Speaker 1: The scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey, Episode twenty,
The gutter Gate.
Speaker 2: The descent was like walking into a grave. The clean
air of the hills vanished, replaced by a wall of
stench so thick it felt solid, a foul soup of
unwashed bodies, human waste, wood, smoke, and rotting garbage. The distant,
muted roar of the city we'd heard from the hill
became a deafening, chaotic cacophony of shouting merchants, screaming children,
and the constant, unnerving babble of a thousand conversations at once.
We were in the gutters. The alleys were a claustrophobic maze,
a web of leaning timber and wattle huts that blocked
out the sun and pressed in on all all sides.
The ground was a treacherous muck of mud and filth,
and everywhere there were people, a crushing, shoving, desperate sea
of humanity. I watched my crew, and I saw the
wilderness being scoured from them by this new, filthier reality.
Stiggins Awe had been replaced by a grim scowl, his
hand resting on his axe as he shouldered a path
through the throng. Brynn was a ghost at my shoulder,
her eyes darting everywhere, her body coiled like a spring.
This was her ultimate nightmare, a trap made of people.
Celaine's face was a mask of cold concentration, her eyes
cataloging not just the poverty, but the brutal, desperate economy
of it all. Cob was coming undone here in the
press of the crowd. His fear was no longer a
distant dread, but a physical, suffocating force. He was pale
and sweating, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. Every
shove from a passerby made him flinch. He clung to
Stiggins's cloak like a child, his eyes wide with the
terror of a man who feels the walls closing in.
He wasn't just in a crowd, he was being buried
alive by it. For hours, we pushed our way through
this hell, lost and exposed, the weight of the Pilgrim's silver,
feeling less like a treasure and more like a tombstone
in our pack. Every face that passed was gaunt, every
eye suspicious and hungry. Finally, wedged between a tanner's shop
and a collapsed hovel, we saw it, a single grimy
sign depicting a laughing crow hanging crookedly over a dark doorway.
The crooked keg it looked no better or worse than
any other pit in this hell. That's it. I grunted,
my patience worn thin. It was our own, the option
for a moment's respite. I put my hand on the
hilt of my sword, took a breath of the foul air,
and pushed the door open, leading my kings into the
Gutter's heart.