Wesley

What did I do to deserve this? Wesley thought—not for the first time, and most certainly not the last.

Beaten and limping, the first trio dragged themselves off to the edge of the yard. Wesley's group was up next. Already, he was bracing himself against the inevitable outcome.

"Well, come on then, you useless bunch of sissies!" Griff bellowed, repeatedly slapping his wooden dowel off his metal right arm to produce a lot of noisome clanking. "You want me to stand here until my balls freeze off? Is that how you're planning to win?"

"We're on it, chief," said Yarrow, one of Wesley's two squadmates, with an admirable attempt at hiding his trepidation.

Without a word between them, Yarrow and the third man, Small Fry, split off to the left and right. They stalked with slow, deliberate steps, moving their practice swords through shifting guard positions. They circled the grizzled master-at-arms while Wesley remained where he was until they had formed the points of a triangle that spanned most of the training yard between the farm buildings. At least ten other recruits squatted in the wings, watching with only the occasional murmur breaking the silence.

Yarrow and Small Fry had known each other for months down in the mines before joining up with One-Eye's merry band. Wesley was the odd man out. Even though they'd been teamed up for weeks, he hadn't been able to ingratiate himself with them. In fact, things were rather moving in the opposite direction.

A brief look passed between those two. A second later, they moved in, footsteps silent in the yellowed grass.

Guess that means go, Wesley thought, and swallowed a surge of sour bile.

Griff let them come. Yarrow came in a beat early with a Dash. Griff shifted his footing only slightly to deflect the recruit's sweeping dowel off his steel shoulder, and Yarrow was left staggering past with the jarring impact. Small Fry hesitated a bit too long, and had his practice weapon snatched right out of his hand.

By the time Wesley had overcome his paralysis and moved in, Griff had Small Fry over the ground and was whipping him with his own practice sword while the recruit howled and tried in vain to wriggle away on his belly.

Griff had his back turned to Wesley. Head strikes were not allowed, so he aimed one at the man's exposed side instead—only Yarrow had come back around and had evidently had the same idea, because their practice swords clashed and bounced off each other.

"Idiot!" Yarrow snarled, shoving Wesley brusquely to the side while repositioning himself. "You don't—"

A steel fist cut him off and sent him on his back, dazed. Wesley went much the same way a few moments later. He was vaguely aware of Griff's boot hitting off his arms and chest when somebody called out.

"That's enough now!"

Cutty's voice.

The boot let up almost instantly. Wesley was on his back, groaning and feeling sorry for himself, until the old man came and helped him sit and brushed some dirt off him, then went and did the same with the others.

"Beating some sense into a lad is all fine and good, but go too far and you're like to knock it straight out again—and then some. That's not how we want to do things here, is it son?"

"No, chief," Griff bit out, his scarred face red with indignation. Wesley wasn't sure what the master-at-arms disliked the most—being chewed out in front of his students, being called 'son', or having to take orders from a man he probably considered his equal at best.

But One-Eye had put Cutty in charge of the recruits, and on the Farm, One-Eye's word was good as scripture, even if no one knew what the sinister fuck was thinking most of the time.

Wesley was shuffled off along with his squadmates for the next trio to take their place on the chopping block. There was a reason why the recruits only had full-on sparring with the master-at-arms twice a week—otherwise, they'd be too beat-to-shit to perform their normal duties.

Yarrow and Small Fry seemed to be holding onto some delusion that they could have won that engagement, and their repeated sharp looks in Wesley's direction told him exactly what he had to look forward to.

He was proven correct when Francine took the recruits into the woods east of the Farm to hunt whatever bits of game they hadn't already scoured, and to scout for monster activity. One-Eye, human radar that he was, had flagged several locations for them to check. At the first opportunity, Yarrow and Small Fry got Wesley separated from the rest of the group. Small Fry used Bind to stick him to the side of a tree while Yarrow beat and kicked him.

"No one fucking wants you here," Yarrow said once he was satisfied, breathing heavy with exertion after all that punching, cradling his skinned right fist.

Wesley slumped forward against the Bind's adhesive force, arms thrown wide against the broad tree trunk like a low-budget crucifixion. "Sorry," he whimpered, drooling over his throbbing fat lip.

"Everyone knows you're gonna wash out eventually—just do us a favor and piss off already so we can get assigned a squaddie who isn't useless."

Wesley just shook his head. He didn't know what else to say at this point. It wasn't like he could tell them the real reason why he had to stay at the Farm. As far as they knew, he was just a random fuck-up who'd decided he wanted to be someone. Not only that, he got more of One-Eye's attention than any of the other recruits even though he'd done nothing to deserve it. The fact that One-Eye's 'attention' mostly meant having to do his dull, unpleasant, and sometimes downright dangerous busywork didn't seem to mean anything to anyone. They'd all be tripping over themselves to lick the man's boots if he gave them half a chance. Stupid dogs.

"Seriously?" Small Fry said. "What's your problem, man? We're trying to do you a favor here. You just don't belong in the Blackwatch."

"I know."

"Then leave. You fuck off from here, we'll say grinners got you. You'll be off the hook."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Wesley laughed. They didn't understand. If he tried to run, One-Eye would know. He was almost certainly watching them right now. He was always watching. But they didn't know their boss like he did. They didn't know that if he went along with this genius scheme they'd cooked up, they'd probably be snuggled up in the same shallow grave before the night was up, all three of them.

Squadmates to the end.

That got Wesley laughing even more, a hysterical edge to it, and that got Yarrow and Small Fry thinking he was making fun of them, and that earned him a whole new beating.

But short of killing him themselves, there wasn't much more they could do, so they eventually had to let him go. When they returned to the group, Wesley said he'd caught a rock while Dashing and taken a bad fall. Yarrow and Small Fry had gone back to check on him. Everyone laughed at his clumsiness, of course, which was a nice cherry on top of the shit sundae.

Battered as he was, he struggled to keep up with the others during their sweep. One of the recruits caught a rabbit, and Francine got three, but that was it. A few of the pit traps, fitted with devices at the bottom that emitted regular Pulses, had lured in some grinners. It seemed like less and less every time, though. Grinners weren't smart, but they weren't stupid either, and they were becoming wise to the humans' tricks.

At the final trap, three diregulls had gathered around and were pecking at their fellow monsters inside the deep pit, which had been rendered the proverbial fish in a barrel by their careless stepping.

Too caught up in their feast, the huge birds took no notice of the Explorers approaching on light feet.

This is it, Wesley thought with a small flutter of excitement. I might actually be able to do something here.

But of course, when he manifested Justice with Soul Summoning and made a go at firing off the hip, he found the trigger dead, and the gun refusing to fire. He was left standing there like an idiot with his dick in his hand, only at least his dick worked most of the time.

The monsters were dealt with by others, and they continued only a little while longer before cutting their excursion short at the border to the deep forest, which was demarcated with dabs of red paint on the trees. One-Eye had forbidden any excursion east and south of the Farm beyond a certain point, where the monster infestation was too bad to achieve anything useful.

Just another knock-on effect of Buck liberating the slaves. With no slaves, there were no slavers. With no slavers, there was no one to man the watchtowers. With no one to man the watchtowers, all the fresh lifers coming off the Shore of Awakening were allowed to stumble right off into the woods to either get eaten by grinners or, in some rare cases, congeal into roving packs of wild bandits. Buck probably could have manned the towers himself, except he couldn't even feed the people already in the city, so he hadn't bothered.

Wesley's embarrassing display got him another good ribbing. The recruits spent all evening mimicking him, drawing finger pistols and pretending to shoot each other and flopping over dramatically when 'hit'. Yarrow even got the idea of calling him 'Wild Wes', and the name instantly stuck. Wesley never thought he'd miss a name like 'Oatmeal', but there he was, missing it.

He took an extra watch shift that night—mostly because he didn't want to spend a minute more than necessary in the bunkhouse around the other recruits, but also because being up there in the watchtower, in the quiet of the night, helped him think. It was peaceful in a way you couldn't find anywhere else on the Farm these days.

I wonder if the sheriff would let me blow my brains out. Maybe that would be the kind of 'justice' he's looking for?

Wesley brought out the revolver and looked long at it, the silvery metal reflecting pale moonlight. Its reassuring weight fit his hand so perfectly. He thumbed the cylinder click, click, click. Sighing, he looked out over the bit of open land that surrounded the Farm and scanned for danger. His thumb kept moving. Click, click, click. Click, click, click.

He took the barrel into his mouth—just to see what it'd feel like. Uncomfortable, was what. His finger moved onto the trigger. His breathing quickened.

"Nice night, isn't it?"

Wesley flinched so hard he nearly pulled the trigger on accident. Jerking around, he dropped the revolver, and it clattered off the railing before spinning over the side, fading into the darkness below.

One-Eye was there on the platform with him, not three feet away. Dressed in formless blacks, his face all shadows and angular hollows, he emulated a grim reaper to a fairly pants-shitting degree.

"S-Sir!" Wesley squeaked. "I wasn't…"

But One-Eye wasn't focused on him. A pale hand on the railing, he looked out over the black horizon as though there was something to be gleaned from it. "Anything to report?"

"No, sir."

"I like to come here sometimes to think—be away from it all, you know."

"What does Sam think of you sneaking out of bed?"

One-Eye barked out a harsh laugh. "Like she'd know! She sleeps like the dead. And she snores like a bear, so it's her own damn fault I need to give my ears a rest every once in a while."

"I see."

"I thought I'd be alone." One-Eye tilted his face a tiny degree in Wesley's direction; the movement seemed like it was meant to communicate something significant. "I told Fleck I'd take his shift."

Wesley chuckled nervously. "Funny, so did I. I guess he forgot to mention he'd already given his shift away."

One-Eye nodded slowly. "Sloppy of him."

"Maybe. Uh, sir." Or maybe just another way to make me look like a tit.

Justice was still all the way down there littering the ground. He winked it out of existence with Soul Summoning.

One-Eye watched the sky. Wesley looked out in the same direction but didn't see much of anything—instead, he was acutely aware of his breathing, his posture, how much he was sweating despite the nighttime chill.

"You seem wistful," One-Eye commented absently, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"I guess so," Wesley replied in a clipped, guarded tone. By 'wistful', does he mean 'suicidal'? There's no way he didn't notice that, is there? Is that him trying to put it politely? He'd never known One-Eye to be delicate with anyone, though, except maybe Sam and Sunny.

"Tell me about it."

"Uh… Why, sir?"

"Because I asked."

"You don't care, though."

"Have you already forgotten? You are my creature, Wesley. I've expended considerable effort in keeping you alive. It would be a terrible waste of my time if you were to kill yourself. Not to mention, you'd be dooming some poor soul to cleaning your brainpan off these planks." He gave the floor a stomp for emphasis. "Not me, certainly. But someone."

"You saw that, then? Of course you did."

"Of course."

Wesley puffed a few sharp breaths into his cupped hands to work some warmth back into them. "What do you want me to say? I'm not exactly living the high life out here, all right? It fucking sucks. I hate this place. I hate everyone in it. I hate you."

"My, my. That's quite a tone you've got on you tonight."

"Sorry, or whatever." Wesley didn't feel sorry at all, and he was tired of hiding it. There was nothing One-Eye could do to punish him if he'd decided to end it all anyway.

One-Eye smiled his most terrifying smile, teeth glittering in the dark. "No, I like it. It's good."

"You don't like anything."

"That's not true. I like plenty of things."

"Name one. And don't say Sam."

"I like a good happy puff as a nightcap." At that, he fished one out and lit it, the cherry illuminating his hand and the bottom half of his face with a deep orange glow when he dragged on it. Taking it away from his lips, he held it out to Wesley. "Want one?"

Wesley shook his head. "No thanks, sir."

One-Eye winked his blind eye. "They're good for you."

"No thanks."

"All right. Suit yourself."

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