Speaker 1: The scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey, a
Signal Box Studio production, Episode two, the naming.
Speaker 2: The dawn brought no warmth, only a gray, watery light
that made the hollow look even more pathetic. It exposed
the grime on our faces, the dark blood stains on stigins, bandages,
the utter exhaustion in every man's eyes. The mood was poison.
You could taste it in the air, sharp and metallic,
like old blood. Selaine's words from the night before had
hung in the dark, and now in the light they'd festered.
We were sharing out the last of the hard tack,
mouthfuls of dust and regret. A man named Kail, a
brawler with more muscle than sense, looked at his pitiful
portion and spat on the ground. This is what Yorick
and Finn died for. His voice was a low growl,
but it carried in the tense silence, a mouthful of
stale bread and a grave in the mud. He looked up,
his eyes, finding mine across the damp pit. Your plan
was shit, dra You let us straight into a slaughter.
The world seemed to shrink to the space between me
and him. I could feel the eyes of the crew
on us, waiting, Orso's hand had stopped polishing his dagger.
Dicks watched with a child's eager curiosity for cruelty. This
was the moment the pivot. A leader who accepts blame
is a leader who gets a knife in the back.
I didn't say a word. I set my rations down
slowly and stood up. I walked the ten paces across
the hollow, each footstep a dull thud on the packed earth.
Cale puffed out his chest, trying to stand his ground.
He was strong, but his anger made him stupid. He
opened his mouth to say something else, but my fist
caught him square on the jaw before the first sound
came out. His head snapped back with a crack of
bone on bone. He staggered, eyes wide with surprise, and
I didn't give him a moment to recover. I drove
the heel of my palm into his nose, a wet crunch,
and blood exploded across his face. He went down in
a heap, sputtering. I stood over him, breathing evenly, and
looked out at the rest of them. My gaze swept
over each man, lingering for just a second the plan failed,
I said, my voice, low and cold as a winter river.
We lost. Now we move on. The next man with
a complaint can deliver it to Jorik and Finn himself.
I gave the bloody mess that was Kail a light kick.
Any takers silence, nothing but the whisper of the wind
and the dead trees, and the quiet, terrified whimpers from
our captive, who had watched the whole thing from his bonds.
I walked back to my spot and picked up my
hard tack. Authority is a simple thing. You take it
and you hold it, and sometimes you have to smear
it in a man's face with his own blood to
remind him who it belongs to. The rest of the
day was a sullen affair. Stiggand sulked, the pain in
his shoulder matched only by the insult of being denied
a real fight. Bryn had vanished into the woods, hunting
for anything to fill our bellies or so spent hours
sharpening every blade he owned, his movements precise and methodical.
The rest of us just sat trapped in our own
miserable thoughts. As dusk began to settle again, cob bless
his cowardly heart decided he was our savior. He scurried
around the camp, gathering odds and ends in his cook pot.
A little something to warm the bones, he announced to
the silent crew a special brew. We watched in morbid
fascination as he worked. He threw in a handful of
bitter roots. Brin had scavenged, some crushed acorns, and a
suspicious looking clump of moss. The finishing touch was a small,
grimy wine skin he produced from his pack, which he
poured in with a flourish. The smell was staggering. It
was the scent of sour earth and regret, but it
was something. He ladled the foul smelling grog into our
horns and cups. It was warm, thick as mud, and
tasted worse than it smelled, But it had a kick,
a vicious, immediate kick that went straight to the head.
After the first sw the world didn't seem quite so sharp.
Around the edges. We sat around a small, sputtering fire,
and the first we dared to light. The warmth felt
good on my skin, but it did nothing for the
chill inside. We drank in silence for a long time,
the grog working its ugly magic. I stared into the
pathetic flames, watching the meat away at a piece of
dead wood. It was us consuming ourselves out here in
the dark. I took another long pull from my horn
and spat a thick glob of the gritty brew into
the fire. It hissed, We're just a bunch of scum,
I muttered, more to the flames than to anyone else
from across the fire cob. His face flushed from the grog,
and his own misplaced optimism perked up. But we're scum
with a dream a real kingdom. Maybe. A loud, barking
laugh irrupted from my right. It was stiggant. He winced
as the movement pulled at his wounded shoulder, but the
grin on his face was genuine. He raised his drinking horn,
the firelight glinting off the cheap metal rings in his beard.
Aye his voice boomed, We'll be kings. The sound of
steel sliding against a wet stone stoppedkk Orso hadn't looked
up from his work the entire time. He paused, admiring
the edge on his blade, his scarred face half hidden
in shadow. Without raising his eyes, he spoke, his voice
dry and final cutting through the other's noise. That's us,
then the scum King's. The name fell into the silence
between us. It wasn't a cheer, it wasn't a battle cry.
It was a statement of fact. It landed and lay there,
heavy and ugly and perfect. I looked around the fire
at their faces. Cale nursing his broken nose in the shadows, Cob,
the hopeful fool Stiggind, the laughing brute Dicks, smiling at
a joke only he understood. Celine watching calculating, Bryn, a
silent predator, returned to the fold, and or so the
cold heart of us all. A slow grin spread across
my face. It wasn't a happy expression. It was the
grin of a wolf that has finally accepted the blood.
Speaker 1: On its teeth.
Speaker 2: The scum Kings, it wasn't a name you'd carve on
a castle wall. It was a name you'd scrawl in
blood on a tavern door, right before you burned it
to the ground. And it was ours.
Speaker 1: Signal box