Evie stops drinking, trying to imagine that group with melee weapons in their hands, screaming war cries filled with rage and blood as they charge the shields and spears and axes of the Sicclunan front line. It’s the most absurd picture in her head, one that would inspire laughter were it not for the picture that follows, the one of piled-up wrinkled limbs and severed heads with shocked, twisted expressions on their withered faces.

Spud-Bar not only takes note of Evie watching them, they can obviously read her thoughts.

“Don’t look at ’em in pity,” Spud-Bar instructs Evie. “Doesn’t do no good, for you or them. Instead you gotta take ’em for what they are.”

“And what’s that?”

“A warning.”

Evie finally looks away from the doomed gathering around that table, searching Spud-Bar’s face for some kind of deeper meaning. “What’re they warning me about?”

“Getting old. Don’t do it. It never ends well, no matter what happens.”

Evie doesn’t believe that, chooses not to believe it, but she also can’t fault someone like Spud-Bar for arriving at such a conclusion. Evie can’t know how many such groups of helpless, frail, and doomed individuals they’ve watched suffer through the Revel, but she doesn’t imagine the number is small.

“Shut the fuck up!” Laython barks over a score of conversation that have congealed into one unintelligible organism.

The Savage assemblage quiets.

All save the old-timers.

Laython ignores their continued chatter.

“The life of a Savage is eating, fucking, and fighting. Fighting is for tomorrow. Tonight you live the first two to their fullest. Because for most of you, all that’s left is the fight. There’s no coming out the other side. Not as the breathing, bleeding, shitting sacks of meat you are now, anyway. Whatever afterlife does or doesn’t await you, let’s make a pact here and now: There will never be a night to rival this one. This is when you revel. Tomorrow is when you die!”

Most of them cheer, because it’s clear from the timbre of Laython’s voice that this is the moment for cheering.

Evie just stares up at him, then at the faces of the men and women around her, certain she must’ve heard different words than all of them did over the last few moments.

“Believe it or not,” Spud-Bar remarks, “he’s sharpened that speech to a razor’s edge from what it was years past.”

Evie can only shake her head.