Kell's Legend

women, the youngest woman only sixteen or seventeen years old, hair braided in pigtails, pink skirts soiled from her forest escape. His eyes flickered to the two men. They were plump, hands ink-stained: town workers and bureaucrats, not warriors.
    Styx leant forward a little, and drummed his fingers on the table. Saark saw they were near to Kell’s Svian, and he blinked. It was unlike Kell to leave behind this weapon; it was his last blade, what he used when parted from his axe. A Svian, so the unwritten rule went, was also used in times of desperation for suicide. For Kell to have left it was…foolish, and meant that something had touched him; had rattled his cage. Did he know these people?
    “You’re a pretty little man, aren’t you?” said Styx. He smiled through blackened stumps of teeth, which merged nauseatingly with the stained lips of the Blacklipper. I bet his breath stinks like a skunk, thought Saark.
    “What, you mean in contrast to your own obviously handsome facial properties?”
    Anger flared in Styx’s good eye, but he controlled it with skill. Saark became wary. There was something more at stake here than a simple trading ofinsults. This was too controlled, too planned. What did they want?
    “What I meant to say,” said Styx, tongue moistening his black lips, “is that you’re a pretty boy.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Well, it’s like this. I love fucking pretty boys, so I do. In more ways than one.”
    Jex laughed, and Saark caught a glimpse of steel beneath clothing. A hidden blade. Saark’s hand strayed towards his own sword, a tentative crawl of edging fingers, eyes never leaving the two men exuding hate and arrogance and dark violent energy.
    “I like to hear them squeal, you understand,” smiled Styx, “only because pretty boys take so much better to the knives, to the scars. They scream, high and long, like a woman, and when you fuck them, later on as they’re bent over a log or table, oh that feeling, so tight, so much resistance,” he laughed, a low grumble of mirth, “what I like to call a good tight virgin-fuck, well man, that brings tears to old Styx’s eye. But not as much as flowing tears to the weeping eyes of a pretty boy.”
    Saark smiled easily. “Well then, gentlemen, you seem to have me mixed up with somebody else. Because I fuck women, I fuck men, I fuck anything that moves. I’m used to taking it, so would offer little sport as your…how do you say? Virgin-fuck? But what I will offer…” He launched up, sword out, a movement so quick it brought the room to a sudden standstill and caught Styx and Jex with their mouths open…“Well, if it’s a little sword-sport you want, I’m all yours, gentlemen.”
    Slowly, Jex pulled a weapon from beneath his clothing and pointed it at Saark. It was small, little bigger than his hand, and made from polished oak. Saark tilted his head, frowning. He had never seen such a weapon. There came a tiny click.
    “You are familiar, of course,” said Jex, “with the workings of a crossbow? This is similar. It can punch a fist sized-hole through a man at a hundred metres. It works on clockwork, was created by the very enemy who now advance through our land.” He stood, chair scraping, and Saark licked suddenly dry lips. Styx stood as well, beside Jex, and pulled free a similar weapon.
    “We call it a Widowmaker,” said Styx, single eye gleaming. “But rather than cause unnecessary bloodshed, I see you need a demonstration.” His arm moved, there came a click and a whump as the clock-work-powered mini-crossbow discharged. The sixteen year-old villager was picked up and slammed across her bed, an impact of red at her breast, a funnel of flesh exploding from her back and splattering up the wooden wall with strips of torn heart and tiny shards of bone shrapnel.
    “No!” screamed the older woman, and ran to the dead teenager, sobbing, mauling at her corpse which rolled, slack and useless and dead, to the floor. The room fell still; cold and terrifying.
    “Damn you, you could have fired at a target!” raged Saark.
    Styx nodded, gaze fixed to Saark. “Aye, I did. I find the horrors of the flesh have more immediate impact.”
    Kat stalked forward, eyes furious, hands clenching and unclenching. “You cheap dirty stinking bastards! She was an innocent villager, she meant no harm to you; why the hell would you do that? Why the hell would you kill an unarmed girl?”
    Styx smiled, showing blackened stumps. “Because,” he said,