[Well, my apologies for starting this so late; RL has been real busy now, but I've got some breathing space this Saturday morning, so...]
Sergeant Blix leaned back and belched rather obscenely. It wasn't much of a breakfast, really, but it had been a long morning. And now, he thought sourly, back to patrol.
It wasn't as if he disliked patrolling Reajh -- far from it. He loved his adopted home and he relished his duty in protecting his city. It wasn't hard work, and Sergeant Blix was a good soldier -- which is why they kept him in duty, long after his injuries and the strain of work kept him away from the front lines.
No, it wasn't the Duty itself that was onerous; hardly. It was this one particular facet of his life, that one thing that made getting out of bed in the mornings a little harder than it should have been.
His recruits. He glanced sourly at his "merry band of misfits", and sighed. It was as if the quality of recruits dropped, year after year.
Shaking his head, he grunted and stood up, and signaled for his men to form up. Patrol time, he thought sourly. Here's hoping they don't mess up and get someone killed.
Again.
* * * * *
"Eat an apple?" thought the Wanderer, bemused at Hek's challenge. "What kind of... genius tells someone like that to 'go away and eat an apple'?"
The boy who had come in front of the Wanderer was... young. The way he walked, the unconscious swagger and the way his voice rose in challenge to the thug shouted "soldier" to the Wanderer; only newly wet-behind-the-ears recruits have that kind of bravado.
Great; now he had to deal with some raw recruit; he had to be doubly careful now. And that lady Mordecai... she was there somewhere in the crowd. Probably very close.
* * * * *
"Have you got the goods packed up, Jim?"
"Aye, paw. Nearly done!"
The old man walked out of the inn, stopped and stared at his son's handiwork, groaning silently to himself. "Ye cain't be calling this 'packing', can ye, boy?"
Jim, not exactly the brightest specimen Reajh's poultry industry had to offer, looked at the cart he had spend several hours loading, now full of crates, which were full of chickens. Live ones. "It looks all right to me, paw," he said.
"'All right'?" bellowed the old man, "Ye cain't be calling this 'all right', son! Didn't I say largest crate at the bottom, smallest crate at the top, and everything had to be tied down?"
"Aye, that's right, paw," said the son, obediently.
"Then what in all the seven hells is that," said the old man, jabbing his finger at a mis-packed crate, "and that, and that? Why isn't that tied down? What the hell did you do, jam this crate in like that? Are ye daft? We're already late as it is!"
Jim stared at the crates his father had pointed to him, as if seeing them for the first time. "Err..."
"Never you mind, ye daft sod!" said the old man, ticked off beyond all imagining. "Nevermind. We're already two hours late, and I ain't going to be any later thanks to your hell-damned stupidity. Here, take this rope and tie it there... no, not there, you idiot, there! All right, get on, but be careful with the crates. Lose any and it's coming out of yer pay, you hear me?"
"Awww, paw!"
* * * * *
The thug that was facing the Wanderer had not exactly had a good day, and was looking forward to making it a little better by administering some pain to the blind man who had collided with him. When the little soldier-boy came up to stop him, he sneered at the boy's challenge.
"Eat an apple?" said the thug, in a rare display of wit that surprised even him, "No thanks, boy, but I've had my share of roughage today. You, on the other hand, might need a beating--"
And then he heard Beatrid's warning, and his eyes narrowed. He hadn't expected that. It was one thing harassing a blind man and some punk private who just joined the militia, but Beatrid looked like business.
He froze, considering his options.
* * * * *
"Sergeant!"
"I see it, Ferret," said Sergeant Blix. "Looks like a fight's brewing up over there."
"Wh-what'll we do, Sarge?"
Sergeant Blix glared at the skinny, rat-faced recruit they called Ferret: he had a proper name and all, but no one cared to use it -- one, because the name suited the kid well enough; two, the boy wasn't very likeable to begin with. Snivelling, somewhat cowardly, and an oily bastard, and a whiner to boot.
Apparently the boy was third-generation militia; Sergeant Blix had no idea why they kept it up, because Ferret was not at all suited for the army life. Maybe he's a bastard, thought the old soldier amusedly. That'd explain a lot of things, and certainly wasn't unlikely.
"Right," he said, turning to the rest of the recruits. "Form up. Let's go see what's happening."
* * * * *
The Wanderer heard the click of Beatrid's gun, and her voice, and frowned. Damn it, he thought. What the hell are they teaching kids in the army these days?
Beatrid was in a crowd, and had drawn a gun. You never drew guns in a busy street. Drawing a gun meant escalating the fight; you just raised the stakes. Not everyone surrenders at the threat of getting shot -- what if you missed? What if someone jostled you, trying to run away? What if this and that happened? It was bad news in the making.
People were backing away from her, at any rate; the Wanderer could hear the sounds of the crowd and the change in the crowd's tone, in its texture. He heard the thug straighten up as well, and he heard the sound of oiled steel leaving its sheath.
Shit, he thought. The bastard's gonna draw. Gripping his sword-staff hilt tightly, he twisted it unlocked and licked his dry lips.
Fate intervened by dropping a whole stack of crates.
* * * * *
"Watch it," shouted the old man, as the cart trundled along, pulled by a donkey. "Don't go so fast!"
Jim didn't seem to hear his father's admonishments. It wasn't as if he was stupid; well, not too stupid. Jim was slow, steady, and dull, and it took some time for words and concepts to penetrate his (considerably) thick skull. It had not occured to him to assimilate his father's order to drive the cart slowly to their destination, so he still drove it the way he would have had he been more attentive to his father's orders.
It took the back of his father's hand to land on his head before he reacted to anything his father did; and even then, it was only to say, "Oaaw, paw!"
That proved to be the end of Jim's salary this month, as a stack of crates, poorly secured to the cart, toppled and fell.
On to a stall. Some of those crates broke, and a dozen chickens flew out, making their mad escape. That wasn't all; the fall itself caused the display of oranges ("Fresh! Still orange!") on that stall to fall apart and spill into the street.
In short: chaos.
* * * * *
Sergeant Blix stopped as he heard Beatrid's command to stay back. He frowned; what was Beatrid thinking of? That's not how you stop a fight -- the Sergeant's memory flashed to his drill instructor's words, long ago:
"If you can help it, don't bring up the stakes! Never bring up the stakes unless you've got enough muscle to back it up. Sure, you think you can take the guy if you just draw your sword or take out your gun. What if he draws a bigger gun? What if he calls his friends? What if you mess up? Let the other guy up the ante; let him screw up."
Memories of his drill instructor fresh in his mind, he took a look at the cause of the commotion. He recognized the thug -- the lad belonged to one of the water-front kids, and quite the rough bastard, according to rumor. The boy he didn't recognize, but the stance screamed, "Farm boy!" to the Sergeant, who was born out in the country, and knew what it must have felt like to move into the big city. The blind guy...
...there was something familliar about the blind guy. The way he held his staff ready, the way his feet was positioned...
It was almost like his old drill instructor, Sergeant Dorn.
No, couldn't be. Wasn't the old man dead?
* * * * *
This was it. The distraction was all the opportunity he needed, and the thug seized it, eagerly. Drawing a rather wicked-looking dagger, he grabbed the nearest hostage he could find and held the knife to the hostage's throat.
[Of course, who exactly is that hostage? Hek? Anyone? If not, the default goes to the Wanderer, but at this point anyone's welcome to join in]
Edited: Okay, massively fleshed out this scene now. It was bothering me all day, to be frank. Hope this is all right, eh?
