‘The Bantos Uprising’

There was no music in the Doglands that night, only the wind working through broken shutters, shivering the filth in the alleyways, and the slow splatter of rain against the cracked sign above “Red’s Hot & Mean”—the wind and the years had erased the letters, left only a streak of angry paint and the stink of badger rotgut strong enough to eat the enamel off your teeth. Inside, the tavern was a cave of sweat and sour smoke, sticky with spilled liquor and old fear.

Sir Petyr of Aros, once of the old order, now just Pete to the drunks and orphans, hunched alone at a corner table, nursing a bottle he could barely afford, his sword at his boot, his name already half-forgotten. A rebel’s night had never been darker. The last rally had broken beneath him like old bone, another butchered band left bleeding in the dusk outside the gates, and the jackals were coming.

The Barswine had warned as much, he knew. Everyone knew. That was the order of business. Fight back, fail, die trying. Stubborn old ‘Pete’, This one. The only other recognizable fighter in the area was there to guard the Jackals theft through tax, and even he had warned the old dog to sleep it off. “Seek tunnels, get lost, If you can walk the alleys then go, dog.”.

“Not a chance.”

Besides, it was too late for that now; They entered with the scent of oil and dust, half a dozen in all, in layered silks already muddy, their teeth bright, their eyes slits. Hacksbar and Vindurga took the lead—nobles by birth, predators by trade, each one bristling with knives, hooks, grenades, a few blackmarket pistols stuck in faded sashes. The room fell silent but for the rain. Aros had no more fighters, no more banners—only Pete, old and out of luck, drinking himself toward legend or oblivion. Hacksbar’s voice was all amusement, dripping with the false gentility of a merchant offering poisoned dates.

“Sir Pete,” he said, letting the title hang like a noose, “it’s over. You know this. We can gut you here or give you an ending. Choose.”

On the battered tabletop, they placed a brass cup. Poison, swirling oily and black, the same color as the rain that trickled down from Jantara’s rooftops, the same stink that haunted every ruined alley where the last resistance bled out. Pete watched the cup as if it were a mirror, as if he could see his old self in its surface.

“Are you a knight?” he asked himself, aloud or not even he could tell. His mind, empty for months, finally answered back—a rasp of laughter, a pulse beneath the scarred ear.

“No clue,” it said. “Let us find out.”

He drank. The taste was nothing, just a flicker of rot behind the smoke and badger liquor in his throat. A hush followed, the jackals grinning with cruel expectation. The townsfolk huddled in corners, eyes fixed to their boots, praying not to be noticed, praying not to be next. Pete let his shoulders sag, let his head hang. Then, as if to chase down death itself, he grabbed the nearest bottle of Red’s Hot & Mean, sloshed half of it down his gullet, and felt the world tip. Fire in the gut, poison on the tongue, his heart kicked against his ribs like a dying stallion. But some old fire—the last coal of Aros—caught. He did not fall.

Instead, he rose.

There was a hush, then a table kicked aside, and the first jackal’s face split open in a rictus of shock as Pete’s broadsword, snatched from its resting place, crashed across his jaw. The blade was old, notched, broad as a shovel, but still murder in steel. Blood spat across the floor, red and black, and the tavern’s stink turned sharper. Pete was moving—no thought, just rage and the memory of younger days, hands and feet remembering the weight of war. Another jackal lunged, dagger flashing, but Pete’s left hand, still clutching the neck of the badger bottle, drove it into the dog’s teeth with a crunch and a shriek. Glass, blood, and spirits gushed over the table. A third came from behind—too late. Pete’s boot cracked a knee, spun him against the bar, and a second bottle of Hot & Mean, flung with perfect spite, shattered across his snout. The fire caught. Spirits, blood, and spit burned on the wooden counter, and in the sudden guttering light Pete saw Hacksbar closing in, scimitar drawn, eyes gone mean as a pit viper.

Pete grinned—a broken thing, all jaw and shadow, Townshend’s own sneer born on a mongrel’s muzzle. He ducked the blade, twisted in, and the sword rose in his grip. The old steel was heavy, but Pete’s arms remembered the weight of banners lost, of fields surrendered. The flat of the blade smashed Hacksbar’s wrist, the scimitar dropped, and Pete drove the sword up—hard, pitiless—into the jackal’s groin. Hacksbar howled, white foam at his lips, as Pete shoved him backwards through a shower of glass, up onto the sill, and, with a final curse, pitched him bodily through the window.

The street beyond was slick and shining. Hacksbar landed hard, bones shattering. He fumbled for his belt, clawing for a grenade—one of the old lion-make types, cobbled from scrap and cruelty—and as he yanked the pin, the wet fuse fizzed. In the next breath, the grenade and Hacksbar became a single red blossom, spraying shards across the cobbles. Two of his lieutenants, racing to help, caught the blast and folded, dying with their master. The crowd outside—silent, watching—staggered back.

Inside, Vindurga tried to run, but Pete was already there. Poison, liquor, and old hate burned him hollow, but something in his spine kept him upright. He cut Vindurga across the arms, both wrists pinioned to the bar with twin daggers stolen from fallen jackals. The slaver-duke spat curses, writhing, but Pete, half-mad, tore a barstool from its place, swung it overhead, and with a roar drove it through the jackal’s skull, pinning him to a ceiling beam. Blood ran in a lazy spiral down Vindurga’s muzzle, his legs kicking, his eyes already swimming in another world.

The townsfolk gaped—first in terror, then in awe, then in a strange, half-drunken elation. Pete, now more myth than hound, staggered back, hacking bile and blood onto the floor, the poison and Red’s Hot & Mean fighting for supremacy in his gut. He vomited green-black, dropped to one knee, then forced himself up with a snarl. In the corner, a barkeep whimpered. Pete raised a fist, sword still clutched, voice guttural as thunder. “Well? Who the hell are you?!” The people stared. Then, one by one, the axes and the shovels came out. Someone yelled his name, not “Pytr,” but “Sir Pete,” and the chant caught.

“Sir Pete! Sir Pete! Sir Pete!” The call grew, swelled, battered the beams, swept through the streets as the news of Hacksbar’s death, Vindurga’s spectacle, and the ruin of the jackal enforcers caught fire. The failed rebellion—the one Pete had fought and lost and wept for—snapped into fury, the dam finally broken. The uprising began not in plan, not in law, not even in hope, but in a burst of tavern violence, an old dog’s last stand, and a moment when every soul in Aros remembered they still had teeth.

Pete, already sagging, was hustled out the back, body wracked by poison, blood, and the last fumes of his badger liquor. He collapsed in the arms of a pair of healers, who dragged him off as the town exploded in riot and bloodshed. By dawn, the streets were awash with corpses and hope alike, and the jackal banners smoldered atop burning wagons.

For a week, Pete drifted in fever, neither living nor dead, as the town he’d saved bled and crowned itself in fresh law. He woke once, to find himself swinging a club at raiders who’d tracked him to the healing house, then blacked out again, deeper than ever. When at last he came up for good, the Uprising was over. Calbara was being born in the ashes, and the bard’s scroll—half-written, half-burned—marked the beginning of Bantos, though Pete’s own name was already fading from the pages. He would pass into legend, his deed half-remembered, half-disbelieved, a question ringing out into the blood-soaked dawn.

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