Speaker 1: The scum Kings, a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey.
Speaker 2: Chapter fifty six, The March, My pitch, my insane, fever
born gamble. Hung in the cold, dead air, My crew,
what was left of them, just stared at me. Their
faces were pale in the twilight, a gallery of shock
and despair. I had taken their last sensible, pathetic hope
and crushed it. And in its place I had offered
them a dream. It was an unbelievable dream, built on
the fraying threads of a desperate story. But it was
a dream. Or So was the first to speak. His
voice was flat, devoid of anger, as if he were
explaining a simple, sad truth to a child.
Speaker 1: Drey.
Speaker 2: He said, you're raving a fever dream from a dying lunatic.
That's your plan. He shook his head, a gesture of
pure weary pity. We have no food, we have no
map to this abbey. We are weeks from any known
civilized road. It is suicide, a fantasy. Seline stepped forward,
holding up her hand, the single silver coin pinched between
her fingers. This is real, Drey, She said, This is
a loaf of bread, This is a day of life.
What you have, it's a carving, it's a story, it's air.
I am walking to the nearest village. We are going
to eat.
Speaker 1: It was done.
Speaker 2: I had lost them. The logical, sensible world was pulling
them back back to the mud, back to a slow, cold,
certain grave. Then a sound cut through the tension, a
sound so unexpected, so alien in this place of despair,
that it made us all flinch. Stigand was laughing. It
started as a low, rumbling chuckle in his massive chest.
Then it grew erupting from him in a great, booming,
joyous roar that echoed off the barren rocks. He threw
his head back and laughed at the gray, uncaring sky.
Or So and Selaine stared at him, horrified, as if
he too had finally gone mad. Stigand wiped a tear
from his eye, his face split in a bloody, bruised
grin a golden abbey, he roared, slamming his bandaged fist
against his thigh, a fortress full of wine, guarded by priests.
He looked at Orso, his eyes blazing with a new
wild light. You want us to go back to being rats,
or So hiding in ditches.
Speaker 1: I am a warrior.
Speaker 2: I was not born to starve to death waiting for
a single coin to buy me a crust of bread.
He turned to me, his gaze full of a fierce,
resurrected loyalty. I would rather die storming a wall of
gold than live another month as a beggar. He spat
on the ground at Orso's feet. Dre's madness is better
than your sense. At least it is a fine place
to die. I'm in to the feast. Dix, who had
been watching the entire exchange with a child's bright eyed curiosity,
began to giggle. Oh yes, he whispered, his painted smile,
returning a secret, rich, holy place. The things we could do,
the chaos, it's beautiful. The crew was split. Brynn was
watching me, her head cocked, her expression unreadable, but I
saw her hand move away from her knife. She was
no longer preparing to leave. Cob as always, was just terrified,
looking back and forth between or So and me, trying
to guess which one of us was going to get
him killed faster. It all came down to Orso. He
was the center of the mutiny. He had the logic,
the coin and the path to survival. But I had
Stiggin's heart and Gix's madness, orso looked at me. He
looked at Stigand, who was now pulsing with a new
dangerous energy. He looked at Selaine, who was clutching her
one coin as if it were a drowning child. He
looked at the barren gray land around us, at the
dying light, at the cold stones. He was a man
of logic, and he was recalculating the math. I could
see it in his eyes. He hated me, He hated
this plan. He hated that his own sensible, logical path
to survival was being undone by a ghost story and
a madman's laugh. But he was, above all else, a pragmatist.
He let out a long, slow sigh, the breath of
a man who accepts a terrible, unchangeable truth. He looked
at the ground, then back at me, his face a
mask of cold, grim resignation, a one in a million chants.
He grunted, his voice, thick with a disgust. He didn't
bother to hide is better than a crawling in ditches.
He sheathed his dagger. The debate was over. Selaine looked
at him, her face crumbling in disbelief. Her one precious coin,
her one real thing, was now worthless. She slowly mechanically
wrapped it in its cloth and hid it away. She
was beaten. One by one, they got to their feet,
Stiggin first, energized as if he'd just feasted, Gis light
as a dancer. Bryn, a silent shadow, rejoining the pack,
cob hauled to his feet by stiggand his sobs quieted
by a new, more profound terror. Finally, or So and Slaine,
the seven of us. We were no longer a broken,
aimless mob. We were a single unit again. We were hungry,
we were battered. We were marching toward a fantasy. But
for the first time since Gray Mark, we were marching
with a purpose. I turned my back on the distant,
smoky memory of the city and faced the dark, jagged
line of the stone Fence mountains. I didn't know if
an abbey was out there. I didn't care.
Speaker 1: It was a direction, it was a war, and we
were on the march. The scum Kings a broad Sword
Studio production created and written by Mike Daltrey.
Speaker 2: Chapter fifty seven, The Grind, The Hope that had burned
so hot, was now a cold, dead cinder. The march
into the Stone Fence Mountains was not a march at all.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 2: Miserable, vertical crawl. The barren hills we had left behind
were a paradise compared to this. Or So had called
it suicide, and with every agonizing step he was proven right.
This was a wall of broken shale and wind scoured rock.
Every foothold was a gambol, every handhold of betrayal. The
loose rock would slide out from under our boots, sending
us sliding back down, bleeding, cursing, wasting energy we did
not have. And the wind, it was not a breeze,
It was a scream, a constant, high pitched, icy razor
that cut through our rags and stole the breath from
our lungs. It found every burn, every cut, every weakness,
and it gnawed on us. The Grand mad Hope of
the Abbey, of the Stern Visage, the golden Fortress that
had seemed so real in my mind, was a distant,
feverish joke. I was a fool, a lunatic, who had
pitched a ghost story to a crew of dying men,
and they had been desperate enough to believe me. Now,
the physical misery of this climb was the price for
my fantasy. I could feel their unspoken accusations in the silence.
The crew was a tattered, silent procession of my failures.
We were bound by our shared suffering, but that bond
was fraying, rotting from the inside out. Stigan was the worst.
He was a wounded giant, and his mood was as
black and cold as the rock under his feet. The
burns on his hands, the price of his rage and
gray mark, were not healing. The filthy rags we'd wrapped
them in were caked with dirt and puss. In this
ice cold wind, the wounds were festering. He couldn't grip
his axe properly. He climbed with his wrists and forearms,
his movements agonizingly slow. He never complained, He just let
out a low animal grunt every time he put weight
on a hand. His silence was a thousand times worse
than any of his roars. He was a warrior, being
undone by his own body, and I had led him
here to rot Behind me, I heard a clatter and
a wet, choked sob cob. He was our anchor in
every sense of the word. His body softened by years
of cook fires and ale was giving out. He stumbled,
he fell, He wept. Every hundred paces we had to
stop and wait for him, or haul him to his feet.
I can't, I can't, dra He'd whimper, his face slick
with tears and snot you will, I'd snarl back, yanking
him up. You'll climb, or I'll leave you for the crows.
Your choice. But it was an empty threat. We all
knew it. I needed every body. His weakness was my weakness.
It was a constant physical drain on our will to live.
The sun began to dip, a sliver of weak, watery
light that offered no warmth and was now abandoning us.
We found a shallow crevice in the rock, a pathetic
shelter that barely blunted the scream of the wind. We
couldn't make a fire. There was no wood, nothing to
burn but our own despair, and we were too exposed.
We collapsed, a collection of bruises, burns, and broken hopes,
huddled together for a warmth. We couldn't generate. The mad
hope of the abbey was dead. It was the ravings
of a fool, and I was that fool. I looked
at my crew in the dying light. Cob was a shivering,
fetal ball. Stiggins stared into the darkness, his face a
mask of silent agony. Celaine, her purpose gone, just looked empty.
Then I saw or So. He wasn't huddled, he wasn't shivering.
He was sitting apart, his back against the rock, his
face a calm, cold mask. He had taken a piece
of flint from the ground and was sharpening his dagger. Shick, shick, shick.
The sound was quiet, precise, methodical. It was the only
sound in our miserable camp besides the wind. He wasn't
looking at me, He didn't have to shick shick, shick.
His silence was a constant, screaming accusation. It was the loudest,
most eloquent I told you so I had ever heard
in my life.
Speaker 1: The Scum Kings a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey. Chapter fifty eight, The Scent of Prey.
Speaker 2: The dawn was a cold, gray wound in the sky,
and it promised nothing but another day of the same
grinding misery. We were huddled in a ts revis seven
ghosts trying to share the body heat of a corpse.
The wind was a constant physical assault, and the hunger.
The hunger was no longer a dull ache. It was
a living thing, a predator with its teeth in our guts.
Stigand was a statue of silent agony, his burned hands
cradled in his lap, COB's weeping had subsided into a low, constant,
animal like whimper. And or so or So was sharpening
his knife. Shick, shick, shick. The sound was the only
clock in our hopeless world, a rhythmic grating reminder of
his logic, of my failure. It was the sound of
I told you so, over and over. Brynn was gone.
She had slipped out before the sun had even touched
the horizon, a phantom of desperate hope on a final,
pointless hunt. Now we were just waiting, waiting for her
to return with nothing, so we could finally give up,
lie down, and let the wind have us. The sun
was past its zenith when I saw a flicker of
movement on the ridge above. It was her. She didn't
walk back into camp. She appeared a shadow, detaching itself
from the gray rock. The crew, too beaten to even
look up, didn't move. They expected nothing, But I saw it.
I saw her face. The dead, frustrated look she had
worn for days was gone. Her eyes, her eyes were alive.
They were bright, feral, and fixed on me with a terrifying,
single minded intensity. This was not the look of a
defeated scout. This was the look of a wolf that
has just found the scent of blood. The shick shick
shick of Orso's knife stopped. The camp was dead, silent.
Every eye was on her. She didn't waste a word.
Her voice was electric with a new energy. Camp three
miles a box canyon stigand raised his head, his voice
a raw croak. Goats soldiers, she said. The word landed
like a stone cob let out a high, terrified whine,
stuffing his fist into his mouth. Soldiers, see soldiers, No, no, no,
they'll kill us all We're dead. Or So was already
shaking his head, his face a mask of grim, cold
logic soldiers in these mountains. He looked at me, his
eyes hard. It's a pa troll or a trap. They're
not merchants, Dray, They're professionals, and we are half dead.
We leave them, We go around. Brian ignored them both.
Her focus was on me, five of them. She canntinued,
laying out the facts with the lethal precision of a hunter,
describing a kill horses, three full supply packs heavy. They're
not a patrol. They're mapping cartographers, she pointed. They're in
a box canyon, one way in, one way out. Two
men on watch. But they're lazy. They're soldiers, playing at
being explorers. They feel safe. She was right. Or So
was wrong. This wasn't a patrol, This was a prize.
Dre or So said, his voice a low, urgent warning.
Listen to me. We are in no condition to fight farmers,
let alone five armed and armored sea soldiers. We are wounded,
we are starving. They will be disciplined. It's a fool's
errand we wait. We go around. Selaine nodded in agreement,
her face pale. He's right, the risk is too high.
It's suicide. I looked at Orso's sensible, logical starving plan.
I looked at the crew, a collection of broken bones
and shattered hopes. I looked at Stigand who was now
watching me. A desperate animal. Hope rekindled in his eyes.
The abbey was a fantasy. This was real. The food
in those packs was real. The horses that could carry
us were real. We couldn't get to the abbey. We
couldn't get anywhere. This wasn't a choice between logic and
madness anymore. This was a choice between dying on our
feet or dying on our knees. I was done being
a victim. I was done waiting. I stood up, my
legs shaking, but my will forged new and hard as iron.
I looked at Orso, then at the rest of them.
We're starving, I said, my voice, low and hard. They
have food, they have horses. They are in aur Away.
I drew my sword. The sound of it leaving the sheath,
a long, cold shing of steel, was the sound of
a final decision. We're taking it.
Speaker 1: The Scum Kings a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey. Chapter fifty nine, The kill Box. The
decision was made, the argument was over. So a man
who had been my enemy a moment before became my blade.
The mutiny was forgotten, replaced by the cold, hard, unifying
clarity of a shared hunt. He stared at me, his
face a mask of grim logic. He hated this, He
hated me for it, but he was, above all a survivor.
He looked at my drawn sword, at Stiggins's desperate, hungry eyes,
and he let out a long, slow sigh. The pragmatist
had won his internal war. A frontal assault is suicide,
he grunted, his voice flat, all business. They're soldiers. We
are what we are. If we do this, we do
it my way, or we all die here. I'm listening,
I said. He didn't need a map, He had Briand's words.
He grabbed a handful of gravel and began to lay
out the pieces on a flat rock. The canyon is
a trap, one way in, one way out. We don't
attack the camp. That's a fortress. We make them come
to us. His plan was a thing of brutal, classic simplicity.
It was a machine with three moving parts. Bryn, He said,
his gaze shifting to her, you are the lure. Tell
them you're a lost local. You need their help.
Speaker 2: But drop a hint about something to explore that you
found on your wandering, a false trail, something that looks
like a path to a better vantage point, something they
can't resist mapping. Lead them into the narrowest part of
the canyon, and for the God's sake, don't go with them.
Brynn didn't speak, She just gave a sharp, feral nod.
She was alive again, Her purpose returned. She was in
her element, and she vanished into the rocks like smoke.
Stigand or So continued, turning to the big northman. You
are the cage door. You and GCKX. You'll climb the
ridge above the canyon entrance. Find the loose rock. We
need a rock slide, something to block their retreat. Not
to kill them, just to seal the trap. Stiggin grinned
a terrible, bloody expression. His burned hands flexed. The pain
was still there, but now it had a purpose. I
will bring the mountain down on them, he growled. No.
Or So snapped his voice sharp. You will be quiet,
You will be a whisper. DICKX, you keep him quiet.
Just one bowlder, a single key stone to block the path.
We need them trapped, not alerted. Dicks giggled his eyes
wide and manic, already in love with the idea of
such a grand, terrible prank. The two of them lumbered
off a giant in his imp to set their trap.
Then or So looked at me and we He said,
are the blade. We didn't need to speak much after that.
We were two heads of the same predator, united by
a perfect, terrible harm. His cold, tactical mind, my go
for the throat will. We stalked the length of the
narrow canyon, our movements economical and silent. This was our
kill box, a stretch of the path no more than
twenty paces long, with a sheer cliff on one side
and a sixty foot drop on the other. There was
no cover, no retreat, no escape. We found our nests.
Me and ors tucked into a high crevice in the
rock wall, a good ten feet above the path, hidden
by a tangle of dead thorny bushes. Selaine and Cob
were further back, hidden, their only job to stay out
of the way. We waited. The silence of the mountains
was absolute. There was only the wind. I could feel
the hunger in my gut, a low, cramping knot of
pure animal need. But for the first time in days,
it wasn't a weakness. It was a strength. It was
a focus. It was the razor's edge of my will.
An hour passed, then two My muscles ached from staying still,
but I didn't move. We were a single, silent, professional unit,
forged by desperation into a sharp lethal weapon. Then I
heard it, a single soft bird call from the ridge
above us, brims signal prey is on the move. My
heart gave a single hard thump. Minutes later they appeared,
two soldiers, walking with the easy confidence of men who
fear nothing. They were in full mail, swords at their hips.
Between them, walking with a compass in his hand, was
another man in simpler robes, a cartographer. The woman's trail
looks promising.
Speaker 1: Master.
Speaker 2: One of the soldiers said, his voice echoing in the canyon,
it should cut three miles off our survey of the
western ridge. The cartographer replied, his eyes on his map case,
not on the rocks above him. They were lazy, they
were safe, They were hours. They passed the point where
Stiggand and Gicks waited. They walked past the canyon's entrance,
sealing their own doom. They entered the narrowest part of
the path right below us. They were in the box.
I raised my hand, the cold wind brushing my knuckles.
I watched the last soldier take one more step. I
let my hand fall. The signal.
Speaker 1: The scum Kings broad Sword Studio production, created and written
by Mike Daltrey, Chapter sixty, The Desperate Victory.
Speaker 2: My hand fell. It was the only signal needed. From
the ridge above, a sharp crack echoed through the canyon,
followed by a low, gathering roar. Stiggins work. A wall
of rock and shale, loosened by his and Gigs's efforts,
thundered down onto the narrow path, completely blocking the canyon's entrance.
The trap was sprung. The three men on the path
spun around, their faces a mask of confusion and shock.
The cartographer screamed. The two soldiers' instincts taking over, drew
their swords and formed a tight back to back circle,
their eyes scanning the rocks above. They were professionals. They
knew this was an ambush. They just didn't know it
was coming from every direction at once. Now, I roared.
Brinn loosed her first arrow. It was not aimed at
the soldiers, It was aimed at the cartographer. The man
clutched his throat, a gurgling, wet sound escaping his lips
as he crumpled to the dirt, a non combatant, a
liability removed at the same instant. Or So and I
dropped from our crevice, a ten foot fall that we
landed in a shower of gravel and grit. We hit
the path hard, our starving bodies screaming in protest, but
the hunger made us fast. We were on them. This
was not a clean fight. It was a desperate, ugly
brawl on a path barely wide enough for two men.
The soldiers were good gods. They were good. They were
clad in se male, their movements economical and precise. It
didn't panic. We met our charge with a wall of
disciplined steel. I lunged at the nearest one, my blade
a blur, but he parried with an almost lazy flick
of his wrist, his footwork perfect, and countered with a
thrust that I barely managed to turn aside beside me,
or So was in a deadly precise dance with the other,
their blades, a high speed whisper of steel on steel.
We were starving, We were wounded, They were fed, they
were armored. We were losing. Then from the rock slide,
a roar stiggined he wasn't climbing down. He was leaping,
half sliding, half falling down the sheer wall of shale
he had created. He hit the path like a boulder,
a bellow of pure joyous rage tearing from his lungs.
The soldier's perfect disciplined formation broke. One of them had
to turn to face this new, massive threat. It was
the opening he needed. The soldier facing me was now distracted,
his eyes flicking to the giant who had just landed
behind him. It was the last mistake he ever made.
My blade, fueled by days of shame and starvation, punched
through the gap in his mail at the armpit. He
grunted his eyes wide, and I tore the sword free.
But Stigand was in trouble. The other soldier, the one
Orso had been fighting, was a veteran. He saw the
true threat. He abandoned Orso and met stiggins wild sweeping
axe swing with a low, disciplined thrust, the sword bit
deep into Stiggins's left shoulder, punching through leather and muscle
with a sickening, wet thud. Stigand roared a sound of
pure agony and rage. But the soldier had made his
own fatal miscalculation. His sword was now stuck embedded in
the Northman's massive frame. He tried to pull it free,
he couldn't. Stiggins grinned his teeth red with his own blood.
He let go of his axe. With his good hand,
he grabbed the hilt of the sword that was still
lodged in his shoulder, and he pulled yanking the stunned
soldier forward off his feet into his embrace. He didn't
use a blade. He smashed his armored forehead into the
man's face once twice. The sound of breaking bone was
sharp and ugly. The soldier went limp silence. The only
sound was the wind and the ragged, desperate gasping of
our own lungs. It was over. We stood there, surrounded
by the bodies of our enemies, covered in mud, gravel
and blood. We were wounded, we were exhausted, but we
were victorious. Stigan leaned against the canyon wall, the sword
still sticking from his shoulder. He looked at me, a wild,
try yumphant, bloody grin splitting his face, and he let
out another roar, a sound that echoed through the mountains.
We were conquerors again, A high pitched gulping cry broke
the moment. It was Cob. He was scrambling out from
behind the rock where he'd been hiding, his face a
mask of tears. But they weren't tears of fear. They
were tears of pure, unadulterated joy. He wasn't looking at
us or the bodies. He was running toward the terrified
horses and the heavy supply packs they carried. He ripped
one of the packs open with shaking hands. He plunged
his arms in and pulled something out, holding it to
his chest as if it were a newborn child.
Speaker 1: Food.
Speaker 2: He wept, his voice cracking, Gods, it's real salt, there's salt.
He sank to his knees, clutching a long dried sausage
in one hand and a skin of wine in the other,
his shoulders shaking with relief. The hunger for now was over.
Speaker 1: We had won.