Chapter 4 Gutter Gut #2
He stared ahead, not making eye contact with the officer who looked them over. What they were looking for, he didn’t know. As long as a soldier was standing, he passed. They weren’t even wearing any weapons. The lower ranks weren’t permitted to carry weapons outside of training.
While he enjoyed the physical exertion of using a sword, Brune wasn’t very skilled.
With size came strength, a boon to be sure, but it also made him slow.
He would be the first to admit he lacked the footwork needed to be a great swordsman.
Brune was clumsy. And while he was passable with a bow, he was certainly no Niklas.
He didn’t think his tall friend had ever missed a target, and he was fast.
No, Brune was certainly not a standout amongst the ranks. Not that he wanted to be. As long as he did as he was told, he was fed with a roof over his head.
Just as quickly as they came, the officers dismissed them. Releasing their breaths, the men let their shoulders slump as they milled about the courtyard. The officers got their rations first, then they were allowed into the mess.
Like it always did, pockets of conversations cropped up.
Mostly about things Brune didn’t care enough about to take part in—women, men, sex, food.
Discussing food just made him hungry. When he was a kid, he could occasionally con a merchant into giving him scraps—burnt batches of bread or molding fruit.
Those were the best days. Even now, he sometimes drifted off to the memory of the taste on his tongue.
The army provided him with food but didn’t care if it was appetizing.
And as for sex, well, he couldn’t really contribute to that conversation.
The only omegas he’d ever seen were far more interested in coin than his personality, and for a kid with nothing, it left little options.
He supposed he’d seen some pretty betas; but one look at his shorn hair and uniform had them promptly looking away again.
No amount of grooming or feeding could wipe the stink of Guttersnipes off him.
Something in the eyes he’d heard. A kind of desperation.
Either way, it wasn’t until he’d presented that he even had a sexual urge. And between training and being squashed in with a bunch of other pent-up alphas and betas…it wasn’t exactly romantic.
“What about you, Brune?” a new man called out across the yard, his smile lecherous. “Tits or ass?”
“Nah, don’t bother with him. He’s only interested in meat that comes on a stick!”
Niklas winced. At the implications or the terrible word play, Brune could only guess. Not that he wanted to. He smiled and waved them off, moving with Niklas to a less crowded space.
“I was wondering,” Niklas said quietly, arms wrapped around himself. “You don’t, um, I mean I-I know I’m not the best at talking about that kind of…stuff. If you wanted to talk to them, you don’t have to stay here.” Niklas’s face was on fire, eyes pinned to the ground between their feet.
Brune chuckled, adjusting his breastplate. “What’s there to talk about? When would I ever be in a position to even look at an omega?”
Niklas shrugged, looking a little more relaxed now that he knew Brune wasn’t going to wax poetic about the finer features of an omega.
Even if by some miracle Brune found someone willing to overlook his background—or rather a lack of one—and his poor station in the army, what would he do with them?
He could barely remember his parents, and what he did remember were flashes.
Blurred memories that meant nothing. He was pretty sure they were dead.
And as far as romance goes, his only example had been the old couple who shared an alley with him one time.
The alpha would give her beta extra scraps, pretending her stomach hurt. She died, and the beta moved on.
He heard a story once. It was raining, and he had been taking shelter under the broken down back porch of a house.
Curled up in the dirt, he heard a man reading a child a story.
Or maybe he was telling it from memory. Brune couldn’t see through the crack in the floorboards.
But the story was all about a knight fighting a dragon for a princess.
It ended with a happily ever after, but Brune didn’t think it was all that happy after all.
There were so many questions. Why was the dragon guarding the princess?
Wouldn’t an evil dragon just eat the princess?
Why spend so much time and effort keeping out other knights?
And if the princess was so worthy, why couldn’t she defeat the dragon on her own?
Brune never got an answer to his questions, but he knew one thing for sure—he would rather have someone fight at his side, or no one at all.
The door to the mess hall opened and Brune slung an arm around Niklas’s shoulders. “They are right about one thing. I am always willing to be first in line for food.”
His friend smiled shyly, allowing Brune to drag him to the chow line.
Hunched over his bowl of thin porridge, it took him a moment to notice the change in the air.
A tension that wasn’t usually present at breakfast. Niklas was steadfastly staring at his bowl, but everyone else was whispering.
Heads popped up, swiveling around before ducking back to continue the train of information.
Brune sat back, looking around until he saw it. The officers. They were acting twitchy, hands resting on their hilts and mouths pressed tight. When they did speak, it was behind a hand to keep it confidential.
“What do you think is going on?” he asked.
“Think I’m eating my breakfast,” Niklas replied lowly, refusing to look up.
“No, I mean with the—”
“Brune,” his voice was tight. “Nothing good ever happens from sticking your nose in officer business. Just eat.”
Ignoring his friend’s caution, he turned his head to try to catch some of the gossip.
“Ecker said we’re marching out.”
“What the fuck does Ecker know?”
“Nah, c’mon, you know his beta is sleeping with the battalion commander. She told him.”
Brune leaned into their conversation. “Did they say when? Where?”
He was answered with an elbow to the ribs, telling him to back off. He ignored the pain, turning back to Niklas with a broad grin.
Marching out! Finally! Brune had expected little when he joined up, but the idea of getting to leave the city, to finally pass through the massive portcullis and see what was beyond the heavy stone…
it was unthinkable. A dream he’d never thought come to reality.
The reasons for leaving hardly mattered—he didn’t join up for the cause and he doubted he’d ever really care—but the opportunity to leave, to see a world he couldn’t even imagine That was something he’d fight for.
“Do you think we’ll see the ocean?” he asked Niklas, forgetting his meager breakfast for now. “Or maybe a mountain! They say they’re taller than the walls! Can you imagine that? Something taller than the walls—and not even made by magic!”
Niklas ducked lower. “I think the porridge is especially warm today.”
Brune rolled his eyes at his lack of imagination, dropping his chin to an open palm so he could continue to dream.
But he couldn’t even do that. Brune’s whole life had been dirty cobbled streets in the shadows of walls so high he had to crane his neck back to see the top. To think there was a world out there, one so different from the one he knew. It was staggering.
“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Folsom said beside him, scraping his spoon across his bowl. “They’re going to send us to the plains.”
Brune blinked. What’s a plain? He didn’t ask, instead scooting closer. “When?”
“Soon as possible. Battalions three and four are going, too. Seems our good King is finally going to declare open war on those Clansmen bastards.”
His mouth fell open just as Niklas dropped his spoon, eyes wide in shock.
Clansmen! They’d heard the stories, of course.
Bloodthirsty monsters who consumed the flesh of their dead.
Mindless creatures who only thought of violence.
Surviving by the mercy of Kaledonea. He knew they’d attacked some Kaledonean patrols recently, but gossip was as unreliable as the water supply in Guttersnipe.
Some of his excitement about adventure waned under the prospect of real fighting. Brune knew that’s what he was being trained to do, obviously, but with fighting came the possibility of losing.
For so many years, he would fall asleep never to be sure he’d wake up. Would hunger steal his life in the night? Would his body rot for days before the cleanup crew came and got him? Sleep always came, and waking would always bring with it a sense of relief and horror. Another day to live through.
Would dying in some plain—whatever that was—miles away be any different?
Brune imagined lying on his back, blood seeping from a wound as he watched the clouds roll across a sky unobstructed by the walls.
There was no stink of overcrowding, no brazen rats dancing in the corner of his eye waiting for his final breath to pick him off.
No, there would just be sky.
Maybe that was worth the risk.
Brune, son of somebody, was many things. He was tall and strong. He was optimistic. He was always hungry.
And he was bored.
When told he was going to be marching out, he imagined endless adventures. New sights. Wild animals and people with stories and lore they’d share with him around a campfire.
What he got was a lot of walking.
The endless vistas he was sure he would see turned out to be the sweaty neck of the soldier marching in front of him. The exotic foods? Soldier rations and dust that crunched between his teeth.
At least the dust was foreign. Tasted the same, though.