Speaker 1: The scum Kings, a Broadsword Studio production created and written
by Mike Daltrey, Chapter sixty seven. The vault beneath the
god's face. Or So didn't wait for my order. He
shoved the blubbering high priest aside, the man skittering away
on the bloody marble like a crab. He ran his bare,
bloody hands over the massive stone visage. The priest was
a whimpering, useless ball by the altar. It's not a
single piece, or So muttered his fingers tracing lines. I
couldn't see. The carvers were masters. It's three but the seam.
He pressed on the carved snarling lip. Nothing. He pressed
on the eye, nothing, he said, Key, I growled. I
looked at the priest, who just shook his head. Snot
running from his nose, he said, key stigand grunted his
voice a low rumble. He stepped forward. I've got one.
He jammed the blade of his axe, the axe that
had broken the gate, that had cleaved the shield wall
into the thin hairline crack. Or So had found the
seam where the gods carved cheek met the wall. Or
So stand back. Stigan put his boot on the wall,
his good shoulder against the axe's halft. He leaned, his
muscles cabled and straining, bunched under his torn mail. The
veins in his neck stood out. The only sound was
his rattling animal grunt, a groan, a sound of stone
grinding on stone, a sound that set my teeth on edge.
It's moving, Gick's hissed, his eyes wide scree Each puff
of dust, ancient and black, exploded from the seam stigand
roared a final guttural burst of power. The mechanism, whatever
it was, broke. The wall slid. The entire five ton
thirty foot high face of the Gods scraped sideways, disappearing
into a recess in the wall. It revealed a black
square opening a set of stairs, descending into perfect cold darkness.
The air that hit us was a physical thing. It
wasn't the hot, smoky, incense choked air of the chapel.
It was cold, it was still. It smelled of dust,
of time, and of metal. GX, his mind moving as
fast as his knives, was already at the grand candelabra.
He ripped a burning taper from it and lit the torches,
or so it stuffed in our packs. He handed one
to me, or So put a hand on my chest. Draps.
Their trap was the wall, I said, shoving his hand away.
They never thought we'd get this far. They're arrogant. I
stepped into the black. I held the torch high. The
rest of them followed a chain of bloody, exhausted shadows.
Stiggand his axe, now just a heavy piece of steel,
he dragged or So, his blade still out, his eyes
scanning every shadow. Brin a dosed at our backs, and Selaine,
her eyes gleaming in the torchlight, her face a mask
of pure fervent anticipation. Gicks prodded Cob down the stairs
ahead of him. We went down. The sound of the
battle above, the screams, the clang of the distant alarm bells,
it all faded, muffled by the stone. The only sound
was the scrape of our boots on the bedrock steps.
It was silent. A tomb, the stairs and a low
stone archway. I stepped through, holding the torch high. The
room wasn't a chapel, It wasn't opulent. It was a vault,
a low, rough hewn ceiling, stone walls. It was a warehouse.
My torch light. It didn't just illuminate, it shattered. It
was a thousand points of reflected light, a universe of
glittering dead stars. I stopped my breath, just left. The
madman wasn't mad. He was a liar. He had undersold it.
The crew filed in behind me, their torches joining mine.
The room blazed into view. It wasn't a horde. It
was a treasury. Piled in glittering shoulder high heaps were
gold ingots, thousands of them, each one neatly stamped with
the sea's sun, stacked again against the far wall like firewood.
Beside them, opened chests, dozens of them, overflowing not with silver,
but with a sea of gold coins. And the shelves,
the gods, the shelves, they were groaning with the plunder
of a thousand towns, jeweled icons, solid gold, chalices, platters,
and relics, scepters, crowns. Cob took two steps in, his
eyes wide and staring, rolled back in his head. He
made a small, wet oh sound, and just fainted, collapsed
in a heap on the stone floor. Gecks nudged him
with his boot, nothing stiggant. He was leaning on the doorframe,
his body erec He stared his axe. The key that
had opened the world slipped from his numb fingers and
clattered to the stone floor. He didn't seem to notice.
A low awe laugh rumbled in his chest, a single,
disbelieving huh. Brain was like a sleepwalker. She walked past me,
her feral eyes wide, her hand outstretched. She'd never seen
this much of anything in her life. She reached out
and just touched her scarred, dirty fingers rested on a single, cold,
perfect gold ingot. She just held her hand there, as
if feeling its heart beat. I looked at Gicks. His
smile was gone, the manic, cackling, blood mad smile was
just gone. His face was a mask of raw, pure,
terrifying hunger. His lips were parted, His eyes were wide,
darting from the piles to the chests, coveting. It was
the most unsettling thing I had ever seen. And Selene,
she was shaking her whole body. Her hands were clasped
at her chest, trembling violently. Lips were moving a silent,
frantic whisper. I leaned closer. She wasn't praying, she wasn't cursing.
She was counting ten ingots to a stack. She whispered,
her voice, a reedy, cracked thing, God's fifty stacks to
a pile, twelve, thirteen piles, the chests, the solari, the weight,
the weight. She was in a pure religious ecstasy of arithmetic.
I walked past them all. I felt like I was
moving underwater. I walked into the center of the room.
I was breathing the air of kings, our one blunt instrument,
our rage, our nihilistic faith. We hadn't snuck, we hadn't planned.
We had kicked in the front door of a god,
and we had hammered the world until it broke open
and bled. This I reached down. I picked up a relic,
a small statue of the stern visage, solid gold. It
was heavier than a man's head. The weight of it,
the power of it in my hand. We were no
longer scum. We were kings. I stood there, blood soaked, battered,
victorious in a tomb of gold. The crew was silent,
each lost in their own shock. Cob was unconscious, Stiggins's
quiet laugh had died. Selaine whispered her mouth. It was
a perfect, stunned, victorious silence, and in that perfect, dead quiet.
I heard it, faint distant from the valley, far far below,
Baha ah woomb A single clean horn, note long and low,
a military horn, not a panicked bell. My head snapped up.
Orso's eyes met mine wide with the terrible, sudden understanding.
Bahara woom. Another one answering from the east, bah wom,
bah wum, bah wum. A third closer, the sea patrol,
drawn by the bells, drawn by the smoke from the
burning gate. The army was at the door.