Now all Betrim needed to do, despite his still being in less than perfect condition, was to kill all six sailors without hurting Rilly. Somewhere deep down Betrim knew that the Black Thorn of a year ago would have accepted those odds. He would have charged in, axe swinging, cutting a swathe through his enemies. But something had changed in the last year and it wasn't just his weakened state. Betrim no longer had any backup, no longer had a crew to help him out. The strong, commanding presence of the Boss, the inexhaustible strength of Bones, the silent and deadly bloodlust of Henry, and the unfailing competence of Swift. All were gone, now it was just him and he wasn’t pleased at the odds.
Betrim heard a shout from behind and below him; someone on the pier. He turned and ran, leaping over the railing. Some corner of his mind recognised that he wasn't as fast as he used to be, that one of the sailors had started forwards before him. With a heavy thud Betrim hit the wood of the pier on all fours, his right hand unhooking his axe from his belt with practised accuracy. The fast sailor hit the pier a moment later and stumbled on his landing. The Black Thorn's first chop took all five of the man's toes off his left foot. His second chop; a meaty back-swing, cut a deep rend through the sailor's screaming face. Betrim didn't wait around to check if the man was dead; he shouldered past and sprinted up the pier towards the city of Solantis, the shouts of the five remaining sailors chasing him all the way.
Just like every damned dock Betrim had ever seen, the dock of Solantis was a crowded mess of people, crates, livestock and lightly simmering violence. He shouted to the folk in front of him, a wordless cry he hoped would translate to something roughly like
get the fuck out of the way
. People turned to stare at him in confusion. Some folk got the hint and started pushing to make room, others just stood still with open mouths. Betrim launched himself into the crowd with all his weight. Folk stumbled and fell, recovered and pushed back, some even shouted back but most just tried to move. Then Betrim was free of the press and the city of Solantis stretched out in front of him and he realised he had no idea of where he was going. Truth was Solantis was one of the few places in the wilds Betrim had never been to, never seemed like he'd had a reason before.
Shouts from behind warned Betrim he was still being chased. He craned his neck around and caught sight of the sailors pushing their way through the crowd, one man was stuck behind a number of docile looking beasts coloured white with black splotches, or maybe they were black with white splotches. Either way they were large and didn't look to be in any hurry to move.
Betrim began to back away. There were a few mercs watching him with amused disinterest. “Those men are chasin' me,” he said to the mercs.
The biggest of them sniffed and looked into the crowd. “Aye, reckon they are.”
Realising he wasn't about to get any help from the local law enforcement without the bits to pay for it Betrim turned and started running. He'd lost valuable time and the sailors would be all the closer for it.
Buildings loomed up in front of Betrim on either side of the street. They were squat things, low and ugly and built of crude, brown stone. He doubted any of them contained more than a couple of rooms and certainly none of the luxuries. What they did have was steps on the outside of the buildings leading up to the flat rooftops. Some of the buildings had wet clothing staked up and drying in the afternoon sun, some had people sitting on chairs, watching the world move by on the streets below them, some had barrels, open to the sky and no doubt full of water, and some were bare. Betrim didn't much care why the buildings were built that way, he mounted the first steps he came to two at a time and hit the roof still sprinting. With a giant leap he crossed the gap to the next building and stumbled, his momentum taking him arse-over-head. A moment later he lurched back to his feet and glanced behind him. One of the sailors was just coming up the steps onto the first rooftop. Again Betrim turned and fled, jumping from one rooftop to the next with two men chasing him up top and two more on street level, shouting as they kept pace.
Skidding to a stop Betrim changed direction and headed off to his left. It let the rooftop followers gain a valuable second but those on the street lost sight of him and would be forced to cut through alleyways to keep up. The alleys of Solantis were well known to be dangerous places. Always folk willing to stab others for little more than a couple of bronze bits or whatever they might find on the body.
The smaller buildings were coming to an end now, replaced by larger, better built dwellings of good grey stone and multiple floors. Betrim snaked to his right and leapt a slim alleyway, he heard the shouts of a man below him, trying to keep up, but ignored it. He was aiming for one of the larger buildings with a balcony, if he could time his jump right he would be able to clamber inside.
Betrim had always had a problem with chases, though usually he was on the other end of the situation, he wasn't built for it. Truth was the Black Thorn wasn't much built for running at all; he was built for fighting and for killing. He could feel his lungs burning as he sucked in air, feel his legs aching from all the exercise. He was moments away from giving up the chase and taking on the four sailors when he ran out of time to think about it. The balcony was right there in front of him and his momentum wasn’t about to let him change his mind.
With a growling grunt Betrim launched himself towards the overhanging balcony. Seemed it was further away then he'd reckoned and for a heart-stopping moment he was certain he'd fall short. A horrible vision of himself collapsed on the street below with four angry sailors standing over him flashed into Betrim's mind but vanished when he hit the stone railing of the balcony chest first. Before he could consider how close he'd come to missing the jump Betrim scrambled and pulled and pushed and flopped over the lip of the balcony. He heard a body hit the stone behind him and decided not to check whether the sailor had made the jump or not.
Betrim pushed through a light curtain to find two women staring at him. Both were naked and in bed. One woman, with skin as dark as the night and nipples as large as grapes was straddling the other. Both looked terrified. Seemed to Betrim something was off about the scene but he wasn't about to stop and ask questions no matter how much he might like to.
He thundered through the door at the far end of the room shoulder first to find a stair case leading up and down. He chose up and sprinted up the stairs as fast as his complaining legs could take him. The stairs ended on the top floor and a long corridor stretched out in front of him with doors on either side, all were closed, no doubt locked. At the far end of the corridor was a single window, shutters open to the cool air outside.
Betrim ran-limped towards the window. Seemed his ankle had picked up a nagging pain, he wasn't sure when it had happened but it wasn't ideal. He reached the window just as one of the sailors appeared at the top of the staircase and shouted back down to the others. Without another thought Betrim launched himself out of the window.
On his way down the thought occurred to Betrim that he should have looked out of the window before jumping. There were no more buildings close enough to land on, nothing close enough but the hard stone of the street three floors below in fact, well that and a few painful looking crates. Betrim decided to aim for the crates, not that he really had any sort of control where he fell.
There was a noise something like a
crunch
or maybe a
crash
and pain, the type of pain that registers throughout the entire body all at once and feels a lot like landing on something hard having just fallen from a high height. Still, it seemed something broke his fall somewhat, because he had that nagging feeling he got when he wasn't dead yet, though everything had gone strangely dark and had a strange musky, feathery smell.
Something sharp and painful started scrabbling at Betrim's face and his hand shot up and grabbed it. A moment later he opened his eye to find he had in fact hit the crates and had in fact managed to destroy every single one of them. A man stood close by spouting curses even Betrim had never heard before. The thing that had been clawing at his face turned out to be a chicken and a particularly scared one at that. It reminded Betrim of his parents ranch back in Sarth so many years ago, reminded him of the argument he'd had with them, reminded him of how that argument had led to their deaths.
A shout from above and Betrim dodged out of the way just as a sailor came plummeting from the sky to land with a sickening
crunch
where the Black Thorn had just been lying. The man didn't move, just lay there, broken and gurgling out his last breaths. Betrim carefully placed the chicken on the ground and limped away.
He was in a large street with plenty of stone buildings either side, some homes, some shops, one tavern. It wasn't busy but it wasn't empty; people moved about, some stopped to stare at the bloody mess of sailor, some just ignored the entire thing as if a bit of death was a normal everyday occurrence for them, chances were that wasn’t far from the truth. A number of mercs, those meant to police the city, stood by laughing and making jokes at the dead man's expense. He ignored them all. If he could just put some distance between himself and here he might...
“Thorn!” Betrim recognised the voice as belonging to the sailor with the crooked eyebrow. He turned to find out he was correct. The man was jogging towards him, breathing hard and holding his side. Seems Betrim wasn't the only one not used to running. The cook was limping along just behind Crooked Eyebrow and as Betrim watched a third sailor was thrown out of a doorway by a big merc with more gums than teeth. The third sailor dusted himself off, looked around and then joined the chef and Crooked Eyebrow. “'Bout time ya stopped runnin'!”
Betrim grinned, though he doubted it looked quite so menacing as normal as he was still gasping air into his lungs. “Reckon... reckon I got a bit more in me. How 'bout you?”
Crooked Eyebrow snarled at Betrim. “Reckon ya a coward.”
The grin disappeared. Betrim Thorn was many things but one thing that was not on that list was coward and he knew the moment he let one prick get away with calling him such then soon everybody would be at it and, when that happened, it wouldn't take long for those same folk to start trying to kill him. It was the nature of the game in the wilds, those with no name were always trying to make one off those with the big names and truth was they didn't come much bigger than the Black Thorn.
Didn't seem like there was much else left to say. Betrim set his face into an expressionless mask, readied his axe in his right hand and plucked his dagger from his belt with his left. Then he advanced on the three sailors.
All three men started to fan out, trying to surround him but the Black Thorn wasn't some green as grass boy, new to the ways of a fight. He charged Crooked Eyebrow with a wordless yell of fury. The sailor seemed caught somewhere between surprise and terror but he managed to dodge Betrim's first swing and blocked the axe with his cutlass on the second. Betrim was just about to stab his dagger into the man's face when the cook swung at him with his heavy meat cleaver. Betrim launched himself to his right to get away from the chunk of metal and nearly stumbled into the dagger wielding sailor who seemed more than happy to get in a good stabbing.
He was a young sailor, the one with the dagger, Betrim couldn't tell how young but he reckoned he was just past reaching manhood. He had a real eager look on his face, the sort of look boys get when they want to make their first kill. Before they realise that killing doesn't make you a man, doesn't give you a name, doesn't do anything but make the other person dead. Betrim dropped his axe, grabbed hold of the sailor's attacking arm with his right hand and stuck his left hand, complete with knife, into the sailor's neck three times. He scooped up his axe before the body even hit the floor. His two remaining enemies started to look a lot less sure of themselves.
The cook mumbled something to Crooked Eyebrow, might have been another language, Betrim couldn't tell. Crooked Eyebrow looked at Betrim real hard for a few moments then glanced at the cook. “Twenty-five thousand bits!” The cook nodded and then both men started towards Betrim.
This time both sailors attacked at once. Betrim swatted the cutlass away with his axe and jumped back away from the cleaver, giving ground before his two attackers. He was aware of a crowd gathering around him; watching him like he was fighting in one of the Solantis pits. Mercs lined the streets laughing and betting on the outcome, none of them feeling the need to interfere. Solantis wasn't exactly known for order being kept on the streets and this right here was proof.
They came at him again and this time he blocked the cleaver, edged out of the way of the cutlass and slashed his knife at Crooked Eyebrow. The sailor jumped back and Betrim charged between the two of them. Forcing them to turn, to keep him in sight. The two sailors came back together, uncertain of Betrim's tactics. Weren't much of a tactic if truth be told, he was just trying to keep them guessing.
The cook was the problem. He was pretty good with that cleaver of his and Betrim was sure if the cook went down then Crooked Eyebrow would run. Not that the Black Thorn would give him chance to run.
Betrim could feel something wet on his chest, didn't feel much like sweat, felt warm and sticky. He glanced down to find a shallow cut bleeding red blood into his white shirt. An inch lower and it would have taken off his nipple, not that he could see any reason for a man to keep his nipples. Women's nipples, now they were alright, attached to the breast as they were made them real nice to look at and even better to play with. Betrim had never seen the benefit of playing with his own nipples. Truth was he pretty much forgot they were there most of the time.
A strange thought intruded in the Black Thorn's head so he gave it voice. “You kill Rilly?”
The cook shook his head but it was Crooked Eyebrow that answered. “Ain't got no quarrel with her nor the Cap'n. Jus' afer you, Thorn.”
