Guards, at boring posts, did predictable things. Â They gossiped. Â They huddled in the way-stations in the walls and refused to come out unless someone was shouting. Â They resented someone interrupting their games of cards, their ever escalating tales of derring-doo, , and their grognardian need to grumble about their lot in life. Â In short: For every two guards you could see, there were at least five more, secreted somewhere in the walls, losing money at games and lamenting loudly current events.
Take the guard room at Trouble's Ishgardian outpost. Â Several stone rooms along the walls. Â Fires inside. Â Warmth and men shuddering against basic labor and basic odds. Â Outside, two who had lost, lamented the fact to Trouble. Â Inside, however, the guards mixed with the merchants who were willing to spread coin on cards. Â They ate gossip from outside the walls and drank tales of politics from outlander cities that dealers cut through with their caravans. Â
Watch this group, inside this stone station, at this stone gate, and you'd see a familiar figure. Â Large and wrapped in furs against the chill, in spite of the fire in the hearth. Â One red eye glaring at a hand of cards, sat Hammersmith. Â Judging by the sounds he was making, he was losing his hands, between glancing at the window that overlooked the gate and, now, Trouble talking with the two guards on active duty as one of dozens of merchant carts in a caravan squeezed out the gates and back onto the open roads beyond Ishgard's borders.
"Should know better at m'age t'play cards with gatekeeps. Â Yez got nothin better t'do all day. Â One yez bound t'actually get good at the damn game." Grumbled the giant roe from inside his pile of wool and fur.
"And yet you're still doing it" laughed one of the guards.
"Mistakes were made. Â Coin doesn't hurt t'lose right now though. Â Figure yez boys'll get a use out it iffin I ain't taking it from yez." Â The giant leaned back in his seat, shifting a long stemmed pipe set into a break in his scarves. "Sides. Â Need something t'do while they get the carts up and out fir the trip home."
"You're a right shitter, being in here while they pack, hitch and haul in the cold." Â Grunted one of the guards at the table.
"Never claimed t'be much otherwise." Â Murmured Hammer, his eye still watching the conversation between Trouble and the gatekeepers just outside the frosty window. Â "Hey Bullet-Tooth. Â How many more games I gotta lose fir yez n'yez mates here t'say I went out the south gate, when yon Trouble comes knockin on yer door?"
One of the guards grinned wide. Â One of their canine teeth was a rough, ugly grey. Â "Few more Geezer. Â You leave your flask of moonshine and we won't mention her lantern you've lugging around." Â Tonesome, he of the bullet tooth, flicked his chin towards a sack with a plain, brightly polished, lantern hung on it.
"Noticed that did yah?" Â Grunted the giant. Â "No fun in that. Â But iffin yez promise to make a rookie take a belt without a warning, you got an agreement. Â Deal me in." Â
Hammer's one eye stayed on the window and the guards at the gate. Â They were yelling towards the inside of the outpost now. Â Trouble was nowhere in sight. He scooped the cards up as they were dealt without checking the hand.
"So why the lantern geezer? Â Trouble's got better gear than that." said Tonesome.
"Yeah, like that gun she shoulders." grumbled one of the other guards.
"Because that's my bloody lantern. Â Technically my gun too. Â But I dun take gifts back. Â Bad manners" Â Hammer sighed a cloud of smoke and tossed a few bright coins into the middle of the table.
"You been at the table long enough, we know you don't got manners Geezer." Â Chuckled one of the younger guards.
"Yez know I don't take kindly to thieving either, eh?" Â The young guard winced and flexed a bruised hand as Hammer grinned and tapped a finger on the piled cards. "Still got the stairs to the battlements running up from here, right Tone?"
"Yeah." Nodded Tonesome as him and the group tossed coins and plucked cards out of their hands. "They put a door in once the cold rolled in though."
"But you don't lock it when yer all down here." Â Muttered the giant, piling a few coins on top of the forfeited pile of cards.
"Why bother. Â No reason to lock something on the second..." Â Tonesome looked up from his hand to behold an empty space where Hammersmith, and his sack, had been at the opposite end of the table. "..story. Â How the hell does someone that big move so quiet?"
"I don't know, Tonesome." Â Came a voice behind the bullet toothed card sharp. A clear, sharp, steel voice from behind a brassy mask. "You tell me..."
Out on the border of Ishgard a caravan trundled away from the gates and the frozen Holy Lands, from which were coming the hard, flat, packing sounds of fists against flesh and, maybe, against bullet teeth.
Outside it's holy gates a fur swaddled roe rolled out of a snowbank near the walls and sprinted to catch a caravan.
A sack on his back.Â
A lantern shining in his hand.