Go to bed, then.​

The villagers in Wend had said the same kind of things to Asher, with the same kind of voice, whenever he had gotten a detail wrong or said something too strangely. It's alright, they would assure him, but there would be a weariness creased round their eyes. Why don't you get some rest? We can try again tomorrow. But the problem was, that Asher did understand. He understood most things perfectly well the first time around. He just didn't know how to say it aloud. The feeling of wrongness, of having something missing, of being just shy of a whole soul, lingered in moments like these.

“... And I haven’t forgotten about your payment for the fish, do not worry.”​

The fish. All that melancholy he had been gearing up to feel, suddenly now with nowhere to go, crossed some threshold within himself and changed. A rare emotion showed on Asher's face. He became bothered. The flicker of the fire exaggerated the expression, brows turning to stormclouds over shadowed eyes.

“I'm not worried about it." He hadn't mentioned the fish, nor had he expected payment for it. Catfish were common, and they tasted bad, especially when they were that big. If he'd put that old guddy out at market, no one would have bought it.

Asher braced his knees and heaved himself to standing. He made a big show of walking across the way and scooping his bowl up again, except it wasn't a show because his back was very stiff from being shoved into a table earlier.

He paused, there on the other side of the fire. Hadn't they just talked about the importance of honesty? It didn't seem like a bad rule to follow, so he decided to give it a try.

"Oh and, tomorrow I'm going to kill a lot of people. If you're not keen on that sort of work, you should get out of here."

Taking a couple of swinging steps backwards, Asher raised a hand in an awkward goodbye. “Goodnight, Rois. Consider the fish a kindness.” Then he turned on his heels and walked off with his bowl of eggs.
 

“I look forward to watching it happen.”

Comes the truthful admittal back, it is a little gleeful from way down there upon the ground, followed by just as awkward a wave as Asher had summoned himself. Watching was the key word there. Rois had touted himself as a ‘fighter of sorts’ but quite honestly, he had no talent with swords, or pikes, or axes, or any sort of weaponry that could possibly arrive on a typical battlefield. The best hopes was for Asher to put on a spectacular show, die himself, and then he’d be able to whisk Lord-whothefuckcares off to safety while everyone was distracted with violence and death… and take the reward for himself! And then he’d scurry back like a fetid rat to crawl over corpses and drag them into the shadows with mirth, profit there too, maybe toast Asher’s arms upon an open fire while he waited for his water-logged company to catch up. This was a no-lose scenario.

“I will not consider the food kindness, I will pay you tomorrow. Nighty-night.”

And he did catch Asher’s emotion. He just didn’t care.

That served him right for falling asleep whilst in the middle of prophetic, mind-opening guidance. Not… not that he wanted him to hear it, obviously.

The moment the other is out of sight his bowl is emptied by way of dirt-flecked hands and eager munches, roe and eggs were a strange combination, but the salty-savory mixture upon his tongue was a welcome reprieve from the blandness of fur-flecked rat meat; part of him wished he hadn’t had gobbled up the catfish so eagerly. They would have paired well together. At least the remnants of the fishes corpse was disappeared between ever-hungry teeth, uncaring of the bugs that had begun to settle against the carcass and not bothering to remove them if they got in the way. Rois was still chewing upon the greasy fins as the butcher waited in the courtyard for the kitchen’s lanterns to be snuffed out, but it seemed like luck was not on his side.

For all the mischief he had been planning, the sight of Nell cleaning up in the kitchen brought sourness with it, women and their late working, how could a pantry be raided whilst there were still people up…? The answer was by knocking out said people, but that’d raise too many alarm bells. An immature look of dissatisfaction crawls across the large males face as he pouts and puffs and returns to the barn to rat-hunt but just to be twarted again by the fact that there did not seem to be any rats left. Nothing stirred the darkness. No sniffling noses came from the old-wood, bah, let the pups live, hope to not starve tomorrow amongst these poor people and their no-rations and their relying on a brain damaged mystery man to save them in such dire times.

Whether Asher is in bed or not he does not care much, a half-and-quarter hour has passed and he tosses himself down onto the mattress with a harumph and gleaming eyes ruby-red in the darkness… speaking of brain damage.

‘It's not a mask. It's all I've got.’​

… Maybe they shared the same weakness. A solid conk to the head to turn them into shuffling, mentally-fucked shadows of peoples frothing at the mouth and wild eye’d in confusion. He ponders Lamb’s mortality as he closes eyes and tries to pretend that the bed is comfortable, the man is no snorer, but is very adept at drooling. Asher would at least have a decent night’s rest in the same room as the half-beast who kept hurting him and eagerly awaited his death, at least!
 
Asher was in bed. He'd curled up against the wall, cloak draped over his shoulders, belt off and sword laid down above his head. The mattress might've been big enough for two people, if the people in question were ordinary sized. But Rois was somewhat huge and Asher couldn't lay straight, so it was a tight fit.

It's wasn't the initial flopping down that disturbed Asher. He slept through that, but woke up a several minutes later, because he was overheating.

"Warm," he lamented, pushing at Rois with sleep-stifled strength, palms and the bottom of one foot. "Get off, you're too hot." But whether the other man moved or not didn't matter, because Asher fell promptly back asleep after that.


The lord and his men arrived very early, in the grey before the rising sun. Asher was up already. He'd tried to slip out into the cool morning air without disturbing anyone. He'd washed his face and rinsed his mouth out at the well, checked his belongings, ate a small breakfast out of his pack (dried berries and pine nuts, and some of the precious butter on a thick slice of rye) and generally milled about.

The lord entered Maullon Garde with three men in tow, all on horses. They filled the shabby fort's courtyard with their importance.

"You must be the Vanak boy," the nobleman said to Asher as he dismounted from his steed. He was dressed in gleaming silver armor and a sun-soaked cloak and tabard. His complexion was pale and smooth, his hands slender even in their bulky gloves, and he smelled like flowers. "Good, I'm glad you've come. There's a band of criminals which have taken up residence in the swamp. They've proven illusive, but I've been told that you can track anything with a footprint."

"What laws have they broken?" Asher asked.

"Failing to take up arms in defense of their Lord. They're deserters."

"That's a crime?" Asher looked like he'd just bitten into a sour apple. He saw the chains hanging from saddlebags, and the finely dressed noble, and the horses, foaming from a hard ride, which carried the hollow-eyed soldiers on their backs. Anyone with half a brain in their head could see that it was dubious work.

"No," Asher said in that blasé way of his. "I don't think I'll help."

That angered the noble. "And what makes you think you have a choice?" He spat, all the beauty draining from his face to be replaced with hard, venomous lines. "We're at war, you're a mercenary, and you haven't paid off your debt yet. You'll do as you're told, or I'll mark you amongst the deserters."

Asher was turning around already. There was plenty of sunlight still left, he could catch something for breakfast, say his goodbyes to Rois, and get on the road. Then at least he would not waste a day of travel.

"Hey! Don't turn your back on me!"

The horses were moving around him. Two riders behind and one in front. A spear darkened Asher's periphery, brushing past his cheek. The soldiers clamored like hunting hounds around him. They had probably meant only to intimidate, bring him into line for the disrespect to their lord. But then Asher tucked the spear shaft under his arm, and wrenched it free of the soldier's grip. He wielded it like armor, using butt and pointy end in turn to drive the horses away. They stamped and snorted, fighting against their instincts and their riders.

"You idiots! Get off your horses and grab him!"

It was the wrong order to give. Two of the soldiers peeled off some distance away and dismounted. Drew their own weapons and ran back into the fray with manly shouts. That gave Asher time to cast the spear aside and unsheathe his sword. The slab of metal hung strangely in his hands, grip high and nose pointed to the earth. Now that their one advantage over Asher was gone, with no height nor hooves to protect them, they did not last long. The third man was still dismounting by the time the other two went down. Then the last soldier was alone, and then he was dead.

Asher reeled on the nobleman, ice in his eyes. Backed him up against the palisade wall and stopped any escape with the tip of his sword, pressed into the wood next to the nobleman's ear, angled down to ready a slice across the throat.

"W-wait!" cried out the nobleman, and fool that he was, Asher hesitated. "Kill me and you'll be hunted down as an outlaw. Surely we can find a more mutually beneficial way to settle this. Let me go, and I can get you a better contract. Make your debt disappear!"

The noble had the look of someone who believed he deserved to be listened to. There was nothing in his words which rang true. Even so, Asher felt cold pity leaden his arm, clinging to him like an insistent child. He let up, ever so slightly, the tip of the blade lifting as his grip loosened. He did not notice that the nobleman had slipped a thin stiletto from his belt and was now brandishing it.

Well, he did notice when it sank into the meat of his shoulder, as the noble careened forward and pushed him back. Used the time that Asher took to keep his balance to make a run for it. Across the courtyard, towards the open gate. He did not reach the road.

Red bloomed at the base of the nobleman's neck, spreading across sunflower cloak. He stumbled, and fell face flat into the mud. A crossbow bolt stuck out of him.

And then it was over. The sort of fight that ended before one even realized it had began.

"Wow-ee!" Mandy hollered from across the way. Next to him, Nell was holding the killing device, lowering it off her sights. They looked like different people. Body fluid with confidence, Mandy seemed to have grown a few inches. And Nell's calloused hands were steady as she re-loaded the crossbow. "That couldn't have gone better!"

"That couldn't of gone worse." Asher shambled forward, shedding blood in little drops along the way. He winced. "Can someone help me get this knife out of my shoulder?"

There were about twenty or so questions rattling around in Asher's head. But he was losing them one by one, the more the heat of the pain settled into him.
 
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If there had been any hands come to bother him in the night the butcher had not felt it; even in strange circumstances such as this he sleeps like a baby and thoroughly wets the pillows with drool as he does so. A sprawled out, large, heated baby. Such a baby had not awoken when the yawning sun clambered into the dismal sky to shed light against thick clouds, not when Asher had left, not even when a haughty voice had thrummed demands through the camp-- but when the violence started? When the agitated hoof-fall turned into startled stomping? When voices raise in an alerted chorus? Rois sits up suddenly with hair flying in every direction and one eye only half open, looking about in minor panic--

A scream cuts through the fog of sleepiness like a bullet to the skull.

The man clambers out of bed (and almost shamefully trips) to scramble half naked with barely kicked on shoes to the entrance of the (now organized) shed with a muted growl, what the fuck was going on? Why did the air reek of blood, why were their bodies strewn about, why was Lamb fighting-- surely this was not the noble and his men?! The one that wished for the escort?! Asher is dancing about them like they are children tumbling about with wooden toys brandished in his general direction, and for a moment Rois wonders if the brain-damaged man who had so keenly fetched him supper had gone mad. Had been shaken too hard and now all that was behind those now wild, furious eyes gleaming with intent was soup, because these people were people that mattered, their armor and weapons told him that alone. People that meant something, somewhere, not just nobodies whose forfeited lives would cause no ripples within the greater tides of the land. And now they lay like floating bodies against the muck, bleeding softly and silently into the land…

And Asher is busy advancing upon the noble himself; but maybe he hears the clapping. Rois, useless and bed-headed and half dressed Rois is simply standing there applauding the youths violence like a proud parent at a soccer game, leaning forward to make sure not a single moment of the sporadic action was missed. How exciting. Dead people that mattered were more fun than dead people that didn’t anyhow, chaos was the fruit of their failures.


“Cut his head off!” He yells distractingly with pitched glee-- at the exact moment that Asher is unceremoniously stabbed by the needle-blade once concealed-- a soft ‘awwww’. That wouldn't be a death befitting of the effort. And of course he makes absolutely no moves to stop the noble as he sprints haphazardly towards the door, the butchers face almost a pout, such a shame, really, truly. He does not see the nobodies and their crossbow, he simply watches Asher with half-lidded eyes of expectation. Would he too fall to drown into the mud? Would the thick dark running of blood from his shoulder continue to weep and ooze till the life drained out of Lamb's face, till he choked upon dirt, till he began to shake with the throes of death…?

... Nah.

“Booooo.” Softly whistled, the sound stolen by the wind.

He looked too healthy for that.

So as his fellow head-case pleads for the knife to be removed, Rois absolutely misses his cue and ignores Asher in favor for stooping down low before one of the many fallen bodies… sometimes these people had pockets sewn against undergarments, and maybe those pockets held interesting things that they no longer needed. Just robbing the dead in plain view. The red-heads expression is cat-like as he drags something shiny from beneath the hem of a bloodied gambeson, a tiny locket framing some woman that did not matter-- the picture is thumbed out to flutter and catch against a bloodied puddle afar. The locket is pocketed.

And the idiot had questions too… but now he had a little necklace as well! The noble would come later. Armor usually did not allow for the possession of anything good (it simply was not forged for anything other than preserving life), unlike the pants of lesser armed men, who could never afford the luxury of solid, full body protection!
 
No one offered to help Asher. The redhead, who still looked sleepy and disheveled, had wandered off and started picking pockets. Mandy and Nell seemed likewise occupied. They were speaking softly and hurriedly to each other, but it was a small courtyard and Asher could still hear them.

“Nelly, go down there and make sure the Rabbit’s dead.”
“He’s dead, Mandy!”
“You only shot him once.”
“No way I'm going near those two lunatics¹. What are we going to do about them?”​

The point of Asher’s blade sank into the mud. It braced his weight as he bent low to pick up the paper which Rois had discarded. A pocket portrait brushed in tiny, delicate strokes. The woman's dark eyes were merely two specks on the paper, her smile a thin line of blush red. There was writing on the back, and when he held it up to the morning light, it shone backwards through her blushing cheeks, dark veins of a language he did not understand. There used to be a person there, but now it was just lines. The memory had gone out of it.

The dead soldier that the memory belonged to was lying face-up, cold brown eyes staring up at nothing. Asher pressed the bloodied portrait against gloved palm. Curled cooling fingers round it, and pulled the dead man’s hand up to rest against his still chest. This motion was automatic, like picking up a bit of trash or straightening the upturned corner of a rug. Asher thought nothing of it. Once he hefted himself up again, he continued on with his mild annoyance at being abandoned by everyone else in this mucky fort.

Unfortunately, Mandy and Nell had sorted something out amongst themselves.

"Keep your hands to yourselves, you vultures! Everything here belongs to the rebellion," Nell shouted across the way, squaring her feet. She raised her loaded crossbow up and leveled it at Rois rifling amongst the corpses. Asher’s breath caught in his throat. No, that was against the rules...!

"Not that we don't appreciate your efforts," Mandy added unhelpfully from his safer position behind Nell.

Asher (who had already been walking towards the pair with the false hope that they might be better help than Rois) stepped into her sights. He moved forward with the malcontent of a man who would need to be stabbed one or two more times before he learned any kind of lesson. The belly of the crossbow was grabbed up with bloody hand, its nose pushed heavenward.

Startled, Nell let slip the trigger and the bolt shot into the sky, arched high and harmless over the jagged toothed walls.

"Don't," he urged, though he was not sure which of them he was pleading with. "Please."

¹Nell means this in the archaic sense of moonsickness, someone made manic by the godstide, a generously applied ailment amongst Altalusian peasantry.
 

Oh… oh.

Wait, what?

Rois turned saucer-plate eyes as the voice came from afar, the sparkling tip of the weapon pointed right at him, why weren’t they going to Lamb, like he thought they would? Why were the pair speaking amongst themselves in barely hushed voices with tones marred by arrogance, surely there was no way this was a double-cross. The smirk was slowly falling from his face as the pieces of the puzzle came clicking into their rightful spots within his mind, they had never intended to help the noble and his static quest to rid himself of the mire… call that one. And now they were brandishing weapons at him, as if he was the enemy over trinkets, that was two, time seemed to slow when Asher moved. Maybe deep down in the dark depths of his heart he feared that the loosing of the bolt would strike the younger to carve another hole into his pale body, but red eyes watch it sail upwards and onwards in a soundless escape…

“Hey…”

What the fuck. Now answers were needed more than ever, it was a shame he did not have the patience to simply ask for them normally, Rois stalks forward with boots slapping against the bloodied mud and snorts actual steam like a bull, it rolls scentlessly against the dark planes of his cheek like an invisible cigarette was exhaled, the tip of a pointed tongue touches fangs as he squares up to Nell so closely that if Asher let the crossbow go it would still bump the center of his chest,

“Why aren’t you saying thank you to him?” A tipping of the head to the side to indicate poor Asher and his red-soaked front, the butcher let his eyes slide from the shorter man and back, he did not know any real first aid beyond the basics. The stained silver wasn’t supposed to be moved until its pressure could be replaced by something else, it was supposed to linger there to stop the bleeding, but Lamb was still bleeding regardless-- and who did these two think they were ordering about-- the murmur of a growl rolls in his throat.

“Find some clean cloth, Lamb. Yank the knife out, stuff the cloth in as tight as possible.” Packing wounds, perhaps he’d offer to do it himself if his mind was not preoccupied by forward thought, intentions, “As for you lot… do not talk to us like that. You should probably explain yourselves… or I am going to kill you--”

Without warning a massive hand lunges forth and grabs Nell by her throat with nail-tips pointed inwards, they dip below skin just enough to immediately see red begin to bead and slip against the stretches of her neck, she is allowed enough air to breathe but the down-tugging of her aged skin is already blossoming with black-blue petals like watercolour painted by way of anger. Crimson eyes glitter, Rois’s mouth is set in a straight line, half-lidded eyes fixed upon her, pointing a weapon at him… letting a bolt loose… that steely grip and the quivering muscles of his bare arm was not the shaking of exertion, but the restraint needed to not simply collapse his hand to the point of suffocation.

Well, now… he had to defend himself... and Asher, too.
 
Clean cloth and a little yank, well if Asher had known it was that simple he wouldn’t of bothered anyone else with it.

It was not difficult to wrest the crossbow from Nell’s grasp, with her preoccupied by the bulk of Rois looming over her. Grabbing a lever that looked important, he snapped it off, and tossed the broken thing aside.

“You should probably explain yourselves… or I am going to kill you–” ​

“Rot in the abyss with the rest of ‘em,” Miss Nell growled back, clearly not willing to answer any questions. It was not desperation which hardened her eyes, but fury. “Ye might not be a Rabbit, but I won’t bend to a noble of any color.”

“They’re rebels,” Asher offered the explanation himself. If they’d asked that noble over there, he would have called them spineless bandits. But that noble was dead on the ground, and not in a position to answer questions. “They think that we’re Lord’s men. I'm guessing its their job to send word ahead to their friends in the woods, for an ambush. But then I messed things up and they had to improvise.”

Which Lord under which banner, was a mystery to him. He knew that there was a lot of conflict in this land and that the commonfolk were fighting back against it. But like many unimportant people who only saw the nobility once in awhile from a long distance away, no one had bothered to tell Asher how it had all started and which side was fighting for what. All he’d gathered was that the red-and-yellow ones were the Rabbits, Rodhan’s men. Not that it mattered to him. He wouldn’t have helped hunt down innocent people regardless of who had asked him, or how noble their cause.

Miss Nell seemed to feel the same way. He really didn’t want to see her choked to death over a simple misunderstanding. Asher raised a hand with the intention of grabbing Rois’ arm, urging him to let off, but he didn’t complete the action.

The needle-point pain got loud – cold steel made a hot pang pulse close to his heart, and for a moment Asher could trace the path of every vein on that side of his body. The sensation startled him. Impulsively, he gripped the handle and tugged. Out came the dagger tip, and out came a lot of blood after it.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Many was moving towards him. The not-a-guardsman was holding something white. A handkerchief. He folded it and put it into Asher’s hand, then guided the hand up to press against shoulder. “Hold that there – firmly, now,” Mandy instructed in a smoke-rasped, but gentle voice. Asher did as he was told. He found himself being pushed a few feet away to a row of crates, and seated on one of the boxes.

“Listen, I used to be an apothecary’s clerk, before all this fighting broke out,” Mandy's dark eyes looked out of a tawny, haggard face and up to Rois. “Let Nell go and I’ll patch your man up.”

For a moment, Asher saw what Mandy must have looked like before he became an outlaw: clean-shaven, dark hair slicked back in neat ply, a pair of glasses sliding down his narrow nose as he nodded low to the page, balancing the books at the end of a long day. The image washed away in another wave of pain, and Asher came back to their present muddy, blood-soaked reality.
 
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“It is hilarious that you think I’m a noble--”

Pressure staggers. Suddenly Asher is delivering upon their ears the much needed explanation as to what the hell had just happened, as to why people litter the ground like leaves in autumn; so these were the enemy. Not figuratively or personally, these were the beings that went against the job, these people who had once been so kindly as to cook for them and offer them sanctuary from the mire. And Rois liked rebels, usually. His dislike for Lordsmen and anyone else that bore wind-swept banners deserved to die for their exploitation of the lower class, but at the same time… these were liars. And now, face down and bled out amongst the dirt was probably the person mentioned in the note Asher had bore.

Maybe he should just punish her because he could--

“I’m no rabbit. I’m a crocodile.”

Said with false playfulness… it dies quickly, Mandy offers up aid, and... that is worth trading violence for. For Ashers sake, naturally. They weren’t friends, but Lamb had been kind (it couldn't be forgotten) and kindness deserved to be rewarded when it was genuine, not the false kind these vagabounds had offered up-- Nell is released unceremoniously, the half-rigid opening of claws to free her reddened throat from the rough grasp,

“You’re all fools.” The red-head mumbles, turning slitted pupils onto Mandy without a lick of feeling circling about them, there is no trust there but there are also no alternatives, “No wonder you’re holed up here in this shit-pit with nothing but scraps to eat and walls that can’t defend you, is this what a rebellion is? You would have all been dead if it wasn’t for him.”

It was almost laughable, Rois wanted to laugh in their faces and is only halted in doing so by Asher’s evident and relentless pain, Gods, this was a reminder as to why playing in games of politics never worked. Big fish little fish, what freedom they were fighting for meant nothing if they were all laid to rest before anything meaningful got done. And now he’s suspicious, the kind of suspicion that cannot be dashed away by words, but something else, also--

“... You’ve completely fucked up this job, Lamb.” A wayward sigh, possibly not the kindest thing one could say allowed to an openly bleeding man on the brink of collapse, the butcher did not know that the noble had commanded him to kill innocents fleeing in the woods but now innocents had died none the less. What a shame. Well… not really, had he wanted to do the job correctly with Asher for profit? Yes, but Rois likewise did not lose in this situation, either. Rebels and Lords, rights and wrongs… all it got you was a stab wound in the shoulder and no money, a step back and a glance towards the bodies laying about--

“... Can I have these bodies?” HUH. “You don’t need them, obviously, besides their armor and belongings.”

Mayhaps it could be salvaged... he begins thinking up little lies that could be told to whoever gave Asher the note, but all of them are kind of pointless when the silver-donned man of the moment was actively becoming waterlogged upon the ground. Maybe they should just kill these people, too. The narrative could not be controlled if there were no witnesses to maniuplate it...
 
“Nell, you alright?”

“...I’ll go get your kit,” she didn’t answer Mandy’s question, rubbing away the pinpricks of soreness in her throat with a hand. She side-stepped wide around Rois, hands up in placating gesture, but eyes reflecting that tense wariness right back at him. “Not going to get very far without medicine and gauze.”

Crows were gathering, on eaves and in branches high above. A brave pair hopped down into the mud to investigate one of the corpses, cawing at each other as they took turns getting closer and closer. In Asher’s village, crows were sacred animals. They were messengers of the in-between, eaters of memory, and kept the lingering dead from cluttering up the living world and turning into wraiths. Miss Nell didn’t know this, however. She traipsed across the courtyard in long, angry steps, shooing them away as she went. The crows hopped right back to their business in her wake.

Mandy started loosening Asher’s tunic to get at the wound, but was warded off by a shrug of Asher's shoulders.

“I can do it,” Asher said. He could, but not very well. In slow, pained motions, Asher loosed his woven belt and pulled his tunic off over his head.

Halfway up, he caught a whiff of something that had him freeze.

The great thing about wool was that it wicked away the littler moistures, and kept them from the skin. But the cruel exchange was that the fabric carried with it every scent in every room it had ever been in. This scent was sour. There was a distinct hint of fish and viscera, but mostly there was that damned smoke. Layered and fermenting, like the teas that traveled from Aetochi through the Highlands: caravan cook fires and freezing nights, wild elk and roasted chestnuts and the fur-line caps of ambitious traders, night after night of carelessness painted in layers upon the tea cakes, a complexity which could not be reproduced by any shorter path. It was overwhelming. And unmistakable.

A shiver prickled at the base of Asher’s spine. Much too quickly, he pulled the rest of the garment off his body.

“Ugh,” his face scrunched up, not in pain at the wound oozing blood down his chest, or the palm-sized burn starting to blister, but at the thought of having to figure out how to untangle that man's scent from his things. “Rois you drooled on me,”

“Stop moving around,” Mandy scolded him. Soaked now to red, he lifted the handkerchief. Prodded around the cut with thumb and forefinger, as the apothecary’s assistant planned out his work.

Obediently, Asher stilled himself. He looked over Mandy’s dark curls at Rois.

“You’ve completely fucked up this job, Lamb.”​

"The job was fucked up," Asher retorted, though there was no venom in his voice. He was bothered by the dead noble and the soldiers, yes, but for reasons distinct and not easily explained to the redhead. He couldn’t put it to words, except that it had not been difficult at all to kill those men. Now that he knew that, he would have to make some adjustments.

Rois looked across at the dead men, and Asher looked too.

“... Can I have these bodies? ...”​

The question did take Asher aback, but not for any sane reason. No, he was pleasantly surprised. The slightest smile lit up his face. Might not have even been noticeable, except for the squint of eye and the tilt of chin.

"That's the first time you've asked for anything."

The other times had been bargains or demands. Asher had been keeping track, so much so that he’d begun to wonder if it was rude to ask for things directly down in the Valley¹. He wished it had been something more ordinary, like a cup of tea or another fish, but... was there any real reason why he couldn't oblige? Besides it being disgusting.

"Well, I suppose it's too wet for a pyre." It was a topic that the other two might’ve protested, but when presented with Asher's nonchalance, one could be tricked into thinking this was an ordinary conversation. "But wouldn't you be better off with one of the horses? They've got more meat on them."

The horses, now riderless, had corralled themselves against one side of the palisade walls. They mulled about with the look that every horse, no matter how good its breeding or training, had: slightly bored, and wishing for more grass.

¹The village of Wend is high enough in altitude that one has to go downhill to get anywhere else, making most of the rest of Altalusia "the Valley" to its denizens.
 

In time, this death would give way to rot.

Water could come to weep with deep wounds, pale skin coloured by shades of green, there was already the beginning of a smell… the unmistakable stench of opened holes releasing fumes which only drew those crows closer, and the biting insects, and even the worms rolling about beneath the mud would come for a taste. Rois tested a tongue against his teeth, probably no good for him to be eating, but… there was always another that gazed heatedly upon bodies bastardized by nature and cared little for the peck marks or the dirtied meat. Thinned eyes pondered them for a moment more before joining his now topless companion, unafraid to regard him with the same manners that he had done moments ago to the dead. Critical pupils dance against the other males chest before slinking to shoulder wound and up to grey eyes flickering with minor disgust,

“Drool the cost of having your own personal bed heater.” Came the humourless purr, it was a common complaint…! “Why was the job fucked up in the first place? Why’d you even attack them?”

A hushed pause.

“... What about your debt?”

It is spoken with the chuffing of someone who would not forgo any sort of assignment for money. He’d been over-eager for coin once and had done whatever it took to make sure there would never be an inkling of debt hovering about his damaged head, the nastiest jobs, foul actions in the dark, the desperation of someone who saw mountains and climbed them upon bleeding hands and feet regardless of the pain. Maybe the debt was not that important to Lamb. Maybe the cost of a stab to the shoulder, the deaths of random men and the loss of money did not outweigh the cost of pride. If that was the case, Rois wondered with the reds of his eyes briefly going shades cooler, a coldness unspoken, then he would be in debt forever; how unimaginable.

And maybe Asher was smiling, it would probably disappear when the half-beast licked a thumb and ran it against the mottled curve other man’s pectoral with a slight amount of pressure, completely ignoring Mandy in favour of smearing his skin with the youngers blood; the digit runs against a tongue casually, salty-sharp, thick, the beginnings of clotting--

“Hmm… well, I am trying to be nice and helpful. You’ve done me another favor, after all…” There is no subtly in his smile, the upturning of lips in a grin that would have been handsome if not for the curve of fangs that always betrayed horrid thoughts. The butcher had thought he’d have to scavenge a battlefield at a later date, had imagined he and Lamb and a noble and a straight line cutting through the marsh, remembering the routes of the dead to return back later to steal the fetid, bloated array of bodies… just for Asher to deliver them right to him instead! And horses were fine but people were better, abandoning the guard-healer-whoever to his work Rois takes a few strides to the nearest soldier and begins to tear clothes off of him in a manner most indignant, gambeson discarded in the dirt,

“What are we going to do about these rebels? Are you really going to let witnesses live?” A huff of minor disbelief as large claws work to undo the dead mans belt-- not an ounce of care whether Mandy heard, and, well, Nell could go to hell for that ‘accidently’ loosened bolt.
 
Yes, Asher understood the flicker of eyes and swiping of blood for an unapologetic taste. Plenty of times in his short life, he had been poked and prodded like this. Measured by some invisible metric which no one would explain to him. Fit or unfit, keen or dull, and never his choice.

“Thank you for the reminder,” he said, though he had not forgotten. Neither his debt, nor that Rois would like to eat him.

There were a lot of questions asked of Asher at once, and whatever Mandy was doing to his arm was starting to hurt. The whole world felt like it was keeling sideways as he tried to sort through an answer. "Debt, I’m beginning to realize, is a kind of weapon. That man would have hidden my wages and kept saying I owed something until the end of time. To keep me here for as long as he liked. Well, I don't have a lifetime to pay. I need to be back home by New Year’s.” Asher pointed at one of the recently deceased soldiers. “And besides, that one over there tried to knock me out with the butt of his spear. Surely that counts as ‘harm’."

Nell came back with a leather satchel in hand. The satchel was thumped down hard atop a crate, which prompted a careful-with-that from Mandy. He dug around the satchel and produced some clean white gauze and a tin of greenish salve. Unrolling the spiderweb fabric, Mandy dipped it in the salve, and began treating the wound. It stung. Asher did not wince.

"What are we going to do about these rebels? Are you really going to let witnesses live?”​

Asher let the last question ring through the courtyard. It was not lost on the rebels themselves. Mandy’s hands had the slightest shake as he tucked the last strip of fabric into place.

"Am *I* going to...?"

He furrowed his brows. There was something off about the phrasing, the abrupt shift from we to you. Asher noticed it right away because he was not used to having agency. Up until recently, other people had been making choices for him, including some he didn't know about yet. Unseen decisions threading him along to unknown conclusions.

It made him realize two things at once: he had just - albeit inadvertently - snapped one of those threads. There on the ground lay the nobleman who would've hung Asher’s debt over his head like a noose. And secondly, he saw the chain which lashed the beast into place, the other side of that rule: if no one was doing any real harm to Rois, he could not strike first. Well, that was interesting. Asher had a lot more control over the situation than he'd previously thought.

"I'll do what I think is best."

Such a vague statement could hardly reassure either side of the conflict. Nor did his expression offer any comfort, gaze as steady as ever and smile gone.

“So then, let’s see if my instincts are true, or if I’m just an ordinary killer.” Asher stated it like one might the weather. An inevitability of life which he did not fully perceive the churnings of, but had to live by nonetheless. He stood up, a little off balance now that his shoulder was wrapped up so tightly. “Miss Nell, could you come help with something.”

Nell understood that it was not an ask. She followed him across the courtyard until they reached the Lord’s body.

“Roll him over for me.” A squelching of mud and a sullying of vibrant cloth. “Thank you.”

Squatting onto his haunches, Asher regarded the corpse with cold perception. A crow landed on the Lord’s silver-tipped boots, clicking softly in a croaky voice. It paused briefly to wipe its beak against bootlaces, before continuing on with its tirade.

“Uh-huh,” Asher said absently, as if he could understand the bird, which he could. It was, very kindly, speaking the Wending tongue to him. It chattered again, louder and more insistent. “The eyes?” He tilted his head curiously, looking at that muck-splattered face where eyes still gazed upwards, unseeing and afraid. “You’re right, they’re different colors.”

He leaned over to take a closer look. The difference was subtle, shades of green catching the light a certain way in the right eye, and then just a shade more yellow in the left. An expensive facsimile. Asher reached forward with his good hand. Pressed the pad of index atop the eye, and hooked his thumb around…

Nell made a noise and looked away.

Out popped the oblong blob, shaped like a worry stone and slimy like a thing he didn’t want to hold. Asher rinsed it off in a nearby puddle. Turned it over in his palm. It was made of finely blown glass. On the inside of the glass eye, a rune was carved, another eye beneath the first, nestled in layered crescent moons, rendered with glyphic simplicity.

“I’ve seen this symbol before,” Asher said. “Embossed on the book that the healer wrote her notes in.”

So, he wasn’t mad after all. At least not in this regard.

It appeared to be the sign that Asher was looking for. Still squatting, he turned his head to look up at Nell. “Grab his sword, and gather up the spears. Lash them to one of the horses,” he instructed. Grasping the glass eye, he reached out and rapped a knuckle against the noble’s metal chest. There, engraved in the silver, a line of hares leapt through sunflower field. “Leave the armor though, it’s too recognizable.”

“You– You’re letting us go?”

“I imagine that depends,” Asher said. “On how quickly you can hurry past the cranky kroko-dil.”
 

‘Being a pawn in some nobles game will not relieve you of your debt. There is a hundred thousand people like you with a million other worries, and everyone is fighting like dogs in a pit for themselves; ‘cept they aren’t trapped by a time-frame like you are.’​

“Finally, you get it.”

Rois does not stop a smirk from playing about his lips as the other talks of debt and how it hovered above you like a rock tied by rope, ready to crush you at the slip of a knife against hemp; Gods, he knew something about debt. A mound was forming, the ones that meant nothing, the beings that had once existed simply to throw their lives down for the high and mighty are being undressed with the precision of a man that did that sort of thing for a living; and it’s a little crude. Just a little. Their thin undergarments that existed for modesty reasons alone are the only thing not shorn from the mud-blood-mixed bodies slack against their companions, its twin stack is things that could maybe be sold if dunked harshly enough in the river and scrubbed against stone.

And Asher is a little different. Was it the settling of his actions against his head or a kind of newfound bravery? Hands clap together to try and shake dried mud from his claws,

“I see. I’d… have attacked them too, in that case.” A halfly murmured response, he’d been wrong, if there was anything that could turn his wrapped-up head from a job it would be being attacked… no matter how alluring gold was. It was the only exception, no matter how much the butcher tried in his head to force the notion that money was king and the king should always be obeyed, I would not be so easily thrown off the scent of coin! “This is not my call; I’ll be unaffected by what happens here. I am not about to change your fate.”

Leech. Parasite. He’s taking hands to boots but curiously watching the mounting sturdiness about the others form as Mandy’s work comes to an end and lamb becomes un-lamb like, commanding and focused, they draw close to the untouched body of the noble and his pricy garb gleaming in the rising sun. It… almost seems like Asher is talking to the bird in black, back and forth in fluent conversation-- but people could not do that, right? Talking to animals? A ludicrous notion that captures the bastards attention and causes eyes to widen in shock even more so than the blasé act of gore,

“... Who are you talking to… ” … Maybe the confidence that Asher wore was actually madness in disguise. With only one ‘nobody’ left the butcher grabs a leg and begins to drag the corpse over to his shorter companion with unknowing eyes glancing down at the prize once snugly resting within the rich mans socket. A clicking of the tongue, these silly groups and their silly symbols, Rois drops the leg of the body to leaaaaaan over the other closely in a jostle against the youths uninjured side,

“Did ya’ get set up?” A little cheerfully spoken! “A debt collector, maybe? Ooo, you might be a really wanted man now, Lamb.”

Two hands bend to pick up the rag-doll of a body to haul it with a throw and a grunt to the pile of the dead, the birds are more than interested, one joins the first and then the next in wag-tailed dances to see what wounds should be picked off first. He’s very aware that the two idiots are watching in fear of them, and whilst Lamb had made the decision to let them go and it would be respected… they could not go free without at least a warning! And it’s great that Asher leaves it to him, because this was his strong point, all easy showman-ship and lacking in the natural disgust for the flesh…! The butcher holds one hand up to them (an unspoken command for attention) and addresses the body just thrown with its concave chest in the way of a jagged spear-hole donned upon him by the others fighting skills, and in slips a hand. Squelching, broken ribs shifting and deflated lungs like mush, the sharp head of the weapon had severed the breadth of the heart off and it is dragged in its limp, jagged, unbeating glory with snapping veins from the cavity and shown to Nell and Mandy like a trophy.

“I never forget a face… and I am not as kind as he is. Talk to anyone about what happened here, and I am going to find you, whether it takes months or years… you’ll see me again.” Softly, carefully, eyes never flicker away from theirs. The dark flesh in his hand and the sagging of its mottled central arteries is pressed tenderly against lips, strips of yellow fat, deep blue lightning strikes across the valves, he opens his mouth… and fangs sheer the bottom valve from it in a horrid jerk that sends globs of congealing blood against his throat and cheek in a weak spray. A puffed cheek and absentminded chewing, hearts were chewy, but the strength of their flavour having seen so much blood over a lifetime is so strong it’s almost sour, unique, thankfully the half-beast had the right teeth to grind the muscle into stringy paste against his tongue,

“Ansh… I’m gonna’ eat yoush.” Loudly swallowing down the mess with an eager tongue flick at fingers, “Alive. I’ll start with your legs and eventually you’ll bleed out… one in front of the other. It’ll be fun.”

A smile painted red, a gory strand hangs from the corner of Rois’s mouth,

“I promise you, it’ll be fun.”
 
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