Speaker 1: The Scum Kings created and written by Mike Daltrey. Episode eight,
A moment of weakness.
Speaker 2: The feast was a greasy, glorious memory. For the first
time in what felt like a lifetime, the gnawing in
my gut was gone, replaced by the heavy, pleasant weight
of a full belly. The pork sat in my gut
like a lead weight, a welcome but unfamiliar burden. I
left the others to their meat, drunk stupor around the
fire's embers. I needed to walk, to settle the food
that my body had almost forgotten how to digest. But
it was more than that. A full belly only lasts
so long. The pig was a reprieve, not a plan.
My mind was already turning, grinding on the next problem.
Where do we go from here? What's the next prize?
A king can't rule from a single meal. The high
of our pathetic victory was already fading, leaving the cold,
hard questions of tomorrow. I moved through the woods, my
hands empty, my thoughts wrestling with maps and possibilities. Do
we push on deeper into the unknown of the tangle,
or turn back toward the lands we knew where our
failure at the caravan was already a story told by
our enemies. Every path was choked with risk. I needed
another score, something bigger than a pig, something to wash
the taste of humiliation out of our mouths for good.
It was in the midst of this planning the next
act of violence, the next theft, that I saw it.
A flicker of movement in a dense thicket of elderberry bushes,
too small for a deer to deliberate for a fox.
I stopped, body going still, every sense on high alert.
I drew my dagger, its familiar weight to comfort in
my palm, and approached without a sound. Peering through the leaves,
I saw them. My first instinct was irritation, vagrance. A
woman was huddled on the ground, her arms wrapped around
a child. They were little more than skeletons draped in rags.
The woman's hair was a matted tangle, her face smudged
with dirt. When her eyes met mine, they went wide
with a terror so pure it was almost a physical force.
She made a tiny, choked sound and pulled the child
tighter against her. The child itself was maybe four or
five years old. It didn't cry, It didn't scream or whimper.
It just stared at me over its mother's shoulder. Its
face was gaunt, its eyes enormous and dark and utterly empty.
They weren't the eyes of a child. They were the
eyes of something ancient that had seen the world end
a thousand times. That hollow, silent stare hit me harder
than a fist. It was wrong, all wrong. They're not
your problem. The voice in my head, Orso's voice, said,
they're dead, already walk away. I should have. I should
have snarled, shown them my blade, and watched them scurry
off like the vermin they were. It was the smart play,
the practical play. They were nothing. But I didn't move.
I was frozen by the silent, dead stare of that child.
My hand, the one holding the dagger, felt heavy, useless.
What was I going to do? Threaten a ghost? A hot,
confusing wave of something washed over me. It felt like sickness,
a weakness in my gut that had nothing to do
with hunger pity. It was a foul, useless emotion. I
thought of my own men. They're desperation. Just days ago,
I thought of the plans for violence and theft. Churning
in my own mind weak the king and me snarled,
you're getting weak. Kill them, no witnesses, no weakness. I couldn't.
My feet felt rooted to the spot. My gaze was
locked with the child's for a long, silent moment. The
world was just the space between me and those empty eyes.
With a curse that I bit back between my teeth.
My hand went to my belt, where the greasy cloth
package was tucked. The rich, savory smell of the roasted pork,
the remains of my trophy, filled the air. I looked
at the meat, then back at them. My arm moved
on its own. I didn't offer it. I threw it.
The bundle of meat arked through the air and with
a soft thud in the dirt near the woman's feet.
Her head snapped down to look at it, her expression
one of utter disbelief. I took a step back, my
heart hammering with a strange, wild fury. The feeling of
pity was disgusting, a filth. I had to get off me,
get lost, I snarled, my voice a low, vicious rasp.
I made it as cruel as I could take it,
and be gone before I changed my mind. I didn't
wait for a reply. I turned my back on them,
on the silent child and his mother, on the meat
I had won. I stalked back towards my camp, furious
at the confusing, sickening wave of mercy that, for a
moment derailed my thoughts from the cold, clean business of
planning our next kill.