Beggars clustered at the far end of the square. Not daring to move closer to the town gates lest they face the potentially murderous wrath of Duke Gratano’s men. All were in rags, and most had no shirt at all. The stench of their unwashed bodies was apparent even at twenty paces.
The most desperate among them wore nothing, their naked and emaciated flesh tinged a fireweed orange. Broken shells of men, they crouched in the shadows. But their eyes were hungry. One fiend, whom even the other addicts shied away from, had skin covered with reddish boils and was giving off a particularly hateful odor.
All the beggars seemed to shout at once as Tagus and his friends approached.
“Spare a vint, sir…”
“A vint, oh gracious lady, I have children…”
But Tagus was looking at one man in particular. Broad shouldered, he was standing, with difficulty, on one leg. The other was gone, its stump hidden by a mass of rags that might once have been a tunic. His back was bent almost double, his haggard face lined with cracks and wrinkles, but Tagus could see the withered remnants of a soldier’s muscular frame in the man’s bony arms and once barrel-like chest. His head was bald and his dark skin looked as though it had been burnt by the sun. His face was dominated by an unkempt beard, and there was still a twinkle in those deep-set eyes that had shone so brightly in the heat of battle.
Those eyes turned to him, and each man recognized the other.
“Rigo…?”
The man’s wide mouth opened, and a wheezy yet full-bodied laugh burst forth from a nearly toothless maw.
“Tagus! By our goddess of the shithouse, the hero is coming!”
The laugh turned into a violent hacking cough, but the grin remained.
Aileanor glanced at the beggar in alarm, and Meno jerked his head to one side at the sound of his ally’s name.
“A blive morning to my old comrade in arms,” Rigo shouted, “I thought I saw the last of ya’ when you took that little splash at Allia Bridge! Guess our heretic gods are still smilin’ on your sorry ass!”
“Good sir, there must be some mistake…”
Meno hastily tried to interject, but the beggar furiously rounded on the gnome, causing him to jump back.
“Shut up, you mangy little bug,” Rigo bellowed, “or I’ll thump you good! I be talking to my old soldier friend here!”
The angry roar faded into a dry chuckle as the big man returned his attention to Tagus.
“So, you finally gave up too, eh? I told Tarquinus years ago that he should give up chasing miracles and earn some decent coin. The gods never meant for us to be passive bloody monks without a pot to piss in. Of course, he never listened, the old pin head…how’s the skinny fellow doing anyhow?”
Tagus had not seen Rigo since he had walked out of the Black Horseman three years ago, choosing to abandon the sworn brotherhood of the Falhorne rather than give up the mercenary life. He had been a loudmouth boaster who always loved a good scrap, especially when his friend Tarquinus was involved. Nor had he been one for religion, obeying the Order’s strictures more as formality than anything else. But Vitus had always overlooked this because he followed orders and was utterly lethal on the battlefield. He had served at Fallonier Fields and the Braxian Civil War, before the laws changed and the money ran out, along with his patience. Looking at him now, it seemed that Tarquinus, in dying in defense of the Asylum, had been the lucky one.
“He was killed in battle, Rigo,” Tagus replied tersely, knowing that he shouldn’t, but it just felt wrong to deny it to a former Falhorne down on his luck. Even if the crippled man had no honor.
“Brother Tarquinus fought bravely to the end. Unlike you.”
“Damn, that’s a shame,” Rigo said through a half-smirk, ignoring the obvious look of disapproval in his former comrade’s eye.
“I liked him. Just never understood why he chose guard duty over mercenary work. It looks like faith did about as much good for him as it did for me. Still, going down fighting is better than this shit. I guess I can’t blame him…”
“You have only yourself to blame.”
Tagus tried to sound indignant, although in truth he did not know what to feel. The renegade Falhorne had abandoned his brethren for gold. At the same time that Porus had met his fate on the gallows after defending the Order’s principles to the end. Yet Rigo’s piteous state hardly inspired anger.
The beggarman gestured all around: to the rags at his waist, the stump of his leg, and grimaced bitterly.
“Ha! Tell your praetor that he’s had his revenge on me and then some,” he spat. “It’s been two years since I lost my leg fighting those bloody Braxians. Serves me right for agreeing to return to that cursed country. The King of Galthran smashed that simpleton Tilly and I barely made it out alive. It took all my wages just to get a wagon ride back south. Even lost my shirt, I did…had to sell it to buy food. Never sold my pride though; a soldier never loses that! Just ask the bandit scum who tried to stop me outside Brisi. I bashed his damn brains out!”
Tagus glanced nervously over his shoulder as Rigo again burst out laughing. Still, the bombast of this old soldier with a begging bowl was enough to put a half-smile on his face. He had to remind himself that the one-legged man was a coward and a deserter.
“He must have been one stupid bandit.”
“Damn right!”
Rigo’s laugh was hoarse, yet still forceful.
“The nerve of some bastards! So how have you been keeping, you bloody puritan? You can’t be living by the Book if you’re out in these parts. I take it Vitus finally disowned you for some stupid reason or other…”
Tagus could only shrug his shoulders against the pain, not wanting to explain the details of what had befallen him since his old life went up in flames. Nor did the wretched Rigo deserve to hear what had happened to his former home.
“I remain what I am,” he said, “And from what you tell me, so does the northern war.”
Rigo chuckled wickedly in response, his withered belly shaking.
“Gormani’s flames, boy, that war will never end! Those nobles breed like rabbits. No sooner does one of em’ fall, the son steps into papa’s armor and herds another lot of peasants to the slaughter. Margrave Tilly’s grandson’s leading his house now, with the personal blessing of His Holiness the Hierophant I might add. Seems he’s decided that the boy’s the chosen of the Most High, come to purify the Braxian reaches of heresy. And before I hobbled out of there, some of the men told me that Duke Lothar’s boy was back from Grimagen and that he’d won favor with the empress. Try to stop a war when churchmen and emperors keep coming to its rescue!”
Tagus paused and took in the wry, cynical smile that had once made Templars tremble.
“You are still alive, and still a soldier,” he finally replied, pulling one of the ducats that Meno had given him from his cloak and throwing it to the former giant of the battlefield.
“This is for a comrade. I will see you again, brother. I promise.”
“That’s up to fate, I guess,” Rigo shrugged, “I wish I could have seen old Tarquinus one more time…but you know what they say: straight trees get chopped for firewood, while crooked ones have to wait for a good storm. I’m still waiting for mine.”
He turned the coin over and over in his grimy hands.
“You’re a good Reshian bastard, you know that?”
Rigo’s sunken eyes took a sorrowful turn, but no tears came. He was a mountain man from the eastern hill country on the Samosian border, tough as boot leather, stubborn as an ox, and furious as a bull in a melee. No one with paler skin than he had ever called the former Falhorne a “Resh” unless he desired a fist to the face. And they were not small fists either.
When Tagus had told his comrade about his near brawl with the Duke of Atocha’s son at Fallonier Fields, Rigo said he would have eaten the insolent knight’s guts and asked for seconds if he had dared to insult him like that. Noble blood would not have saved his skin. Tagus remembered the deadly serious look in the big man’s eyes.
Rigo was a survivor. The greatest Tagus had ever known. He had held his own at Allia almost single-handed, as the survivors of the collapse had struggled to pull themselves from the water. Without him they would have surely been overrun. He had been badly injured in the battle, but had recovered faster than a young horse, threatening to punch out the saw-bones when they tried to cut off his wounded leg. But in the end, he had lost it anyway. Perhaps it was a blessing. A crippled beggar was less attractive to slavers and less threatening to the ever-present guards and patrolmen.
The former Falhorne’s eyes looked tired, and they dropped away, staring at the ground.
Tagus felt Aileanor squeeze his hand. She had never let go the entire time. With difficulty, he turned away and followed his companions toward the inn.
Excerpted from “Falhorne: Dark Dawn” by Tristan Dineen, All Rights Reserved
