The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

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MeaCulpa, S.C.M.
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The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#1 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

The Razor Edge
“I'm telling you Boss, the local [censored] is where it's at.”

Boss gave a disapproving growl that set a hundred lazy twirls of smoke through the afternoon sunbeam, momentarily distracted from his card hand and cigarette. I snuck a peak at his hand and quietly decided to fold.

“They got no [censored]' meat on their bones. You young fellas always fall head-over-heels for these Keidran girls. Now some people think that's just perversion—I ain't like that. You just don't have any common sense.”

I had to pipe up at that point. “What, it's against common sense to have different taste in girls?”
“First off, it's good you said girls, cause half of these broads are as young as my daughter back home. Again, not here to sit in judgment, but they ain't gonna know any [censored] ropes, y'know? They get in bed and they're just gonna be a confused [censored] child.”

“Aw, nuts to that. You know the tabbys screw like wild animals.”

“Yeah—exactly. I ain't interested in screwin' wild animals. When you're young all you care about is perky boobs and a decent grip. When you get older--”

Mick interrupted with a chuckle. “What else is there to like? We ain't talkin' bout getting married, we talkin' about stands.”

“I know you're talking about stands. Why the hell would you marry one of the—oy, thanks kindly.” the wench—pretty little thing with orange and white all over with bird-of-paradise feathers in her hair—passed out drinks with a grin. She was either unaware of the context of the discussion or knew better than to show any disapproval. Smart girl. Me and Mick made eyes at her. Nate broiled in the corner. He was the new guy. Don't know what his problem was. I think he just didn't care for tabbies, really.

“See? Look at that right there and tell me you wouldn't nail her to the [censored]' wall, boss.”

“Eh, I don't go for all the fur and [censored] anyways. Again, no offense intended. But even if I did, I wouldn't be going with no Keidran because first, no goddamn meat on their bones, and second, no technique. You start getting higher standards. And you ain't gonna get that with the local color.”

“Bout time we heard some common sense,” Nate said, a little too loud and a little too assertively. Mick shot him an awkward look.

“The [censored] you lookin at?”

“Nothin, man, nothin. 'Ey, we playin' cards or what?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Boss replied. “I'll raise--”

A very specific kind of whistle, followed by a thunk, repeated itself against the wooden tavern walls. You learn the sound of an arrow striking wood pretty quickly as a soldier. Even if you haven't blocked on yourself, you've heard the noise a hundred times. On shields, on palisades, and on inn walls. These were too closely grouped to be misses or accidental, which meant they were likely fire-shot.

We rushed out to the front of the inn in a cloudy haze of steel armor plating, cursing, and screaming. Thankfully the inn patrons were too stunned to get in our way before we got outside.

Five of the [censored], in loincloths, were lighting up the east tavern wall from about 50 paces out. They saw us and started taking shots. We knelt and raised shields. Of course they were in [censored] loincloths, goddamn savages. You'd think it makes our job easy but it doesn't. If we closed in they'd outrun us and shoot us again. That's why they didn't wear any armor—relied on mobility. They loaded more fire shot, aimed at us this time.

Infantry aren't cleared to use longbows—takes a good few years or so to train a proper archer. That's why I carried a crossbow around. Not a little [censored] one you get from some shady hophead's kiosk though—a real, bona-fide siege crossbow. It's overkill on unarmored targets but the extra range is worth it. You wore the thing on your back and it shot bolts half the size of a javelin. You reloaded it with a [censored] wench—if you had the strength to pull it back on hand you'd probably be better off throwing the damn bolt anyway.

I used toothed bolt-heads since armor piercing wasn't an issue. That's another disadvantage of fighting bare—you give your enemy nastier tools to work with, since they don't have to worry about piercing steel to get to you.

I fired off a bolt. It hit one of them and he stumbled back, vomited blood, and crumpled as his life bled out. I got a jolt of adrenaline and didn't bother suppressing the natural grin that comes from a combat high. I remember my first confirmed kill terrified me. Boss told me you either embraced the high or died trying to fight it. “War don't have room for merciful men,” he said, and after a short reflection, “Maybe don't even have room for halfway decent men.” I put that out of my head. I was decent enough. I just took pride in my work.

They still had us outmatched, though—no one else carried a crossbow, and our shields weren't large enough to hold the line forever. We had to make a break for the back wall of the inn. The fire hadn't spread there yet. With any luck, cavalry's horses were still in the stable next door. We had emergency cavalry training, not enough to deal with a spear line but more than enough to overrun a handful of archers.

Like I said—“with any luck.” The mangy [censored] slit the horse's throats. One of them was still choking, twitching, even managing a weak whinny and kick every now and then—they'd been cut recently. Then why weren't they on this side? Wind answered my question—they wanted it in their favor. I was surprised they didn't bar the door to the inn—if they're going to torch it, why not just let the people burn inside? Questions for later.

We were ground troops, not archers, and our armor wouldn't hold forever if we charged the line—besides, they'd just run into the woods and peck at us some more.

People finally started pouring out. The mutts fired into the crowd, yelling [censored] in Keidran. I knew a few words because I heard them enough I thought I'd look them up. “Sympathizers.” “Traitors.” “Cat-Garbage.” (That one doesn't translate well, but you get the gist of it.) I'd only been hearing it since we got posted across borders. You can guess why.

“We just gonna stand here and let them pop civvies?” Mick said, with a rumble of rage.
Nate pushed his luck again“Quit your high horse [censored], Mick. They're [censored] tabbies, not real [censored] people. You only give a [censored] because you want thei—“

Before Mick could beat the Nate senseless, Boss smacked him upside the head. “Shut your [censored] mouth, newbie. They're people if they're on our side.” Nate smoldered, but kept silent. He addressed the whole squad then. “Look, they're busy with what they're doing, and we can't stop 'em. Best we can do is use this and get around them. They lost one of their number but they still know better than to come over here and bother us.”

“[censored], boss, that's cold,” I replied. I really felt it too.

“The [censored] are we gonna do? Ride in like knights in shining [censored]' armor? That option's out. Now move.”

Wolves don't anticipate much cunning from human rank-and-file. They outmaneuver us casually—and today they'd done it brilliantly. No reinforcements showed up, and as we started creeping around the tavern to get a shot behind the bowmen we saw why. There was a huge pillar of smoke coming from where the barracks was—or more appropriately, used to be. If anyone was in there, they were dead or close to it. And these ones must've been sitting pretty, thinking we were shaking in our boots. But we're the 8th Infantry, the Razor Edge, not some cannon fodder spearguard. Yeah, we ain't knights. We sure as hell aren't Templars. But my first week in training I learned what kind of snakes you can eat in a survival situation and which ones will kill you—then I ate 'em. Next week I had to get to the mess hall without being seen by sentries in order to eat, every day—when you go without meals every time you [censored] up you learn some tricks fast.

Still, creeping up to them was galling. You'd think after a while I'd get used to seeing people walking around, alive, thinking today was like any other day, and then suddenly getting an arrow in the [censored] throat. You think after a while I'd see that and not be able to feel a weird combination of sickness, rage, and depression. You'd think I'd call myself a hypocrite for being disgusted at that but loving it whenever I stuck a mutt.

So you'd think. I guess I'm just odd that way. But there isn't a soldier in the world—at least there isn't one that survives very long—that doesn't feel that high, doesn't relish in it. There's a group of philosophers back in the cities that say war is against our nature. That's a load of crock. Every animal in the world is made to kill or get the hell away from things that kill. We're no exception and the Keidran are no exception. We're just exceptionally good at it.

We moved to a barn that was just behind them. I was amazed they hadn't seen us. They were shouting obscenities, furious at their dropped comrade. Probably thinking about how they would catch up with us. You'd think the civies would realize it was just the five of them, that if they just bumrushed the [censored] people would stop dying. But I guess that takes a few people with the balls to bumrush a bow line.

Which turned out to be us once we were close enough. We managed to hug the barn wall until we were just five paces from them. They couldn't outrun [censored] now. We closed. They pulled their bows. We had our steel in hand already.

One volley hit us at once. An arrow hit my shield and went through, but just by a few inches. I figured Nate would go down—his shield technique was always [censored] sloppy. I don't know how you [censored] up holding a piece of wood between you and the pointy thing but Nate always seemed to manage. Not today, though. Today Mick took one in the leg and went down, so now it was just the three of us against the four of them.

Three of us clad in inch-thick steel and holding three foot razors, against four of them nearly butt-naked with spears they hadn't drawn yet. One of them managed to just before Boss cut his throat with a snarl.

There's nothing quite like hitting a bowline, even in a little skirmish like this. I think it's that look in their eye just one second before you stick 'em. They realize they're well and truly [censored] and all they can do is stare. When you actually stick the [censored], though, that's something you can get philosophical about. Doesn't matter what kind of person you are—when three feet of steel is in your chest and you're looking death in the face, you're a coward. You can see that just before the light leaves their eyes. They'd stab their mothers in the back just to get away from the fate you gave them. There'd be no end to what they'd do. You have total power over them. In the moment before you destroy their lives, you destroy everything they thought they were, and they know it. And you can get all that just from a look.

One of 'em, though, one of 'em was slick enough to back off.

I wenched up another bolt as he dashed towards the treeline, where he'd be impossible to hit.

“Cmon, man, he's getting away,” Nate insisted.

“Shut it, newbie!” The wench clicked. The string was taught. I knelt and brought the crossbow up.

Ten paces from the treeline. A westward wind. I compensated. Five paces.

I fired. The bolt whistled and curved through the air and hit the mutt right in the [censored]-cheek. It howled and tumbled. Boss was pleased with the shot, pumping his fist—doubly so since the mutt was still alive. “That one might be a field officer if I'm reading those colors right.” they kept little bands on their arms for ranks. We knew red and blue were officer colors but little else past that. The mutts kept their internal organization pretty close to the chest.

Combat high still racing through my head, I looked at Mick's damage. The arrow was a bodkin stuck right through the chain, popping the links like twigs under a horse's hoof. He was sweating, groaning, but alive. Guess one of the mutts shot low and actually managed to hit something. The first thing I wondered when I saw that arrow—how did these savages get [censored] bodkin?
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Re: FFC 2015: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [ROUGH DRAFT]

#2 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

Those five had done a hell of a lot more damage than we thought. They'd killed the sentries—all of 'em—and torched our supply depots. They actually boarded up the barracks before they burnt it down. I was still drawing a blank why they didn't do the same with the inn. The inn was just icing on the cake. They didn't expect any real resistance, and once they saw us running, they figured we were gone for good. Not surprising, either—most others would've seen the damage and made a run for it to safer territory.

You aren't given that mentality in the 8th, though. You're expected to hold when everyone else has left. Unsurprisingly, that means our casualty rate is pretty high—two in three. But just about every one of those took plenty of mutts with 'em. That's fair enough math in the 8th's book and it's fair enough math in mine.

Only reason we could guess they hit us—other than strategic value—was the prison. We had about two dozen mutts put into emergency detention. We'd of had more but most of them skipped town when they heard about the war. Prison was empty now, its inmates probably signing up for the other side. On reflection I couldn't blame them, but I'd stick 'em just the same as any other mutt.

Mick was worse for wear, but still conscious. We chatted about home. Mick was from a little craft village that made their living on scrimshaw. They made some real good work—Mick's dad was in the trade and he had thought he'd go into the trade whenever the war was over. He got drafted halfway through his apprenticeship. He still made little scrimshaw trinkets whenever he got the chance, though.

My past wasn't anything special. Just another family that walked two hours to the city square every day to sell beats or fish or whatever other get-rich-quick scheme dad had thought up for the month. My dad only learned one trade—sleaze. Every [censored]' month he'd latch onto some foreign product, buy it off a traveling merchant and try and sell it higher in the market square. It actually wasn't too bad for money—dad said someday every merchant would be doing it. But when people find out about it things get nasty. He eventually got himself hung by an angry mob for selling fish at double price after cornering the market. Mom skipped town the next day, didn't bother to tell me where she was going. Maybe thought I'd be safer that way. I saw the glares of everyone around the village—people that used to know me and make jokes with me, play cards. Suddenly I was the enemy. Enlisted the next day and got the hell out of dodge.

We had Mick shacked up at a local's place. He was some kinda healer. I didn't know how much of what he was doing was gonna help, or how much was just local hocus-pocus crap. You're used to medics with bottles of salve, clean white bandages, and all that if you're in human territory. This was some ancient-looking cat—meaning he was probably two years younger than me—jabbering something mystical in Keidran while he burned incense and placed a bunch of plants on the arrow wound.

Speaking of, I was holding the arrow in my hand. It was bodkin, all right—well made bodkin, too. It was squared just about perfectly, the shaft was smooth as silk, the fletching was almost perfectly uniform. Even after it had gone through two layers of chainmail and a human leg, it looked servicable enough to fire again. No wolf smith made that [censored]. I wasn't even sure a human smith did.

Mick and I had been through some things, but after a while you realize there isn't any point to you sitting around and watching your best friend moan all day. I got out to get some air.

It was dusk, now, and this was the point that the situation started cementing into my psyche. There were three of us left to guard the whole damn village when there was a full company not three hours ago. About half of them got killed—third watch in their beds, second on duty, and first—that's us—in plainclothes. We just hadn't bothered to get out of our armor yet because the commissar told us we might be pulling third shift as well. (They killed him too, but don't expect me to cry over his sorry [censored], he was a real piece of [censored]. I'll tell you about that later.) Boss—whose authority just ranged to the three of us and a couple pages on lend from a local knight, both of whom were dead—was now the commanding officer for the town guard.

Considering he had forgotten to give me orders, I suspect this realization hit Boss a lot faster than it hit me. Maybe because he thought a little more tactically, and knew that if they were hitting the tavern it's because there was nothing of any strategic value left to hit.

I tried the commissar’s office and found him scavenging the dead man's articles. Again, don't expect me to take offense. He'd replaced his cork pipe he'd smoked for too long with a foot-long oak reed with gold trim. It didn't suit him. Too garish. I silently hoped the power wasn't going to his head.

“What now, Boss?”

“We report back to the outpost, towards the border.”

“That's a forty mile trek, Boss, and we don't got any horses.”

“We'll need locals to help carry equipment then. Recruit three of them, big lads if you can find any. How's Mick?”

“Still [censored], but holding up. You think the tabby geezer knows what he's doing?”

He didn't react. I guess he felt dwelling on that served no purpose.

“I've been thinking. Those five weren't any ordinary mutts. They sliced our sentries like nothing, burnt down the barracks, and nearly got us, too. Any other day and it would've been a clean sweep. Not only that, they had bodkin—looked like it'd been smithed by a master. Didn't think mutts had smiths that quality.”

Boss nodded. “That's how the wolves like to work. Just a few units working like a scalpel.”

A pregnant silence while we both gave it some thought.

“Nate found something,” Boss said. “I think I know why they didn't bar up the tavern.”

He leaned over and pulled a disarmed bear trap from behind the desk. “Wanted 'em to walk into these puppies. Nate found four of 'em just around the treeline. Pretty cleverly guarded, too. He found a couple stake traps further in.” Boss just shook his head. “[censored]' monsters. It's like the old stories. You hear about monsters and think they live in caves or guard tombs or some [censored] like that. But no, they make up armies just like us. Could you ever imagine a human stooping to that [censored], kid?”

“No sir,” I said. Didn't have much of an answer besides that.

He sighed. “Nate's packing. When can Mick get mobile?”

“I'll ask. Might be the healer has to come with us.”

“That's fine enough. I want us out of here as soon as possible. The prisoner isn't crippled. We're gonna bring him to the outpost.”
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC 2015]

#3 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

I spent my last hours in that village helping the locals put their dead away proper. Well, as proper as could be managed. We didn't have enough tinder or fuel to make pyres for them all, so they were burned together. They put all sorts of little trinkets there. I think I saw a couple jewels. While no one was looking I snagged one. It seemed a waste to burn it, and it isn't like they'd be able to tell.

The pyre still burnt real high and bright. I remember Nate made up some load of crap about tabby funerals, how they did some kind of carnal ritual with dancing and so on. Ironically this was one of the few times the tabbies seemed to dress like humans—they put on big sackcloth robes. I guess they were for winter normally. They knelt around in a circle while the chieftain—well, the new one, anyway, the original got done in in the raid—said some kind of words. I didn't know what they meant but I paid respects regardless.

Doing that much got me some recognition. I got three big guys that were more than willing to volunteer. We'd saved their [censored], and besides that I'd shown up to pay respects and all, which they didn't expect. We let them know they weren't expected to fight if they didn't know how, but they all brought clubs and knives anyway.

The barmaid from earlier in the day was just next to me in the circle. She spoke human tongue better than I did. She lost her composure and cried on my shoulder for a few minutes. She'd lost her brother. Later that night we went to her place. She moved like a flame in the wind. If Boss cared about technique he should've been with this girl. You could almost imagine drum beats in rhythm with her. When it was over she curled up almost like a bona-fide cat and purred while I stroked her hair, until she fell asleep. That's the other thing about tabby girls—they're always grateful. There's no complicated [censored] after sex. A friend of mine told me tabby guys got needles on their dick just like normal cats but I think that's a load of [censored]. They just like sex more than we do.

We left around dawn. Three young tabbies came with us. They were big lads, on Boss's orders. The mutts had been real thorough—there wasn't a beast of burden left in the village. If we hadn't been there, there wouldn't be anything left. They'd still be chasing tabbies through their obstacle course.

Mick was on crutches but managed to keep a pretty strong pace. We gave him the least burdens. He said his leg's pain had mostly subsided and the medic—named Nico, by the way—was tagging along next to him, glancing at the leg every so often.

Nate was less than pleased, but he had learned the value of holding his tongue. He gripped his sword tight enough that you could see his fist shaking if you looked close enough. I mentioned it to boss and he put Nate on point so he didn't go [censored] looking at the tabbies.

One of the Keidran—I never learned his name—was dragging the mutt along and enjoying any chance he could to trip him, or smack his head into a branch. Served the [censored] right.

I chatted up with one named Joe—probably just a translation for my sake since the other Keidran seemed to call him something a little different, like “Juh” or “Jah,” something like that. He spoke Human better than Keidran and seemed to know his way around human customs. We talked about sports, exchanged little [censored]. Still, you can tell something's off even among the most plain of 'em on account of their age. There's only so much you can learn a quarter way through a 20 year lifespan, even if they say Keidran learn faster to compensate. If the war lasted 15 years and Joe kept himself safe from the battlefield, he'd still be on death's door. I guess that always bothered me. It really shouldn't matter to me but it does. I wonder how they get anything done.

We got far enough out from the trees we were confident we'd see any mutts coming and sat for a rest. We were all carrying twice a normal weight and only managed a few miles before Boss ran out of breath to talk [censored] on us. We had dried rations packed so there wasn't much point in building a fire seeing as it was just a little past midday. We got a thick branch and stuck it deep in the ground and tied the prisoner around it. The rope was around his neck, like a dog's collar. No one got tired of pointing that out. The tabbies especially, occasionally making mock barking noises at him and laughing while he glared.

~

Boss got himself acquainted with the hired help. “So yer Joe, you're--”

“Deré, sir.”

Boss waved the formality away dismissively. “You ain't a soldier, don't call me sir.”

Deré had an accent and a little trouble with human, but he kept his statements simple enough that you could hardly tell. “I'm...will be? Go to fort. Say yes fight.”

Boss gave a hearty laugh and gave Deré a resounding slap on the shoulder. He was the largest of the three and barely seemed to feel it. “Now you hear that? Boy can hardly put two human words together and he's still ready to pick up a blade and kick some [censored]. That's some [censored]' spirit.” From then on, Boss and Deré had a grand time together. Boss's Keidran was good enough Deré was able to communicate with a sort of [censored] tongue between the two, sometimes substituting Human words for Keidran and vice versa.

Nate was off somewhere, but I could imagine he wouldn't have taken kindly to that. My guess from Nate was, he was from rich blood. He spent about an hour with his hair everyday. I don't know what got him in the army but he sure as hell wasn't happy about it. I think that was the cut of it. For the most part we were friendly with tabbies. Me, boss, and I'd worked side-by-side with slaves before, wolves from before the war. Dad's scheme-of-the-month then was prospecting and he'd hired a company to do the searches for him. He actually found a good bit of gold but didn't see the point in reading the contract. They took enough of it he basically broke even.

They brought in slaves to do most of the heavy work, and those guys were real decent folk, polite even after they knew we weren't about to whip 'em. I remember dad said the “[censored] nobles” would to that to us if we gave 'em half a chance. He was talking about indentured service on account of his debts, though. Thankfully mom had [censored] at him enough so he paid them off a week or so before he got himself hanged. Looking back the timing seemed a little suspicious, but it didn't make any difference now. I do wonder if he happened to be right on accident, though. Rich folk like Nate see the world differently. They see a certain kind of person's poor and they assume they're garbage. So when they see those people not so poor they suddenly get threatened because the garbage is taking over something they think belonged to them, based on the divine right of their stinking [censored].

The third one didn't talk at all, but didn't seem to be in any kind of mood. It's hard to tell sometimes though.

By the time we could feel our legs again it was dusk, and there was another forest to go through before the outpost. No chance we were taking it in the dark. I went with Joe and got some loose timber. We talked while we worked.

“I'm thinking about enlisting.” Joe collected sticks with mechanical speed while he talked.

“You too? Guess it isn't too surprising. You gonna do it right there at the outpost?”

“If they let me. If they don't, I'll see if I can buy a bow and I'll hunt them down myself.

I shook my head. “I'm guessing you're a hunter, or trapper. Am I right on that?”

He nodded. I stopped, sighed, and looked him in the eye. He caught my body language and stopped picking up sticks for a moment, then nodded.

“You do that and you'll just get yourself killed. Painfully. I doubt the outpost'll have any reason to deny you, but you can always go furhter in the city and—“

“No, I can't. No rights in human territory. I would get caught on the way and sold off.”

I laughed a little. “Don't be so paranoid. There's plenty of Keidran out there who're freemen. My advice is wear rich looking clothes and act like you own the [censored] world, right up until you get to the recruiting station. Then take all that [censored] off and act like you could [censored] over the world.”

Joe laughed pretty hard at that, but still wasn't convinced. “You ain't been a Keidran there, how you know that?”

“Been around plenty. And you're half-right; if you're dressed like any other swinging dick they'll chain you up and you'll be sold off to some fat dickwad in mink fur in a minute. But take whatever coin you've got, splurge it on some nice looking jewelry—can be glass, you aren't going to a [censored]' masquerade or any [censored] like that—and most of 'em will be too scared to touch you. They might not respect you, but they'll respect your money if they think you've got it.”

He nodded. “I'll think about it man,” in a tone that said he wasn't convinced, and would rather talk about something else—so we did, though that was just smalltalk that gave me a little time to think.

He still wasn't convinced. Even in the middle of the war he'd rather go off on his own and fight trained killers with his granddad's bow then head into deeper human lands. Can't say I blame him, though. Owners didn't think twice about whipping their stock raw in the middle of the road. Anyone told them to stop they'd accuse them of being abolitionists. Say they could pull a few strings and get them thrown in a dungeon. About one out of ten that made that threat could actually do it, but it was enough that no one bothered 'em. And there's places here and there that money just makes you a target, the real seedy places. It occurred to me Joe wouldn't know them from Adam, and even though I'd spent all that time trying to persuade him I came into a gradual agreement with his position. An arrow in the neck would be a kinder fate than bondage. Most things would be.

It was twilight when we got back. The third Keidran who hadn't said anything—I think he honestly didn't speak human, he was from further in tiger land originally—wasn't there either. Boss said he went looking for Nate and Boss, against his better judgment, agreed with him. (Boss knew better Keidran than any of us so I figured that's how he acknowledged the guy's purpose.) Nate still hadn't returned and Boss was starting to worry. He said he was going to patrol and walked off. Boss didn't seem to mind—any day you don't have to tell your subordinates to do their job is a good day. But he wasn't in view and we had a pretty decent position on the top of a hill. There were just a handful of trees scattered around, nothing that'd make him hard to see. Outside of the forest there were only a handful of places he could be dicking around in. But we weren't about to go after him in the dark.
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#4 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

I didn't see either of them come back on my watch, either. It was a cloudy dawn that cast a muted blue glow on us. We should've been striking out for the outpost but we had to find Nate and the nameless cat. I finally got his name from one of the others—Mirrserr. Joe said it was an older name, fella probably had real traditional parents. Explained why he didn't even know a lick of human. You pronounce the double rs with a purr—I tried and Joe just laughed at me.

The lot of us set out. The prisoner was starting to look weak, but you could still see he had fight left in him if you looked in his eyes. He didn't try to make a run for it, though.

Joe was the one found signs of 'em, no surprise. He had his eyes to the ground and just walked. Nate wasn't around to make some capital case of that—he would've for certain. Joe was awful kind to offer to given that Nate would be none to happy seeing his face again.

Joe didn't stop until an hour had passed and he had found a bloodstain. We had suspected the worst at that point but no one wanted to admit Nate might've done something like that. Wasn't too long before the stains became a trail and the trail became a body. There was Mirrserr, a big gaping slash on his throat. Joe and Deré gave a sigh but weren't as broken as you'd expect. They had no expression but I knew what was happening. It was the first time they'd looked at a body and didn't feel anything, or at least didn't feel as much as they thought they ought've. There isn't any helping someone then. Unless you're dying yourself, you're never more alone than when you realize you've run out of care for those close to you.

We were in a circle for a bit around the body, Mick with his walking struts the medic had made for him, Boss with his hands on his hips, the medic fella doing Mirrserr's last rites with the other two tabbies.

“We don't have the option of going after Nate now,” he said.

“Well no [censored], boss, but--”

Boss held up a hand before Mick could finish. “I know you guys know that. Question is if the civvies know that. We can probably make it to the outpost without them if we make it a hustle. Worst comes to worst we can let them go after Nate on their own if they feel so obliged.”

Both me and Mick's eyes went wide.

“Boss, I get that this looks bad, but this is dangerous territory. How do we know Nate--”

“We don't. But that's what these folks are gonna think and that's what they're gonna act on—and he abandoned his post. He won't get any sympathy from me for that.”

“It just doesn't seem right, letting 'em hunt down one of our boys--”

“He isn't one of our boys anymore. Probably wasn't ever. And all of this is 'what-if' territory regardless.”

Mick wasn't happy about that, but I was with Boss. In all honesty Nate probably did Mirrserr in and didn't come back because of that. Mick was the kind of guy who tended to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

“The other thing. Prisoner might've picked up on what happened. Might try to turn the locals around.”

“Think they'll listen?” I asked.

“I don't know. All sorts of ways someone can react to someone they know passing, especially if it's a murder—someone's gotta be accountable for that, and in some folks reckoning more are responsible than others.”

Boss always knew the score when he was talking about folks that way. I sometimes wonder how I'd be different if Boss was my dad instead of the one I'd been stuck with.

When the rites were over there were a few moments where no one knew what to do or say. Boss spoke first.

“We're heading to the outpost. We'll let the MPs know about the evidence here. We don't let soldiers get away with murder.”

Joe had his arms crossed as he stared at the body. He didn't have anything to say. Don't know what he was feeling at the moment. But when he looked up at Boss I knew where his heart was.

The medic stayed. Joe and Deré took to the forest. I watched as the brush swallowed them, a hungry green beast that needed corpses to build its blooming empire—an empire that absorbed the sun like a sponge, leaving the ground as dark as dusk in the midday light. We'd be going in there too, but on our own way.

The medic was too old to carry the prisoner, so it was my turn. I hadn't really been paying much attention to him, but I saw now his eyes had glazed over. He tripped more easily, moaned in pain instead of howled. And I watched it and I felt that charge again. It wasn't quite the shock to the nervous system you get from a kill on the field. It was something different. That was a shot of bourbon—this was a glass of fine wine. Watching an enemy suffer. Not just an enemy, but a real piece of [censored] that deserved it. The kind that were barons in some of the fiefdoms back near home, that laughed while their hapless subjects were flayed for being a pound too short on their grain tax. They'd laugh as they gorged down bread baked from the same grain. He was that kind of person. I wasn't. He was. That's why it was alright.

An infection had swollen and flared where I'd hit him, though. Boss said we didn't have long before he wasn't useful to anybody. I could've said we'd walk faster without him, but Mick was still in crutches. It was high noon and we still had too much ground to cover. We'd have to walk through the night.

At dusk, we heard the echo of a scream. More like a howl, but from a human voice. We knew who it was. I felt a strange sense of loss and closure, all at once. Nate was a [censored], but he was our [censored]. When you're in the line, holding steel and timber side-by-side, you become something to the people you're next to. People say brother but that's not it. A brother is an accident of birth. It's more like you're all the same creature, with different aspects, different faces. One charge was all it took, and already that had begun to happen with us and Nate, even though he was a prick from start to finish.

Guess we'd get another newbie soon enough. The discomfort seeped under a callus that had built on me for years.

Night fell around us, and I felt my hands shaking as the last bit of light left the forest. The prisoner started laughing, weakly, so I took out my sword and gave him a pommel across the cheek. He collapsed, spat out some teeth, and kept laughing. Something lit up when I saw that, just him laughing at us.

“The [censored] is so funny?” I gave him a kick in the stomach. He reacted halfway—maybe because only half of him was left. And then finally he stopped laughing and looked at me, looked right in my eyes.

“Dead men. We're all dead men.” And he started laughing harder and harder, summoning up some kind of demon strength. It shook me seeing him laugh like that, laugh at me while I could slit his throat open, while I could break each of his bones, while I could cut off every bit of him he held dear and wave it in front of his face and he was laughing at me and--

I heard Boss say something to me. I heard him scream orders. But he was somewhere else, somewhere far away, it was me and this laughing [censored]. The blade was in my hand, it came up, and something grabbed me—It was Mick.

“He's [censored] with you, man. Either that or he's [censored] lost it. Don't let him get to you like that. He wants you to kill him so he doesn't give up anything.” I had the face of someone who'd caught his wife [censored] a horse. Everything about that wolf looking up at me and laughing just cried for me to end it. Some primitive part of my brain thought if I didn't that his face would become the sky, and his laugh would be the wind. Boss put himself between me and the prisoner.

“We don't have time for this, kid.” Boss's voice. Closer this time. The fight-or-flight reflex pounding on my brain chilled down to a broil.

“He's [censored]--!” I didn't even have a word. My voice cracked, tears ran down my face. He just laughed harder. Boss and Mick looked at me with genuine fear. I'd never seen either of them so legitimately afraid. I noticed Boss had a hand resting on his sword.

“I know, kid, I know. I'll hold him for a while, okay? You take the front. Try not to think about him.

I wasn't having his laughing, though, so eventually we gagged him. The situation cost us the last of our daylight. We lit up our torches and kept moving.

The sound of insects, night birds, and the carnivores that stalked the night looking for sleeping prey surrounded us. This wasn't the domain of men anymore, of two-legged things that built and sang and thought. Boss said we couldn't be more than a mile from the fort but I started seeing some worry in his eyes as he looked at the horizon. Like he should've at least seen torchlight by now, or chanced upon a patrol. We were wandering in a deep, deep black, our torches dying moment by moment. The foliage got thick and eventually we had to use our swords just to make progress. We thought at some point we'd have to at least find a clearing, or a hill, or something that would let us see where the hell we were. Something that would indicate cardinal direction. It never happened. We just ran into that dark.

Until we heard that whistle, the whistle of death, the tune he sings as he makes his harvest.
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#5 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

The prisoner leaped onto bosses back and bit into him. He broke some more teeth on the chainmail but kept biting. The medic dragged Mick to a thick brush. I took my sword and stuck the [censored] with an animal howl. We tossed our torches in the general direction of the arrow's flight. Its light burned a blue spiral into my eyes that flashed bright green whenever I blinked.

It didn't do us any good, but now they were in the dark too. We dived over to Mick and the medic.

All we could do was wait for dawn, listen for footsteps. We didn't hear anything. The dark seemed to last forever. We just waited, in silence, for the enemy to mess up. Step on a twig, trip over a root, anything.

Not likely. They were comfortable here. These were rangers, real ones, the kind that could've disappeared in these forests in midday. We were covered in steel plate and chain-link—may as well have tied bells to our necks. The true gravity of the situation dawned on me. We weren't getting out of this one. There wasn't a maneuver to make or a tactic that got us out of here. We waited until dawn, and once it was dawn they'd be hidden and we wouldn't be.

We waited for death, and it came just as the speckled light started dewing on the ground. Mick got hit first, then the Medic. Boss and I made a run for it, arrows narrowly missing here and there, but each miss got less narrow.

Then one of them fell over dead. The other only had time to turn his head, overwhelmed, until something shook his tree and he lost his balance. He crashed into a root and arced his back, howling, grasping his spine. Something had broken. Someone stepped out of the shadows then, and plunged a sword into the mutt, and a ringing quiet entered the forest.

It was Joe. He had Nate's sword on his back. When we asked Joe what happened to Deré, he just shook his head.

The three of us made it back to where we'd left Mick and the medic. It was too late for either of them. We didn't have the time for a burial, so we made icons next to them.


At least we'd move quick now, and we did. When the sun came up, we saw the fort's torchlight, high on a hill. It was the best uphill walk I've ever had to make.

~

“We'll look into it.”

That dead-eyed [censored] bureaucrat with officer's stars had a look of slight boredom, as we told him how we'd barely survived. He nodded, wrote in his journal, and had us ejected from his office as quickly as possible.

“He isn't gonna do [censored].”

“I know he isn't gonna do [censored], kid. This is all we can do.”

We saw Joe then, sitting hunched over on a bench. We'd elected to lie about Nate, owing Joe our lives. We said he'd abandoned his post and ran into the forest. Joe had wisely tossed his sword before he walked up the trail. I walked over and sat with him. Boss stood, pulled out a tobacco pipe, and smoked. We'd both just bathed for the first time in ages.

“Nate's gone, huh?”

He nodded. “They don't know whether to execute me or recruit me.”

“Don't worry about it.”

A long silence. Then;

“We never figured out how they got their hands on bodkin,” I said.

Joe smirked and shook his head. “Only one place could make arrows that good, you think about it. It went through plate like butter. Normal smiths can't make that.”

“Who, the--”

As soon as I realized it, he looked at me and nodded. But still, I had to protest.

“Couldn't be. You can't say that [censored] out loud. They—I lowered my voice a bit. “The Templars have a wide reach, Joe.”

“Never said anything about saying it out loud. Just to you.”

“But—why?”

“Might not be the whole lot of them. Could be a handful of folks with magic, war profiteers. Not like we ever gonna learn the specifics.”

It made some amount of sense. But if there were Templars selling to mutts, then that meant—

“That's our ace-in-the-hole, out the window, Joe. We could really lose this war.”

“You can lose any war. Hunters die to beasts. Even between man and beast, the outcome isn't certain. But yes, it hurts your chances.”

Birds chirped away in some tree, filling the silence between us.

“You ain't gonna tell anyone else that, are you?”

“Nah, man.”

“You still wanna serve?”

He nodded. “All I got left now.”

~

We were reassigned to the fort for a while, given some bits of string and brass to wear on our dress uniforms. Guard posts. Easy stuff, for now. Others were sent to reinforce the village, or what was left of it. it was an FOB now, effectively.

Joe hadn't been treated well in the fort. Cowardly people mumbled curses as he past, while the brash men would toss his meals from his hands in the mess hall. Joe didn't really have a temper about it, but eventually it didn't matter. Someone pulled a knife on him. He wrecked their [censored]—Joe was [censored] huge, and the little pisswipe causing him trouble should've known better—but every witness lied their [censored] off. Only me and Boss saw it as it happened. Boss's testimony was enough that Joe wasn't executed, but he was barred from service.

He left, back into the forest. To be fair, he was good enough killing mutts on his own.

People don't mind you as a guard. They think you're all brawn and no brains. Especially those Templar pricks that came a week later. I gave them a close eye, based on what Joe'd said. They walked up to the CO's office, presumably talked shop. That was my chance. I looked in there, saw crates of magical knick-knacks, but there was just one thing I knew was off.

There was the bodkin. I took out one of the arrows, and tucked it inside my armor. There was another I kept in my bunk to compare it to, but I already knew this was the right one. Joe was right from the beginning. No one noticed.

I knew what would've happened if I went in while the Templar were there. They could've razed the whole fort on their own, for all I knew. So I waited until I left, and I showed Boss.

“What do we do?”

Boss thought long and hard on it, then said; “Nothing.”

“The [censored], Boss?! You're just gonna let this slide—“

“If you bring it up to the CO, he'll put you in irons at best, or execute you. Even if he isn't in on the whole damn thing, which I wouldn't guarantee, he'd much rather do injustice to you than put his own hide in danger. Best you can do is just kill the mutts regardless of whatever new tricks the Templars give them.”

“This means there's some deep [censored] going on, Boss. We can't just let this go. We gotta—“

“Do what?” Genuinely angry at me for the first time in a while. His eyes lit up, and then I realized he wasn't angry with me, but the whole situation. The whole damned thing.

“Men like us can't make a difference. That's for our boss's boss's boss. We're grunts, kid, and we'll always be grunts. We fight till we die--we don't have any other place, or reason for being.”
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#6 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

~
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#7 Post by Dadrobit »

Great, the good news is that in finishing the story, it as a whole it comes across magnitudes better than before.

The less than stellar news is that you may have gone too far...

I feel that the four paragraph epilogue you added there are the end is nearly entirely unnecessary. It adds nothing that wasn't already implied, (other than the physical act of burying the bodkin) and really just made the ending come across with a, "[censored] everyone else, I got mine" mentality.

Not only that, but ending it in that quote by, Boss would have been fantastic from a somewhat artistic point of view. Had you ended the story with a powerful piece of dialogue like you had begun the story, it would have come across as very intentional and I believe would have been very well received.

“Men like us can't make a difference. That's for our boss's boss's boss. We're grunts, kid, and we'll always be grunts. We fight till we die--we don't have any other place, or reason for being.”

And blam, done.

**EDIT**

Did you edit out a piece/pieces of the story? I could have sworn that you mentioned the arrows collecting dust or some-such before the epilogue, but I don't see that anymore. Am I hallucinating?
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#8 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

Me? Edit a story after it's already posted on the forums? You're speaking nonsense!

In all seriousness, yeah, I played with the end a bit, and I think you're right. I got a bit too preoccupied in tying up the plot I forgot about the story.
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#9 Post by MeaCulpa, S.C.M. »

Almost forgot. Here's some end music.
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#10 Post by red.wolf »

On the contrary to what was previously said about your epilogue, i think it was a good way of wrapping it all up. In a way it was rather random but it does give an end to it while leaving it open for an additional writen piece to be made later.
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Re: The Razor Edge [NSFW] [FFC'15]

#11 Post by Dadrobit »

red.wolf wrote:On the contrary to what was previously said about your epilogue, i think it was a good way of wrapping it all up. In a way it was rather random but it does give an end to it while leaving it open for an additional writen piece to be made later.
On the contrary to your... contrary?

If you're looking for more follow-up, the current epilogue-less iteration is far more open-ended and allows a lot more for prospective potential for parable portrayal pertaining to the previous plotline.

Recall how in the epilogue the protagonist physically buries the bodkin and just flat out accepts defeat with a "Screw you guys, Hakuna Matata," (to put it nicely) mentality. With that, he buries every chance of using the bodkin in the future as a plot device without it sounding hypocritical or deus ex.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to have more than just a "6 months later" setting with recycled characters as the core foundation for sequels, and we are allotted that power with the present loose model.
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