Speaker 1: The scum Kings, a broad Sword Studio production created and
written by Mike Daltrey.
Speaker 2: Chapter sixty six a sermon in red. We poured through
the burning, splintered face of the God like a river
of filth. The courtyard was a pig pen of panic.
The guards, the stern guard I spat, were a joke.
They were fumbling with helmets, tripping over the hems of
their own night shirts. Their polished black and gold armor
was for parades, not for a three am brawl with
seven devils. They held their spears like farmers hold rakes,
hold the line. One of them shouted, a man with
a gold plumed helmet. He looked like an officer stigand
a walking wall of soot, blood and burning. Rage just laughed.
He didn't slow down. He hit their line like a
boulder hitting a fence crack. He smashed the officer and
the two men beside him to the ground in a
single fluid motion of his axe. The line didn't just break,
it evaporated. This wasn't a battle, It was a sermon,
and we were preaching with steel gicks was a whirlwind.
He'd lost his bow, so he'd taken to his knives,
he was dancing. I saw him slide under a guard's
clumsy spear thrust, giggling, and come up behind him, planting
both of his jagged blades deep into the man's kidneys.
The guard screamed Gix's laughter. A high, discordant shriek cut
right through it. Or So was the cold, calculating center
of the storm. Dre left two on the stairs. I turned,
catching his spear thrust on my shield, shattered the man's
knee with a kick, and buried my sword in his throat.
Or So was already moving his own blade a flicker,
dispatching the second. He doesn't just kill, he solves a problem.
I looked up. A thwip sounded from the cloisters above.
A guard trying to rally a new group suddenly gurgled
his eyes wide. He looked down at the gray fletched
arrow buried in his throat, and toppled over the balustrade,
landing with a wet crunch on the marble below. Brinn
she'd found her perch. She was the ghost cleaning up
the stragglers. The rest of them broke. They just turned
and ran a full on, panicked rout. They fled from
the courtyard back into the opulent halls of their abbey.
They were leading us right to the heart of it.
Run him down, I roared, tasting the blood in the air.
We chased them through halls that were richer than any
king's palace. The floors were polished marble, slick with our
muddy foot prints and their blood. The walls were covered
in gold leaf mosaics of their stern, joyless God. We
were a pack of wolves in a treasure box. Monks
screamed and ran, their soft, pale bodies, comical in their terror,
stigging just swatted them aside like curtains. We rounded a
corner and I saw a flash of steel. A guard
braver than the others had gotten separated. He had Cob
cornered against a statue of a weeping saint. Cob was pathetic,
holding a pot he'd snatched from a burning kitchen like
a shield, weeping. Please, No, I'm just The guard raised
his spear for the killing thrust. He never made it. Selaine,
she was there. I hadn't even seen her move. She
stepped in front of Cob. The guard shocked, lunged. She
didn't back up, She didn't flinch. She moved like a
vesper and dullist, not a bookkeeper. Her body twisted her dagger,
a thin needlelike thing I'd never seen her draw, flashed up.
She didn't stab his chest. She went under his arm,
deep into the armpit where the armor was thin. It
was a precise, silent, economical blow. The man's eyes went wide,
he dropped his spear, his mouth opening. She pulled her
blade free, let him slump to the marble, and then
calmly wiped the blade on his clean white robe. She
looked at me, her face a mask of cold, precise fury.
Her chest was barely heaving. Cob was blubbering behind her.
She wasn't protecting him. She was protecting her investment. She
was protecting the numbers, the rations, the gold. She was
protecting the order of our chaos. I gave her a
sharp nod, pragmatism. It's a beautiful thing. The last of
the guards fled through a set of massive, twenty foot
tall golden doors at the end of the hall, the
central chapel. Stigan didn't bother with the handle, He just
put his shoulder into it. The doors exploded open. The
place was obscene.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 2: Cavern of gold and white marble. The ceiling was a
painted dome, and at the far end, on a raised
dais was the last of them. Eight of them, the
real stern Guard. This was the elite. Their armor was
polished black steel, trimmed in gold, gleaming in the light
of a hundred candles. They stood shoulder to shoulder, tower
shields interlocked, spear points bristling. They weren't running, and behind
them his face, a sweating, pale blob of terror, was
a fat high priest in robes of gold thread, clutching
a golden staff. This was their last stand. Stigant, or
so said his voice. Calm the wall break it gicks
and brins. Arrows bounced uselessly off the interlocked shields. This
one was on us, stigand roared. He didn't have a tactic.
He was the tactic. He charged a three hundred pounds
beast of muscle and rage and slammed into the shield wall.
The clang of it was deafening. A shield buckled, A
spear jabbed out, catching stiggand in the side. He grunted,
ignored it, and brought his axe down, cleaving one of
the tower shields. In half the gap. Or So and
I were in it before they could react. This was
a meat grinder. These Stern Guard were good, they were fast,
They knew how to fight, but they never fought us.
They fight for a god, They fight for pay. We
fight for the air we breathe. I buried my sword
in a guard's belly, tore its sideways. Or So ducked
a sword swing, slit the man's throat from behind. Gecks
was under the shields, stabbing at ankles and groins, laughing.
It was a ten second flurry of screams and steel.
It was a butchery. Then silence, save for the huffing
of our breaths. Eight elite guards lay dead or dying
at the foot of their altar. The High Priest was
on his knees. He dropped his staff. He was babbling,
his hands raised backed against the far wall. The wall
was a single, massive, thirty foot high carving of the
Stern visage, cut from solid black stone. You are damned,
You are damned the sea. The sea will send legions.
You will be I was tired of his voice. I
stalked forward, my boots echoing on the marble, and shoved
my sword slick and dripping right under his fat, quivering chin.
The point dimpled his skin. Where is it, I snarled,
Where is what? The gold? Take it, take the chalices,
the icons, the horde, I said, pressing the point harder,
the madman said, behind the face of stone. The priest's eyes,
wide with terror, darted. They flicked from my face to
the massive carved stone wall he was pressed against. He
didn't even need to speak. I looked at the wall, solid, impassive,
a god of stone. I looked over my shoulder stigand
was leaning on his axe, his chest a heaving wreck.
He was bleeding from a dozen new cuts. He looked
like he was about to fall one more, I said.
He looked at the wall, He looked at his axe.
He spat a wad of blood under the white marble floor,
and he nodded. W