Ryszard

Ryszard grumbled as he sat his weary body down at the bar. Once again in his life, he was in a bar that reeked completely of fish. That was the price of going to the cheap pub by the seafront; the high proximity of the fish market to where you drank your ale.

"You there, barmaid, beer please." Announced Ryszard in the direction of a group of particularly loose looking women in the vague hope that one of them served ale. One of the wandered up.
"Want anything else with that?" Flirtatiously replied the maid, leaning over the bar so that Ryszard would get a good view of her equipment.
"If I wanted a quick fumble in the basement with my ale, I would have requested one. However, I just want ale. Not a barmaid that smells of fish, just an ale. Is there not a maid in Aquilonia who doesn't offer herself as a free gift with the ale? Please, just the ale!"

She let out a humph as she scrambled off towards the beer barrels behind the bar. Ryszard sighed as he came to the conclusion that the barmaid was probably right now deciding what kind of nasty reagent she was going to dump in his tankard in revenge for his comments. He eyed the ale suspiciously as it was plunked with such force in front of him that half of the contents spilled out.

"Mitra, if you're still with me, please let this cheap, weak, poor excuse for ale be free from any kind of poison, sewage or any kind of human fluid that the barmaid may have planted in here." With that, he knocked down whatever contents was left in the mug.
"Urgh... yep. That's the last time I insult a barmaid BEFORE I order a drink from her." He coughed, clearing his throat of the tainted ale.

The evening continued on, Ryszard sitting in the corner, contently smoking his pipe and thinking of the good old days in Brythunia - in the army of a long quashed city-state. On his lap sat Irina. No, not a pretty girl from Cimmeria, Irina's a crossbow. Ryszard's lovingly maintained crossbow that he carried since he was enlisted into the army. The man himself was fairly tall in height with an athletic build, as many light infantry soldiers were. His dirty blonde hair hung about his shoulders and his bright Brythunian blue eyes sat above a nose bent slightly after being broken in a long past bar brawl. He wore a combination of his old soldier's armour and whatever other clothes he picked up on his travels. He looked every part a man who had more than a few stories to tell. Stories that involved Fighting, Glory, Ale then Women in that specific order.

Ryszard had a job tonight. He was waiting for a slave trader to arrive in the bar. More precisely, he was waiting to shoot said slave trader in the name of Tortage's resistance.

Despite being relatively sharp tongued and irritable, the man was deep down very honest and selfless. He's do anything if it was for a good cause, requesting no payment, no reward. He didn't call it good-grace or selflessness, though. He called it atonement.

Four years before, a young Lieutenant Ryszard Danilov led a body of soldiers in front of a small village. His superior ordered the young Lieutenant to burn the place to the ground. Ryszard knew that the people in the village had committed no crime, and that the attack was only due to the complex politics of the Brythunian city-states. Therefore he refused to order the attack. The soldiers who served under Ryszard immediately stood behind him, supporting him. When the Captain of the unit tried to kill the Lieutenant on the spot, the Captain was swarmed over and killed by the soldiers.

One week after that, the soldiers were executed, with only Ryszard and two other men surviving after breaking out of prison. Ryszard, unable to bring himself to explain to the bereaved parents and wives of the soldiers why they had died, because of his failure to obey an order, fled south. He sought to remove the stain on his soul simply by trying to do justice in a world where justice was a rarity. This bought him to Tortage's resistance.

"Ah, there's the bastard." Hissed Ryszard under his breath, loading a bolt into his crossbow under the table.
The slave trader made his way to the barmaid Ryszard insulted earlier. The barmaid seemed to be making the trader similarly explicit offers, casting glances at Ryszard as if trying to invoke some raging jealous fire of passion for her reminiscent of an Aquilonian romance saga.

The Lieutenant swung up his crossbow as he pounced from his seat, knocking over a table in the process.

"Give hell my regards, you son of a whore!"

KA-CHUNK

"Oh fuck! The fucking fucker's fucking fucked!" Swore Ryszard as the crossbow bolt jammed itself inside the trigger mechanism.
"Guards!" Roared the trader to his own personal guard, who until now were getting comfy with some ale by the fire.

Ryszard darted forward, brandishing Irina in the air the way one of King Conan's soldiers brandishes a sword. He swung the lump of wood and metal around, catching one of the guards on the head, sending teeth in the direction of a barmaid cleaning the tables. Catching his balance, he pulled the guard over, bringing his knee into the guard's torso. He had moments to catch his breath before the other guard came at him, flailing with a sword. Ryszard ducked down, some of his hair narrowly being snipped off by the razor-sharp blade. He pushed forward, grabbing the guard around his waist, and plunged through one of the inn's windows.

The two ended up in the streets of Tortage, rolling about in a wrestling grip. After puling himself from the guard's grip, the Lieutenant quickly reached round to his side, pulling out his officer's gladius just as the guard righted himself.

Thonk.

The guard gave one last grimace as he slipped off the end of Ryszard's blade. Before he could utter his last words, a decapitating counter blow silenced him.

Ryszard thanked Mitra for the fact that the city guards were all in the barracks. If it had been daytime, he'd have been done for.

The man pulled his cloak over himself as he sat amongst some crates in the dirty streets, shivering in the icy night's air. He peered up at the moon peering out over him amongst the tall, shoddily built, wooden buildings. He'd be sleeping under the stars tonight - there'd be no chance of getting back into that in for at least another week.

A half hour passed as Ryszard gazed blankly into the distance. His attention was aroused as he saw a shadow move in the distance from the inn's door. Loading a bolt into his field-repaired crossbow, he thanked Mitra for his luck as he realised the shadow was the slave trader. Carefully muttering a prayer, he pulled the crossbow tight against his shoulder, peered down the loaded bolt and eased his finger onto the trigger.

Thwak.

Ryszard smirked to himself as the figure crumpled to the ground.

"Mitra and Irina, you do know I'll always love you both, right?"