Arn, a mercenary

The guard then stopped a portly merchant sitting in the front of a wagon and questioned both him and his pimple-faced nephew about the reasons for their visit to Zatakia, and even managed to extort two bottles of the wine that they were aiming to sell there before allowing them entrance into the city.

Feeling quite satisfied that he would have something to get drunk on that night, the guard nearly dropped one of the bottles when another figure suddenly materialized from out of the darkness and steered its steps towards the city gate.

“Halt, who goes there?!” The guard cried out at the figure, hurrying to put the pair of bottles down on the ground and grabbing his spear from where he’d leaned it against the wall in an effort to look as professional and alert as possible.

“Just a soldier who’s come to Zatakia looking for work,” the figure replied as it pulled down the hood of its dirty, tattered cloak to reveal itself as a man with an unmistakably masculine face, brown hair which came down to the base of his thick neck and which looked as though he paid absolutely no attention to it, and a stubble which bordered on becoming a beard.

“Right,” the guard tightened his hold of his spear as he spotted the hilt of the man’s sword where it appeared from within the front of his cloak, “you’re sure you’re not just a vagrant?”

The guard’s question was stupid, but it was at least partially motivated by the fact that Arn was clad in rough clothes that were dirty and worn beyond repair, contrasting with the spotless handle of his sheathed long sword, which he had pried from the cold, dead fingers of the fat oaf who had styled himself his master before Arn had organized the revolt that had seen him regain his freedom and marked the end of his brief career as a gladiator.

Since then, Arn had travelled north across the smouldering ruins of the southern empires all the way up to Zatakia, and didn’t have much patience for men like the guard in front of him, who had stayed in Zatakia to bully whomever wished to pass through the city gate while he had spent years down in the south, fighting in the great war and seeing far too many of his friends die deaths that were both unnatural and rather messy.

“I have this sword to show I’m a soldier,” Arn explained, and smiled faintly at how the guard moved back when he pulled back the side of his cloak to expose more of the simple but sturdy sheath in which his sword rested, “want to find out if I can use it?”

“Not really.” Although he might not be motivated, clever or particularly valorous, the guard had become quite a keen judge of character after years spent sizing new arrivals to the city up, and he quickly decided that the stranger was not a man whom he would want to fight with, regardless of whether or not he was telling him the truth about merely being a mercenary looking for honest work.

“You may enter,” the guard finally announced, and stepped out of the way to allow Arn to pass, which was pretty pointless when one considered that the gate was easily wide enough to accept two wagons at once.

“Good,” Arn replied with no emotion whatsoever in his voice, and entered Zatakia, satisfied to have finally returned to it and determined to fulfill his real purpose for coming there.