When a mans gotta go...

Balt stood before the slave masters desk waiting for the paperwork to be checked over. The grizzled slave master who sat before him stank of piss and stale sweat and the young soldier fought the urge to wrinkle his nose in disdain.

At last the paperwork was stamped and a small pouch of coins was pushed roughly across the table. The slave master did not look up and Balt did not thank the man as he took the coin and turned to leave.

Aquilo was not a large settlement and it did not take him long to walk from the slave lines to the edges of the town proper. He absently rubbed his fingers over the rough skin on his left cheek where the woading tattoo marked him as a one time prisoner of the Fang.

It was growing dark and Balt had worked up a thirst marching the last batch of Odsier slaves to this gods forsaken mining town. He needed a drink and perhaps a tumble or two with someone sweet and willing... He slapped his neck as he took a bite from one of the local bugs. Bloody flies seemed to love to feast of foreigners!

His had came away slick with blood and he frowned in confusion at the amount of it. Reaching for his neck once more he felt the damned fly still there and plucked it away to find it to be no fly at all. It was a small feathered dart.

"What the..." he murmured as his vision began to swim.

"Oh fuck no." he surged forward into a run, looking around him wildly, but between the dimmed light and his blurred vision he could make out little. Some bastard was trying to kill him. Who? Why? He could not think straight.

He saw movement off to his right and instinctively turned to his left, barrelling through a tanners yard. He gagged at the stench of the large vats that now surrounded him. The locals used horse piss by the gallon to cure hides and work leather and it was all he could do not to fall to his knees and vomit as his lungs filled with the sickening air and his blood pumped round what ever foul substance he had been poisoned with.

It occurred to him far to late that surging into action like this had simply quickened his demise, forcing the poison around his body and his heart worked to speed him on. When the stranger stepped out into his path his could barely see a thing and his ear were filled with the sound of his own heart beating and his laboured breath fighting to continue... to keep him moving.

He felt a dull ache in his stomach as the stranger kicked him. He was lying on his back then, staring at the black night sky. The stranger was crouching over him. A hard cold object was pressed to his head and then the stranger was speaking though it seemed from far away and Balt could not make out the words.

The young soldier gasped then as he was lifted up into the air and then down again into one of the nearby vats. The foul liquid filling his nostrils and burning his throat as he fought weakly to get to the surface. A strong arm pushed him down and he tried to scream out, forcing the last of his air in streaming bubbles from his mouth.

His head ached and his chest was on fire. The foul taste of the liquid caused him to heave and vomit then slowly, painfully, the world became dark and still.