Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey. Chapter twenty two.
Speaker 2: The Invisible Wall, a red lantern, stank of piss, which
made sense as the outhouse was through a curtain from
the main room. It was the kind of tavern where
men went to forget they were starving, only to remember
when the bill came, then only to forget again when
they were knocked unconscious. I kicked the door open. The
room went silent. Thirty pairs of eyes turned to me.
They were the eyes of the broken in a shithole
like Vance's folly. These were the shot upon I strode in,
and the saw the scum King, the burner of Abbey's
the monster good because I didn't care what they saw,
cared what they wanted. I walked to the center of
the room, my boots crunching on the sawdust. I pulled
the heavy leather pouch from my belt and up ended
it on the nearest table. You could have wiped the
bar clean with the drool that extended from the open mouths.
Upon the table were gold, celari, silver spokes, a fortune,
and hard currency spilling out amidst the tankards of water
down ale. The silence changed. It wasn't fear anymore. It
was hunger, pure animal hunger. I need men, I said,
my voice, cutting through the stench. I need men who
can knock out teeth, men who can break a knee,
men who want to eat venison instead of rat stew.
I picked up a gold coin and held it up.
It caught the light of the tallow candles. I'm buying wolves,
I roared, who is hungry? For a second, nobody moved.
The fear was still there, warring with the greed, and
the chair scraped. A big man with a broken nose
stood up, then another, Then the dam broke. They surged forward,
a tide of desperate humanity, crashing against the table, hands
clawing for the coins, voices shouting promises of loyalty, of violence,
of anything I wanted to hear. I smiled. It was easy.
Gold was the universal language. I had my dogs six
hours later. I wanted to kill them all. I stood
on the palisade, looking down at my army. I had
hired twenty men, twenty dogs who snarled, twenty dogs who
led with a bite, twenty dogs who were useless. I
had sent three of them to guard the smithy to
ensure Jaron kept the forge hot. I found them an
hour later, drunk on the wine they'd bought with the
gold that could have bought them the entire tavern. Their
drunken method of intimidating Jaren was to throw rocks at
his cat, while Jaren sat watching while chewing on a
piece of jerky. I had sent five to patrol the market.
I watched them now. They were overturning a fruit cart,
laughing as an old woman wept. They weren't enforcing compliance,
they were just acting like assholes. They were bullying the
weak because it was easy, not because it was useful. Ay,
I shouted down from the wall. The five men in
the market froze. They looked up, grinning like idiots, waving
at me as if we were drinking buddies. We got emboss.
One of them shouted, holding up a stolen apple. We're
making sure that the merchants are He looked confused for
a moment, and then smiled a toothless smile, merchanting. I
gripped the rough wood of the railing until a splinter
dug into my palm. They weren't soldiers, They weren't even
proper thugs. They were the dregs that settled at the
bottom of the barrel, men who had never held power
in their lives, and, now given a scrap of it,
were using it to torture cats and bully old women.
Or So leaned against the post next to me, watching
the display with a look of weary validation. That your army,
or So asked the question, even as he knew the answer.
They're green, I replied, a comment, as pathetic as the
army of dogs itself? Who's training them to be less green?
Speaker 1: Or So?
Speaker 2: It was twisting the blade, but I could blame him.
Speaker 1: Eye.
Speaker 2: While watching a circus, a pathetic, expensive circus, I thought
of my youth. A single copper secured the loyalty of
my boy's self. I would do anything for the local boss.
How were these similarly pathetic men different, I didn't know,
but they were. I turned away from the wall, disgusted
Yet gigs, I told Orso to train them. He asked
to fire them, I said, and by fire, I mean
beat the first three until the restaurant. I walked back
toward the hall. My purse was lighter, but my problems
were exactly as heavy as they had been this morning.
I had learned a lesson though the hard way. Gold
makes a man greedy, it doesn't make him useful. I
still needed a hammer, but I was starting to realize
that the one I had it was made of soft lead,
and the world was getting harder every day.