“..Pride?”

The men go silent, until the asker barks a laugh.

“Ha! Damn straight. Let her down!”

The man holding your legs drops them, letting them hit the ground just before your rump does the same. The man holding your arms hauls you to your feet before you can think, like the strings of a marionette, dancing you before your feet are firmly on the ground.

“You tell your captain that.” He dusts down your front, patting you with heavy pausing slaps. Others do the same, and by their reckoning, your buttocks and breasts seem dustiest. “Or better yet, tell our captain that! Maybe you’ll join a real crew, on a real fuckin ship!” He finally slaps your face, twice, with what you think are supposed to be light taps, before spinning you by the shoulders to face the stone gate posts. “Now get the fuck out of here!”

He lands a slap, one that is truly not meant to be light, right on your behind, hard enough to crack even through the worn fabric of your stolen britches, and it sends you running forward like a racehorse, staggering and not looking back. Their jeers chase you, their sentiments not improved for your apparently right answer, and even when the stone pillars pass and the bend of the path and its wall of trees hides them from you, you do not stop running.

Half way up the path, you slow, your rational mind reminding you that you did this not to look suspicious. You look quickly about the building, but the roof guard cannot be seen at this moment and the dark windows hold no answers. Only the lower floors high arched windows on the far left side holds light, but there’s no one you can see watching you. Even so, you slow and find yourself limping, the right side of your buttocks smacked to a stinging and no doubt reddening rawness. You hold it, trying to rub feeling into it, and as you get nearer and nearer to the building and further from the men, you feel tears begin to overwhelm you.

The path splits, the right way leading to the front, and you step off it, leaning an arm against the building where no one can see. Just in time for the tears to fall.

You feel so stupid.

Not just for crying, in the middle of the night, against the stronghold of your enemy who you came here to kill, though all that does have a ridiculousness to it. It’s also from before; your own stupid choice, your frustration at the men, the injustice of it, the powerlessness of it, it wasn’t fair! You had been so mad, but not so much that you weren’t also terrified, and now that the anger had ebbed away, only fear remains.

You sink to your knees, the soft grass about the building covering your fall, and you hold a hand hard over your mouth, **** to keep quiet. The laughing faces of thirteen men, each of whom would face a hangman’s noose if they stepped foot in a civilised society, mock you in your mind. But what more could they have done to you but mock? The answer is anything. Anything they wanted. You were one wrong answer away from it and you feel it like the near miss of a deadly blade.

And what was with that riddle anyway: you still don’t get it!

‘If pride comes before the falling, which would you rather be? Pride? Or Falling?’

Then he had mentioned telling his captain that, to join his crew, or their ship?

You look down the path and see no one walking up, and so you take a moment to reach up to your bun, threading the few stray hairs that escaped back into its tight confines. Isn’t Captain Washkins ship called ‘The Proud Gull’? That seems a solid clue. Being in the Red and Yellow colours of Captain Roland, you assume ‘Falling’ has something to do with his (and by extension, ‘your’) ships name. Could it be that simple? Or stupid? A riddle that came down to ‘which is better, us or you?’

What if you’d said you?

You take a shuddering breath, running your forearm over your eyes, one after the other, before standing on unsteady legs. They still shake a little with fear, not seeming fit to **** the most infamous pirate of the archipelago. This whole operation made a lot more sense back on the mainland.

For some reason, remembering that is a comfort; you came here with bigger fish in mind, not to be distracted by those disgusting degenerates! You dust yourself down, properly, straightening your ragged pirate attire and taking several deep breathes. You’re not even in the building yet; no time to lose focus!

You re-join the path and follow it to the front entrance of the building; an inlet in its otherwise straight front face. High walls are on both sides, shallow enough to hold no windows, and before you is a heavy set door guarded by a heavy set guard. He lounges against the wall, arms crossed and axe at his belt, and he looks at you as you approach. When the light of a nearby lantern illuminates you, he comments in a deep voice that matches his hulking form.

“You alright?”

You sniff, and by instinct, wipe your red eyes again for anything you missed before. A nod is all you give, with a thin watery smile for his concern. It doesn’t need to be faked, but you think it helps anyway. His deeply lined and stony face twitches in what must be a rare event, and he nods you through without check.

You’re no glutton for sympathy, but you’ll accept it when it helps you.