Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 18:29:45 GMT
Harvest IM 1010
It was coming on to dark. The land was hard, dry and even the dust and dirt nomadic so that the Preacher Man having banged and tugged at his hat watched as the sun looking back played eyeball chicken. The hell of it was he could still be learning of the sin (so as to speak out against it) and lord, the city was the black gods own groin cup and yet he having ventured there in his fine black hat that had nigh nearly hidden him beneath no one could have been more helpful. No sir, no one had yet called him Sire before and some had asked after his wife as they bowed and begged his indulgence as whispers and rumours and tales and titbits had been piled and pushed and served up in a ribbon of wet and earnest servitude.
In the city it was like they had only seen the hat, in the Bazaar, and he a creature of myth from some den of sin called Cheapside to be clear on what he had heard. And there he had picked at what they had presented and had them read and look when he had not. He did not doubt that in the days to come when they learned as they would that he was not perhaps whom they thought that they might be snippier when next they met. But that was back in the city and he here where like everywhere time had spilled too soon this year put the last touches to his hat that was many hats and when the sun gave in and set and vanished for the night – Tirack did the same.
Praise the lord and observe the old tradition.
*
“A lot of holes in the badlands, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the cart,” said Rex. It was dawn in rural Deci which meant at this time of year late and reluctant. The sun tried to sneak about the horizon, Rex watched it suspiciously. Here he was a distance away from his breakfast and with two good handfuls of his boys. Bildteve lay in the empty dirt. Rex took out a cigar. He said, “Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all feckin' night.”
“Right Rex.”
“You damn right, right Rex,” he tossed a prospectors shovel at big mouth. “Now, get this pieces of pie here planted. Fecker comes at me with a sword. In Forgetown? That’s practically suicide. Damn Bildteve. Big shot. Come here,” Rex kicked the corpse. “Come here? Here? Go against local trade? Undercut local trade? Here? In Forgetown, here?” Rex fell upon the body with kicks and punches before turning away but not before spitting on the dead. “Come here, try and take over. Get in a fight and kill two men but that’s alright? That don’t count?” Because this was an adventurer and adventurers did what they wished? Face up to Rex and find out what numbers meant. Rex looked at the state of his boots, “Look what this fecking mutt did to my shoes.”
The boys laughed. Muttering, big mouth set to on the ground. A few riches of wind soil and then it was stones, dry clay and what dirt became when ground down and mixed with ash and poison. The sun was rising now and the first of the ox bells could be heard.
Rex looked up to where some of his boys were walking with the traders going to the city. Making sure nothing happened or if it happened bad then making sure people knew who that bad thing had been. They were local those ox carts else they would not have the company. Rex hated it that so many outsiders had come to Forgetown with their goods and their bundles and their treasure. Arrogant bastards with all their talk of ‘trees’ and ‘water’ and not grull one paid in local taxes. Rex watched big mouth for an hour but the sun clear of the hills he took most of his boys back to town, nodding at the Preacher Man lying in a scar by the trail with two goblins in stick distance nervously prodding him to see if he had yet died.
“Boss.”
Rex had treasure burning a hole in his purse and people relying on him.
“Boss.”
“What, what, what is it? What, what?”
“Boss, Tirack boss,” Noises (like many there) wanted the preacher picked up. They had wives and whilst the men had no time for gods the womenfolk always set an extra plate at mealtime. Rex seeing this stopped. He nodded. They had a handcart after all just right for carrying a body. Funny that.
*
It sat over the water and on the corner of what had been Stab Street, a beast half pig and half man with bloodied tusks and where the old bundle pulley on which it swung stood over the water it and the body writhed with a hundred hungry snakes. Here and the lanes were a confusion that made walls and windows into the city and into which the gargoyle had picked his way slowly and under many he sensed a watchful eye. There clustered under the hanging body were rafts and on the rafts barrows that would have had back home wheels, but which here had found that wheels cost hard grull and a skilled hand but a weary back and a cheap threat weighed in for less.
If he was unwelcome here he did not sense it. There were shops now moved upstairs above the water that few noticed. The noise was terrible, like a hundred fat pigs were fighting nearby to see how much fatter they might become if they were fewer in number. He spied a pair of rats in grey pick at their teeth with a magnificent knife. He peered through an actual and quite marvellous window to see where in rows men of means and youths wishing to cut a dash were shown the quality of a knife for sale by being given a dry haircut with each. Mostly and though this was a shop, indeed up here a shop that only from above showed itself to be many buildings altogether, the shop was occupied by locals that gossiped and drank what looked like rum. They argued and a rat child played with a goblin child and what they played with under everyone’s feet looked to be someone’s hand. Slake grunted having come here expecting worse and moved away whilst within and though they had not looked up the old men discussed gargoyles they had seen and how gargoyles nowadays were always in too great a hurry. And everywhere, everywhere hereabouts burned into the metal and branded into the wood, painted, fixed or scrawled was the sign of the black hat.
It was the dead beast that Slake had discovered that marked the shop he wanted. Moving anyway across the rooftops, and unsure how he felt about it that here so also did most people in the long flooded Cheapside he was at least pleased to find that for the first time he could remember someone had had the foresight to put a door, in the roof. He knocked. He knocked twice more and so slowly he might have been a queue. He entered and if he had had a hat, that hat he would have doffed. Next time he would remember to bring one.
*
“You spitshine?”
The boy fought back with kicks and hard nails and a ferocity that could only have been bettered had he lived and probably died in the now-drowned gutters of Cheapside. The toerag had nearly picked his purse which had been rich as Rex had been emptying it to anyone that stopped long enough to work out if it was cake or crutches from the recently declared founding father. He said, “Kid, you listen. You don’t rob off your own. This? This is Forgetown? Greatest place inna world, no kidding. You got spirit, like a priest maybe, but you don’t rob here.” He shook the child before tossing him out of the temple to bang and bounce on the tin that lined the ground without. Rex took a dagger and tossed it after the boy, saying, “Now getoutta here and rob the highways!” He dropped the butt of that day’s fifth cigar and picked up the cup of hooch that was ever at his elbow. He peered inside to where two dozen wives big, small, stout or tall fussed over their Preacher Man. Rex was impressed. He was a picky man, anything warm, and there was a lot of that here. “He be okay?”
“I have been shown the way!” A voice shouted.
Rex nodded. He was going to be okay. That was’a’alright then. He looked about but saw only fools and enemies. When it came it came from friends, with a smile and kind words. Best not have any of them then.
*
It was a desperate day and night, forging through a storm that struck at them, soaked them and left each battered and bloody and in one case near weeping with his arms as he lay on the slope about an empty tin. Only one of them stood and that only because of the utmost determination, suspicion and outright concern that whilst they had followed a path unseen up a pass that had barely seemed to end that behind them now was only green, green grass and the swaying of young thistles. They were not far from a river, wide and sluggish and within reach of a wild orchard all overgrown and clotted with windfall.
“We forced a path,” said one.
“We were allowed to enter...” said the third.
They all had an opinion and were close to arguing when the one with the tin sought with a hand, eyes closed, for the hamper only to know only too well that it was not there to be found. He said, “There is no wine.”
“There is cheese,” the third uncoiled. It was something close to his heart and as such he had carried some just as that suggested. It was moreover a magnificent day only shattered when having assured himself of his cheese he opened his eyes to what he would not presume to be a sun only to find a terrible face but inches from his own. Much to his later shame, he screamed.
*
Anyone that went north could be a spy. Might be too, a spy was just someone that talked and everyone talked. Travellers gossiped. Traders laughed. Adventurers boasted. Spearmen grumbled. Not even north either. How many had passed through Forgetown in the last two years? The Sleek thought it likely impossible to know and did not wish to give Anath the pleasure of a soft boiled guess served up as a hard boiled answer. Deci was also the claimed home for half at least of all the adventurers that had walked the Empire. Or where they had been born at least, which was not to his mind exactly the same thing. So it was not at all surprising as it was not in any Imperial city to see devils, angels and stranger things drinking too much or being accosted by those wishing an immediate solution on the point of a sword – the good and Imperial way.
He had baited no trap, had set out as might be for mice any cheese. More normally and to find such people as he sought, such infiltrators or spies then to use his vaunted talents some plan, some bluff, some clever bait. But he was The Sleek and having begun to consider this he had whilst inspecting certain property above about and even below his fine and many layered townhouse caught something that had set his teeth to itching. And so and now and here he was and if it was difficult in Hightown to surround a house then that was what he had done. And much to his annoyance, it was one close to his own.
The cheek.
The very cheek of it, indeed.
He liked it here. Here high above the city and on the street that was as covered as open that wound only once more about the narrowing Quarter to the gates of the great Spire. The last houses hereafter his own and that which he stood before now those flattened townhouses of Sire Brass, House Hail and House Duff – these of particular interest to him. The Quarter was an uneven stack of plates with the dirtiest at the bottom and the finest at the top and the land here perhaps the most precious of all. None of the three Houses needed treasure, but the first at least might take it with a favour, the second more particularly through an old and overdue debt and the last – well the last and trickily where it lay dark and unoccupied for many years held by a House that was only Deci because it had ruled it all in the first days of Empire.
The Sleek stood near enough to touch the poison smog that the city wore like a hood. It was time and hands tucked in the small of his back and in a whimsical mood he approached the gates of the townhouse. That they opened smoothly before him was nothing unusual. Whether by status, servant or mental strength Taleth Majius had not had to physically touch a doorknob himself since...
...ever?
*
There were three gangs at least and they had come for war. The faces were not all young and the Sire’s sharp eyes spied boots better paid for by Guildsmen amongst them. He also noticed more than one slyly turned away or hooded glance, knowing that what he had heard was true. And what he had heard had been that the gangs he knew that would unite had old hands and faithful sponsors that had done well and so returned or paid for assassins or similar to lend a hand. Cheapside for a round hundred yards about the Sumps and the Four Fingers Deep was empty but Cheapside was not quiet. Like in Forgetown where Anath might play the louder in the Cart & Hammer when the inevitable fists flew the Quarter outside the fighting turf lived the more noisily. This was Cheapside business. One had come to be King and they all knew where that led.
But Sire Berry was not interested in the crown. It was too much grief. He might have minded it had he been able to nicely smooth his way in, to be acclaimed and celebrated but whilst he had the biggest muscle in Cheapside then he had better things to do with it than kill his customers. Hell, as it had become over recent years his people. And just as the tattle had been for weeks now that the threat was Myron so he reminded them of that here, now.
“’Dis goblin fecked the last lot, an’ ‘dis goblin’ll feck you all up an’ all. No feckin’ worry about it. But ‘dis goblin is wonderin’ in the cold light of the pisser at noon what the feck and why? So fight if yer want, feck it – come’n ‘ave a go if yer think yer ‘ard enough!”
There was from about him the falling of bodies from roof and water. The Stepsons and the Hat fought and many watched and they spat at the end, losing a tooth or a hand but their blades were bloodier than their pelts and the bodies in the water were near all others. Sire Berry nodded, he had to respect that. One gang had gone for it, two waited to see what he was going to say. Because he was Sire Berry, respected, local figure – he could lie like others breathed but this was where he lived and it was hard to live it down on big things. He said, “Well, dey came and dey thought dey was ‘ard enough.” There was a laughter. Berry nodded, smiling and waited for silence. “Brave lads, dead and we’ll miss ‘em. Dey was wrong. Nah then,” he spat on one hand. “Feckers outside, always feckers outside...”
He spoke and well and people put aside their differences, word spread. Cheapside was not going to be the privy for the arse of the enemy or the lavender willy wipe for the nobs in their Spire over this. Rout out strangers, bugger anyone might know about Myron – but he had a name, a phrase. They were hunting the Iron Hand.
Later and Marmalade pointed out there was no trap, no lure, no plan to catch the Iron Hand. Sire Berry chuckled as he looked out then at the Quarter being roused. Didn’t matter, he said. Whoever they were, they knew they were being hunted up. They did not know, what the Sire and the people knew – how much, or how little. But they would have heard the name and gone. From here at least and most like. Which was good because Drake it had been said was hosting a high stakes ratfink game in the weeks to come, and given that so much hard grull was in so few hands in this city high stakes might meant very high stakes indeed.
*
The dust storm was rust red and ash pale. The dried specks of long exhausted poison sucked down from the sky. A little dirt, but only a little and iron, some silver and bone, even stone in the form of dust but mostly the first by far so that though others might have quailed he not only stood he walked through the storm with his hands flat and outstretched as if to trail in the wake of some pleasant sunner boat trip. He passed shapes where carters had dragged up stout sailcloth above they and their loads, where the oxen sat with eyes and nostrils closed and there the sounds were of a too small boat caught in too great storm. Yet these too passed.
He was distant otherwise from people and yet and for the first in the longest time there was no anger within him, no sense of hungry change where here he sensed then that howling once ever within him now caught at and echoed in this Deci dust storm. It roamed across the Badlands. It grew on the flats and shrank in the hills. It left dirt and dust and once when they crossed together a sharp dip, some lost river, he saw fine nets strung to catch in sequence the spoil of the storm and the shapes of men with fine mail veils harvesting whatever they wanted from the storm. It passed on and he with it, they walked apace and often without he felt any wind to make it at all. This was a moderate dust storm only. A mile perhaps from end to teardrop end and half as wide some were few were greater and some only the size of a man, elementals wild in those smaller examples. Yet never high, dust that blew over the badlands of Deci and in this caress of rust and iron he walked with a face like a cat eating fish through a net.
Here where the storm grew still. Where the dust stilled, where the dirt long gone did not impede the rust and poison iron and where they scarcely did they fall nor moved at all, and only gently then. So suddenly had this change come upon him that he frowned, puzzled. Everywhere came somewhere to die and here came the rural storms, to here the Rust Flats where no life could be found for two leagues (and that unpleasant).
*
The wagons were doubtless moving and the crowds so tidal already being pulled towards the winding processional route. Deci was a city not only old enough to predate the biggest of the ox carts but whose streets flowed together like old glass and last year’s toffee too close to the stove. It was dark in the Spire but a very expensive sort of darkness. It was the warm darkness that only came from a particular candle set with a black wick and lit the chamber surmounted with the great and ungainly circle of blades so like a crown that beneath which and hands pressed to silver lips sat a King. There were unseen, guards. Something stirred in the pure shadow above. Nobles in their traditional best, their puffed and concealing tunics and tight britches, their conversely tight bodices and puffed skirts and sleeves were lit in circles by the same half light that took the eyes of those that were the Blood of the city to see in it at all.
And what they saw was their King. His mirrored silver and half face mask reflected not what faced him but that which those standing there feared they might see. Beautifully wrought that mask in this light seemed to be no mask at all and the King if he was the monarch of anywhere some clever and considered hell with these his Princes, Dukes and Earls of its many circles. The scents were of good wine and old gold, strong and pungent to flick back the stink of the city like a servant to the beggar.
They stood because the King had not told them to be seated. Lying on a table set for his pleasure were scrolls of ritual and deeds of land. Tribute time, one had asked as if expecting it all along. The mask by nature expressionless had agreed. Tribute time and so too it seemed, visitor time. The Toymakers and certain other Guild Masters had been brought to hearken to their King. There was no need now of common blood.
Yet there were these three strangers and behind them a Baron of the King’s House that had brought them. They wore no chains. They had been expecting this, if perhaps not quite so soon for they had planned on the ‘Dawn. But today would do and the first bowed formerly to which the King without expression inclined his head.
He offered nothing brought for them. King Troy the Faceless would not waste wine or meat on these any more than he would a ghoul or vampire, they were all and if the last had at least the good sense to realise it – dead, or only alive at his pleasure.
*
The carts creaked and the light of the lanterns now several years old was a little tattered too yet still the streets were rinsed blue and washed purple as the tin fish, goats and stranger animals followed the procession. Guilds had wagons and there were many wagons where here and in Deci where they were secretly productive souls now that all the bastards had killed one another – or were waiting for the next bigger bastard to show up most like – whilst the poor became poorer and hard grulls were growing as ever more thin on the streets they did love the festival. No one called it the Day Of The Dead anymore, it was the Hundred Days, or the Guild Day, or even and quite erroneously to those that had met him Fat Anath’s Tea Party. People were in a jolly mood, which meant cruel and there was fighting and laughter which quite in character was the laughter almost of children. Laughter that like any parent knew meant trouble was a siren call for the people of the city who could read the sounds of the city better than a pissed scribe with one hand could a new scroll.
The procession went on the only route afforded and because it was Deci the scouts went first. Behind these and waiting for their warning stout fellows carried quite the most burnished sheet of silvered steel because the Guilds if they were competitive all had as one of the secret clauses in their secret charters one that concerned a certain Knight.
Who brought the whole procession to a halt.
He there in Wet Sunstar Square upon Fine Canterin’ dressed in armoured ribbon and with spiked bells upon his harness, erect and eyebrow raised in quartered armour of fluted red and green. He and their very own Sir Dirk Drakken no matter what his further titles might say and with word no less of hundreds of serfs now being uppity upon his ancestral lands – the Knight of Deci. The procession made the sound of many thousand men and women holding their breath. He was their Knight but it was sometimes and never always certain as to which Knight that might be. Mothers whose children actually survived to grow old enough to listen spoke terrible stories to their brats of the Knight Mayor that Dirk had yet to think of and those children would learn because of it not to sleep at night.
Dirk in turn saw his prey. He had heard of the fellow of course, that laughing knight, that neatly moustachioed bravo, that giddy jolly soul with no time for writing and too much perhaps for tea by the bucket and cake by the pint. Dirk was not impressed. This Knight of Levity looked to have been bent by a curved mirror, so short was he, so round and with a forehead nonetheless as tall as should have been his plumes.
Sir Dirk raised his sword, showed a good lance and was pleased to see that his enemy matched him move for move. They leapt towards one another with a roar that might have been half the city screaming at the other half to get (it seemed) the bloody hell out of the way!
The procession of wagons, lanterns and guild but a sparse minute later coughed and settled after the impact. Its orderly line now a rug rucked up when on a shiny floor it had intercepted a giddy fool! Dirk finding himself and his mighty charger Fine Canterin’ for no good reason he could remember stood atop three of the wagons in a tumbled heap raised his visor to tip an apology to the nearest ox where it swung in its harness nonplussed and seemingly unsurprised several yards clear of the ground.
Dirk beamed.
That’d teach the blighter!
*
They were not taking part in the festival but Gideon who wore a Forgetown hat had his suspicions. He had heard of the Silversmiths, had learned of other’s thoughts on their relationship to Ulis and here now where he peered into the widow of that neat little shop with its empty display – still the only real display in Deci – and closed drapes, he scoffed at them. Few seemed to recall hereabouts that the Silversmiths had, literally, vanished one fine ‘Dawn. Guild, collection of weather vanes and discordant but precisely angled doorways and all – those restored were not they that had gone. To Gideon’s way of thinking they kept themselves too isolated, too aloof - too masked. To the Mayor of Forgetown they were acting a role and what power and benefit they brought was conveyed, not created. Theatre and what theatre where it was not as was common bawdy, dark? The city was too sly. There were too many layers. It was a wonder he supposed that the settlement did not melt from its plotting but he suspected it was all too subtle. Having been in Alguz of late the difference was stark. Missy Sicks who had come to the big city with Gideon on hearing this had opined that in Deci the Hundred did not trouble the Council or the King with their plots, their plans and their little wars and victories. Deci was many things and to outsiders and Senate, it was Anath and Troy, Talath and Trundelberry, Jander and Dirk, and Selgard. And Gideon thought that pretty ripe, just as did the Hundred Guilds doubtless.
“Shop’s shut, son.”
Gideon turned. There was Sire Berry having a scratch with a very limp fellow in the garb of a Nobleman left dead for three weeks. He nodded. He greeted the Black Hat adding, “And you also, Mr Totterman.”
They both liked that.
“I know it’s closed. I was just thinking.”
“’Is nibs tell you anyfink? Anythink odd?”
Gideon admitted that he had, but it had been very odd. Reminded of their conversation though he tried to remember it more clearly and with the distinct impression that to some degree what he was thinking off was tied to that. He could not join the Guild and whilst if he found a rogue he might artisan it, silversmithery would not be quite the same. It was to some degree particular to the person, but Gideon was a person and clearly had a knack for such things. Alchemy was related. It was all to do with the transference. ‘If he found a rogue’, he was the mayor of Forgetown (something he was keeping quiet as a temple fart hereabouts), he laughed. Easy.
“Why is’e bein’ screwed wif, Mr Hat?”
“Totter?”
The tall figure made a gesture to imply magic, or ritual, or a hot cup of tea – it was pretty general in demonstration.
Sire Berry said to Gideon, “Son?”
“Why do you keep calling me ‘son’?”
It seemed Drake was out of town and it was too good a tradition to let slide so Sire Berry was keeping it warm for him. He explained about Imps and the Hat rubbed his spiky chin knowing ritualists where either Noble or hidden but thinking on Minnows heritage he clicked his fingers and suggested the North Quarter, once safe now mercilessly bullied by everyone going to and from snakish prayer. There was a shaman though one piss-reekingly scared after the butchery of most like him when the tribes had last wandered in unopposed. “’Dis nice goblin can ‘ave ‘im run to ‘elp yer.”
“That would be helpful...” Gideon said dubiously. He was pretty sure that the most powerful ritualists sat or had fled the Council. But still, if...
“...we is an ‘elpful bunch,” said the Hat and suggested that they might like to hunt out the parade.
*
The roar had him knife to hand and almost laughing at the obvious treachery of his so-called Council. The sound of an army in wait, unleashed. Yet still and though they had him in a trice surrounded they did not fall upon him, only and to his further snarls mocked him with a strange and hundreds strong striking of one hand upon the other. The first blow took him between the shoulder blades, a second and he spun only for some mysteriously attractive woman in a killer’s bustle to press her doubtless poisoned lips against his whilst a number forced more into his hand, this time foaming, tarry and in amount a pint. Music struck up, terrible, awful Deci music and about him they danced – terrible, awful Deci dancing. He turned to his guide shouting to be heard and to say, “What is this pandemonium? This farce?”
“They like you, they’re cheering.”
“Ha,” Selgard said. Then, “I don’t understand?”
“Understand what?”
He shouted back, “Everything after ‘they’.”
The procession where sought and found by the Governor was in the process of disentangling itself. It looked as if a small but sturdy force of nature had ploughed into it and Selgard who had learned rapidly that it was best to ask only questions to which he cared about the answer only raised a tentative hand to receive the passing adulation. He still suspected some dreadful trap never willing to accept that perhaps he was viewed as a local lad done good. Drake had been one of them in his own special way and Goldenballs few even remembered unless reminded that before he had walked amongst them, taller than some, had been their Governor. Now it was Selgard who had not made any sounds about being awkward or overthrowing the King (though many still looked forward to that, though the same who waited to hear about the King’s latest madness and therefore and for the most part, in vain).
He was not sure he liked it. He might have felt better when Jander still enjoying the attention helped to dig out one Guild Master or another introduced him had it been a little more private. Selgard was very much not used to being the centre of attention. There were hundreds of people here most of whom were looking at him. Some still shook him by the hand. There had been that kiss.
“See, they like you,” said Jander.
“I’m not sure I like that. I have important work to be about. There are the Iron Hand we have heard of but I’ve not been able to divert my full attention to it. By naming them I think Sire Berry might have driven them out of Cheapside, now if I could be allowed to...”
But Jander was having none of it. He did not especially hold with spies, with rumour or stalking about playing at Bold Jack Whiskers. He thought that one day Selgard would look very fine standing proud and obvious before a mighty levy in times of need. He was just the sort of fellow that if he was willing to die horribly then other might also. Although they might have to get someone else to do the talking, Dirk probably. “Let them like you, they approve of your appointment. They like that though you are said to follow some funny blanket-and-bib God you do so by stabbing things up. Also, that you have an evil beard.”
“An evil beard?”
“Do I have a beard?”
“You do not.”
“There you are. Beard. Pointy, sign of a bad sort. Look at Anath,” Jander nodded. He led Selgard away and at times leant a surreptitious hand to the mess of the procession until and at length and though it squeaked alarmingly it set off once more. Jander made the disappear only for Selgard to tap him firmly on the shoulder. Jander said, “Yes?”
“Long shot I know but do you know a smith?”
Jander blinked. This was clearly some sort of joke, he said, “I might.”
“Good. I’ll come with you then.”
Jander protested that he had to be about business that Selgard would find tedious, beneath him, mere metal and fire and the stuff of the common, simple smith in his forge. Selgard nodded and still followed on. People were still handing him jugs of tarry ale he did not want to drink and for some reason a baby that when he had tried to return it had led to something of a chase. He was the Governor and people kept on looking at him. Smiling too, with Deci teeth. This was some ploy, some trap, some cunning jest at his expense. He blinked, Jander had vanished. Selgard rolled up his sleeves. He would see about that.
*
“Dragon, Halfblack?” Sire Brass was looking out over the city and seemed to be of the opinion that the sinuous beast that had appeared quite without warning was the responsibility of the Council. He, Anath and the Sires Low, Slice and from Scarlene Nail had gathered for drinks but Brass had set his aside to peer outwards and with some small curiosity.
Anath rose with a slight sigh. He at least could do something about this. He could delegate. He opened that same window to lean out sufficiently to be heard. He said, “Commisent!”
His face as stiff as the helmet being fetched for him it caught and reflected something of the distant fire that bloomed a Quarter away. The city did not burn but at least one part of it did and in the flame light that was so much brighter in the sickly poison gloom that passed for air in Deci a shape could be seen coiled about a pointed spire. Dirk nodded, this was as it should be and the damn weasel that was fretting about above was only adding rust to the joints of his determination. He sent for a certain lance. Already his great charger had been roused from and quite literally it’s bed. Minions like ants on a bone ran over the horse with harness wax and small heated irons. Dirk having defeated his latest enemy had been on his way to his own rest but the need to be where Dirk’s where needed had brought him here.
“Commisent!”
The Knight kept his eye on the distant beast. The weasel he ignored. He had done things his way. He had inspected the populace to see if they were armed and finding they were had seen no need to arm them further.
“Commisent – I expect this dealt with before the parade comes by...”
But Dirk was no longer listening. He mounted in a swirl so that plate moved like mail and mail like samite. He and his hoss reared, a trumpet sounded, there were drums – he was three storeys up and with a shout he dared the ground to do its worse!
Anath nodded and in answer to the dragon, or it’s like, he had a servant close the shutters. He turned back to his guests, “Gentlemen,” he began and outlined as he saw it such matters as to their mutual concern.
*
It was a fine thing to have a procession and here the wagons stood abandoned as Gideon helped himself to pie. He was though he kept his face away from the guilds well known of course - the mayor of Forgetown, and the local Alchemist. There were still many hereabouts and who had become used to trading with Mr Tamary only too keen to pick up on the supplying that was lucrative for all parties – albeit they came here, to the city, which was only a problem as much as he made it one. A little shop somewhere, a front as it were against the Guilds, easily done.
Gideon particularly admired the serpent coiled about the Guildhall. Twice as long as a bolt of hand-lightning it perfectly matched in colour the city. It slipped softly to coil about the building only shown at all by the burning building close by that framed it. Its wings Gideon saw were more spectral than real and really he would have been hard put now seeing its slinking, sly manner to imagine a more Deci sort of dragon. He wondered where everyone else was? He needed to point Halgar as they said hereabouts, no doubt all the ale left just lying around. Had been, anyway.
There came the sound of a trumpet. There came the sound of Sir Dirk and the serpentine dragon doubtless hearing it too whipped about the rooftops to vanish into the shadows. Which was a shame as Gideon had found a brazier and several ears of corn and being an alchemist had been about to come up with an idea for a snack.
*
“It’s not that anyone’s slipped by anyone, God,” Master Dust on one knee reported. The Blades had left the city to tour that part of the rural lands they could and they had done well enough, they were good and light but the territory if not Bildteve was still very big for a man on foot. He stood when at length and finally ordered to by Jander saying, “But we’re riding luck to find an enemy if he doesn’t want to be found. If light enough for the wilds anyway.” More disturbingly had been Dust’s information that the Angel Gate when he had arrived had been empty. Hacka’s Hearties were either well out and ranging far already, or were not there. Indeed and Dust had asked around and apart from their Reeve at times taking whatever pay might be coming, no one had seen the Hearties for quite some time. Jander mystified by this had only just learned from the traders he queried, those he had found arriving in the city most recently, that both had thought that the Hearties actually worked for the City of Keys. At least, so they had heard? The Upright Men were still out in the Badlands and admiring all the roads made for the enemy.
“Problem, God?”
“Not you too, Quirt,” said Jander. He dismissed Dust. There was the pass that cut by the Silver Mountain but the Braekens were not impenetrable. Many could have told him this, some on the council who had estates there. Indeed the Shedeff even crossed them to the Far North. Jander just did not have the Helds to hope he found an enemy, and indeed it was looking like he did not have the Helds at all! Dust had suggested plainly that they had beacons. When they were lit then he and his would have a place to start hunting from though they were no trackers and streetfighters whilst content enough in the wilds were hardly ever going to find it as would a local. The militia would not leave the city, Jander began to see that their fine new walls mostly unmanned were at best a good show. The military might of Deci had ever been making it uncomfortable to occupy. Stand up fights were for stand up fighters. Buggeration.
Here and coming on to morning the procession had broken up into a number of uncharacteristically raucous celebrations. About the great and many wheeled monstrous alter to the Forge that only fitted down so very few streets it was warm, roofed in well made canvass and ripe to the smells of poker ale and sausages. He had spoken warmly with Quirt, the fellow as drily competent as ever and naturally enough prepared to assume his turn as Guild Master – he only was not because a God of that thing had wanted so to be. But it was good to take turns and in truth Quirt had had to run the place anyway most weeks.
Jander had enjoyed the brief discussion on Quirt’s plans, the man revealing a hint of mad reason not previously evidenced. Indeed and it had actually managed to intrigue more than be shared with the Forge who was a traditionalist at heart and so not previously exposed to what Quirt had seen as the natural progression from the terrifying industry of the city, the Engines Of The Forge. Best suited a little removed, doubtless – especially since even Quirt had pronounced them with each word attended by a capital letter.
“Dirk!”
Jander turned and just as the sausages were being dished up, it was Selgard who having met the many Guild Masters and discovering that they would all change in the ‘Dawn not concerned himself with a list now hailed the city’s bravest knight. Jander who had barely concerned himself with the sight of the slick, black and fire venomed wyrm in the Slurries the moment Dirk had crashed by was somewhat surprised to see the fellow now without a fantastic new trophy.
“Sir Dirk – you have bested the dragon?”
“Shadow Wyrm,” snapped Dirk with all the experience of the truly great beastslayer and all the bitterness of failure. “Ran off.”
“Couldn’t you have... chased it?” said Jander.
But Dirk only muttered darkly about cheatin’ and trickery and clattered away to find dark company to suit his new dark mood.
By Alan Morgan