The Gifts of Kara - Part II: Scouting
“There are few things as dangerous to a man who ventures into Lustria as thinking himself safe in his base.”
-Common saying amongst adventurers, originally coined by Tilean explorer Fortunato Di Martini (2380-2439) after a failed expedition.
Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
20th of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.3. 1 Ak’b’al. 16 Sotz’.
Stefan reached the alley in a full sprint, to the point that he almost skidded to the ground when he made the last tight turn on his space route.
Last time that had happened he had both gotten himself covered in mud (one of the reasons why he no longer did hit and runs anymore) and gotten caught by the man he’d stolen from. That Tilean man had given him the third hardest beating of his life and two chipped teeth.
But as he made the bend, and ran his last stretch, the raving and coughing of the kislevite he had stolen the pouch from became more and more distant, simultaneously making the odds of a new beating to add to the ranking smaller and smaller.
He entered the Blushing Maiden, the whorehouse John’s mom worked at, from the backdoor, greeting the ladies who were not working at the moment.
The arrangement was a convenient one: Johnny Bent-Ear’s mom, the eponymous Blushing Maiden, got half of whatever a member of her son’s gang got if they used her business as a hiding spot. And the whorehouse was just a street away from one of the Bentear’s second best stealing spots, a specially busy and cramped intersection of many between the unplanned streets of Port Reaver. Perfect for inconspicuously bumping into someone or for getting lost in the crowd after just snatching whatever hung from a belt with a running start, Stefan’s favorite technique.
Of course, Stefan wasn’t dumb enough to run directly
towards the Maiden, his route had entire loops around multiple buildings to it.
He inspected his loot, finding a dozen kislevite silverine coins and almost twice as many copper coins decorated with bears and eagles inside the worn down and well used pouch. A good find, the best of the day to say the least.
He gave Martha the Maiden her and her son’s “half” (they wouldn’t miss a couple less copper coins) and prepared to wait out until it was safe enough to attempt another run.
A bit less than a fourth of a timekeeping candle, he had learned, was enough that almost anyone who tried finding thieves like him after getting robbed would have already given up by now.
And experience, also known as the second hardest beating, had taught him that any man willing to wait for longer than that, as uncommon as they were, would have waited for days or weeks anyways. So there was really no reason to wait longer.
He walked out into the beautiful, sunny, rank smelling and disease ridden street of Port Reaver.
What a day to be a thieving street rat! He thought to himself as he made his way towards the beautifully named Butcher street, not to be mistaken for
The Butcher's street. The first, you see, was named after the refutable profession of most of the men who had set up businesses there.
The second, almost on the opposite side of the city in fact, was named after one of Port Reaver’s most well known “businessmen,” Pieter The Butcher. Whose profession was far from refutable.
In a few minutes he reached the point in which Butcher Street crossed paths in an almost straight line (there wasn’t a single truly straight street in a city built by pirates) with the Dead Man’s Way.
The Dead Man’s Way, one Port Reaver's three main roads, had received its uplifting name due to the fact that it ran from the port and markets southeast all the way through the city to the opposite side. It connected with the gatehouse and the almost two meter tall walls around the city, the only part of the city the pirate merchant lords took care to maintain.
To him though, that simply meant that there was a street anyone who wanted to buy fresh (or not that fresh) meat in the city had to visit… And it crossed with the one used by the hundreds of adventurers and hunters arriving or leaving Port Reaver on a daily basis.
Exactly the kind of congestion that made his job oh so easy.
Men returning with sacks, bags and pouches filled with valuable goods. Men who, more often than not, were exhausted or even wounded enough that a scrawny kid like him could outrun them.
And today, even with how much traffic had lessened over the last few years according to the older Bentears, the crossing was packed with possible targets.
All he needed was to be patient (and inconspicuous enough) to find a good target.
Because worthwhile targets were all over the place, people just
had to walk around with coins in their pockets if they wanted to get anything done. A random person he chooses, unless he chooses a fellow vagrant of course, would have something worth snatching as long as he was clever and fast enough to get his hand into the right place.
A good target, on the other hand, was someone who looked easy, like that returning Kislevite who( despite his size) visibly looked like he had caught something and that it was not going to be pretty. And no sick man would be able to outrun him.
It didn’t matter if an easy target had little to no loot on him. A pouch which turns out to be empty was always better than a loaded one if you ended up getting a purple eye for it. So he continued looking for a good target. Hiding in plain sight with a group of other kids, mostly Bentears like him but one was a butcher’s kid who had provided for them to have a game of knucklebones.
It took him two games, with three of the other players cycling out to make their own businesses and dealings. But he eventually found a good target.
And
boy was it good.
The guy stood out in the crowd like a bugless cot at the orphanage. And much like one of those (honestly non existent) sleeping spots, the thing that made him stand out was the fact that he was just
grossly clean. No sweat marks, no grime, no stains on his shirt. Like a prissy princeling from the merchant’s quarter.
He was tall, which only made his purposefully plain and oversized clothes look even more painfully out of place.
In a city like Port Reaver, you either wanted no one to be able to recognize you if you were someone like Stefan, or you wanted everyone to notice you. If you were an adventurer, or a pirate-merchant lord, then you sure as hell made sure that you were ready for what that attention would get you.
And this idiot certainly wasn’t. Stefan, it seemed, had hit it big. Because if his instincts were right (and they usually were) what he was looking at, all uncomfortably pushing through the crowds and constantly looking for something like a lost puppy... He had to be the classic example of the successful merchant’s coddled sonny, looking to have some
fun in totally inconspicuous clothes. Because clearly there was
nothing suspicious about the oversized large-brimmed hat or the long sleeves in the middle of the day...
He had probably spent the night in whatever establishment had managed to entice him most and was now trying to make his way back to daddy dearest. Probably half as heavy or even more in gold.
But, by Stefan’s accounting, still enough to share with a poor orphan boy.
So he forfeited the game, got up, and took position.
Run, bump into, scream about “being sorry sir” and just
tug and keep running. And hope for the best.
So he ran, bumped into the tall guy, who felt more solid than he had looked like, and found purchase on a… Bronzen? Bronze ring that connected a
beautifully heavy-feeling leather pouch.
So he
tugged and… And found himself, heels firmly dug into the dirt, hanging from the man’s belt-pouch. So he looked up, craning his neck, and greeted the confused man with a roguish, if scared, smile and a:
“Oops?”
The man only had time to raise his eyebrow and emote a confused “Uh?” Before Stefan, heart pounding in his chest, made another attempt to break the pouch’s lip and finally heard the
riiip he had been looking for.
He managed not to lose his footing when the force suddenly released and
booked it.
He weaved his way through the crowds, eliciting offended grunts and surprised yelps as he stepped over boots and grabbed onto anything, be it hair or a sleeve, to boost himself forward.
Usually he would be hearing the well known call to apprehend a thief or to “get back here you bastard!” he was used to.
But this time nothing came, not that, no sound of a pursuing revenge seeker. Nothing. And that bothered him more than any ax wielding Kislevite could.
Jungles of Pahualaxa, Near Port Reaver, Isthmus of Lustria
20th of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.3. 1 Ak’b’al. 16 Sotz’.
The river he was bathing at, by his reckoning, was a slow moving tributaire of the Toskitl, perfect for his needs. Had he followed its course he would have eventually reached the rapids which gave their voice to the Head Monoliths. But here the waters were tranquil and clean. Perfect for a long bathing session and a lot of scrubbing.
Enough to remove every single bit of paint beautifully decorating his skin. He hated it, he hated it as much as he hated having to take off his earrings and studs, which together with the rest of his belongings were now under the care of Tek’Qila, the very skink who had touched up his paints a few nights ago, and stored in one of Wajgrani’s sisal rope baskets.
But had he not gone through the step of making himself as inconspicuous as possible, he knew his task would end in failure.
Didn’t mean he enjoyed having to behold his bare skin in the reflections created by the water.
“Might as well…” He muttered to himself before turning around. On the shoreline, a few dozen Skins were working, most were either fishing with nets and their spears from the riverbanks, with a few preparing what had already been caught. The rest were either working on mending different items, making use of the good lighting of the riverbank, and a few were crafting darts and javelins.
“Any of you have a blade to spare, as thin and sharp as possible!” He asked, pointing at the dark fuzz growing on his lower face. One of the bunch who were fishing, a flat and tall fish skewered on the skink’s spear, warbled in recognition and went for the belt slung around his chest.
Roland walked towards the skink, wading through the water and stretching his hand out, receiving the handle end of a thin obsidian blade.
“Thanks!” He acknowledged, moving back towards the deeper waters in order not to disturb the fishing further.
“It’s nothing lord herald!” The skink cheerfully responded as he himself climbed up a boulder where a basket full of already caught fish had been left.
Soon after he got started working on lightly scraping the blade over his skin, starting with what had grown over his lips and cheeks and slowly and methodically working down his body, making sure to shave as much as he could reach on his way to the final stop that were his legs. There were of course some areas he just couldn't reach, those would usually be taken care of by his warmblood cousins back in Pahuax, but he could make do.
It was as he rinsed the blade off(would have been uncouth not to) and was taking one last swim to fully rid himself of any hairs which could have stuck to his skin, that he heard calling for him.
A skink, one of the warriors which had not been on the riverbank moments before, was signaling for him to come because his presence had been required by Ottoga. Roland briskly walked over the smoothed pebbles which covered the waters, making an effort to squeeze as much water as he could out of his hair (a task he failed at), shaking it off like a hog and quickly tying it into a messy braid.
When he arrived at the clearing where Ottoga had ordered their main camp built, he quickly took in the reason why he had been called for.
There were ten warmbloods in the clearing, immobilized of course, with their arms and legs still tied to the staff they had been carried with behind their backs. He could guess that resting on one’s stomach with their limbs bent behind themselves wasn’t the most comfortable position. But then again, trespassers weren’t in a position to protest such treatment.
“One of our scouting parties apprehended them to the warmblood city’s northeast. About a fifth or a fourth of the total they ambushed” Ottoga informed him. “I don’t believe they will be of much use to the task, but I’d rather be sure of it, will you question them?”
Roland nodded, taking in the pile of confiscated belongings to the side, he went to survey that first. Most of it wasn’t on note, arms, what pieces of clothing and armor had been removed, backpacks and bags of supplies. But he knew by now where to look, so he purposefully went for the one piece of equipment that seemed of the finest craftsmanship, finding a finely made satchel.
Inside, carefully organized even if a bit jostled, was a collection of
interesting items: A compass, a spyglass, a collection of papers he would have to remember to translate later, a few bags of coin and other such knick knacks… And a map; sure, a crude diagram of Pahualaxa’s northeastern reaches and coastline, but a map nonetheless. A map with a clearly marked point of interest.
“They were heading towards the Ziggurat of Dawn!” He shouted, halfway twisting his head to the side but not fully taking his eyes off the map. “Or at least towards one of the lesser temples near it!” He amended.
A chorus of growls was the response he got. With one, a local saurus’, rising above the rest.
Roland looked at the skink who had been, like him, going through the pile of items.
“Part of the party which caught them?”
“Yes.” The skink chirped.
“Which one did you take this from?” He asked, raising the satchel up by its shoulder strap.
The skink responded by pointing at one of the figures, a lanky human (at least three of the other ones were of the third race).
Roland pointed at one of the saurus and then at said man.
“Bring me that one.” He commanded, the warrior quickly understood and, grabbing each end of the stick with one fist, hauled the limp body to Roland.
The man, upon closer inspection, really did look like he was the stachel’s owner, his clothes, although muddied and torn, looked like they might have been of fine make at some point. The nose was clearly broken, but had probably been hooked at some point, and there was a tuft of hair growing from the man’s chin, two others (although tussled) grew towards the sides from just over his lips.
Roland quickly untied him from the thick branch, but kept in place the knots around the man’s wrists, and hookining his arms under the man’s armpits, hauled him backwards until he was laid to rest with a tree’s trunk to his back.
Roland squatted before the man.
And slapped him.
That awoke the fool, who fell to the side with what started as a gasp and ended as a confused shout-scream. Quickly Roland took hold of his upper arm and heaved him back into position.
The man spoke in a language none of Roland’s cousins had taught him; his questioning, confused and scared tone however, gave enough of a clue as to what he was saying. Roland roughly placed his hand over the man’s mouth, applying light pressure and muffling the thief. It made for a good order across language barriers.
“Reikspiel, do you speak it?” Roland asked in the most common of warmblood languages.
The man nodded slowly, his eyes were wide like those of fish, their frantic motion giving away how he was taking in the scene surrounding him.
“Good. Once I remove my hand, please don’t scream, all you’ll gain is irritating us, understood?”
Another nod, Roland removed his hand, absentmindedly wiping it off of the man’s clothes. And noted with satisfaction how the man had heeded his advice, staying silent.
“Now, you are going to answer my questions. And you will answer them with honesty.” He ordered. The man’s gaze moved downguards. At first that confused Roland, until he followed the captive’s gaze.
Hastily shoved between two of the many lengths of cloth which made up the garment was the blade he had used to fix himself. In his haste to answer the summoning he had forgotten to return it.
He looked back at the thief, at least it was helping him get his point across. Perhaps an amusing little gift of the Old Ones? No matter, he would return it once his current task was done.
He went for the satchel, digging around it until he found the map again.
“This, how did you get it?”
“I bought it from a friend,” The man hurried to answer. “He told me that he had been part of a party that had found abandoned wealth in the area.”
“Where is this friend?”
“Back in-back in Sartosa, he retired…”
That gathered a snarl from Roland, making him frown and show his teeth.
Sartosa, he had heard of it many times before. A land like many others beyond the World Pond. A land where every port was a reaver port and every man was a thief.
“Wealth, he told you he found wealth… He found our temples, he found our archives, our offerings to Chotec, and he took them with him.” Roland explained.
“Yours? You mean…? You work for them!” The man explained, as if that had not been evident. Still, Roland did not waste spit or breath explaining that he wasn’t working for “them” but that he was one of “them.”
Instead, he moved to the side, grabbing hold of the man’s head with one hand and pointing at the rest of the captives with the other. “Then, do they all serve you?”
“Yes-yes, the dwarves left the Blackfish Docks with me, the rest I contracted here.”
“Here where?”
“On Port Reaver! On Port Reaver!”
That, finally, caught Roland’s attention.
So far, the man’s story had been just like those of the hundreds who he had seen walk to the top of Pahuax’s temples and never return. He had not asked them himself of course, too young to be trusted with said task. But his cousins and his siblings always talked about what they had learned when translating themselves.
But now, knowing that the man had left Port Reaver, and recently at that, judging by the distance…
“Ottoga!” He shouted, fluidly switching back to High Saurian. “You can send the rest to Pahuax, I only need this one!”
Ottoga raised his claws in an agreeing gesture, quickly roaring out orders for a small detachment to do so.
“And you… You are going to tell me much of what has happened to that rotting mass of wood you deem a city since my last visit…” He idly fidgeted with the thin blade as he explained.
He would profusely apologize to the skink scout for his rude tardiness later. Much later. Well into the night, as a matter of fact.
Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
20th of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.3. 1 Ak’b’al. 16 Sotz’.
The Bentears, per tradition, met up nightly. Just after dawn, so that any of the kids who had work to do in the dark would not be strapped for time.
It was mostly just an excuse for them to unwind all together… And for Johnny Bent-Ear to collect his fare for letting the younger kids work in his and his main crew’s turf… Of course.
That was why he had tried to avoid it today, because with what he’d found in the day’s last run… It could have fixed his life. No more going to bed hungry, no more sleeping in a moisty cot at the orphanage. Hello to warm full meals and having his own room!
Except, except he’d opened his damn mouth and fucking shown off. And rumors, like a rumor about a Bent Ear with a bag full of gold, spread through Port Rever like a bog fire. Before he’d had time to hide or spend any of it, two of Jhonny’s older goons caught him and carted him off to the hideout. Not before giving him a purple eye of course.
Of course, the hideout wasn’t more than a side room in a weirdroot den owned by the Stragglers, the gang the Bentears were a literal cadet branch of. But it served its purpose, it kept the street rats all packed into every beam, barrel, nook and cranny they could use to rest while Johnny gave his “speech.”
“-and this little shit!” He accentuated the shit part with a kick to Stefan’s back. “Thought it’d be okay to betray us! Betray me! Your big brother!” And another kick. By this point Stefan could not remember how many he’d received, or for how long he’d been crying and cowering in a fetal position.
At this rate, Johnny would be taking first spot in the ranking by the end of the night. It had been foolish of Stefan to assume no man would ever surpass his father.
“But don’tcha worry kids! Because Johnny and the Stragglers are here
precisely to deal with these kinds of ungrateful little shits!”
Stefan didn’t dare look up, but he could feel that Johnny, with his floppy right ear like a mutt’s, was rearing up his leg in order to deliver the mother of all kicks. He hoped this one wouldn’t be another one to the head, those were the worst ones.
Instead he only got the loud sound of something hitting the leaky ceiling up above the Bentear meeting spot. And a second later, an explosion of sound from the already loud and rambunctious main room in the drug den.
None of the Bentaear kids did anything, what could they do? Johnny was the oldest and he wasn’t even old enough to be inducted into the Stragglers. Most of them, orphans and street rats and bastards… Most of them had the instinct of flight ingrained on their eight, ten or fifteen year old skulls.
But they didn’t even flee, frozen by the sound of fighting, of toppling and splintering chairs and breaking glass to do anything. It did give Stefan a much needed respite, which he used to slink and crawl back away from where Johnny was, like everyone, staring with wide eyes at the wall between them and whatever hell had unleashed .
The sound subsided in a few minutes, the brawl and going and giving way to the sounds of pained groanings.
That was until the limp body of a man, who Stefan recognized by his mostly-bald head as one of the three Stragglers who had been guarding the business that night, crashed through the door, almost tearing it off its hinges.
His pitiful moaning was obscured by the children’s collective gasps of fear and surprise.
But Stefan had run out of fear for the night, so he instead stared at the figure just beyond the door’s frame.
A tall man, the tall man.
Johnny Bent-Ear was first to act, and like the bully he was, his instinct was to pull a shiv out of his ratty trousers and run screaming at the man.
BASH
All it took was one punch, square against Johnny's head, a bit above his cheek. The seventeen year old crashed against the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, a heap of tangled limbs. Had the room been better illuminated than by just a few candles, Stefan would have seen the pool of dark liquid forming just where Johnny's head landed.
Only then did the Bentears’ (who would probably be looking for a new name come morning) flight instinct truly kick in. Most went for the door directly leading to the alley behind the building. Others went for the windows, showing an agility most would not have expected from scrawny and underfeed kids like them. A few braved the door behind the tall man, their evasive maneuvers reminiscent of a fly’s.
But Stefan was not one of them, the beating had taken too much life out of him.
So he just stared as the man knelt beside the heap Johnny had become, rummaging through his clothes, until a certain clinking of coins in a bag was heard.
A bag Stefan knew was filled with unfamiliar square and rectangular golden coins, decorated with geometric patterns he had never seen before in his years as a thief. The bag was filled to the point of obscenity, no wonder the other kids had caught him when he himself had been the one carrying it.
He, very much against his will, let out a pained wimper. Which finally gave him, as shrouded in the room’s shadows as he had and as small as he had tried to make himself, completely away.
“You…” The tall man with long hair said. Somehow being able to recognize him.
The man rose, rehooking the bag into his belt as he did, and walked towards Stefan. Who tried with all his might (read, none) to crawl his sorry ass away.
But the stranger didn’t go to grab him, merely inspecting him from up above, judging.
“Why? Why do you steal? You steal from us wherever we go, whatever we carry… Why do you steal so much from us?” The man asked, his strange accent of hard
cees and hissing
esses alien to the boy. He didn’t understand much of what the stranger was saying, but he knew to answer a question when a man stood over him. Or else.
“I… I needed it.” The fourteen year old whimpered, sniffing his own bloody snot.
“For what?”
“Fo-food?” He answered tentatively.
The stranger with the blue-golden eyes did not respond, he just kept staring at the crying child.
Maybe he lost consciousness, maybe he fell asleep, maybe both. But when he woke up the next morning, sore all over and with his skin covered in bruises, he found three pieces of rectangular gold, each as long as his finger.
And maybe, just maybe, that’d be enough for a few good meals until there was a new gang to join.
Many argued the following night, over drinks and puff of smoke, about who could have been responsible for beating up four Stragglers only not to steal their catche of weirdroot. The names of different gangs and pirate lordlings were passed around, with no good answer being found.
But what was certain was that no one thought of the tall man in ill-fitting clothes who uttered the words “They don’t feed their own children.” Over and over as he stalked the streets of Port Reaver for the entire night.
