"There he was, britches around his ankles, unarmed, scared. Some slave trader, aye, defenseless when he takes a shit!" A round of laughter accompanied the story, rough men hewn of blades and bloody battles pressed together beneath the roof of the Grimgrout mead hall. "So. So I told him I wasn't the sort to kill a man on the pot and let him to his business."
"What then?"
Brill took a swig of the mead in his right hand, his left hand tapping on another full mug waiting to chase the next, "I waited. Took him almost an hour to finish. He stepped out, eyes like a rabbit, thought I would have gone away by then, but there I was, waiting in the same place."
"You let him go?"
Brill raised an eyebrow at the man who questioned him, shaking his head, "Nope. Stabbed him in the gut. Job's a job, but let it never be said I sent a man to the Gods with shit on his arse."
Again, laughter swelled among the mercenaries and they turned back to their drinks and jokes. Honest folk kept a wide berth of the mismatched men, afraid the dogs would bite if you leaned too close, that money wasn't the only collar that held them to their craft. More the better then, less of the marks got into their circle, the less they could gouge them with prices. Hard to tell a man like Brill that your promised sum of gold was too much when you didn't know a thing about him. Mercenaries lived in the enigmatic world of double dealing and rising prices. It was said, among certain circles, that mercenaries were merchants of Death, every bit as smooth and fast as those turbaned Kalims from the South. But while the Kalims sold scarves of silk and fine perfume, mercs sold the skin of men with debts and hate, poured blood of libation to their equally enigmatic god.
"To Athermon!" Brill roared, raising his glass, "God of thieves, merchants, and mercenaries. May he bless our blades to cut and bless our customers to hate and lust for plenty more to test our edge upon!" He was championed with a roar, a thunderous appreciation. Here, a man was not measured by the weight of his past, but by the weight of his grip behind his weapon. Thieves, looters, deserters, and cowards sought the Rust, named so for the habit of blood to dry upon their armor, but only the worthy stayed alive…and even then, not all the worthy enjoyed a full life.
The Argerian military fought for home and country. The Rust fought for gold, nothing more. Country and home were luxuries most could not afford.
Draining his first mug, Brill picked up the second and swallowed it down in three tremendous gulps. Cheers accompanied his feat of hedonism and he departed the mead hall amid thunderous applause.
Outside, the evening had taken on a dreary note, despite the colored penants and fools cavorting in the streets. Drunkards lay strewn in alleys and whores slipped skin from their frocks and sung the men on. Brill smiled, adrift in the swaying warmth of his bosom friend, mead. With an unsteady gait, the armored mercenary pushed past the festivities and toward the tombstones. Argeria's graveyard stretched across two hills, silhouetted markers to remind the people that their celebration came at a cost. Lomass had devastated Argeria some years ago, and even in the truce that followed, the military grimly accepted that it was only by Durell's respect of the Wounded King that kept them sovereign. Here the dusty bones of men and women were commemorated. Long after their family died, and their family's family perished, these stones would still stand.
Pushing through the gate, he nearly pitched into an open tomb, a yawning mouth prepared for no man and all men at once. "Not today," Brill slurred, balancing himself on the headstone, "Got plenty of fight left 'fore I go to ground." Stumbling away from the ill omen, he crossed himself twice, his hand rising to the crown of his head and drawing down like a blade in front of his face. Two to be safe, leave the ill omens for the unwise fools. This grave waited for a body and it was not particular on which it would have to eat.
His sheathed sword clanged against the tombs as he walked, narrow paths between the weeds and briars echoing loudly with his passage. He came to rest beneath a Willow tree, gnarled and ghostly, protectively protecting a patch of land from the invasion of military. Here, the honored druids and priestesses were laid to rest, their souls laid at the highest point of the cemetery and protected by a sacred tree. It was one stone he kneeled before, though, pulling out his wineskin and upending it on the cold soil. The wine was expensive, but then, he felt it was deserved. The richness of his glee ran out of him like wind through a cloak, passing through the holes in every bit of him.
" 'm sorry," He said to the gravestone, "Sorry for what I did ta ya, ta ya kid. Forgive this poor fool today on Fool's feast for his crime. I didn' mean it. Never did." The grave was silent, and a burning itch still pulsed beneath his skin. "Still cursed, then?" He asked it, patting the headstone almost fondly, "Guess I'll haveta come back next year, then. See if ya change ya mind." Wheeling back from the grave, jerking with the overcompensation of his inebriated body, Brill focused on the gate at the bottom of the peak.
He was in the wrong spot. Blinking blearily, he remembered that her grave was behind the Pallantine chapel, ringed by yews, not up here on a hill. Sighing, he started down. "Means'a same n'matter where I'spilt."
He ascended with some difficulty, but descending was a process in vain. He tumbled, crashed, flew headlong over graves on his passage down the hill. The clatter raised the gaze of the villagers, but none stopped to lend a hand or their insults. His armor was the brown of rust, and that alone made him dangerous.
Stepping back onto the street, Brill took one of the flasks from his belt and swigged its properties, swilling the spirits with his tongue.
"Gods'n Gods'n Gods above," he sang, throwing out his arms and turning in an incomplete, wavering circle, "Do I love the Feast 've Fools."
************************
He found his way slowly, winding through alleys and merry makers. But moonlight led his path to the Pallantine chapel. He passed in front of a cloaked woman, nearly knocking into her. Grunting an apology, he pushed behind the chapel and through the yews with a calamitous crash.
A man stood above her grave, silver chalice in one hand. Another reveler, lost probably. No one visited this grove, not anymore…and he was just drunk enough to assume he was the only one who paid respect.
"Not'safast," he grumbled, and the pale man turned sharply, his lips stretched against a scowl and his eyes flashing in the dark. "Thisseere's a tombyard, nah a tav'rn." His words slurred and he blinked, desperately trying to focus the pale man in his gaze. With speed born of honed reflexes and surprise brought of his unpredictable swaying, he came forward and grasped the cup, pulling the goblet away from the pale man.
"S'Fool's feast!" He bellowed, "An I…I wan you to share it wif me. Here a…mong the honnered dead." Holding up the cup, he toasted the air, pouring a little out over her grave, much to the shocked dismay of the necromancer. Then, raising the cup to his lips, he took a gulp.
It tasted like fire, fire and rot.
Sputtering, hurling the chalice away from him, dashing its contents, Brill reeled away and fell headlong over another grave. "S'what, s'what. S'whattzat?!" he sputtered clutching his throat. "Ah beeen pois'nd! Ah ben pois'nd!" His body buckled, twisted, pumped uselessly at the air. His muscles tremored and his entire figure seemed to tremor, every inch of him. His head bashed against the grave beneath the necromancer's feet, his tough skull cracking it, before he rolled away into the low cover of the yews, hissing and spitting and…finally going still.
Forty years since Ranthos vanished.
"And so what do they call you, friend?"
