These Old Bones

1-2

The demobilisation wages had paid for most of the journey. Bounties paid a little further and scavenging and poaching had filled in the rest. Until now. Now, when his coin purse sagged all but empty. When his pack weighed heavy on his back, filled with nothing but weapons of death, utensils and pitiful dried and salted food for those days when even poaching left his stomach empty.

Brorzjav thought of the town and its bounty. There had been a time when no-one would have taken that bounty from him. Not a fop that cared more about his hair than the sharpness of his sword. Not a young woman, bare old enough to be away from her mother's tit. No-one. He wouldn't have asked for the bounty, he would have taken it. Grabbed that bounty like a plump whore's arse and drank his fill from the proceeds.

Age had broken him. Age and death and death and death.

How much blood could one man carry before he collapses beneath the weight? Brorzjav could tell you. This much. This much and less. How much? The blood of the first man he killed was too much, a half-drunk brigand on the way to Adrasusk. Falling on the blade of Brorzjav's rusting dagger and soaking the fine clothes his father had farmed his fingers raw for to give him on his birthday. That much.

Or upon reaching the riverside city of Adrasusk and the man that tried taking advantage of a fresh faced boy, staring in wonder at houses two stories tall and more. That throat, slit in the night before the man's intentions became actions, would not be the last person he killed in cold blood. That much was too much.

Or the first woman he killed, or rather, girl. Leader of a pack of scrawny urchins, desperate, starving, forced to steal the little coin he had left. She had died by his hands around her throat and the other children beaten half-to-death. Though there was little blood involved in that one, it was still too much.

And on and on. Growing older, bigger, stronger, more practiced, learning he had talent for fighting and killing, warring and brawling. All far, far too much. Too much for any two or three men. He had enjoyed it all at the time, thrived on it, wallowed in it. A day without blood, even if only breaking the nose of some poor fool in a tavern, was no day at all. Brorzjav lived for fighting, lived for the deaths of others, lived for the blood on his hands, laughing in the face of his enemies and striking them down with no compunction, no pity, no regret.

Until that day on the field of blood, when Notch fell from his hands as he stared and stared and stared at the dead around him. Empty eyes glaring back in accusation. Even the dead had more pity than him.

A clap of thunder rattled his skull and rumbled onward across the sky, dragging him from his memories. He adjusted his bag, turning it so the buckler stuffed inside didn't dig into his only good ear. What he wouldn't do for a straw bed for the night. He considered whether trying to take the bounty would be hypocritical of him. Setting out to bring a murderer to justice would never end without at least one of them losing some blood. Just as well the mayor had chosen idiots instead.

Just because he had tired of killing, didn't mean he couldn't do it, if he needed to. Regardless of how he thought of himself and past transgressions, he was who he was. He had few skills to earn coin any other way. He couldn't hunt worth a damn. Working in fields was how he ran into the life of a killer in the first place.

He knew what he knew. He'd try not to kill anyone else, if he could help it, but he wouldn't shy away from it, either. The scales were never going to balance in his favour, anyway. He would beg forgiveness on the last day he drew breath and, if that forgiveness were denied him, then he'd die damned.

Die as he'd lived, Brorzjav believed.

-+-

The jangle of bridles startled him to wakefulness. The snort of horses. Opening his eyes to the morning sun, heavy clouds from the night before no longer hanging above him. He stretched his legs, stifling the groan and began to cough. Hacking and wheezing, he turned his head to the side and spat a gob of phlegm onto the ground.