Post by Sire Halfblack on Aug 9, 2014 12:10:52 GMT
Harvest IM 1007: An Intriguing Game of Ratfink
It was gloomy in that way that Deci has to it when the sun is high in the sky yet befuddled by the smog over the city and the overhanging buildings. It was close to noon and the street would never be so brightly lit yet still it was murky and the shadows thick enough to throttle a drow, as they said at times round here the traveller knew. For the most part it had avoided the fires and the fighting that the King of Cheapside had demanded. The city stank so badly of foundry fumes and choking smoke in any case that it was hard to tell either had happened from the window out which the prodigal leaned now. The same iron hard timbers had been dragged from yet more ash and like ants that swarmed about their kicked over hill the Cheapsiders had rebuilt and remade. Something of the city here helped that. Something about Cheapside made it eternal.
The street hung close together at the upper levels as was common in all parts of Deci, save for Hightown. The slates and old wooden slats blurred and blended into a single piece and from where he stood the traveller could reach out and knock on the firmly shuttered window opposite him. The rows in places even touched even as they leaned against their neighbours. In Deci where there was some permanence the lane resembled drunken friends supporting one another home. Friends that varied from the fat to the lean, from the finely painted to the broken toothed for rarely were any two neighbouring buildings ever alike.
*
The cat looked at the bandy legged man and the bandy legged man looked right back. He was not unused to Deci. Indeed, he knew it rather well which was exactly and precisely why he tended to take his business elsewhere. He knew that there were wolves in Deci. And snakes. And hungry folk. So he knew that something the size of a cat that was neither a rain of bloody snow nor a thin sort of spit roast was something worth noticing. So his dirty hand went to a dirty hat and the first rose the second and with a twitch of his nose bold Stovepipe offered the cat a bow. And the cat in its turn returned the gesture. Which pleased Stovepipe enormously. He noticed other eyes then. Slanted and golden and in their little darkness’s that hid the cat’s shapes and suggested instead their true forms.
“Yer mistress, I’s told,” said Stovepipe as he straightened and puffed out his chest, “is being in the notion of seeing me stand straightly afor her.”
So the cat turned and presented its chuff and Stovepipe being Stovepipe followed it on.
Cheapside
In the heart of the city the Governor appointed by the Chancellor of the Empire to scour and bring to heel that city that had shown rebellion and sheltered the greatest outlaw of this age sat at the long table and peered at those that had come at his order. Many more had already been to see him but over the course of the night they had been whittled away until only the most worthy remained.
“Cut.” Drake indicated the worn rectangles of pasteboard with the three-inch stub of his cigar. No one had seen him light it. Sire Berry had thought to offer but in the end decided not to. The goblin beamed, stretched out a hand and did as asked. This was ratfink, though the pack was a Deci one and almost three times the size of those seen elsewhere. That did not matter. No one was here to whine. In the event of irregularity the faces of Drake, Berry, Fifth and Marmalade went stony hard. That of the remaining player stayed fixed in the same happy cast of supreme faith in life’s ability to always work out right in the end. They were not fooled. Not in ratfink. Not in ratfink and with a Deci pack.
“Two cards up, kids.” Drake flipped each. He had a good hand. Marmalade folded, having already stepped in for the Fifth. Sire Berry made a show of hesitation but remained. Dirk just beamed. Drake said. “Well, well, as agreed Mr. Honest Vizier and his lady wife Mr. Vizier’s Money count as wild. That means our good friend Berry’s lookin’ strong.”
“I can’ha show?” Dirk scratched an itch on his back plate. They all nodded. One could show as much as one wanted in Deci ratfink. They might be making some of the rules up as they went along, but once they were decided on they stayed. The good knight turned over another card to show three. All Kings. That was as many as there were in the pack. Hard to get higher. The others concurred and he took the pot. No one had bettered that and in secret Dirk had also held Childe Murder that would, had someone stuck with it, invalidated all three.
Many thought Dirk not quite as clever as, say, his horse. In many ways they would be right. But he had outlasted most others in the game, surprising all. Cards, he had expressed the view, was a gentleman’s game.
Win big or lose big.
Anything in between was beneath him.
*
It had been a shame that the craft Guilds had not attended the little gathering. Drake had wanted to deal them a few hands and through not talking shop let them know that he really needed them to help him out. But the Masters and Sires of those Guilds had left, of a sudden and without any witnesses. Those that remained had already taken it upon themselves to not go near buildings that each assumed would suffer horrible retribution. And in any case they had been ordered by the Senate, they said, to close. Some went along willingly enough, thinking of leaving for other cities, although that went badly against the grain for there the traditions and observances were different and they would be little more than apprentices again. Others plotted together but none had come to the card table.
“Merchant, Goldsmith, Wagoneer, Nighstoil and Warsmith.” Drake laid down the cards. It was a good hand. A strong hand. The Puppeteer, Toymaker, Poisoner and Assassin had all been dealt out of the pack in the first hand and he could not rely on them coming back to his hand for some time now.
Sire Berry narrowed his eyes. “Three of… stools.” He placed down his one card. He was not sure why he only had the one card. He was pretty sure though that he was winning overall. He was a careful, cunning sort of player. Whereas Drake was trying to chase suits and houses of cards that made for rather predictable and reliable hands, and Marmalade was concentrating on the rather rarer, yet potentially better, associations he, Sire Berry, was playing with whatever came his way.
“Me. ” Dirk laid down a card. There indeed was a rather rough representation of the knight. Sire Berry was impressed. Since it was the first time the Dirky card had come up, ever, they had to work out where it fitted in the pack. It was certainly amongst the Noble suit but seemed to trump most for some reason. Which was of little use as no Noble cards were on the table. Most had been lost for the moment to another pack and though they had searched that one for a while House Majius had not been found at all.
It was on the floor. Dirk picked it up and placed it carefully under his own card. Though marked with the Majius symbol this one seemed to be that of the Baron Throttle. Quite an alarming representation Drakken thought, with both hands clasping a pale face opened in a soundless scream. Doubtless the duel. Doubtless something that needed to be seen to but here in the city Dirk had discovered there to be a shocking lack of duellists, in the Noble style. Here they did not seem to rely on such things but rather it was a sickly city so it often did not arise. Nearly all the Deci Nobility died of natural accidents. Stairs, the coughing ague, the purple-throated pox, eruptive plunging boils in the chest, that sort of thing.
Sire Berry nodded at the appearance of the Nobleman. Marmalade had folded. From his pack the goblin took out the city, the alchemist and the first of Crowns. These he placed one atop the other. That ended the whole game. He took not only his own winnings but those of the last five hands.
Taking up the cards once again Drake shuffled and cut them once more. Now that he was dealing it meant that the cards were no longer working their way back up again. They were not being counted, now they were random once more.
“Thousand grulls.” He opened.
“Y’aint dealt yet?”
The Governor shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Not betting, son?”
“Can I look at me cards first?”
Drake looked at Berry with a stern sort of expression on his face. “Now that, son, is up to you.”
“Right.” Sire Berry reached out.
“Depends on how yer fills yer britches, boy.” Drake put another thousand in. Sire Berry checked his cards. Dirk he noticed did not.
“Lucky me, eh?”
Drake glared but said nothing. It was close to the end of the year and that meant that the Masters and Sires of the Guilds would probably change. Few served consecutively in the top position, indeed, in the size of Guild that warranted a Sire the handful of Master’s below that person often had no ambition to rise at all. It was often more influential in the long term.
With few Nobles in the city: he (Dirk), Talath, Lord Hail and two of the Hail girls, the Spire had not seemed to be the seat of influence he would have liked. But still what he wanted to have built, was being. It was being sorted, it seemed, locally. It was lucky doubtless that his ambitions had not been too great but still it was rewarding to see things get done.
Dirk blinked. Someone had played the One of Kings again. “Egad! Aha, what’a follows, eh?” The hand was not over as the previous sequence had not been completely repeated.
“What yer got?” The goblin asked helpfully.
The knight bit his tongue as he peered at his hand thoughtfully “Gotta choice, eh. Eh?”
Rings of bread were placed in the centre of the table and Drake was the first to reach across to the platter. “Your choice, old man.”
But Dirk was unsure. He had the void and the glory in his hand. Either would probably take the pot. “Aha, eh. Eh?”
*
The cards had been put away in the traditional Deci heap and Sire Berry counted his winnings. Dirk stretched and creaked. Drake flipped the top from something strong and tarry. It was getting towards night and the game had gone on most of the day.
As was not uncommon quite a lot of the pasteboard scraps had to be gathered from under the tables, chairs and even distant wall hangings and skirting boards. One of those, Drake saw, was the Governor. It was an old card, much worn and clearly one that had gone through many hands. He was the last to leave and so it was the last card to be tossed on the pile.
On the top.
Drake left the chamber and turned towards home. He had a boat to work on. The city shook to the sound of the lesser foundries even as some of the greater ground to a halt. He saw few people on his walk through the curving, lopsided streets. Elsewhere the markets would be growing as carters and some of the braver traders arrived, though talk was that Forgetown was the place to be to get a decent deal done.
“Mornin’ Governor.” A woman called as she opened the door to her leaning house. A dozen children pushed by.
“Good morning, Mrs. Doomwiddy.”
And it was indeed morning and much of the city was turning in to buildings and rooms whose shutters had long been nailed shut.
The King’s Court
It seemed like a bloody funny quest but it was what the King had told him to do so that was just what Robin intended to achieve. He had beaten up a few of the people of Cheapside but had sloped off when the whole street had turned out at the sounds of violence. With all that had happened in the last year in Cheapside there was no one left that really fulfilled the role of ‘victim’ and the gangs had risen again in the manner they first had.
By street. Or lane, or square or gutter or even roof but generally by street. The gangs might not truly have started in that way, he supposed, since at first they would have relied on mutual backgrounds, race, even faiths. But people liked to live with other people like them and so where he now left, Thrift Street, had its own little story. When Deci had just been Cheapside it had at first been a scrap of ground between two others where a band of forgers and crimpers had settled. As the years passed and others fleeing from the same crime came to the city they found their way to Thrift Street. They bred with one another until, as now, everyone was either a Scoff, a Badrash or a Chrimp by name. To defend themselves, or just so that they would be left alone, they even fought as the Thrift Street Grully Dreadfuls and used a hat embedded with old, sharpened discs of metal as their signature weapon. When there had been a Forger’s Guild (the ‘Make Believe’) amongst the Hundred most of the Masters had come from Thrift Street.
And the only reason they did not string up Robin was because they knew he was Blackjack’s boy. But there were a hundred of them thereabouts and they would still have given him a bit of a kicking had he not sloped off giggling and laughing at their red-blooming faces. Robin was kicking a stone as he thought on the ritual chambers. He had sought and asked and bullied and demanded to know of people where they might be found and, yes, well under the streets there was just such a thing. It had been rather old and terribly dusty but had been entirely to do with the city and they that worked the city arts. He himself was looking into the glorious terror and devastation that certain shaman – orcs – wrought. It was good, fun sort of stuff but the tribes were not especially known for their ritual chambers. Shaman perhaps on lonely hills or under distant henges but not in the city. What he wished to make was tribal, orc stuff and there were no such chambers possibly anywhere. Certainly not in the city. Those to be found in Cheapside were for the… he frowned… ‘Sen-terry-ark’, whatever that was.
So he scowled. And he hefted the length of iron over his shoulder that the King had sent him for and he stomped down the lane and through the doorway and slammed the treasure down so that the cobblestones rang and the hall was made into a very poor sort of bell.
At this time of day there were not very many people in the King’s Court. Cheapside was now, though not so much to look at, a castle. And here in its heart a keep. But people still slept and the day was the day and even the rogues that flattered Blackjack had to fall into a stupor at some point.
So Robin fidgeted in the shadow of the dirty great golem that held up a dish large enough to hold a roast pig. It held it so that its one polished surface gave a fair reflection of the King as he preened at his own image. Blackjack’s hair was slicked down with tallow. His tusks had been sharpened. He wore a fresh head about his neck and his furry britches had been filled out to make an alarming and boastful bulge. His axe had been cleaned. His sword had been dressed in a scabbard of new leather. There was gold at his throat and silver at his wrists. His boots shone wetly. On a stand nearby a whole bearskin made his cloak.
“How’da I look den?” The big orc stomped his feet so that sparks flew in every direction. He banged his fists on a chest slick with once precious mail made as fine as laced velvet. He roared appreciatively at his own reflection.
“Girl bait, boss. Pure girl bait.”
Blackjack, seemingly well satisfied with the results of his grooming fetched the remainder of his accoutrements and left his court with Robin running in his wake. He peered at the metal post that his boy had left, pushing it over as he passed. “What’s dat?”
“Yer tolds me ter gets a ‘long stand’, boss.”
Blackjack shook his head. “Nah, dat’s a joke. Yer see. Yer goes about askin’ forrit and everyone makes yer just… stand still. Forra long time. Is’a joke, see?”
Nodding, Robin agreed that it was. Nonetheless he had gone to the guilds and they had given him a long stand. They used it to hold scrolls when they worked.
*
They were nowhere to be found. Blackjack was becoming a little annoyed with all the hunting up and down streets he was being forced to endure. He was the King and that meant that everyone did what he wanted them to do. And what he wanted them to do was lie back and make appropriate noises. And those he wanted to make such noises were the Songbirds. But the Songbirds were nowhere to be found.
“Is almost like they is hiding…” Robin suggested, but was cuffed about the ear for his trouble.
Blackjack was the King. He could not comprehend for a moment that having given a command it would not be carried out. He had widely let it be known only the night before that he intended to have the entire Songbirds gang as his personal breeding nest. So why they were not lining up ready he could not guess. “Dey is likely playin’ ‘ard ter get.”
Robin agreed that was probably so. They were playing very hard to get. He just wished they wouldn’t because King Blackjack plainly had his dander up and if he did not get to plunge the Songbirds then he might well plunge anything close to hand. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Best (he thought) to direct the King’s growing ire in other directions. “Could be, dey don’t want ter..?”
“What?”
“Yer know… do, it, with… der King?”
A great, savage bark of laughter answered that one. Blackjack was an orc. He was the biggest, ugliest and most powerful orc in Cheapside. Therefore, like back in the orc tribes, all the orc girls should be queuing up. It made no sense whatsoever that the ferocious gang here would think any differently. No, the only possible explanation as to why the women would not fall into his bed was because someone had captured them. Killed them perhaps. That was it.
So the King sat down on a lump of old wood and accepted the bottle of black tar ale from Robin. Drake wanted him to be the Commisent. It was rather an elfy title and his followers thought it might be okay to do if that Drake came up with a better title. ‘King’ for example. Or ‘Warlord’, or ‘Death Master’ or… and then the names had gotten even worse than Death Master, which even Blackjack thought sounded a bit naff. It meant that he could go out and have wars and stuff. Which might be fun he supposed. Though personally and despite what many thought of orcs, Blackjack mostly preferred fighting in streets. He yawned and wondered how the Fifth and Marmalade were doing.
Hightown
“Look, I don’t think you understand…” He looked at the long bladed sword in something approaching horror. Ellei Hail smoked her long stemmed pipe and smiled broadly about the stem. She clearly found it entirely funny, in complete contrast to the Baron Throttle. “…I and swords do not particularly mix.”
“It’s duelling. S’got nothing to do with actual fighting. Didn’t you ask Dirk to help?”
“Asked his knave.”
“And?”
“He told me to get a horse and big curly lance. I asked if Dirk could show me about using a sword. The servants said ‘only if the lance breaks’. I pointed out that Dirk can’t always use a lance, I mean, what happens when he goes on the adventuring trail, with low tunnels and stuff? It seemed the servant is in talks with some dwarves regarding pit ponies and a small chariot just in case that very thing arises.”
It bothered Talath that he had been called out on a duel. It bothered him that as a Baron, a titled member of the Nobility, he could not refuse. Oh, he might appoint a champion but then as a young man people would talk and he would lose face. Not as much as for he and is House as if he actually lost, or worse, did not turn up at all. Duelling was an old art it seemed and one revived of late in Halgar and Keys. Where one fought without bloodshed but only an acute observation of form and style and traditional response. It was almost a scholarly pursuit. Almost. But accidents happened and it was clear that the House had been put into a position where they would lose a duel and thus influence. So Talath needed to win. Only he did not know how.
Thankfully he had not had too little time to really dwell on it. For the moment he was the city’s commisent, or the equivalent. He had heard that Drake intended to appoint Blackjack to that role which would not entirely displease Talath as he knew very little about Helds and fighting, having taken the city’s very small army out of the city the very month the tribes attacked he was hardly covered in glory by such actions, which was not something that hung heavy about him. Not something that concerned or kept him awake at night. Nonetheless he had been there when Arraman’s Reivers had arrived and he had told them to bed down as they wished, there now being a little more space in the city than previously.
They had, in the manner of near all Mercenary Helds, been rather frightful to look at. The men and women of the Held wore tribal warrior rings and torcs all brown with the blood of those they had torn them from. They moved fast and light over the ground and though Wall they wore little if any armour. For they hunted the tribes and to do that they travelled light and fast. They carried spears primarily for throwing and fought with sword and shield thereafter. They even carried bows and slings, and though their skills were hardly those of a decent Hound still they were unusual in Wall. They were a versatile sort of Held and every member for one reason or another hated the tribes.
A view not especially unusual here either they would find out, Talath was sure. So he had told them to bed down and someone in power would seek them out presently. Arraman had grunted at that. They would need paying. Up front too, not just promises.
Now he walked with Ellei, and complained once more about his duel. It was not like his new enemy could just suffer an accident. Everyone would know what had happened and whilst that was not precisely a problem it would demonstrate to the Nobles that House Majius was exactly what those in the Senate said it was. So either House Lacht had to withdraw, House Majius had to formerly apologise and lose influence or Talath would have to fight. And if was to fight, then he had to win.
“Why don’t you deal with that relative of mine I keep telling you about?” Ellei asked.
“How will that help me?”
“It won’t. But it will certainly help me.”
Talath shook his head. He might have to find a tutor. That meant Keys or Halgar, going to the Salle’s, that sort of thing. He would call on Dirk again. Dirk would know.
The Badlands
It was not unlike a farm but remote from trade road and major river. It lay alongside a water cut however and beyond the manor house there stood a wide little lake fed by three streams. Ingeniously, if the sluice was opened the cutting would fill and the lonely estate would be joined rapidly to the River Spittle leagues to the east. Otherwise remote the farm not surprisingly for the territory seemed to farm very little. Hereabouts the soil was very poor, the only vegetation being stunted little blech bushes that could be burnt and the ash mixed to make a poor man’s lime but that was about it. The manor was rather shabby looking but on a decent inspection revealed a roof entirely intact and six chimneys all smoking.
Nearby were a dozen sturdy looking storehouses near to a bunk hall, what might have been a stables and some sort of gather. Twenty men and women seemed to guard the estate. Certainly they moved about the land nearby as if that was their purpose. Under a heavy stretch of sailcloth a barge lay on the sluiced lake.
“Nice…”
*
There was not much to recommend the wilderness. Even west of the city where it was reputedly a lot better than to the east, and certainly the south. Here at least the Gremlin fed the land with water from the mountains and untainted by the city. The city that though he was several days travel beyond it still clogged that horizon with a dense pall of poison smog from its industry.
Here the land might have been less sickly than elsewhere for well into the distance and beyond sight still was the Shedeff. But every time nature sought to rise and restore the land, however little that might be and however long that might take, that power was hastily quashed by Deci. Who, it seemed, feared it.
He had met hardly anyone in the wilds. The ashen dirt thin soil sat upon rock, and towards the river clay. Stunted bushes grew here and there but he had passed only the stumps of forests. The places of note here stood like little islands, gathered in close to themselves about those patches of greenery that could be found alongside hidden springs and in depressions where tough grass flourished and stopped the soil blowing about the land. For when the winds picked up even the loosely fertile land went nomadic.
*
It was cold but they did not notice. They had more pressing concerns than the wind that chapped their hides or the thin ice that broke under their bony feet. They perceived the land through eyes that saw everything in the terms of their hunger. The need that sat in a tight little knot in the centre of their stomachs and that had to be fed else it would feed on them. When they were not eating, or even gnawing on a bone, they panted, though they were not precisely alive. They shuffled. They stretched their aching fingers. They argued and snapped at one another. They wanted meat. They needed meat. So they sat and hunched about the wretched hamlet and they tore at the dead and some pulled strips from the still living and they ate.
It was not much of a hamlet. It was not much of a land, with its thin topsoil and its stony earth and its scrubby plants that oxen and certain goats could live on but not much else. The goats were dying too, each with a ghoul burrowing into its belly for the soft organs and the nutsty sausages that looped within, all warm and ripe and plentiful. The goats had fought longer than the people but not after they had been knocked down with rocks. Not after their legs had been broken and their skulls cracked.
It had been a long journey and they needed to eat. They always need to eat of course. Just that after a long journey they needed to eat that much more desperately.
They dragged their victims both dead and dying to the foot of the old stone steps. Broken by time and the elements the first two were less than rubble in their centre and the two that followed had a crack running across each a hands span across. It was possible to slip and break a leg on those steps and each was high enough to need even a grown man to stretch his stride high to make the next. The steps led to a courtyard more uneven than the steps and there lay the remains of the temple. Still roofed but some great tremor or rite in the past had seen it sink so that when he entered, he entered through a savage rent in the stone roof.
He turned only once to see his horrid children devour those they had taken. The first to flee from them doubtless still were even now running. But those they had caught would see them through another month and thereafter it was the Deathly Season. The Season when the meat stayed in its little cottages and hovels and no one visited anyone and the land became one, big, larder…
By Alan Morgan (CI10V1)