I had never seen someone have so much difficulty in sitting down like I saw the commander. He swayed and staggered. It was as if, from his perspective, the floor was made of thin rope, and mis-stepping could plunge him down a cliff. I began to laugh but quickly stopped when my mother shot me a cold glare.
Eventually, she grew tired of his shenanigans, stood up, took his arms, and led him to sit on the bed.
"So that's how to do it," he muttered.
He offered my mother a tankard; she shook her head. She once told me that ale and similar drinks were poison to the mind. Indulging in it on special occasions is hardly a problem, but if it becomes a vice, it will end a man.
He shrugged. "Suit yourself. More for me then."
He began to drink again, but my mother held his arms.
"You can indulge in this vice when our feet touch land; for now, speak."
I studied Khaller. As funny as it was to see him make a fool of himself, it was worrying. This was not his character at all.
He really did not want to speak. I suspected that if he wasn't bound by an oath, we wouldn't have heard a single thing from his mouth.
To be forced to relive whatever memory haunted him must be taking a great toll on him. I almost felt sorry for him.
He started muttering incoherently, and I began to wonder if we could give any credence to the mutterings of this drunk.
My mother clearly didn't think so, so she slapped him across the face. I doubt she could have done much damage to him, but the sound it made was loud and sharp.
I saw his face fill with fury as the hairs at the back of my neck and on my arms stood straight. Fear gripped me, and I stood up and jumped behind the chair for cover. I doubt it would have done much to protect me from him if he came at me, but it was the best I could do in that moment. If my mother was scared, she made no show of it.
His fury subsided as quickly as it flared, and he seemed to have sobered.
He rubbed his cheek, almost pouting.
"That hurt."
"Sorry," my mother replied.
"Where should I start?"
"From the beginning."
He ran his hands through his flaming red hair. Then he began.
"Not much to note about my early life, to be honest. I was born in the slums of Cross Harbor to a whore mother. I never knew my father. Any time I asked her who he was, she would say that she couldn't say. Apparently, he was a big deal; revealing he fathered a bastard would be damaging for rank and renown. I always thought that was horseshit, really. She most likely didn't know who he was. She entertained different men every day: lowlife and scumbags, sailors and traders, anybody with enough money."
He paused for a moment before he continued.
"Although she did like to dress up at night and go somewhere. I always tried to trail her, but she would always lose me; she was quite good at evading. I never did find out where she went, so maybe there was some truth in it, I don't know, either way, it doesn't matter now."
"Why?" my mother asked.
Khaller said nothing.
"Is she dead?" my mother asked again.
"Yes."
I noticed a slight twitch in his left pinky finger and the way his eyes darted away from my mother's gaze when he answered, and back. It was quick. If my mother hadn't asked me to study him so closely, I would have missed it.
He was lying, I concluded.
The question was why. Was it shame? Unlikely, he had openly told us his mother was a whore; shame was not a factor in this. I pondered on this question, but the answer eluded me, so I shifted it to the back of my mind and let my subconscious work on it. My mother would likely quiz me on it later, so I had time to think on it.
"I'm sorry," my mother said.
He shrugged. "She was in a dangerous business, and the slums were a dangerous place."
"Anyway," he continued, "I used to get into a lot of fights as a child. It may not look like it now, but as a child, I was small and frail."
I found that hard to believe. The man was massive; it looked like he had been like that all his life. He must have had a ridiculous growth spurt at some point.
"The other children, some older and some my age, used to call my mother a whore. Mind you, their mothers were by trade also whores. It was like an ocean calling the sea wet. But it irked me to no end, and I used to attack everyone and anyone who spoke ill of her. It should be no surprise that I lost quite often. I was small, my body was weak; that hardly the profile of a fighting man. Initially, it was bad; I would get beaten senselessly, taking more bruises and wounds home than a fisherman caught fish during fishing season."
He grinned. "But eventually, I got good at fighting. It was a slow and arduous process, but it paid off. I developed good instincts for when a punch would come long before it was thrown. I know all the right places to hit a man to stun him, to put him to sleep, to kill him. Soon enough, I decimated everybody I fought. People who used to beat the shit out of me became scared. And I enjoyed every moment of it."
Khaller paused; he looked down at the tankard in his hands, his mood grew somber.
"But eventually, it was no longer enough. At first, they would gang up on me in teams of fours and fives, sometimes more. But with my sort of premonition ability, I would destroy them. Now that I think about it, it must have looked like I was a speed demon. Nobody could land a hit. Until people stopped fighting. If they were unlucky enough to come across me, they would just take the beating. It was no longer fun; I no longer enjoyed it."
Khaller sighed. "I realized then that I didn't care about them insulting my mother; after all, she was what they said she was. A whore. But what I truly wanted was the fight. It was a thrill for me. Even when I got the crap beaten out of me, I enjoyed it. I reveled in it. It made me stronger. And I wanted to grow even stronger still. But everyone I went at no longer put up a fight. I felt hollow, empty. I wanted to fight. No, I craved it. I couldn't go to pick up fights with random people in the slums, definitely not in the town; I was crazed, but not that crazed.
"The itch became larger each day until I began to feel myself go mad. Until I met Kosher."