“Oh, be sure I will.” the mercenary relaxed a little, but still kept a wary eye on the assassin. The foreign man might be claiming to not be an enemy this time, and as another former hired blade he had no reason to find it untrue, but it wasn’t enough to fully trust him either.
“Hard to call that following, we weren’t exactly on best terms” he shrugged. “As for joining the Hawk, no, I ain’t making that mistake again.”
He had heard about Griffiths new kingdom, and made a note to steer clear of it. While he was desperate to find a safe haven from the demons he had to deal with ever since, searching for it under the wing of the man responsible for putting him in this situation in the first place felt beyond foolish. Besides, the way his previous loyalty was repaid with tossing him away like a slab of meat to be devoured was not something he was willing to forget nor forgive.
“Why does that matter to you, anyway? For someone who says he doesn’t have any business with the Band of the Hawk anymore you’re strangely nosy about it.”
“Fascinating. And what mistake would that be, exactly? Sources have told me everything up until your group’s heroic jailbreak those years ago.”
“And my business and my interests are not always the same.”
He paused, weighing his decision to share further.
“I am trying to discern the number of people who blindly follow the Hawk, and why they do so. His hold over the minds of the people who surround him appears terrifyingly absolute, and the loyalty that he has inspired in them could tip into a fervor.”
He turned, pacing a few feet, his eyes searching the ground for an answer he’d yet to find.
“Yet the few survivors of his original mercenary group refuse to follow him, and even actively oppose him. The ones who, I would suspect, know him better than the rest. I hope my curiosity then, regarding the single most powerful man in the world at this moment, is understandable.”
