FicWad

Written for Laylah's request on the Yaoi Challenge community on LiveJournal. I almost put this in the Suikoden IV category instead, but since it definitely takes place during Tactics' timeline and well before IV, it went here instead.


Hervey had managed to light himself on fire. Sigurd didn't know how, and he certainly didn't know why; then again, it was Hervey. Hervey the /furious/. A guy with a name like that didn't really need a reason to do something that stupid, did he?

"Hey, pretty-boy, a little help here?" Hervey snarled, beating out the flames on his shirt with the bandana he'd just ripped from around his neck. "Or are you just gonna stand there and watch-- ow!"

The fire had flared up again, searing the fingers holding his bandana. When he finally got the fire out, Sigurd was ignoring him in favor of looking out towards the other end of the beach.

"What's so interesting over there?" Hervey asked, scowling and picking at the scorched remains of his shirt. "Hey, listen to me! You got a medicine on you?"

"You were supposed to take care of the supplies. Seeing as you're too much of an idiot to keep your mouth shut and pay attention, I'm guessing you left them back at the camp where we're never going to get them back." He ducked down further, using the rock they were already behind for even more cover. "Get down here and shut up, unless you want them to see you."

"You could be a little nicer to the guy that was just on fire," Hervey whined, sounding something a lot less than furious. But he listened for quite possibly the first time since they had met and got down behind the rock. "Who are those guys?"

"I don't know," Sigurd said tightly. "If you would shut up for five minutes and let me get a good look at them, I might be able to tell you." And, miracle to end all miracles, Hervey listened for the second time since they had met and quieted down. "They look like they're from Mordo. I guess this is the smuggling stop Lady Kika thought it was and we didn't waste a day and a half on that beach."

"Hey, that's our stuff," Hervey observed rather unnecessarily as they watched the smugglers pick apart their makeshift campsite. "I say we get it back. Along with whatever else they're hiding over there."

Sigurd thought about that for a moment. Kika had sent them to find out what was going on here, not to actually recover anything, but it wasn't like she'd be able to complain about them coming back with a bonus. If these smugglers were from Mordo like they seemed to be, they probably had goods from the Scarlet Moon Empire. Specifically, cargo that hadn't gone through Kooluk's extensive customs and taxation system that ensured the best northern goods stayed in Kooluk hands and the dregs went to the Islands. They might have metal or even finished weapons and ammunition, northern commodities that never made it past the southern bays of Kooluk. And it wasn't like they'd be able to find out anything worth knowing without getting close enough to take things back with them....

"I think you may have just had a good idea, Hervey. I'm in shock." Sigurd peered over the rock again, trying to gauge what in the world the smugglers were doing at their campsite. There hadn't been anything valuable there-- not valuable to a group dealing in black market northern shipping, at any rate.

"Sorry that not all of us have your fancy military training, pretty boy," Hervey sulked back. "They shoulda taught you to carry an extra medicine on you for when the poor guy stuck with your nancy ass gets burned."

"Be quiet, you idiot." Sigurd scrubbed a hand through his hair as if Hervey's whining was giving him a headache. It wasn't (yet), although he was sure it was only a matter of time. "They'll hear you."

"I, uh, think it's a little late for that." Hervey said grimly, looking over his shoulder.

"Yes, it will be if you don't quit yelling and flailing around like you're having fits." Sigurd didn't even have the chance to go and and tell Hervey exactly what he thought of his antics, because Hervey was yelling behind him.

"The hell, didn't they teach you people to search the whole beach at your fancy academy in Middleport?" Hervey demanded, scowling, as he drew his sword. "Maybe I wouldn't have wasted so much magic amusin' myself earlier." Sigurd didn't even dignify that one with a response, partly because Hervey hadn't exactly been searching the beach either but mostly because he was too busy ducking under a smuggler's grasping arm and reaching for his knives. The man even looked like a stereotypical pirate, one-eyed and bearded like nobody under Lady Kika's command actually was. And up close, he definitely had that shady Mordo look.

As much as Hervey and Dario made fun of it, though, being trained in a formal naval academy had given Sigurd certain advantages. Like the one he had now, neatly sidestepping the smuggler's swing and driving a knife right into his good eye. He didn't even have time to remove it again (mess of blood and vitreous fluid or not, it was a good knife) before he heard Hervey go down. Hervey going down had a very unique sound that was immediately familiar to anyone who'd seen Dario beat the daylights out of him onboard the /Grishend/-- a sort of heavy groan devoid of any of his usual theatrics. He turned to see Hervey on the ground, at the feet of a considerably more sighted and less furry smuggler than the one Sigurd had gotten.

"Hey, ain't you the one on the wanted posters in Middleport?" He turned out to be a she, if the voice was any indication-- it was hard to tell with people from Mordo, sometimes, they were all thin and tended to slouch. "I think you are." And he didn't even have time to try and get her before he was on the ground, two more of the smugglers behind him.


Hours later, they were both tied up in the corner of what had been their camp only a day earlier. The smugglers were, it seemed, arguing about what to do with Hervey. Sigurd was easy-- take him to the authorities in Middleport for his court-martial and the gallows, and collect the bounty on him. Hervey, though, he was harder; they weren't sure that his captain would pay a ransom for him or even who his captain was at all.

"They've gotta be from that bitch Kika. No man would let a couple of pretty boys like that on his ship." One of the smugglers was arguing, and the woman who'd dragged Sigurd back hit him in the back of the head.

"They could be from Brandeau. I hear he's gone off the deep end since Edgar died and Kika took over. They could even be the leftovers of Steele's crew, maybe." The woman looked over at the pair of them boredly. "And ain't none of them gonna pay a ransom for this idiot. Either we keep him, or he goes to the sharks."

"There ain't any sharks near here, stupid." The first smuggler made a rude gesture at her. "I hear the Governor of Middleport's got himself a sea monster in the bay. Maybe we can get rid of 'em both there. Or give him to Gaien or Kooluk as a pirate."

"Don't be an ass, they'd take us, too." She made an even ruder gesture right back. "Guess we could leave him here. If he's lucky, his bitch captain'll get here before he dies. Be a shame to waste that pretty red hair."

"Women," he spat, and that turned it into a full-on fight. Sigurd stared, not believing that they'd been captured by a group of people with a collective intelligence that was less than Hervey's.

"Hey, you got any mint?" Hervey asked suddenly. "You've gotta, you're a wimpy magic guy. C'mon, all that burning stuff earlier gave me a headache."

"If you hadn't lit yourself on fire earlier and wasted all your energy, you wouldn't have a headache now." Sigurd closed his eyes, both to shut out the sight of the idiots fighting and because Hervey was giving him a headache himself. "Anyway, it's in my pocket. I can't get to it with our hands tied."

"You military people got no creativity." Hervey rolled his eyes and leaned over. Sigurd was about to retort that they may not have creativity but they certainly had grammar when Hervey dug into his chest pocket with his /teeth/. That got the attention even of the two fighting idiots, who looked shocked.

"The hell you two getting up to?" The woman asked, hands poised to strangle the man.

"You know what they say about the kinda men that go into Reinbach's navy," Hervey said, looking up and grinning at her like she hadn't just been discussing throwing him to nonexistent sharks or a sea monster. "Least, I hope you do." They both stared for another long moment as what Hervey said sunk in-- the moment where a person thought of Governor Reinbach and his son and the sorts of company they kept, and what the officers in their fleet must have been like. Everyone had that moment of realization when they first heard the rumors about the Middleport navy.

"Yeah, well, you keep it over there," she said as if they had any other choice being tied up as they were, and resumed pounding the man's head into the ground.

"What are you talking about?" Sigurd hissed, horrified. "We don't do any such thing in the navy!"

"Yeah, right. I've seen pictures of that commander." Hervey snorted and resumed digging through Sigurd's pocket with his teeth until he found the mint. He sat back, chewing on it and gulping it down before anyone noticed that there might have been an ulterior motive for going after Sigurd with his teeth. "I've seen pictures of his /wig/. That's enough."

"Commander Reinbach is a nobleman of Gaien and an officer, and he'll succeed his father as Middleport's leader. Talking like that about him is inappropriate." Sigurd opened his eyes again, mostly to keep an eye on their captors (who were still making a strong showing at murdering one another right there). Then suddenly he smelled smoke, and Hervey was flexing his newly-freed wrists behind his back where the smugglers wouldn't notice. So that was why he'd suddenly needed to clear his head with the mint, so he could get better control over his fire rune.

"Why do you care if I insult the guy? What, you the one he was shacking up with?" Hervey asked, and after he finished his words the ropes on Sigurd's own wrists sparked and smoldered behind his back. "Hold still, pretty boy. Goin' up in flames would get their attention pretty quick. You see where they put our weapons with your fancy military eyes?" He didn't sound like he put much stock in Sigurd's "fancy military eyes" that couldn't even notice smugglers at the far end of the beach, though.

"That's disgusting, you moron." Sigurd shook the charred remains of the rope off his hands and leaned back against the rock. "And yes, as a matter of fact, I do. They're over there, near those crates. Along with everything you forgot to bring with you from camp this morning."

"Yeah, yeah," Hervey said dismissively. "Least I got us free, which is more than you can say. Hey, which one of them do you think's gonna win? I'd put my money on the girl. She's feisty." And sure enough, it looked like the woman had just stabbed the man in the gut. She stood up, wiping off her dagger with a satisfied look; Sigurd wondered how a group like this actually managed to complete a smuggling run and evade the Kooluk authorities, if they were this disorganized and needlessly violent.

"You two done bein' all Middleport on me?" She asked, looking at them both suspiciously. Sigurd just barely managed not to choke, between that and Hervey's /I told you everyone thinks that look/. Hervey, the idiot that he was, just grinned at her.

"Naw, not quite yet," he said, and then he lit her on fire.

"You idiot, that screaming's going to bring all the rest of them down!" Sigurd hissed as they sprinted forward to get their weapons. "At least finish her off to shut her up."

"Hey, if her and the other guy yellin' and killing each other didn't bring 'em down, nothing will. They'll probably think he's the one who did it." Hervey buckled his sword belt back on and slung the pack over his shoulder before kneeling down to wrench open the top of the crate. "Holy-- Sigurd, look at this. They weren't smuggling back from Scarlet Moon, they were smuggling to Scarlet Moon."

The crate was full of rune cannon shells. Mostly fire and lightning, the two most destructive kinds, but there were a few scattered shells of other kinds. Even just taking this crate and not touching the rest of the cache would be worth all of the trouble they'd gone through here.

"You'll have to carry it," Sigurd pointed out. "Too many lightning shells in there, it would make me sick." There were hardly any water shells in the crate and more than enough fire to balance them out, so Hervey would be fine. "Here's hoping they didn't destroy our boat, and that Lady Kika hasn't given up on us."

"Given up?" Hervey snorted. "Pretty boy, this ain't the military. We've been out here for two days. She probably doesn't even expect us back for another two. There's nobody watchin' your ass to make sure you're on time." Still, he hefted the crate of ammunition up and followed Sigurd out of the camp; they left behind the woman, who was almost as dead as the man she'd killed. Neither of them looked back at her. "I mean, you're probably used to people /watchin' your ass/, Middleport and all, but-- ow! What was that for?"

"Because you're an idiot." Sigurd dropped the fist he'd punched Hervey in the jaw with. "Now shut up and help me find the boat, Hervey the Furious, or Dario's going to hear all about your little side-trip through Middleport today."

"Yeah, then I'll tell him about how a girl who wasn't even Lady Kika took you down." Hervey glowered at him over the crate in his arms. "We'll see which one of us he wails on more."

"You," Sigurd replied matter-of-factly. "Because it's always you. Must be the red hair."

"When we get back, I'm throwin' you overboard," Hervey grumbled.