Three days later we were ready to get started on our new job. The escort ship was waiting for us in the harbor, and on first glance it looked almost tolerable. They’d set us up with a nice little two-masted battle sloop that looked like it should be able to sail circles around the big fat lumbering freighter we were supposed to be escorting. It might not be heavily armed enough to scare off a proper Equestrian naval squadron, but the heavy arbalests mounted along the railings and scorpions on the forecastle and poop deck would make for a fine deterrent against pirates.
I probably should’ve been happy about having a half-decent escort ship, but instead I just got suspicious. Our clients might be slavers, but they were also merchants. Merchants never skip on an opportunity to cheap out on expenses and keep a few more more ducats in their pockets. You’d think they would have the common sense to not skimp on essential maintenance for the ships that brought in their cargo, but greed is never rational.
That was why I’d sent Talon ahead to check the ship from stem to stern. My second was waiting for me when I arrived on the docks, and wasted no time getting down to business. “The ship could use a bit of dock time for a proper overhaul and general cleanup, but there aren’t any critical issues. It should get us back to Freeport just fine.”
I grunted. “So whatever’s wrong with it got covered up by a fresh coat of tar and paint, and they stacked the cargo over whatever else they don’t want us to see.”
“As always, your unceasing optimism inspires us all,” Talon answered dryly.
“Just dealing with the world as it is,” I grumbled. “No sense pretending it’s all sunshine and rainbows when the only color we’re dealing with is the one I wipe off my arse.”
“Class too,” Talon murmured. “Only the most sophisticated of wit from you, sir.”
I snorted and chuckled. “It’s part of my effervescent charm.” I gave the ship another once-over. “So it’s decent enough and should get us from here to Freeport. Assuming we don’t end up murdered by pirates, hung by Equestrians, captured and enslaved by a rival ship, or cut down by a bunch of those damn fool freedom fighters.”
“The joys of mercenary life,” Talon agreed.
“Storms too,” I continued on. “We get hit by a nasty storm, it’ll probably snap those masts like twigs and leave us dead in the water a thousand miles away from land.”
Torch, who’d been resting against one of the railings nearby, leaned over to not-quite whisper. “Is the captain always like this?”
“No, he’s usually not this cheerful.” Talon shot back, not even pretending to make an effort to keep her volume down. She turned back to me and answered my original concern. “If we do get caught in a storm the ship should manage, so long as the crew does the same.”
“Right, the crew.” I scowled and gave the ship a second look-over, but none of the sailors were close enough for a proper inspection. “Even the best ship in the world is just a bunch of wood and canvas without a crew. So what are we dealing with?”
Talon shrugged. “They look like the usual Freeport dock scum. I can’t say much for their appearance or hygiene, but they seem to know what they’re doing. The captain’s an old sea dog of a gryphon who probably drinks salt water. Started off scrubbing decks when he was a kid and worked his way up. Smells a bit of grog, so the two of you should get along famously. He’s been making this run for a few years now, so he knows the waters and our route.”
“That'll just have to do then.” I took a deep breath, grimacing at the mixture of sea air, wet wood and tar that accompanied any sailing ship. Not to mention the dozen or so other odors of an active dockside. “So he makes slave runs all the time. Guess that figures. Well, at least that means he knows his business.”
“Right. Our business now too.” Talon grimaced, her eyes flicking across the harbor towards the big fat-bellied freighter we’d be escorting. The ship’s crew was loading up a long chain gang of hollow-eyed zebras and gryphons, shuffling them down into the hold. The wind shifted, and I could swear I smelled the damned ship. It wasn’t pretty. That many creatures crammed into a small space for a month’s time never was.
Worse than the smell, there was something else about the whole ship that just put me on edge. I’d never been one for magic or superstition, but there was something about that ship that just felt ... wrong. Like ... like all the misery, pain, and despair of all the thousands of slaves it had hauled had somehow soaked into the very boards of the ship, contaminating the whole damned thing.
Feathers, we hadn’t even started the job and I already couldn’t wait for it to be over.
I grimaced and turned away, doing my best to put the ship out of my mind. “That isn’t our responsibility. We’re just supposed to be some extra muscle if anyone tries to attack them. Makes no difference what the cargo is.”
“That is what they say, isn’t it?” Torch cut in. “But none of the others in the company seem to agree this is just the same as any other escort job.”
“Morale could be better,” Talon agreed, speaking a bit more carefully than the new recruit. “Some of the men are saying we should’ve stayed in Port Nowhere and looked for another job, and the rest are probably thinking it.”
Big surprise. I’d probably be saying the exact same thing if I were in their shoes. But then, they didn’t know how bad the company’s finances were or how little luck I’d had finding anything else. “This is the only way to get back to Freeport with an intact company and the money to keep them from scattering to the winds once they find out they aren’t getting paid. You got a better idea, I’d be happy to hear it.”
“It’s a bad situation, sir.” Talon sighed and shook her head. “The men understand. They don’t like it, but they understand.”
“Though there are a few unanswered questions about what exactly our job is,” Torch chimed in once more. “Everyone knows about seeing off pirates and thieves, and that we’re not supposed to get involved with the actual slaves, but what do we do if they break out on the other ship? Do we step in to protect our clients, or is that not our problem?”
I grimaced and shook my head. “Nothing official one way or the other in our contract, but if we show up in port without the cargo we’re escorting I doubt we’ll get paid.” There was technically an exception for if the ship sank due to weather or captain error, but that was only for half pay and required us to rescue the captain of the slave ship so he could testify we’d done everything we could to save the ship and its cargo. Any storm nasty enough to sink a big freighter like that probably wouldn’t leave us in any shape to mount a rescue, and if the captain ran into a reef he wouldn’t admit it just to save our pay.
Torch frowned and shook his head. “So we do whatever it takes to get the cargo there?”
“That’s what they’re paying us for,” Talon answered simply.
I grunted and nodded along. “Any other circumstances, if the slaves busted out I’d make a snack and sit back and watch them go on their merry way. But right now we have a job. Getting back to Freeport won’t do us much good if we end up too poor to buy our next meal. Odds are we’d end up in chains ourselves to replace the slaves we let get away.”
“Quite.” Torch sighed and nodded. “Like you said, far from ideal.”
“Life has a way of putting us in spots like that.” I sighed and shook my head. “We’ll find something better when we get back to Freeport.” Maybe if I kept repeating that to myself I’d eventually believe it. It was nice to believe that we just had to do the one bad job before everything cleared up, but the ugly truth was that jobs where we got to keep our noses clean and feel good about ourselves were few and far between. Merc work tended to be ugly, especially when the necrocrats were the ones with all the money and power in Freeport.
Even the jobs we got that sounded clean on the surface probably had all kinds of nasty stuff going on underneath. The job we’d originally come to Port Nowhere for had been to recover some exotic creatures from the mostly unexplored continent to the southwest. Says a lot when going into a tropical jungle hellscape full of huge killer lizards constituted a clean job. And even then, the necrocrat who was paying us probably wanted the creatures to find some way to turn them into giant killer zombie monsters.
Torch grimaced and flicked a bit of dirt off his cloak. “So we’re just holding our nose and getting through this one nasty job before finding better work.”
“Yes.” There was something about his tone I didn’t care for. Almost as if he was judging me. The last thing I needed was the new meat in the company looking down on me and having an opinion. “That a problem?”
Torch shrugged and answered with a disarming smile. “Not really. Just getting a feel for the company and my commander.”
I grunted and shook my head. It was a good answer, but the fact that I had to ask the question in the first place... “My job is to look out for the soldiers under my command, and sometimes that means taking jobs that stink. Mercenary work isn’t for saints or people with too much of a conscience, especially not in Freeport. We do the job, and then we get paid enough to keep our heads above the water for a bit longer.”
“I see.” Torch’s eyes lingered on me for several seconds. “When was the last time you took a job you were proud of?”
“Pride’s like honor: it doesn’t pay the bills.” The closest I could think of to something like that was being proud of the job I didn’t take. Yeah, a merc being happy about not working. Do the numbers on that. Still, ancient history, and bringing up the Charger Contract in front of Torch would just feel like I was fishing for his approval or something. I frowned at the young stallion. “You ever been responsible for anything?”
“Yes,” Torch answered.
For a moment I was curious to ask what a homeless merc with no family who was desperate enough to sign up with us could’ve been in charge of, but no sense getting sidetracked. “So you know what's it’s like to be a leader. You’ve had to deal with the pressure of everyone else counting on you to get it right, and knowing that if you feather up they’re all screwed.”
“It’s a heavy responsibility,” Torch agreed. “And sometimes it requires doing things you don’t want to. Like taking an ugly, amoral job just to pay the bills.”
I grunted again, not quite acknowledging his point but certainly not disagreeing with it. The wind shifted again, bringing us all a fresh wave of the damned awful stink coming off the slave ship. It served as a rather pointed reminder of just how terrible our job was. “Any other questions?”
Torch shook his head, leaning back against the railing. “Nothing for now.”
“Right.” I looked him over again, an idea coming together. “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean. Being out on the ocean surrounded by salt water isn’t going to do our gear any favors. Might as well put you to work cleaning it.”
Torch regarded me with a raised eyebrow. “I thought each of us was responsible for keeping up our own gear?”
“Yes, but we also keep a cache of company steel.” Equipment broke sometimes, and keeping a few backups for new hires who didn’t have their own gear was just common sense. “You’re the new meat, so you get to fix it all. Do a good job and I might even let you spend the rest of the trip looking after everyone else’s gear too.”
“An excellent motivator for me to apply myself.” Torch commented dryly. “I thought the Striker Clan tradition was to never let someone else take care of your own gear?”
“It’s been a long time since we were part of the clan,” I growled. “And even back in the old days, we had inspections to make sure everyone was doing it properly. Besides, it’s a good way to get to know the rest of the troops. You’ll meet each one of them, and by the time you’re done you’ll know their weapons and armor.”
“Plus all the other details you might glean,” Talon chimed in. “Which soldiers are studious about keeping their gear in top condition, and who slacks on it. The ones who are willing to do the job themselves and just pass it off to you for approval versus the ones who leave you to do all the work yourself. The ones who go over every detail of how you should handle their gear, and who doesn’t give a damn about it.”
Torch nodded along slowly. “That makes sense. It doesn’t make me look forward to it any more than I was before, but it makes sense.”
“Good.” Talon turned to me. “Speaking of gear inspections, we should also have the men run regular combat drills. On top of familiarizing ourselves with the ship and making sure everyone’s sharp, it would be best to avoid having them lounging about for too long with nothing to do.”
“Good thinking.” I nodded to her. “Well, let’s see where they’ve got us bunked. Hope there’s enough room for some actual airflow, or our ship’ll stink as bad as the one we’re protecting once the month’s done.”
A few initial hiccups aside, we managed to get underway with relatively little trouble. Talon and I both had private cabins as befit our rank, and the rest of the troops had decent enough quarters down in the hold. Tighter than I liked, but nowhere near as cramped as I’d been afraid of. They’d handled a lot worse.
Not to say they loved the conditions so much they’d lounge around down there outside of bunk time. Most of them stayed out on deck as much as possible, getting fresh air. Talon decided to keep them from getting bored and restless by giving them plenty to do; right now the sergeants putting the men through the paces until they were all so worn out from training they wouldn’t even think of getting rowdy. She was a big believer in the old adage about making training so hellish that actual combat seemed easy by comparison. After a week of drills from her the soldiers would be praying for an enemy attack.
Torch was hard at work with the rest of them, swinging his sword through attack routines. I couldn’t quite identify what it was that was so odd about his combat style, but it’s not like most mercs had an especially consistent one. He was probably using whatever the Charger drillmasters had put into his head before the house fell and combining it with a dozen other random bits and pieces of inspiration from random mercs and travellers he’d come across since. It’s how most mercs developed their skills.
I shrugged and squared off against him, drawing my old double-headed axe. “Might as well get a look at what you’re capable of.”
Torch paused for a moment’s thought, then shrugged. “A spar? Certainly.” He drew his sword, letting me get a good look at it for the first time. The blade looked way too good for a normal merc; there wasn’t a single chip or spot of rust on it, and the ripple-pattern on the blade looked like something a lot more special than plain old steel. From the way he flourished the blade he clearly knew how to use it, and the long single-edged sword looked like it’d lop off a limb if he got a solid hit in. Good thing we both had plenty of practice padding.
I grunted and hefted up my axe. “Nice sword. Where’d you get it?”
“Family heirloom,” Torch answered, sounding a lot more terse than usual. No surprise, given the subject. “It’s about the only thing I have left.”
“Right.” I stood there, feeling unusually awkward about the conversation. I mean, the feather do you even say to something like that? I eventually found a safe enough topic. “So it’s an heirloom. That sword got a name?”
“None that I know of.” He shrugged, then saluted me with it. “It’s a very good sword though. What about your axe?”
I twirled it around a few times. “Nope. A gryphon reiver tried to take my head off with it, and when I stuck my sword between his ribs the blade got stuck. Couldn’t spare a couple minutes to wrestle it out, so I just grabbed the axe and carried on. Think I like the axe better anyway; don’t have to be as fancy with it.”
“I’m surprised,” Torch murmured. “I didn’t think it would have a story at all, even one as bare-bones as that. You don’t strike me as the sentimental type.”
I shrugged. “Don’t have much to be sentimental about. In my experience, people going on about the good old days are just deluding themselves with some rose-tinted fantasy of back when they were too young and stupid to see the world for what it is.”
Torch chuckled softly. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible cynic?”
“Only everyone I’ve ever met,” I shot back with a faint smirk.
“You don’t believe in much, do you?” he asked.
“Believing in things makes you stupid and gets you killed,” I groused. “There’s nothing like a good cause to bring out the worst in everyone. Just look at what happened to the old clans. Telling themselves they’re freeing Equestria, when they’re really just so determined to protect their old privileges they thought teaming up with Nightmare Feathering Moon was a good idea.”
“Mmm.” I caught a flicker of a disapproving scowl on Torch’s lips before he managed to hide it. Guess he was one of those types who got all starry-eyed about the honor and glory of the old clans. Guess I could get it. Who didn’t love the idea of our noble ancestors fighting for truth, justice, freedom and all that rot? Too bad the reality was that the clans’ idea of justice was a world where they got to be the warrior elite, and everyone else served them. I’ll trust someone who admits they’re an asshole backstabber way faster than someone who tries to act noble. At least the first guy’s being honest with you.
Torch brought his blade into a high guard, evidently expecting me to try and chop down through his defenses. “Well, shall we dance?”
“I’m not a dancer.” I decided to accommodate him for the first strike. After all, beating him wasn’t the goal, it was figuring out how good he was.
Torch caught the flat of my axe with the flat of his own blade, smoothly parrying it even as he sidestepped to make sure he was clear. I grunted and nodded. At least he knew how to properly defend against someone trying to smash his skull in, redirecting my attacks rather than trying to block them with brute force. It was one of the most basic lessons any fighter learns, but having competence was more than I could say for some of the fresh meat I’d recruited. If there was one thing I missed about being on good terms with the rest of the clan, it was getting a steady supply of new recruits who at least had a solid foundation of all the basic skills a merc needed.
I picked up the pace, tossing out a few feints to see if he’d fall for them. The kid was good, keeping his guard up and not getting pulled out of position. This wouldn’t be an easy one. He was lot nimbler with his sword than I was with my axe, and I couldn’t really take advantage of the fact that an axe could hit harder. If I hit him while I was going all out it could do some serious damage even with all the padding, and while I wasn’t averse to giving the new meat a hard time I drew the line at actually hurting them. Besides, last thing I needed was to put one of my own soldiers out of action with cracked ribs when we might have a fight coming up..
Torch was only making me happier the longer we went on. It was hard to be sure when it was all a practice match where neither of us was serious, but I had a feeling that if we were going at it for real he’d make me work for it. This kid was a real find, probably officer material once he got a bit of experience and seniority with the company.
He caught my axe in another parry, this time hooking his blade under the curve of my axe to pull it a bit further out of position than I would’ve liked. Then he did something weird. He started to make an odd sort of hoof gesture but froze halfway through, hesitating for a critical half-second.
I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but I wasn’t going to let the opening go to waste. Rather than fight the lock on he had on my blade I struck with the base of my axe handle, thumping him in the chest. It didn’t do much more than knock him off balance for a second, but that was enough for me to get my axe free and bring the blade around, stopping my swing well before it would’ve connected, but close enough to make my point.
Torch grimaced and let his blade dip down until the point tapped the deck. “Well played, sir.”
I frowned at him. “You hesitated there. That’ll kill you against an opponent that knows what they’re doing.”
“Right, I should have known better.” He sighed and shook his head. “I was trying to judge whether the strike I had in mind was safe for a spar.”
“Fair enough,” I grunted, seeing no reason to push the issue. The last thing I wanted was to lose an ear to some overeager young whelp trying too damn hard to impress me. “Want a bit more padding, or are we good?”
Torch shook his head. “This should be fine.”
“Then get your guard up.” I came at him again, pushing a little bit harder this time. Torch continued to match me, but the longer the spar went the more I started to notice something a bit off about his combat style. It kind of reminded me of one time when I’d gone up against Nimble Doo. The guy liked to use an offhoof dagger along with his sword. About halfway through I’d knocked away his dagger, and after that the fight went all wrong for him. The guy was used to having two weapons, and trying to go back to just one threw off his style.
So was that what it was? There was a missing element to how he fought, and it was showing up as we went at it. Not the craziest thing. I knew plenty of moves that wouldn’t be showing up in a friendly spar with a new recruit.
Still, it was a weakness I planned to make him pay for. A merc needs to be adaptable, and if you’re no good without all your favorite tricks it’ll go bad whenever you can’t use them. If I could hammer that weakness out of Torch early on, before he got too set in his ways... “You’re doing it again.”
“Am I?” When I made my next strike to take advantage of the opening he brought his sword around whip-quick, catching the haft and nudging my strike wide. I expected him to try and get his sword around for another strike, but instead he stepped inside my guard and shoulder-checked me. While I was off-balance he shifted his sword to fully lock my blade, and he had the position and leverage to disarm me with little more than a flick of his wrist.
Right as the triumphant smirk was working its way onto his lips I pulled one of my hidden daggers, bringing it right up to his throat. Torch blinked, then reluctantly let his sword fall once more. “I'm impressed, sir. That's two for you.”
I put the dagger away. “Word of advice: always keep back a couple tricks they won’t see coming. You’d be surprised how many times a hidden knife will turn a loss into a win.”
“Didn’t you just give your trick away?” Torch pointed out.
I grunted and put the dagger away. “If you think that’s the only one I’ve got...”
“The captain likes to keep three or four hidden daggers on himself at all times,” Talon chimed in. “The one he used then was the obvious one that’s supposed to get found whenever someone checks him for hidden weapons. He always says that nobody trusts a merc who isn’t hiding at least one weapon.”
“Because all mercs keep a hidden backup,” I shot back. “Every single one. If a search doesn’t turn one up, it just means he’s hiding it really well. It’s why I keep the one there, and the others in places nobody knows about.”
“I’d wager half the whores in Freeport could tell you exactly where they are,” Talon murmured not quite loud enough for me to call her on it.
“I’ll remember that, sir,” Torch answered dutifully.
“Right.” I was about to let it drop when an ugly thought sprang to mind. Torch was fighting like there was something missing from his style, and we’d just been talking about keeping a knife hidden for just in case. What if it wasn’t a weakness in how he fought or some piece of gear he’d lost, but something he was deliberately holding back?
That made entirely too much sense, and I didn’t like it. Then again, it wasn’t like I’d ever turned out Talon’s gear and made her tell me where she kept all her hidden weapons. She had even more than me, considering she liked to keep throwing knives for when her crossbow was out of ammo or taking too long to reload. If I jumped on every merc who kept a couple secrets from me, I wouldn’t have a merc company left.
I scowled and shook my head. “I’m getting old. If I was a decade younger I’d be taking you apart right now. Not sure what’s going on with your style, but it’s off.”
Torch shrugged, an easy grin on his lips. “I suppose I might just be out of practice.”
I didn’t like that answer. It was too neat and simple. The truth is usually a lot uglier and way more complicated. Whatever, let him keep his secret if he cared that much about it. As long as he wasn’t planning to put that hidden dagger in my back, it made no difference to me. “Come on, we’re doing this until you get it right or I get tired of trying to teach you. Probably the latter, if I had to guess.”
Torch chuckled and flourished his sword before coming in to start the next round. “Come now sir, I’m not that bad. I’ve had the same clan training as you, after all.”
I fell into the easy rhythm of sparring, taking my time to feel him out and try to suss out what it was he was holding back. “Yeah? Is that all?”
Torch shrugged and matched my pace. “Well, as far as formal training goes. I’ve picked up a few bits and pieces from all manner of other sources over the years. After the fall of my clan I did quite a bit of travelling. I suppose there’s something about my face that just makes everyone want to teach me a few useful combat tricks.”
“Right.” I scowled at the reminder of what happened to his clan. “Foul business, that.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He sighed and shook his head, dropping his blade to a rest position. “Magnus's Folly, they called it. If only they knew how right they were.”
I followed his lead. I hadn’t been eager to bring it up, but as long as we were discussing the whole damned mess... “Normally not one to speak ill of the dead, but Magnus was a vainglorious fool who got a lot of ponies killed. The idiot couldn't get it through his head that Pegasopolis is dead, and has been for a long time. Thinking he could take on Equestria with a few hundred warriors was lunacy.”
“The folly goes far deeper than that.” Torch sheathed his blade and took a seat. “Magnus saw the rift developing between the clans. The Doos went from escorting merchant ships to owning them. My own family became more and more embroiled with the Necrocrats, to the point of learning their arts. And your clan remained mercenaries. The old bonds were fading as the clans diverged, and he thought the best way to rekindle them was to try and rekindle an old hate for the homeland that exiled us centuries ago.”
I snorted and shook my head. “If I hated everyone who crossed one of my great-great-ancestors, I’d hate the whole world, and probably myself in the bargain.”
“Yes,” Torch agreed. “The idea that the clans could be bound together by rekindling the old hates of the war from centuries ago...” He shook his head. “Hate never builds anything, it’s only good for destruction. Not to mention the whole plan hinged on a string of desperate gambles and a fool’s hope. When the clans wouldn’t join him for the attack, he hoped that they’d change their minds if he won a couple battles.”
“Everyone loves to be on the winning side,” I agreed. “Only problem is they all knew that would be Equestria. Even if he caught them off guard and sacked a coastal town or two after beating up the local militia, he was sure to lose as soon as they mounted a proper response.”
“And as it was he didn’t even get that far.” Torch scowled, pacing over the side of the ship. “The Equestrians were ready for him when he landed. Considering what happened after that, I’m inclined to think someone forewarned them. My family had its share of rivals among the other necrocrats, and once Magnus’s Folly destroyed a large portion of our fighting strength we were an easy target.”
“Especially when nobody saw the final hammer coming,” I grunted.
Torch sighed and shook his head. “For a moment, we dared to hope the other clans were coming to help us in our hour of need. Then the first volley came in.”
“Not all of us,” I grunted, a bit of the old anger stirring in my heart.
Torch looked back and me and nodded. “No. Not all of you. It’s why I’m here.”
“Surprised you haven’t spent the last decade killing as many Strikers and Doos as you can get your hooves on.” I snorted and shook my head. “It’s what I’d do.”
Torch’s eyes narrowed, and I heard a hint of a furious growl in his voice. “Don’t think I’m not tempted. No offense, but if I’m ever alone in a room with the pater of your clan...”
“If I was there I’d hold him down for you,” I mumbled under my breath, hopefully not loud enough for him to hear. After all, Nightshade was a cousin. I might not give much of a damn about being proper, but openly discussing kinslaying was too much. Especially in front of a guy I barely knew.
Torch sighed and slumped back against the railing. “Revenge might be momentarily satisfying, but I doubt it would do any good. After all, the clans were just mercenaries. The worst of the Necrocrats are ruling over Freeport, and Ushabti's dream is dead.” He snorted and shook his head. “It makes you wonder if that’s the fate of all idealists. To see everything they built collapse into misery and ruin.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “That’s the problem with dreams and grand plans: they don’t survive in the real world. Reminds me of that old saying about how you should never meet your heroes. The guy you’ve never met can get put up on a pedestal, and you can believe in him ‘cause he’ll never do wrong. Real people can only ever disappoint you.”
“You really are a cynic.” Torch chuckled. “Well, I suppose I knew that at the start of this conversation. Anyway, I think that’s enough of maudlin dwelling on the past. You said you could win five rounds against me.” He stepped back into the center of the deck. “I say we put that boast to the test.”
I smirked and readied my axe. “Five? Feather it, I’ll go ten.”