Chương 68: Chapter 67 - No Strings Attached

The Rusted Nail smelled like a hundred years of spilled ale nobody had ever properly mopped up. Ray shouldered the door open like he owned the place, which, judging by the way the barman didn't even look up, he might as well have. Rowan followed a step behind him, and the others filed in after—Ant last, ducking under a lintel that hadn't been built for anyone his height plus a pack.

The floor was packed dirt gone dark and hard as stone, scattered with sawdust that had clearly been swept over something rather than actually cleaning it up. Ant's eyes caught on a stain near the bar, brownish, old, the kind that didn't come from spilled drink. There was another by the second table. And a third, half-hidden under a bench leg, like whoever'd cleaned up hadn't bothered moving the furniture first.

"Don't stare at the floor," Hazel murmured beside him.

"Bad manners in a place like this."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I've been in a place like this." Rowan didn't so much as glance down. He walked it like a man who knew where every stain had come from and didn't need reminding. He raised two fingers at the bar without breaking stride, and the barman—a broad woman with forearms like Kalsar's—nodded once and started pulling mugs before Rowan had even reached the corner table he was clearly aiming for.

The table sat against the back wall, half in shadow, the kind of spot that let you watch the door without anyone watching you back. Rowan dropped into the seat facing the room. Kalsar took the one beside him without needing to be told why. Old habit, maybe. Or the same habit Rowan had. Drinks arrived a minute later, six mugs thumped down by a boy who couldn't have been older than twelve, gone again before anyone could thank him. Ray wrapped both hands around his mug but didn't drink.

He was watching Rowan with the look of a man doing arithmetic he didn't like the answer to.

"Right," he said.

"So. Recruits." He said the word slow, turning it over.

"That's a bit non-pacific, if you don't mind me saying. Could mean anything. Could mean you want someone to carry your bags."

"Nonspecific," Rowan said, not looking up from his mug.

"That's what I said."

"We don't want bag carriers," Kalsar said.

"See, that's my point. Vague." Ray spread his hands.

"What are we actually after here? Muscle? Brains? Someone pretty to stand at the front gate and look imposing?" His eyes flicked, deliberately, to Kalsar.

"No offense."

"None taken," Kalsar said, in a tone that suggested there might have been, slightly. Rowan looked at Kalsar. Kalsar looked back, and the two of them settled it without a word between them—old shorthand, your call or mine. Kalsar tipped his head, just barely, toward Ant. Ant felt the weight of it land on him before he'd even opened his mouth. He hadn't planned to be the one talking. He never planned to be the one talking.

But Kalsar's eyes were on him now, waiting, and so were Rowan's, and there wasn't a version of this where he got to sit back and let someone else carry it.

"Fighters," Ant said.

"People who've been through it. Tired of getting used and thrown away when they're not useful anymore." He paused, chose the next words with more care than he usually bothered to.

"We're not looking for the strongest five people in this room. We're looking for people who'd actually stay, if we gave them a reason to." Ray's eyebrows went up a fraction.

"Well now." He glanced at Rowan.

"Didn't peg him for the talker."

"He's not, usually," Rowan said.

"Five, six of them," Kalsar added, picking the thread back up before it could wander.

"Battle-worn. Done with hard living. People who'd take a clan with no strings attached over another season eating dirt out here." Ray leaned back, and something sharper moved behind the grin.

"No strings, eh?" He let it sit there a second.

"That's a big promise for a clan I've never heard of, mate. Everyone's got strings. Question's just how long before you feel 'em pull."

"We've got a clan after us," Rowan said, no preamble, laying it flat on the table like a card he'd been holding since they walked in.

"Shell Razor. Hit our headquarters a few weeks back. We held them off, but it was close." He held Ray's eyes.

"Man leading that attack is dead now, at least. Rest of them are still out there, and we don't know if they're done or just regrouping." He let that sit.

"So when I say no strings, I mean it different than you're used to hearing it. Means you fight because you chose to, not because someone's holding your contract over your head. Means if you bleed for us, we bleed for you back. That's the whole offer." The noise of the tavern kept going around them—someone laughing too loud two tables over, dice rattling somewhere near the hearth—but their corner had gone quiet in a way that had nothing to do with volume. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Ray didn't say anything for a moment. He turned his mug a quarter turn on the table, watching the movement like it required his full attention.

"Shell Razor," he repeated, quiet now, none of the performance left in it.

"Heard the name. Nothing good attached to it."

"Didn't pick the fight," Ant said.

"It picked us." Ray studied him a second longer. Then, abrupt as a door slamming, the grin came roaring back, wider than before.

"Well, that settles it, then." He thumped his mug down.

"I'm in."

"Ray—""No, I mean it." He pointed at Rowan, dead serious under the theatrics for just a second.

"You stitched my arm back together in a barn with nothing but a candle and a prayer, mate. I don't forget that. I owe you my life, plain as that, and if you're telling me you need bodies willing to stand somewhere and get hit for a cause—" he spread his arms wide, "—here I am. Volunteering. Nobly."

"You're a thief," Hazel said.

"Not a fighter."

"I am multi-talented," Ray said, offended.

"And besides. I know people." He was already twisting in his seat, scanning the room like a man taking inventory of stock he already knew he had.

"You want fighters, I can point you at fighters. Real ones. Not tavern brawlers who talk big after their fourth ale." He jerked his chin toward the far side of the room, where two men sat hunched over a table too small for either of them, shoulders nearly touching a low beam.

"Sam and Duncan," Ray said.

"Brothers. Big ones, obviously, you've got eyes. Duncan's the shield—and I mean the actual shield, doesn't go anywhere without one strapped to his back like it's grown there. Sam runs a lance. Individually, decent. Together, though, that's a whole different conjugation of trouble." He whistled low.

"You don't want to be standing where they're pointed." Kalsar's eyes had gone to the pair and stayed there, assessing in the way he assessed everything, weight and reach and stance even from across a room.

"Kithren?"

"Duncan's got a turtle," Ray said.

"Not a garden variety one, mind. Thing comes up to my chest standing still. Wider than that table you're sitting at." He shook his head, half laughing.

"Saw it take a boar charge dead-on once and just—stood there. Boar came off worse."

"And the other?"

"Sam's got a Glacier Panther." Ray lowered his voice slightly, like the word itself deserved a little respect.

"Shoots ice out its mouth. Actual ice, not frost, I mean full spikes of the stuff. Saw him drop a man's arm clean at the elbow once, didn't even look sorry about it after." He shuddered, theatrical but not entirely.

"Scary animal. Scary quiet fella too, Sam. Duncan does the talking for both of them, mostly." Rowan was watching the two brothers with something working behind his eyes—assessment, maybe, or memory.

"They still take work?"

"Odd jobs. Guard contracts, mostly, nothing steady." Ray's mouth twisted.

"Nobody wants to commit to two men who come as a matched set, funnily enough. Package deal scares people off."

"It won't scare us off," Ant said, and meant it. Ray's grin flickered, edging toward approval. He turned, scanning further, and stopped on a man sitting alone near the hearth, a mug in front of him he hadn't touched, staring into the fire like it owed him an answer.

"That's Andy," Ray said, quieter now.

"Different sort altogether."

"How different," Kalsar said.

"Kithren master, I'm told. Never seen his Kithren myself—not once, and I've been in and out of this village more times than I can count." Ray's voice had lost most of its usual flourish.

"Word is he trained some of the Emperor's elites, back before. Allegorically speaking, anyway. Before he put a man through a table for laying hands on his Kithren, and that was the end of that particular career." Hazel's whetstone had gone still in her lap.

"He's out here. Not in a palace somewhere."

"Funny how that works," Ray said, not unkindly.

"He goes to the lake most days. Sits. I don't ask." He shrugged, one shoulder.

"Man like that, you don't exactly walk up and demand answers." Ant found himself looking at Andy longer than he meant to—the stillness of him, the way he sat like the noise of the tavern simply didn't reach him. He'd ask Mahkir about this one later, once they were somewhere quieter. It wasn't a normal recruit. It felt like the kind of thing that needed thinking through properly, not decided on instinct across a crowded room.

"Last one," Ray said, dropping the showman's edge out of his voice—less information now, more reverence. He nodded toward a woman sitting near the door, a longbow leaning against the wall within easy reach of her hand, her eyes doing the same slow sweep of the room that Kalsar's had been doing since they sat down.

"Rebekah. Though round here, most just call her the Bow Queen."

"Bold name," Hazel said.

"Earned one." Ray leaned in like he was telling a secret, though his volume didn't drop much.

"Saw her hit a target from one end of this village to the other. Full length, mind, not some exaggeration. Man had a coin nailed to a post at the far end, bet her she couldn't clip it from the tavern door." He grinned.

"She didn't clip it. She split it."

"And her Kithren?" Kalsar asked.

"Spirit fox, they call it." Ray's grin thinned into something more careful.

"That's all I've got, and that's honest. Never seen it fight. Don't think anyone's lived to describe it in much detail." He spread his hands.

"She keeps to herself. Doesn't drink much, doesn't talk much. But she's here most nights, same seat, same bow." The table went quiet a moment, all of them turning it over—five names now sitting between them like pieces on a board nobody had decided how to move yet. Kalsar broke it first, voice flat and practical, already halfway to the next problem.

"Order of approach. Who first."

"Sam and Duncan," Rowan said, without hesitation.

"Easiest sell. Ray's right, nobody wants a two-for-one deal, which means they've probably had a rough season of it. Rough season makes a man listen."

"Andy," Ant said, before he'd fully decided to say it. Everyone looked at him. He held Kalsar's gaze, steady.

"Not tonight. Not like this. Man like that deserves more than a table full of strangers cornering him by the fire." Kalsar considered that a moment, then gave a short nod, the kind that settled a thing without needing to say more about it. Ray glanced between them, then let out a low whistle, mostly to himself.

"You lot really are something." He drained the last of his mug, set it down with a decisive thunk, and stood, already rolling his shoulders like a man limbering up for a job.

"Alright then. Sam. Duncan." He jerked his head toward the table across the room.

"No time like tonight to find out if brothers travel well." He was already moving before anyone answered, weaving between tables with the easy confidence of a man who'd never once doubted a room would part for him. Rowan caught Ant's eye on the way up, dry humor pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"Try not to look so much like a clan leader," he said.

"Puts people's backs up."

"How am I supposed to look, then?"

"I don't know. Less like you're about to sign someone's death warrant." Rowan was already following after Ray.

"Work on it."