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A little before sunrise, in the city of Verbobonc, a badger trotted down a wooden sidewalk.

He was a very big badger, about seven feet from wet black nose to rump, with another couple of feet of furry tail past that. His flank fur was so long he resembled a massive, furry turtle. Claws as long as a man's hand clicked on the boards as he trotted along. In no particular hurry, but clearly with someplace to be, he crossed one street and then another. The badger was mostly gray-furred as seen from above, with thick black legs and a mostly black face marked by a long white stripe up his nose.

Tiger-sized badgers are not a commonplace thing in Verbobonc. In fact, this was the only one. Just the same, most people he passed barely glanced at him as he scuttled by. This badger had been in town for a while and was well known. Someone might recoil in horror the first time the ambulatory buzz-saw went by, but by the tenth time he was just scenery.

"Mornin', Bart," a street sweeper greeted it in passing, and the badger nodded politely as he went by. As he stopped at a crossing to wait for a carriage to go by an old woman dug her fingers into the thick fur of his neck and scritched. The badger arched his neck into it, but as soon as the carriage was gone so was he.

Five minutes of short-legged trotting carried him from the bar where he slept to the west gate of the city. The thick wooden gates were still shut and he nodded approvingly. A guardsman yawned and waved as he disappeared into the gatehouse.

Once inside the door he stood up on his hindpaws and waddled over to a row of lockers. When you could see his chest, where the fur was shorter and cream-colored, you could make out the harness of leather straps and steel buckles. Bart had a gold earring in each fuzzy ear, a set of black iron bracers on his forelegs and the harness. He didn't need any more clothing than that to trot to work. Once here, though...

Rather clumsily he opened the largest of the lockers. Though he seemed a mere beast - even standing up the way he was now you'd never mistake him for a humanoid - one thumb on each forepaw was opposable. His huge paws and long claws didn't make very good hands, but hands they were nevertheless. The locker was full of armor tailored for his furry frame and he reached for a heavy chainmail coat that would buckle onto his harness.

Just then the watch officer stuck his nose in the door. Lieutenant Georgios spoke before Bart could open his mouth.

"Bart, HQ has a job for you. Get there ASAP. You don't need your armor."

It turned out the big badger could talk, too. There was a growl to his voice, but you got used to it. "But there's that big caravan coming in -"

"We'll cover it. Dogs can sniff too, they just aren't as good as telling us what they find."

"Yes, sir. I'll get back as fast as I can."

"No you won't. They need you all day and you'll have to stay at the station house. Maybe overnight there, too."

Bart perked up. All that added up to just one thing. "Who is it? Bandit?"

Georgios, a battle-scarred former adventurer, shook his head. "I don't know and I don't want to know, Bart. I'll see you tomorrow, or the next if they give you tomorrow off too."

Bart grinned a toothy grin. "Yes, sir."

Bart stuffed the chainmail back into the locker and shoved a leather-and-steel helmet shaped for his narrow skull in after it when it tried to escape. He was licking his chops as he scuttled on all fours back out the door.

There were advantages to being the Guard's talking monster. One was that everyone got to know you and trusted you. Having a good work ethic and, he liked to think, a pleasant disposition helped too, of course.

Another was that occasionally the city needed someone gotten rid of. Bart happened to have a particular talent for making problem people disappear. He'd planned to eat some bread from the guard room table when he had a break, and showed up to work hungry. It looked like he wouldn't be hungry for long.

Verbobonc is not a big city and soon the big badger arrived at city guard headquarters. Located near the redoubt in the center of the town, it was a low stone building with thick walls and little more than slit windows. All the guard posts were fortified and the headquarters was no exception.

"Hey Bart." The sergeant at the door nodded to him. "Captain Kenner was going to send a runner for you if you didn't show up."

"I got here as fast as I could," the badger growled. "You know I'm not built for speed."

Sergeant Siler grinned, made a note on his entry ledger and waved Bart in.

Out of habit the badger made a sharp right and headed for the cells. This building was fortified largely because people who got locked up here wanted very badly to not be locked up, and they sometimes had friends to help them remedy their situation. He had to go through two more checkpoints to get to the cells, but the guards waved him through. He was expected.

"Ah, corporal." The captain of the guard looked up from his desk at the click of claws on stone. No other guardsman made a sound like that.

"Sir." Bart sat up on his haunches and saluted as best he could. "I came as fast as I could."

"At ease, corporal. Bart, you know that sometimes we have a prisoner here that needs to be executed immediately. Given the availability of resurrection magics, and the threat posed by -"

Bart listened intently though he knew every word. It was always the same briefing. He'd heard it half a dozen times now but the captain was required to say every word and he was required to hear it. The I's must be dotted and the T's crossed because the city did not lightly execute someone.

When they did, though, they liked them to stay executed. Burning the prisoner's body meant gathering firewood and smoking up the district. Taking it out of town to the crematorium near the cemetery was a security risk. Burying it just begged someone to come dig it up and Raise the criminal and hiring a mage to Disintegrate it cost the city money.

His belly, on the other hand, cost nothing to operate. All it took was the city giving him a day off to digest his meal. Troublemakers cause little trouble after a trip through a badger, in the city's experience. Some people are more useful as fertilizer than they were as people.

The captain, showing signs of being as bored with the paperwork as Bart, read every word in his best professional voice just the same. The bureaucracy was tiresome but it was there for a reason.

"Toe print here," he said at the end, and slid the document across to Bart. Badgery claws don't hold a quill pen well and his forepaw was as large as the entire sheet of vellum, so he inked the pad of his thumb-toe and pressed it in the appropriate spot.

"All right," Captain Kenner said at last. "Follow me, Corporal."

The guards at the next door watched them go by, standing just a little straighter and gripping the hilts of their halberds. The whole building was on alert from the number of guards. Things were always tense when he was called to headquarters.

One more pair of guards and they were where they needed to be. Captain Kenner unlocked a thick bronze-plated door and swung it wide. Finally Bart got to see his breakfast.

Half-orc, female. Heavily scarred. Close-cropped black hair with a braid in back, where an enemy could not easily reach. Strongly muscled. The badger nodded approvingly. The yellow-green skin didn't bother him. There was a lot here to like, if you happen to be a big feral badger who likes strong muscular ladies to share his bed. In fact she looked a lot like Alma, the half-orc bouncer who worked at his bar and who was the closest he had to a real girlfriend. Bart slept with a lot of ladies for fun. He slept with Alma because he liked her.

The prisoner's wrists were bound behind her back by thick leather straps, and her ankles were bound just as tightly. Yellowed fangs peeked past the leather gag in her mouth. She saw him and tugged at the bindings, but whoever tied her up knew what they were doing. All she could do was roll over on the straw mat and glare at him.

"Banditry, murder, conspiracy to ambush caravans," Captain Kenner said without being asked. "Caught during a raid on a farmstead. They'd killed the family there and were using it as a base. Some of the bandits escaped the raid and -"

"...There is worry about an escape attempt," Bart growled. "Your pardon, sir. I have seen the paperwork. I know she is condemned. I will do my duty."

For a moment the badger hesitated. There was something eerily familiar about the stocky half-orc. Then he stepped forward. There was no fear on her face as he yawned. Her mouth was twisted in a rictus of hate as his long jaws slipped over her face. She even tried to bite his tongue, but the gag stopped her. Bart slipped his jaws over her face, gathered his tongue beneath her chin and swallowed.

Captain Kenner watched it happen. The prisoner was very brave and very strong. Rather than panicking she tensed, trying to bend herself double and kick the badger away. She must know she would be executed by one means or another but she wasn't going to make it easy for Bart.

The badger pinned her hips to the floor so her feet couldn't kick him in the belly and yawned until his jaws popped. With a side-to-side wriggle of his pointed muzzle he got his jaws over her shoulders. She was still struggling and a fang caught in her skin as her upper arms vanished into his maw. Blood showed past his stretched black lips as skin tore. Just the same he swallowed again. The lump in his neckfur slipped down toward his body, followed by the greater bulge of her shoulders, and he hooked his claws around her rump and tugged.

Captain Kenner had heard a lot about Bart even before he met the badger. Originally a mere dire badger, no more able to talk than a dog, he was a rent-a-mount at an exotic riding animal stand. His owner had him magically modified to be a walking body disposal, and a later owner had paid for spells to make him intelligent. By the time Bart arrived at Verbobonc he could talk, use his paws as hands...and swallow a man whole.

He didn't do that very often. Bart was very good at overpowering people without killing them. He could pull a strong man off his feet and strip away weapons and armor with his claws. That skill got him a job as a bouncer, and another with the city guard. Usually a foe surrendered at once when a badger three times their size took their sword away and grinned in their face.

Sometimes they fought and managed to bruise him. Sometimes he had to beat them against the floor to get them to give up. Sometimes they were so much trouble he lost patience and the encounter ended in a burp. Bart was as good at shoving a struggling man into his maw as he was at pulling them down and wrestling them into submission. Get far enough on his bad side and you ended up in his insides.

The badger pulled with his forepaws and suddenly there was just a kicking set of half-orc legs protruding from his jaws. Stubborn to the last she slammed her knees against the stone floor to get the leverage to kick him. Her heels hooked hard down onto his narrow skull. The kick must have hurt her knees more than it did the badger and it wasn't enough to even slow him down. Bart's skull was thick and it took more than that to stun him even when he wasn't wearing his armor.

She tried to brace herself for another kick but his muzzle lurched upward and only her calves and feet were left. Bart swallowed and it was just the feet. Stretched out in his gullet, her head and shoulders already in his stomach, she tensed herself as straight and rigid as she could manage. She must have reasoned that he couldn't breathe while swallowing her.

Captain Kenner nodded. It was a good idea. Others had tried it. Maybe if she'd saved her strength she could have kept him from swallowing her long enough that he'd have to cough her up. Instead she'd struggled with all her might, all the way down. The badger, knowing his might happen, had taken a great breath before starting and swallowing an orc a third his size was not particularly difficult.

As she struggled in his throat, desperate for a breath, she relaxed her tense body for a moment. The badger tossed his muzzle, gathering up her feet, and swallowed one last time.

Captain Kenner watched the bulge move through Bart's neckfur to join the swelling in his sagging middle. It wasn't the biggest prisoner he'd seen the badger swallow. She was just about the most stubborn, though. Even through long flank-fur he watched the bulge change shape as the tied-up half-orc made things as unpleasant for her executioner as possible. She must know there would be no escape. Without a knife to cut her way out, even were she not tied up she was doomed to a trip through Bart's guts. A minute ago she was a prisoner. Now she was just badger food.

It was not the badger's first carnival. Familiar with struggling prey in his belly he rolled over and wrapped his long-clawed forepaws over the squirming bulge. He pushed hard enough to muffle the inner squirming, forcing the half-orc into a tight fetal curl. There was a twitch as she tried to worm an elbow free to jab him in the kidneys, but the pressure of his paws also squeezed most of the air out of his gut. A long belch bubbled up out of Bart's jaws and it was all over. With a last shuddering twitch the half-orc was still. Too exhausted to fight any more and nearly suffocated, she could only lie there as the stomach acids came trickling in.

Captain Kenner watched as the badger rolled onto his paws, took two heavy-bellied steps to the side and flopped onto the thin straw mattress the half-orc had been on. Bart knew the drill. He had to stay here long enough for them to be sure the half-orc was beyond any simple Resurrection magic.

Even a moderately skilled cleric could bring a mostly intact corpse back to life. It was a lot harder when the corpse was badly damaged and so Bart couldn't go until his belly was sloshing with half-digested orc. Of course, by the time his stomach was done there wouldn't be a body to Raise at all but the remainder of his shift was long enough for their purposes. That was why the badger would stay here under guard until the evening.

"Good job, corporal. I'll bring you some water, and I think I saw one of those dirty books you like in the wardroom."

The badger grinned, rolled onto his back and sprawled out. Not only did he get a meal out of his guard shift, but his "work" for the rest of the shift would be to lie around, nap, and otherwise idle away the time. His job for the next twelve hours was simply to digest his meal.

As the captain turned away the badger's movements forced out another long burp. He didn't see the sudden worried expression on Bart's face. The burp tasted...familiar.

Bart's sense of smell was far better than a man's. Better than most dogs, for that matter. They had him sniffing out contraband at the gate because he was good at it and he had that long muzzle and wet black nose for a reason. He could, among other things, tell if two people were lovers with a sniff from ten feet away.

He could also tell, most of the time, if people were related. That second belch tasted an awful lot like his girlfriend. As the captain nodded to the guards and the cell door was locked Bart found the shape of the swallowed half-orc woman beneath his paws and squeezed. There was still a little air and it came up in a last small burp. It, too, tasted an awful lot like Alma.

He knew what his girlfriend smelled and tasted like, having sniffed and licked every inch of her body. It was only the second half-orc he'd swallowed but it tasted and smelled far too much like Alma for it to be a coincidence. He'd just eaten a close relative of hers. Sister? Hadn't she mentioned a sister?

The captain was back, setting down a jug of water and a careworn book. Bart recognized the cover at once. He'd read others of the Jade series before. Jade was a (probably) fictional half-elf woman who seemed to run into an awful lot of amorous and demanding males. Humans, of course, those volumes didn't interest him much. But then there were the one where she was captive to a minotaur, or used as a toy by a pack of gnolls and their hyena pets. Sometimes mere animals dragged her off and mounted her. She always got away in the end. Forty volumes in and this one here, judging by the cover, involved a horse-sized green dragon exploring her various holes with its barbed penis and forked tongue.

Normally, a full belly and time to kill would have him leafing eagerly through the illustrated pages and maybe, in the absence of a lover, curling down to suck himself off. Being a flexible badger has its advantages.

But now he was worried. A last small burp, probably the air in the prisoner's lungs, percolated up and it tasted as much like Alma as the others. What could he do?

He could retch her back up, but that would not save her. The warm gurgle from his belly meant his stomach juices were already at work. She'd still be mostly intact, but with her lungs full of acid she was already extremely dead. Even if some spark of life remained, there was no cleric to heal her injuries.

If he did cough her back up, dead or alive, he'd have to explain why. Maybe he'd get off with just a minor black mark on his record, or even none at all. He had a good reason not to want her gurgling digestive fate on his mind.

But what good would that do? He was still the one who killed her. He'd still have to explain to Alma.

Sneak out, cough her up in front of a cleric? The guards and locked gate worked both ways. They kept potential rescuers out and they kept exactly the sort of escape he was considering from happening. The captain trusted him, but there were limits. No one could bribe Bart to spirit them out in his belly if he had to stay long enough that a good part of the prisoner had already made its way through his digestive tract.

It would also make him an accessory to the escape and brand him a criminal. He'd worked hard to build up a good reputation here. He didn't want to lose that. Verbobonc was his home.

Bart sighed. There was no good way out of this one, was there? He could only do his job and live with the consequences.

Bart reached out a forepaw and dragged the book closer. Within a few pages he saw it had the usual issues. These books were fun to read, but in his experience, simply pushing harder was not the fix for being too big for your lover. "Rape her until she likes it" also didn't seem like a good plan, despite how often it happened in the books. Then again, it looked like the dragon planned to eat her when he was done.

Jade would get away. She always did, usually with a limp.

"Sometimes you have to trade a good licking for a hand job," he muttered as he turned a stained page with a claw. "I wonder if these writers have ever had sex at all."

But he kept reading. He looked up a few minutes later and pointed a claw firmly until the guard by the entrance stopped staring. Then he rolled over to reduce the temptation to stare again. It wasn't the guard's business that the long furry ridge along his belly had swollen hard and now had a stiff pink tip sticking out at the end.

*****

You could only put things off for so long. In this case, that was about twelve hours. Long before then he'd already sat on the hole in the floor that was all the cell had for a toilet and shat out part of the half-orc woman. The soft tissues were easy to digest and dispose of. By the time Captain Marsh - Captain Kenner having gone off duty hours before - came by to release him, he'd squatted over that hole three times. Eating a third of your weight in one gulp has a way of speeding things along.

His belly was noticeably less swollen now and the captain nodded approvingly as it sloshed when Bart rolled onto all fours. The half-orc was reduced to the larger bones and a mass of nearly liquid nutrient after half a day in a dire badger's stomach. It would take another day for the largest bones to dissolve and pass but there was no bringing his meal back now without very powerful magic.

"Good enough," Captain Marsh said. "You have tomorrow off with pay. Stay out of public until she's all gone. You can work at your bar but don't leave it."

The badger winced. He'd thought about sleeping someplace else, maybe even renting a small room, but there it was. It was the bar or nothing. He could ask to sleep here, or at the gatehouse...no, that was just putting things off.

The captain assigned him a guardsman for the walk home. Bart knew the drill. He passed the time chatting with the corporal so it looked like they were just headed in the same direction while each kept an eye out. They weren't followed and no one paid any more attention to him than they had when he went to work this morning. The most notable thing that happened was a pretty hestan cat-woman scratching his ears as she for a moment walked beside them. He sniffed, memorizing her scent, and licked her wrist. Maybe he'd see her again sometime.

There was a small risk to being the executioner of prisoners like this one. Maybe someone would find out and come after him someday. But probably not. It's not worth picking a fight with a whole city guard when the person you wanted to rescue has already disappeared into the sewer system after a trip through a badger.

They arrived at the Cracked Flask just as the enchantment on the sign lit up. Glowing liquid sprang from the flask and arced into a nearby mug. Here are things to drink, the sign said without words. Interesting things.

The corporal waved and the badger nodded in reply. He sighed. This was it, then. He pushed through the doors and into the common room.

Not a busy night. Only a dozen or so people in the common room, half at tables eating and half at the bar. Only one of the booths was occupied. He looked up and there by the little stage where minstrels sometimes played was Alma.

The resemblance was uncanny. She was just shy of six feet tall, stocky and muscular and as scarred as the half-orc lying half digested in his belly. He'd given her a scar or two, a love bite, a careless scratch. Brown half-orc eyes met ink-dark badger eyes and she instantly saw the guilt writ across his face.

Alma glanced at the muscular bouncer standing by the door and gestured. Faroul, swarthy and as scarred as Bart was under his fur, nodded. He could handle the place for now.

She went up the stairs with his nose at her heel, and at the top she opened the door to the balcony. Used only for private dinners in better weather, there was privacy here. The badger looked up into a lowering sky and into snowflakes that melted when they hit his nose.

His fur protected him from the chill and Alma showed no sign of shivering either. Bart sighed and looked up at her.

"I think I ate your sister today," he growled.

She knew his guard work sometimes required him to eat people. So did working as a bouncer. She'd seem him swallow a man whole after no amount of reason or blunt force got him to leave the bar. She knew he could do it and that if you pushed him far enough, he would.

She let him explain, let him tell her that only too late did he realize who he'd eaten, and that there was just no way to spare her sister a slimy digestive fate.

"She would have been executed no matter what I did," he growled. "If I'd coughed her up, even if she'd lived, they would have killed her some other way."

"And I'd have had to explain why I coughed her up," he growled. "The captain wouldn't have been happy."

That was when she punched him in the nose.

Or she tried to. Alma was quick and she was strong and she threw the punch with little warning. She threw it right at one of his few vulnerable spots, the wet black nose on the end of his pointed snout. Others had tried that and the badger's reaction was pure reflex. His jaws snapped open and her fist went right down his throat.

Just as much by reflex his forepaws whipped out and suddenly she was pinned against his furry chest, arm down his gullet to the shoulder and held there by two strong paws each the size of a man's head.

Alma cursed and cuffed him in the ear with her free hand, only able to hit at half strength from so close in. "Now what are you going to do, huh? Send me after my sister?"

He could have. He really could. He was three times her size and all wiry muscle under his fur. Without a weapon, the only thing between her and wearing a badger-fur coat for the night was his good nature and fondness for her.

Bart did not eat people often or lightly. He certainly wasn't going to eat his girlfriend, even if what he'd done today meant she wouldn't be that any more. He yawned and pushed her away, disgorging an arm slick with slime from his gullet.

"I'm sorry," he growled, and this time when she swung she hit him hard enough to turn his shaggy head to the side despite the thickness of his neck. Bart just turned back to look at her, a drop of blood running from one nostril, and she cursed and fled back into the bar.

That was why Bart found himself out on the balcony, hours later. He couldn't bring himself to go back inside despite the snow gathering on his fur. The cold didn't bother him as much as the inner ache. He didn't know what to do now any more than he did when he realized who he'd swallowed.

Maybe he'd ask the owners of the bar to put him on shifts where he wouldn't see her much. Maybe he should take his sleeping basket and find somewhere else to live. He just didn't know.

His belly gurgled. Pretty soon he'd have to go in, or jump down off the balcony. There was still a lot of half-orc making its way through his guts. By the time he went back to guard duty, morning after next, there'd be no sign he'd eaten Alma's sister at all, beyond a little new fat on his flanks. Very few people would even know. A few guards, a few officers, him, and Alma. And Marta. That was her name, he remembered. In whatever afterlife she'd ended up, she would know what happened to her body.

The door handle rattled and he looked up as Alma appeared, a bundle of furs under her arm. She threw them onto the balcony. Half of them landed on him, the space being little bigger than a small table and a few chairs.

"Make room," she said. Bart shook the snow off and flattened the furs to make something like a bed. When Alma settled into the curve of his body, pressed against the swelling in his middle, he pulled the remaining furs over her with his claws and rested his muzzle on her shoulder. She was tough, but she didn't have his pelt. The furs and his warm body would keep the chill out of her flesh.

He could smell the sweat and traces of blood on her. She must have gone down into the bar and picked a fight, or was lucky enough to have one picked when she was in a rotten mood. The orc side of her liked to fight. She was rough and she was tough, which was one reason he liked her.

His tongue found the scratches from when he grabbed her earlier, and licked away the pain.

"I didn't know it was her," he growled. "I thought she looked like you, but you know my eyesight isn't so good. It was only when I tasted her that I realized what had happened." He paused, not wanting to fight any more. "And that was only when I burped. She fought so hard going down there was no time to taste."

He sensed the smile, there in the dark and the snow. "I bet she did. She was a bandit, you know. I tried to get her to settle down, but she liked fighting too much."

"I go crazy in a fight sometimes too," Bart growls. "It's something from before I could talk. A badger thing. It hasn't happened in a couple of years. I have to be really mad and really hurt, but it's there."

Alma stroked his ears. "I hope I didn't hurt you when I hit you."

"Just a little, honey. I turned my head as your fist hit me. I didn't want you to crack my snout." Or your hand, he didn't say.

His girlfriend sighed, and looked up into the snow. "Can we sleep out here? It's pretty."

Bartleby stirred, sliding out from around her and up onto all fours. "Let me go make sure Faroul and the staff need any help. Then I'll be back."

And he did do that, but he also visited the second floor privy, where more of Alma's sister left his body and disappeared down the city's cloaca. Not much left but bones in his belly now, and those softening fast.

When he slid off this seat and back onto all fours he padded back to the balcony door, carrying a jug of wine in his jaws. It was time to apologize to Alma properly, with tongue and teeth and maybe other things.

If she'd let him, that is.