"Stop! He was only here because that asshole was holding me hostage!" Nakelin yelled at me as Gallagher struggled to stop her from moving back around to interpose herself between us.

"Damn it!" Kos snarled from behind me. I glanced back at my brother-in-law, a high body stat clearly didn't do much to stop getting kicked in the nuts from hurting.

I slid my visor back so the woman could see my face. She was scrambling to break free from Gallagher's hold.

I cast Shape Earth, and the stone rose up around the woman, carefully shaped to avoid harming her or her baby, but it curled around her and pulled her away from my enemy.

Gallagher went insane. His leg had regrown down to the ankle, but the missing foot didn't seem to slow him as he surged to his remaining foot and lunged at me. I had triggered my Haste amulet the instant he moved. He flashed forward, growing in size once more, reaching out to me with fingers curled into claws.

I danced sideways, and my dagger flashed, leaving his right hand dangling, only held on to his arm by scraps of muscle and tendons.

Something blurred past my left side, then a spear sprouted from his overgrown shoulder. It had sunk into the gap between his collarbone and his neck. He reached up to yank it out as the wound glowed green. I hurled myself into the path the spear had taken and barged Kos out of the way. Even crippled, one hit from Gallagher would send him to join Mune on the moon Helas, where good warriors go when they die. I'd lost one friend. I wasn't about to lose another so soon.

"Leave him," I growled as I threw Kos away from the man.

"The nomads have a code," I said as I stalked around him just out of reach. "The shit-sitters don't understand us. Stupid savages, what's to understand? But we take vendettas very seriously."

"Us? You've gone native as well, then. Figures." He coughed a scarlet lump up and spat it onto the floor. "Let them go, and I won't fight," Gallagher said. I glanced at the woman and child. She was trying to break free of the stone, but wasn't strong enough.

"You took someone precious from me, bloke," I growled.

"So fucking kill me, you moron! Don't kill them!" The pain of losing Mune was boiling inside me. I wanted to make this man suffer for what he'd done. My code, my shitty, annoying code, overrode my impulse to take something precious from him out of spite.

"Kos, get the woman and child out of here. Find Kril and tell him to get his ass over here. "

"Mond, you can't-" Kos began.

"I can. Go find Fay and your nephew. Keep them safe," I growled. He glared at me but did as I asked. I used Shape Earth to move the stone covering the woman, setting her free, and then I sculpted a prison for Gallagher, locking him in place.

"Don't hurt her!" he shouted at me.

"The nomads aren't the savages in this world. That title belongs to my feral Huskar. Where is your boss, asshole?" I replied in an amicable tone that offset the harshness of my words.

"He's not my fucking boss! Why do you think Nakelin was in his dungeon, you ass?"

"If I could get that deep into the dungeon, you could have."

"I was being watched, you prick! If I so much as looked sideways at the guards, they'd have iced them! I won't lose a child!"

"You just robbed a wife of her husband, and tried to leave my child without a father! Kos, take the woman away, make sure she's treated well."

He snarled and tried to break free from the stone prison I'd shaped around his limbs. He failed. Kos dragged the shrieking woman and her child away.

"It will be fine, love. Focus on little Peytre! I love you!" Gallagher called as he sagged, finally accepting that he was trapped.

"How did you end up under Mortimer's power?" I asked. I wasn't willing to remove my armour quite yet; he could be faking not being able to break free, but as there hadn't been any further reinforcements from the palace, I was starting to relax. Kos was dragging the woman away, ignoring her hysterical screams and her attempts to hit him with another low blow. He was being careful to make sure the kid was safe as well, which softened my attitude towards him a little.

Gallagher looked up at me and grimaced. I was painfully conscious, although the pain was metaphorical in my case, of his hand knitting itself back onto his arm, and his missing foot was almost regrown.

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"I watched you beat the shit out of Greg McConnor in the octagon," I said.

"You and ten million others. So fucking what? Just don't hurt my wife and son!" he spat.

"Wife, eh? I'm not the only one who's gone native," I growled as I circled him.

"I started in some fucked up version of ancient Rome, Cobbler. I fought my way to the top of the gladiator ranks without taking a single fucking level. I earned my place on skill alone. And then that cunt Mortimer caught up with me," he finished bitterly.

"The bitch that killed us warned us about you. Everyone is waiting for you, Cobbler. We've all been building our strength, preparing for the psycho to make a run at us. If you've an ounce of humanity left in your black fucking soul, just kill me and spare my family."

He sagged as he finished speaking, his head hanging down as far as it could within the stone bonds I'd sculpted around him. What the hell was I feeling? Anger burned, an urgent desire to avenge Mune, but something akin to pity, to sympathy lurked at the back of my mind as well.

"I can't control you. You're a danger to me and my friends," I ground out through clenched teeth.

"Friends! Hah! Good one!" he sneered.

"Mune, the man you turned to fucking paste, has… had been with me since I joined the nomads. I was there at his wedding. I taught him how to fight!"

"Not well enough-" I kicked him in the face before he could finish that sentence.

"Maybe not. Do you know what the nomads do with prisoners?" I asked, forcing myself to jump to a jovial tone of voice.

"Make them fuck sheep? Oh, I know! They have to dance the Macarena!" I fought down the urge to kick him again.

"Not so much. The men will blind you and cripple you. They're more than happy to cut anything off as and when it regrows. Then the women will take your rod and your stones. And skin. The nomads are not fucking carebears."

"Makes sense you'd fall in with savages. What the hell are you waiting for? Just kill me already," he muttered.

"Why should I-" I began, but he cut me off.

"Cobbler. Quit fucking around. You think you're a proper road man, a gangster, but you're just a fucking thug who got into the dark side of life. I've seen your like before. You don't scare me, cunt. Kill me, or give me back my wife, my son, and fuck off." His words threw me for a loop. I was never what he seemed to think I had been back on Earth. A quiet professional with a career that had to be built in the shadows, sure, I'd accept that. I didn't throw my weight around; I wasn't dug in with the criminal elements back home unless they had the money and connections to hire me. I hadn't been an evil man. I'd been a kind of garbage collector, a human recycling facility, to return to the worms that which was theirs.

"I wasn't what she told you," I muttered.

"Not a killer? Tell that to the empty cities from here to Crathan!" he sneered.

"This shit hole is the furthest south me and my forces have been. I called my troops back when they broke into the city for fucks sake! I came here for Mortimer's head and that thing!" I stalked over and scooped up Death's Source from where it had rolled to one side.

"This is the key to his fucking monsters! When I took it, the amalgams died. All of them! Without the shard of Hadesti, those fuckers melted away, and now, wherever that twat is, his army just lost its most powerful weapons! Those things were the mushed-together remains of all the dead people you think I've killed. Does he have some kind of psychic power to turn people into fucking idiots?" I snapped.

"You're the dangerous one," he said slowly.

"After you! You were a champion!" I barked in reply. He fought against his bonds for a second, then grinned at me. He swelled, and the stone broke away from his body.

"Well, that wasn't a smart thing to do, was it?" I chuckled as he rolled around with broken limbs. He'd snapped free of the bonds but done himself some serious injuries in the process. A green glow surrounded him, and I scowled. I moved forward to finish him off, but he held up one hand.

"No! Stop! I don't want to go home!" he pleaded.

"Stop fucking about. I can't send you home," I snapped, weighing the dagger in my hand.

"What do you think happens when we die here? We're dead already, you ass. Kronos spilled the beans. Father Time isn't quite as limited as the others."

Thoughts of Fay, Kos, Kril, Jandak, and my as-yet-unnamed son flashed through my mind. All I'd ever had to do to go home was die?

"Aresk couldn't tell me anything like that, you lying shit."

"He's one of the bound Gods! Kronos, Hadesti, and Aphrodite… who can question time, death, and beauty?" He spat to one side and tried to push himself into a sitting position. "You've been played, you fool!"

"Who can question War? I'm not the one about to be iced, Gallagher."

"You watched my fights, you mentioned it before."

"So? That doesn't mean you can know that."

"Kronos told me! I'm not wrong, am I?" he snarled.

"No," I admitted reluctantly. My mind was whirling. I could have just gone home? Not been tortured on the back of that wagon? Not cut that guy's fingers off? Not built an army that was hell-bent on burning down every shit-sitter city?

"He held them hostage, Cobbler! He was going to turn them into one of his monsters if I didn't serve! I fucking hated him. I do hate him! Maybe the green-eyed woman was wrong. Maybe you aren't a monster. Prove it. You've got my wife and son. I won't act against you."

Would he, though? He could, that much I was sure of. I had a beaten tiger in front of me, spread out on the flagstones of Mortimer's palace. If I let the beast get back up, I wasn't sure I could put it down again. He'd know my tricks. Sure, I'd know his, but I got the feeling he had more tricks I hadn't seen yet. Shit. I couldn't hold his wife and kid hostage.

"I really want to kill you. You turned Mune into a fucking street pizza." My knuckles cracked as my fists clenched. "I-"

"I'll go. Give me Nakelin and my boy! You don't want to go home! Neither do I. I've got no beef with you." His eyes looked up at me, full of sincerity and desperation. "We can just go our own ways."

"You won't be going anywhere for a while. Bob, cuff him!" I called.

My murderbot rattled over, trailing a wounded tentacle.

"Raymond, I'm not sure I'm capable of restraining him."

"Take a leg off at the knee. It'll slow him down for now." Bronze met flesh, and Gallagher grunted.

"You fucking twat!" he snarled.

"That'll do, Bob. That'll do."

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