Thirty -
Suikoden IV, Adonis Attack (Helmut, Sigurd, and Hervey)
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In his heart of hearts he almost wished that he had been summarily executed. They'd have been well within their rights to do so, and it would have been easiest for everyone: a quick and painless death for him, a martyr for the Kooluks, a legacy that his father could have been--if not proud of, then at least accepting of. He would have died as a failure; instead he was living as a traitor. He knew very well which one his father would have preferred.

Still, it was done, and there was nothing to be done for it now, bound as he was by his word.

Being on board this ship was, in its way, its own exquisite form of torture: he'd come aboard three days ago and since then no one had bothered to speak to him. They weren't snubbing him, precisely. He'd been treated much better than he had any right to expect. But still, they had their own business to be about, and so they walked by him without seeing him, and while in many ways he was grateful for this, in other ways it was worse than being clapped in the brig and left to rot. Like this he was an impotent ghost, drifting through the ship, filling the spaces in between meals and nights with second-guessing and terrible, crushing boredom. At least in the brig he'd have been a captured enemy, someone of consequence. Leaving him free and armed was tantamount to telling him that they considered him harmless--

--someone slammed into him from behind, driving him painfully forward into the rail and abruptly ending his session of feeling sorry for himself.

"Hey! You're in my way!" someone said from behind him. Helmut looked over his shoulder. The redhead who was always hanging around at the other end of the deck was glaring at him, with his sword out--reflexively Helmut whirled and grabbed for his own sword before it registered that the sword was down, pointing at the deck.

Helmut left his hand on the hilt of his sword anyway. Before he could either apologize or snap at the man (the pirate, that was one of Kika's pirates, he was in league with pirates now) someone said "Hervey." in a mild voice, and the redheaded pirate twitched and then wilted.

"I'm very sorry," said the owner of the voice, tall and black-haired, drifting over to stand behind the now terribly grumpy-looking redhead. "Hervey's not the most polite person you'll ever meet."

The redheaded pirate--Hervey, apparently--rolled his eyes. He started to say something, but the other pirate made a small inquisitive sound and Hervey subsided into muttering instead.

His first instinct, born from long years as a soldier and a gentleman, was to demand either an apology or satisfaction; but for the first time in his life Helmut took a step back from that instinct, as if he was looking down on himself from a great height. "It's all right," he dimly heard himself saying. "No harm done."

"I still apologize," the tall pirate said, and promptly drove an elbow into the small of Hervey's back. Hervey yelped and muttered something that might also have been an apology. After that there was a slight and uncomfortable silence, and then the tall pirate said, "Ah, where are my manners, my name is Sigurd," and Helmut, after a slight pause, inclined his head.