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	Though lacking the padded footsteps of a burglar and the tender touch of a lockpick, Gütta fancied himself nonetheless as rather a discreet man, urging his body and mind into the inviting embrace of that warm friend, laziness, with the graceful finesse of a dancer. Every morning began, when he could help it, with a large beer by the bedside, clean and bitter, flowing from the pot's belly to his; and with the chamberpot thence filled, the bright teeth (straight and strong like merlons) thence polished, the weathered modesty thence clothed, he moved toward the mess hall. He had mastered the art of his gait. Should he stoop too low, dragging his heels along the coarse stones as if touched by malaise, he would elicit pity from other knights; too tall, too straight of spine, too proud of bosom, and he would swim in their haughty contempt. Nay, he had totally seized his anonymity, strolling through the halls and seeming to the negligent eye as mundane as can be. Ergo no men put themselves forward as obstacles in his quest for meat and gravy, and other hearty stuffs to sit like lead in his gut and appease the throbbing heat in his skull. If I put so much effort into actually [i]working[/i], thought he, I would own this damned place!

	Alas, like any fine liquor, too much laziness churns up into the stomach a true sickness, seeming to seep ere long even into man's very soul. After he broke his fast, having received no orders from his lieutenants, nor any urgent business around the bailey, Gütta set himself on the course of any bored soldier: he went out into the cloister, and he trained. Any who frequented this place knew his routine, if but in passing; a rope tied around the torso of a tree, looped around a high branch, and then weighted down at the end with a round wooden bull's-eye, served as his personal orc, troll, or brigand, its shape shifting to match his daily whimsy. Already sporting the scars of knife and arrowhead, this lump of lumber thus was his victim when flesh, blood and bone were not available. As for standing targets, the scapegoats for his axe and his sword were simpler still: plain wooden stakes dressed in rags, plugged up with straw, and to stop their viscera from spilling out preemptively, cinched tight at the hems.

	Like hunting dogs locked up in their cages, bladders bursting but fangs much too dry, for hours the mercenary gnawed restlessly at his figurative bone, resting frequently to curse the sun and turn his face from it, for his face seared at his nerves with the residues of too much tipple. Where the boisterous stone pillars and walls would bite at his sword, denting and nicking and rolling the fickle steel, rather the ash and elm and cedar accepted from Gütta their wounds and scars. Thus was his average day spent, when he was not to march a road and dig a latrine (the two true duties of war): stabbing with the awlpike, hooking with the axe and beak, rushing in with the shimmering naked sword, against foes of wood and straw. Inert as they were, nevertheless they oiled his wits and honed his talents.

	And indeed, this was a day like any other. When the explosion reverberated through the stones of the keep, and whistled sharply through the air, he had propped his back against a buttress as to rest, and let the sweat dry from his brow. The mercenary turned toward the noise only by instinct, his heart startled into a quicker tempo. When he saw that no shrapnel soared toward him, and that no smoke shuffled listlessly heavenward, he realized the mishap, one of countless, surely was innocuous, and no reason whatever for further alarm. Those children sure like to show off, he pondered, his irritation tickling at his brain like a delicate morning mist.

	He wondered when supper would be ready, and when the heavens' mercy would strip the ache from his eyeballs.