Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 18:28:23 GMT
Plague IM 1010
Tirack? Hiding. Gideon? Hiding. Jander? Hiding. Anath – dead probably. It was hot and Wild Rex Randall hoped Forgetown liked flies for it certainly had a lot of them. Still air that hummed with flies. Hot metal that set flies albeit briefly on fire, flies and sweat and a smell that was like that of a city with its effluence and stinking bodies, its disease and its second smiles. It recalled a city, but not Deci. Nowhere smelled like Deci. Compared to Deci Forgetown was a valley of meadow flowers. But still it stank, and it had not rained and ale was cheaper than water, not that you wanted to drink the water.
Nor that you wanted to roam the trails. Not with everyone hiding, dead or both. Lucky then that Rex was here. Lucky then that he could make sure the robber filth, the newcomers, could be kept back. Forgetown was honey to a robber, robbers who like these flies were thick and fat and not short of a good meal. Rex cut green beef from the bone and with a knife tossed the steak to the man that had come to speak with him.
“We’re forming up a caravan, together.”
Rex nodded and cut more meat from where it hissed and stuck to the walkway outside the Cart & Hammer. The main drag was a dustbowl rutted by wagon wheels over the Deathly and harder than when icy in the Pestilence. He nodded, “I can make sure it gets through.”
The trader tugged at his moustache. He was under no illusions as to what was going on but it did not concern him. Business was business, trade was trade. Sometimes you had to give a little and he had made more whilst here, “How much?”
“In this city you gotta make the treasure first,” Rex seemed to ignore the question. “Then when you get the treasure, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the...”
“How much?”
Rex snarled but remembering himself and his plush new waistcoat named a figure, not too high for a day’s hire of caravan guards. Too high and it became a problem. You had to think about the longer road.
“You sleep at night?” the trader wanted to know as he counted out the greasy grulls.
“I gotta sleep with one eye open see,” Rex went back to cutting meat, “and I’ve only got one eye, right?”
*
“Lace?”
“Aho!”
“You want lace, a filigree of wire about the cuffs and...” Quirt inspected the plans. They were a drawing really and not bad at all. Lots of dead bodies and dying dragons whilst rendered in charcoal a knight in armour that boasted absolutely everything that could possibly be crammed on, after which more had, “your son drew this of you?”
Dirk frowned manfully, “He’a did?”
“I thought as much, a boy of some talent. Very nice. But you cannot possibly want me to actually make this for you?”
“Dirky has’a’ son?”
Quirt blinked, the conversation was getting away from him, “Good for you? Now the armour?”
“Like’a that, but...” Dirk sought for the word, “... more.”
“There are flags on the helmet? The helmet - has a helmet. I understand you like to have things fashioned to resemble fabulous beasties, good Sir Dirk – but which one of them,” he pointed, “is this?”
Dirk patted the peasant on the head from where he stood upon his might charger in the Warsmith’s Guild, “All’ve ‘em,” well obviously.
*
“Best not stand out my dear,” the Lord Synovius in company with his hand-made child, several tall yeomen, Oechen and a number of people from his estate in their honest homespun and the straw hats suited to the climate stood in the wondrous confusion of streets, lanes and shops that made up the King’s Bazaar. It was an incredible place, and here found in quite the most horrible of cities. Deci was just... awful. Terrible. Stinking, mean and covered with a poison smog. Lank black hair and a hearty crop of girl thingy spots seemed to be the fashion. And Synoivus with his arms filled with scrolls turned about to nearly walk into the much wider presence of another Nobleman. This one in richly edged black, pearls and jewels dressing his tunic on silver chains - a sharply pointed crown topping his head. They looked at one another, a well fed pike finding a new and rainbow-dappled salmon in his pool.
And about the rooftops, from every window, standing outside every shop and settling down on the uneven cobbles it seemed that half the city had come to watch. They grinned.
Synovius chewed over a few choice words before, “I am honoured to make your acquaintance...” but he was interrupted by Oechan who filled in the missing words with ‘your majesty’ after paralysing his Lord’s voice briefly with a light blow to the spine.
“You are, you are... and what have you there?”
“Scrolls your majesty,” Synovius opened his mouth to Oechan’s words. What was the man doing, working him with his foot? What did the man think he was going to say to this pumped up, insane and pretend-Noble?
“Let me see them,” King Troy the Faceless held out a languid hand. Someone slipped a rope from above so that its faint shadow cast by a shop’s lantern crossed Synovius’ own. The King perused, shook his head and let them fall to the ground.
Troy rather forgot the visitor to his city when the funny little fellow was picked up and hurried away by his own people. Rather rude of a visiting Noble not to have popped in to the Spire, he thought. But he was inclined to be generous. It was the theme of the month. What with having sent out salt that the pestilence might be the lesser and had his new toy erected on a balcony of Hightown. Troy now was shopping. Troy clapped his hands and made his wishes known then sat down in the correct assumption that someone would put a chair there, for to see him fall would have resulted in the whole street having their left buttock cut off with a rusty pair of sheers. Or so the people hoped.
“Everyone?”
Everyone listened. So did everyone else.
“Everyone, I am here to shop. I have treasure to spend. I judge that the visitor be left for the now. I can always have him made into a pair of shoes tomorrow,” he snorted at his words and the people giggled as one and evilly. They loved to act the part of the malign city. Acting it was certainly a lot safer than doing it. He sat back and held out his hand where it was filled with a goblet. He waved away his people when it was whispered to him that a crone was but a street over and closing.
Standing, Troy buffed his many-beringed fingers on the front of his tunic. He licked a finger and smoothed down the eyebrow of the silver mask everyone expected him to wear. The city went back about its business and a foul crone moved up to the King in a bubble formed by no one wanting to be within touching distance of her.
For a crone she was rather young, rather pretty and if dressed in the rags of her position and wet with blood to the elbow still she had what the Noble women of Troy’s acquaintance sought through extensive use of stiff silk and troll bone to create – a figure. A peasant of course, but he was the King. He raised a hand and she in his presence executed not a curtsey but a bow straight from the waist.
“You wished to speak with us?”
“I did,” Troy admitted, “but I have matters to see too. Come, let me show you my immense organ and there we might talk.” She fell in step with the monarch of Deci as he continued, “it’s from Gressen you know.”
*
The River Fry still ran small and dirty, a stream in a deep bed. There were pigs and a lot of goats that rooted where soil was made captive by nasty smelling soap bushes. There was a palisade but the gate stood open. It had not been closed if he was any judge for quite some time. Not so far away were several graves piled with rocks. Of people there were none, none that he could immediately see anyway though he could feel them hiding about Fryer’s Held and the thoughts he felt were those that cursed themselves for not having seen his approach sooner. Then they would have fled entirely. They were angry, terrified. Though their visitor had the sense not to die in Deci black beneath the flaying sun he still looked like nothing less than he was.
“Come out, I’m all alone.”
No one did so Selgard was forced to head to the closest hiding place and there take an old sword from a man that would not meet his eye. The fellow wilted when caught.
“Why are you hiding?” demanded Selgard.
“’Cause we ain’t goats to go to slaughter.”
“No, well done. What are you talking about?” Selgard’s entirely reasonable tone caught the fellow off guard. He pointed out in answer that, what, a year – a year and a half – ago, the city had come here and the Sleek had executed a number of them by ‘making their heads go bang’. Since they had been doing what it was they had been told, Selgard’s captive supposed it was time for a reminder, an example? “Hardly, I am the Governor of Deci. The city is not just going to come out here and murder people to make some point.”
Some of the villagers laughed so hard they fell out of their hiding places.
“Really now,” said Selgard, “I’m just a man, travelling about – learning about my people. What makes you think I come here waving some big sword and set to stamp the mark of Deci on the land?”
“Ah...” But the villager did not need to explain further. Selgard too heard the trill of trumpets and the thunder in the ground from mighty hooves.
*
It was the dead of day and across the Bladders people were dying. An hour before and the rats had moved as quietly as they were able, hampered only by the snorting, squealing and stomach thinning grunts of the war pigs as they had been driven through homes and walls, across thereafter collapsing bridges and onwards ever more furiously as their handlers pricked and stung them. When the pigs had broken through the wall of the outermost oast house as had been the bang that saw the building sink a clear yard startled those thereabouts like lightning amongst pigeons. Those on the fringes reacted first, turning even as from the fetid water rats rose quietly to sweep and catch, to snap and cut then drag the rivals below the scum cracked liquid effluence.
Sire Berry himself cared less about what he did not know than what he did. He walked now that the worst of the fighting was over to enjoy the nastier, scrappier moments. He spied some of his little bastards swarm through windows to take those within. Half of his pack were looting, some were torturing or just killing slow because they thought it more fun that way. There was a great swath of cleared rubble only slowly filling with the treacle thick filth of the Quarter where the pigs had gone right through the enemy (a heady dose of oily war prunes as one of the rats had called it).
There was not a gang that could stand before Sire Berry when he had the upper hand. There was not to be frank a single warband in the city, few even as they were – that could face him and his. The Two Tall Drinks had been nasty, skilled and were now being used to wipe the lanes clean of their own presence. He and his had blown into their turf and now only slowed by their need to play they had everyone on the run – those not caught by net or rope. The rats, his horrid stepsons were even now fighting amongst themselves in places and that was the most dangerous of all though Sire Berry could hardly interfere. Unleash any warband and no less his own on a village, town or city and only a fool stood with any hope that he might prevent the terrible pillage that followed. He watched his rats scrap over a fat women and her dirty daughters, turned and went on to pass over narrow new bridges and out through new doors, all above the water that plopped occasionally to another body.
“Hit and run, Custard?”
The rat all slick with Cheapside water and the bodies he had burrowed into sblack personed. Hit and run had been the aim, but there was increasingly bugger all to run from. The pack were having a day of it. Killing, eating, robbing, violating and celebrating – and rarely any of it in that order. Custard was sat on his haunches inspecting a box full of fake rubies – good ones by the look of it – whilst their owner bled out beneath him, “Run soon, boss.”
“In yer own time, son”
The tour was brief and that with stopping to laugh at the puppets some were making of the near dead. Broken bones tied with wire and made to dance. A bearded man sewn into a dress was trying to fight off three rats with their trousers missing, rats who laughed as he tried to knock them away with an old half-pike. Berry stepped back when through the pig hole smashed through the Quarter two of his rode a grossly wobbling orc women, whipping her as they went by. Still there remained some fighting but it was peeling off as the Stepsons found better entertainment.
Sire Berry paused to stand on one roof where half the slates had been pulled in, foot on the ledge. He smelt fire but cared not – Cheapside was half water and anything that might have burned had been made to do so a year or two back by Blackjack. But – so it began. The gangs had formed alliances. He had made the move. There would be those to band together and relatives and even employees doubtless to call on – but, Berry mused, perhaps not. To call in outsiders was to admit failure. To bring in naughty heroes however disguised was to declare very loudly how small his fine goblin thingy was. And that would never do.
So he sat when he found a three legged chair, tipped back on his boots and listened to the sound of his children at play.
*
The sun sizzled on the armour. The air about him was close to catching alight. Wasps blow apart a yard from the ridged and darkly ornate oven where it sat upon a horse of such size as to make the Governor have to stretch had he wished to pet its nose, which he did not. He was alone with the Black Knight of Deci, who was in contrast in the company of a band of scurrilous rogues in black livery who despite having smoothed down their hair had not one intact face amongst them.
“Go away please, you’re frightening people.”
“SELGARD!”
“Hello, yes? Look I’m not being funny but this place has had quite enough of people like you. They farm goats, they make a sort of cheese and cut and cure good hides. When that is people from the city don’t destroy their heads, run them through with spears or otherwise go all Majius on them.”
“Majius? SELGARD!”
The Governor pinched the bridge of his nose. He remembered that whoever the Black Knight of Deci was, it was not Dirk. It was some other fully armoured and triumphant Noble of Deci that owned a horse that could have rogered a manticore had it not had its tackle cut off when young. Of which in Deci there was no other. Nonetheless, “Look, were those old ladies yours?”
“Ye Ladies of ye Bath,” The Black Knight in his vast helmet and in his own little worlds admitted nothing.
“They tried to impede me. Look, whatever else you need to know about me – if I do not want to be kidnapped then I won’t be. And stop saying ‘ye’ – the word is ‘the’. And what are you doing all the way out here?”
The Black Knight of Deci had to admit that perhaps Cheapside had become a bit stark in recent days, but purpose was purpose. He looked about himself, not at all surprised to find out that Selgard had stolen Cheapside. There was tea and there was cake back in Deci, and Selgard had not wanted a mouthful of it. Dirk was waiting, back there – sort of thing. The small crowd that accompanied the Black Knight hissed at Selgard.
“Don’t do that,” the Governor told them.
They booed.
“Nor that. Now, what do you think you are doing out here? Following me?”
The Black Knight did not know. There was a self proclaimed Troll King somewhere hereabouts that had raided and made off with much of the cattle outside Deci, but the Black Knight just assumed that Selgard knew all that since he was such a clever bastard. The Black Knight remained where he was saying nothing.
Selgard having been thrown into stark and soft relief by the pack that now stood stock still or fidgeted had a much easier time getting the villagers into what passed for their Inn. He told them to ignore the villains without. He did not mention any mental power on his part, sensing that was the sort of thing to get him nowhere hereabouts.
*
It occupied the whole of the balcony. A confection of brass, glass and a sweep of copper keys that stretched out about the King where he sat in its heart with the giant bell-ended spout directed at his city. It whistled gently, it heaved and then juddered as following the carefully inscribed instructions Troy topped up a glass bowl to one side with a measure of a certain liquid. That had come with it and like all of the engine within a series of straw filled crates whose remains littered the small ballroom behind him. Though the dedicated illustrations on each box should have made the process an easy one still it had taken Troy all the previous day in which he had lost one of the tools included and still been left with three bits whose use he could not for the moment fathom. With feet encased in pointy toed and curling boots he pumped two peddles as was described he should. He turned about before taking hold of the pump-bellows that was next, “My organ.”
“It is very shiny.”
“Shiny things are good things, as they say... here,” he too in his city with a sweep of his hand.
“I am a messenger only, from the Hag.”
“Good, good.”
“She will come to you in the month’s that lies ahead and will test your mettle. If you are up to the occasions then she will serve you as you wish.”
“Ding dong,” Troy leered who maybe it was just the occasion, the engine or the night itself thought everything was sounding a bit dirty of late.
“Your organ?”
“Indeed!” Troy pumped the bellows hard and long until the pressure of the machine grew too great so that it shook set to pitch him free and most likely over the lip of the balcony. He rammed down keys, pulled a lever and then with a shout released a latch so that the whole boomed once and threads of something thin, diaphanous and dark burst from the machine to vanish over the city and into the night. He hoped it made the city happier, for himself Troy felt better than he had for quite some time. He smacked his lips, “Are you hungry?”
“I...”
“I could eat a horse,” Troy reached for and rang a small bell. Immediately servants appeared, “Fetch us horse,” he said adding, “for two.”
*
Part of the Deci Hunt stalked their prey. The interloper, the sneaking spy from Halgar – the Lord they well knew was not some mere bumpkin rural farming Noble but the Mennihaft of Halgar himself. One there had drawn the stone and so had claim to the prize. A silk rope whispered down the wall and she descended silently whilst her compatriots made ready to overwhelm the visitor’s paltry bodyguards. She alighted. She fetched out a hollow silver blade. Quietly she entered where he slept.
Above and her Hunt fellows heard no sounds of protest, no flurry of activity - only the soft pop of the cork leaving a bottle.
*
Great carts blocked the drag and made the walls of a hasty hall. The sides were let down so that foul spirits and bawdy women could shout amongst the rude seating made. Even the good wives of Forgetown packed into one part of the arena made up before the Cart & Hammer and enjoyed a smoke of new rolled lead whilst in the centre of the increasingly smaller ring two scarred men beat the crap out of one another. Central sat Rex in a fine hat that had once belonged to a goblin, puffing on the fattest cigar whilst his closest and best laughed at every quiet word he passed amongst them.
The air was hot, close as if the sun having gone Rex had made its curse anew here in the close confines of his arena. People cheered as one of the combatants drove a fist into his enemy’s ear, kicking him on the ground so that he vomited blood. The winner jumped up and led the roars. Rex stood too and waved the crowd down, “Hey, hey!”
The winner grinned. Rex clapped him on the shoulder and spat out a shred of pipe leaf. He nodded. No one made a sound now except for the defeated spearman who coughed again then wailed in his pain. Twice Rex made to speak and twice the defeated man interrupted, groaning. Rex bent and cut his throat with the same knife he had butchered the cow several days before, “I thought he’d never shut the feck up.” Everyone laughed.
Rex had suspected it would turn into a riot but this was better. His silver tongue made them laugh at even this display of murder – but then life was cheap, people died and were killed and most thought it a mercy slaying anyway. They laughed again. Rex raised both hands as if he had won the fight and people snatched up instruments so that he could dance back to his seat, sitting and leaning forward for the next bout. He clapped and the crowd clapped with him. He was hungry, “Who wants pepper and sausage? Pepper and sausage,” he said, “you? Pepper and sausage.” He shouted for someone to fetch just that. It was a beautiful night in a beautiful town by a beautiful city.
He was living the Deci dream. Someone had cleared away the body that five hundred witnesses would swear had died in the fight. The Deci dream. Feck yeah.
By Alan Morgan