Post by Sire Halfblack on Sept 26, 2015 11:25:49 GMT
Harvest IM 1015
There were screams only heard by the king. It was not dark in the night for Hightown, if frequented by the assassins, did not welcome them. The square clear to the smog shone a dull silver. To the statue once raised to Charmin’ Billy the ruffians and rascals of Cheapside chanted their abuse. The king stood alone, a little forward. His face was bright, as the mask that was expected of him shone brightly. The Spire broad here was the pinnacle of the quarter that itself stood higher than the city about it, and of which so much was hidden in the poison cloud a little above. He held no knife, only a key.
From the buildings closest to the statue there was only the mob. They shouted, they called out, but still Troy could discern the screams he had made in the Spire. For such was his judgement.
The mob enraged, was enjoying itself immensely. These were the scum of the city, but also it seemed they were miners. Troy cared not to wonder at why that might be, his thoughts this night as the day came close were only of death.
“I have been a reasonable man,” he said, and the crowd stilled. They also booed at the very idea. “They have made this fight their own,” to which the mob cheered, “but this is not a war. This is a crime. A crime against my city and a crime against its king. Let them know our judgement!”
*
It smacked of treason. Treason was not a word one used much hereabouts. Here was the remotest part of a territory that prided itself on being the remotest part of an Empire, and in which every village and settling was more remote from any other than anywhere else. Except perhaps for Scarlene, but who went into the territory of Scarlene? But it was remoter than anywhere there, here so close to the mountains it sat in the fells and was only a part of the Empire at all because no one else had really thought to want it. Not anyone that mattered anyway, not anyone until Selgard.
“I am a loyal servant of the Empress,” said Selgard.
“You are the governor of Deci and a follower of the only church to ever declare for theocracy. Your admirable role is to ensure that between the Empire and the rulers of Deci there is a bridge, and one well-travelled. You do this very well. There are those that believe you are too much in the pocket of the Majius; which is all very well as there are those in Deci who think you are too Imperial. No one else sent here in your stead would be able to mitigate the long division between Deci and the rest of the land. They see a great scar between them, but allow themselves to forget that a scar is a sign of healing. A scarred arm is not an injured arm, it is a working arm marked by injury that has long been healed.”
“You are very well informed for a druid,” said Selgard. They ate eggs by the river with more bubbling away in the little pan.
The traveller looked like every vagrant traveller Selgard had ever witnessed, and was definitely tribal. There was a staff topped with antlers, and there were rabbit skin boots. Still though the traveller had shaved, albeit badly. “That’s because,” he said, “I am a shaman.”
“A good one?”
“Nope, rubbish. I have so few spirits I can not only name them but tell you their birthdays.”
“You seem unusually well informed for a rubbish shaman?”
The traveller shrugged, in this world one gained power through high adventure. He liked long lie-ins and free pies. Not being an ogre it had never served him well for the gaining of power. Besides which when a man had great power people would pester him to save worlds. He didn’t want to save worlds, he wanted to save cheese.
“How does one save cheese?” Selgard wanted to know.
“In a bag,” the shaman showed him. “You save it for later.”
“I have cheese. I can probably have it made into a pie.”
“There you are then. Wherever there is a cheese pie in need of purpose ever will you find me. Now if you like, you can do as I suggest.”
“It’s treason!”
“Like the walking gods and their realms?”
“Point,” Selgard conceded.
For a while neither spoke until at length the shaman nudged the baron. “Cheese,” he reminded his host.
*
The mob came within a stone’s throw of the spire before from it appeared the jaeger. Alendari and his followers had filtered through the mob and now stuffed helmets upon their heads and cast aside cloaks as they dashed the last few yards. Their spears already dripping venom that touched smoke from the cobblestones they went forward, their shields up and out as King Troy the Faceless reached out a hand to the great doors. Even above the din a sharp click was audible across the square. The key passed him by the Silversmith’s dissolved. The doors likewise, before the interior of the reception hall within bloomed with fire as a ball tossed by Troy detonated within.
Streetfighters, the jaeger did not clot the suddenly open gates. A stick threw itself through to make a wall that instantly went left even as another barged immediately to the right. A third centered about Alendari was inside before the defenders reacted, and then to a scrabbling and a sudden darkness, and the howls as creatures that had skulked so long in the Abyss were put to the spear. Alendari pressed them, having his held widen until all the sticks were a curve that matched that of the far wall. There was a line amongst them, more spearmen that though they fell did so to vanish.
In the surprise of the advance the jaeger were two thirds across the hall before the fighting really started. They had expected harder than this but the king’s ritual and wilful assault had wrought his terrible judgement. Alendari kept the discipline, shouting as the first of the enemy not to fall to darkness broke and ran. His eyes went here and there, not liking the Spire much, seeing how every alcove and fluted wall was made for a seething assassin; or a skulking nobleman. “Doors,” he ordered, then to Troy, “Where else?”
Quickly the king marked the hidden recesses that led to passageways and tunnels. He knew where they were so there was no reason that in the time since the last ‘Dawn some of the secrets of the Spire had not been learned by the enemy.
Each of the sticks reformed, shields pressed together. The handful of dead were left for now where they had fallen. Ahead was a confusion of room and chamber. It would be dirty work, but no more than any maze of alleys in any city; and the Spire if big was certainly still not the size of a city.
“Kill them,” said Alendari.
“Wait,” Troy interrupted. Then, “Move aside, quickly now.”
*
He had refused to wear the hat. Fortunately he had people to do that sort of thing for him and so it was a dignified Anath that was received at the door in company with Sneertwice. Sneertwice protested no more at surrendering the half-size tin helmet (with genuine wooden candle and full-option authentic faux-wax drips) to the flunkey than he had at adopting it before they had entered the street earlier.
“Not everyone can be a miner,” Anath cast a quick eye to the mirror affixed to the wall.
“It seems sir, that today the city believes otherwise.”
“And where by the Hundred’s two hundred danglies are the people getting the silly things anyway?”
Sneertwice coughed. He had a variety of coughs, as complex and weighty as any code. This was one of the easiest to crack.
“I see,” said Anath. “We are the foresighted one.”
“We endeavour to ensure that you are, sir.”
“When you’re good, you’re good,” he made the slightest adjustment to his best.
“Good, sir?”
“We do so enjoy the figurative.”
*
Pigs.
Big as ponies and fatter by far they honked like trolls as they crashed into the Spire, and the largest of them all pulled a cart that bounced and shook as it caught a step here, and a drop there. Pigs with heads as big as barrels that gaped with tusks, and which crashed up the stairwells and through the walls. Where there were doors, the doors were no more. Where there were no doors, there were broken walls.
Pressed against the walls the jaeger looked slowly up over the brims of their shields in time to see the great pig chariot jump in the air as it hit one broken door, and was gone.
“I though no one ever saw the bloody rats?” Alendari hissed.
“Them’s pigs,” Sire Berry whispered in his ear. Then towards the new figures that were creeping through the great doors to the square, “And them’s are goblins…”
And they were, Alendari had to suppose. Though hidden in big coats and scarves, stooped and sneaky, and with hands like serving plates whose long sausage fingers flexed for the throats of drow they were goblins, “Be seein’ yer, big boy.”
*
The biggest mines were in the city. Nowhere in the whole of the Empire, actually the whole of anywhere Jander thought (and there was supposedly a whole world call Mine World out there somewhere) had so many miners. And every one of those miners was celebrating what it was to be a miner. For this was Golden Balls day, and if nine in every ten miners that took the time off to celebrate such an event had never actually been near a mine then this was Deci. ‘Free’ was just about the right price for anything, and if that meant for miners then everyone was miner. In Deci ‘free’ was to be taken up before any other fecker did so. If the Assassins Guild had a ‘free’ on contracts then there were citizens who would have them go after their selves because free was free, and they weren’t going to miss that.
Jander had invested so much to make sure it was free, that he was the one missing out. He had spent the morning learning how to be a miner, something he usually oversaw, or shat out, or tripped over and it had proved to be hard work. Especially since today he was the only miner mining. Now in the city where a surprising number of very impractical miners helmets were being worn, and everyone ate runny fried eggs nicely blackened about a runny yolk, Jander was sat on a cart.
“Put the sword down,” said the guildsman.
Jander made a face. He had learnt how to make a cart go, and how to make a load mean something. Now he was learning that most vital of the wagoneers trade; how to surrender. It seemed that when attacked that was what they did. Or ran away, because no load was worth dying for but every load was worth more to a brigand than chasing after a carter. This was not the place for traders. “But I could just kill them,” he protested.
“And then they’d shoot us when you’re not there. Are you going to run every wagon out of this city?”
Jander stuck out his lip, “Might do.”
“Start again, Mr. Sunstar. You will be tested on this at the end of the day.”
*
When they moved, they did so with a trio of them left behind to watch the m’lord. He watched as room by room they fell upon the occupants, and here most memorably, where banding together the gaunt looking drow in their lustrous mail had sought to make a stand, only to be caught from where they would have fallen back to. It was quick, almost artful. Everyone knew that the Stepsons were the baddest bastards in the city when it came to knives but no one could rightly have said they had ever seen them having to prove it. Sire Berry had fought quietly, secretly, in forgotten scraps on many sides and in the shadows his rats had grown, become more terrible, deadlier.
Even now as Davian was taken onwards it was to where in one larger chamber a figure in silvery robes sat upon a cruel throne. About her came together an organised gathering of what were clearly warriors. The walls hung with spiders and the floor was a crunching rug of snake skins. They stood and black fire touched their weapons, and the woman in silver rose to reach out a hand.
Davian threw the black dart. The ritual snapped from his hand. Intending to distract he saw it slice by a larger creature that clearly watched for such an attack, only for the dart to strike its victim square in the chest, and for her then to bang out in sparkling darkness!
At this the drow turned, their faces grew angry, and from the high vaults of the ceiling rats fell upon them. Too dark and Davian plucked from the air a flaming ball that he tossed into the immediate, savage melee. Rats cut open drow, that turned upon their ambushers with anger, catching some even as already most skipped away. With another twist of his hand Davian felt for the smallest of the spiders and called them from the larger fiends so that the drow now, and quite to their surprise, were bitten by the lesser beasts that they had thought to be theirs.
And into which the rats came again. Taking their chance (and now in an arrowhead pointed by a black hat) they caught at the fringes of the drow, dragging the foolish out to cut them, open them, and to once more flee.
“Offski,” said one of the rats with Davian.
“But there’s only a couple of dozen of the bastards left!”
“Got somewhere to be, m’lord?” the rat chuckled, “A ball to go to?”
Davian wants to fight, but he didn’t fight like those he was with. Already they had bundled him behind one statue, booted open part of the wall and vanished within.
*
The jaeger in their sticks had filtered through the Spire. The Stepsons were ahead, though they knew that to be a relative term in this mess of a noble-warren. The largest group were with Alendari, and they moved slow enough to clear each chamber, kick aside every room, whilst trying hard all the while to look at what each might contain. The Spire had been fouled, defaced. There had been a dozen or more small scraps already, only occasionally did the defenders stand, and those that did were killed. But the jaeger were struck, often not as surprised as they might have been but now a stick of the jaeger was being used to take back and then protect the wounded, even the dead.
It was hard, slow work. But it needed to be done, and done right. The jaeger went about their work without war-cries, without much fuss. The enemy weren’t going anywhere, and the jaeger went everywhere. The spears died in ones and twos, but the drow went quicker.
It was in the long gallery, that (typical to Deci) curved alarmingly and allowed no one to see further than a knife might be thrown. There they came to the webs. Clotted, hung with the detritus of so long they barred the way ahead, and in which could be seen hundreds of eyes.
“Lightning,” said King Troy.
Alendari did not look round, “Lightning?”
“Lightning,” Troy said with a sharp bark of a laugh, and across the Spire the spears of the jaeger crackled into sparking life.
They pushed into the webs and if the corridor was only ten men wide then Alendari had three times that, and so he had a wall. “Lightning,” he agreed, and shouting time they cut their way onwards.
*
He had been here officially, and he had been here socially, but this was the first time Davian had been here without an invitation. The teardrop chamber flared into a balcony and at its lips he could make out beyond the bloated spiders that defended it three figures, hooded and half faded into the gloom. He drew his weapon, stepped forward, and offered them surrender.
“You expect us to surrender?” a thin voice retorted.
“No,” said the Lord of Thorns, who standing alone smiled as from either side flowed the rats.
Sire Berry was having the time of his life. He skidded under one spider to open its belly even as two of the lads were jumped upon by it. He opened it wide, rolling aside as it fell then darting to the next even as the Stepsons avoided the snapping fangs. There blades lit with lightning now still six of them caught up a leg each and pulled so that a spider was left crippled, before with a sigh the whole mess drew backwards. He thought he saw two of the villains the spiders defended caught up and carried away, spiders moving easily outside. But the fight went on, and winning it, just for once, the Black Hat stayed so that the Stepsons rounded on the enemy they rapidly outnumbered to show them what real venom felt like.
Davian walked into the fight and where he stepped spiders were pulled aside. Soon he looked down once again over the smog of Deci, at where the guilds and larger gathers pressed through poison smog. “Ours, I think,” he said.
*
“Nasty night, Lonely.”
The smaller man jumped, the stink that had given him his name remained momentarily as a dusty shadow, “I in’t done nothing, Mr. Selgard!”
“I doubt that, Lonely. I doubts that very much. Shocking what we don’t know what you’ve done. About the same as what we know has been done, but not by who. I see a connection, Lonely.”
“Bit I in’t!”
“Then who, Lonely old son. Who?”
“Who done what, Mr. Selgard?” said the little man in a plaintive voice.
But Selgard was not to be diverted, “Now, now Lonely, no clues…”
“It’s that woman, in’t it? I didn’t know what she was up to. Catskinner told her to do one.”
“Very patriotic of him,” Selgard could have bottled sarcasm.
“Or he might have already sold the information. Look, I never said I knows everything.”
Selgard patted him on the head. Then wiped his hand on his shoulder, before seeing that had only made it worse fouled a corner of his own shirt. “Lonely, listen, I’m not interested in everything.”
“Cheers, Mr. Selgard!”
“Just everything you told this woman, starting with who she is.”
*
The day was not yet done though night was an hour upon them. Little ran faster than rumour in Deci, but that was because anyone from Deci knew it was usually better to hide and not encourage anything to chase you. Nonetheless, and whilst still dressed in small helmets and (now) waving very small spades the crowd that had accompanied the warriors from the Spire cheered as it came at length to Dogtown, and thence the cathedral. No one called it that, a cathedral implied a god and if the city had turned out for a walking one already then Jander didn’t count. Actually Jander did, but only in bundles. And Jander wasn’t here. Nor was Selgard. Faced with the need for military action and a good dose of deliberate stabbing the city had not called upon the person with the small army, or the one with the knives. It was probably to do with gods, something both of those notables were on personal terms with.
No, this was a Majius matter. Also an Alendari matter because, probably, it involved beating drow. And a Sire Berry matter, so it was said, mostly by the people of Cheapside. Since the mob was nearly all Cheapside that was said quite loudly.
Troy, Alendari, Davian, and Trundleberry were there now. They stood in a row facing the Serpent, and they looked… like they had had a very busy day. Everyone but the king was torn, battered, bruised, bloody and frightful. The king had servants and had dressed on the way. Trundleberry looked like a butcher that had crammed a week’s work into a day, but none of the blood was his. Strictly speaking Drow didn’t bleed, but Sire Berry was that damn good that if he stabbed something it fecking well bled, blood content notwithstanding.
Three score of the city jaeger were arrayed behind them and most leant on their shields. They had been sent to battle that morning and they had been brought to battle this night. Most reckoned that was time and a half, double bubble at least. No one in Deci thought life was cheap; or if it was it came itemised. There were also rats, in the crowd, notable by their shortness and the wrapped rags and filthy bandages that concealed how rat they were. A pig wallowed nearby. A lot of goblins in big bowler hats flexed their dark stained hands.
Davian handed a thin cigar to Troy. It wasn’t that the king was known to smoke but sometimes themes had to be obeyed.
“Let’s deliver a Deci eviction.”
*
The donkey was dead, but it had been dead for long enough that even a moderate necromancer could have had it up and pulling no matter how skeletal it was. Up yes, but perhaps not so much pulling because there was no plough.
Prosperity had come to the Badlands. In truth a lot of prosperity had come to some very busy paint spots across the Badlands whilst most of the Badlands remained just simply awful. And when Jander had been asked which was the most awful of them all, he had suggested the hamlet of Awful. There were probably far worse places. Places the scribes did not see, and having no mineral wealth nor had Jander. But it was awful enough and now Awful was rich. Sixteen horrid people stood and watched as Jander approached. He was to some a god. He even had priests. His priests could have told him with a look if the people were ghouls, but Jander could not. His priests could call upon spirits, which was also odd because Jander had not even the one to use as a loaner. Or so most thought, rightly or wrongly. So Jander walked up to the nearest and noticed the marks of many diseases survived, and decided they weren’t ghouls. Wretches, amongst the worst he had ever seen, but wretches looped with gold chain and stood before a stack of rarely worked silver plate.
There was a small bog the other side of the shaky huts that made up the hamlet. In it were very small amounts of extremely poor quality star iron. It would actually cost more to mine and bloom than it would ever be worth. Yet in Awful that was what they did. But not now, because now the people of Awful were rich. Jander wondered how many brigands, thieves and other horrid people would soon know this.
“Oh dear,” he said. His new friend couldn’t quite let go. Or was still as he had been, only from a different direction. Now that new force, old force (both, really) was doing good. He was taking from the rich and giving to the poor. He really meant well, but he was still rewarding robbers, even if indirectly and entirely accidently. Jander reached into a purse considerably lighter from having been in the city and began to count out grulls. Grulls could be hidden, and spent, whereas all that was here was treasure.
Brigands or adventurers, or both, “People of Awful, I wish to buy your treasure.”
They shook their heads. Jander knew, just knew that if he left it all here they would be dead within the week. He had to act for their own good. He drew his sword, “I must insist.”
The only way to save them was to rob them. And then leave the grulls behind. If he tried to just take it, they would resist, and they might get injured. He couldn’t reason with them, but they understood the threat of a blade. He sighed. “He’s good isn’t he?” he asked no one in particular.
*
“You may surrender!” Davian Lord of Thorns called out but the words could be scarce heard above the mob. That mob had thickened alarmingly, half the city seemed to have gathered. Today was a day when no miner had to work, and where the drink was free. Today was the day when most of the city had decided for the day to take up mining, and it was half pissed. Not only the square but the streets for a long bow shot in every direction were crowded. Packed, crammed, and all shouting. The wolves that actually lived there had at first barricaded themselves in assuming an attack, and then emerged when on finding out it was some other poor fecker up for the drop had joyfully joined in.
Troy was prepared to offer the drow in the cathedral the chance to surrender. It was not right for him to actually say that, especially not when surrounded by so many citizens of this his proud city. It was damn near cultural that the time to offer someone else the chance to surrender was before you had them on the ground. Not when the steel toecaps were actually raised to stomp, because stomping was religious, near enough. And this was the cathe… Serpent.
All hail Deci.
“I will escort them away,” said Alendari.
“Me too,” this from Sire Berry.
Alendari spared the Black Hat a very long, very cynical sort of look.
“Wot?”
“You know very well ‘wot’.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Davian insisted, “And you too, Trundleberry.”
Whilst not having moved so much as a step nonetheless the four, in company with the jaeger and the Stepsons, were inching inexorably towards and then up the steps of the Serpent. The mob was not to be put aside, and every moment that followed saw it grow so that by now just as there were hundreds that wanted a piece of drow arse on the end of their knives so too were there thousands that were pushing forward to look. So it was that Davian by chance reached the great doors first (and stretching out an arm to vainly prevent the crush) forced them open.
The silence within swallowed that without. Half the city lusted for blood and with little choice but to enter the four did so. In some bafflement for the expected for attack did not come. Stepsons and jaeger dashed forward and in time scoured the Serpent only to return empty handed.
The drow had gone. The rumour of what had happened in the Spire hadn’t hidden and the sound of a city heading their way had clearly been enough.
Davian strode to the twisted snakes that made the dias, it now broken upon the hard floor. He turned about hands on hips, “A victory, my king!”
The city erupted. The cheering was tremendous. Deci had come in open battle and had actually won. Admittedly the enemy so thoroughly outnumbered, inevitably doomed, had been wise enough to saunter away but this was Deci and that counted.
“Still time and a half,” Alendari muttered.
“Double bubble easy,” Sire Berry agreed.
By Alan Morgan