The air was thick with the stench of people and smoke. It was the kind of smell that clung to everything. It permeated the hidden hideout that was Viiran’s resistance bunker under Mudtown. That’s what they we’re calling it now, Viiran’s Resistance. Bartiin got the impression that not everyone was keen on the name and that the cooperation required to keep the various groups, tribes, and gangs united against their common enemy stood on shaky legs at best.

Between the vast complex of connected houses and the grand hall underground, the compound was a hive of activity. There was enough space for a hundred bodies. So, in Mudtown fashion, double that number filled the cramped hall every day and with each new day that passed, it felt as if more and more people flocked to Viiran’s cause. Bartiin coughed as smoke filled the hall for the third time in two days. Some new fool had lit a fire inside and Viiran’s officers, Yoharum among them, moved swiftly to reprimand the culprit. We’re going to die down here, Bartiin mused. Suffocate from our own stupidity.

The air was already plenty thick without fires being lit. Violence had reared its ugly head the last time the officers stepped in. Bartiin wished only to be elsewhere when it happened again. He could feel the tension and eagerness in the atmosphere. There was a palpable thirst for violence. The men and women who came, and they were mostly men, appeared angry for justice and hungry for blood. They came in small groups, boasting ancestry to small hamlets and unimportant villages. Places so far inland that even those who’d grown up in Mudtown had never heard of them. Yet they swaggered with abundant enthusiasm that it made one think they were all descendants of kings.

The newcomers brought strange accents and stranger clothing. Men and women wore clothes patterned with feathers and beads instead of shells. The stories they brought were queerer still. Some, especially the young, didn’t speak the Trader’s language at all and Bartiin would require help from Yoharum or one of the other men to interpret.

The stories were sometimes innocent, but many troubled him deeply. The newcomers would boast of brutality that made his gut wrench and violence that turned blood to ice. Atrocities committed for the cause were heralded as great victories. Secret killings under the cover of darkness. Bodies paraded through the streets with an aura of twisted pride. And yet all shared the belief that such violence was necessary. But Bartiin knew first hand, as both a soldier and former radical, that fighting with righteousness cloaked in arrogance enabled blindness to cruelties. Evil festers most not where it is unseen, but where it is seen by all and then permitted to continue.

Somewhere along the way, this campaign for retribution against the Casoyans would cast off its disguise of justice. Worse, Bartiin was growing apprehensive to the idea that Viiran already knew that truth. He wondered if Yoharum knew it too. He seemed the type not to care. If they did, they endorsed it by feeding the army’s ire with makeshift weapons and the promise of righteousness.

Men inside the camp boasted of their ties to the gangs and of criminal successes. These things were lorded as badges of honour instead of stains on their character. It was a backwards place, one where the nobility were regarded as criminals and the criminals were heralded as noble. It was unrecognizable from the coup he had been apart of. Belvaas the Elder had been intentional; do only what was necessary. His son now governed with the same purposefulness.

They had deposed King Golan to avoid war and bloodshed. Viiran’s resistance fighters desired it. They were forged not by discipline, but by desperation. Just being amongst them, Bartiin was far deeper in their mess than he dared to admit and Yoharum continued to push him deeper into the thick of it. Subtle hints to aid them in more than small ways. Stories circulated of the glorious rebellion in Gaag, none of which matched the reality of what happened. Bartiin was seen as a hero, a freedom fights, a man who had already done everything they hoped. None of it was true. And Bartiin was quickly realizing that escaping the island was the hook that kept him here, tethered to these people. There would be no escape from here without their help, but neither would it come without their blessing.

After the smoke from the fire dissipated within the large hall, Bartiin sat amongst the unfamiliar crowd and ignored the stares from the curious men and women who believed themselves unseen. Yoharum returned and took his seat. “Idiots” Yoharum grumbled with a scowl. Bartiin looked up at the big burned man. Yoharum’s skin was still red and cracked. It was peeling in most places. He looked more like an evil spirit than a man. Hulking and bandaged and red. “Where did they think the smoke would go?” Yoharum continued. “Almost killed us all.”

“When can we get to my ship?” Bartiin asked point blank.

“I’m not sure yet” Yoharum said through breathy grunts. “The day of the attack on Caso, is guess.”

“And when is that going to be?” Bartiin pressed.

“Hm. Won’t be long now.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Bartiin urged. “Long meaning what? A few days? A few weeks? A few months?”

Yoharum hunched over and drew close. Bartiin knew the man wasn’t trying to intimidate him, but his sheer size and look accomplished the task. “A few days from today” Yoharum whispered. “Plans are a go, my friend.” He clasped a huge hand over Bartiin’s shoulder and smiled a devilish gap-toothed smile. “The bastards will get what’s coming to ‘em and you get to go home.”

Bartiin met Yoharum’s gaze and found no trace of deception. “Alright” he said.

“You are soldier” Yoharum ventured. “My people, they have passion. But we need training and discipline to fight. We need a person like you. A person has done this before; overthrown an empire.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting these stories about me but it has to stop” Bartiin said. “Spirits, the way they stare at me gives me the creeps. I’m not the man you think I am. I never overthrew an empire. You’re right that these people need training and discipline. But they won’t get it in time for your attack. Nor am I the right person to train them.”

“And why is that?” Yoharum asked.

“Because I don’t believe in your cause.” Bartiin hissed.

“What do you mean?” Yoharum asked. He seemed offended.

“I’ve already fought my war…” Bartiin said, “You make it sound glorious but it was awful. And even all these years later, I seem to be the only one left still fighting it. I’d do anything to escape it.”

Yoharum’s expression hardened, but there was no sign of retreat. “This is different. This is fight for justice. Fight for freedom. Fight to destroy terrible people. The Casoyans—”

“I’ve met your bloody Casoyans and you’re outmatched,” Bartiin interrupted bitterly. He had no patience for the idealistic speech that would follow.

“We have twice as many soldiers as them” Yoharum argued.

Bartiin glanced around, noting how ragged and unprepared the people here looked. “You have twice as many people as they have soldiers. That’s not the same. They’re well trained, armed, and armoured. They have walls and towers. You have a mob. If you march these people on the city gates, they’ll die.” And even if by miracle you made it into the city, this group will destroy everything worth anything and then cannibalize itself over the scraps.  

“You’re wrong,” Yoharum said, his tone sharp but earnest. “My people are ready and we will take this city. No matter the cost.”

“That’s easy to say before it comes time to pay up” Bartiin countered.

Shouts cut Yoharum short as chaos erupted in the hall. Across the hall, the fighters scattered in a blind panic. As Yoharum turned to bolt, Bartiin caught his arm, anchoring him. “What’s going on?”

“Casoyans” Yoharum growled.

Bartiin followed Yoharum through an unfamiliar passageway into fresh air. The panic persisted. Instead of beelining into the fray, Yoharum fled inland followed by a group of fighters. Bartiin followed him up an embankment towards the outskirts of the slums through muddy streets lined with homes perched over the hillside. As they ran, women pulled children off the streets. Others, grabbed their travel packs and their families and fled. All gave way to Yoharum and his men.

They reached a lookout and surveyed the mess below. The walls of the city loomed in the distance and Mudtown stretched from the north around the lake, through the lowlands, and out towards the coast while hugging the city. Emerging from the south and lake gates were hosts of soldiers.

“Oh, sweet spirits” Bartiin muttered under his breath. The soldiers, Casoyan guild soldiers, marched in numbers beyond his count. It was an army. They bore spears and shields and marched in rank and file. People fled in droves, but people also came in droves to hurl rocks and insults.

One of Yoharum’s soldiers pulled a mirror from his belongings. Yoharum spoke back and forth with the soldier and the mirror signaled flashes across the valley. Meanwhile, Viiran’s mob surged through the streets towards the encroaching armies. It was a flood of anger. Bodies surged between the shacks and homes with the same furiousness as the floodwaters had. They met their enemies with disconcerting enthusiasm. Especially once the killing started.

Men and women, most of them untrained and undisciplined, ran forward to their deaths. They swarmed the columns of soldiers and broke upon them like waves upon the rocks. They had numbers, Yoharum had been correct, but the guilds’ training and discipline proved itself effective. For each Casoyan killed, five died at their hands. Their cries carried across the valley.

“Behind us!” Yoharum yelled, his voice booming across the narrow rooftop. “Ready yourselves!”

Bartiin’s heart skipped a beat. He whipped around. It had been difficult to watch the carnage below, but his stomach sank as he realized he was to participate. Three Casoyan heavies pressed in from behind. More came appeared at the heads of other roads and trails, closing the net on those hoping to escape. It was brilliant. The heavy soldiers advanced, blades drawn and shields raised and Bartiin knew they were in trouble

Yoharum didn’t seem to share his fears. The large man wasted no time. With a roar, he pulled one of his axes from his back and held it high above his head in challenge. The rest of his ragtag group of warriors followed his lead, their provisional weapons raised in defense, but they were far from being a match for the well-equipped Casoyan heavies closing in.

Bartiin felt trapped. He was the only one without a weapon. He hadn’t thought to bring one. His gaze flickered to the men around him. The men he prayed would protect him. They were gangbangers. Kids that thought a weapon made you tough. They weren’t soldiers. They wore no armour and carried whatever crude weapons they had been given by Yoharum and Viiran. Among them they had a crude spear with a flint-mapped tip, A Casoyan spear, a long cudgel and a dented shield, and two long bronze knives. Only Yoharum, wielding a pair of war axes, looked ready for a fight.

The Casoyan soldiers wore cast bonze plate and pressed forward with chilling confidence. These men were killers. They were outnumbered, but that wasn’t a concern. The heavies raised their swords and shields. Bartiin saw the glint of their sharpened bronze blades and felt the knot tighten in his stomach. His eyes darted around in desperation, but there was no way out. Their rooftop offered the perfect vantage over the slums, but it left no escape. A leap from here would risk grave injury or death.

Yoharum charged forward. He hurled his first axe with brutal force. It caught the middle Casoyan square on. The man was knocked hard off his feet despite taking the blow to the shield. Yoharum’s power was undeniable, even as injured as he was. Bartiin recognized the sheer strength his strange new friend wielded.

Another one of Yoharum’s soldiers, the one wielding a long spear, darted in. His thrust was direct, aimed squarely at a heavily armored soldier’s chest. It was a foolish attack. The blow glanced off the soldier’s bronze plate and the stone tip of the spear shattered. The Casoyan heavy seemed unperturbed. With brutal speed, the heavy countered with his own sword swing. It came down in a deadly arc. The blade cut through the spearman and he screamed in death.

The second standing Casoyan heavy blocked the cudgel on his shield and managed to slash his attacker’s thigh, opening a wound that Bartiin recognized as fatal. Yoharum’s warrior collapsed onto one knee and only a quick swing of Yoharum’s axe saved the man from a quicker death at the heavy’s hands.

The soldier Yoharum had knocked down was back on his feet and with one already dead, and one more incapacitated, the Casoyans pressed their advantage. They closed in, shields raised and swords poised. The fervor that was present in Yoharum’s warriors just moments earlier had evaporated. If there was a place to run to, these men would have scattered. But penned in, they had no choice but to stand and fight. Fight or die.

Yoharum, his rage building, swung again. The Casoyans kept well clear of him. Even armoured, they recognized his threat. Yoharum’s axe cut the air in front of him with all the fury and rage he could muster. The Casoyans kept their distance, too cautious to be caught by his wide killing blows.

The rebel on Yoharum’s left lunged with his knife. It was a desperate counterattack and the Casoyan soldier parried the blow with his shield. He followed the parry with his own counter, which came around in a vicious swing. The sword cut through the man’s side and he keeled over as blood spilled from his body. The soldier turned and gave the bloody warrior a kick that sent him over the side of the building. He crashed into houses below.

Yoharum roared and charged for the heavy that had just kicked the tribesman. The other two heavies, distracted with their own fights, were unable to intervene as Yoharum barreled forward. Yoharum pushed all his strength into the under-swing of his axe. The soldier was quick enough to raise his shield to dampen the blow, but still took the hefty force of it square on and stumbled backwards over the edge himself. He screamed in terror as he fell and hit the building below with a sickening crunch.

Bartiin watched in silent horror as the heavy furthest from Yoharum decapitated the woman who had been fighting him off. She had stuck her knife into his leg only to lose the weapon and her head alongside it. The Casoyan reeled in pain as he pulled the knife out and tossed it aside. The decapitated woman was the only one standing between the Casoyan heavy and the man bleeding out from the thigh wound. Unable to crawl away, the Casoyan soldier ran the poor man through with the point of his blade.

To Bartiin’s relief, the bloody knife the soldier had cast away had bounced. It skidded to a stop just an arm’s span from where he stood. Bartiin seized the small weapon and held it out defensively. The Casoyans advanced, unconcerned. It was three on two now, and only Yoharum kept them at bay.

Yoharum swung wildly. The sole surviving soldier at his side used his own spear to keep the soldiers at bay, always aiming for exposed limbs. The heavy furthest from Yoharum, the one with the bloodied leg, lunged and stabbed the spearman with the point of his sword, burying the tip of the blade in the man’s shoulder. The rebel’s spear found the man’s other leg and he collapsed as it pierced through his other thigh. Both men wrestled on the ground, neither close to dying from their traded injuries. They clawed and wrestled as the heavy drew a knife and pushed with all of his weight to bury the blade inside his opponent’s chest. The spearman twisted and the heavy’s knife caught in the man’s loose clothes.

Bartiin seized his moment to strike. His sword master had taught him patience. He rushed forward, bloody knife in hand and plunged it into the heavy’s exposed neck again and again. The man stopped struggling and the spearman wriggled his way out from under the dead heavy.

Yoharum drove his axe down against the final Casoyan. His height and reach allowed the blade to arc over the heavy’s shield. The axe cleaved straight through the man’s helmet with a sickening crunch and a horrifying spray of blood and brain matter. It was the single worst thing Bartiin had ever witnessed, and yet he roared in triumph as the terror of dying was replaced by the exhilaration of living another day.

Yoharum turned, his face a splattering of blood. Bartiin helped the spearman to his feet and the man groaned in pain. The shoulder wound he had sustained from the Casoyan soldier was bleeding steadily but didn’t appear grave. Bartiin’s heart raced. All three men huffed in silence. Blood covered Bartiin’s hands. He had killed again; taken another life this day.

“Take their weapons and armour” Yoharum ordered, already working to remove the bronze scale armour from the Casoyan heavy he had just slain. Bartiin froze, not sure whether to follow the order or not. This wasn’t his fight. He looked to the injured spearman, who seemed more focused on stopping the bleeding from his shoulder “Now!” Yoharum barked.

“For fuck’s safe, man!” Bartiin yelled, “He’s trying to bandage his wound!”

“There is maybe more of them!” Yoharum growled, looting a fine bronze war knife from the dead heavy’s corpse and stashing it. He threw the shiny armour over his torso and the plate looked small on hulking frame. “Strip the armour from that one. Get the swords and shield. I’m going down for the third man.”

Bartiin wanted to protest, but Yoharum was already jogging off of the roof to find a way down the house below where the soldier had fallen. Where he had been pushed, Bartiin corrected himself. Spirits.

“Thank you” the spearman said, now that they were alone. The stranger was shorter than him, but muscular. He had a wrestler’s build and wore his dark hair back in braids adorned with shells and beads. His accent was heavy and now that he was facing Bartiin, it was clear that the wound on his shoulder was far from the only wound he had taken over the course of their short skirmish. “I… I think that dog would have killed me… had you not killed him first. I owe you life debt, foreigner.”

“No, no debt” Bartiin said, removing the plate from the dead Casoyan. “I killed to save my life. Yours is a bonus” Bartiin presented the armour to the spearman but the man stepped back, not taking the scale.

“No!” The man refused, “I cannot take this. This was your kill. Spoils are yours.”

Bartiin frowned, unfamiliar with whatever custom this man had and unsure how to bypass it. “I don’t want this armour” Bartiin said, thinking to his own armour the Casoyans had taken from him during his arrest.

“Then this sword” the man insisted, offering the Casoyan made blade to him instead.

“For spirits sake, no.” Bartiin said. “I don’t want any part of this.”

“I see,” the man said. Bartiin wasn’t sure he did. “I am grateful that you were” the spearman said at last. “Let us go to Yoharum. I no longer wish to be here.”

Bartiin found it hard to disagree. He took one last glance out over the chaos below. Billows of smoke plumed across Mudtown. Flames spread rapidly from building to building. Wind propelled the fire away from the lake and towards the coast, the entirety of the slum in their path. At the city gates, the Casoyan’s were in retreat. Viiran’s fighters rallied as if they had won a great victory. Bartiin knew they hadn’t. There would be no containing the blaze now.

They followed the path that Yoharum had taken down from the rooftop lookout. Veering off the main road, they slid down a grassy incline. The two men could hear Yoharum before they could see him. There was a hole in the roof of the clay-tiled house below them and Yoharum’s voice echoed up through it. Bartiin followed the spearmen around to the front door. They entered the dwelling to see Yoharum leaning over the Casoyan heavy.

The huge warrior leaned over the broken heavy. Bartiin was shocked to see the man still lived. Although, the state of his mangled body made him feel sick. The Casoyan was on his back, face up. His arms bent in unnatural angles. He wheezed sickeningly and spat blood towards Yoharum. His helmet was missing and his dark hair hung loose. Bartiin stood in the doorway with the spearman, not sure what would happen next. Yoharum was speaking with the dying man. They were going back and forth, though the bloody coughing made the Casoyan man’s words sparse. Yoharum was angry, though he always seemed angry.

“What are they saying?” Bartiin asked the spearman. He too was listening to their conversation.

“This man was one of the soldiers who slew Yoharum’s crew” the spearman answered. “Yoharum is asking him how the Casoyans found them that night. They are negotiating.”

“Negotiating for what?”

“Yoharum wishes for an answer and the soldier wishes to die quickly.”

They continued to listen to the exchange, and then the spearmen furrowed his brow. Yoharum grew angrier and huffed off, leaving the dying soldier in his agony. “Let’s go” Yoharum ordered. “This was a waste of time.” He carried the man’s blade in his hand. It was bent.

“The soldier said something peculiar” the spearman admitted after Yoharum was out of range. “He said that Yoharum was not a thief, but a messenger. Hm, maybe a currier. The word, it doesn’t match in Tralang. It is used for the children that run messages in the city. It is specific to these children, not a big person.”

“The man called him a child?” Bartiin asked, not following.

“No. The meaning is different. It means what you say but it also means that Yoharum was expendable. I don’t fully understand.”

Bartiin did. He was the one to grimace now. He understood the message behind those words. He had been the one to use them during his original meeting with the ambassador. A local. Somebody capable of getting it done. Preferably one that can disappear afterwards. Bartiin had meant a killer who could leave the city once it was over. She had taken his words literally. Or maybe that was what he told himself now that he knew the man. Maybe he had meant it her way. Either way, Bartiin was now certain that Ambassador Hina Durali had been the one to send the guild’s elite squad after Yoharum. Spirits have mercy.

“Let’s go” Yoharum’s voice boomed from outside.

Bartiin’s stomach lurched. He was the one who betrayed Yoharum. Just as Yoharum had feared that night in the mountains. Yoharum had been right about him the whole time. Now he was terrified the hulking killer might learn the truth some way. Or worse, figure it out for himself.

Bartiin marched in Yoharum’s shadow, praying his secrets remained in the dark.