Post by Nepty on Aug 30, 2014 14:57:58 GMT
This game was run by me, and played with by several players. I put it here because the death of the old site deleted it. I wil update it as I can.
Me: All non-PCs and the following houses
House of Karkis: Lords of Karkin
House of Reihn: Lords of the Rains
House of Morris: Lords of the North and West Marches
House of Bogg: Lords of Marne
House of Harper: Lords of the East March
House of Celtigar: Lords of the Harborlands
House of Fallard: Lords of Morlond
House of Dracoran: Kings of Norvath by Right of Victory
House of Sothston: Lords of the South March
PLAYER HOSUES
Felix: House of Oskeherre, Lords of the Huntlands
Glass: House of Ungorian, Lords of the Thunderbow
Wark: House of Gurthane, Lords of Stormlane
Klimono: house of Koulemvour, Lords of the Stonelands
Halon: House of Krultuch, Lords of the Kraken Isles
Harrab: house of Athelhere: Lords of the Ironlands
Coolyo: house of Ahil, Lords of the Navareen
(if someone could find the map, that'd be awesome)
FIRST POSTS
by
NEPTY
“In the year 9999, nearly ten centuries after the Raqori conquest of Norvath wrested that land from the hands of the First Men and the day before the turning of the millennium, several important events took place. They would lead up to the event known as the Tale of Rat and Dragon, Or the Song of the Vaersvult.”
____________________________________________________PROLOGUE___________________________
There were some nights when you just couldn’t get warm, it was plain that that was what the man was thinking as he fed more sticks to the fire. As he shoved the twigs into the small blaze, he took the opportunity to warm his hands, gloved though they were.
The man had built his fire in the lee of a rock face jutting from the ground. It was out of the wind, as the nearby Spearwoods proved an effective windbreak and their needles proved ample fuel for the fire. But fire can be life and death in the cold nights of the Stonegrave forest.
Bulitt wondered If perhaps he could lunge and surprise the man, but he didn’t weigh his chances heavily. He was alone and though armed, he had only a longsword and an eight-foot-spear with a leaf-shaped iron head, the other man had a crossbow that could send a quarrel punching clean though Bullit’s hauberk and mail.
He decided to wait. He didn’t dare move either. Hallis Vole and Muddy were back with their Rounseys a mile to the south. He had gone ahead for a few hours to scout ahead and had noticed the fire glowing through the gaps in the trees. Bullit squinted and tried to make out the rest of the man. It was hard though, shrouded as the fellow was by cloak and smoke. He seemed to be wearing a cowl and a scarf around his face to ward off the chill, his eyes were open though, and gleamed in the firelight from under his hood. His clothes were all black and his armor too, light chained mail and leathers. There was a disturbance in the blacks around his hip that might be a scabbard, and he had started the fire with wood shavings, so he likely had a knife. What worried Bullit, however, was the crossbow propped against the rock. It was made of finely oiled walnut and steel and a small quiver of a dozen or so quarrels lay next to it. Each quarrel had the look of a four-tined bodkin to it. A weapon like that could punch through caste-forged plate with the same ease it could mangle Bullit’s own flimsy leathers. Bullit squinted again.
The man might have ample money in those bags by his feet but he wasn’t like to have so much it could pay for Bullit to bribe to gods to let him back into the world if the man shot him. He gripped his long ash spear in one hand and prepared to slink back into the forest.
As the bandit shifted his weight, using the spear as a prop, his foot slipped several inches and came down hard onto a rock. The clink on steel was the loudest sound in the clearing. Bullit froze.
The stranger’s head shot up from the fire and he glared suspiciously at a point several feet to Bullit’s left. Hoping that gazing into the flames had impaired the man’s night vision, Bullit slunk off.
When he got five hundred steps away, Bullit judged he could walk quicker. He carefully followed his trail hack through the mist-shrouded woods of searpines and Watchers and black-trunked ebonwoodswith needles as dark as midnight.
When he found them, Hallis Vole was keeping watch over their three ragged rounsys as they idly grazed on grass growing up through a broken stump. Muddy was huddled against a tree, wrapped in a dark green cloak with a sewn-over badge of a sable sword, marking him as a deserter from the Blackblades, the peacetime soldiers consigned to serving against outlaws out of penance for their crimes. Whereas Hallis was a Stonelander who had come out of the mountains after a life in that harsh land had weathered him into a man fit only to be a killer, and being that there were no wars present and the Redcloaks had rules and arrested rather than killed and the Blackblades were too far north to join and had rules against pillaging, he had taken up the bandits life. He was a big man and wrapped in mule hides and sheepskin like most stonelanders. He wore a big square beard and a bigger falchion that had won many an argument and gotten them out from under the hands of the Redcloaks many a time as well.
Muddy was a Marnishman who got his name from his place of birth and the constant, caking filth he covered himself to hide his scent and looks. Short and rude, he preferred his bladed water-dragon hunting spear and a hard bow of hornwood strung with catgut. He liked to joke that murder had gotten him into the blackblades and murder got him out. He told them he’d knifed a girl for speaking too loudly when he was trying to sleep and that lord Bogg’s men had spent the better part of the summer chasing him down before shipping him off to the fortress at greenside to take up the dark sword in penance. He’d apparently spent two years in the blades before he’d gotten sick of it, killed his companions when scouting after some raider and fled down south were he’d met up with Bullit and Hallis Vole.
Bullit had stolen a few hundred gold crowns from a merchant but, fool that he was, he’d let the merchant live to describe him. The red cloaks had tried to grab him a the next town he stopped in but he’d made off, but not before killing a pair of them with the same pitted steel longsword that hung at his hip.
Hallis Vole looked away from the rounseys. “You’re back. Did you find anything worth anything?” He had hacked his falchion into the tree stump and had his arms crossed against his huge chest.
Muddy peered through his own cloak. “Gods, must I get up?” he seemed to be talking to the sky, as if asking the gods if he must stand.
Bullit leaned on his spear, the haft making an impression of the soft, wet ground. “One man. No horse. All in black. Got a good crossbow and might have a sword. Prob’ly a knife too. He had two sacks with him.” He was sure one of those sacks had coins. It looked heavy and misshapen enough.
Hallis Vole uncrossed his arms and rubbed some warmth into his hands. “One man? You’re sure?”
Bullit scowled. “I watched the fellow for a half hour. He had no companions with him. He didn’t take a shit or eat. He just fed his fire.”
Hallis spat into the shadows of the nighttime woods and walked over to Muddy. “Get up you.” He gave the heap of sodden green cloth a prod with his boot.
“Oho. How polite. Wake up on the wrong side of a rock this morning, Hallis? Did you break your fast on bugs?” grumbled Muddy, untangling himself. The marnishman was short and wiry and had dark hair and pale skin. He yawned and bent to pick up his bow.
Hallis Vole frowned. “It’s nighttime.”
Muddy chuckled to himself and muttered “Halfwit” as he strung his bow. It took him several tries, and he cursed the soft ground and wet air. When he finally managed it he held it up lamely and twanged the string. It thumped damply. “This wouldn’t send an arrow through paper, much less armor,” he complained. “Where’s my pack? I have some spare strings in there.”
Hallis Vole rooted through one of the bags tied to the saddle on Muddy’s rounsey and withdrew a cloth package. “What’s this, velvet? It’s only string Muddy.”
The Marnishman snatched away the packet and after what seemed to Bullit to be overmuch choosing and contemplative noises selected a string that looked just like the others. He wrapped the rest back up and handed them back. Then he rounded on Hallis Vole. “Treat a sword poor and it still bludgeons people to death. Treat a bow poor and it’ll be the death of you.” The marnishman tested the string and made a satisfied noise. “All ready?” He picked up his bog spear and slid it into his belt.
Hallis Vole smirked and wrenched his huge falchion from the tree trunk he had planted it into. “That shows how much you know about swords. And yes. I’m ready. Notice how I didn’t have to fuss over every little detail like you.”
Muddy grunted and raised an eyebrow at Bullit, who was already carrying his spear and his longsword was still buckled into his belt.
“If you’re all finished, we must needs get going before our man falls asleep.” Asked Hallis Vole.
Muddy started off the way Bullit came. “That would make it easier to slit his throat, halfwit.”
Bullit led the way through the forest and found the camp where he had left it after several minutes of creeping through the woods. They stopped when they could see the glow.
“Quiet,” hissed Bullit, and slowly made his way towards the fire.
When they got there, the fire had died down to a few smoldering embers and the man with the crossbow was nowhere to be seen. His things were all there however, the dying fire, the crossbow, the quarrels and the two horsehide bags. Bullit scanned the treeline. No one.
Hallis Vole silently crawled over. “Did he go to take a piss?” he asked.
Bullit shook his head. “I hear nothing. Perchance he’s gone.”
Hallis Vole gave him a despairing look and got up and lumbered into the clearing. “There’s no one here.” He said and poked into the thick boughs of the spearwood pines with his Falchion. When he was satisfied that there was indeed no on here he turned back to them and gave a wide grin.
Muddy came out next. “You’re right. Not a soul.” He bent down by the embers of the fire and rooted about in the ashes while Hallis Vole picked up the crossbow.
“This is a fine piece of work, looks to be professional. Castle-made most like.”
Bullit got up last and went straight for the sacks of coins while the others argued about the type of crossbow it might be. He grabbed the first sack and turned it over. It was full of what felt like metal disks that clinked when he moved the bag. He fumbled for the drawstring with frozen fingers.
“Whomever was here can’t have been vanished for more than an hour. It would be prudent to take what we can carry and make haste away.” said Hallis Vole.
Bullit found the drawstring and pulled. The top of the bag opened and with a hiss, dozens of gold and black coins poured out.
The others looked over.
“Three gods,” said Hallis Vole, dropping the crossbow.
Muddy glared at Hallis Vole and told him he’d best be careful with the bow if he didn’t want it to break. Bullit paid neither of them any mind and grabbed a coin at random. A black sable, thick and- he paused to bite it- real iron and tin, no imitation money. Hallis Vole grabbed a fistful and frowned deeply. “Who carries this much money with them? We should leave this place. But bring the money.” But something was nagging at the back of Bullit’s mind. “Hallis, pick up the bag and try to carry it,” he said. The big man obliged and grunted as he lifted the bag. “A horse could bear this with ease.” He said.
“A horse, perhaps, but not a man afoot,” pointed out Bullit. “This man had no horse.”
Hallis Vole looked around suspiciously. “You’re right,” he said. “He didn’t.” He drew his hunting knife and slit the second horsehide bag. White cylinders sealed with red tumbled out. Scrolls.
“Scrolls. Letters.” Observed Hallis Vole.
“Mayhaps they would have some use as firestarters,” suggested Muddy. It was true none of them could read. “The wind chills me to the bone”
Hallis Vole looked uncertain. “I mislike this.”
Muddy laughed. “Do scrolls unman you so?”
The big man scowled. “Perchance he tied his horse up a distance away. Bullit, go search for it.”
Bullit nodded and took up his spear and pushed his way through Spearwoods and Godpines and Browncloak Sentinils. Half a hundred yalms away his feet nearly stumbled in a pothole and he cursed. There would likely be no horse here. No one was fool enough to tie their horse up out of sight. He continued on when he heard the babbling of water and nearly soaked his boot through when he found it. It was a thin, shallow rocky brook with Spearpines obscuring its roof. Bullit peered down its length but it was as dark as everything else and the night swallowed it less than five yalms away.
Bullit waded quickly across the stream and then turned back. Most like there was nothing here after all. And if there was it was hidden well enough that he couldn’t find it. As he turned he heard the screams.
A high, pitched, keening shriek, not one of pain but of sheer terror. Bullit whirled around and stared back at the way he came, frozen to the spot as the screams penetrated the air again and again. He could hear Muddy’s high-pitched screams, yes but also a sound of horror tearing from the throat of Hallis Vole. Louder and deeper.
They went on for only several seconds before Hallis Vole’s wails cut out with a shriek of pain and then…silence.
Bullit stared, unmoving at the way he had come. Back there was…something. He could feel something wet and warm running down his leg and filling his boot and the acrid stench of urine filled his nostrils.
Then the trees shook. He could hear the clatter of running feet. Bullit let his spear fall and fumbled clumsily for his longsword, dragging it out of its scabbard as Muddy burst from the trees.
The marnishman was in absolute terror, his eyes huge with fear. He didn’t stop when he saw Bullit in his way, only ran faster, cloak flapping and boots splashing into the stream. Ten yalms away he jerked to a held as if a puppet on a string.
Bullit could see a hand, gloved all in black gripping Muddy’s shoulder. Another hand snaked around his neck and seized his pale throat. Muddy’s face darkened and his eyes grew larger still as the hand squeezed. He let off a chain of choked gasps and short fitful attempts at breathing as he was lifted off the ground by some useen yet hugely powerful assailant.
“Gk…Ghh…glk…kl…kl…kkkkhhh…” Muddy choked pitiously. His hands, so adept and drawing and shooting his short bow of horn grabbed at the fingers around his throat and tried to pry them loose, to no avail. Bullit stood, transfixed as he watched Muddy die.
When he died, it was silently, ceasing to struggle and thrash. His hands slowly, limply fell to his sides and his eyes unfocused. The marnishman’s legs gave out and the strangling hand let go. Muddy collapsed in a tangle of green cloak and mail with a thump, his head in the stream.
Bullit stared, but not at his dead friend. He stared at the space behind him. There was no one there. He could hear no sound of breathing or disturbed pines. He was alone with the keening winds and the babbling brook and the towering stern spearwoods and the dead man in the Stonegrave forest.
___________________________________A TALE OF RAT &DRAGON_______________
Gods of old and gods of yore, when cold wind rises, return once more, waken from the wild’s core, when man forgets his ancient lore, when kingdoms die and brothers war, you will return to us once more, to paint the snows with bright red gore. To show them truth, what man is for, to open wide the closed snow door. The end of man is what you swore. Let them run, hunted, hated, all their strength in arms abated, let them flee, through the mud, let us drink their hot red blood.
HEDDERIC
The doors were lacquered black ironwood and creaked when they opened like a ship at storm. I hope that’s not the omen it would seem, thought Deric. They were very grand though. Carved minutely with flowers and mythical beasts. And some not so mythical, it would seem. He regarded a huge carved Manticore. Everything in the High Hall was grandly made. Deric waited for the doors to fully open before he walked inside. The guardsmen at the doors wore dragon head-shaped helms and bowed their heads as he passed.
The room was in the castle known as The High Hall, the king’s castle. The hall itself was the throne room, where the obsidian throne drank in the light from its dias in the back of the room, all harsh angles and lines and the odd jagged point where the bones peeked out, making it look very sinister indeed. At least it’s not covered in blood this time. The throne was made of a manticore skull, yawning open. There was a feast set out in front of it on a plain oak table. A small group of lordlings sat about it, discussing something in hushed tones over the soft clatter of cutlery. Deric walked slowly across the room, peering at it’s finery. The last time I was here it had been carpeted by corpses, now it was covered with a huge rug done in intricate Saali'i patterns. Bloodstains had been replaced by extensive honor scrolls dangled from each pillar and the alcoves from which the banners of every great house in Norvath hung were filled with the statues of kings.
The others must have heard him. Not a hard feat with his steel-shod boots echoing in the huge chamber. To them in their Raqori silks and fine Xantish lace he must look a sight, ragged chainmail and a leather jerkin and riding boots. An axe at his side and clothes covered in mud, sea salt and horse shit.
A man in a robe and cowl stood up, pushing his chair back as he did so. His cowl was thrown back so all might see his face, which in question was pale, as hairless as his head and gaunt as a skeleton. Deric could see the man’s skull under his skin but he had a sort of ageless quality to him. He looks like some young boy’s favourite grandfather. His brown, shining eyes and easy smile at odds with the midnight-black robes he wore with a cowl and daggered sleeves of the same color. When he spoke, his voice was amiable and light, airy even. It certainly didn’t sound old at all.
“Lord Karkis, it is our honor to welcome you. We heard of your troubles with storms off Cape Crab. My
condolences for you. It must have been terrible.” He reached out both hands in a Shakaarik greeting.
“Lord Ziefer,” greeted Deric, taking the Lord Warlock’s hands and shaking them.
“I am truly sorry for the abruptness of this meeting, you have just arrived from a long, stormy voyage.”
“So I’ve been told,” said Deric. He took the proffered seat at the foot of the high table. The seat down at the far end of it, nearest the throne was empty. “Where is the King?”
Another man, this one an even older man with a cloak sewn in greys and browns spoke up from his place to the left of the king’s vacant seat. His white hair was worn long over his shoulders in the fashion of the Learned Wisdoms.
“Unfortunatly, my, ah, lord, his Grace is ,ah, indisposed It may have been that something he, ah, ate last night did not agree with him.”
The third man at the table rolled his eyes, a young lordling with long brown hair and a handsome face. He wore armor gilded with patterns of greenery. “What High Wisdom Qorbin means to say is that my brother his royal holiness has the shits.”
Deric nodded at him. The castellan of High Hall was the king’s brother Varn Dracoran. His hair was not the characteristic Dracoran red but the chestnut brown of his Fallard mother. “I see. I take it to mean he won’t be joining us?” said Deric.
“His Grace has expressed his, ah, regrets.” Said Qorbin, scowling at Varn.
I’ll bet he has, thought Deric.
Varn smirked. “He told me “Tell Deric I’ll see him later, shits or not.””
Deric gave a thin smile back. He rather liked Varn. His attitude, however rude it was, was easier to read than the others. “Very well.”
“No matter.” Said Qorbin. “I shall, ah, endeavour to introduce the rest of the, ah, High Council to his lordship, who I am told will be, ah, joining our numbers soon. We were just, ah, beginning our midday meal.” The old man waited politely in case Deric wanted to say something then continued. “May I present, ah, Lawrence Breakwater of the City Watch?” The High Wisdom indicated a harsh looking armored man who sat with a bowl of soup in front of him. The man looked to be near fifty, hard, with a glint in his eye and a permanent scowl on his face. The commander nodded at him. He’s the one they call Lophand, remembered Deric. He looked down. The man had a steel maul in place of his right hand.
“Makewater’s not much for conversation,” quipped Varn, already continuing where he left off on his meal.
Qorbin ignored Varn and indicated another man, gaunt and bearded, wearing an obsidian crown which looked extremely heavy. “This is High Tetriach Carro.” The holy man clasped his hands together. “In the light of the Three.”
Deric didn’t want to hear the pious speech he could sense was coming from the Tetriarch but was saved that by High Wisdom Qorbin.
“Master of the Treasurey, Martyn Dace,” introduced Qorbin, indicating a well-dressed man all in green and gold. He wore a thin mustache and a small goatee.
“Well met. I have heard quite a lot about you from my friends.”
Deric tried to hide his displeasure. No doubt these ‘friends’ of yours are the smugglers and pirates that greive me so. He thought venomously.
“And lastly,” went on Qorbin, oblivious, “Your old friend, master of blades, Gared Morris.”
Old friend? I’m not entirely sure about that. Non-enemy, perhaps. For the moment.
Gared sat nearest the king’s vacant seat, clad all in the bloodred armor of the King’s Blades, his hundred
household knights from around the Freeholds. The black commander’s cloak trialed over the back of his chair. The man’s graying hair was combed over and made him look like an old man, though no wrinkles were in evidence, so unlike lord Zeifer.
Gared didn’t frown or smile or do anything. He looking into Deric’s grey eyes with his own colorless ones and then nodded in acknowledgement. “Karkis.”
“Morris,” said Deric, coldly, inwardly he frowned deeply. This one stands here in this room he profaned with the blood of children.
Gared turned back to contemplating his own meal, a large roast of mammoth meat. Deric watched him suspiciously for a moment and then nodded at the High Wisdom.
“Go on, wisdom,” said Deric.
“Just so. We are glad you could come here for this meeting, which is of some import. There are several matters to discuss, first, I must report that the pirates on Rock Island have been apprehended and hanged by Lord Dayn’s men.”
“Is that so? Good riddance to them.”
“Good,” Said Dace. “They were preying on shipments of iron and gold from Feyrlun.”
Qorbin nodded and shifted his papers “Ah. Next is the small matter of a group of roving adventurers. They call themselves the ‘Road Wardens.’ Most smallfolk seem to refer to them as the ‘Knights of the Wild.’ They have been, shall we say, upsetting the balance of power in Stormlane.”
Deric waved away the serving girl and poured himself a cup of springwine from the jug in the table’s center. “How so?”
Lord Breakwater responded. “If a group of peasants decides to take matters of justice into their own hands, people will start to question their lords governance. Do you recall the Lordsway Bandits? Robbed from the rich, gave to the poor. The smallfolk loved them, certainly. But in the end they gave them rather unpleasant ideas. They tried their hand at rebellion. And even that aside, what they are doing is murder.”
Deric nodded. I knew them. I fought against the lordsway bandits. He didn’t want to see that again but disliked where this road of conversation was going. “I know what you mean. Obviously you don’t want these men to continue with their business?”
Varn nodded from his place. “Indeed. Perchance these men are ‘true knights’ but we’ve learned that lesson once already. People will join them as don’t have such noble goals. The Redcloaks do their job just as well and with considerably less violence. We don’t need peasants to go around taking the law into their own hands. What these men are doing is murder.”
Martyn Dace swirled the wine around in it’s own cup and peered into the depths. “It’s only a matter of time before they hang a lord. Likely Lord Rossart, he has that unsavory habit of making his peasants fight one another to the death.”
“Good riddance to him if they do, I say.” Muttered Varn. “He’s a scoundrel and a raper.”
I don’t like this. Thought Deric. It seems too much like something Mallin would have done. Kill all enemies and be damned to consequences or morals was his way. “I admit,” he said. “That they may cause problems, but perhaps it would be best to wait until these problems actually arise.”
Gared Morris’s pale eyes flicked up to gaze at Deric’s grey ones. “It will only be for a time. Eventually someone will call out for them to kill my cousin Sidgis and the rest will take up the chant. That will be the end of these Road Wardens. They won’t be able to ignore the cries to kill the most brutal man in the realm.” His voice was scarce above a whisper.
Martyn Dace gave his little secret smile. “If any of them are fool enough to try to cross swords with the Corpsemaker, that will be the end of them.”
Deric had to agree. The best way to deal with these men is to wait until they get themselves killed. I don’t like it but it’s better than hanging them outright
“A cruel thing,” said Lord Zeifer, despairingly. “But this is a cruel world. If the Lord Protector would give me authorization, I could see to it that this happens. I am required to consult with you before doing anything of an even marginally military nature.”
And no doubt you ask authorization for a third of these things, thought Deric in the privacy of his mind. If everyone asks me before they do anything, I’d be privy to a thousand treasons by the time the sun set.
“If someone calls for them to kill Sidgis, that will be their doom. If they hang lord Rossart though, despite his habits of rape and murder, they would be breaking the law. Zeifer, just observe them for now.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
High Wisdom Qorbin shuffled the papers again. “Ah, now. The Great Bank of Volmar is calling in its debts, we owe them…” Qorbin shuffled the papers furthermore, “A half million crowns. Ah, What is the state of our coffers, Lord Dace?”
“The crown can afford to reimburse the Great Bank, though we will have to take out a loan from the Athelheres. Again.”
“We are a half million crowns in debt?” Asked Deric.
“Wrong, my lord,” Hallis Dace smiled his irksome thin smile again. Deric wondered if the huntlander kenw how infuriating that smile was. Probably why he does it, thought Deric, glumly. “We are three million in debt, half a million to the Great Bank, Half a million to House Athelhere, a million in debt to The Sea Bank of Varnesh and a million in debt to your own house, my lord.”
My own? “I was not aware.”
“Obviously, your castellan has not seen it to trouble you it seems.”
“Where did all this spending come from?” We haven’t had any tournies in years. I will not belive Terren allowed the realm to be beggared. He’s too cautious for that.
Dace smirked again. “The spending, my lord, comes from King Mallin’s reign. He enjoyed…certain things if you would remember. A strain on our coffers.”
Deric took another sip from his wine glass. Mallin’s dead hand still moves us all from beyond the grave. The worst player left the board a mess. “I see,” he said.
“Of course you do, now-” Began Dace, but Deric interrupted him.
“What I SEE is a man driving us further into bankruptcy, if you take out another loan from the Athelheres to reimburse the loan from the Volmarkers then we dig our grave all the deeper.”
“I deal in coin, my lord. Not promises. I must think in the short term,” pointed out Lord Dace.
“Even if it harms the realm in the long term?” countered Deric.
“I know, this may seem like a sorry state of affairs but-”
“It IS a sorry state of affairs.” Who lets these apes rule the kingdom?[i//]“Take out the loan if you must but you will need to raise trade tariffs and tithes.”
“Very well.” Dace scribbled some lines onto his paper.
Qorbin scratched his chin. “Ah, finally, tomorrow is the Midsummer’s Day, and the beginning of a new century and millennium. The Council of Seers at High Hermitage says that they have studied the weather patterns and we will be in for a very vicious winter. We must make sure all the harvests are brought in, as this nearing winter is only a year away. And will likely start early in the fall and end in mid-spring, so we are looking at, ah, a year-and-a-half of winter for this season. The Wisdoms at High Hermitage say that every thousand years, the sun goes the furthest away, over a period of seasons, until we are looking at summers of a few months and winters of five years at the least. It will get worse before it gets better.”
There was a long silence.
A five year winter? Or longer? Thought Deric. All his life, winters had been two years at most, and those were bitter. Once the snows did not abate for an entire season, leaving them with three years of winter, but that was two hundred years ago. During the Mythic War, the longest summers had been happening too, though they were growing shorter now. Seasons were three years each on average. A year of summer, six months of fall, a year of winter and six months of spring. He did know, however that every thousand years, the sun grew further away, tilting their world away from it and causing winters to last entire seasons.
“Gods, that sounds absolutely shitty,” complained Varn. Deric had to agree.
The others murmured assent, aside from Gared Morris, who said “Winter is always in the North, no doubt we will endure. How far will the snows reach during this projected five-year-ice-winter? And when will it be?”
Qorbin shuffled his papers. “Ah, the cold is, ah, expected to lock Norvath in it’s entirety. Long Pike and Southgarden may not be frozen solid, but it is assumed that the snows and ice will cover the world from the Winterlands to the Kraken Isles. Ah, the Navareen may be spared the snows due to the presence of the Stonelands but it will be bitter cold there all the same.”
Lord Dace sighed. “Do the Wisdoms give a name to this phenomenon too?”
“Ah, we call it, at High Hermitage, an ‘Ice-Age[i/]’ or ‘Glacial Era’” said the High Wisdom.
“Of course you do,” Muttered varn.
"What an unpleasant name," observed Lord Zeifer.
“Prehaps this matter should be taken to the king,” Said Deric.
“Ah, indeed, it ah, should. Thou perhaps we should, ah, warn farmers to get in as, ah, as many harvests as they, ah, can.”
Deric nodded but added a bit. “Do this as well, send a murder of crows out to each Freehold, This should require twenty-one murders of nearly a hundred crows each. A crow for each Lord, great and small to bear instructions and warn them of this coming…glacial age. How long did you say it would be?”
“Ah, reports suggest five years or longer, possibly up to, and I do not make mock, a hundred thousand years of winter.”
A stunned silence greeted him.
“I’ve decided I don’t like Ice Ages,” said Varn, slowly.
“Three Above, save us,” murmured the High Tetriach.
Even silent Gered looked troubled. “If it truly is a hundred thousand years of winter, we could only flee south across the sea.”
“That is true,” Said Qorbin.
Deric gavea wan smile. “How romantic. The last of the Norvathi fleeing from a doom that took their realm to strike out for the south.”
Everyone laughed, albeit uneasily, Gered Morris and Qorbin stayed silent though. Gared looked contemplative and Qorbin looked worried.
“Is that all?” asked Lord Dace.
Qorbin scratched his chin. “Eh, uh, Yes. Ah, it, ah, it would appear we are done.” He mumbled. “I, ah, declare this High Council meeting to be closed. I shall send out the Murders directly, though, ah, I shall require time for my assistants and I to pen all those, ah, messages. All the Lords of the freeholds will know of this soon, and be prepared for the, ah, coming Ice-age.”
Deric stood up as and made for the door as fast as he could. The air outside was city air but he would gladly inhale deeply in a tannery now. Not that it would wash my disgust away. Was this truly the realm’s state? Signing death warrants for peasants half a world away and beggaring the kingdom? Sitting idle while what may be the end of the world bore down on you?
Halfway to the door, a voice called out, quiet, so the ears had to strain to hear it.
“Karkis.”
Deric turned. Gared Morris was still seated as the others were filing out. “I wish to speak with you.”
Deric walked back to the table and took his seat as the last of the others filed out. “What?”
“Your badge of office. As befits the Lord Protector of the realm.” Gared nodded towards the table, where a small brass badge shaped in the likeness of a sword and shield lay. Deric must have forgotten it. He picked it up and made to leave, as he was leaving, Gared spoke again. “You don’t joust,” he observed.
Deric halted for a moment. “When I fight I mean to kill my foe, not play at war.”
“Wise enough.” Spoke Gared.
“I think it is,” said Deric. “Tell me, Gared, what do you think of these affairs?”
“I am a soldier, your lordship, I merely deal in blood, not coin or grain.”
“What about this Ice-age?” Asked deric.
“I am a Northman. Frozen Bones May Never Lie, it is said at the Icefort. Good day.”
Deric watched as he left with narrowed eyes. That one bears watching.
ALAYNE
It was midday when Sir Dorcas Bracken unhorsed Sir Robert Reihn.
They had been at it or nearly half an hour, Sir Dorcas with a mace and Sir Robert with a longsword, two men in full plate crashing together mounted on huge destriers. Sir Dorcas’s helm was angular with a beak like a raven’s for a visor, his eyes unguarded. Sir Robert wore a tourney greathelm, visorless and fully-concealing. Sir Dorcas’s mace caught him full in the chestplate, sending him toppling of his horse to land on the square stone tiles of the yard. A ragged cheer went up from the men-at arms watching. As Sir Robert lay winded. From her seat by the window in the Wisdom’s turret, she could see her brother Godryk, heir to the throne looking on with a cold, thin smile. Garbed all in black and grey, he stood up, his cloak trailing behind him. “Well fought. The reward and station amongst my household knights goes to Sir Dorcas Bracken.” He nodded at a man-at-arms, who kicked open a small chest at his feet and handed the knight still ahorse a sigil of a skeletal ice dragon. The knight got off his horse and passed his downed foeman, who was struggling clumsily to his feet to kneel in front of Godryk and swear his sword to his service.
Would that I could be a knight too. And ride into battle with my brother and his men.
“Alayne, are you paying attention?” Demanded Wisdom Mallador. Alayne whipped around and nodded. “Yes, your…wiseness.”
Alayne was a slight girl of four-and-ten, her hair thick and bloodred like the rest of House Dracoran and falling past her shoulders in red waves. So unlike her sister, who preferred to do her hair into elegant styles as was the ‘latest fashion’
“Do not make mock of me, child, these lessons are important.” How important can learning the names of the queens through the ages be? They weren’t nearly as interesting as Manticores. She liked learning about them. Big beasts the sizes of castles with huge scales and bones of obsidian and stone, they could breath water and had a dozen legs and huge spines sprouting from their back and spat fire. They sounded grand. She would have liked to have a manticore herself but she settled for their bones, which adorned the High Hall and the Hall of Stories. She liked to run around and under them and play at being a knight. It was sad what happened to them all. They all died, or were killed. I would have liked a Manticore, she thought. It seemed monstrously unfair that they were all dead.
“Yes, Wisdom,”
The Wisdom began to talk again, prattling on about kings and queens and never choosing to discuss the interesting ones like Dallia the Warrior or the Scaled Lord. Alayne glanced back at the yard. Her brother and the freerider sir Dorcas Bracken had left. Alayne wished she could have followed them. She knew her brother was holding small competitions and gathering Freeriders and hedge knights to him. The talk amongst the soldiery and chivalry was that he planned on riding out against the barbarians in the Hartswood.
That certainly sounded like an adventure. Like as not she would have to stay here and listen to the most boring history lessons as her brother covered himself in glory.
Not that I’d be able to ride with them anyways. I’m a girl. Girls sit at home and knit and sew and play silly games and marry princes and have children. Girls have boring lives.
She watched one of her father’s household knights, a midsized man with a yellow bass on his shield ride a quintain.
It would be grand to be a knight. She looked back up at the Wisdom, hoping her lessons would finish soon. Sir Edric had told her she could practice at the longsword today. Sir Edric Bar Marron understood. The sallow knight was the master-at-arms of the castle and he and Sir Preston were the only ones willing to teach a young girl how to fight as a knight would.
She suffered through the rest of the lesson in silence.
When it was done, Alayne gathered up her things and made for the doors, stealing one last glance at the practice yard below, where now only a guardsman sat, blunting a practice sword. She hurried out the door and down the steps.
The Great Keep was well-deserving of its name, the pride of the Herron kings, it brooded over the city and the Bay of Eels, it was three fortresses, really. The small outer castle with its stagnant, filthy moat guarded the way into the castle proper, a many-acre structure on floors of tiled stone and dirt. The Ten Towers were here, along with two dozen smaller buildings and turrets. There was the Guard’s Tower, The Queen’s tower, named for the queen who had built it, the God’s Tower, the three-sided contrivance of a godshome, it looked over the Old Godhunt, a ten-acre enclosed forest where the many gods of the wild reigned as stone statues. Next to the Godhunt was the Dark Tower, from which Allarin The Evil reigned for ten years before his uncle, Karrlin the Kinslayer threw him down and dashed him on the cobbles below. Above even that on its own artificial hill as the Shadowed Citadel, with its own walls and its six-story wide tower of red stone. That was where the Shadowmancers held court, the few of them there were. Only eighteen, it was said, led by Lord Zeifer. And they were truly spies, nothing more. Others were the Protector’s Tower, glaring out over the sea, where Gerris the Just had reigned from, the Kingstower, where the guests stayed, the Sword Tower of the Kingsguard, the Bridge Tower, which guarded the long, wide approach to the throne room and the Tower of Fangs.
The Bridge Tower guarded the short causeway, which was built a hundred feet above the sea itself. The sea came crashing in and gurgled through the sea-caves under the rocks. It made the approach to the Tower of Fangs positively harrowing on a stormy night, though pleasant during a clear day.
The Tower of Fangs was a castle-within-a-castle-within-a-castle, a walled sheer cliff island with a gigantic long hall. The Tower itself was given its name for its looks, the huge tower where the king and his family lived. It looked out over the sea and the Bay of Eels to its north and east and the city to its west. The castle’s top was cluttered with trebuchets and it’s tall, menacing merlons gave it the look of fangs.
It was to this tower that Alayne ran. She had lived her whole life in this castle and it ceased to awe or terrify her, possibly as it never had, being that it was her home and had been for all fourteen years of her life. This castle and city.
Alayne dashed across the Causeway, passing several guards, some of whom laughed and others who merely bowed their heads.
She almost bumped into a leathers-wearing man on the causeway. She didn’t recognize him, so she asked who he was. “Who are you? You look like a freerider, I know all my father’s guards.”
The man looked down at her. Cleanshaven and pockmarked, he had a narrow face and long black hair down past his shoulders. Grey eyes studied her intently. “You have Terren’s look about you, girl.”
Alayne frowned. “You know my father? You look familiar.”
The man glanced back at the High Hall, where he had come from, built below the Tower of Fangs. It was the throne room. “The whole realm knows your father. You are Alayne?”
“I am,” she said. He does look familiar. “Who are you?”
“Hedderic Karkis, Lord of Southmarch, castellan of Long Pike and Lord Protector of the Freeholds, as people seem so interested in titles here.”
Oh. That’s who he is. He dosn’t look like a lord. “You look like Gav.”
“Gav? You mean Gavin, my son? I know he’s a knight in service to the king.” asked Lord Karkis.
“Yeah. He’s my friend. He tried to teach me at axes but they’re too heavy. He says southrons like axes. I’m a southron. I like swords though. And armor. But my sister likes gowns. And tourneys. And my older brother likes killing. But not Marq. He likes riding.” She made a face. Helena liked stupid things and Godryk was too old and Marq was too cowardly. Her friends were the knights and the guardsmen. And Gav. Gav was nice.
“We do like axes in the Southmarch. Gavin uses a longer-hafted one than I do. I prefer a War Axe to a longaxe.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Where are you running to?”
“The throne room. I’m meeting my friends.” She had learned it was never too wise to say when she was going to be learning at swords. Some of her father’s men tried to stop it once, before she got herself hurt.
“Well then, have fun with your friends,” said the Lord Protector, and walked off.
Alayne stole into the throne room quietly. They called it the High Hall.
The Throne stood at the other end, brooding.
Some called it the Obsidian Throne, others, the Throne of Bones, most called it the Black Throne.
It was forged out of Manticore Bones and Manticore Fire by the Manticore Kings. Their words had been ‘Death or Glory’ and the throne was that.
The throne itself was the skull of manticore, jaws wide open, the roof of its mouth forming the back of the chair and it’s palate forming the seat. It was a small skull. The kings had filled it with the scales of the dead manticore and others of its kind had torched it with their breath. The bone and scales ran together and forged what foreigners called the Blackstone Chair. Every time a man sat it, he seemed to be about to be devoured by a great beast. It’s teeth were gone in the front, but still there on the sides, being as armrests, the others would shadow the king’s face by forming a canopy above his head. There was a table on the audience floor in front of it.
Evidently there had just been a High Council meeting. Probably to welcome that lord, Hedderic.
Only the King or the Lord Protector could ever sit the Throne. She would never. But she did not want to. Her brother would come into the throne when her father died.
I wonder if Godryk would be a good king? She thought. It makes no matter. He will be anyways.
Alayne pushed the thought from her mind and walked swiftly through the hall, passing her grandfather Gared Morris on the way. He nodded at her. As master of the Blades, he commanded the king’s personal army of one hundred knights from around the realm. Not on par with the Kingsguard, but still very deadly. He was armored in his ash-and-black armor, his skull-shaped greathelm under on arm. “Alayne, good afternoon,” he said, his voice a whisper of the wind.
“Good afternoon to you to grandfather. How are you?”
“I keep well.” He replied. He was not truly her grandfather. They shared no blood. But he was her brother’s grandfather and was so called grandfather by all the Dracoran children. Her true grandfathers were both dead, one was a Dracoran and the other was some soldier.
“Why’s Godryk raising men?” She asked.
“He means to remove the threat of barbarians in the Hartswood, Alayne. Now off with you. I must stand my watch.”
“Yes grandfather.” Alayne hurried off and opened a door to a small inner courtyard, covered in trellises and filled with hedges. From behind them, steel rang.
Alayne crept around the hedge and watched. Two men in full plate stood there, trading blows with longswords. One of them carried a shield with the field of a starry night and six crows on it, another had the device or a red rose on yellow. The knight of the starry crows was in heavy plate with a bucket-shaped greathelm, the knight of the rose wore a halfhelm with a covered face, his gorget and covering making the halfhelm near a greathelm.
The battle ended soon after she arrived, the crow knight put his weight behind his shield and slammed the other one, as the knight of the rose staggered backwards, the knight of the starry crows bashed his chestplate with his longsword, sending the man crashing to the ground. The crow knight knelt and drew a short dirk, he flicked open the other’s visor and put the dirk above his face.
“I yeild.” Said the one below him.
The crow knight got up and pulled the other man to his feet. Alayne smiled broadly. “Hello.”
The two turned to face her. “You’re here,” said Sir Preston Wainfleet, the knight of the red rose.
“Told you,” Said the knight of the starry crows, Sir Edric Bar Marron, the master-at-arms, called Ravenstar by many. “Are you ready for today’s lesson, my princess?”
“I am.”
“Sir Preston will armor you.”
Sir Preston put her in chainmail and leathers, and heavy plate made for a short person. It fit her well enough but was loose here and there. Sir Preston gave her a halfhelm to wear and a small shield with the device of a standing tree. Before she put on the halfhelm, she made sure none of her long red hair would get in her face. The armor was heavy, truly, but the smith had made it correct to sir Edric’s designs. It was lighter than plate and heavier than mail and right for her size. She accepted her longsword form Sir Preston.
Her weapon was not common steel, she could not have carried it if it were. It was forged of Bitterglass. An alloy of Dragonsteel and the metal known as Bronzewater. Both useful and hard to find. It was lighter than any longsword had a right to be, and when an edge was put on it, it was sharper than a razor.
Sir Edric took his place opposite her.
“Stance,” She took her stance, placing the shield ahead of her, the longsword poised for thrusting behind it. Some girls might like to be a graceful warrior like a Navareen Sand Dancer. She had seen the sand dance. But the knight’s dance was for her. It had an elegance all its own, and while the Sand Dancers were dancers, knights were painters who only used red and grey. Sir Edric had told her, the day she’d asked to be taught at arms. “It’s a hard teaching, and for a girl, you’ll have it extra hard. Jayne Wickwill was taught in the ways of the Sand Dancer, that is the art a lady should use for war, if any.”
But she had told him she didn’t want to be a sand dancer. She wanted to be a knight. They who rode tilts and thundered to battle on coursers with swords and maces, not who leap from rooftop to rooftop spinning swords.
Sir Edric swung, a fast sideface blow, she caught in on her shield. Wrenching the shield sideways, she thrust with her sword, steel met steel with a metal ringing.
The knight’s dance was hers.
LYLE
Lyle Barklaw hurried down the steps of the freezing courtyard. Icemark was made all of stone, built over a hot spring under the mountain and heated by huge iron pipes running through its walls. The snows outside melted when they touched the pipes, the walls were hot to the touch.
But the outside was a different matter. It was a midsummer blizzard again, this high in the mountains though it could snow at any time. The stuff in question was piled up three feet high in the courtyard, and the servants hadn’t shoveled it out of the way yet. Lyle was wrapped in a thick grey cloak but it still chilled him as he struggled through it towards the castle proper. The scroll mustn’t get wet, he thought to himself as he plodded through the snow half as high as him. In the winter it was worse. Where it snowed a hundred feet deep in the vales. He’d just been a minor lord’s second son until a few months ago.
But it wasn’t this cold in Barklaw Hall. The snows dusted the ground, yes, but never piled up like soldiers in a siege. The Hall wasn’t as gigantic either, it was no castle. Icemark was one of the most formidable castles in the Ironlands.
Lyle stamped out of the snowy courtyard and began up the icy steps. The guard, a grim-looking soldier in full plate with a snarling wolf ringed in icicles blazed on his shield opened the door for him.
He stopped to look at the man for a moment. Someday he was to command men like that, to be a knight in service to house Athelhere and house Harwin. Right now though, he was only a squire, though a squire for a lord he was still only a squire. He stood there in the main hall of the castle, stamping and puffing, glad for the warm, well-lit halls. After a moment while he let his extremities thaw, Lyle started down the hall, made his way up the stairs, through the higher halls to the Frost keep then through the high halls to the Ice Keep and then to His Lordship’s Audience Hall.
He stopped for a moment to collect himself and look as a squire to a lord should, then entered.
There were several smallfolk and the knight who evidently ruled their holdfast standing there. The peasants were claiming that bands of wild folk were coming down from the mountains with the animals as summer threatened to draw to a close and were stealing the livestock and attacking isolated farms, pillaging for crops to put aside for the long winter to come only a year away.
“How many?” Asked Vance, from his Wolf throne, he was listening intently.
Vance was a fairly plain looking man, a poor job with a razor every morning made sure he didn’t grow a beard and he had taken shears to his hair as a boy to make sure it never got in his way during battle. He lived by his father’s words that “Hard places breed hard men.” And if there were men harder than Vance, Lyle had never heard of them. Vance had a scar over his left eye that he had had mended on campaign in the Harvale with a burning knife and thread. It left a grisly scar and his eye had drained of color. He always wore his scaled leather armor and cloak everywhere. And his sword. Nothing special, an ugly thing of pitted steel that was by some accounts sharp as a razor. He honed it every day. When he had heard their council, Vance nodded and straightened.
“Sir Asher Darrion.” He called. His voice was as a young man’s voice was but had an aura of command over it. Wisdom Waylan had said it was “Velvet over steel”
The knight in question stepped forwards and knelt. All of Vance’s bannermen were notoriously loyal to him.
“At your command my lord,” asked the knight, who’s sigil was a broken tower. He wore plain grey plate.
“Take half a hundred of my men and muster what levies you need. Find these wild men and put them to the sword. Send her ladyship their heads. I will join you once I have mustered my own men and we can sweep the Icehearts.”
Then his steward spoke up. “Lord Harwin, if it pleases you, your wound still needs to heal, the Wisdom says so.”
Vance ground his teeth and looked over at the frail old man in robes. “Is that so Lurin? It does not please me, in fact.”
The man nodded. “Yes, my lord, the clansman truck you with a steel ball on a chain, or morningst-”
“I know what a Morningstar is, Lurin, just tell me the facts.”
“Your bone still needs to knit back together to heal fully my lord.”
Vance ground his teeth again. “How long? I feel a craven sititng here in my castle. No better than those carrion crows at Feyrlun.” Vance had made his displeasure known at Lady Sandra’s suitors, telling them that they should be in their lands, ruling their people, not troubling their leigelord. He was nearly the only man of high birth not courting the lady, there being nearly half a hundred suitors at Feyrlun. He was clearly more interested in war than the affections of women, wealthy or otherwise, though one of Her Ladyship’s suitors had gone too far when asking if Vance preferred men instead, and the young lord had challenged him to a duel and nearly run him through with a longsword for impugning on his honor so.
“My lord,” Said Sir Darrion, “we know you are wounded, we wouldn’t want you to go off riding into the hills with a mending leg.”
Vance ground his teeth again. “The cane feels like a shackle.”
“Nevertheless.” Counciled Wisdom Waylan from his desk in the corner. You couldn’t argue with a ‘nevertheless’ from Wisdom Waylan. Vance leaned back again. “My sword arm will be useless with any more of this malingering.”
“My lord, I know that your honor is important to you, but while other men pledge their swords to their lords, you seem to be trying to gift-wrap an entire freehold.”
“Any lord who cannot defend his bannermen is no lord. Tooth and Claw, Waylan. Our words.”
Several of the knights in attendance straightened slightly. Every man of them intensly proud of their heritage, the men of the Harvale being the blood of the first men and the blood of Old Tantesia, while the rest of the Ironalanders in the Seavale and the Feyvale were descended from the Raqori. They took pride in being ‘Ironmen’ as well. Few other men in the Ironlands could claim to embody iron as much as Vance Harwin. Though Iron was useful and hard it was cold and unforgiving as well. Vance was not a merciful man nor a kind one.
Lyle took a breath and stepped forward, the scroll under his skinny arms. Vance looked over from the Wolfthrone
“Lyle.” He said. He never smiles.He thought Lord Vance never smiled as far as Lyle knew, keeping a stern face for his lords, but he had when he agreed to foster Lyle and make him a squire. He had said to him the day he had arrived at Icemark.
“We’re hard men here, Lyle Barklaw. Is this the life you want?” Vance had gestured to the men practicing with sword and shield, the master-at-arms demonstrating on a pig carcass where the best places to stab a man were at to the training guardsmen, to the frozen peaks of the Icefangs and the green valley of Harvale. Lyle had told him ‘yes.’ All his life he’d dreamed of being a knight. Vance had given him a very rare, very thin smile and nodded. He’d always been straightforward. Vance had inherited Icemark at the age of eight, and had killed his first man at nine. He was, as he put it ‘a hard man’ And his reputation among the freeholds was that he was straight as an arrow and dedicated to his liege. Those that knew him well could stand his ever-present sternness loved him well, but to everyone else he came across as prickly and unlikable and suspicious of everyone save his liege. Lyle remembered when he had seen the girls of one town line the streets for a glimpse of the Ice Wolf returning from battle and asked the scarred, silent freerider at the head of the column where lord Harwin was, if he had survived, never suspecting they were addressing him himself.
“What’s this then, another raid? A letter from those crows at Feyrlun?”
Vance took the letter and broke the seal, the sigil of a rearing horse.
“It’s from Lady Sandra, my lord.”
Vance nodded. “It would seem so,” his eyes roved over the yellow parchment.
“It would appear that yet another problem has arisen. A shame.”
With that, Vance pushed open the doors behind his throne and left.
“I wonder what that was about.” Asked Sir Fallin Piper, a knight whose sigil was a white flute on a green field. The master at arms, Sir Martyn Dare nodded and gestured to a pair of Harwin men-at-arms. They bowed and thumped their pikes on the ground, ushering the courtiers to leave. Lyle started out too but Waylan stopped him with a raised hand. “His lordship will require a squire, still.”
Lyle nodded and started after his lord but stopped before he reached the door. “Wisdom…what was it?”
“Crows and ravens bring important news over the realm.”
Lyle looked at his feet. “Most important news is depressing, isn’t it.”
“Joyous news is often not deemed as important, Lyle,” said the Wisdom, not unkindly. “Go now.” He
motioned with his head towards the door.
Lyle started up the stairs behind the throne room and followed them up and up to the top of Icemark. To the Snow Gardens. They were called that because there was nothing but trees that grew there. Evergreens and grey-green Spearpines. On the top of the keep icy statues frolicked amongst their three acres, mythic dragons, wild beasts, men, knights with blades raised high. Every few weeks someone would add more if they took a mind to ice carving.
In the Snow Gardens was the Old Godhunt. It had long since crumbled from disuse, but the Harwins kept to the gods of the Wild, The statues here were they. The Dog, Wolf, Stag, Horse, Hare, Rat, Falcon, Crow, Snake, Waterdragon, Pike, Kraken, Dragon, Bear, Spider, Scorpion, Man, and Beast.
Vance sat before the statue of the Wolf, while every castle had a relatively similar god, the Beast ws always the different, customarily placed outside the circle or in the shadow of the Man or looking over his shoulder, it was always different. Here it was a hunched man-wolf thing with long clawlike fingers and slavering jaws. The gods of the men of Yore were never as friendly as the Three of the Faith or the One. The gods of the wild were only worshipped by the houses of the men of Yore. Everywhere kept a Godhunt. Even if it was mostly out of tradition. Some were expansive, some were arrayed like a pack, the snarling wolf and dog customarily by the side of the torch-bearing, axe-wielding Man, the ever-different Beast always hungrily watching the rest.
Lyle approached Vance, who’s longsword was across his knees, Dark One, it was called, no one knew why. It was pitted grey steel, not Dragonsteel or Bronzewater or Biterglass. Just common steel, but hundreds of years old.
The Old Gods of the Hunt required no special prayers like the Three of the Faith or the One or the Frozen King. One could pray to them, but there were no special words. The howl of the wind is their prayer. The only prayer they need. He’d been told once. There were no hymns. You prayed and the gods of the Hunt listened and did or did not answer. Men do not question gods. There were no preists. No holy men. No chapels. Only statues and whispers in the wind. But here, in the cold of the Icefangs with the wind whipping all around you and the distant howl of the Pack as wolves brought down prey in the distance, you could almost believe these gods would get up and touch you.
“Lyle.” Said Vance.
“My lord, Waylan said you would have need of a squire.”
“Yes. Bring me my whetstone and oil and cloth. I have not yet honed Dark One today. Now is as good a time as ever.”
Lyle nodded. Vance would always spend time every day razoring his sword.
“My lord…” asked Lyle, the wind nearly drowning out his voice.
“Speak, lyle.” Said Vance.
“What is it? What troubles you?”
“My brother is dead. He was serving as a knight, riding with Her Ladyship’s redcloaks. Killed south of the Gorge in a dispute with some locals.”
“Oh. I am sorry my lord.”
“No you’re not. You didn’t know him. I barely knew him myself. He was my brother, so I loved him, as an older brother does. I brought him to the king’s court once when he was young. But I can’t say I knew him well. He was my brother. Now he is dead. You are not required to be sorry. I am not.”
You are not required to be sorry? He was his brother. How can he not greive?
“But I, ah…I wish he lived, my lord.”
Vance was still. “So do I. But we cannot change that what has passed. He is dead. I am not. You are not. My lands are intact, my leigelord lives, the killers will be hung. Life goes on. Be thankful for that. No man is entitled to anything but his path in life. And even that may be taken from him.”
Lyle was about to take his leave when Vance spoke again.
“Have you ever killed a man, Lyle?”
What kind of question is that? “No, my lord. I am only five-and-ten.”
“I was nine. During the war they call the Mythic War. A man-at-arms of house Locke. My brother never killed a man until a year ago, in the Bloodwood. An outlaw.
They sent me to be fostered at Feyrlun until I was six-and-ten. Most boys have to wait until they’re a man grown, but my uncle died when I was fourteen and left no other relatives to be lord of Icemark. So I was allowed to return here and rule. The youngest ruling lord in four hundred years. But most everyone from my boyhood is gone. I recall training with the lord Athelhere’s son, but he died. I remember his uncle, but he’s dying and the other one’s bookish. Now that I recall, the only person I ever knew who’s still alive is the lord I serve. Ironic.”
Lyle was unsure why Vance was telling him all this. He was a hardspoken man and not a talkative one at that.
“The gods take who they choose.” Lyle motioned at the statues.
Vance looked around at the statues “You keep to the old gods then. Only the Harvale houses do in the Ironlands. Odd that I don’t. Not as such.”
“But, my lord…you are in a Godhunt.”
“I am. That doesn’t mean I’m one for pious bleating. I like the silence. The statues have been here for centuries. So have the trees. I don’t worship trees do I?”
“Ah…no, my lord.”
“Good.” Vance returned to looking at the sky.
“Shall I take my leave, my lord?”
“As you wish, Lyle. I will be up here. Bring a skin of mulled wine. It’s cold.” Vance leaned back against the statue of Wolf again and looked up at the grey, cloudy sky.
RAT
Rat basked lazily in the sun, reading a book on a roof. The wind smelled of sea salt and the city. He’d once been told by a sailorman how each city had its own smell, like drinks. Seawatch smelled of dead grass and horse manure. Earthy but freezing. Long Pike smelled of ship’s lacquer and tar and blood. It was a warport forever fighting pirates raiding from the Northstones. Southgarden smelled of wine and spices. A trading port. Kingshead was a cesspool of people. It smelled like disease and reeked. The Wineway had the scent of lemons in the breeze, flowers and fruits. It was the pride of Lacuster. Lacusport was always smelling of stone, stone towers and red rock. A defended port. Coldharbor, one of the busiest ports in the world smelled of rain and damp and the forest. It was in the midlands and built among the rainy Stonegrave Forest. Seaton smelled of dirt and grass, built on the Joining Plains of Northmarch and Stormlane. Feyrlun was small and rich and smelled of iron and wood. But alone amongst these. Green Cliffs smelled like the Sea. It’s harbor was the most frequented of northern ports and it’s docks stretched for miles.
Rat turned a page.
He could read. That was an odd thing about him. He could write too. And he could climb and be quick and had a gift in his wits.
Rat Hunter was a bastard. His father had been a drunken soldier camped here during some minor scuffle with bandits so he’d raped a girl of ten, or so he had been told. The man was long gone and his mother had died of the Firefever a year after he was born and a life on the streets had raised him, Vylarr, Timeon, Lugg, Scaveor and Rodrick. Daven Wykwood had looked after them all, the sellsword had had a mind to start his own mercenary band but never got around to it. The mace that had smashed into his leg had shattered his knee and put an end to him selling his sword. Now he drunk himself blind every night on money he got from any contracts that remained to him. He wasn’t brought so low he sent out his ‘lads’ to get him drinking money. That had been the first thing he’d taught them. Never give a man drinking money. Never demand money or you’ll end up in debt up to your eyeballs.
And what words they were. Thought Rat. They all had mostly drifted away to live their lives how they decreed. Rat, at three-and-ten was still a cutpurse, though he was a hawker as well. He bought fish from the fishermen and sold them along the quays. He sometimes stole into places to take things as well.
Vylarr was still his closest friend, the youth of seven-and-ten had tried his hand at banditry for a year, and returned to Green Cliffs with a longsword, a red cloak and some cheap armor. He said he’d taken it off a corpse he’d made and had no wish to make more, but he was the closest thing to a real bandit Rat knew. He said he wanted to be a knight some day. So did every boy, but Vylarr really wanted it. He had no lordships or lands but he hoped if he wore his sword and chainmail that some knight would take him on as a squire.
Rodrick was dead. He’d been knifed and dumped in a canal. Scaveor had become a sailor. Timeon was gone. The Southron had vanished one day, leaving a note about becoming a sellsword. They’d never heard from him since. He was the only one of them save Rat who could read and write. Lugg was a dog. A scrawny, fleabitten thing with more teeth than hair. He was curled up in she shadow of the chimney beside Rat while Rat himself enjoyed a good read.
It was a fascinating book about the First Men and their culture. It held many stories of their times as well. The legend of the Vaersvult was his favourite.
The first king had only his sword and seventeen companions, but the Vaersvult devoured them all. Flesh and bone. Root and stem. For they hated made things and fire and bronze. The First King was alone in the great forest with but his axe and a single, guttering torch. The Vaersvult hunted him for sport. He was the only man in their realm, after all, and was far more entertaining than animals. Man was no base prey. He had his axe. Manteeth, they called it in their tongue and fire. Sunhurt, they called it in their tongue and armor. Stoneskin, they called it in their tongue. But he could not evade them, for they were gods. But they were the gods of ending. And they hated fire and made things. They tore his armor and they hurt him and he fled as they hunted him for the last time, hungry and lean, to drink his hot blood. But Man was not die this day. In the forest, Horse and Wolf found him, hurt and frozen as the Vaersvult hunted him-”
His reading was interrupted by a clattering noise.
Vylarr clambered up to the slated roof he was reclining on against a chimney, a sack in hand.
“Ah, the knight errant returns from his quest with offerings for his liege,” said Rat, eying the bag.
“I never seen the point of books.” Said Vylarr. He had mousy brown hair where Rat’s was coalblack. “Can’t say I’d like to spend all my days reading about someone else’s life. I don’t even understand how those signs make sounds in your head.”
Rat closed the book and put it aside. The roof that was their current haunt was atop a smithy and was reasonably dry. “They say the man who reads a thousand books lives a thousand lives, but an illiterate man only lives one. May I ask what’s in the sack?”
“Supper,” replied Vylarr, unbuckling his swordbelt tossing it at the base of a chimney. He set the sack down with a thump. Without hesitating, the man began to root in the bag’s depths until he produced a wineskin. He began to drink.
Rat sighed. “Oh, by all means, go ahead.”
Vylarr stopped drinking for a moment. He offered him the wineskin. Rat shook his head.
Vylarr handed him a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese and went back to his wineskin, once he had drank his fill he sat back against the chimney. “Well. We’re out of a job,” he said, resignedly.
Rat sighed again. “How did you ruin this one, dare I ask?”
“I ah….may have said some things about our employer’s mother.”
Rat paused, considering the options. “What kind of things?”
“About, ah, her…fondness for dogs…male dogs.”
Maybe I should have some of that wine after all. Thought Rat, gloomily. “Why?” he asked.
“He said I didn’t do the job right. Called me useless.”
Rat tore a heel of bread off of the loaf and ate it. “So he reprimanded you and you called his mother a dog fucker.”
“I may have been drunk at the time,” admitted Vylarr, indicating his wineskin.
“Well drunk or not. We have no more income from you, which means I have no way to buy the day’s catch at the docks, which means I have no fish to sell, which means we have no money. Again.”
Vylarr had the good graces to at least look ashamed. “We could sign on as sailors on a galley. That’s good pay.”
Good pay though it may be, the prospect of letting sailors bugger us up and down the serpent sea makes it lose some of it’s appeal.
“I don’t think so.” He said.
“I suppose you’re right,” admitted Vylarr. He reached out and scratched Lugg behind one of his mangled ears. The dog’s hairless tail thumped for a few seconds.
“We’ll see if they’ve heard anything down on the docks. If push comes to shove we can try and join the Watch,” suggested Rat.
Vylarr took another draught of wine. “Good as any idea,” he said when he was done.
And that was how Rat found himself in the tavern called the Dockside Den.
Rat looked halfheartedly into the depths of a mug of ale while a marcher sellsword boasted of having fucked a girl from every freehold.
And in every freehold, to hear him tell it. Thought Rat. And across the Serpent Sea. And on the moon for what it’s worth. “Tell us again about the time in the Gorge!” demanded Vylarr, who always enjoyed hearing war stories. Rat sipped his ale and traced an idle pattern on the tabletop.
“Alright, allright,” said the sellsword. “It was pissin’ rain, right? It’s always thunder and lightning in the Gorge, so it’s pissin’ rain, mud’s up to your knees, can’t see two yalms ahead for all the vines and the trees. Bloody inhospitable place, that. Very green.” He took a long swig from his tankard. Some of the ale dribbled through his coarse, short beard. “Right in the middle of a battle it were. During Aaron Marksy’s rebellion. I was going along with some lordling from Sothon who’s purse was fat enough to get me to fight the rebel lord. Anyways, I’m thinking, hells this battle is unpleasant, I’m wading through the muck, blood on my sword and blood on my armor and all. Can’t see anything, battle’s good as lost, I was just concerned with legging it out of there. My blood’s up though, every now and then I stumble across a few stragglers, mostly Bloody Men. That’s what we called the Marksys, the Bloody Men. Vicious fighters them, they got the most numbers of any house in the Thunderbow, even more than Ungorian. All mad for fightin’ too.” He took another swig and slammed his mug down on the table, the others listened intently. “So I find a few, kill a few, hah. Then I come across this little village, me an’ some other men. Couldn’t have been more’n a few dozen hovels, well, I’d chosen the wrong side in the battle, as it were, so I figured a little bit of loot’d be a good thing. Now I’d been given a battle command by some minor lord in service to the Gorgens, fifty men, freeriders, a few sellswords, mostly Gorgegard Men. We go howlin’ down on this villiage, swords out, turns out we weren’t the first ones!” He chuckled. “Some Bloody Men had taken it into their mind to stop for a bit of looting on the way back to Bloodlet Throne. War’s war. I would of done the same in their boots. Anyhow, we come down on them in the midst of their pilliage, they’re caught with their pants down, literally in some cases, some were looting, some weer raping, some were killing, some were stealing. All the same. So we drive these damned Marksys out but we’re so exhausted none of us had the strength left to pick up where they left off!” The sellsword guffawed. “Anyways. The knight ruling the town comes up to me, seeing as I’m commanding, praises me, offers to knight me hisself, I say, no to the knighting but he says to me, ‘name a reward and it shall be yours’” The others around the inn had gone silent now, clearly enraptured by his tale.
“Well?” Asked a sailor. “What’d you ask for?”
The sellsword gave a grin. “I said to him…you got any daughters?”
The inn erupted into drunken laughter. Rat found himself unhumored by the tale.
“What about you Rat, make a man of yerself yet?” Asked a dockworker. Rat was a common sight on the docks.
Rat gave a weak smile. “Not as such…” He could sense that some of the whores in the corner were gopng to try to see if he’d go upstairs with them again if they heard this. He might have if he’d had the money, but Rat and Vylarr were the dregs of society and poor to boot. I should get out of here before that, he thought. ‘Oh, yes, I would fuck you but I’m too poor.’ Hah.
Miserable, Rat stood up. “I’m going to talk a walk down by the docks.”
Vylarr stood up. “I’ll go with you, can’t hold my ale.” He was wearing his longsword tonight, though Rat had never seen him use it.
Rat stepped out into the cool night. A light fog was coming off of the Bay of Whales and shrouded the wharves in it’s wet, clinging embrace. They stretched away over the water for miles with beams and masts of ships jutting out of the fog like spears on an abandoned battlefield. Rat enjoyed the silence, broken only by the sounds of the city and the occasional splash or distant whale call from out on the bay.
He took a deep breath. The sea was in the air. The salt sea. He blinked as he heard Vylarr’s booted footsteps on the walkway. The former bandit walked to the edge of the peir the tavern was on and unlaced his breeches. There was a pattering sound on the water as he pissed into the sea.
“Ah, there’s a sight,” said Rat. “The dastardly outlaw making the formidable Serpent Sea all the mightier with a serpent of his own.”
Vylarr chuckled. “Hah, well. Mine is a mighty seadragon, it seems fit that he should wake the wroth of the sea god.”
“You are too smug by half,” Chided Rat.
“If I wasn’t smug by half, I’d be smug by quarters.” He continued to urinate.
“I’d much rather you be smug by Sables, truth be told. We’re beggared,” Pointed out Rat.
Vylarr shook himself off and tied up his breeches. “Ah, nothing like a good piss. Except maybe a woman. And even then it’s close.”
Rat stretched at his wrist. “If fucking is so comparable to pissing I might as well not bother.”
“You’d be missing out on a world of joy, Rat.”
“How? all I’d need to do for satisfaction is drink my bladder to bursting each day. It does have a certain appeal.”
“Getting drunk every day?” Asked Vylarr. They began to walk down the quays.
“No, having all that money to spend on wine. I’d spend it on something else. Or lay it aside.”
“Smart. Me, I’d piss it away.”
It was true. Vylarr could be said to pool his money together. First at the gambling table, then in his cups and then finally pool it all together in a yellow puddle in an alley.
“You would, wound’t you.”
“You’re too smart to be a fish hawker Rat. You can make clever remarks and read and write. High Hermitage would take you.”
“Become a Wisdom? Live in some high lord’s castle counseling them. That sounds grand. But there’s the small matter of passage to High Hermitage. I’m just as like to raise that kind of money than our wise and benevolent lord is to raise me to lordship.”
Rat wandered to the edge of a quay while Vylarr produced a skin of wine somewhere and started chugging.
He looked out over the sea. It might actually be something, to be a Wisdom. Better than this life, at least. My only companions a drunken bandit and a dog.
He heard a distant whale call.
“It’s a new century tomorrow.” He observed. “The one thousandth year since the coming of the Raqori.”
Vylarr’s chugging noises stopped and the man staggered over. “Aye, the Raqori, the civilized folk.”
“They had a name for the conquering, you know,” observed Rat.
Vylarr blinked. “What’d they call it?”
“The first men didn’t have a chance, with their bronze against iron and chariots. The Raqori called the war ‘The Tale of Rat and Dragon.’ Do you know that? It was so one-sided.”
Vylarr bobbed his head, probably thinking he was nodding sagely, though looking more like a surprised chicken than a sage. “The Dragon won, right. That was the raqori?”
“It was. The First Men held their own for a long time but they lost. The last true Raqori still across the sea think that the Tale repeats itself every thousand years with different players each time.”
“Always wanted to be part of a saga,” said Vylarr.
“Well if the Tale restarts tomorrow we will be” Said Rat.
“New century, new millennium, new rebirths. Here’s to everyone everywhere” Vylarr was clearly dead-drunk by now. He began toasting the stars, lifting his skin of wine to the sky. “Here’s to the new gods and the old and the new millennium and the old. Here’s to the smallfolk like us. Here’s to the high lords and their Great Game and here’s to the Raqori with their Tale of Rat and Dragon.”
Me: All non-PCs and the following houses
House of Karkis: Lords of Karkin
House of Reihn: Lords of the Rains
House of Morris: Lords of the North and West Marches
House of Bogg: Lords of Marne
House of Harper: Lords of the East March
House of Celtigar: Lords of the Harborlands
House of Fallard: Lords of Morlond
House of Dracoran: Kings of Norvath by Right of Victory
House of Sothston: Lords of the South March
PLAYER HOSUES
Felix: House of Oskeherre, Lords of the Huntlands
Glass: House of Ungorian, Lords of the Thunderbow
Wark: House of Gurthane, Lords of Stormlane
Klimono: house of Koulemvour, Lords of the Stonelands
Halon: House of Krultuch, Lords of the Kraken Isles
Harrab: house of Athelhere: Lords of the Ironlands
Coolyo: house of Ahil, Lords of the Navareen
(if someone could find the map, that'd be awesome)
FIRST POSTS
by
NEPTY
“In the year 9999, nearly ten centuries after the Raqori conquest of Norvath wrested that land from the hands of the First Men and the day before the turning of the millennium, several important events took place. They would lead up to the event known as the Tale of Rat and Dragon, Or the Song of the Vaersvult.”
____________________________________________________PROLOGUE___________________________
There were some nights when you just couldn’t get warm, it was plain that that was what the man was thinking as he fed more sticks to the fire. As he shoved the twigs into the small blaze, he took the opportunity to warm his hands, gloved though they were.
The man had built his fire in the lee of a rock face jutting from the ground. It was out of the wind, as the nearby Spearwoods proved an effective windbreak and their needles proved ample fuel for the fire. But fire can be life and death in the cold nights of the Stonegrave forest.
Bulitt wondered If perhaps he could lunge and surprise the man, but he didn’t weigh his chances heavily. He was alone and though armed, he had only a longsword and an eight-foot-spear with a leaf-shaped iron head, the other man had a crossbow that could send a quarrel punching clean though Bullit’s hauberk and mail.
He decided to wait. He didn’t dare move either. Hallis Vole and Muddy were back with their Rounseys a mile to the south. He had gone ahead for a few hours to scout ahead and had noticed the fire glowing through the gaps in the trees. Bullit squinted and tried to make out the rest of the man. It was hard though, shrouded as the fellow was by cloak and smoke. He seemed to be wearing a cowl and a scarf around his face to ward off the chill, his eyes were open though, and gleamed in the firelight from under his hood. His clothes were all black and his armor too, light chained mail and leathers. There was a disturbance in the blacks around his hip that might be a scabbard, and he had started the fire with wood shavings, so he likely had a knife. What worried Bullit, however, was the crossbow propped against the rock. It was made of finely oiled walnut and steel and a small quiver of a dozen or so quarrels lay next to it. Each quarrel had the look of a four-tined bodkin to it. A weapon like that could punch through caste-forged plate with the same ease it could mangle Bullit’s own flimsy leathers. Bullit squinted again.
The man might have ample money in those bags by his feet but he wasn’t like to have so much it could pay for Bullit to bribe to gods to let him back into the world if the man shot him. He gripped his long ash spear in one hand and prepared to slink back into the forest.
As the bandit shifted his weight, using the spear as a prop, his foot slipped several inches and came down hard onto a rock. The clink on steel was the loudest sound in the clearing. Bullit froze.
The stranger’s head shot up from the fire and he glared suspiciously at a point several feet to Bullit’s left. Hoping that gazing into the flames had impaired the man’s night vision, Bullit slunk off.
When he got five hundred steps away, Bullit judged he could walk quicker. He carefully followed his trail hack through the mist-shrouded woods of searpines and Watchers and black-trunked ebonwoodswith needles as dark as midnight.
When he found them, Hallis Vole was keeping watch over their three ragged rounsys as they idly grazed on grass growing up through a broken stump. Muddy was huddled against a tree, wrapped in a dark green cloak with a sewn-over badge of a sable sword, marking him as a deserter from the Blackblades, the peacetime soldiers consigned to serving against outlaws out of penance for their crimes. Whereas Hallis was a Stonelander who had come out of the mountains after a life in that harsh land had weathered him into a man fit only to be a killer, and being that there were no wars present and the Redcloaks had rules and arrested rather than killed and the Blackblades were too far north to join and had rules against pillaging, he had taken up the bandits life. He was a big man and wrapped in mule hides and sheepskin like most stonelanders. He wore a big square beard and a bigger falchion that had won many an argument and gotten them out from under the hands of the Redcloaks many a time as well.
Muddy was a Marnishman who got his name from his place of birth and the constant, caking filth he covered himself to hide his scent and looks. Short and rude, he preferred his bladed water-dragon hunting spear and a hard bow of hornwood strung with catgut. He liked to joke that murder had gotten him into the blackblades and murder got him out. He told them he’d knifed a girl for speaking too loudly when he was trying to sleep and that lord Bogg’s men had spent the better part of the summer chasing him down before shipping him off to the fortress at greenside to take up the dark sword in penance. He’d apparently spent two years in the blades before he’d gotten sick of it, killed his companions when scouting after some raider and fled down south were he’d met up with Bullit and Hallis Vole.
Bullit had stolen a few hundred gold crowns from a merchant but, fool that he was, he’d let the merchant live to describe him. The red cloaks had tried to grab him a the next town he stopped in but he’d made off, but not before killing a pair of them with the same pitted steel longsword that hung at his hip.
Hallis Vole looked away from the rounseys. “You’re back. Did you find anything worth anything?” He had hacked his falchion into the tree stump and had his arms crossed against his huge chest.
Muddy peered through his own cloak. “Gods, must I get up?” he seemed to be talking to the sky, as if asking the gods if he must stand.
Bullit leaned on his spear, the haft making an impression of the soft, wet ground. “One man. No horse. All in black. Got a good crossbow and might have a sword. Prob’ly a knife too. He had two sacks with him.” He was sure one of those sacks had coins. It looked heavy and misshapen enough.
Hallis Vole uncrossed his arms and rubbed some warmth into his hands. “One man? You’re sure?”
Bullit scowled. “I watched the fellow for a half hour. He had no companions with him. He didn’t take a shit or eat. He just fed his fire.”
Hallis spat into the shadows of the nighttime woods and walked over to Muddy. “Get up you.” He gave the heap of sodden green cloth a prod with his boot.
“Oho. How polite. Wake up on the wrong side of a rock this morning, Hallis? Did you break your fast on bugs?” grumbled Muddy, untangling himself. The marnishman was short and wiry and had dark hair and pale skin. He yawned and bent to pick up his bow.
Hallis Vole frowned. “It’s nighttime.”
Muddy chuckled to himself and muttered “Halfwit” as he strung his bow. It took him several tries, and he cursed the soft ground and wet air. When he finally managed it he held it up lamely and twanged the string. It thumped damply. “This wouldn’t send an arrow through paper, much less armor,” he complained. “Where’s my pack? I have some spare strings in there.”
Hallis Vole rooted through one of the bags tied to the saddle on Muddy’s rounsey and withdrew a cloth package. “What’s this, velvet? It’s only string Muddy.”
The Marnishman snatched away the packet and after what seemed to Bullit to be overmuch choosing and contemplative noises selected a string that looked just like the others. He wrapped the rest back up and handed them back. Then he rounded on Hallis Vole. “Treat a sword poor and it still bludgeons people to death. Treat a bow poor and it’ll be the death of you.” The marnishman tested the string and made a satisfied noise. “All ready?” He picked up his bog spear and slid it into his belt.
Hallis Vole smirked and wrenched his huge falchion from the tree trunk he had planted it into. “That shows how much you know about swords. And yes. I’m ready. Notice how I didn’t have to fuss over every little detail like you.”
Muddy grunted and raised an eyebrow at Bullit, who was already carrying his spear and his longsword was still buckled into his belt.
“If you’re all finished, we must needs get going before our man falls asleep.” Asked Hallis Vole.
Muddy started off the way Bullit came. “That would make it easier to slit his throat, halfwit.”
Bullit led the way through the forest and found the camp where he had left it after several minutes of creeping through the woods. They stopped when they could see the glow.
“Quiet,” hissed Bullit, and slowly made his way towards the fire.
When they got there, the fire had died down to a few smoldering embers and the man with the crossbow was nowhere to be seen. His things were all there however, the dying fire, the crossbow, the quarrels and the two horsehide bags. Bullit scanned the treeline. No one.
Hallis Vole silently crawled over. “Did he go to take a piss?” he asked.
Bullit shook his head. “I hear nothing. Perchance he’s gone.”
Hallis Vole gave him a despairing look and got up and lumbered into the clearing. “There’s no one here.” He said and poked into the thick boughs of the spearwood pines with his Falchion. When he was satisfied that there was indeed no on here he turned back to them and gave a wide grin.
Muddy came out next. “You’re right. Not a soul.” He bent down by the embers of the fire and rooted about in the ashes while Hallis Vole picked up the crossbow.
“This is a fine piece of work, looks to be professional. Castle-made most like.”
Bullit got up last and went straight for the sacks of coins while the others argued about the type of crossbow it might be. He grabbed the first sack and turned it over. It was full of what felt like metal disks that clinked when he moved the bag. He fumbled for the drawstring with frozen fingers.
“Whomever was here can’t have been vanished for more than an hour. It would be prudent to take what we can carry and make haste away.” said Hallis Vole.
Bullit found the drawstring and pulled. The top of the bag opened and with a hiss, dozens of gold and black coins poured out.
The others looked over.
“Three gods,” said Hallis Vole, dropping the crossbow.
Muddy glared at Hallis Vole and told him he’d best be careful with the bow if he didn’t want it to break. Bullit paid neither of them any mind and grabbed a coin at random. A black sable, thick and- he paused to bite it- real iron and tin, no imitation money. Hallis Vole grabbed a fistful and frowned deeply. “Who carries this much money with them? We should leave this place. But bring the money.” But something was nagging at the back of Bullit’s mind. “Hallis, pick up the bag and try to carry it,” he said. The big man obliged and grunted as he lifted the bag. “A horse could bear this with ease.” He said.
“A horse, perhaps, but not a man afoot,” pointed out Bullit. “This man had no horse.”
Hallis Vole looked around suspiciously. “You’re right,” he said. “He didn’t.” He drew his hunting knife and slit the second horsehide bag. White cylinders sealed with red tumbled out. Scrolls.
“Scrolls. Letters.” Observed Hallis Vole.
“Mayhaps they would have some use as firestarters,” suggested Muddy. It was true none of them could read. “The wind chills me to the bone”
Hallis Vole looked uncertain. “I mislike this.”
Muddy laughed. “Do scrolls unman you so?”
The big man scowled. “Perchance he tied his horse up a distance away. Bullit, go search for it.”
Bullit nodded and took up his spear and pushed his way through Spearwoods and Godpines and Browncloak Sentinils. Half a hundred yalms away his feet nearly stumbled in a pothole and he cursed. There would likely be no horse here. No one was fool enough to tie their horse up out of sight. He continued on when he heard the babbling of water and nearly soaked his boot through when he found it. It was a thin, shallow rocky brook with Spearpines obscuring its roof. Bullit peered down its length but it was as dark as everything else and the night swallowed it less than five yalms away.
Bullit waded quickly across the stream and then turned back. Most like there was nothing here after all. And if there was it was hidden well enough that he couldn’t find it. As he turned he heard the screams.
A high, pitched, keening shriek, not one of pain but of sheer terror. Bullit whirled around and stared back at the way he came, frozen to the spot as the screams penetrated the air again and again. He could hear Muddy’s high-pitched screams, yes but also a sound of horror tearing from the throat of Hallis Vole. Louder and deeper.
They went on for only several seconds before Hallis Vole’s wails cut out with a shriek of pain and then…silence.
Bullit stared, unmoving at the way he had come. Back there was…something. He could feel something wet and warm running down his leg and filling his boot and the acrid stench of urine filled his nostrils.
Then the trees shook. He could hear the clatter of running feet. Bullit let his spear fall and fumbled clumsily for his longsword, dragging it out of its scabbard as Muddy burst from the trees.
The marnishman was in absolute terror, his eyes huge with fear. He didn’t stop when he saw Bullit in his way, only ran faster, cloak flapping and boots splashing into the stream. Ten yalms away he jerked to a held as if a puppet on a string.
Bullit could see a hand, gloved all in black gripping Muddy’s shoulder. Another hand snaked around his neck and seized his pale throat. Muddy’s face darkened and his eyes grew larger still as the hand squeezed. He let off a chain of choked gasps and short fitful attempts at breathing as he was lifted off the ground by some useen yet hugely powerful assailant.
“Gk…Ghh…glk…kl…kl…kkkkhhh…” Muddy choked pitiously. His hands, so adept and drawing and shooting his short bow of horn grabbed at the fingers around his throat and tried to pry them loose, to no avail. Bullit stood, transfixed as he watched Muddy die.
When he died, it was silently, ceasing to struggle and thrash. His hands slowly, limply fell to his sides and his eyes unfocused. The marnishman’s legs gave out and the strangling hand let go. Muddy collapsed in a tangle of green cloak and mail with a thump, his head in the stream.
Bullit stared, but not at his dead friend. He stared at the space behind him. There was no one there. He could hear no sound of breathing or disturbed pines. He was alone with the keening winds and the babbling brook and the towering stern spearwoods and the dead man in the Stonegrave forest.
___________________________________A TALE OF RAT &DRAGON_______________
Gods of old and gods of yore, when cold wind rises, return once more, waken from the wild’s core, when man forgets his ancient lore, when kingdoms die and brothers war, you will return to us once more, to paint the snows with bright red gore. To show them truth, what man is for, to open wide the closed snow door. The end of man is what you swore. Let them run, hunted, hated, all their strength in arms abated, let them flee, through the mud, let us drink their hot red blood.
HEDDERIC
The doors were lacquered black ironwood and creaked when they opened like a ship at storm. I hope that’s not the omen it would seem, thought Deric. They were very grand though. Carved minutely with flowers and mythical beasts. And some not so mythical, it would seem. He regarded a huge carved Manticore. Everything in the High Hall was grandly made. Deric waited for the doors to fully open before he walked inside. The guardsmen at the doors wore dragon head-shaped helms and bowed their heads as he passed.
The room was in the castle known as The High Hall, the king’s castle. The hall itself was the throne room, where the obsidian throne drank in the light from its dias in the back of the room, all harsh angles and lines and the odd jagged point where the bones peeked out, making it look very sinister indeed. At least it’s not covered in blood this time. The throne was made of a manticore skull, yawning open. There was a feast set out in front of it on a plain oak table. A small group of lordlings sat about it, discussing something in hushed tones over the soft clatter of cutlery. Deric walked slowly across the room, peering at it’s finery. The last time I was here it had been carpeted by corpses, now it was covered with a huge rug done in intricate Saali'i patterns. Bloodstains had been replaced by extensive honor scrolls dangled from each pillar and the alcoves from which the banners of every great house in Norvath hung were filled with the statues of kings.
The others must have heard him. Not a hard feat with his steel-shod boots echoing in the huge chamber. To them in their Raqori silks and fine Xantish lace he must look a sight, ragged chainmail and a leather jerkin and riding boots. An axe at his side and clothes covered in mud, sea salt and horse shit.
A man in a robe and cowl stood up, pushing his chair back as he did so. His cowl was thrown back so all might see his face, which in question was pale, as hairless as his head and gaunt as a skeleton. Deric could see the man’s skull under his skin but he had a sort of ageless quality to him. He looks like some young boy’s favourite grandfather. His brown, shining eyes and easy smile at odds with the midnight-black robes he wore with a cowl and daggered sleeves of the same color. When he spoke, his voice was amiable and light, airy even. It certainly didn’t sound old at all.
“Lord Karkis, it is our honor to welcome you. We heard of your troubles with storms off Cape Crab. My
condolences for you. It must have been terrible.” He reached out both hands in a Shakaarik greeting.
“Lord Ziefer,” greeted Deric, taking the Lord Warlock’s hands and shaking them.
“I am truly sorry for the abruptness of this meeting, you have just arrived from a long, stormy voyage.”
“So I’ve been told,” said Deric. He took the proffered seat at the foot of the high table. The seat down at the far end of it, nearest the throne was empty. “Where is the King?”
Another man, this one an even older man with a cloak sewn in greys and browns spoke up from his place to the left of the king’s vacant seat. His white hair was worn long over his shoulders in the fashion of the Learned Wisdoms.
“Unfortunatly, my, ah, lord, his Grace is ,ah, indisposed It may have been that something he, ah, ate last night did not agree with him.”
The third man at the table rolled his eyes, a young lordling with long brown hair and a handsome face. He wore armor gilded with patterns of greenery. “What High Wisdom Qorbin means to say is that my brother his royal holiness has the shits.”
Deric nodded at him. The castellan of High Hall was the king’s brother Varn Dracoran. His hair was not the characteristic Dracoran red but the chestnut brown of his Fallard mother. “I see. I take it to mean he won’t be joining us?” said Deric.
“His Grace has expressed his, ah, regrets.” Said Qorbin, scowling at Varn.
I’ll bet he has, thought Deric.
Varn smirked. “He told me “Tell Deric I’ll see him later, shits or not.””
Deric gave a thin smile back. He rather liked Varn. His attitude, however rude it was, was easier to read than the others. “Very well.”
“No matter.” Said Qorbin. “I shall, ah, endeavour to introduce the rest of the, ah, High Council to his lordship, who I am told will be, ah, joining our numbers soon. We were just, ah, beginning our midday meal.” The old man waited politely in case Deric wanted to say something then continued. “May I present, ah, Lawrence Breakwater of the City Watch?” The High Wisdom indicated a harsh looking armored man who sat with a bowl of soup in front of him. The man looked to be near fifty, hard, with a glint in his eye and a permanent scowl on his face. The commander nodded at him. He’s the one they call Lophand, remembered Deric. He looked down. The man had a steel maul in place of his right hand.
“Makewater’s not much for conversation,” quipped Varn, already continuing where he left off on his meal.
Qorbin ignored Varn and indicated another man, gaunt and bearded, wearing an obsidian crown which looked extremely heavy. “This is High Tetriach Carro.” The holy man clasped his hands together. “In the light of the Three.”
Deric didn’t want to hear the pious speech he could sense was coming from the Tetriarch but was saved that by High Wisdom Qorbin.
“Master of the Treasurey, Martyn Dace,” introduced Qorbin, indicating a well-dressed man all in green and gold. He wore a thin mustache and a small goatee.
“Well met. I have heard quite a lot about you from my friends.”
Deric tried to hide his displeasure. No doubt these ‘friends’ of yours are the smugglers and pirates that greive me so. He thought venomously.
“And lastly,” went on Qorbin, oblivious, “Your old friend, master of blades, Gared Morris.”
Old friend? I’m not entirely sure about that. Non-enemy, perhaps. For the moment.
Gared sat nearest the king’s vacant seat, clad all in the bloodred armor of the King’s Blades, his hundred
household knights from around the Freeholds. The black commander’s cloak trialed over the back of his chair. The man’s graying hair was combed over and made him look like an old man, though no wrinkles were in evidence, so unlike lord Zeifer.
Gared didn’t frown or smile or do anything. He looking into Deric’s grey eyes with his own colorless ones and then nodded in acknowledgement. “Karkis.”
“Morris,” said Deric, coldly, inwardly he frowned deeply. This one stands here in this room he profaned with the blood of children.
Gared turned back to contemplating his own meal, a large roast of mammoth meat. Deric watched him suspiciously for a moment and then nodded at the High Wisdom.
“Go on, wisdom,” said Deric.
“Just so. We are glad you could come here for this meeting, which is of some import. There are several matters to discuss, first, I must report that the pirates on Rock Island have been apprehended and hanged by Lord Dayn’s men.”
“Is that so? Good riddance to them.”
“Good,” Said Dace. “They were preying on shipments of iron and gold from Feyrlun.”
Qorbin nodded and shifted his papers “Ah. Next is the small matter of a group of roving adventurers. They call themselves the ‘Road Wardens.’ Most smallfolk seem to refer to them as the ‘Knights of the Wild.’ They have been, shall we say, upsetting the balance of power in Stormlane.”
Deric waved away the serving girl and poured himself a cup of springwine from the jug in the table’s center. “How so?”
Lord Breakwater responded. “If a group of peasants decides to take matters of justice into their own hands, people will start to question their lords governance. Do you recall the Lordsway Bandits? Robbed from the rich, gave to the poor. The smallfolk loved them, certainly. But in the end they gave them rather unpleasant ideas. They tried their hand at rebellion. And even that aside, what they are doing is murder.”
Deric nodded. I knew them. I fought against the lordsway bandits. He didn’t want to see that again but disliked where this road of conversation was going. “I know what you mean. Obviously you don’t want these men to continue with their business?”
Varn nodded from his place. “Indeed. Perchance these men are ‘true knights’ but we’ve learned that lesson once already. People will join them as don’t have such noble goals. The Redcloaks do their job just as well and with considerably less violence. We don’t need peasants to go around taking the law into their own hands. What these men are doing is murder.”
Martyn Dace swirled the wine around in it’s own cup and peered into the depths. “It’s only a matter of time before they hang a lord. Likely Lord Rossart, he has that unsavory habit of making his peasants fight one another to the death.”
“Good riddance to him if they do, I say.” Muttered Varn. “He’s a scoundrel and a raper.”
I don’t like this. Thought Deric. It seems too much like something Mallin would have done. Kill all enemies and be damned to consequences or morals was his way. “I admit,” he said. “That they may cause problems, but perhaps it would be best to wait until these problems actually arise.”
Gared Morris’s pale eyes flicked up to gaze at Deric’s grey ones. “It will only be for a time. Eventually someone will call out for them to kill my cousin Sidgis and the rest will take up the chant. That will be the end of these Road Wardens. They won’t be able to ignore the cries to kill the most brutal man in the realm.” His voice was scarce above a whisper.
Martyn Dace gave his little secret smile. “If any of them are fool enough to try to cross swords with the Corpsemaker, that will be the end of them.”
Deric had to agree. The best way to deal with these men is to wait until they get themselves killed. I don’t like it but it’s better than hanging them outright
“A cruel thing,” said Lord Zeifer, despairingly. “But this is a cruel world. If the Lord Protector would give me authorization, I could see to it that this happens. I am required to consult with you before doing anything of an even marginally military nature.”
And no doubt you ask authorization for a third of these things, thought Deric in the privacy of his mind. If everyone asks me before they do anything, I’d be privy to a thousand treasons by the time the sun set.
“If someone calls for them to kill Sidgis, that will be their doom. If they hang lord Rossart though, despite his habits of rape and murder, they would be breaking the law. Zeifer, just observe them for now.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
High Wisdom Qorbin shuffled the papers again. “Ah, now. The Great Bank of Volmar is calling in its debts, we owe them…” Qorbin shuffled the papers furthermore, “A half million crowns. Ah, What is the state of our coffers, Lord Dace?”
“The crown can afford to reimburse the Great Bank, though we will have to take out a loan from the Athelheres. Again.”
“We are a half million crowns in debt?” Asked Deric.
“Wrong, my lord,” Hallis Dace smiled his irksome thin smile again. Deric wondered if the huntlander kenw how infuriating that smile was. Probably why he does it, thought Deric, glumly. “We are three million in debt, half a million to the Great Bank, Half a million to House Athelhere, a million in debt to The Sea Bank of Varnesh and a million in debt to your own house, my lord.”
My own? “I was not aware.”
“Obviously, your castellan has not seen it to trouble you it seems.”
“Where did all this spending come from?” We haven’t had any tournies in years. I will not belive Terren allowed the realm to be beggared. He’s too cautious for that.
Dace smirked again. “The spending, my lord, comes from King Mallin’s reign. He enjoyed…certain things if you would remember. A strain on our coffers.”
Deric took another sip from his wine glass. Mallin’s dead hand still moves us all from beyond the grave. The worst player left the board a mess. “I see,” he said.
“Of course you do, now-” Began Dace, but Deric interrupted him.
“What I SEE is a man driving us further into bankruptcy, if you take out another loan from the Athelheres to reimburse the loan from the Volmarkers then we dig our grave all the deeper.”
“I deal in coin, my lord. Not promises. I must think in the short term,” pointed out Lord Dace.
“Even if it harms the realm in the long term?” countered Deric.
“I know, this may seem like a sorry state of affairs but-”
“It IS a sorry state of affairs.” Who lets these apes rule the kingdom?[i//]“Take out the loan if you must but you will need to raise trade tariffs and tithes.”
“Very well.” Dace scribbled some lines onto his paper.
Qorbin scratched his chin. “Ah, finally, tomorrow is the Midsummer’s Day, and the beginning of a new century and millennium. The Council of Seers at High Hermitage says that they have studied the weather patterns and we will be in for a very vicious winter. We must make sure all the harvests are brought in, as this nearing winter is only a year away. And will likely start early in the fall and end in mid-spring, so we are looking at, ah, a year-and-a-half of winter for this season. The Wisdoms at High Hermitage say that every thousand years, the sun goes the furthest away, over a period of seasons, until we are looking at summers of a few months and winters of five years at the least. It will get worse before it gets better.”
There was a long silence.
A five year winter? Or longer? Thought Deric. All his life, winters had been two years at most, and those were bitter. Once the snows did not abate for an entire season, leaving them with three years of winter, but that was two hundred years ago. During the Mythic War, the longest summers had been happening too, though they were growing shorter now. Seasons were three years each on average. A year of summer, six months of fall, a year of winter and six months of spring. He did know, however that every thousand years, the sun grew further away, tilting their world away from it and causing winters to last entire seasons.
“Gods, that sounds absolutely shitty,” complained Varn. Deric had to agree.
The others murmured assent, aside from Gared Morris, who said “Winter is always in the North, no doubt we will endure. How far will the snows reach during this projected five-year-ice-winter? And when will it be?”
Qorbin shuffled his papers. “Ah, the cold is, ah, expected to lock Norvath in it’s entirety. Long Pike and Southgarden may not be frozen solid, but it is assumed that the snows and ice will cover the world from the Winterlands to the Kraken Isles. Ah, the Navareen may be spared the snows due to the presence of the Stonelands but it will be bitter cold there all the same.”
Lord Dace sighed. “Do the Wisdoms give a name to this phenomenon too?”
“Ah, we call it, at High Hermitage, an ‘Ice-Age[i/]’ or ‘Glacial Era’” said the High Wisdom.
“Of course you do,” Muttered varn.
"What an unpleasant name," observed Lord Zeifer.
“Prehaps this matter should be taken to the king,” Said Deric.
“Ah, indeed, it ah, should. Thou perhaps we should, ah, warn farmers to get in as, ah, as many harvests as they, ah, can.”
Deric nodded but added a bit. “Do this as well, send a murder of crows out to each Freehold, This should require twenty-one murders of nearly a hundred crows each. A crow for each Lord, great and small to bear instructions and warn them of this coming…glacial age. How long did you say it would be?”
“Ah, reports suggest five years or longer, possibly up to, and I do not make mock, a hundred thousand years of winter.”
A stunned silence greeted him.
“I’ve decided I don’t like Ice Ages,” said Varn, slowly.
“Three Above, save us,” murmured the High Tetriach.
Even silent Gered looked troubled. “If it truly is a hundred thousand years of winter, we could only flee south across the sea.”
“That is true,” Said Qorbin.
Deric gavea wan smile. “How romantic. The last of the Norvathi fleeing from a doom that took their realm to strike out for the south.”
Everyone laughed, albeit uneasily, Gered Morris and Qorbin stayed silent though. Gared looked contemplative and Qorbin looked worried.
“Is that all?” asked Lord Dace.
Qorbin scratched his chin. “Eh, uh, Yes. Ah, it, ah, it would appear we are done.” He mumbled. “I, ah, declare this High Council meeting to be closed. I shall send out the Murders directly, though, ah, I shall require time for my assistants and I to pen all those, ah, messages. All the Lords of the freeholds will know of this soon, and be prepared for the, ah, coming Ice-age.”
Deric stood up as and made for the door as fast as he could. The air outside was city air but he would gladly inhale deeply in a tannery now. Not that it would wash my disgust away. Was this truly the realm’s state? Signing death warrants for peasants half a world away and beggaring the kingdom? Sitting idle while what may be the end of the world bore down on you?
Halfway to the door, a voice called out, quiet, so the ears had to strain to hear it.
“Karkis.”
Deric turned. Gared Morris was still seated as the others were filing out. “I wish to speak with you.”
Deric walked back to the table and took his seat as the last of the others filed out. “What?”
“Your badge of office. As befits the Lord Protector of the realm.” Gared nodded towards the table, where a small brass badge shaped in the likeness of a sword and shield lay. Deric must have forgotten it. He picked it up and made to leave, as he was leaving, Gared spoke again. “You don’t joust,” he observed.
Deric halted for a moment. “When I fight I mean to kill my foe, not play at war.”
“Wise enough.” Spoke Gared.
“I think it is,” said Deric. “Tell me, Gared, what do you think of these affairs?”
“I am a soldier, your lordship, I merely deal in blood, not coin or grain.”
“What about this Ice-age?” Asked deric.
“I am a Northman. Frozen Bones May Never Lie, it is said at the Icefort. Good day.”
Deric watched as he left with narrowed eyes. That one bears watching.
ALAYNE
It was midday when Sir Dorcas Bracken unhorsed Sir Robert Reihn.
They had been at it or nearly half an hour, Sir Dorcas with a mace and Sir Robert with a longsword, two men in full plate crashing together mounted on huge destriers. Sir Dorcas’s helm was angular with a beak like a raven’s for a visor, his eyes unguarded. Sir Robert wore a tourney greathelm, visorless and fully-concealing. Sir Dorcas’s mace caught him full in the chestplate, sending him toppling of his horse to land on the square stone tiles of the yard. A ragged cheer went up from the men-at arms watching. As Sir Robert lay winded. From her seat by the window in the Wisdom’s turret, she could see her brother Godryk, heir to the throne looking on with a cold, thin smile. Garbed all in black and grey, he stood up, his cloak trailing behind him. “Well fought. The reward and station amongst my household knights goes to Sir Dorcas Bracken.” He nodded at a man-at-arms, who kicked open a small chest at his feet and handed the knight still ahorse a sigil of a skeletal ice dragon. The knight got off his horse and passed his downed foeman, who was struggling clumsily to his feet to kneel in front of Godryk and swear his sword to his service.
Would that I could be a knight too. And ride into battle with my brother and his men.
“Alayne, are you paying attention?” Demanded Wisdom Mallador. Alayne whipped around and nodded. “Yes, your…wiseness.”
Alayne was a slight girl of four-and-ten, her hair thick and bloodred like the rest of House Dracoran and falling past her shoulders in red waves. So unlike her sister, who preferred to do her hair into elegant styles as was the ‘latest fashion’
“Do not make mock of me, child, these lessons are important.” How important can learning the names of the queens through the ages be? They weren’t nearly as interesting as Manticores. She liked learning about them. Big beasts the sizes of castles with huge scales and bones of obsidian and stone, they could breath water and had a dozen legs and huge spines sprouting from their back and spat fire. They sounded grand. She would have liked to have a manticore herself but she settled for their bones, which adorned the High Hall and the Hall of Stories. She liked to run around and under them and play at being a knight. It was sad what happened to them all. They all died, or were killed. I would have liked a Manticore, she thought. It seemed monstrously unfair that they were all dead.
“Yes, Wisdom,”
The Wisdom began to talk again, prattling on about kings and queens and never choosing to discuss the interesting ones like Dallia the Warrior or the Scaled Lord. Alayne glanced back at the yard. Her brother and the freerider sir Dorcas Bracken had left. Alayne wished she could have followed them. She knew her brother was holding small competitions and gathering Freeriders and hedge knights to him. The talk amongst the soldiery and chivalry was that he planned on riding out against the barbarians in the Hartswood.
That certainly sounded like an adventure. Like as not she would have to stay here and listen to the most boring history lessons as her brother covered himself in glory.
Not that I’d be able to ride with them anyways. I’m a girl. Girls sit at home and knit and sew and play silly games and marry princes and have children. Girls have boring lives.
She watched one of her father’s household knights, a midsized man with a yellow bass on his shield ride a quintain.
It would be grand to be a knight. She looked back up at the Wisdom, hoping her lessons would finish soon. Sir Edric had told her she could practice at the longsword today. Sir Edric Bar Marron understood. The sallow knight was the master-at-arms of the castle and he and Sir Preston were the only ones willing to teach a young girl how to fight as a knight would.
She suffered through the rest of the lesson in silence.
When it was done, Alayne gathered up her things and made for the doors, stealing one last glance at the practice yard below, where now only a guardsman sat, blunting a practice sword. She hurried out the door and down the steps.
The Great Keep was well-deserving of its name, the pride of the Herron kings, it brooded over the city and the Bay of Eels, it was three fortresses, really. The small outer castle with its stagnant, filthy moat guarded the way into the castle proper, a many-acre structure on floors of tiled stone and dirt. The Ten Towers were here, along with two dozen smaller buildings and turrets. There was the Guard’s Tower, The Queen’s tower, named for the queen who had built it, the God’s Tower, the three-sided contrivance of a godshome, it looked over the Old Godhunt, a ten-acre enclosed forest where the many gods of the wild reigned as stone statues. Next to the Godhunt was the Dark Tower, from which Allarin The Evil reigned for ten years before his uncle, Karrlin the Kinslayer threw him down and dashed him on the cobbles below. Above even that on its own artificial hill as the Shadowed Citadel, with its own walls and its six-story wide tower of red stone. That was where the Shadowmancers held court, the few of them there were. Only eighteen, it was said, led by Lord Zeifer. And they were truly spies, nothing more. Others were the Protector’s Tower, glaring out over the sea, where Gerris the Just had reigned from, the Kingstower, where the guests stayed, the Sword Tower of the Kingsguard, the Bridge Tower, which guarded the long, wide approach to the throne room and the Tower of Fangs.
The Bridge Tower guarded the short causeway, which was built a hundred feet above the sea itself. The sea came crashing in and gurgled through the sea-caves under the rocks. It made the approach to the Tower of Fangs positively harrowing on a stormy night, though pleasant during a clear day.
The Tower of Fangs was a castle-within-a-castle-within-a-castle, a walled sheer cliff island with a gigantic long hall. The Tower itself was given its name for its looks, the huge tower where the king and his family lived. It looked out over the sea and the Bay of Eels to its north and east and the city to its west. The castle’s top was cluttered with trebuchets and it’s tall, menacing merlons gave it the look of fangs.
It was to this tower that Alayne ran. She had lived her whole life in this castle and it ceased to awe or terrify her, possibly as it never had, being that it was her home and had been for all fourteen years of her life. This castle and city.
Alayne dashed across the Causeway, passing several guards, some of whom laughed and others who merely bowed their heads.
She almost bumped into a leathers-wearing man on the causeway. She didn’t recognize him, so she asked who he was. “Who are you? You look like a freerider, I know all my father’s guards.”
The man looked down at her. Cleanshaven and pockmarked, he had a narrow face and long black hair down past his shoulders. Grey eyes studied her intently. “You have Terren’s look about you, girl.”
Alayne frowned. “You know my father? You look familiar.”
The man glanced back at the High Hall, where he had come from, built below the Tower of Fangs. It was the throne room. “The whole realm knows your father. You are Alayne?”
“I am,” she said. He does look familiar. “Who are you?”
“Hedderic Karkis, Lord of Southmarch, castellan of Long Pike and Lord Protector of the Freeholds, as people seem so interested in titles here.”
Oh. That’s who he is. He dosn’t look like a lord. “You look like Gav.”
“Gav? You mean Gavin, my son? I know he’s a knight in service to the king.” asked Lord Karkis.
“Yeah. He’s my friend. He tried to teach me at axes but they’re too heavy. He says southrons like axes. I’m a southron. I like swords though. And armor. But my sister likes gowns. And tourneys. And my older brother likes killing. But not Marq. He likes riding.” She made a face. Helena liked stupid things and Godryk was too old and Marq was too cowardly. Her friends were the knights and the guardsmen. And Gav. Gav was nice.
“We do like axes in the Southmarch. Gavin uses a longer-hafted one than I do. I prefer a War Axe to a longaxe.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Where are you running to?”
“The throne room. I’m meeting my friends.” She had learned it was never too wise to say when she was going to be learning at swords. Some of her father’s men tried to stop it once, before she got herself hurt.
“Well then, have fun with your friends,” said the Lord Protector, and walked off.
Alayne stole into the throne room quietly. They called it the High Hall.
The Throne stood at the other end, brooding.
Some called it the Obsidian Throne, others, the Throne of Bones, most called it the Black Throne.
It was forged out of Manticore Bones and Manticore Fire by the Manticore Kings. Their words had been ‘Death or Glory’ and the throne was that.
The throne itself was the skull of manticore, jaws wide open, the roof of its mouth forming the back of the chair and it’s palate forming the seat. It was a small skull. The kings had filled it with the scales of the dead manticore and others of its kind had torched it with their breath. The bone and scales ran together and forged what foreigners called the Blackstone Chair. Every time a man sat it, he seemed to be about to be devoured by a great beast. It’s teeth were gone in the front, but still there on the sides, being as armrests, the others would shadow the king’s face by forming a canopy above his head. There was a table on the audience floor in front of it.
Evidently there had just been a High Council meeting. Probably to welcome that lord, Hedderic.
Only the King or the Lord Protector could ever sit the Throne. She would never. But she did not want to. Her brother would come into the throne when her father died.
I wonder if Godryk would be a good king? She thought. It makes no matter. He will be anyways.
Alayne pushed the thought from her mind and walked swiftly through the hall, passing her grandfather Gared Morris on the way. He nodded at her. As master of the Blades, he commanded the king’s personal army of one hundred knights from around the realm. Not on par with the Kingsguard, but still very deadly. He was armored in his ash-and-black armor, his skull-shaped greathelm under on arm. “Alayne, good afternoon,” he said, his voice a whisper of the wind.
“Good afternoon to you to grandfather. How are you?”
“I keep well.” He replied. He was not truly her grandfather. They shared no blood. But he was her brother’s grandfather and was so called grandfather by all the Dracoran children. Her true grandfathers were both dead, one was a Dracoran and the other was some soldier.
“Why’s Godryk raising men?” She asked.
“He means to remove the threat of barbarians in the Hartswood, Alayne. Now off with you. I must stand my watch.”
“Yes grandfather.” Alayne hurried off and opened a door to a small inner courtyard, covered in trellises and filled with hedges. From behind them, steel rang.
Alayne crept around the hedge and watched. Two men in full plate stood there, trading blows with longswords. One of them carried a shield with the field of a starry night and six crows on it, another had the device or a red rose on yellow. The knight of the starry crows was in heavy plate with a bucket-shaped greathelm, the knight of the rose wore a halfhelm with a covered face, his gorget and covering making the halfhelm near a greathelm.
The battle ended soon after she arrived, the crow knight put his weight behind his shield and slammed the other one, as the knight of the rose staggered backwards, the knight of the starry crows bashed his chestplate with his longsword, sending the man crashing to the ground. The crow knight knelt and drew a short dirk, he flicked open the other’s visor and put the dirk above his face.
“I yeild.” Said the one below him.
The crow knight got up and pulled the other man to his feet. Alayne smiled broadly. “Hello.”
The two turned to face her. “You’re here,” said Sir Preston Wainfleet, the knight of the red rose.
“Told you,” Said the knight of the starry crows, Sir Edric Bar Marron, the master-at-arms, called Ravenstar by many. “Are you ready for today’s lesson, my princess?”
“I am.”
“Sir Preston will armor you.”
Sir Preston put her in chainmail and leathers, and heavy plate made for a short person. It fit her well enough but was loose here and there. Sir Preston gave her a halfhelm to wear and a small shield with the device of a standing tree. Before she put on the halfhelm, she made sure none of her long red hair would get in her face. The armor was heavy, truly, but the smith had made it correct to sir Edric’s designs. It was lighter than plate and heavier than mail and right for her size. She accepted her longsword form Sir Preston.
Her weapon was not common steel, she could not have carried it if it were. It was forged of Bitterglass. An alloy of Dragonsteel and the metal known as Bronzewater. Both useful and hard to find. It was lighter than any longsword had a right to be, and when an edge was put on it, it was sharper than a razor.
Sir Edric took his place opposite her.
“Stance,” She took her stance, placing the shield ahead of her, the longsword poised for thrusting behind it. Some girls might like to be a graceful warrior like a Navareen Sand Dancer. She had seen the sand dance. But the knight’s dance was for her. It had an elegance all its own, and while the Sand Dancers were dancers, knights were painters who only used red and grey. Sir Edric had told her, the day she’d asked to be taught at arms. “It’s a hard teaching, and for a girl, you’ll have it extra hard. Jayne Wickwill was taught in the ways of the Sand Dancer, that is the art a lady should use for war, if any.”
But she had told him she didn’t want to be a sand dancer. She wanted to be a knight. They who rode tilts and thundered to battle on coursers with swords and maces, not who leap from rooftop to rooftop spinning swords.
Sir Edric swung, a fast sideface blow, she caught in on her shield. Wrenching the shield sideways, she thrust with her sword, steel met steel with a metal ringing.
The knight’s dance was hers.
LYLE
Lyle Barklaw hurried down the steps of the freezing courtyard. Icemark was made all of stone, built over a hot spring under the mountain and heated by huge iron pipes running through its walls. The snows outside melted when they touched the pipes, the walls were hot to the touch.
But the outside was a different matter. It was a midsummer blizzard again, this high in the mountains though it could snow at any time. The stuff in question was piled up three feet high in the courtyard, and the servants hadn’t shoveled it out of the way yet. Lyle was wrapped in a thick grey cloak but it still chilled him as he struggled through it towards the castle proper. The scroll mustn’t get wet, he thought to himself as he plodded through the snow half as high as him. In the winter it was worse. Where it snowed a hundred feet deep in the vales. He’d just been a minor lord’s second son until a few months ago.
But it wasn’t this cold in Barklaw Hall. The snows dusted the ground, yes, but never piled up like soldiers in a siege. The Hall wasn’t as gigantic either, it was no castle. Icemark was one of the most formidable castles in the Ironlands.
Lyle stamped out of the snowy courtyard and began up the icy steps. The guard, a grim-looking soldier in full plate with a snarling wolf ringed in icicles blazed on his shield opened the door for him.
He stopped to look at the man for a moment. Someday he was to command men like that, to be a knight in service to house Athelhere and house Harwin. Right now though, he was only a squire, though a squire for a lord he was still only a squire. He stood there in the main hall of the castle, stamping and puffing, glad for the warm, well-lit halls. After a moment while he let his extremities thaw, Lyle started down the hall, made his way up the stairs, through the higher halls to the Frost keep then through the high halls to the Ice Keep and then to His Lordship’s Audience Hall.
He stopped for a moment to collect himself and look as a squire to a lord should, then entered.
There were several smallfolk and the knight who evidently ruled their holdfast standing there. The peasants were claiming that bands of wild folk were coming down from the mountains with the animals as summer threatened to draw to a close and were stealing the livestock and attacking isolated farms, pillaging for crops to put aside for the long winter to come only a year away.
“How many?” Asked Vance, from his Wolf throne, he was listening intently.
Vance was a fairly plain looking man, a poor job with a razor every morning made sure he didn’t grow a beard and he had taken shears to his hair as a boy to make sure it never got in his way during battle. He lived by his father’s words that “Hard places breed hard men.” And if there were men harder than Vance, Lyle had never heard of them. Vance had a scar over his left eye that he had had mended on campaign in the Harvale with a burning knife and thread. It left a grisly scar and his eye had drained of color. He always wore his scaled leather armor and cloak everywhere. And his sword. Nothing special, an ugly thing of pitted steel that was by some accounts sharp as a razor. He honed it every day. When he had heard their council, Vance nodded and straightened.
“Sir Asher Darrion.” He called. His voice was as a young man’s voice was but had an aura of command over it. Wisdom Waylan had said it was “Velvet over steel”
The knight in question stepped forwards and knelt. All of Vance’s bannermen were notoriously loyal to him.
“At your command my lord,” asked the knight, who’s sigil was a broken tower. He wore plain grey plate.
“Take half a hundred of my men and muster what levies you need. Find these wild men and put them to the sword. Send her ladyship their heads. I will join you once I have mustered my own men and we can sweep the Icehearts.”
Then his steward spoke up. “Lord Harwin, if it pleases you, your wound still needs to heal, the Wisdom says so.”
Vance ground his teeth and looked over at the frail old man in robes. “Is that so Lurin? It does not please me, in fact.”
The man nodded. “Yes, my lord, the clansman truck you with a steel ball on a chain, or morningst-”
“I know what a Morningstar is, Lurin, just tell me the facts.”
“Your bone still needs to knit back together to heal fully my lord.”
Vance ground his teeth again. “How long? I feel a craven sititng here in my castle. No better than those carrion crows at Feyrlun.” Vance had made his displeasure known at Lady Sandra’s suitors, telling them that they should be in their lands, ruling their people, not troubling their leigelord. He was nearly the only man of high birth not courting the lady, there being nearly half a hundred suitors at Feyrlun. He was clearly more interested in war than the affections of women, wealthy or otherwise, though one of Her Ladyship’s suitors had gone too far when asking if Vance preferred men instead, and the young lord had challenged him to a duel and nearly run him through with a longsword for impugning on his honor so.
“My lord,” Said Sir Darrion, “we know you are wounded, we wouldn’t want you to go off riding into the hills with a mending leg.”
Vance ground his teeth again. “The cane feels like a shackle.”
“Nevertheless.” Counciled Wisdom Waylan from his desk in the corner. You couldn’t argue with a ‘nevertheless’ from Wisdom Waylan. Vance leaned back again. “My sword arm will be useless with any more of this malingering.”
“My lord, I know that your honor is important to you, but while other men pledge their swords to their lords, you seem to be trying to gift-wrap an entire freehold.”
“Any lord who cannot defend his bannermen is no lord. Tooth and Claw, Waylan. Our words.”
Several of the knights in attendance straightened slightly. Every man of them intensly proud of their heritage, the men of the Harvale being the blood of the first men and the blood of Old Tantesia, while the rest of the Ironalanders in the Seavale and the Feyvale were descended from the Raqori. They took pride in being ‘Ironmen’ as well. Few other men in the Ironlands could claim to embody iron as much as Vance Harwin. Though Iron was useful and hard it was cold and unforgiving as well. Vance was not a merciful man nor a kind one.
Lyle took a breath and stepped forward, the scroll under his skinny arms. Vance looked over from the Wolfthrone
“Lyle.” He said. He never smiles.He thought Lord Vance never smiled as far as Lyle knew, keeping a stern face for his lords, but he had when he agreed to foster Lyle and make him a squire. He had said to him the day he had arrived at Icemark.
“We’re hard men here, Lyle Barklaw. Is this the life you want?” Vance had gestured to the men practicing with sword and shield, the master-at-arms demonstrating on a pig carcass where the best places to stab a man were at to the training guardsmen, to the frozen peaks of the Icefangs and the green valley of Harvale. Lyle had told him ‘yes.’ All his life he’d dreamed of being a knight. Vance had given him a very rare, very thin smile and nodded. He’d always been straightforward. Vance had inherited Icemark at the age of eight, and had killed his first man at nine. He was, as he put it ‘a hard man’ And his reputation among the freeholds was that he was straight as an arrow and dedicated to his liege. Those that knew him well could stand his ever-present sternness loved him well, but to everyone else he came across as prickly and unlikable and suspicious of everyone save his liege. Lyle remembered when he had seen the girls of one town line the streets for a glimpse of the Ice Wolf returning from battle and asked the scarred, silent freerider at the head of the column where lord Harwin was, if he had survived, never suspecting they were addressing him himself.
“What’s this then, another raid? A letter from those crows at Feyrlun?”
Vance took the letter and broke the seal, the sigil of a rearing horse.
“It’s from Lady Sandra, my lord.”
Vance nodded. “It would seem so,” his eyes roved over the yellow parchment.
“It would appear that yet another problem has arisen. A shame.”
With that, Vance pushed open the doors behind his throne and left.
“I wonder what that was about.” Asked Sir Fallin Piper, a knight whose sigil was a white flute on a green field. The master at arms, Sir Martyn Dare nodded and gestured to a pair of Harwin men-at-arms. They bowed and thumped their pikes on the ground, ushering the courtiers to leave. Lyle started out too but Waylan stopped him with a raised hand. “His lordship will require a squire, still.”
Lyle nodded and started after his lord but stopped before he reached the door. “Wisdom…what was it?”
“Crows and ravens bring important news over the realm.”
Lyle looked at his feet. “Most important news is depressing, isn’t it.”
“Joyous news is often not deemed as important, Lyle,” said the Wisdom, not unkindly. “Go now.” He
motioned with his head towards the door.
Lyle started up the stairs behind the throne room and followed them up and up to the top of Icemark. To the Snow Gardens. They were called that because there was nothing but trees that grew there. Evergreens and grey-green Spearpines. On the top of the keep icy statues frolicked amongst their three acres, mythic dragons, wild beasts, men, knights with blades raised high. Every few weeks someone would add more if they took a mind to ice carving.
In the Snow Gardens was the Old Godhunt. It had long since crumbled from disuse, but the Harwins kept to the gods of the Wild, The statues here were they. The Dog, Wolf, Stag, Horse, Hare, Rat, Falcon, Crow, Snake, Waterdragon, Pike, Kraken, Dragon, Bear, Spider, Scorpion, Man, and Beast.
Vance sat before the statue of the Wolf, while every castle had a relatively similar god, the Beast ws always the different, customarily placed outside the circle or in the shadow of the Man or looking over his shoulder, it was always different. Here it was a hunched man-wolf thing with long clawlike fingers and slavering jaws. The gods of the men of Yore were never as friendly as the Three of the Faith or the One. The gods of the wild were only worshipped by the houses of the men of Yore. Everywhere kept a Godhunt. Even if it was mostly out of tradition. Some were expansive, some were arrayed like a pack, the snarling wolf and dog customarily by the side of the torch-bearing, axe-wielding Man, the ever-different Beast always hungrily watching the rest.
Lyle approached Vance, who’s longsword was across his knees, Dark One, it was called, no one knew why. It was pitted grey steel, not Dragonsteel or Bronzewater or Biterglass. Just common steel, but hundreds of years old.
The Old Gods of the Hunt required no special prayers like the Three of the Faith or the One or the Frozen King. One could pray to them, but there were no special words. The howl of the wind is their prayer. The only prayer they need. He’d been told once. There were no hymns. You prayed and the gods of the Hunt listened and did or did not answer. Men do not question gods. There were no preists. No holy men. No chapels. Only statues and whispers in the wind. But here, in the cold of the Icefangs with the wind whipping all around you and the distant howl of the Pack as wolves brought down prey in the distance, you could almost believe these gods would get up and touch you.
“Lyle.” Said Vance.
“My lord, Waylan said you would have need of a squire.”
“Yes. Bring me my whetstone and oil and cloth. I have not yet honed Dark One today. Now is as good a time as ever.”
Lyle nodded. Vance would always spend time every day razoring his sword.
“My lord…” asked Lyle, the wind nearly drowning out his voice.
“Speak, lyle.” Said Vance.
“What is it? What troubles you?”
“My brother is dead. He was serving as a knight, riding with Her Ladyship’s redcloaks. Killed south of the Gorge in a dispute with some locals.”
“Oh. I am sorry my lord.”
“No you’re not. You didn’t know him. I barely knew him myself. He was my brother, so I loved him, as an older brother does. I brought him to the king’s court once when he was young. But I can’t say I knew him well. He was my brother. Now he is dead. You are not required to be sorry. I am not.”
You are not required to be sorry? He was his brother. How can he not greive?
“But I, ah…I wish he lived, my lord.”
Vance was still. “So do I. But we cannot change that what has passed. He is dead. I am not. You are not. My lands are intact, my leigelord lives, the killers will be hung. Life goes on. Be thankful for that. No man is entitled to anything but his path in life. And even that may be taken from him.”
Lyle was about to take his leave when Vance spoke again.
“Have you ever killed a man, Lyle?”
What kind of question is that? “No, my lord. I am only five-and-ten.”
“I was nine. During the war they call the Mythic War. A man-at-arms of house Locke. My brother never killed a man until a year ago, in the Bloodwood. An outlaw.
They sent me to be fostered at Feyrlun until I was six-and-ten. Most boys have to wait until they’re a man grown, but my uncle died when I was fourteen and left no other relatives to be lord of Icemark. So I was allowed to return here and rule. The youngest ruling lord in four hundred years. But most everyone from my boyhood is gone. I recall training with the lord Athelhere’s son, but he died. I remember his uncle, but he’s dying and the other one’s bookish. Now that I recall, the only person I ever knew who’s still alive is the lord I serve. Ironic.”
Lyle was unsure why Vance was telling him all this. He was a hardspoken man and not a talkative one at that.
“The gods take who they choose.” Lyle motioned at the statues.
Vance looked around at the statues “You keep to the old gods then. Only the Harvale houses do in the Ironlands. Odd that I don’t. Not as such.”
“But, my lord…you are in a Godhunt.”
“I am. That doesn’t mean I’m one for pious bleating. I like the silence. The statues have been here for centuries. So have the trees. I don’t worship trees do I?”
“Ah…no, my lord.”
“Good.” Vance returned to looking at the sky.
“Shall I take my leave, my lord?”
“As you wish, Lyle. I will be up here. Bring a skin of mulled wine. It’s cold.” Vance leaned back against the statue of Wolf again and looked up at the grey, cloudy sky.
RAT
Rat basked lazily in the sun, reading a book on a roof. The wind smelled of sea salt and the city. He’d once been told by a sailorman how each city had its own smell, like drinks. Seawatch smelled of dead grass and horse manure. Earthy but freezing. Long Pike smelled of ship’s lacquer and tar and blood. It was a warport forever fighting pirates raiding from the Northstones. Southgarden smelled of wine and spices. A trading port. Kingshead was a cesspool of people. It smelled like disease and reeked. The Wineway had the scent of lemons in the breeze, flowers and fruits. It was the pride of Lacuster. Lacusport was always smelling of stone, stone towers and red rock. A defended port. Coldharbor, one of the busiest ports in the world smelled of rain and damp and the forest. It was in the midlands and built among the rainy Stonegrave Forest. Seaton smelled of dirt and grass, built on the Joining Plains of Northmarch and Stormlane. Feyrlun was small and rich and smelled of iron and wood. But alone amongst these. Green Cliffs smelled like the Sea. It’s harbor was the most frequented of northern ports and it’s docks stretched for miles.
Rat turned a page.
He could read. That was an odd thing about him. He could write too. And he could climb and be quick and had a gift in his wits.
Rat Hunter was a bastard. His father had been a drunken soldier camped here during some minor scuffle with bandits so he’d raped a girl of ten, or so he had been told. The man was long gone and his mother had died of the Firefever a year after he was born and a life on the streets had raised him, Vylarr, Timeon, Lugg, Scaveor and Rodrick. Daven Wykwood had looked after them all, the sellsword had had a mind to start his own mercenary band but never got around to it. The mace that had smashed into his leg had shattered his knee and put an end to him selling his sword. Now he drunk himself blind every night on money he got from any contracts that remained to him. He wasn’t brought so low he sent out his ‘lads’ to get him drinking money. That had been the first thing he’d taught them. Never give a man drinking money. Never demand money or you’ll end up in debt up to your eyeballs.
And what words they were. Thought Rat. They all had mostly drifted away to live their lives how they decreed. Rat, at three-and-ten was still a cutpurse, though he was a hawker as well. He bought fish from the fishermen and sold them along the quays. He sometimes stole into places to take things as well.
Vylarr was still his closest friend, the youth of seven-and-ten had tried his hand at banditry for a year, and returned to Green Cliffs with a longsword, a red cloak and some cheap armor. He said he’d taken it off a corpse he’d made and had no wish to make more, but he was the closest thing to a real bandit Rat knew. He said he wanted to be a knight some day. So did every boy, but Vylarr really wanted it. He had no lordships or lands but he hoped if he wore his sword and chainmail that some knight would take him on as a squire.
Rodrick was dead. He’d been knifed and dumped in a canal. Scaveor had become a sailor. Timeon was gone. The Southron had vanished one day, leaving a note about becoming a sellsword. They’d never heard from him since. He was the only one of them save Rat who could read and write. Lugg was a dog. A scrawny, fleabitten thing with more teeth than hair. He was curled up in she shadow of the chimney beside Rat while Rat himself enjoyed a good read.
It was a fascinating book about the First Men and their culture. It held many stories of their times as well. The legend of the Vaersvult was his favourite.
The first king had only his sword and seventeen companions, but the Vaersvult devoured them all. Flesh and bone. Root and stem. For they hated made things and fire and bronze. The First King was alone in the great forest with but his axe and a single, guttering torch. The Vaersvult hunted him for sport. He was the only man in their realm, after all, and was far more entertaining than animals. Man was no base prey. He had his axe. Manteeth, they called it in their tongue and fire. Sunhurt, they called it in their tongue and armor. Stoneskin, they called it in their tongue. But he could not evade them, for they were gods. But they were the gods of ending. And they hated fire and made things. They tore his armor and they hurt him and he fled as they hunted him for the last time, hungry and lean, to drink his hot blood. But Man was not die this day. In the forest, Horse and Wolf found him, hurt and frozen as the Vaersvult hunted him-”
His reading was interrupted by a clattering noise.
Vylarr clambered up to the slated roof he was reclining on against a chimney, a sack in hand.
“Ah, the knight errant returns from his quest with offerings for his liege,” said Rat, eying the bag.
“I never seen the point of books.” Said Vylarr. He had mousy brown hair where Rat’s was coalblack. “Can’t say I’d like to spend all my days reading about someone else’s life. I don’t even understand how those signs make sounds in your head.”
Rat closed the book and put it aside. The roof that was their current haunt was atop a smithy and was reasonably dry. “They say the man who reads a thousand books lives a thousand lives, but an illiterate man only lives one. May I ask what’s in the sack?”
“Supper,” replied Vylarr, unbuckling his swordbelt tossing it at the base of a chimney. He set the sack down with a thump. Without hesitating, the man began to root in the bag’s depths until he produced a wineskin. He began to drink.
Rat sighed. “Oh, by all means, go ahead.”
Vylarr stopped drinking for a moment. He offered him the wineskin. Rat shook his head.
Vylarr handed him a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese and went back to his wineskin, once he had drank his fill he sat back against the chimney. “Well. We’re out of a job,” he said, resignedly.
Rat sighed again. “How did you ruin this one, dare I ask?”
“I ah….may have said some things about our employer’s mother.”
Rat paused, considering the options. “What kind of things?”
“About, ah, her…fondness for dogs…male dogs.”
Maybe I should have some of that wine after all. Thought Rat, gloomily. “Why?” he asked.
“He said I didn’t do the job right. Called me useless.”
Rat tore a heel of bread off of the loaf and ate it. “So he reprimanded you and you called his mother a dog fucker.”
“I may have been drunk at the time,” admitted Vylarr, indicating his wineskin.
“Well drunk or not. We have no more income from you, which means I have no way to buy the day’s catch at the docks, which means I have no fish to sell, which means we have no money. Again.”
Vylarr had the good graces to at least look ashamed. “We could sign on as sailors on a galley. That’s good pay.”
Good pay though it may be, the prospect of letting sailors bugger us up and down the serpent sea makes it lose some of it’s appeal.
“I don’t think so.” He said.
“I suppose you’re right,” admitted Vylarr. He reached out and scratched Lugg behind one of his mangled ears. The dog’s hairless tail thumped for a few seconds.
“We’ll see if they’ve heard anything down on the docks. If push comes to shove we can try and join the Watch,” suggested Rat.
Vylarr took another draught of wine. “Good as any idea,” he said when he was done.
And that was how Rat found himself in the tavern called the Dockside Den.
Rat looked halfheartedly into the depths of a mug of ale while a marcher sellsword boasted of having fucked a girl from every freehold.
And in every freehold, to hear him tell it. Thought Rat. And across the Serpent Sea. And on the moon for what it’s worth. “Tell us again about the time in the Gorge!” demanded Vylarr, who always enjoyed hearing war stories. Rat sipped his ale and traced an idle pattern on the tabletop.
“Alright, allright,” said the sellsword. “It was pissin’ rain, right? It’s always thunder and lightning in the Gorge, so it’s pissin’ rain, mud’s up to your knees, can’t see two yalms ahead for all the vines and the trees. Bloody inhospitable place, that. Very green.” He took a long swig from his tankard. Some of the ale dribbled through his coarse, short beard. “Right in the middle of a battle it were. During Aaron Marksy’s rebellion. I was going along with some lordling from Sothon who’s purse was fat enough to get me to fight the rebel lord. Anyways, I’m thinking, hells this battle is unpleasant, I’m wading through the muck, blood on my sword and blood on my armor and all. Can’t see anything, battle’s good as lost, I was just concerned with legging it out of there. My blood’s up though, every now and then I stumble across a few stragglers, mostly Bloody Men. That’s what we called the Marksys, the Bloody Men. Vicious fighters them, they got the most numbers of any house in the Thunderbow, even more than Ungorian. All mad for fightin’ too.” He took another swig and slammed his mug down on the table, the others listened intently. “So I find a few, kill a few, hah. Then I come across this little village, me an’ some other men. Couldn’t have been more’n a few dozen hovels, well, I’d chosen the wrong side in the battle, as it were, so I figured a little bit of loot’d be a good thing. Now I’d been given a battle command by some minor lord in service to the Gorgens, fifty men, freeriders, a few sellswords, mostly Gorgegard Men. We go howlin’ down on this villiage, swords out, turns out we weren’t the first ones!” He chuckled. “Some Bloody Men had taken it into their mind to stop for a bit of looting on the way back to Bloodlet Throne. War’s war. I would of done the same in their boots. Anyhow, we come down on them in the midst of their pilliage, they’re caught with their pants down, literally in some cases, some were looting, some weer raping, some were killing, some were stealing. All the same. So we drive these damned Marksys out but we’re so exhausted none of us had the strength left to pick up where they left off!” The sellsword guffawed. “Anyways. The knight ruling the town comes up to me, seeing as I’m commanding, praises me, offers to knight me hisself, I say, no to the knighting but he says to me, ‘name a reward and it shall be yours’” The others around the inn had gone silent now, clearly enraptured by his tale.
“Well?” Asked a sailor. “What’d you ask for?”
The sellsword gave a grin. “I said to him…you got any daughters?”
The inn erupted into drunken laughter. Rat found himself unhumored by the tale.
“What about you Rat, make a man of yerself yet?” Asked a dockworker. Rat was a common sight on the docks.
Rat gave a weak smile. “Not as such…” He could sense that some of the whores in the corner were gopng to try to see if he’d go upstairs with them again if they heard this. He might have if he’d had the money, but Rat and Vylarr were the dregs of society and poor to boot. I should get out of here before that, he thought. ‘Oh, yes, I would fuck you but I’m too poor.’ Hah.
Miserable, Rat stood up. “I’m going to talk a walk down by the docks.”
Vylarr stood up. “I’ll go with you, can’t hold my ale.” He was wearing his longsword tonight, though Rat had never seen him use it.
Rat stepped out into the cool night. A light fog was coming off of the Bay of Whales and shrouded the wharves in it’s wet, clinging embrace. They stretched away over the water for miles with beams and masts of ships jutting out of the fog like spears on an abandoned battlefield. Rat enjoyed the silence, broken only by the sounds of the city and the occasional splash or distant whale call from out on the bay.
He took a deep breath. The sea was in the air. The salt sea. He blinked as he heard Vylarr’s booted footsteps on the walkway. The former bandit walked to the edge of the peir the tavern was on and unlaced his breeches. There was a pattering sound on the water as he pissed into the sea.
“Ah, there’s a sight,” said Rat. “The dastardly outlaw making the formidable Serpent Sea all the mightier with a serpent of his own.”
Vylarr chuckled. “Hah, well. Mine is a mighty seadragon, it seems fit that he should wake the wroth of the sea god.”
“You are too smug by half,” Chided Rat.
“If I wasn’t smug by half, I’d be smug by quarters.” He continued to urinate.
“I’d much rather you be smug by Sables, truth be told. We’re beggared,” Pointed out Rat.
Vylarr shook himself off and tied up his breeches. “Ah, nothing like a good piss. Except maybe a woman. And even then it’s close.”
Rat stretched at his wrist. “If fucking is so comparable to pissing I might as well not bother.”
“You’d be missing out on a world of joy, Rat.”
“How? all I’d need to do for satisfaction is drink my bladder to bursting each day. It does have a certain appeal.”
“Getting drunk every day?” Asked Vylarr. They began to walk down the quays.
“No, having all that money to spend on wine. I’d spend it on something else. Or lay it aside.”
“Smart. Me, I’d piss it away.”
It was true. Vylarr could be said to pool his money together. First at the gambling table, then in his cups and then finally pool it all together in a yellow puddle in an alley.
“You would, wound’t you.”
“You’re too smart to be a fish hawker Rat. You can make clever remarks and read and write. High Hermitage would take you.”
“Become a Wisdom? Live in some high lord’s castle counseling them. That sounds grand. But there’s the small matter of passage to High Hermitage. I’m just as like to raise that kind of money than our wise and benevolent lord is to raise me to lordship.”
Rat wandered to the edge of a quay while Vylarr produced a skin of wine somewhere and started chugging.
He looked out over the sea. It might actually be something, to be a Wisdom. Better than this life, at least. My only companions a drunken bandit and a dog.
He heard a distant whale call.
“It’s a new century tomorrow.” He observed. “The one thousandth year since the coming of the Raqori.”
Vylarr’s chugging noises stopped and the man staggered over. “Aye, the Raqori, the civilized folk.”
“They had a name for the conquering, you know,” observed Rat.
Vylarr blinked. “What’d they call it?”
“The first men didn’t have a chance, with their bronze against iron and chariots. The Raqori called the war ‘The Tale of Rat and Dragon.’ Do you know that? It was so one-sided.”
Vylarr bobbed his head, probably thinking he was nodding sagely, though looking more like a surprised chicken than a sage. “The Dragon won, right. That was the raqori?”
“It was. The First Men held their own for a long time but they lost. The last true Raqori still across the sea think that the Tale repeats itself every thousand years with different players each time.”
“Always wanted to be part of a saga,” said Vylarr.
“Well if the Tale restarts tomorrow we will be” Said Rat.
“New century, new millennium, new rebirths. Here’s to everyone everywhere” Vylarr was clearly dead-drunk by now. He began toasting the stars, lifting his skin of wine to the sky. “Here’s to the new gods and the old and the new millennium and the old. Here’s to the smallfolk like us. Here’s to the high lords and their Great Game and here’s to the Raqori with their Tale of Rat and Dragon.”