Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
pit Boss, a bald man with a face like a
slab of scarred meat, looked Stiggand up and down. He
chewed on a piece of sour leaf, his eyes lingering
on the bruises Stiggin still carried from Corvin's men. He's big,
but he's fresh meat, the pit boss grunted to me,
assuming I was his handler. The Breaker will kill him.
He's tougher than he looks, I said, my voice flat.
The pit boss just shrugged and took our last few
coppers as a wager. It was a fool's bet, but
Stigand was my man. Stiggan didn't even look at me.
He stripped off his tunic, revealing a torso covered in
the faded tattoos of his homeland, and vaulted over the
railing into the pit. His opponent, and they called the Breaker,
was already there. He was a mountain, wider at the
shoulder than Stiggand, and with arms like tree trunks. The crowd,
smelling an easy victory for their champion, roared with bloodlust.
The fight began without ceremony. The Breaker charged a freight
train of muscle and swung a fist the size of
a small ham. It caught Stiggins square on the jaw
with a sickening crack. Stiggin's head snapped back, and he
staggered into the railing, a spray of blood and spittle
flying from his mouth. The crowd went wild. I saw
the Breaker's smile, a cruel, confident expression. He thought it
was over. He was wrong. Stiggin pushed himself off the railing.
He slowly wiped a hand across his mouth, looked at
the blood on his knuckles, and then he did something
that silenced the entire cellar. He smiled a wide, joyous,
bloody grin. He spat a broken tooth onto the straw.
The shame was gone, the humiliation was gone. All that
was left was the pure, honest pain of a fair fight.
He was home. This wasn't a beating in a tavern.
This was a contest. This was his church. He let
out a short, sharp bark of a laugh and met
the Breaker's next charge head on. What followed was not
a skillful duel. It was a war of attrition, a
storm of raw, savage force. The Breaker had the strength,
but Stigan had something else. He had a deep well
of fury to draw from. He was fighting for more
than coin. He was fighting for his soul. Every blow
he took, he gave one back harder. The sound of
fists on flesh and bone was a brutal, steady drum beat.
I watched my own bruises aching in sympathy as my
northmen worked. This wasn't about a plan. This was about exorcism.
Every punch he landed was a blow against Corvin's quiet condescension.
Every grunt of pain he ignored was a defiance of
Silas's authority. He wasn't just hitting the man in front
of him, he was hitting the whole rotten city. The
tide turned, the Breaker, used to quick, decisive victories, began
to slow. His punches lost their snap. A flicker of
panic entered his eyes. He was just a brawler, stigand
was a warrior. Stigan saw his moment. He ducked under
a wild swing, drove his shoulder into the Breaker's gut,
and unleashed a furious barrage of blows to the man's
head and body. A right, a left, another right. The
Breaker staggered, his hands, dropping his eyes glassy stiggand ended
it with a final devastating uppercut that lifted the giant
off his feet. The breaker hit the Bloody Straw and
did not move. The cellar was dead, silent. The hostile
crowd stared, stunned at their fallen champion. They had come
to see the outsider broken, and they had just watched
him perform a baptism of violence. The pit boss, his
face unreadable, tossed a small, heavy purse of coin into
the ring. Stiggin ignored it. He stood over the unconscious
form of his opponent, his chest heaving, his body a
canvas of new bruises and cuts. He threw his head
back and let out a roar. It was not a
shout of anger or a cry of pain. It was
a roar of pure triumphant release. He was no longer
Silas's dog. He was Stiggind, the champion of the Bloody Straw.
He had won back his name wat