Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 20:14:57 GMT
Harvest IM 1014
It was a monumental moment for King Troy the Faceless. Tugging his hand free from one filigreed glove he ran his fingers over the stone of the Heraldic Entire. He was for the moment satisfied. It had been a long time since he had been put aside from his wishes to raise it only for Eartholme to build their own instead. Advice he had long held to the forefront of his mind when dealing with his Vizier.
There was the faintest tingling about the crown of his masked head. He turned, waving down the guard who stood with him when he spied it to be Ma Berry haring away and back into the city. Replacing his gloves he brushed away the last of her curse where defeated it dusted one shoulder.
*
They were tied up as best they could be but what Selgard really wanted to be sure was a bit of an oubliette, or a dungeon. He couldn’t believe Deci didn’t have a dungeon! Not a gaol obviously as the last thing they needed was a fortified little castle for all the criminals to run their academy in. This pair would have to be moved and someone would have to put them somewhere where they could be kept properly captive. “We have a Guild for everything else,” he pointed out.
“Screw you,” said one of the miscreants.
They weren’t going to talk. They weren’t from Deci or they would have long since. Torture was the best way but again, “And there’s no Guild for torturers? What is that all about?” Selgard rubbed his forehead. “This is going to hurt,” he said.
“Ha, pathetic. We won’t say a word.”
“Oh, I believe you,” said the Governor.
*
If one wanted anything then if the King’s Bazaar did not have it, then it would know the person who did. Or so it often seemed. The Leer was for a shop not one that liked to sell so much as it did to buy. Its shop front like so many was not large but it was deep and toymaker cabinets lined the walls where on padded velvet it displayed its wares. Most were not priced, few were for sale. It was a place that liked to collect. Leeries, as it was more commonly known, was a favourite for thieves in the know that liked to disburse of certain objects with an eye to a fair, if not grand prize, but with the surety that thereafter no mark of their own would upon it remain.
Lord Talath had learned of the place only the night before. It did not worry him that formerly he had not for he could have spent a year wandering the Bazaar and still not seen it all. But he was a man that could find out where to be when he needed to and whom to speak to once there, and so he had come to speak to the shop’s owner Mrs Moth. Neither did he care that Mrs Moth had neither been born upon Primus nor did she share, racially speaking, much in common with those who had. She paid her taxes and caused no trouble and Talath had been with far stranger on the adventuring trail. Mrs Moth was a friend of Ma Berry and they took tea once a month. Today was not that day.
He spoke and she listened, and yes she had heard of just what he sought. There had been two such articles, possibly the only two, brought back from the first Eartholme before it had been levelled by its angry prince. One was in the hands of a Noble House that no longer had much dealings with the city of its heritage, the other to her certain knowledge belonged to one that in part did.
Talath always ready to be polite for expertise and the swift execution of his duties thanked her, bade her continue as she was, and left her so as not to impact too unduly upon her business.
*
It had taken Alendari all morning to find enough members of the Upright Men to make a stick. At first he had dug out a similar number of the local militia but they had walked off the moment he had turned about to return to his own business. They had been to his eye no great loss since the militia had appeared to not only be citizen-spearmen but without the hampering of the word spear. They were backstabbers and poisoners and frankly weren’t about to face up to anyone and tell them not to. Not to do pretty much anything.
Sire Berry had pigs up here and so knew the quarter passing well. He said as the mercenary stick took post by the open gate, “Don’t think dem stabby fellers want ter get kicked by der wolfies,” he punctuated his words with a small knife with which he had been shaving.
Selgard sat cross-legged on a broken pillar nearby nodded at the sense of it. Hands cupped around a hot cup of potion he nursed the headache that the night before had brought him. This was Deci. They had a militia that wouldn’t stand on the walls and some mercenaries that at least in the case of the Upright could actually be found. At least these had. They’d long settled and in two cases showed darker marks on their sleeves where they had hastily unpicked new guild patches. He watched as Alendari tugged at the gate.
“It doesn’t seem to move,” said the commisent.
“Nope,” Trundleberry agreed. There were hinges, big ornamental things they were but it looked quite a lot like the gates weren’t so very much held in place by a year or more of fresh paint so much as the walls themselves.
“Why don’t the gates actually shut?” Alendari wanted to know.
“Stops people getting in,” this from Selgard. Then as further explanation, “It’s part of the Halfblack economic model.”
Trundleberry added, “It’s dead good.”
“What is?” said Alendari.
“Da model. All little ‘ouses and pointy bits. Takes up yer basic big table,” then to their blank stares, “It’s a scribe thing, innit.”
*
He emerged from speaking with the dragon, a little more certain as to what to do and satisfied that in intent at least he had the right of it. Still the people of Thorns had waited and he bade them go about their business but to keep a watch at the mouth of the estate. They knew something of what had concerned him it was after all a very close sort of community. “I will speak with them, offer them a chance,” he said.
That brought some worried frowns but still a few nods. They had all had bad lives and many had done bad things, but if you had the dream of the dragon then you had a chance and it was a chance most would not care to see robbed from others.
*
A number of tribesmen bow-legged from ponies they didn’t want to lose in the city. Wood from some estate to the north. A merchant marked wagon from the Thorns. Yokels with barrows full of food that couldn’t be fried (it mystified Jander). Traders, carters, travellers of every stripe and then some goblins. These last with packs bigger than them. They were invading it seemed, or had invaded and gone home to pick up some of the toadstools you just couldn’t get hereabouts. Ten men in old doublets that didn’t do up any longer shivered around the brazier that looked to be a fixture and which was normally occupied by the watch. Jander would have told them off but he couldn’t help but think that hunching around smouldering coals might be a religious thing and he didn’t want to interfere in case the religious thing it involved was him.
There were definitely gates. They just did not shut. He tapped his teeth with the end of a number six hammer. It was quite inventive really. The city now wanted the gates shut in case the goblins did not know there were other gates or there was no culture of smuggling in the city; still his not the reason why, his but to close and deny. Jander didn’t want to spend too long on the job since it was Anath’s grandmother’s funeral again and like quite a lot of people Jander therefore had urgent business out of the city.
He spat, rolled up his vambracers and set to work. He would make sure this gate shut. Opening it afterwards would be quite something else.
*
House Hadensford was a noble line not without power in the Empire. The House Lord was in Halgar where he was invited to the very best balls and was courted for his moderate influence, especially where that concerned his fellow notables of the Blood. It had with Marston been one of those to join Amora on the Long Ride that had led to Empire and which many chose to forget began in Deci. Amora had not been one of them in that and the House had done well out of the reformation of the Nobility. So too it had been instrumental in the manner of Deci when House Duff (and let us not forget the then soon-to-be Merchant Sires) had cleared out and reborn Bildteve from the perfect law of Kessleharn. And in both those places it had stayed, indeed was in many ways the mouthpiece of the Bildteve nobility but if the Lord had remained in Halgar it had retained its Deci titles and the line had remained here, as had its once-trade factor the man called Slice. House Hadensford ate from separate plates and if it genuinely was a force for the Empire in Halgar, if too the Bildteve House had been with House Tallfellow but weeks from invading Alguz when that city had fallen to Theocracy, then still in Deci it was a Deci Noble House.
It ate, again, from separate plates. It functioned as if three Houses without ever opposing or vying with the others. The line in Deci had risen and suffered along with others. The wolves had not been kind to it, but perhaps something of the Empire did remain within it here for unlike other Deci Houses (except perhaps the Majius itself) it worked well enough together and without the pressing need to seek to elevate one lord over another at the expense of the House as a whole.
And in Deci it was quiet little Lady Sereth that received a visitor one morning, late in the night as it would be seen hereabouts.
*
Cheapside was built on Cheapside and under the streets of Cheapside were the somewhat crushed former streets of that same. Under Dogtown were catacombs. Proper tunnels, somewhat squared and which had perhaps once been mines of one sort or another, but catacombs nonetheless. These were tunnels and the Stepsons didn’t much like tunnels.
“Aren’t rats meant to like all this sort of thing?” said Selgard.
“Dey loves it,” Sire Berry assured the Governor. Actually the Stepsons had houses and hundreds of little rats scampering about the place. They had beds and bedpans and some of their wives didn’t even know they were rats. Cultural, by heritage, yes they liked tunnels. They liked warm fires and muffins much more. The only cheese they gnawed at night was cheese they bought, and it wasn’t scraps neither, “Dey is just lulling you into dat false sense of wotsit.”
Selgard rubbed his head not prepared to pursue the matter further. If the Black Hat wanted him to be lulled into a false sense of wotsit then it was certainly working. “One of them just hit his head,” he muttered, but not very loudly.
“Dat’s somethink clever.”
“Can’t you lot see in the dark?”
“Da dark yes,” Trundelberry answered not liking anyone passing judgement on his adopted family, “Da dark, of course. Eyes like lanterns we ‘ave got.”
“But no lanterns?”
“And dis is da wrong sorta dark.”
“The sort you can’t see in?”
Sire Berry nodded. That was right; the sort of dark with no light was troublingly the sort of dark they couldn’t see in. He could see quite well but then he was a goblin. Now if the Governor had wanted fellers that could see in the dark, it was goblins he should have come down here with!
*
“Right, bollocks…” hastily they adjusted their shields, took hold their light spears, and tested the buckles of their new armour. They had sat and shivered here for an hour and only too happy not to be ordered down there in order to break up the scrap, of which there was now a victor.
Alendari had not for a moment entertained the idea of making some grand stand against an outnumbering enemy which was as well since his followers would have thought that a very funny jest if he had. But coming upon an enemy that had just sent another enemy to flight after savaging one another was another thing entirely. Besides which it was cold, and not only that, it was bastard bloody cold. The druids amongst them had sworn off the idea of snow but that had sounded more hopeful outrage than actual insider knowledge.
Well north of the city and they had found the sort of tracks that heavy wall could have discovered, or probably. They had stalked forward to spy upon a large band of mountain goblins shortly before another band of stockier types had flowed from a stack of hidden little caves and for a while now the jaeger had enjoyed watching another bucket of sods take it in the neck. Now they hurried forward so that the victorious cave goblins turned only quickly enough for the closest to be speared from the first of the thrown shafts before the whole lot were surrounded, but not quite cut off. There was never any point in cutting off goblins. Then they would fight. Suggest there might be a chance to run and they might actually give in. This they did but not by actually throwing down their weapons.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re up to? Kicking arse is my job around here!”
They winced a little at Alendari’s words. “But,” one, probably the leader by his position towards the back, “Dem was bad goblins.”
“And you I have to suppose then are good goblins?”
They found that very funny. “Nah, but we ain’t them bad goblins. Them bad goblins from big hills,” it pointed towards the mountains that gathered in the horizon, “We bad goblins from dat big lump that what the Maggot is king of.”
There was something about the spokesman that bothered Alendari. The goblins as a whole were in the bare bands and braids of hill goblins, or as much as he could tell. Cave goblins maybe, but goblins definitely. The one who lead them had boots on, proper Deci boots with the iron toecaps and the soft leather soles. He said, “Why don’t you name your tribe for me?”
The goblin made to open his mouth.
“And no letting this lot remind you…” Alendari waggled a finger. “Where are you from?”
“Might be Deci…” it admitted.
*
“That’s nice,” said Selgard. “What is it?”
“It’s me golem,” Trundelberry tapped it with a knife. It had been some sort of sentry. There had been a good dozen of them but mostly they had been playing with themselves which was what sentries mostly did. Caught quite literally with their trousers half down they had been killed, dragged off and stashed away by the leading edge of the Stepsons. “We ain’t lost,” he added.
Selgard spared the Black Hat a short sort of glance, “Why would you say that?”
*
It was possible that most were within the shelter of the spires of rock but out here and but a handful stood to receive him. Of them all only one was of an age to Davian, and he lame but still with a crossbow that had been cranked at the lord’s approach. Of the remainder they were older and some of these chased away children to the nearest of the cave mouths. Only close now could he tell much of this for each was bundled in layers of everything and now all held a spear or an axe in hands wrapped in sacking. One amongst them with a sickle as long as a sword ordered him to halt once he had crossed the limits of their commune.
“I come to make you an offer,” he said.
“We want nothing from you, dragon spittle.”
To which Davian raised an eyebrow, then both his hands to show he came in peace. He said, “I know some of you have shared dreams of dragons. There is space upon my estate. You should put aside what this man and his ilk have told you. There are cottages and hearths, food and shelter, work enough too for any man. You know where I am, or where the dragon dreams bring you,” he pointed at the only one to have spoken, “This man will bring only ill to you.”
Spitting into his beard the druid shouted, “Lies, curses and lies!”
Davian ignored him. “Think well on what I have said…” whereupon he left them to further follow the advice of the dragon.
*
Having told Galdor of the mysteries and riddles that he had unearthed Jander was still a little put out that the Taltharian had just nodded, understood perfectly and gone about his way. Not rescuing Tsu-Ling was a chore Jander felt able to bear up under even now as he walked the wall of Forgeholm to the smell of righteously crispy eggs. The Holm Guard were out in force. For such a source of armour and weapons as the Forge was he tried not to wonder at quite how they managed to look so shabby. They were either old or young and not much in between. They liked little moustaches and squabbling. And they could never do things the easy way. Ask them to march up a hill and they’d be manufacturing something out of a bath tub in order to accomplish the task (which was a better use he supposed than a bath tub, which was a pestilence sleeper if ever he had seen one). “All quiet?”
It was. So far there had been no goblins. There had been goblins, but not now. Elsewhere he had learned goblins were emerging but also in some cases temporarily returning. Hill goblins that had come to the surface after the gnolls had gotten a kicking and nearly all other life had been Pined. Because of the last the Tallfellows had scoured the hills with their decent little army clearing out most of what would normally have fed on goblin. And there had been goblins here, scouts or raiders Jander had to surmise but there was a land of easier pickings out there and no sign below of the little bastards infecting his nice, clean mine. Forgetown had been raided only weeks before but it was still there. There had been fighting but everyone of note had been too busy to notice, but there too the raids had become more… highway robbery, really.
Of some note was that in his absence a band of a dozen ruffians had asked for admittance and when it had been refused (for his people had not liked the sour look about them) one amongst them had cursed their evil, but all had left and not been seen again since.
Jander was a warrior and as such what he really wanted was a drink. And he knew who would have one, because there wasn’t a Mine Sire born that didn’t have a drop of the good stuff about him somewhere. Apart from Jander, but that was the point of being their demigod.
*
The silver cage was lit by the pure ritual of the city. It had about it a serpent whose cold light moved about the captive within. Beaten, playfully cut, he screamed as the serpent slipped through the bars to enter his mouth, vanishing in a moment to leave that same silvery light glittering from the eyes, the nose, and then less so from a mouth that closed into a serpentine sneer.
*
The day before they had come together with Jander’s Blades with both groups sheltering in a misbegotten village in sight of the hills. The locals had been surly and far from welcoming, even ignorant of Deci beyond its legend so well to south and west that none there had ever seen the place. Nor had, Alendari suspected, any here been seen in turn by scribe or tax collector. Long settled in a natural bowl of stark stone and clay it jealously guarded the soil it had captive under fine nets and the motley collection of cattle that was already sheltering for the Deathly. They had been raided by their neighbour just seen by the fires of their own village that in turn and downstream were raided by theirs too. The sight of so many so well armed had been quite a shock. But that night they the jaeger and the blades had sheltered for the dark had brought a chill as bad as the season to come and the morning had seen ice outside the cave barns they had occupied, their combined breath making it hard to rise in what had been so comparatively cosy amongst the precious fodder already set aside.
Alendari thought of those hamlets. Of Bent, Rudertugh, and Fowling where now he having followed the stream to the hills spied more goblins.
For a further day they chased away the little bands as they appeared until no more followed the stream. The goblins were not in hirds, they came in small groups that mostly ran back the way they had come at the sight of the jaeger. Retreating once again and this time to the closer hamlet of Fowling it was to find a dozen scouts there before them, and Alendari approached with caution until they revealed the patches they wore on their chests beneath coat and cloak.
Sharing their frugal rations the two agreed to share their news.
*
Fingers and Gafferty were two of the left-hand goblins of the Gaffer. Long, long ago and last year they had been nicking big eggs in the hills and after a bit of a head-muddle about being invading victors with the Maggot now nicked better eggs. Mostly eggs. Never actually eggs. But eggs is eggs and there was a bloody great pig round the corner and so they scarpered right into the bladed hands of something ‘orrible.
Upside down by the ankles they still managed to impress Sire Berry at the way they screwed their hats in their hands and turned their mouths to an unhappy leer – which meant they were sort of smiling helpfully to the rest of the world.
“You buggers summat to do with dat Maggot?”
They nodded, it worked both ways up.
Sire Berry scratched his arse. This was easy. But then there was nothing quite like a goblin for ratting out another goblin. They called it goblining out though; he had perhaps spent too long being a rat. He said to Selgard, “Yer wanna ‘ave a poke in dere noodles, Governor?”
“Heavens, no…” Selgard made a face at the very idea.
“Right den, what does we wanta know!” this to the captives. They understood perfectly. It wasn’t for them to be told questions it was for them to give the right answers.
*
They didn’t trust things that began with anything other than a big lever and Jander was inclined to agree. The new Mine Sire, or certainly in his very new hat, stood to the cheers of the miners as Jander set in place the Rise with the pulling of a very big lever. There were rattles, a clank, and then from the mine poured gold.
“Not all that entirely local,” Sire Born felt compelled to point it.
“Must be,” said Jander, “it just came out of the ground round here,” and there was no arguing with that.
“Thing is boss, I’ve been having a poke around and there’s a fair bit that I wouldn’t have placed as being from Deci. Is that normal?”
“It’s certainly right, Born. It’s positively right. Can’t trust others with gold now can we? They don’t know how to treasure it like we do.”
“Like dragons?”
“Hardly, we don’t hoard it.”
Born nodded, he had raised the matter and it had been dealt with. It was both a very strange mine and the very best of mines. The sort of mine other mines would want to be seen with, to visit. And just about now he thought they might be packing their trunks, “Just one thing, where we mined a month or two ago?”
“Yes?”
“There’s more gold there now.”
“Yes?”
“Just thought I’d mention it…”
*
In places there were scorches upon the buildings but Forgetown remained even if so many were in Bildteve. The carter parks were nearly empty and the ever changing residents seemed to be settling in as if it were the Deathly already. Hooded and hatted, coated in pelts and rawhide, wool and leather there was still enough noise to frighten an ogre but Davian thanked the great serpent for the business with the stone for it made his task all the easier. He had entered the town after the long journey south and through the graveyard which judging by the new mounds had seen plenty of business (though the bells set over many spoke more of plague than conflict).
He saw the first of them about the steps of the temple to the Forge that acted as a plug to the main drag. Ruffians they might have been but that was a look that by circumstance many had come to, practical and in keeping with this frontier town. Yet he was not the only one to have noticed them for whilst outsiders were the life blood of the place Deci was not a territory rife with brigands and these stank of it. People had stopped to watch them pass by. Still there were a number of traders with Jander’s patch making their business on the steps. Another glance showed there also to be a score of Jander’s spearmen too though they were taking pains to try not to look at what they so clearly were.
“Silly bastards are out scouting,” he breathed. He took four quick strides and spun the nearest about, saying simply, “Do not be so foolish.”
Mouth agape the young man could only blink. He set a hand to a sword hilt but Davian’s closed over it before with a shove he sent him stumbling back into his companions. For the most part Davian judged them to be determined, but well led or inspired rather than fanatics. He pointed at the crueller faced of them that blustered about a long beard and bullied the ruffians into some sort of order saying, “This evil has killed the mother.”
“And would you have these good folk die also?”
“Good folk? Aye, you would have it as such! For in your vipers nest good is evil, and evil is in the right. They have raped the mother,” this to his ruffians. “They have slaughtered nature and they have violated the moon, and hide in their villainy from the sun. We shall see her revenge upon you…” and from within his cloak he too produced a sickle, this one as that before weighted for war. His followers at first stalled but at his snarl straightened and fetched out their own weapons.
There was a rattle as from the watching crowd those of Jander’s Blades appeared, and so too from the citizens a number of the local militia. Locals hefted cudgels and somewhere a bell began to ring. Davian said, “Your death might achieve much but these poor fools that follow you would be a waste.”
The druid darted forward and Davian with a movement parried the sickle. The crowd’s strong arms swamped the bearded man whilst his followers were hedged in. Still the druid ranted until someone hit him, then another until he was silent. The ruffians placed their weapons on the ground. Davian said, “These are not the only ones, turn out and seek others hereabouts. It is perhaps more likely they are close and these were their vanguard,” then to the Blades, “Tie them, stick them somewhere safe…”
The woman he had addressed nodded. How safe they would be from rescue she could not say but the ruffians went away without protest. The druid having been knocked senseless was similarly bound, and also gagged, and Davian thought that if anyone would attract a rescue it would be this one.
By Alan Morgan