Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 18:42:28 GMT
Sunner IM 1012
It was evening by the time the heat began to drain away into the mountains, and only troubled by flies Selgard sat on the step of his manor only playfully pushing them away when they became too troublesome. It was not often he got to enjoy his estate. The air heavy with the rich scents of the earth, of pine trees, and cooking where inside four of the local mothers were stirring something delicious in a pot. He was not alone, he rarely was here and in truth he liked that. Lazing in the same shade were two of the pony tribesmen that had settled here, and having fought for the place had every right to, to Selgard’s mind.
There were tribesmen in the Deci territory. The badlands weren’t nearly as empty as might be supposed, although so much of it was dead to nature it was hardly a stretch to believe otherwise. The city had long poisoned the land and now Jander had held the mother down, kicked and scorned her that was pretty much how things would now doubtless remain. The tribes kept themselves very much to themselves. Most were settled, remote, and hostile only to strangers. They scraped a life or lived it well enough, the best probably south and east of the city where he had heard of somewhere called Caer Mose – but they were hardly troublesome.
“It’s the city isn’t it?” he said.
It seemed very likely. If the city had uppity tribes they were almost certainly those that had taken the north quarter, bloody laughing wolves. Selgard sighed. It was such a nice evening and he really thought he might have avoided stinking Deci for a while. He would eat before he left. Talthar might know where a man might get a decent meal in Deci but Selgard had never found out.
*
“You!” said Troy Majius. A city of poison and soot, smog and filth he wore (like nearly everyone) black. But whereas for many that was what any colour soon became, here from head to toe that was how they had started. The rings, the chain, even the silver mask would have marked him even had it not been for the loyal men and women that had followed and tried now to blend into the bustle; just not very hard. A kingly finger pointed at the young man who bending over another had been punching him repeatedly in the face.
“Me?” he cried out when his victim cuffed him about the ear. A whisper of realisation was shared. The young man on top swept off his cap, “My Lord!”
“What are you doing?”
“Robbing, lord!”
“Now I ask you, is that quite the thing we do here in Deci?”
The young man blinked, confused. Unsure what to say his mouth worked silently whilst the brain tried to keep up. It was an uneven race.
*
The hills were here an extension of the mountains that jutted into the territory, the tooth of a jigsaw piece and why the Thorns were a part of Deci at all. The rising stone lip made for a natural wall about the estate higher than the city walls apart from where the bent horseshoe it made ended in a gap facing south no more than a half mile across. It had been here that Lord Davian had first seen the Thorns. It was here that he might raise a wall and a gate and thus enclose his estate entirely, and far better than any estate anyone might likely find across the whole Empire. A palisade to start and then good stone it would be a lot lower than the surrounding rise, but high enough, and higher than most, across the half mile break.
Davian was looking back across his estate. He had spent some time with King Grudamagh where the dragon had contentedly withdrawn to its deepest caves. They had spoken respectfully, the dragon and the Majius, the agreement they had made. It was the Majius way; to prosper, to profit, to make something of nothing. It was a manner bred into them by the hard, sickly land. And the dragon had shared what it recalled. Of the dragon blood, such as he had called it – the making of ritual with one’s own blood. Of certain ritual suggested where Davian might separate his shadow and send it further afield. Of the use of minions and their sharing in ritual’s curse – and a name, of a woman, in the lanes of the King’s Bazaar, that might for a certain gratuity have scraps of the books once madly scribbled in by the Sleek Princess that had for almost a whole year ruled Deci in triumvirate with her long dead brother and a cat with the eyes of a man.
It seemed a shame then to leave the estate for the desolate badlands of Deci. The Thorns had become his home, the people his people that knuckled their foreheads and laughed at his tales and where no one plotted for one moment about his downfall. Deci could keep Deci, when all was said and done there were advantages to being a very rural sort of Lord.
*
One of the townhouses that stood about the very top of the Quarter it formed a side dominated most note worthily by the Spire. The word house was, as with those others closest here, something of a misnomer for it was a part of the rock that jutted upwards and somewhat separated from the rest of the city. It had a garden of gravel and small statues and the house itself was very fine, rather old, and difficult to ever quite see all at once.
It was the house, of the House, of Hail. Their’s was a House older than the house. Their’s a line as old as any in the city (and far older than most) with two rulers amongst their ancestors, but who had ever since the rise of the Empire retreated further into the territory. They had other properties. They had other influences across the city. They had a sprawling brood and of all the Houses perhaps the most bastards that if unacknowledged, had still been cared for, set up, supported, and who did well amongst the Hundred.
With the restoration of their lands they too were a House that was headed by an Earl. That had to be confirmed by the Empress but this was Deci, and that was a formality that if even unobserved would change nothing in this city, in this land.
*
No one had seen Anath for several weeks. That made Sire Berry suspicious because at least if you had an eye on Anath then whilst you probably had not the first idea what he was doing, then at least you could have a fair punt at knowing where he was doing it. Trundelberry looked behind the nearest crate of broken glass. He turned around sharply. He spent a moment trying to see if he could catch Anath out of the corner of one eye. Carefully he pulled out a crisp hundred and dropped it on the mud of the tiny little yard. He watched it for a long minute and then content that wherever Anath was it was not here turned his attention instead to the small door with the chipped paint and hoped it wouldn’t be thought too impolite to knock.
He had not known there was a yard, which was very odd because what the Hat didn’t know about Cheapside when he cared to consider it could be kept in a small cage and prodded with pins. So it was with uncharacteristic nervousness that Sire Berry made to knock, and then to pause when he saw that the door was already slightly ajar.
*
Set in a gully then unless by luck, misfortune or some effort the temple might have been missed entirely. Certainly no tracks led to it but Davian had been told just that and knowing to look for trees, to wait for noon and the highest of the sun, he had seen a gleam of metal and come here where otherwise for miles about nothing much might claim to be a wood. With trees there was soil. Dirt was more valuable than gold in many places across this land and Davian was unsure who started the more when he almost walked into a snorting boar. Both eyed one another warily before each, and perhaps by some recognition of the other, passed by without making a sound.
And then the trees stopped at the lip of that gully. There in the drop was a temple. Domed top upon a square base with statues at each corner, Davian waited but saw no signs of life below. He made his own darkness and stepping on it walked to the gully floor.
*
King Troy the Faceless (it was what the people called him and he was playing up to the role today) had watched a trader tied to his own wagon wheel. The man had dared to sell to a stall in Cheapside rather than offload in the market and so now his wagon and team were the property of Troy Majius. People thought that was as it should be. Not that crime should be so punished, but that the king should be out and about being mean, prominent, and mad as ham. In Deci of all places everyone well knew that the law were just whatever rules the people in charge made up as they wished week-on-week. Executing hundreds for knifing some fecker would never go down well. Picking on someone in a funny way always would.
But now Troy stood where he was pretty sure a bloody great rock had hit the city during the last parade. A rock of which there was no evident sign. The Guilds as was their duty had upkept and made good. The honey had swept up and stolen as was their job. People bustled by. Most making sure that Argoth wasn’t coming in the other direction. It happened; recently too.
Calling up to a band of wastrel scrabbling about the tin scaffold put up on the nearest building Troy said, “Where did all the rocky bits go?”
The Guildsman in charge of the team replied, “Silversmiths, Lord King!” other than as Troy had discerned, into the river.
The Hundred then, Troy clapped his hands together. It was high sunner and under the poison smog the city steamed. All this being outside could not be good for him.
*
Deci had improved its walls not so very long ago, or at least made them a little more than the stone store they had for so long been. The gates in the northern wall were open, unguarded and Nichal went first through them with the mob of his jolly Hird close behind. There was no ambush, no guards, not even a Watchman to ask them their business. He suspected that the city did not close its gates since gates cost grulls and didn’t want every idle invader breaking them just to avoid a bit of a climb.
“It could be an ambush, chief?”
“I don’t think we could be so lucky...” said Nichal. He well knew that there were militia, or assassins, or goblins, or painted dollies for all he knew that could make an invaders life difficult. Here in Dog Town they were not, it seemed, that. Nichal looked around suspiciously as they crossed the winding street. “Eyes peeled, boys,” he said.
“Killers, chief?”
“Tax collectors...”
*
“Awight, pasha?”
Oddly Gideon had had little reason to come to the particular back lanes close to the Cart & Hammer before they had been barricaded up, though he knew after a late night and a little rat fink they could be crowded. Those barricades had withdrawn somewhat but still what he had always assumed to be a storehouse was hedged off, lanes blocked, and the doors riveted shut. It was late enough to hardly be worth sleeping but with lanterns and salamanders there was a glow to the street here and the noise and singing were for the most part convivial. The young man on the first stall pointed to the skillets and the cauldrons in which bubbled, sizzled and fought back anything that could be eaten in the badlands of Deci; but here given flavour, and texture, and plenty of black scabby bits. A crowd waiting their turn pushed and jeered at him to stop dithering. He turned on them to deliver a good, strong feck off and they quietened with broken smiles and a few returns. It was Forgetown, certain things were expected. Gideon said, “Two of whatever’s good and if I want to have a quiet word who is best for that?”
*
In the heart of dog town there was a celebration. People scuttling to and from the cathedral avoided great, wet, stinking lumps of the north quarter (and with good reason). Out in the wilds it was true enough that the tribes were considerably cleaner than the filthy citizens of the great settlements. Rain and the need to scrape off tribal paint and dye saw to that. But here and settled and with the honey long chased away a lot of the north quarter of Deci looked like what happened when young plague lepers having just left home moved into a town just sacked by really angry raiders.
Nichal was not impressed. He hoped his brethren liked dog nuts because there certainly was a lot of it. Still though people ran from the tenements and rows most thickly occupied by the wolf tribes, and his followers had been surrounded by those keen to hear of the victory over the gnolls – it not being their problem in the first place for the moment entirely forgotten. Already the tales were growing taller, of a foe ten times their number and of the greatest skill, yet vanquished with cunning and the true ferocity of warriors born.
“There’s the arsehole!” someone shouted. Nichal was swarmed, clapped till he was bruised and lumpy and was soon trying to walk through puddles of drink that he spilled as more was poured. They certainly seemed very pleased to see him. Hang on, “Who called me arsehole?” he shouted.
“You are an arsehole,” said Zen. “But where would we be without one?”
That was true enough, but... “It’s not quite the glory filled name I’d prefer?”
She chuckled, “What would you prefer, which bit of you should we celebrate, not your brain surely?”
Three wolf girls were smothering Nichal with kisses. There was nothing like a hero to bring on the heat. Nichal endured them, two in one arm and the third in the last. He said, “My heart, my courage, my manly wolfiness?”
“Your manliness, you mean your thingy don’t you? You want them to call you ‘thingy’?”
“Better that than arsehole.”
“Let’s stick to what we need, not what you think with,” said Zen and stepped back as warriors too long waiting to march on the Spire and bring it tumbling down waved sword, axes, and spears in the air. Two of them especially had been waiting, one old and one young and both had formed up hirds from the mess that many more had become. Zen shook her head as the crowd pushed her back. thingy Arsehole would never serve; not unless they intended to be highwaymen.
*
The shop was like many in the King’s Bazaar rather small, somewhat dark and well used to a city whose concept of property was what one could stop others from taking. It sloped outside and tilted inside. Here and the shop was composed mostly of locked drawers behind a counter that recalled to Machier a lectern. Privacy in Deci was rarely guaranteed. The great and the mighty spent so much time and effort guarding against the eyes of their peers that the opposite ability could hardly be ignored. Nonetheless establishments such as this at least took the effort. It was surprising frankly that no one had successfully robbed one of the potion houses or gem polishers hereabouts.
“Help you?” said the toad-like proprietor. There was something lurking in the inevitable shadows but neither patron nor punter saw fit to mention it.
*
It had been closed by order, but whose order was not given. The doors and windows had had nails driven into the frames to keep the shutters closed and the walls were smeared with the same scrawls as could be seen across half the quarter – the ones that served to remember Charmin’ Billy. It didn’t take much to affect an entrance and Andre waved for Skully and Diamond Lilly to enter once the doors had been wrenched open. After their last run in with the flea-bitten wolves it had come as a shock to most of his followers to find that now there were at least three Hirds only a few streets and lanes away! Not sticks, not a lone Hird – but three. Nichal had left with a Hird – bad enough considering it’s skill, but he had now taken to raising a Horde and scrapping with dogs was one thing but a small army probably quite another.
“Cheating mutts...” Diamond Lilly said, clearly thinking much the same thing. She had for some time said that the city had gone to the dogs since they had forgotten the true way, Argoth’s way, but the literal realisation of that had been quite a blow. She for one thought that The Sleek hadn’t gone far enough.
The building had been a storehouse, but back before the Guilds had gone all Empire on them and stopped building things with hard graft, effort, and a lot of slaves. Old Skully had been in the Hundred before the new traitors had been raised. He knew that if they raised a building in an afternoon, if stone flew, and wood shaped itself with a touch then the Hundred was drawing on the same so-called benefits of Empire. They might not be a part of the Imperial Guilds hierarchy and talent, but they drew on the same thing ultimately – and the Empire wasn’t the Empress, no matter that the true power of that filthy conqueror has come about for the Guilds under her.
“Clear it out,” said Andre was others came in behind him. Somewhere in the gloom something groaned. “Start with that.”
*
“So we here to fight then?”
It was something Zen heard at least five times daily, and now that Nichal was here and now with three frothing Hirds people were wondering why he wasn’t sacking the city, killing the Watch, the Sleek’s men, setting fire to the tallest buildings and seeing if any babies born since the murder of Charmin’ Billy were very popular indeed. She doubted the last very strongly. From what she had heard people killed by Argoth stayed dead. And not so very long ago Argoth had been walking about the city like he owned the place - which as far as many in the other quarters thought was pretty much the case. She said, “That’s for Nichal to say.”
“Only,” there were two of them now, “leave it long enough and if we don’t rampage about the city, the city will start killing us.”
Zen waved off the very suggestion even though she was a local girl and deep down knew this was very probably true. Most here were not about to leave having done nothing. Nor were they all fired up to march off to a war somewhere else, since that smacked of just doing what the Empire wanted. Zen knew for a fact that some of the leaner, more dangerous individuals that had come here to watch and perhaps join in had left already. But not left, gone. But to take word that Deci was wide open, had slaughtered nature, murdered the tribes, and (in no way related to any of this) not only had a lot of crappy young gold but had a mess of streets called the Bazaar that were about the best place to reive across the entire continent.
She had not much liked some of those that had left carrying such news. They had been... wild. Wild was good of course, but these had been above-the-mountains wild. They had been the sort that had been only too aware that the gnolls and the Pine had somehow completely missed the city, and thought that very suspicious. It was more commonly thought in other quarters that with nature having been destroyed all about the city such an enemy had been unable to come here. But those that had left had not believed it. She said, “Nichal will protect us. He looks like a face too often kicked, but he can fight a bit I suppose.”
“He ain’t always going to be here though is he?”
Zen frowned and told them to quiet such talk. People had expected Nichal and Berek to dig a very big pit for all the bodies. There was even talk amongst the young cubs that they were all too close to the people that ruled here. That sort of talk had ended within moments of Nichal’s arrival, but what had been said sometimes echoed.
*
If he was not the top man then he was still the man to talk to and Gideon with several new stains down his front licked his fingers clean right in front of the storehouse when he found him. Sloppy Bey was a young man who whilst born in Ishma could remember very little about it. Like most of them here he knew Bildteve better than Deci, but Forgetown best of all. Gideon could have brought the heavy mob in here and Sloppy knowing it was clearly pleased that he hadn’t. Gideon did not care to admit that there was a posse in the Cart & Hammer just in case.
“Look Sloppy, I appreciate you’ve all been keeping things in the family and that’s the Forgetown way,” indeed now he thought about it Gideon had to admit that the number of times people came running up to the mayor needing him to sort out their lives was pretty much never. “But you were hit worse than most with the pestilence, and I’ve heard you fought the gnolls away from your streets. But you’ve got something in there...” he pointed to the storehouse, “And I need to see what it is.”
“Nothing there, pasha!” Sloppy said.
“Look, be sensible. If you can show me that whatever it is you can handle then believe me I’ve got better things to be doing. Me mayor, me important – also, me not Jander with the big golden boot, or Anath who... tell me, how are all these stalls coping with the Deci taxes?”
“No need for that, pasha,” Sloppy laughed off the only-implied threat. The expression went almost as far as his eyes.
*
Lady Berina Majius was comforted by the fact that the children were out of her hair and firmly under the protection of that oldest of the city’s patriarchs. It freed her up certainly to walk the rooftops with her husband as they made for one of the city’s many magnificent structures. It was endemic to the Deci nobility that their children were not brought up by nannies, nurses or certainly sent for an education to another House. One kept one’s children close, and closer still the more ambitious the House. Such things bred true and there was no enemy worse than one next in line for anything. Nonetheless Troy did not seem to share her good mood. “What troubles you?” she said. There was war, and all elsewhere. Why, in all the Empire could there be a city that had avoided the whole messy nonsense so well? It took talent for a city to hide behind a tree until it all went away (especially when there were so few trees).
*
With a hairy thumb Nichal wiped blood from one side of his mouth. His head was still ringing from the sound of a bell that had cut across his little ritual. That lay in shreds all about him now and he ground the last smoking piece out with the toe of his boot. He nodded. He had half-expected there to be nothing natural to call upon but to barely get to where he might find that out before being silenced had been something of a surprise.
He couldn’t help wondering if the little fellow wandering through the square had anything to do with it. You could never really tell with Selgard. Where the Governor walked every step was watched by dozens of wolves. A single man drifting into their midst was not entirely beyond the realms of Deci to be counted as an attack. He nudged the closest of the two he had been sharing a bottle with, “This could be a trap,” said Nichal.
Of the two the youngest looked up eagerly. With barely fluff for a beard Boryd had still gathered up the eager braves that had drifted from the packs that come here. Like they, indeed more so, he was so full of spit, fire and vinegar that he could start a fight in a Shaehan temple. The second much older than both he and Nichal lounged in a hammock but had been the first to set eyes on Selgard. Greywain came from the mountains where for most of his life he had been the literal lone wolf. But here and with others sharing his views of cold revenge and a hatred for cities his grumblers were as much a hird as most might have hoped for.
There were jeers and whistles. Someone bared their arse in a high window. Nichal said, “Wait here,” and picked himself up, wiped the blood from his hand and still wincing from the peeling bells dropped from their perch to land lightly a short distance from the Governor.
*
It had been a long time since Sire Berry had been anywhere in the territory that wasn’t Forgetown. Forgetown indeed had seemed dreadfully rural and so he had perhaps forgotten what it was like in the real badlands. Long, dusty and for some days far too hot he had muttered and complained at each passing, rocky, ashen, league. For whole days he had seen no one other than his guide, more fecking miles of feck all, and their donkeys. So when streams began to cross the land, and then always seeming to go down the ground had become marshy, his mood had at last lifted.
By nightfall they had crossed the stinking swathe of marshland to find the island. That island topped by a finger of rock that resembled some great, shaky chimney. An impression not much ruined by the trailing smoke that lifted from it.
*
“Hale Chieftain Ogder, did we do well against the gnolls?” said Selgard. Now he stood here it was pretty clear that the best and fastest way to reduce the scribe’s perception of tribal threat was to make them play the drums a bit less loudly. There might have been a rampaging army of orcs out in the badlands trying to work out how to carry off a mine for all he knew, but getting this lot out of the way would drown out any number of bone-waving thugs. Here on a mission of peace he offered a stiff bow.
Nichal touched two fingers to his brow, “Wotcha,” he said.
“Look, you’ve all had your fun but isn’t it about time you all went home?”
“Think some of them might have done, to be honest.”
Selgard (who had had nothing to do with killing hundreds of relatively innocent people because of the line from which they were born) nodded. It had all started when everyone in the city with a knife and more lives than toes had raided, killed and done away with the Straw Dogs. It might have ended there, but things rarely did and frankly some of those that had been a part of it were rather important in the city nowadays. He had even heard a faint rumour that the whole more recent affair had left Ulis... irked. Ulis was said to speak of it in very quiet terms. Apparently the more angry Ulis got, the softer he spoke. And the rumour Selgard had heard had been so faint as to be somewhat less than a whisper. He ran a hand down his beard. He said, “There must be some way of sorting all this out?”
“Best not kill any more wolves, pal?”
“That would be a good start,” Selgard agreed. “Look, surely there’s some sort of wergild we can come to?”
Nichal thought about that. “Not sure they want to join some Guild, even one made up for them.”
“No – wergild. Not a Were Guild. It’s when we pay lots and lots of treasure to say sorry. Look, if you’d wanted to do something to the city before now you would have done?”
“Been a bit busy fighting pestilential invaders to be honest? Look Selgard, I half expected Troy to show, and I certainly thought Andres would be stirring things up. I was going to destroy him.”
“Troy?”
“No...” Nichal was about to explain when from a doorway a furious bundle of wild hair and rags stormed over. Before she crossed the square he was able to hiss, “Watch out, trouble.”
“You bastard!” screamed Zen. “You bastard, you killed Billy!”
Selgard held up both hands to show that as a renowned neuronic master he was not armed, “Madam, I assure you I most certainly did not.”
“You here to pick a fight, Selgard?” interrupted Nichal.
“Most certainly not.”
“You can if you want? You can bring all the armies of Deci and all of its local heroes you trust. We can make it fair. Well, not fair because my boys are bigger and stronger than yours, and frankly we ain’t got no problem with Trundelberry since we all know he kept out of it. Or if he didn’t, he was pretty clever about it. And we like that.”
“We do not,” said Zen angrily.
Selgard who standing here alone was pretty sure he had actually come therefore with all the city’s armies, and indeed every member of the Council that he could really trust, sighed once more. To be fair if the wolves stayed here much longer the city would absorb them all anyway and Deci would have a smashing new slum across most of the north quarter.
“This is dog town,” said Zen. “This is ours now,” she prodded Selgard with a dirty finger, “and you can sling your hook!”
“Well you certainly seem to have made yourselves at home. Just try and keep the noise down will you?” said Selgard. Then with a faint smile, “some nights it’s getting so we can’t hear the screams.”
“And we ain’t gonna pay no taxes!” Selgard heard the woman scream as he turned to leave. He was not so very sure about that. The wolves hereabouts were looking all very settled and once a chap has a roof he rarely looks at a tree the same way again. They must be running out of the treasure they had stolen and unless someone led them on raids they would soon need to make some grulls, or starve, so leave, or settle in properly.
It was Deci. There was room for everyone (if they didn’t leave quick enough).
*
Gideon had not missed the strong presence along the little row of shops in Cheapside, all boys and girls from the black hat as evidenced by the patch most wore showing just that on a green background. For such filthy reprobates there was real strength amongst Sire Berry’s followers, most of whom rats that armed to (and including) the teeth were making no effort to be anything other than the lethal bastards they were. Nonetheless they had only nodded as he went by, watched him as he had opened the door, and the only one who had said more than a word had been to enquire when the shop would be open once again?
*
The taste was much the same, he thought. Had he been absent or had there been some jump, some jar that had set him here from the shadows? He did not feel that nemesis that would devour him and for that he was grateful, though did not dare to assume he had been chased away, killed or left this place for long. Perhaps now he too would feel the return of the King’s Wizard. The King certainly had.
“I have been told of certain things,” said Troy to his Wizard.
“It is right that people reveal what is in their heart to their king,” he said.
“And what is it then that lies in your heart?”
“Had I such a thing then my lord King should be assured that his wizard would tell him,” the frightful figure bowed so that the rags and robes that made him blew lower about the chequerboard floor of the Spire.
“Go, hound – and chase...” said King Troy the Faceless and perhaps beneath that silvered mask he curled his lip, but none would ever know but the King, and he would never say.
*
People quietened when the woman entered. Short as she was it was her reputation rather than any presence that ran before her; hushing lips and stilling tankards. To Orion she looked so dreadfully ordinary that it was a wonder anyone remembered her five minutes after meeting at all. “Who’s that?” he whispered.
“Fraer, now shut the feck up.”
He did. Fraer he was soon to learn was one of the Sire’s henchmen. They happily used the term. She looked a lot younger than Orion but that couldn’t be right since it was widely known that she had been pardoned personally by Cerus Amora. For what exactly was less clear, but the information suggested a lot more than many cared to know. And now she worked for the Sire, and had done for some years now. Orion like most there was keeping his nose very clean. A year or so carting and they might look towards promotion to running a caravan, or factoring in Deci. And that it seemed was very well paid indeed. Not just in treasure, but because of the revenge that was certain to follow anything that happened to them thereafter. For such a powerful man the Sire seemed to have taken some care over the years, decades now, to become very well known to only a very few people. It was said, though not widely, that even members of the city Council were... beholden to him.
The Sire employed quality. One of those qualities did not include being famous. It was true enough that he had a number of former adventurers on his books. None of them had been on the trail for many years. Orion had sometimes wondered what happened to heroes renowned and heroic one day and then not heard of in years. It seemed some were hereabouts. It was all very different (he had learned) from the Sires in other cities. The Sire like they had the Cerus Marque. His it was similarly rumoured was numbered ‘one’. They had known one another in the old days before there was an Empire at all.
Fraer went up to one man, who nosily shat himself. He rose and followed her out.
Orion said, “What was that all about?”
“Curse marker on the load, the tit probably opened up the wagon.”
“Secret stuff inside?”
“Nah,” said the other man, laughing now with others. The bonhomie in the gather had jumped sharply in the sudden absence of the woman. “No need, profits are good. The Sire just don’t like people that betray a trust. Fair enough really,” a jug of good Gothiel ale was called for and gotten at a knock-down price. It was the best gig in the Empire for a carter this one, most here thought. All you had to do was play straight.
*
It was where he had won, he was sure. Every day he remembered a little more as he scraped at the tiny patch of dirt inside the cave for the roots and the grubs to be found there, for breakfast and for dinner. His sister so presumptuous as to call herself ‘Prince’, and he then here where she could not harm the city, he just a mask, his face, the silver that now he missed and so hid.
The Waives had once been more than this. There had been trees where now there not even stumps. The tower too was but a hump in the ground, the old hall barely remaining where two sides had fallen in - now here, now this cave, with its single remaining and finely fluted column.
There was someone too he hated. The hate was in him like a ghoul felt hunger. It gnawed, it ate at him. He could not remember whom it was he hated, but the hate did not care. He had returned to his beloved Deci to find his order... scattered, defeated, subsumed. The silver dark, the glass broken, then there was only the always-there-but-nowhere and the senseless, unknowing-ever-after. Then there had been the noise, and the dust, and he had slipped away only remembering here.
So here he had come. Here at least secure for the Waives were only to be found at all between light and darkness, a place of twilight. So too then he though he spied out in the dying sun and rising night a shadow he rejected it.
Who could come here? Who then now might have the stuff of the Waives?
By Alan Morgan