Journey of an Evil Henchman

Benjamin Rekhmire sat alone in the back of a bar, trying very hard to be inconspicuous. At seventeen he was technically underage and it didn't help matters much that it was nearly two o'clock in the morning, but this hole in the wall wasn't the sort of place where people ask a lot of questions. It was the sort of place where people got routinely drunk. Another fight broke out while he watched but these combatants were soon thrown out, just as all the others had been. There weren't a lot of people left inside by then. Eventually one of the few remaining patrons drained his mug, stood up, and made his way back in the dimness to sit beside Ben. 
    'Buy y'a pint, kid, if you tell me what you're doing here,' he said.

    Benjamin could tell the man was a trained assassin, or at least a thug, by his constant alertness. The man must also have the constitution of an ox; he'd been drinking all night, but showed absolutely no sign of it. Ben would have to be cautious.

    The man turned half around in his seat and waved his hand vaguely in the air. Almost immediately the bartender appeared, set two tankards on their table, and vanished. 'See? Beer. So tell me what you think you're doing in a place like this.' Any pretense of drunkenness seemed to have evaporated off the man like pure alcohol into the air.
    Benjamin picked up the cup and, since the man seemed to expect it, took a swallow. 'I'm looking for work,' he said.
    'What kind?'
    'The kind that pays.' This was the way his father had always started off in a new town; go to the worst bar you can find in the middle of the night and inquire about employment. It had worked well enough for him, up until those last few jobs. Benjamin took another pull of beer. 'Know anyone who's hiring?'
    The man looked him up and down, from his wiry black hair to his new waterproof boots. Finally he asked, 'What kind of equipment do you have?'
    'A rifle, two pistols, and a machete.'
    'Hmm...' There was a pause. 'You heard any of the news from over the Tarik boarder?' Ben shook his head. 'They say there's been a war up there, and the old regime toppled. Supposedly, Lord... Damn, can't remember the last bit, anyway Lord Kuer-something now has control, but he suffered losses.Gantz,' said the man, 'is a reasonably peaceful place; we've little need for mercenaries here. But you might find work over Tarik way.
    'Oh, and one last thing,' he added, as Ben rose to leave. 'They've got the main pass through the mountains locked down, but there's a second one, higher up, where people can still get through.
    'Don't forget to leave a stone at the top for the mountain god!' the man called after him, which set the bartender laughing, for no readily apparent reason.
    Benjamin pushed open the ill-fitting door and stepped outside into the post-rain mud. As he turned up his collar against the wind, Ben glanced west toward the towering mountains, which rose up steep and blacker than the night sky. The torn fragments of cloud raced along as if driven, by some ancient evil, away from the peaks. As if only flight could save them.
    If he had been some kind of tragic hero, Ben might have noticed a feeling of strange presentment, or even doom, as he looked at those mountains. But he wasn't, and didn't. All he thought was, 'Going to take me a week to ride up there, in conditions like this.' So Benjamin Rekhmire set off immediately, riding on his ancient motorcycle, and that was probably just as well, all things considered. 

As it turned out, Ben never needed to go over the higher pass at all. After three days of travel he stopped at a convenience store for gas and an actual toilet (you see, he hadn't thought he could afford hotels; he'd been camping by the highway every night), and overheard some people talking as he stood behind the snack isle.
    A middle aged woman was leaning on the counter. '...needs it, doesn't he? No point in being dictator unless you make money.'
    'I suppose,' the cashier conceded. 'Still,' she went on, rubbing at her nose ring in what looked like a habitual manner, 'Too much upheaval scares away investors, and there has been a lot of it recently, so I hardly think there're going to be many coming through.'
    'Oh don't say unlucky things,' the older woman chuckled, 'You need the customers!'
    At that point they both seemed to notice Benjamin watching them; the tattooed cashier hurriedly straightened up and removed her hand from her face, and the woman gathered her purchases and left with a little wave. Ben was about to ask for a pack of cigarettes, but thought better of the impulse: age mattered in this country, and he didn't have ID. 'Could you tell me the road to Tarik?' he asked instead, doing his best to mimic the accent of this country.
    'Sure thing,' said the young woman, 'Just keep going on highway 55, it'll take you all the way there.'
    'Right.' Benjamin paid for the gasoline and left, nearly smiling. If he could get through security, he wouldn't have to sleep outside; there were always abandoned houses after a takeover.
    Later, Ben would never understand quite how he did manage to get across that boarder. 

'So you're looking to work for Lord Kuertian. What position would you like to apply for?' The lobby clerk asked Benjamin. He had glasses and is basically unimportant to the story.
    'Position?'
    The clerk looked at Ben condescendingly and rolled his eyes. It made him look oddly fish-like.'What job do you want?'
    Benjamin considered. Finally he said, 'I don't really know.'
    The fishy clerk rolled his eyes even farther into his head, so that only the white was showing. For an instant, Ben let himself imagine the clerk suddenly blinking with a second pair of filmy eyelids, sprouting antennae and feelers like a catfish and leaping straight through the second story window behind him to swim with webbed fingers and feet through a post-apocalyptic world covered with water, from which the tops of buildings protruded like stumps and cypress knees. The clerk was looking at Ben expectantly; he must have been talking.
    'I'm sorry, what?'
    'I said, do you have any skills? What do you know how to do, what do you do well?'
    Ben answered with the first thing that came to mind, 'I can shoot people.'
    'Then you'll want to speak with Colonel Haddock.' The clerk opened a drawer in his desk and grabbed a piece of paper. Then he got up and began walking rapidly toward the entrance to a large hallway, beckoning Ben to follow. 'Come on, we'll see if he wants you.' 

The clerk stopped outside a large oak door and rapped on it respectfully. 'Colonel? A new recruit.'

    A voice from beyond the door called, 'Bring him in.'

    They entered a room paneled in wood, floor to ceiling. It was paneled not vertically, but horizontally, and looked as if the people who'd built it had said 'screw it' and left the bark on. There was one, rather small window, a large desk, and a chair, in which sat a man who was, presumably, the colonel. He was big and tall and intimidating. Also he was sunburned, pale, and angry. The Colonel had been trying to acquire a masterful tan, but parts of his north-lander skin just couldn't cope with that kind of workload and had sent in their letters of resignation, leaving Haddock looking like a mottled shaved bear. This somehow served to make him even more frightening than he otherwise would have been, with only his crewcut and angular face expressing the torturous cruelty in which he steeped himself. Benjamin had seen worse, and he stood up to the aura of general hatred as if he had dealt with it his whole life. Because he had dealt with it his whole life.
    The clerk closed the door and took up a stance beside it, an impartial observer. Ben, deeply conscious of the military nature of the man before him, stood at rigid attention directly in front of the desk, keeping his eyes fixed on the window frame.
    Colonel Haddock glowered at him from beneath eyebrows so light they were almost nonexistent, and looked him up and down. '...Just how old are you?'
    Benjamin stared straight before him as he lied through his teeth. 'Twenty-one, sir.'
    'Really.' The one word encompassed every shade of disbelief. 'Can you shoot?'
    'Yes sir.'
    'Ever killed anyone?'
    'Yes sir. A few people.'
    'Do you enjoy it?'
    Startled, Ben glanced at Haddock, but dragged his eyes back to the window-frame a fraction of an instant later, and swallowed, nervously. The Colonel was smiling a terrible, torturous, terrifying, T-THEMED-ALLITERATION smile.
    Ben swallowed again. He had to make this convincing. 'Shooting people, sir? Nothing better.'
    'You're hired.' The Colonel sat back in his chair, a much more bearable expression on his lips. 'You, clerk, take him down to requisitions. Tell them standard equip, and make sure they get someone to show him around.' Colonel Haddock turned back to Benjamin. 'I'll expect to see you on the training field tomorrow, six o'clock sharp. Dismissed!'
    Ben turned about smartly on his heel and left the room, shadowed by the clerk, who paused outside the closed door and tapped his fingernail against his teeth. It produced a strange clicking sound, which Ben thought might have been the sound of a devilish game of dice projected up from hell, so weirdly did it echo in that abandoned hallway.
    It has been mentioned before that Benjamin is not very plot- or genre-savvy at this point, so it will surprise no one to learn that he shrugged this foreshadowing sentence off as easily as he had the last.
    Ben followed the clerk through winding ways to the requisitions office, where a little man took his measurements very precisely over the course of an hour and a half, then proceeded to hand him two uniforms, each of which was at least three sizes too big, and a pair of boots that were just like the ones he was wearing, but half a size too small. Thus equipped, Ben followed an errand boy around the base for a tour which ended, most likely by design, in the mess hall, so he and the boy (whose name was Ted) sat down together at one of the long tables a bit before the scheduled dinner time.
    When he was about halfway through with his bowl of stew a mustachioed hurried up to the table and addressed Ben. 'Recruit,' he said, 'take our lookouts some dinner.' Then he hurried away, and Benji had no choice but to abandon his food and follow orders.
    There were sentries posted at every corner of the walled compound, and Benjamin hauled the big stewpot around to each in turn. He remembered Ted telling him something about a watchtower a little ways along the road; in fact, now that he thought about it, he'd passed the place on the way in. It wasn't far and there was still half the pot full of stew, so Benji slipped through the front gate in the light of the setting sun.