Speaker 1: The scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
morning after we met Silas was a quiet, ugly thing.
We were eight men crammed into a squalid room, each
of us nursing bruises of the body and of the soul.
The silence was thick with the poison of our new reality.
We were no longer a pack of wolves, free to
hunt where we pleased. We were dogs on a leash,
and we were waiting for our new master to call.
The call came mid morning, not from Silas, not even
from Corvin. It came from a pasty faced boy who
worked for the gang, who kicked open our door without
knocking and tossed a slip of parchment onto the floor.
Jorn It read the Spice Merchant, He's late collect The
note was a rough map to a stall in some
random corner of the gutters. There were precious little details,
but there didn't need to be. We were to just
show up and collect the payment, the amount of which
was outlined in a single phrase, Take it all. The
walk to the merchant's stall was a grim procession. Our steps,
which had once held the swagger of conquerors, were now
the leaden tread of men on their way to a job.
They hated. This was our trade violence. But before there
was a thrill to it, the thrill of the hunt,
of taking what was ours by right of strength. Now
it was just work. We weren't taking our share, We
were enforcing another man's rules. We found Jorn's stall in
a crowded market alley. It was a small, sad looking affair,
but the air around it was rich with the scent
of foreign spices. Jorn was a wiry man with nervous eyes,
but he stood his ground. I'll have it next week,
he pleaded as we surrounded him. The shipment from the
coast was delayed. I swear it on the visage. I
felt a flicker of something, pity maybe, but I crushed it.
My feelings didn't matter. Silas's orders did. Silas doesn't care
about your shipments, I said, my voice dead. I nodded
to stigand the big Northman moved with a joyless mechanical efficiency.
There was no laughing roar, no thrill of the fight.
He simply grabbed the merchant by the front of his tunic,
lifted him off the ground, and slammed him back against
his shelves. Jars of expensive saffron and peppercorns crashed to
the ground, their fragrance mixing with the stench of fear.
The merchant gasped, his resistance gone or so found the
coin box under the counter and emptied it into our purse.
It was a heavy take. We had what we came for.
We were enforcing Silas's will, and the bitterness of it
was a poison in my gut. We marched back to
the crooked keg. Corvin was there, sitting at a table,
as if he owned the place, which he did. I
placed the heavy purse on the table before him. The
silence was thick as he untied the draw string and
spilled the coins onto the wood. He counted it with
a professional's disinterest, his scarred face impassive. When he was done,
he scooped the entire pile into a larger bag of
his own. Then, without looking at us, he reached into
a different pouch at his belt and pulled out a
few coins, letting them fall on to the table. Coppers
an insulting poultry share. It was enough to keep us
fed and housed in our squalid room, but not enough
to ever dream of leaving your cut, he said, his
voice flat and dismissive. He stood and walked away, leaving
us standing there staring at the pathetic wage for our work.
We had traded our freedom for our lives, and this
was the price a handful of coppers. We weren't scum kings.
We were just scum for hire, and the pay was
shit