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.
The scum kings created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
coin Corven had given us was poison. It brought us
another day in our squalid little room, but the price
was a slow, burning humiliation that settled deep in our bones.
For a man like stigandt, it was a torment he
couldn't bear. He was a creature of action, of loud
boasts and honest violence. This quiet, simmering shame was a
cage he wasn't built for. He couldn't sit still. He
paced our small room like a great bear, his presence
making the walls feel even closer. Finally, without a word
to any of us, he turned and strode out the door.
Stay here, I ordered the others, and went after him.
I was his leader, and I couldn't afford for my
most volatile weapon to go off in the middle of
Silas's kingdom. Without my hand on the trigger. I stayed
in his shadow as he moved through the labyrinth of
the gutters. He wasn't looking for a drink. He passed
three taverns without a glance. He wasn't looking for a woman.
He ignored the painted girls in the doorways. He was searching.
I saw it in the way his eyes scan the crowds,
the way he dismissed the calm and thugs and alley brawlers.
He was hunting not for a victim, but for an equal.
He was looking for a way to wash the dishonor
of Corvin's butchery off him, to find a fight that
felt like a fight, not a culling. He was searching
for a scrap of the man he used to be.
It was the sound that drew him, a low, rhythmic
roar from the bowels of a run down alehouse, the
sound of a mob banged for blood. Stigan's steps quickened.
He pushed through the front room of the tavern, ignoring
the patrons, and headed for a heavy reinforced door in
the back, where a single, massive guard stood with his
arms crossed. Stiggins slapped one of his few new coppers
on the guard's palm. The man grunted and stepped aside.
I paid my own coin and followed him down a
flight of rickety wooden stairs. The air that hit us
was hot and thick, tasting of iron, sweat and cheap ale.
The cellar was a cavern, packed with a hundred screaming,
shoving men, their faces ugly and alive in the flickering torchlight.
In the center of the room, on a floor of
packed dark earth, was a circle of bloody straw. It
wasn't a ring, it was an altar. I looked at Stiggant.
The dead, hollow look that had been in his eyes
since Corvin's men had pinned him was gone. In its place,
a familiar fire was rekindling. He gripped the wooden railing
that surrounded the pit, his knuckles white. He wasn't just
watching the two brutes who were currently hammering each other
into a bloody pulp. He was remembering who he was.
We had just walked into his church. The bout ended
when one man fell and didn't get back up. He
was dragged out by his feet, leaving droplets of blood
on the straw, which were added to the collection. Already there,
the winner, his face a mask of swollen flesh, raised
his arms to a roar from the crowd. Stiggan didn't hesitate.
He pushed his way through the press of bodies, a
giant parting a sea of lesser men. He stopped before
the pit boss, a bald, heavily scarred man who looked
almost as wide as he was tall. The pit boss
looked him up and down, a purely transactional appraisal. Stighan
just pointed a thick finger at the bloody circle on
the ground. I want to fight, he growled. 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 Stigin 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. Stigan 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, the man they called the Breaker,
was already there. He was a mountain, wider at the
shoulder than Stigand, and with arms like tree trunks. The crowd,
smelling an easy victory for their champion, ro 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. Stigan 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 stigand 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 stiggand 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, the scum Kings, created
and written by Mike Daltrey. Stiggins's victory in the pit
bought us more than coin. It brought us a sliver
of status. The name whispered with a new grudging respect
while he nursed his wounds. Or so Sileina and I
knew we had to turn that name into a weapon.
We need to know the shape of the web before
we can cut the strands, or so it said. We
need a spider, And so we returned to the crooked Keg,
not to drink, but to hunt. Selaine chose a dark
corner booth, ordered a single cup of cheap ale, and
for two hours she simply watched. I sat with her,
a silent guard, and I saw her true craft. She
wasn't watching the loud drunks or the obvious thugs. She
was watching the quiet ones. Her eyes tracked the flow
of whispers, the subtle exchange of coins, the nervous glances.
She was mapping, the secret currents of the room. After
an hour, her focus settled on a single, weasel faced
man with shifty eyes. He never stayed in one place
for long. I watched as she watched him, he'd have
a hushed word with one of Silas's known men, then
ten minutes later be sharing a hushed laugh with a
man who wore the tattered red sash of a different crew.
He was a ghost who walked between the factions, his
only loyalty to the coin he collected for his whispers.
He was our man, so Elaine didn't approach him directly.
She waited. When he finally passed our table on his
way to the latrine, she accidentally knocked her copper cup
to the floor. As he bent to pick it up,
their eyes met for a fraction of a second. I
hear you have a fine sense of the local climate,
she whispered, her voice barely audible the back booth. Ten minutes,
it will be worth your while. The man who I
came to learn was named Finian paled slightly, but a
flicker of greed lit his eyes. He gave a tiny,
almost imperceptible nod, handed her the cup, and scurried on
his way. Selaine had not just found an informant. She
had set her own hook, baited her own trap. Ten
minutes later, he slid into the booth opposite her, and
her quiet war began. He was a man who survived
by selling the secrets of more dangerous men. I had
only ever seen Selaine as a woman of numbers and ledgers,
her world confined to the neat columns of her book.
But here, in this dark corner, she was a different
kind of predator. Her weapons weren't steel, but whispers. We
are new to the gutters, she began, her voice low,
and even we wished to unders stand the business climate.
Finian licked his lips nervously. Information is expensive, dangerous. Selaine
slid a single copper coin across the table. It was
an insultingly small amount. We pay for quality, she said,
and we punish poor investments. She let her gaze flicker
towards the tavern's common room, where Stigand was sitting alone
at a table. A silent, brooding mountain. The norseman who
broke the breaker last night. He is my partner. He
has very little patience for liars. Finian's eyes widened. He
had seen the fight. Everyone in the gutters had heard
of it. Celaine was leveraging our one asset with brutal efficiency.
She was dissecting the man, finding his weak points, his
fear of Silas, his fear of us, his desperate need
for coin, and pressing on them with surgical precision. She
showed him just enough of Stiggins's winnings to wet his
g but her tone promised violence if he wasted her time.
He began to talk. He told us everything. He told
us of Silas, his iron grip on the major businesses,
his chief, and for Sir Corvin and his disciplined crew.
And then, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, he
told us of the rivals, the red Hands. He hissed.
They were here first, a proper gang of thugs. Silas
tamed them through attrition, but their fuse is still lit.
They hate Silas and his new ways. There's a truce,
but it's about as strong as a whore's expression of love.
One missing payment and the whole thing comes down. Selaine listened,
her face impassive when he was done. She pushed a
few more coins across the table. Finian, seeing his chance
to curry favor with the new power in town, decided
to give us a bonus look. He said, leaning in
the red hands, They're bringing in a shipment of northern
blades tomorrow night, down by the old abandoned tannery at
the river's edge, a secret shipment to arm up for
the war. Everyone knows his coming. Selaine gave him a
final coin, and he scurried away like the rat he was.
She turned back to us, her face showing no emotion.
The transaction was complete. Stigand had won us a name.
But Silain, with a handful of bloody coppers and a
quiet threat, had just bought us a war. She now
held the key to the entire power structure of the Gutters.
The scum Kings created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
information Slaine had bought with Stiggins's blood money was a key,
and now or So was going to show us the lock.
We were gathered in our squalid little room, the door barred,
the air thick. With anticipation, Orso knelt on the floor
and unrolled a piece of cured hide, A crude hand
drawn map of the gutters. He must have paid a
beggar for it wasn't much, just a smear of charcoal
lines showing the main alleys and a few key landmarks.
But in Orso's hands it became a kingdom. He picked
up a handful of splintered, sharp edged twigs from his
pouch and placed them deliberately in the center of the map.
All right, he began his mercenary instincts taking over. Based
on what we've seen, there are two players this, he said,
tapping the chaotic pile of twigs, is Silas the established power,
probably a brute who has held this gutter for years,
all rage and brute force. He then placed a few smooth,
dark stones on the eastern side. And these must be
the challengers, the red Hands, the informant's crew, younger, more disciplined,
trying to take the territory. Ambitious. He was laying out
a classic power dynamic, the one we'd seen a dozen
times in a dozen different pits. But Silain, who had
been silent until now, spoke up. You've got it backwards,
or So. We all turned to look at her. Or
So paused his hand hovering over the map and raised
a single, questioning eyebrow. Silein's face was grim, her voice
low and certain. The informant was clear. The twigs, she said, pointing,
are the red Hands. They are the old Guard, pure
stupid violence, all rage, just as you said, and that
is why they are losing. She then pointed to the smooth,
dark stones. That is Silas. He is the new way.
He's not a thug, He's a business man, the informant said.
His crew is disciplined, orderly, and professional. That is why
he is so much more dangerous. He doesn't just rule
the gutter, he manages it. A slow, thin smile spread
across Orso's scarred face. He was not insulted, he was impressed.
He looked at Silain with a newfound respect. With a
single deliberate motion, he swept the pieces from the map
and placed them again, this time correctly, the dark, orderly
stones of Silas's crew in the center and the chaotic
pile of red hand twigs on the periphery. Better, or
So said, his voice, holding a new, colder, cunning, much better.
Brutes are predictable, but businessmen. Businessmen have assets, they have
supply lines, They have more to lose. I watched him,
and I understood. He didn't just see gangs anymore. He
saw an ecosystem, and with Silene's intelligence, he now had
the key to its collapse. He picked up a handful
of smooth, dark stones from his pouch and placed them
deliberately in the center of the map. This, he said,
his voice a low, intense whisper, is Silas, orderly, disciplined,
hard to break. Then he scattered a handful of splintered,
sharp edged twigs on the eastern side of the map.
And this, this is the Red Hands, the old Guard,
a chaotic pile of sharp edges, no discipline, all rage.
I watched him, and I understood. Or So didn't see
men or gangs. He saw pieces on a board. He
saw weaknesses and probabilities. To us, the gutters were chaos.
To or So, they were a machine, and he was
about to show us how to break it. Silas is
the new way, he explained, his eyes gleaming with a cold,
predatory light. He controls the gutters through business, Through control,
The Red Hands are the old way, pure stupid violence.
They hate each other, but they are in a stalemate,
a cold war. They watch each other, they test each other,
but no one makes the first real move, so we
make it for them, I asked exactly, or So said,
we can't fight silas head on. We saw what happened,
and we can't join the red hands. They're just as
likely to slit our throats as things us for our help.
So we don't become a player in their game. He paused,
looking around at our faces. We become the board itself,
We create the moves. We become a ghost that whispers
in both their ears and makes them tear each other
to pieces. Stigand grunted, the complex scheming clearly making his headache.
Why not just kill them all? Because we are eight
men uocks, not an army, or So shot back, without
looking up. We use our heads, not just our fists.
We will use their strength against each other, and when
they are both bleeding and broken, we will be there
to pick over the bones. His logic was cold, brutal,
and perfect. It was the first time since we'd arrived
in this pit that I felt a flicker of real hope.
This was a path to revenge. Or So leaned back
over his map, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He used
the tip of his dagger to point to a small,
insignificant looking square near the river at the edge of
the Red Hands territory. It was the abandoned tannery our
informant had mentioned. He looked directly at me, his voice
dropping to a conspiratorial hiss, a serpent offering a poisoned apple.
We don't attack Silas, he said, the corner of his
mouth twitching into a thin, cruel smile. And we don't
attack the Red Hands. He tapped the tannery on the map.
We make them attack each other. The war starts here.