Bounty
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Katz was a nasty piece of work. Wherever he went he left a trail of destruction, most of it human bodies. Not that that bothered Kull too much but it taught him to be wary. The warlord hereabouts at first hadn’t paid the bandit much attention. But when Katz intercepted one of his caravans carrying gold, he’d woken up. He’d put word out. Wanted, dead or alive. The “alive” fee was four times higher. Kull wanted nothing else. He was broke, had nothing to his name. His own last robbery, not too much left by the time he’d swapped the jewels in for coin … he’d pissed that and whored it away. The last remnants he’d lost. Hijacked one drunken night .. left for dead. Left broke. The blood-money on Katz would be a god-send.
Katz’s latest heist … he’d intercepted the warlord’s caravan. Rumour had it …. there’d been a fortune-and-a-half being quietly transported .. disguised like it was nothing much. Either Katz was a lucky motherfucker. Or he’d had someone on the inside.
Kull himself took to thieving when he was down on his luck. As such, he’d thought he knew how Katz’s thinking went. And he’d not been far off. He’d had a nose for the sucker. It had paid off. He was on the bastard’s trail, he HAD tracked him down, Either way, Kull reckoned, he was going to make a fortune. Either claiming the bounty. Or …. if things worked out right …. he might torture the sucker out of his mind. Get him to spill the beans .. where he kept his stash. It wouldn’t be the worst day of Kull’s life if he himself got his hands on the warlord’s treasury.
Be careful what you wish for, they said …. Kull’s life had not always gone to plan. And this time … well, it seemed he had fucked up again. Or it was those bastard motherfuckers again. Those vindictive gods .. they really had it in for him. Bad enough that his surprise ambush on Katz had not gone his way. He’d been fighting for his life against a heftier opponent. Tottering on the edge of a precipice. When these outlaws had turned up. Ten-to-one, those spiteful gods were behind this ambush. Hated it when Kull thought he had made his own luck.
They were going less than easy on him, these outlaws, Blindfolded, gagged, hands tied behind .. Kull struggled to walk. His captors had hardly been sympathetic. They had him tight on his rock-firm upper arms. But he couldn’t see. He’d trip, he’d falter. And get a good punching for his trouble. Any misstep carried with it a promise of a punch in the head. A fist to his side. And there’d been plenty of them. Probably the same was happening to Katz too. But Kull no longer cared one fuck about that prick. He’d feared getting thrown over the precipice when these outlaws found out he had no coin. They hadn’t done that. And now his guts churned with the thought … what next? What were these outlaws going to do with him? Sold as a slave? Make something out of his saleable hide?
They’d walked him some time. Now something had changed. The sun had disappeared. His skin felt cold. Through the bag over his head, sounds had sounded vaguely echoey. Reminiscent of being underground, in a cave. Suddenly there was water around his legs. He was crossing a stream? An underground stream? He could understood why these bandits had blindfolded him, he was lost. He was totally disoriented, he couldn’t work out what was happening to him. It had his nerves on edge.
No. Not crossing an underground stream. Intriguing. They had been walking him along the stream. For seeming ages. Walking in water over his ankles, an underground stream. His thoughts wandered. Strange words, those. Violators. And what had that alpha male said? Something about the hood .. so they didn’t “foul their sight with these crimes”? Or something strange like that. Something weird to hear from leader of an outlaw gang.
Suddenly Kull stubbed his foot on an unseen rock, he tripped. A punch to his neck added to the momentum, he stumbled into the guard on his other side. His head rocked, from a hard punch to the jaw. Lights flashed before his eyes in the deep blackness of his hood. Hands shook him, his escort harshly swore and barged him roughly along for giving them trouble. These pricks were certainly making it clear how much they thought of him. Shit, how those fucking gods were having a fucking-laugh at his expense .. belly laughs at the mess they’d got him into, laughing themselves sick. Thinking he could make something of himself! Thinking he could outsmart them. Those fucking-gods .. they made him sick.
Things had changed again, Kull realised, they had been hauled him out of the water. Walking again on dry ground. Oh shit! What the fuck! Where was he? Sun warm on his skin again. Where the fuck were they taking him? And what were these arseholes going to do with him?
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