Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 20:12:27 GMT
Plague IM 1014
How could it be so damn hot when it was so damn wet?
The badlands of Deci had already swallowed the rains that had come the night before just as they had every night leaving only those gullies and delves that ordinarily crack or chasm had now woken up as rivers. Well south of the city the rain had fallen and it had taken them the best part of the morning to find a means to cross the Spittle where briefly it roared underground. Alendari crossed now by an arch of rock no higher than the land about it. There were jaeger spread widely over the territory but avoiding Forgeholm (where he had heard there was plague). Bodies had caught below where the river funnel had narrowed and starved of much else a horrid army of insects were braving the river whilst he and those with him kept an eye on the ghouls that had come for the same reason. “Bold bastards,” said Alendari, for the ghouls did not hide only sat and watched them a little less than a bowshot distant. Some he spied had carrion feathers piercing their heads like thingy combs.
There was a lot of open ground in the territory and mostly it was empty. Something less than twenty thousand might be sensed by the scribes and perhaps as many again as not but the badlands absorbed them easier than the rains. He had a dozen with him here and that was the largest group by far, for the jaeger had gone cat-gut and no one had eyes like them. They had found trails and been fooled for several days when many had proven to be false, but such tricks were pierced soon enough. Now he knew most of the jaeger were drawing together whilst he was sweeping wider, just to make sure. And they did it at a run, in shirt sleeves and with a cape rolled for the night, most weren’t carrying much more than a spear. They lived on snake and they looked like brigands, but no one had their eyes when it came to this land.
Here and in consequence they saw nothing of those they hunted, confirming what they had thought. What they did see was goblin sign, going towards the Forgotten Hills.
*
Rowdy as the tenement was where the night wore on Zen was by the open shutters when first she saw it. Only momentarily but enough to see her drift away from the pack that occupied the floor, to pass through another in which brats hunted one another to descend to the uneven square beyond. Born to the city she had survived the worst of it, she knew it, but this was the first time she had ever felt alone. In Deci one was never alone. Not truly, yet here and the sounds had diminished and the square at peace not a breath stirred the night.
From a broken doorway opposite the tall figure ghosted out and away. Far taller than she, hunched about the shoulders and with long arms hooked and close to cradle a tiny infant over which a gaunt and terrible head night-shadowed by the brim of a pointed hat crooned. Yet much of the figure was hidden in robes that fell away to shadow and passing into more of the same Zen curiously, a little warily, pursued.
*
It might have overlooked the city when the city had been but Cheapside. It might have been a bell tower but for the lack of a bell. If there had been birds they would have roosted here, but there were no birds. Vermin might have lived well on all the bugs but the damn snakes had eaten all the damn vermin and the damn bugs perhaps despairing seemed over recent years to have taken it into their heads to end it all. Certainly the boards of the floor crunched where Troy moved about. The tower that, typical with much that had been old in Deci, looked fit to fall down but would rebound a twelve pound lump hammer with an ogre at the other end. He had gained entrance through the tin boards screwed over one of the open sides as had been described and now he tried to trace out the sigils from amongst all the messages and vile profanity that had been placed there over the years as if from some very crude instruction.
He could only make out a little from what on looking carefully seemed to be a lot. He had scraped away more of the crunchy carpeting to find the remains of what must have been dozens of rituals, none recent, but scraps and faded teases only. In pieces he traced what seemed of most interest until where another opening just as sealed with tin slats mocked him.
*
It might have been a temple for it had that air to it. Raised high as if on stalks it was twisted between other buildings and to it came carts, honey and others, and stranger figures that stalked, old bird spirits in the forms of the venerable and the awful. She had followed and encountered no one, something impossible she would have thought in Deci. A gathering of horrors, the living and the spirit, and towards which Zen hurried only to be struck suddenly by a cloud of dark feathers that blinded her, drove her back, her hands raised.
She blundered a little before trusting to senses other than sight. She growled, dropped to hands and knees, the feathers blew outwards tugging at her rags. She was once more alone.
*
Stark though the badlands might be still there were places that surprised even one that roamed them exhaustively. The ground had dropped away for hours, pebbles and shale fields that soon gave up the horizon in the direction they came. A valley in the widest sense of the word it was one so shallow that it would have been possible to miss it entirely even if one ventured through it without greatly paying attention. There was a river that wound wormily through its lowest reaches but it was the pillars that really gave some sense of scale to the immense, terribly gradual drop. The pillars peaked about perhaps where the land miles either side continued. It was as if the whole had collapsed leaving them as they were now like stone trees that might take a minute to walk about, branchless and seemingly made up of flat discs as tall as a man piled atop one another. That last was an illusion for the pillars were all of a piece, a score or more of them. Once there had been catacombs here, “Ripped clear open during the Magiarchal arse buggery,” said Trenchard meaning the wars.
He had once worked the curious valley back when the star silver here had been worth the effort. But for years it hadn’t paid now and here and there he pointed out where boulders dwarfed to stones by the pillars were of a different type to the rock resident here. Davian pretended more interest than he felt. Trenchard wasn’t quite local to the Thorns but he was not a stranger either, drawn there by the dragon and with certain deeds upon his hands no one cared to know about. This was Deci, even if the badlands, and no one worried at what a person had done in the past. The people of Deci could put up with many things but when it concerned this sort of thing they rarely liked any hypocrisy on the part of their rulers.
“Hello...” Davian saw them rise from a drop and the lee of one of the rocks that fallen from the heavens were probably possessed of the star silver. They were here to seek ruffians and worse and the three women and two men certainly had the look. Although... He frowned.
“Majius?” said one in a whisper. Davian agreed that this was so. He showed no fear because he felt no fear, not of this many, still though he raised an eyebrow when he heard who they were.
*
“Well screw you then,” and then he was caught about the throat, cut, kicked and tossed out of the hall to land bleeding and cursing on the spoil and filth outside. There were probably cobbles or flags under all the crap but they were only the hard bottom of a lot of scraps, a lot of ashes, and a lot of things that cut so that he jumped to his feet with more curses and more blood. He hated this city but he wasn’t about to play with it yet because he had eyes and good sense and had learned what might happen to a ritualist that played around here. Which was all very well but the funds he had stolen out with were too low and he was too hungry anyway and everything that he had thought of the thugs that had destroyed his city had been confirmed since he had come to this one. Not that he had stopped to see what had happened to Myron since win or lose nothing good was going to happen to anyone without the wit to get away.
He knew of ritual because he had assisted in ritual. He knew of ritual because he could perform it, or had been able to. Just a little, just without letting many know of it. And here he had come to where he might do well, or be alive at any rate. Until he had seen people he had known before they had gone and he had hidden pretty well, though now he had been robbed too many times and spent out what hadn’t been taken and Deci? Well Deci could fall for all he was concerned. If he was still in it, then that didn’t much concern him either. He was a disgrace, in what amounted to rags and stinking of his own filth and piss.
This was the Slurries. There was all manner of work. It was dangerous, often awful, filthy, and terrible work but it was still work. But he wasn’t from around here and even the worst of work had a history and a certain nepotism to it. The honey was different but he had not sunk so low yet.
Yet.
“Aramand Malaise?”
“Yes?” then he swore at being so easily caught off his guard. He managed three paces and half a spell before he was brought down, beaten and bound. It was not the most expert of kidnapping but then he was hardly the most profound of victims.
*
Ten of them and three about the scrape right out here in the Badlands. Spiny thornweed and flowering greasewood dotted the ground and along the formerly dry cracks the melt ran to dust the rocks where soil and ash had lodged nearby with lichen and sourmoss. Ten of them, and some from this world, but most not (albeit they had been here long enough to claim some Primal status). The scrape was well away from anywhere and a crack under a flattened rock had served to hide what they sought.
One said, “Not for some days, there’s nothing left of the trail,” overhead and the rainclouds were taking another breath for the night to come. Briefly the southerly badlands would flourish.
Another nodded. She inspected the box that had been hidden there and which two of them could have found, but which in this party the task for which had fallen to her. They were an odd bunch, but there were adventuring parties that looked stranger. The two outermost waited having seen the cautious approach of a half dozen figures with spears. Of the two one that was more seemly halloed them, inspected them, but rejected them as being the villains. Indeed, he thought he knew them for what they were, saying “Alendari’s spears?”
“That’s the case, and just so we don’t get all angry could you say who you are? Only I’ll not lie, we’ll leg it if you bunch come at us but we’ve got lots of friends and they’re dead good at finding stuff out here.”
The first laughed at that. “We are with Sire Slice, spearman,” he showed where the Merchant’s patch was stitched faded to one sleeve. That didn’t mean much of course but it calmed things down since the spears knew all about what was then going on here. “And yes, we don’t fear you but we’re not about to take on your hundred friends, all at once. It’d be embarrassing. Also, unnecessary.”
“That’s fine,” said Ratly. He was indeed one of the jaeger but they were split up into grull packets so covered a lot of ground. But in those grull packets they, like any Watch, wouldn’t trouble anything that looked a bit adventurous. Not unless the warband was all together, then they’d take on anyone who thought six or so about right as a fighting force. “Only, I don’t suppose you can give us something that says we didn’t just let you go?”
“We’re going back to the city now, spearman. How about you come too and talk to the Sire, and we can all pretend we were all just happening by together?”
*
It was easy to keep away from the wolves in Dogtown. It wouldn’t have been a stretch had they filtered across the squares between the tenements and lanes the dogs had taken for themselves had the Stepsons had a care to, but they hadn’t and so didn’t. In any case they knew the pig streets best and those they moved over above and below until they came to the gate by habit circuitous.
There was actually a pair of watchmen on duty there. Or rather, there was a pair of watch present. Whether they were actually watchmen, if the city had a proper watch, and if this pair was two of them was more difficult to say. One was the skinnier version of the second though neither was exactly portly so Sire Berry caught the eye of the older and watched as both jumped to their feet and knuckled the brims of their helmets. The gates they guarded were open. Not far away Trundelberry smelled sausages in the pan and two of the Stepsons made a gesture that told him of the two more inside the little doorway. He was off his turf so was understandably being careful.
“Dis goblin is der black ‘at,” a thumb to his chest.
They knew that. They weren’t sure if he was officially nasty and worth their wary respect, or if he was just plain nasty and therefore demanded it. Either way, “Wotcha boss,” said Gateman. Gateman saw to the gate, so too did his sons although one of his sons despite her cropped hair and big helmet was also his daughter. They probably made a bit of treasure guarding the gate although what they mostly did was watch it, something that Sire Berry supposed was all in the job title. Work had been done of the walls sometimes in recent years. The gate too, which could probably be shut if it was ever told to be; so far and mostly this was never.
“Boys, things dis boss wants ter know...” said The Hat.
*
The pillars in the valley closest to the river had caves and possibly going up but most likely down. Nonetheless and about those pillars had been erected shelters, hasty ones at that that suggested that the rain and melt had flooded out the lower levels. Davian sat with the sluggish Deci sun behind him counted two, almost three hundred of which a fifth perhaps were children.
“Armed well, for commoners,” said one of Alendari’s jaeger, “aren’t they?”
“No lord hereabouts either,” Davian answered. Someone doubtless owned the land but that was hardly the same thing.
There were spears (that was common enough) and swords (which were not). Crossbows too rather than bows though a few little self bows were here and there. In stoneware bowls a lot of mushrooms were drying and there were fish on sticks set to air dry in the creeping sun. Along the closest bank though and the most noticeable thing was that there crops. Crops that went only so far before the rock left only tufts in cracks and then nothing at all. “Druid,” said one of the jaeger, “Or two, or more.”
Davian couldn’t see them and said so.
“Nah, there’re druids. They don’t all have beards, or robes, and druids don’t much like Deci. Deci holds down nature and violates it. Some don’t like that. And we know druids,” he nodded toward one of the women in the jaeger number that looked no less travel stained but warlike than any of them. “Matty is a druid, ain’t that right Matty?”
Matty shrugged.
Davian pursed his lips, and thought.
*
The north quarter might be Dogtown, but only a little bit had actually gone to the dogs. In a city that in places was very crowded the northern quarter was not. Oh, strictly speaking as many lived here as most other quarters perhaps but other quarters had purpose and point and other quarters were busier then. In the north one could go for streets and not see a soul. Sire Berry supposed Cheapside was more confusing only he knew Cheapside so well the northern quarter seemed more so. There was a badness to the place now he thought about it. A lingering... not evil, not just darkness, but it was something like a battlefield, somehow more had happened here than happened now and little of it good. There were ghosts here, and in a city like most cities with little light there was none at all hereabouts. The sun was about up but that didn’t mean much.
“Anyone see goblins?” The Stepsons did not. There was a lot of goblin nuts here and there and mostly half filling one sturdy old ruin of a tenement or another. Sire Berry bent took a smear of the filth in an alley and tasted it. “Oh, yuhs, obvious really...”
*
There they were, thought Zykof. In their robes, and their hoods, and their silver, like richly well-to-do wraiths, “Bastards!” he said, then louder, “Bastard, bastard, spire sucking bastards!” But they ignored him. They were some of the scholars and tutors that saw to certain parts of the spire, teaching the nobs about ritual and how that differed from spells. Oh, they were good Zykof would admit. And they took their orders well, and they knew how to balance all that with the Hundred too. But they were mean, and they were thin, and they waited to be told what to do because the higher one went the more that was the case. To be important was to be servile. Zykof coughed, scratched at his ribs and ran a little fire about his fingers. He would have too, would have blown them to firey pieces but what would have been the point? Knives in the dark, the Sleek calling by, because, because, just bloody bastard because!
He loved Deci, had lived here all his life. Didn’t see why anyone would leave. Everything anyone could want was here. He patted a wall, by habit did not touch where he had concealed his purse and almost walked into the woman that was behind him. He didn’t go for a knife but an elemental he had close by, because it burned and made light and thieves just bloody hated that.
“Mr Zykof?” said the woman.
“Nope,” he said, because after all he had been born in Deci.
“There was this hag, and she said...”
*
They didn’t much like rain in Cheapside and so thought it hilarious on hearing about how much had been falling further south. The Spittle was high but that was the melt. Not that it hadn’t rained, for some night now there had been a downpour but that rain had been silver rain appearing through the great poison smog above and so therefore the sort of rain that came from the king. Cheapside took some getting used to and Selgard had been here many times, but every time it took some hours before he felt that his breakfast might be a memory refreshed in its violent return all over his boots.
People liked Selgard and he had spoken to a number, even being chased down the lanes by one and forced to listen to this, that, and the usual other. Just off the processional that wound to the gate goblins stared at him from a doorway far too grand for the tenement it fronted. They all had big hats and big hands. It was daytime and Cheapside had mostly emptied out since if the city by tradition worked at night the sun so reluctant above the smog made little difference, and more pertinently there was so much more work to be done. Most people hereabouts were wastrel, and they toiled for the Hundred where by family they had links, or by address were associated. Or in the Slurries they laboured in the smelting and the foundries, city and otherwise. The city was hotter than the badlands heated by its industry and beneath the canopy that made. It was the heat after the Deathly and if people coughed or scratched then they didn’t wretch, poke at buboes, or... die. Pestilence was a name for the season. Still though Selgard tugged at the collar of his shirt, goblins watched him and the more he looked the more he saw. Perhaps a fifth of the city was goblin. It could be argued that the greatest den of goblins in the Empire was Deci, though most of them were right now, he had learned, in the Slurries. Working.
Not all by any means, but most.
On one wall was orc sign. He remembered it from some years before. He touched it with his fingertips to find the pitch wet. The wall was covered in scrawls and symbols, the city was a mess of desecration.
Something almost struck his head. He had moved before it came close and then because some things can’t be allowed darted towards the nearest doorway to tell whoever had dumped whatever it was why they should not do so again.
*
He hadn’t considered the mad banquet for years, not in the context of trade. It was one of those tales Merchants shared and Sire Anath chuckled at the sight of so many carts lined up roughly from where he stood on the wall with Sire Brass. Sire Brass looked terrible. Sire Brass had been cursed and Sire Brass whilst he had been protected had not been protected enough. So had done most of the work, and Anath had slashed the price of stone and made very sure than anyone likely to find the price in Bildteve attractive did so. Some weeks before he had talked it all over with Brass, since Anath was a man that respected talent and influence in its own bailiwick (and Brass was one of those that still dealt mostly with traders). Indeed, many of the Merchant Sires did. They weren’t all grand lords of commerce on the Halgar model. It would have worked even better in Sellaville but then if Anath was a Merchant he was a Deci Merchant. Albeit also a Bildteve and a Scarlene merchant, but the point still stood that he wasn’t a Sellaville merchant. He had fine instincts and those instincts warned him off the two southern cities of the Empire.
“Ten centuries to the trader who’s load scribe marked here is first to arrive at Bildteve,” Anath still found it amusing. “And ten for the last to arrive before the end of the next scribe tallies, but who makes the most interesting journey,” Brass had added a few suggestions.
It had not sounded like a very great prize, but the amount wasn’t important, it was the nod of the head to the winner. Indeed, making it a very great treasure wouldn’t have worked nearly so well. It would have been... Anath shook his head at the thought, too ‘merchanty’. Merchants made treasure. Carters carried loads, traders... mostly, enjoyed themselves. If they had wanted to be rich they wouldn’t be traders. Being rich would have made them merchants (small capital) slumming it. And here they were. Lots of traders. Lots of them. How they had all come here was not worth worrying at. Most had been here already, because they had instincts too.
“Did you talk to Slice?” Brass had been hedging about the matter for a while now. He coughed up a millipede.
“He’s not happy, frankly. This all disturbs his plans, you know how far he looks ahead,” said Anath. But Anath had promised that he would provide Alendari’s jaeger held and the Governor himself to hunting up the miscreants that had troubled Slice and that deal done all was now well. Of course that had been happening anyway, and more, but a Merchant Sire saw things in ways that even a merchant did not. That was rather the point. And Deci had erupted in the wake of the attack on Slice. Deci so used to watching its back, and looking for the back of others, watched well when it had something to look for. And Deci hadn’t even started yet!
On a tin podium Ma Berry held aloft a black streamer. The traders would probably have respected some noble tart from the Spire but ‘probably’ didn’t cut it if Queen Berina had been heckled. They definitely respected Ma Berry on the other hand since the Spire might look down over the whole city but Cheapside was at best only next door.
The ribbon dropped. Carts creaked, and at the speed of an ox the race was on!
There would also be profit, which was of course important to the hundreds of traders (even if not so very much).
*
The market thrived even if so much of what the city produced never made it so far. Deals and plunder, barter and haggling rose the further in one came to the Invisible and crossing the King’s Bazaar there was in a spiralling little alley that curled back on itself a drinking den for the discerning gentleman whose discernment was embarrassed by his purse and whose gentle ways were at best a posture. It was not large and it had no sign but it served what Madame Trapp called wine. And she called them all sir, and laughed at their quips, and upstairs in a windowless room three girls worked hard for her. Girls was a term she used in contrast to their age but they giggled well and wore a lot of white lead.
Three brave and cheerful souls were pretending to enjoy the wine whilst another having come to his turn was buried in sheets above them to exaggerate woops and laughter, encouragement and pretty flattery. At least here they treated a gentleman like a gentleman, especially if they only pretended to be. But they had pretended so long and had pretended so well that none of them could quite recall who they had first been anyway.
Alendari had never been here before but Selgard had. Alendari was not long in the city this day and still had the ash on his shirt and britches that with the rain had become a dye so that Madame Trapp ordered him out. She served no labourers here, no wastrel at all, her gentlemen were proper gentlemen and a gentleman did not do proper work at all.
Then, “Lawks Master Selgard, didn’t see you there!” Now the governor he was a proper gentleman.
“Sorry Madame, this is the commisent.”
That sounded suspiciously hard working to Madame Trapp. She sniffed, “Well, I will expect him in a bigger shirt next time, Master Selgard!”
“Quite so, Madame Trapp.”
“And his hair,” she tutted. Her gentlemen had proper mops and, better still, wigs. She didn’t much approve of chins either. At least the... commisent? The commisent, had a proper beard. Gentlemen should have beards, and always groomed beards.
*
There were a round dozen of them and if they were all older than Anath then they all had a certain look about them that saw him pat down his magic just to make sure it was still there. They might have had many fine virtues but trust wasn’t one of them. Anath knew that Sire Slice had once been a decent means for those of power and experience to retire from the adventuring trail, and his trade was not only restricted to this world. The Sire himself was heavy with ritual power though Anath did not think any of it was made by his own hand. Sire Slice now owned this house that overlooked in part the Invisible Quarter. Next week that would probably be different. On a table there was a flat box still stained with fresh earth. The great and mighty of Deci had a list of those in the city whom they did not bother, and many on that list they did not care to see bothered either. Slice wasn’t at the very top but he wasn’t far from it. Anath knew this because he wrote the list.
*
They were lighter in the purse and someone was trying to sell a chicken, only slightly soiled, and a source of food and bedding both. Alendari having never taken much of an interest in markets had enjoyed them less having had to forge through one to get here where everything was being bought and even to the consternation of some who went without! None of his concern whereas this was, where having walked up to the table two of the dandies had not only jumped to their feet but the first had already crashed through the window before even he had gotten the first word out.
Deci didn’t hold much with glass. What they did have was precious since they didn’t have much sand and mud was more valuable still so it was shaved horn that let the light in. Small panels that gave way to leave bent and broken lead and the shouts as into the den ran a dozen of Alendari’s followers. They were roamers and they patrolled and hunted like no one else yet still they were city lads and lasses and outside the shouts were those of his streetfighters doing just that. Inside and cornered the last of the dandies drew iron and was put down with shouts that turned over tables and wrecked the room in an instant.
“Alive!”
Alendari rolled his eyes at the governor’s shout. Already more of his spears were barging in and some were on the narrow stairs. Between them slipped Selgard but he was part of the same pack as Alendari joined them. This was where those who didn’t fight in the streets would have become a plug. But spears were dropped and knives came out and the small room above was awash with more shouting as britches about his ankles one of the villains was beaten bloody. Selgard pushed the jaeger aside, grabbing at the unfortunate.
“You didn’t have to be so rough...”
“Yes they did,” Alendari wasn’t going to let anyone tell his people off. “He had a blade. And anyway, it was a fight.”
They didn’t know where the others were but by skill, talent, luck, whispers and combining their efforts they had this one. Frankly it amazed Alendari it had taken so much trouble at all.
He would let Selgard pay for the mess. On the old bed a woman of debatable years patted her hair with a hand recently employed to pump. A veteran of this sort of thing she winked at the jaeger.
By Alan Morgan