Speaker 1: The scum Kings, a broad Sword Studio production created and
written by Mike Daltrey. Chapter sixty three, The White Lie.
Speaker 2: Two days, two days of climbing. After that first night
of triumph, the captured wine was a sour memory in
our dry mouths. The last of the sea's heart attack
was a scattering of crumbs in Cobbs pack. The manic
energy of the map's discovery had burned away, leaving only
the grim, hard ash of determination. The mountain was a brutal,
vertical nightmare. We weren't walking. We were climbing, using hands
and feet, dragging ourselves over leagues of broken shale and
icelicked rock. The wind was a constant scream, a physical
enemy that tried to peel us from the cliffs. Cob
was a wreck, his body completely giving out. He was sobbing,
a high, thin sound that the wind tore away. Stig
and his face gray with pain from his festering shoulder,
was just an engine of grim resolve, hauling Cob up
ledges like a sack of grain, his every breath a
rattling groan. Even Orso's cold pragmatism was wearing thin. His
face was raw from the wind, his lips cracked and bleeding.
He'd just stare at the map, then at the wall
of rock in front of us, and say nothing that
was worse than his complaining. We were following the map
to the letter a madman's scripture. I called a halt
in the lee of a granite spire. The crew didn't stop.
They collapsed, a pile of rags and misery. Stiggins slumped
against the rock, his eyes closing, his hand clamped to
his shoulder. Cob just lay where he fell, his chest hitching.
Speaker 1: We're done.
Speaker 2: Dre Gig's hissed, his usual humor replaced by a raw,
scraping edge. This is it a fine place to die,
very scenic, silent, I grunted. I looked at Bryn. She
was the only one who looked alive. Her green eyes
were bright, her senses on fire. She was in her element.
She tasted the air. I didn't need to give the order.
I just jerked my head. We left the others. We
didn't speak, We moved. She was a shadow, a whisper
of leather on stone. I was just a man, but
I was a man who knew how to be quiet,
A man fueled by a promise of gold. We climbed,
moving along a goat track that was little more than
a rumor. For an hour. We climbed, the wind trying
to tear our gloves from our hands. The rock was sharp,
like broken glass. Bryn froze. She held up one hand.
I stopped, my breath catching in my chest. She pointed
up the ridge, the final one. We didn't walk, We crawled.
We crawled the last fifty feet on our bellies, the
ice toothed rocks tearing at our knees and elbows. The
wind was a roaring giant up here. I pulled myself
to the edge, my heart a cold hammer in my chest.
I parted a clump of frozen thorny brush, and I
saw it. I let out a breath. It wasn't a laugh,
not quite. The madman was a poet. It was nestled
in a perfect high altitude valley, a perfect bowl of green,
untouched by the wind. It was beautiful, and that one
word filled me with a pure, cold blooded rage. It
was white. The walls were not the gray practical stone
of a northern fortress. They were gleaming, polished white limestone.
They shined in the thin mountain sun, an arrogant declaration
of wealth. This wasn't a wall to keep enemies out.
It was a wall to make peasants feel small. The
guard towers, four of them, were slender and fluted, disguised
as ornate bell towers, capped with bronze roofs that gleamed
like fresh gold. But I saw them, the arrow slits,
narrow and dark, hidden in the scroll work, and the gate,
by all the gods. The gate, it was an obscenity
thirty feet high, carved from a single massive piece of dark,
ancient wood. It was a perfect giant carving of the
stern visage itself, the severe, judgmental face of their god.
The deep set eyes were the watchports. The snarling, downturned
mouth was the murder hole. A fortress, I muttered, a
fortress disguised as a house of prayer. Brynn and I
lay there for a long time, just watching. We were
the wind, We were the rocks, We were the hunger
they'd all forgotten. I saw them, fat monks in clean robes,
walking on manicured gravel paths, gravel in a garden up here.
They weren't cold, they weren't hungry. I saw the guards
Their armor was polished black and gold, ceremonial. They carried spears,
but they carried them like priests carrying icons. They paced
the white walls, but they weren't watching. They were parading.
They were bored. Then I saw it, the thing that
sealed their fate. A guard on the east wall stopped.
He stood there, looking out over the valley, his back
to the world. He took off his helmet. He took
his helmet off on patrol. He pulled a cloth from
his belt, and he started polishing it. He polished it
for ten minutes, admiring his own reflection in the black,
lacquered steel. I felt Brynn's breath, a cold puff of
air near my ear. She'd been watching the towers soft,
she whispered. The word was a knife's edge. Pure contempt.
They ring bells, they don't watch the rocks. She was right.
They built their fortress, and then they forgot why. They'd
been safe for too long, counting their gold, polishing their armor,
and looking up at their god. They never ever look out.
I kept watching the guard. He was still admiring himself.
A wave of pure cold certainty washed through me. This
wasn't anger. It was clarity. They're not soldiers, I whispered,
the wind, stealing the words. Brynn looked at me. A slow,
cold smile spread across my face. It wasn't a smile
of humor. It was the smile a wolf gives the
lamb their pigs fattened for us. I looked away from
the guard and back at that massive, arrogant, carved wooden gate,
at that judgmental face. I couldn't wait to see it break.
We're not sneaking in Bryn. Her green eyes, feral and bright,
met mine were kicking the door down.