Hookton. Of all the places he'd been this one wasn't the worse candidate for places to die in. That wasn't saying much, really, but he had to admit it was a rather nice place for a moderately successful port town. The local constabulary or whatever passed for such had the sailors behaving reasonably in public, the bartenders had the gumption to cut them off before they got too deep in their cups, and all in all it seemed like the kind of place that wouldn't have to worry about the kind of trouble it was in. But sometimes that made for the best targets. Kerr could see the reasoning that would have gone into selecting it for an assault, especially a big bold one of the sort that was coming. Finding out about it ahead of time had been a stroke of good luck, a matter of happening to stop under the right window to scrape something from the bottom of his boot at just the right time and overhearing a conversation being spoken just a little too loud. Pure luck that he'd elected to cut through that particular alley on his way to another matter.



An assault, on the night of the next new moon. The sailors behaved because they weren't at the end of their journey, they weren't paid yet and thus had nothing of their own to defend. The constabulary had enjoyed that peace for too long and grown soft, letting their ranks be filled with people who wanted to wear the livery but didn't really have the fight in them for tougher places. The money was here, there was trade to be done between clever merchants and ship captains looking to fill out their hold or offload cargo that wasn't going to make it to the next big port. Capture the docks, clean out the ships and dockside taverns, disappear into the pitch black night. Little resistance, big take. Two pirate captains had come together to make a massive score, had done the scouting, and had embedded insiders to open the proverbial gates. Kerr didn't know who those double agents were, where they were embedded, and so he couldn't just warn the locals. The plan would change but it wouldn't be cancelled.



So he'd sent out a few missives, hiring a few mercenaries on the sly to come and meet him in Hookton. Bounties aplenty and an appreciative, generous population of locals that would be all too happy to buy a lot of drinks if they won. And all Kerr wanted was a finder's fee on any bounty over a thousand marks, which probably wouldn't be a lot of them but he wanted more manpower than he wanted coin out of this misadventure. The two captains, if captured or killed, would more than make this lucrative for him even if he wasn't the one who claimed the bounty. He had such a weird reputation, between being unscrupulous underworld muscle and unerringly honest about his bounty hunting work, people wouldn't even blink twice about him setting a trap for an unlikely pirate attack in a middle port like Hookton. Which was why he was sitting with his back to the inner wall of a pub, eating stew, and watching for certain people to turn up. The broker he'd contacted was a known value to Kerr, the names listed hopefully available. People who'd been in the mercenary business long enough or loud enough to know who Kerr was in return.



All he had to do was wait, and that was easy to do with a hunk of dark molasses bread and a bowl of slowly simmered stew to eat between flirting with the local girl working as his server. She'd have been more interesting if she was ten years older and a bit more world-weary but the innocence was cute in its own way. She'd gone off to do some cleaning after getting a glare from the owner's wife through the kitchen curtain so Kerr was happily munching away on a piece of his bread he'd dipped in the stew and watching the door.

A towering figure made her way through the streets with a massive horse obediently trotting along at her heels, a large crow perched on one broad shoulder. Quite a bit of bronze skin was showing as the Orc has barely bothered to clothe herself enough for modesty, and certainly less than the average human citizen would have preferred--or at least the women, as the gawking of the menfolk seemed to be mostly appreciative of her ample cleavage clearly being on display. The mercenary winked at a few of the younger ones, delighting in their cute blushes as they ducked out of sight or hurried to complete their forgotten tasks. Her good-natured chuckle rumbled like a cheerful avalanche as she finally reached the pub detailed in the missive Amarok had delivered to her two days ago, loosely draping her steed's reins over a post designed for just such a purpose. With one last pat to Tyr's flank, Guthrunda stepped into the establishment with a friendly--if slightly unsettling due to her large tusks--grin at the occupants, stomping dirt from her boots at the door so she wouldn't dirty the wooden flooring as she approached the bar. Unintentionally looming over the proprietor, she jovially ordered a large tankard of mead and slid the appropriate amount of coin across the bar-top to his slightly stupefied hands.

Scooping up the tankard with a loud bark of gratitude, she stomped over to the table Kerr sat at and thumped down into the seat opposite him with a wide grin, the chair creaking in protest at her considerable weight. "Greetings, ser Kerr Blackwood of Clan Greentusk," she started cheerfully, only the glint of her hazel eyes revealing that she was smarter than she was pretending to be. "I am Guthrunda of Baghur, Amarok here says you have need of some extra hands? I possess two of them myself, and can call in more if needed." Guthrunda propped her jaw on her fist as she glanced over the smaller human with a thoughtful smirk, sending him a playful wink. "A roll in the hay wouldn't be amiss either, ser, if I may say so."

In walked an Orc. Kerr noticed, everybody noticed, it was the way of her people to take up as much of a space as they could wherever they went. Quiet and reserved Orcs didn't make it far in the great northern forests. But where everybody notice, Kerr was the first to return to what he'd been doing. Growing up in and around those same forests had left Kerr jaded to the effect of having a powerful, tall Orc woman push through a tavern door. It'd lost its novelty before he was fifteen. Plus, his stew wasn't going to get any warmer while everybody was gawking at her admittedly ample assets. There was something to be said for a powerfuly built woman who didn't lose her more womanly features. Of course, Kerr was biased about such things but he felt everybody was entitled to their personal preferences.

Coins were exchanged, cups handed over, and then she made her way straight to him. She recognized him, he thought before she'd even crossed half the distance. But that was no surprise. Between his curly blond hair and his sword rig (which was unique on this continent at least) he was fairly easy to recognize amongst those who knew of him and were looking. The trick was being around a place so rarely that people never thought to look. He thought about the list of people he'd put word out to, running through the information he had in his prodigious memory, and settled on a name. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you Guthrunda of Clan Baghúr," he replied without looking up from his meal. He finished his most recent tear of bread and then made eye contact. "But I'm no Ser, just an old quarter-Orc mercenary out to make his coin." Nobody had seen fit to knight him. Yet.

He ran a hand through his curly blond locks when she hit on him. Despite only standing two inches taller than him she was likely to weigh about the same and was definitely broader of shoulder. He also knew he made himself seem less than he was almost subconsciously, so the predatory look on her face wasn't a terrible shock either. Kerr had a bad habit of inviting trouble on himself. It made him smile. "Offered and accepted, m'lady. We'll settle on a when and where after we discuss the business at hand." She wouldn't be his first Orc and, goddess willing, she wouldn't be his last. "If your fighters can be here before the new moon in three... well, two nights time now, then I would be happy to have them. The local guards aren't incapable but they're softer than most port guards because the place doesn't invite trouble for a variety of reasons." The softness of peace was why the daring, brazen plan of attack by the pirates had a solid chance of being successful in the first place.