.”
"Sure.” I said.
He dragged his sword up a little higher and nestled it over his shoulder. A jagged edged, two handed hilt with a bandage wrapped around the handle that stretched all the way down his back behind him. It looked orange in the evening sun.
“You’ll be in the southern front.” I said.
"Southern front, huh." He said. "We don't have many traps there, do we? Or men stationed. Or anything, really."
"None." I said. “I’ve only seen two guards there too. How’s that for prep?”
Kal rubbed his chin and looked about, talking in a mumbling low voice.
"I don't know what we'll be able to do then. Say a dozen bulls around, I’d only be able to handle two. Maybe three. And you? Shit, I don’t even think you can handle half of one." He leaned his giant steel against his chest and drew his head back. I wasn’t here to debate. "I always find a way to get myself in trouble, don’t I?"
"Sorry." I muttered the words. We both sat in that silence, something in between self-anger and disappointment. We looked onward to the camp and the shuffle of men that went in between the tents, the movement of arrows and of swords and of rolled and bagged supplies hefted over the bulky shoulders of all the squads and all the people. Us two, and I don’t want to speak for him, but us two kind of pariahs to this little tribe. Or assortment of tribes. I even saw Gabralto in the mess of movement, made me squirm.
“I think I got one person left who might want to help.” I said. “Someone who’s kind of like us, in a way.”
“You better fetch him quick because I’m starting to regret my decision.”
“He's the last person I wanted to ask...”
“Sylas!” I said. “Hey, come out, would ya?”
We rustled through the bushes.
“Ow.”
My legs scratching against the thorns and the wide leafed vines that made me itch, and the itch that made me look wide-eyed down.
“Sylas? The wind of the east? You’re going to ask him for help?” Kal asked.
“Yeah. I’ve spoken to him before.”
“He doesn’t help anyone, let alone us.” Kal said.
“Never say never. There’s always a deal to be struck.” I smiled and winked and then fell flat as my legs started to throb. Shit. Shit. Shit. I bent over and hopped back a little bit until I struck a tree and scratched along my two legs (that had gotten oh, so, hairy over the months!) and went at it like a post for cats.
Twigs snapped. The leaves made clatter. I thought it was the three bullies again, I thought I was going to have to fight or hope for the fellow with the large sword to protect me. We both turned to face the direction of the rustling, both necks exposed and flexed in that direction. Then something gripped my firm, calloused hands. Then the knew blade came, drawn to my neck. Two hands behind the tree I was stood adjacent to like the branches had grown limbs to kill me in revenge for all those damn books I’d consumed.
I didn't even want to turn or breath. The hands let go of my throat. I fell and crawled back. Kal had both hands behind his back, on the blade.
The man - the one with two daggers, it was him. He came from outside the shadow of the tree. We both eased.
“What’re you two doing here? You’re far off camp.” He said.
“We came looking for you.” I massaged my throat.
"How'd you do that? That noise trick?" Kal asked. “The trees shook behind us but you came from there, in front.”
"I don't know what you mean." Sylas cleaned his blade off of his bandaged arms. "I just wanted to take a good look at the boy who almost ate a shoe."
“I didn’t eat shit. What he told me to do was kiss his shoe.” I shook my head. “W-which doesn’t matter. I didn’t kiss that either.”
"Had a rough time of it, did you?" He said. "All of that trouble just to start a militia.”
"That’s right. I’ve come here to ask you for help.”
“Not that I mind helping you. But why should I help?” Sylas asked.
“’Cause I can pay you.” He said.
“Oh?” Sylas asked. “How much?”
“Sixty silver.” I said.
“That’s what we make a hunt. You’re paying me my normal salary. Why would I help you over Vicentius?” He asked.
I grit my teeth.
“Eighty.” I said.
“Is it just the three of us?” He asked. “Well two, considering your talents.”
“Yes.” I stood. “Just the two - three of us, in the southern front.”
“Then that’s too much work for too little pay.”
He turned, put his hand against the tree and started his way back. My lips fumbled. I felt my eyes water. Call it the Darko curse but in my family runs this strange habit, I guess, or condition where losing money makes us break into strange…humors, let’s call them. And I was breaking out into one right now as I reached to my side for my coins. My legs itched. My face reddened and my eyes were just about ready to cry.
But I’d be damned to feel what I felt back then. I’d be damned to let it fall through my hands again.
“One hundred and sixty coins. It’s all I have.”
Sylas turned around, smiling.
“Now that’s how you hire a mercenary.”
