Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey.
Speaker 2: Chapter fifty nine, The kill Box. The decision was made,
The argument was over. Also, 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. Well we all die here. I'm listening,
I said. He didn't need a map, he had Brind'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. 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.
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. Stiggin or So continued,
turning to the big northman. You are the cage door.
You and Gicks. 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, Dix,
you keep him quiet. Just one boulder, 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 harmony. 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, master, 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 Gecks 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
you w