Speaker 1: The Scum Kings created and written by Mike Daltrey, Episode ten,
The Bottom of the Barrel.
Speaker 2: The last piece of pork was tough chewed on for
an hour to steal every last bit of flavor. But
the rich, sweet taste of the feast was a fading memory.
A faint, sour tang had begun to haunt the edges
of the meat, and the pile of bones we'd thrown
to the side of the camp was now swarming with flies.
We'd eaten like kings for three days, but the world
had sent its tax collectors. Rot and ruin wait for
no man. When the last rib was gnawed clean and
thrown to the insects, the hunger returned. It was meaner
this time, for having been so recently fed. The good
cheer of our victory had vanished, too, replaced by a sullen,
watchful silence. My outburst at Gicks had seen to that.
The men moved around me with a new wariness, their
eyes skittering away from mine. They had seen the King's rage,
and now they knew it could fall on anyone at
any time, for any reason. Morale was a cold, dead
thing in the bottom of a pit. It was Orso
and Selaine, who came to me. They approached together as
I stared into the fireless pit, a united front of cold,
hard reality against my black mood. The pig is a memory.
Dre Orso began, wasting no time. Were back where we started,
a worse Silein corrected, her voice as crisp as a
winter morning. We have expended time, our most valuable asset.
The season turns, the nights are colder. Soon the roads
will be impassable with mud, and the only thing left
to hunt in this forest will be each other. Her
words painted a grim picture.
Speaker 1: She was right.
Speaker 2: We couldn't stay in this ditch forever.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Without coin, we cannot enter a town. She continued, her
logic relentless. We can't buy a room, a loaf of bread,
or a moment of silence from the watch. We are
ghosts out here, and we will die out here. She's right,
or So added, we need a score, something with coin,
anything just enough to get us under a roof and
around a table where we can plant a real move.
I listened, my jaw tight with a familiar caged fury.
I couldn't beat this problem. I couldn't threaten it or
break its nose. It was the truth, and it had
me cornered. We were starving, broke, and a season away
from freezing to death. As if on cue, Brinn emerged
from the trees she had been scouting, always scouting. She
stopped before the three of us, her expression unreadable. There's
a road, she said, her voice a low rasp, far
to the south, and a shrine, just a pile of
rocks with a roof. She paused, and her next words
landed like stones. One man, he wears the robes of
the sea alone silence. The three of us stared at her.
A shrine, a lone priest, not a caravan, not a merchant,
not even a fat pilgrim, a dirt poor holy man
at a dilapidated roadside chapel. The potential lute was probably
a handful of copper spokes in a donation box, and
whatever food the priest has. I saw the pathetic desperation
of it reflected in Orso's grim face and Selaine's calculating eyes.
This was their solution, This was the best they could
come up with. Hitting a church mouse, I wanted to rage.
I wanted to smash something, to scream that we were
better than this. But I looked past them at the
rest of my band, Cob looking thinner and pale, Kil
and Rat huddled together for warmth, already looking like corpses.
We were not better than this. My pride was a
luxury I couldn't afford. My rage was afire with no
fuel left to burn, all that remained was the cold,
hard fact of our survival. I met Orso's gaze, then Slaine's.
I gave a single sharp nod of fine. The word
came out flat dead. I turned and walked toward the
center of the camp to address the others. A new plan,
a new mission. The air was thick with our collective shame.
We all knew what this was. It was the bottom,
and we were about to start digging.