Post by Sire Halfblack on Aug 4, 2014 19:02:52 GMT
Maii IM 1002
“What is it that you want?” The Boneman asked the Watch. The sergeant who faced the man was not used to such a reaction since it was plain what he wanted. He desired that the oddly garbed figure should either be quiet or pass over a few grulls so that he and his men would look the other way. He did not like confrontation did the watch-sergeant, it suggested that he was dealing with one of the infernal heroes who made his life so much a misery!
“Your preaching, sir.” The sergeant added the honorific just in case the bald, tattooed and bone-clad figure before him was in fact some terrible demon or avatar. “It seems to be rousing a certain amount of anguish from the people.”
The Boneman waved at the collected and huddled group arrayed about him. Despite some of them wearing local clothing it was plain that they were not the most natural of city-dwellers. If the sergeant had been a less charitable, or perhaps cautious, man he might have spoken his thoughts aloud, that the people under discussion looked like they would be better suited to riding about the city casting flaming brands at anything that looked worth the burning.
“They don’t seem to want to be here, sir.”
“That is not a matter for your concern.” The Boneman snapped. “Go away.”
The sergeant considered his options and thought that someone other than he was better able to deal with the situation. Indeed, he suspected that there was someone, somewhere that needed his skills more. Someone drunk and preferably unarmed causing too much noise in the small hours of the day when most of the proper people of the city would be fast asleep.
There was also a preponderance of people with knives to consider. Whilst this was not strictly unusual in Deci, it concerned the Watch that they were actively booting the doors in of tax-paying drow and people whose only crime was to attend semi-secret meetings that involved dipping knives in blood and idly speculating on whether murder was ‘altogether a bad thing in the grander scheme of the world’.
The sergeant had asked a few of them about it once he had found that they had nothing against the watch or, more importantly, he himself in particular. It seemed that there were a pair of miscreants going about trying to kill one of their leaders. Also, that a friend of theirs was being hunted down. Since the person so under threat was Fade Raban, one of the cities leading citizens, the sergeant felt that he would avoid the whole matter altogether.
With summer waving its hand for attention at the fringes of the city, Deci even managed to acquire a few pleasant days. Over the last few months visitors had become fewer in the city and this seemed to cause little concern for the citizens who had begun to speak of their ‘great city’ in louder tones again. They were fairly self-sufficient as a settlement and the peons distrusted outsiders anyway. Outsiders meant trouble and they had quite enough of that already. This opinion lasted precisely as long as it took the taverns to run low of wine and for the Innkeepers to explain that shortages were occurring. Other cities might be great ale-drinkers but the northern settlement saw itself as more stylish than other, lesser cities.
No wine?
By Alan Morgan (CI4V6)