Where Loyalties Lie

Chapter 32 - Fortune

“Dead man walking.”

Drake walked beside the man with members of his crew both in front and behind. They trudged their way up the hot sand towards the tavern; somehow it seemed the most fitting place for the event, given that its bones had been taken from the Man of War.

It didn’t really seem like there was much to say, and the man wasn’t exactly in the chattiest of moods. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since the day he broke. When Drake had pulled him out of the hold of the Fortune, he’d been unresponsive at best and pitiful at worst. His uniform was faded and stained, stinking of sweat, his moustache was an overgrown bush, and his eyes looked like they belonged on a dead man. Soon they would.

It was a rare thing to see a man so broken after so little. They’d taken his ship and killed most of his men, but that was something every experienced sailor had to keep in the back of their mind as a possibility. The former admiral had given up his secrets under duress, but again that was rarely enough to truly break a man. To crack a man to this degree, to the point where he was little more than a walking, eating, shitting doll, wasn’t easy. But Drake had seen it before. Long ago, down deep under the earth, Drake had seen it.

The Drurr were masters of torture the likes of which even the Inquisition couldn’t match. Drake had seen men and women mutilated, cut up and put back together wrong, made to live with the monsters they’d become. He’d seen tortures of the mind, folk balanced on the edge of terror for so long they actually craved the pain, because the waiting – the expectation, the anticipation – was just too much.

Once Drake had asked the matriarch why they tortured their slaves, and she’d told him with venom. Those Drurr who had taken him hated humanity. They were bitter beyond madness, and all that bile and contempt was directed towards mankind. The humans had once been their slaves, but the Dread Lords had changed all that by decimating the Drurr population, destroying their greatest kingdom and corrupting their dead. Then came Volmar and his Inquisition, and what was left of the Drurr became hunted, persecuted, and driven from the world above. The Drurr had once ruled the world; thanks to humanity, they now ruled nothing. Even their homes deep underground were ruled by terrors far older and more powerful than they.

“Dead man walking,” a woman’s voice called out. It snapped Drake out of his morbid revery.

Scanning the crowd gathered to watch the admiral’s final walk, Drake recognised a lot of the people, both refugees and pirates. It seemed almost everyone on the island was waiting up ahead, near the tavern, to watch the man die.

“Sorry about this,” Drake said quietly.

The admiral didn’t respond.

Maybe it was the memories of his past, but Drake was feeling more than a little hesitant at the thought of killing the broken man. “What was it that did this to you?”

The admiral lifted his head a little and turned empty eyes on Drake. He said nothing.

“Wasn’t giving up your kingdom’s secrets, was it?”

Still no response.

“Was it Beck? The Arbiter?”

The admiral turned his head away, and Drake thought he saw tears welling up in his eyes.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Drake stopped and turned the admiral to face him. “You believe the Arbiter should save you. One of Volmar’s faithful should put us all to the torch. Instead you find her working for me, using the magic of her faith to pull the truth from you.”

“How could she use her magic,” the admiral said, sounding resigned, “if she wasn’t still faithful to him?”

Drake nodded. “So now you’re wondering which side of this conflict Volmar is truly on?”

The admiral nodded and his shoulders sagged, his body shaking with sobs.

“Well, then I guess I’ll let you in on the truth of it,” Drake said in little more than a whisper. “Your god doesn’t care. We ain’t heretics, just folk trying to survive. Your attack on us, your murder of our people, wasn’t divine judgement, Admiral. It was politics, plain and simple.”

“Everything we do, we do for Volmar,” the admiral protested. “The order came from Emperor Francis, and he is Volmar.”

“No.” Drake shook his head. “The order came from the merchants we steal from. Your God Emperor just mouthed the words. Is the Arbiter by my side not proof enough for you?”

The admiral buried his head in his manacled hands and sobbed.

“You need more proof?” Drake said. “Fine.” Drake nodded to one of the pirates waiting nearby, and the admiral was driven up the beach towards the tavern, where the angry mob of refugees and pirates waited to lynch him.

Drake and the admiral stood in a circle of hundreds of people. The entire town of New Sev’relain crowded around them, and they were shouting for the Sarth officer to die. Drake basked in the attention for a while before waving for silence.

“For most of you this is your first look at Admiral Tattern, the man who commanded the ship that burned Black Sands and Sev’relain. The man responsible for the deaths of so very many of us.”

An angry cheer circulated through the crowd, and a stone flew out of the back ranks and landed in the sand near the admiral.

“Hey,” Drake shouted. “That could have hit me. Next person who throws something gets to drink a pint of the sea.”

The crowd quieted.

“Now, I know you all want him dead. You want to see him strung up and turning purple. Well, I’m suggesting a different punishment. I reckon you should let him live.”

Shouts erupted from the crowd, and they weren’t just from the refugees. Pirates from both crews added their voices to the argument. Drake almost changed his mind when he realised his own crew were against the idea, but again he held up his hand and waved for silence. This time he didn’t get it.

“Death is a shit punishment,” Drake roared, and the crowd slowly quieted. “You want to send this cockstain to the grave. All that does is release him.” Drake gave the admiral a heavy push, and the man stumbled and collapsed to the sand. He remained there on his knees.

“He tried to wipe us all out, but here we are. What better way to punish him than show him how useless his efforts were? Make the bastard watch us rise back out of the ashes. Let him live. If he wants to wander off into the jungle and seek his own death, he can. But if that drive to live we all possess makes him want to eat and drink and keep going, then make him work for it.”

Drake turned a full circle, sweeping the entire crowd with his gaze. “Either way, it’s up to you. I won’t kill him.” He started off down the beach, back towards the Fortune. He grinned as he heard others taking up his advice.