You must've Misheard

I do appear to have made a severe and continuous lapse of judgement. It is at times like these I thank the gods for my ability to grovel. I can't fight for the life of me, even when I was a wee lad I was exquisitely shit at the art of fisticuffs and feistily fandoogling ferocious felons in the face. Always a source of endless dissapointment for Da, it was. And Mam, he would bring up how unsatisfied she would be with me at every possible interview, he apparently wished me to be some kind of muscle bound whale with swelling fists and terrible eloquence. A carbon copy of himself, the perfect human and God's best and only friend on this world of people who actually learnt to do anything useful, heavens forbid. I prided myself on doing anything for my Mam. I could die for her memory, dead as she already was, and I would kill for it. But when it came to "What your Mam would've wanted" or pissing off Da, it comes in at a close second.

But it's at times like these I'm glad I ignored him, spending time instead talking to Herman the fisherman and Brother Carmichael, always with the best retorts.

"Well then lad, is you abou' reade te star' talkin yet, or is that tongue so useless I'll have to cut it off? Migh' just help ye out of a few situations. Maybe you'll piss us off less if it's gone." Time to start talking, methinks, and in the most polite way possible.

"Up close, you're mug looks even uglier." His face contorted in an ugly grin. That grin was one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen, full of something more than rage and anger, it was full of... insanity. And spinach. Primordial and absolutely hidden in anything but his smile, was that madness, but his teeth showed it. And they showed it too well. Now I've seen all kinds of nutcases, but this guy was the crème de la crème of them all. The absolute tippy top of crackers mountain.

It did not exactly contain a comforting message, but fuck it, he didn't look like a bargainer anyway, and he was definitely the murdering type. "Y'know," I whispered, "I used to know a guy like you. He was called Jowan, born and raised a Dwmnonii, proud as you can get. He liked cheese, did Jowan, had it with everything, from gruel to puddings. I met him in Lundoon only a few summers back over a pint and a shared lack of coin. I got to know him after a while, he was a good friend and a better drinker, but my god would he get into any prospect of a fight after he got into that sweet stupidity of drunkenness." I began to speak with more confidence, I came into my element when talking, I was a natural born silvertounge and professional bluffer. "His thing was that he would unnerve his opponents by any means necessary. He would talk about their children, their wives, he would cut his arms and forehead to cover himself with blood, and I once saw him strap a dead goat to his back for a fight. He was a proper bastard, was Jowan, make no mistake. Only a quarter after I'd first met him, Jowan got into a fight with a big bloke named Dewi, a sailor from Caerdyffed who he'd been glaring at for half an hour. A few drinks deep, Jowan left the pub for a while, around 15 minutes, and came back with a little knitted jumper. It stank of shit and pig piss, did that jumper. When Dewi saw Jowan carrying that jumper, he stopped completely, shut down. 3 seconds later, Jowan was screaming on the ground with a broken shard of metal through his eye and Dewi was screaming at him. That jumper was his daughters, you psycho. Jowan drowned her in the pigs water trough." I was quickly silenced with a slight push from the man's blade, drawing a drop of blood from my neck. "When I ask you to speak," He growled, all remnants of that half smile half grimace gone, "I expect an answer. A proper one, like, not a series of repeated bullets to my ears, you'd do well to remember that, now, wouldn't ye?" He had the uncanny ability of making everything sound like a question, and an accusation, at the same time.

But now he had fallen for my trap. Y'see, I wasn't a warrior. But someone in the general vicinity... Well they were. And they were pissed.

Trackers are trained to never let anyone take their hunt, it's a well known fact, and part of what makes them so notorious. Anyone who tries to help or interfere is killed: mercilessly. The good Brother Carmichael would tell me of his little adventures, most of which I doubted, though I didn't have the heart to tell him, but there was one I knew was true. One of them would always terrify him, to the point that he once tried to jump into the fire to stop himself remembering.

Carmichael, who at the time was still training in a monastery, had done summink bad, he'd always say, though I never found out what. He'd left the monastery on the hill, doing his bad, bad stuff. Hadn't told the Bishop, or a single orphan where he went off too neither, cos Brother Carmichael was cool, didn't need no ones permission to do nothing. The man was out for hours, till the witching hour, when all should be in their beds. Now the Brother? He was a clever guy, he knows this, he knows the kind of shit that happens that time. Demons come out, take you to their lairs and do things to you. Well the Brother got home to his monastery on the hill, and found that a demon had come, just decided that right there and then was as good a place as any to do those things. The abbots' were all missing their heads, bodies lying misshapen and somehow uncomplete, a painting without a tapestry to work with. The little orphan boys were all hung by the neck, their little happy eyes missing, and the cross was missing, its position, pride of place was instead taken by the Bishop himself, crucified to the wooden beams. I always found that part of the story quite fitting. The man killed by what he loved the most.

It was the next day we sailed into town, me and the brigade. We found Carmichael about to be hanged for every one of their murders, the entire time he screamed for death. Pulled him down, did Shaman, said a good Christian man like this one couldn't have done what he did, and me Ma would've wanted me baptised, too. Now I don't believe in no Jesus, but I tried to, for Mam's sake, and so I was baptised the same day by a crying priest covered in blood and sweat, and I never felt more unholy. I never really believed the Brother could've killed those people, not because he wasn't strong enough, but because he was too kind. He had the body of a man, but the mind of a child. He loved hide and seek, always hiding in obvious places on the deck, though there aren't many places to hide on a narrow boat anyway. We would always find him last, though, so he felt better. But Carmichael would always insist one thing. He saw a Stepper, grinning at him at the door.