Tales of a Headlands Brawler

[Dremonth]

”My eye?” chuckling while looking at Lil ”All right I’ll humor you, even if the story is scarcely something for ladies ears!”, steepling his fingers he would adopt a thoughtful expression “Now let me see”



As I might have said earlier I spent a period of time at Stoneward prison, usually quite orderly as far as a prison goes but… well it was a bit different from the norm when my lot arrived. We had recently been apprehended for instigating rebellion against the king, which was indeed quite true. We had risen up against the ruler classes and their morally bankrupt plans, but when citizenry rise up against nobility… one finds that the rebels has quite the tall order to fill. We had this narrowest of windows when we could have succeeded in displacing the King and his followers… and failed. The leadership of the Northgate rebellion was captured and sent to Stoneward, along with whatever man at arms that Lord Crowley had with him at the time… like yours truly.

But to return to the prison itself, it was usually quite the upstanding establishment. But when our folk were carted in, we noticed that the highly vaunted professionalism was somewhat lax. The guards would not react to a Northgate rebel being beaten up by fellow inmates, yet crack down on the same rebel if he tried to fend for himself. Now I don’t know what kind of wages a prison guard would pull, but if they were being paid per bruise on our hides... then they would be living quite fine indeed. Now they did not touch Lord Crowley of course, him being a nobleman and all with a fair deal of connections he could pull, but the common folk of the Northgate rebellion were more or less fair game.

In fact there was this one big brute; now what was his name… oh yes... Euchuriya Sims. Who Sim was? Well as far as I gathered, he was before his incarceration in the business of beating the living shit out of each and every shop owner that would not pay him not to. And as far as my sources were correct, he did quite well in the protection trade, that is until he had threatened one clothier too many, a clothier with contacts that is. So he found himself landed in Stoneward, and being a pragmatic son of a bitch he had decided to simply move his business from outside the prison walls… to inside them. When the rebels were put behind bars he was given a plethora of soft targets, as the guards did not intervene on their behalf he could ply his trade as much as he wanted… or at least that was what he thought.
He had sighted in McGregor, a young farmhand from the headlands, as his first target. Wobbling over his postulant bulk to the youngster one day in the courtyard, he had a certain dark look over him which telegraphed exactly what he had in mind. I don’t actually think Sims had a single delicate bone in his body, for right there in the middle of daylight he simply biffed young McGregor right in the face. The lad was simply dumbstruck of shock by this sudden aggression, and of course the thin rivulets of blood coming out of his nose. Sims towered over him with the smuggest shit eating grin you could ever imagine, moving to kick the boy where he laid as the guards had not moved at all in response to his actions.

Now at this point Sims plan went fairly wrong, having let his guard down entirely as his victim showed no signs of rising up to defend himself. If I could have made a picture of the expression he made after I had sank my right fist in his side… I’d have the basis for a great comedy. The sound of my punch went through the entire courtyard, and this time the clinking sounds of guardsman armor moving rapidly towards us could be heard. Sims face however was redder than the reddest dawn, such humiliated fury one can hardly believe, and he retaliated against my punch with one of his own. Taking it squarely in the chest, it was all I could do not to lose my breath, having been hit by what must have been a meat battering ram. Having taken his hit however, I found myself in a brilliant position to return it, and so I did. The sound of clattering china is reminiscent of what I heard there, as my left fist sent Sims teeth flying in a spray of gore. I was going to finish it all with a knee to the stomach when I think my head exploded… a guardsman’s cudgel had hit me squarely on the side of my head.

I woke up… I think three days later, in solitary confinement. Mind you, despite the pain of a ruined eye, and the constant ringing of my head, I must say the mental image of a toothless Euchuriyah Sims cheered me up immensely!