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Mr.Crocodile
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Swamp Town Burns - Part VII: On The Prowl
“Stop looking at that treeline for even a second and you will be dead you fucking idiots! It’ll be so fast that we won’t even be able to loot your corpses you bastards! That’s how fast those things will pull you in!
Sigmar-fucking-dammit if I get woken up in the middle of the night by one of you idiots contorting in the ground with his guts out or venomed-up enough to breathe blood I’ll just kill the sod then and there to stop the fucking noise. You are sentries! DO YOUR JOB!”
-Quote by Captain Thijmen Rehn. Recorded during his failed expedition in search for Chaqua, the City of Gold.
The town, if it can be called such a thing, is so much worse for Roland’s senses once he enters it. He had hoped for such a thing to be impossible as he had washed his paints off of his naked skin.
The smells worsen, they worsen so much. He hadn’t even considered such a thing to be possible. There’s the rot, a rot which is alien when compared to that of decomposing plant life or a carcass, both common in the jungle. It’s a worse rot than what he’s smelled when walking the streets of Sudburg or even during his dalliance in Port Reaver. It’s not just the piles of waste humans are so careless about, he can handle that. It’s that here, seemingly, there’s even less of an effort to push them away.
Sudburg, even if its inhabitants have the horrible tendency to just throw bucketfuls of their refuse out their windows and into the streets, is at the end of the day still built upon a coastal mount. Copious rain and the sheer force of gravity makes it so that, with the exception of the thick of the dry season, eventually the slop will make it downwards and outwards.
Port Reaver is worse, of course. But at least Port Reaver hugs the shoreline and exists framed between two estuaries. If nothing else that allows an ease of access to wastage removal consistent enough for some of its inhabitants to at least try.
Swamp Town? Swamp Town is “built” upon coastal marshland, and mostly surrounded by mangroves. Mangroves which act as a tidal barrier. The water gets in with the high tide, but the waves do not, not pushing or pulling any of the filth. The water leaves with the low tide, the filth gets stuck. Swamp Town is a bowl of rotting construction material and warmblood feces that gets inundated and desiccated twice every day. Roland cannot decide which of the two “modes” disgusts him the most. Desiccated it currently winning the debate, however, as it is the situation he’s currently dealing with.
That all combines with further smells. The smells of dirty humans and their sweat, the smells of unclean alcohols and dubious meals. The smell of singed black powder and misery. What’s worse? He can smell and feel it all clinging to his skin, like a lather of nauseating ointments. He’d give one of his arms in sacrifice in exchange of the ability to shed his skin as his fellows do, because otherwise the only way he can imagine he’ll get the putrid smell out will be to simply scrub the entirety of himself raw.
And the smell is far from the only assault to the senses. The noise is almost as bad. One could be mistaken for assuming the droning buzz to be that of rain. It is not. There’s no clouds above him, at least none made of mist.
Flies.
By the millions, and he’s probably underestimating. In some areas, above the worst sources of noxious leachates, they form such thick swarms as to act like smokestacks and heat distortions. Enough of them to feed an entire cohort, if only there were skinks careless enough to poison themselves like that. He wouldn’t feed one of those insects, fried or otherwise, to even the worst of reavers.
The buzzing is truly nerve wracking, and that’s without getting into the sensory assault that is constantly feeling hundreds of the things land on him. He’s stood over week-old hydrodon carcasses with smaller accumulations on the things. And while anywhere else such a situation would have quickly turned into a banquet for flycatcher birds, bats and amphibians, here those animals only thread at night. So he is constantly forced to shake and swat himself free of them. The cohort are most likely still spying him from the treeline, chittering and laughing about how he looks like brain fluke has rotted the inside of his skull with how spasmodic his movement has become.
Some small voice in the back of his mind curses his blessing and how it likely is responsible for how much more attention he’s getting from the insects when compared to the few other warmbloods walking the “streets” under the high noon. It’s a traitorous voice, one he’s happy the flies trying to get into his nostrils and ears are “helping” him ignore.
The fly clouds' pungent sound and horrid tactile sensation somewhat abate as he climbs up the ladder leading into one of the larger stilt-built structures of Swamp Town. The refuse under and around it indicates to him that it’s likely a tavern. The kind of place he’s hoping will give him a good lead. The rungs are slimy and sticky to his touch, but he perseveres.
But the sensorial respite isn’t long. Some of the problems are simply replaced. The smell of combined waste is replaced by the smell of humanity at its worst: Sweat, sickly secretions, unwashed skin, matted and lice-infested hair, alcohol, vomits…
His skin is greatly freed from the flies’ assaults by the heavy and ratty curtain that guards the entrance, but only to be replaced by the stagnant humidity and warmth of too-many warmbloods confined in a badly ventilated hut made from rotting material.
The soundscape… It's not better, it’s less worse. Much less overwhelming buzzing. A lot more hushed talking, the occasional grunt and moan, or phlegmatic cough. But on what his auditory sense gives him a relative break on, sight makes up for.
Not a single one of the warmbloods, and there must be more than twenty of them, looks happy or healthy. Or even just content and hanging on. Males or females, older or younger. They all look too thin or too fattened. Too weak or unhealthily bulky. Scars resemble less the badges he’s accustomed to and more like the obvious points at which an object has been overused. Blemishes and pockmarks from dozens of diseases and ailments he can’t even name are visible wherever skin is in view. He has never been the best judge for what actual attractiveness entails for his race of birth, and he hopes none of those canons fit what he’s seeing right now.
The warmbloods of Sudburg are like working ants, any missing antennae or leg little more than a sign of their hard-working nature and the fact that they are doing what they are meant to: Work hard. The warmbloods of Port Reaver are more varied, some as decorated and groomed as songbirds, others are just like their kin in Sudburg, others look like seasoned predators. Even the thieves of the hated parties which march into Lustria can be physically admired to a degree: Their horrid task makes their hunting desirable, but it’s a hard task they are committed to nonetheless, one that leaves their bodies ready to at least face Lustria. In that way, they are akin to beasts of burden.
The warmbloods of Swamp Town…? If Roland is to keep to the zoological analogies he’s created within his mind, he’d describe them as the sickly animals at the back of the pack. The kind that the herd simply needs to abandon for its own collective good. The kind that tries to look intimidating as it foams at the mouth because of exhaustion. The kind that is skittish enough to run at the snap of a twig in a clearing, but doesn’t have the energy to actually volt.
Their faces look like they’ve been wallowing in carnosaur dung all day long, which isn’t too far from the truth. Some look terrified, as if they expect something or someone to lunge at them at any movement. Others look the opposite, ready to lunge and bite a nose off at the least of gestures.
Roland knows he looks out of place. He’s as “clean” and healthy, too much so by the standards of those of the fourth race skulking and drinking inside the tavern-hut. He’s also larger than almost all of them, but that’s common enough that he almost doesn’t factor it in. He approaches the tavern’s keeper with as little aggression as he can, which is hard considering the discomforting context of the settlement.
“Hello.” He greets in reikspiel. It’s not the native tongue spoken by the majority of warmbloods in Lustria, interestingly enough, but it is their common trade language and one he’s as fluent as he can be in.
“Uh… I guess you are looking for someone, no way one of your kind is looking for a drink at my fine establishment.” The man behind the counter, portly and missing a chunk of his nose, answers. “You’ll have to get one anyways, otherwise you can leave.”
The man’s initial comment, blunt as it is, draws Roland’s interest. “One of my kind?” What could “kind” mean in such a context? The xho’za’khanx of Pahuax do not visit Swamp Town, and even if they did, he may look queer but he does not look like his usual self to begin with.
“You look like a trader’s loose-panted son. I hope daddy knows his son is visiting the fine businesses of Swamp Town.” The man laughs as he serves Roland a mug of thick ale he didn’t ask for, it doesn’t even look cold. “If you are hoping to get your dick wet before you get dragged back to ship, try the next place over. My girl doesn’t work the day shift.”
“My… father knows well where I am. And ahhh , no, I’m not looking for female company. I’m looking for a man-”
“Then I still recommend the next place over, they bought a new slaveboy recently, Kislevite, pale as snow.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m looking for a man. For information on him, to be precise” Roland’s hand tentatively moves to grip the keg, even if just to hide the rising tension in his body.
“Ohhhhhh right, should have said that from the start. Well, I’m sure that if you spend long enough here you will be able to jog someone’s memory, specially if you pay a couple of rounds. You look like you can afford it.”
“I’m looking for a faster route around. The man is a redhead, wears a very clean white-”
“Barra.” The barkeep coughs.
“Excuse me?”
“You are looking for Barra, Barra the Exile. Little cunt is unmistakable. Why you looking for him? I haven’t seen him since I had to ban him from here.”
“Why was that?” Roland inquiries.
“He tried to get dodgy with me multiple times, I had to get a friend to shake him down and made it clear he’s no longer welcome. Same thing in most of the town, he’s a consistent toothache, that ginger rat. What did he do to you? He usually works as a guide for parties inland. And you don’t look like you’d survive two days without boiled water.”
“He… He allegedly did something that greatly interests a friend of mine. I’m doing said friend a favor.”
“Allegedly? Nah, I’m sure he did whatever bothered your friend.”
“Good, that means I’m not wasting time. So, where could I find this Barra the Exile?”
“Well, I’m not sure actually, he is in the town, but most of us like seeing him so little we pretty much block him from our minds. Once again, a few rounds here will probably jog someone’s memories…”
Roland sighs. Of course. He braces for a new assault to the senses, specifically his tongue, as he raises the keg to his lips. Meanwhile his free hand goes for one of the pouches tied to the belt he is using. He ends up fumbling and not getting anything out, that’s how bad the shock of the drink’s taste is.
It’s crest-curlingly sour, and tasted similar to the fermented leaves he remembers having taken at Nicolete’s kitchen during his mission in Port Reaver. Except that had been a good sourness, an intended one. He doesn’t think anything in this beverage was intended. It’s the aberration of drinkstuffs. He can’t avoid swearing in saurian as he swallows the last few gulps down, and hopes the man will simply assume him to be speaking an unfamiliar warm-blood tongue.
“Strong stuff aye? Got it from a guy in Skeggi last month, still have half a barrel of it on- Oh.” The barkeep’s gloating is interrupted by a greedy reaction, as Roland manages to fight off the horrid sensation and slams a few coins into the counter. They are worn and shine-less, the kind found when inspecting captives.
“I don’t have the time to get these people drunk on your behalf.” Roland dryly remarks. “Just help me find him.”
The tavernkeep inspects the coins, unamused. The man had probably hoped to get much more out of an inebriated Roland. Said facial expression changes as he actually counts the value of the coins. Warmblood currency, Roland has found, seems to not devalue no matter how bad the state in which it is found is. Meaning that what to him are just grime and brown-blood covered little pieces of unusable metal, are quite attractive to the overgrown figure behind the wood-worm infested piece of furniture.
“He lives in a tent-covered rowboat in the outskirts up northwest, only way to sleep dry around here if you can’t find a stilt house. It’s not that easy to find among the trees unless you are looking for it, the carp is as gray and lichen-infested as the trees it’s tied to. Otherwise, look for him at The Rotting Tongue tavern. Guido, the owner, is the only one around here who doesn’t hate his guts.” The man gruffly explains as a tapping of his finger implies to Roland that he wants a few more coins, which he gives without much comment.
“Anything else?”
“Well, I’ll give you a piece of advice, free of charge. Whatever you plan on doing when you catch him? Don’t bother searching him, he’s in the habit of wasting his money fast. And if you don’t manage? Don’t follow him into the jungle.”
“Why?”
“There’s a reason he tends to return alone and with equipment to bargain to newcomers.”
“Ah, that does explain things I already knew. I will heed your warnings.” Roland begins to turn as the man continues counting coins, happy about his quick and easy pay being coupled with the possible removal of who Roland is quickly learning is not just suspicious in the eyes of Oxyi-Cho'a.
A hand, however, suddenly pressed against his chest, stops him. It’s sweaty, large by warmblood standards and sports some worryingly ingrown nails. It’s connected to a fitting body.
“Hey pretty boy… Hear you were looking for Barra…?” A man with a leech’s smile intercepts him. “Sorry, but you are going to have to fuck off, I’m first in line and it’s not a short one.”
“How so?”
“I found him last night sleeping in the wrong bed, mine. I was just talking with a couple friends about paying him a visit tonight. And while we’d be ok with you tagging along, you’ll have to be happy with the scraps.” The man does indeed point at a small gathering in the corner of the room. They remind him of the men he was forced to fight during his visit to Port Reaver to recover the stolen game pieces he had taken for haggling. Unkept, of lazy and yet nervous eyes, covered in tattoos and with belts fat with knives.
“That is not something I can agree to.”
“Sad to hear, then I guess you will have to pay up.”
“Pay up? For what exactly?”
“For being a clean-shaven pretty-boy who thinks he can walk in here, jingle his coinage, and get what he wants.”
“Ah.”
Roland is frustrated, tired and greatly bothered by the mere thought of having to even walk the threshold between horrible inside and tortuous outside again. The idea of a brawl does not appeal to him in the slightest.
Next thing he knows, the both of them are falling through the open hair, the fly-containing rope curtain behind them raised by the sudden shove. Roland thinks little, but his body makes sure he lands on top, with the man bearing the brunt of the two and a half meter long fall between the groundlevel of the stilted tavern and the peatbog below.
The splat of the impact is as lacking as the baking heat would imply, but there’s still some give to the thick mud and filth mixture. Enough that when Roland gets up and brutally plants his booted foot on the man’s face, he is able to break the surface tension and mostly submerge it.
It doesn’t take even a minute for the flailing and the painful grip of the man’s hands on Roland’s oppressive ankle to falter, and the man’s fellows never actually poke their heads out to even discern the fate of their spokesman.
Such things, it seems, are common enough in the Swamp Town.
When Barra is woken up by a shift in the light, his blurry eyes meet a long shape blocking the sun and as such casting itself in relative darkness.
“Barra the Exile?” It asks in reikspiel, it sounds tired and frustrated, but relatively young. Even in his still sleepy mind, such details sing sweetly to him.
“Barra the Entrepreneur.” He corrects on instinct. “Who do I have the pleasure of talking with?”
“Roland Welser-Nakor.”
“Well meet sir Welser-Nakor. What brings you to my-” Barra’s arms open wide, gesturing to his rowboat of a home. “-Humble abode?”
“I want to talk with you about your business.”
“Oh, a proposal, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“And why should I listen to it? You have interrupted my nap, after all.”
“I just drowned a man who publicly professed an intent to assault you and likely murder you.” The sun-shadowed figure grunts.
“…”
“In mud and feces.” Roland ads.
“ Oh. ”
It is all too fast, just like the kid taken while playing by the water in what feels but really isn't such a long time ago.
He had simply been running messages once more. Sure, now it was between the different workstations across the large and slowly forming clearing of the Henge instead of across Port Reaver. But that just meant more and shorter sprints.
Then the explosion of sound. It's not a roar. Predators don't roar when they hunt, not the normal ones at least. The only thing that precedes the rending screams is the low rumbling rustle of something large and heavy rushing and crushing its way through the foliage to get to the poor slave who had simply happened to be piling bundles of removed vines in the wrong area.
The sudden shock makes Stefan stumble and stop, makes him forget where to or why he had been running. All he can see is the mass of scales and spikes falling upon a defenseless man.
It’s a good ways longer than most men are tall, something that’s easy to see despite the way its frill and speed confound the animal’s actual silhouette. But it’s not one of the three long horns anchored on said frill that end the man’s life. It’s a beaked mouth armed with teeth and protruding serrations, there’s no finesse about such weapons, they simply clamp around the man’s shoulder and reach all the way to the middle of the chest with their length. Bones crack, blood splatters. But the man continues to scream.
The Trypadon is a medium to large-sized ambush predator, known for its distinctive frilled head, sharp beak and skill as a burrower. It’s not a mortal wound, at least not instantaneously. But it’s a wound that will make the man incapable of fighting back.
The people closer to the actual catastrophe, because Stefan is damn near to the center of the henge’s plaza while the kill is occurring in the periphery, react in two very different kinds of ways. Some try to help, brandishing their tools, their axes, sickles and other Stephan can’t actually name, and try to threaten it. They are largely unsuccessful. None of the ones wielding shorter tools even dare get close enough to grace the animal’s spike adorned rump and tail, much less the head. And those few with longer tools? The animal stomps and bucks, its claws dig furrows into the already upturned soil and are used to crack and bend the ends of pitchforks and spades.
Most people, though, tools or no tools, simply flee towards the quickly accumulating and loud crowds further from the jungle’s edge.
The scene reminds Stefan of a street dog with something the other mongrels wanted in its mouth. The constant turning and instinctive kicking, the growling, the shaking and slobbering. Only that none of the other “mongrels” had even the slightest chance of stealing the “food.” And that the winning dog is a spiked reptilian predator large enough for Stefan to honestly say it’s the heaviest-seeming living thing he’s ever seen.
Soon enough, once it’s sure none of the people surrounding it pose a real and immediate threat, the animal starts backing up slowly. Then, with another brusk motion, it runs off into the jungle.
This time, he’s not sent for aid to the city or the guard, there’s no scrambling to hunt the beast down or secure the area. People, once they feel certain that the animal will not return for seconds, slowly get back to their work. Most do so much more cautiously, jumping at the flight of birds or crawling away of lizards and insects perturbed by their working of the soil. Eventually even Stephan realizes for how long he’s just been standing there and remembers he has more messages to deliver.
And so the day marches on. There’s no mysterious figure who saves the day or king who organizes a sweep. At least not until the dawn comes, and with it the end of the workday for the slaves and freemen workers.
A few men, perhaps a little more than a dozen, gather around one of the fires with more weapon-like implements, debating what direction they should take or how to organize themselves. They are not loud enough for Stefan to clearly follow the conversation from the inside of the structure that has become his and his master’s camp. But it’s better entertainment than just staring into the bonfire until he’s tired enough to override his own nerves.
“It’ll be pointless unless they catch it before it reaches its burrow. And it probably did so less than an hour after it left, maybe just minutes.” Von Danling points out, making Stefan jump. He had assumed the bark-skinned man to be asleep.
“What? Why?! If they find its burrow, won’t it just be trapped?” He answers with a question, as he’s slowly realizing his masters like him to do.
“A trypadon? No, not in the slightest. When they find it, it’ll have used that frill and all those horns to wedge itself face out in the burrow’s entrance. Whichever unlucky sod tries to approach it by that point will have to fight a wall with teeth on it. The only real option would be digging the entire warren out, and that’s a whole other mess. It all makes them a nightmare to deal with. So much so that the coldbloods see it as a symbol of protection, their guards sometimes even wear their skulls as helms to embody the obstinate things.”
“So they can be killed!” Stefan tries to reason. On the back of his mind, he files in the name of the beast. There’s so many monsters in the Lustrian jungles that he’s not surprised he had never heard of it before.
“What a lizardman the size of an orc can do is not the same as a man.”
“Ohhh…” Stefan mutters,
“You act like you’ve never seen one lad.”
“That’s because I… Haven’t, sir? I’ve heard all the stories but I’m happy that I’ve never corroborated them.” Stefan explains, confused.
That, for once, actually gives the wizard pause. The ancient man turns slightly to look at something over Stefan’s shoulder. When the boy turns to follow the man’s gaze, he finds himself confused. There’s nothing special about that bit of wall.
“Truly?” Von Danling asks, much more interested now. “You have never met one of them? Even in passing, maybe during an unwise visit to the jungle’s edge back before you were a runner for the city?”
“Uuuuh. I don’t think I’d be alive if that were the case.”
The wizard keeps looking at him and the nothingness over his shoulder for a few more minutes. Making Stefan more and more uncomfortable. Returning to their prior topic of conversation ends up being his way out.
“So… If they can’t really scare it off or kill it…?” He raises his elbow to point at the gathering of men.
“It will be back, whenever today’s catch runs out and it gets hungry again. It now knows there’s easy prey in hand here.” The wizard combs his beard with his thin-fingered hand.
“Can’t you help them, sir?”
“I would, but my skills are better spent in more subtle ways. Beasts are not the only thing to deter from entering our henge here.”
“Oh.” Stefan looks down, a cold shudder runs through him. “Shouldn’t we tell the king, then?” The answer he receives a moment later will not help him sleep any sooner tonight.
“I planned on bringing the incident up in our next meeting. But I doubt he’ll do much. After all, seventeen dead men so far is entirely within expectations of a project like the one he is allowing me to carry out.”
Often, when Torfi is tired and has nothing left on his to-do list to carry out, he will simply laze around with the hounds in the kennels. Today that is not an option, between his mother’s and a couple other hunting parties under the king’s auspices, the kennels have been practically emptied of everything but the pregnant bitches and the pups who have not yet been fully trained. A coincidence in plans Torfi is not happy about.
Usually he, as the new kennelmaster, should have left with one of the hunting parties. The largest one, that’s who his father would have gone with. That’s what he had done the day he did not return. But that’s not the reason why Torfi has stayed behind.
The reasons Torfi has stayed behind are Haimiaz and Eistla. Because with a household of now only four, and the killers of his father still reaping the glory, there’s no telling what might happen to the thirteen and three years old if left alone for too long. And he can’t expect his mother to do so all the time, not without any thralls to help.
So he is staying the day in Skeggi. Not necessarily the entirety of it in the longhouse-by-the-kennels, he would go stir crazy. But he is using the sudden emptiness of his usual place of work to do other tasks that require doing. Such as his current one.
Hounds need collars, leads and chains and all shorts of other knick knacks his father had always taken care of. Both in fixing old ones and buying new ones. Torfi knows all the basics, all the small fixes that don’t take a tradesman to do. Those had been the first skills taught to him by his father.
But kennelmasters and hunters are not leatherworkers. And leather workers are in high demand in a place like Skeggi. So his current task? Waiting until one isn’t so he can make an order.
He’s not just waiting bored out of his mind, of course. The Hound’s Skull isn’t also known as “Chain Rock” for no reason.
He’s not far from Eriksson’s Tower, which is easily visible over the roofs of surrounding buildings. The ancient cairn built by the port’s founder hundreds of years ago, and around which has grown into the default city square of Skeggi, is an excellent tool for finding the slightly less relevant node of streets at the center of which Torfi’s causal entertainment is.
The Hound's Skull is a huge stone lump stolen from the ancient standing monoliths south of Skeggi across Lysa Bay, crudely carved into the shape of a snarling hound's skull by the first priest to set foot on the settlement. It’s no wonder it has long been a place meaningful to his family line.
Stories say that a king once had a great metal loop hammered into the stone, with chains attached to it. All items are there, that’s obvious. Torfi isn’t so sure about the alleged thousand-year old nature of them. Metal rusts fast in Lustria.
But anyways, said chains have manacles attached on the end. Most days, there are one or two citizens with the manacles around their necks, feet, or hands, fighting off other prisoners or folks from the crowd, or dodging any detritus being thrown their way. Today it’s two women.
Sometimes this is a punishment, today certainly is. Passerbys have informed Torfi of the two girls’ status as Imperial thralls who had attempted to kill their master and escape Skeggi. Escape to where Torfi doesn’t know or understand. There’s nothing but a deadly jungle around. But then again that’s the kind of stupidity he’d except from any thrall who tried to betray their master to begin with.
But punishment isn’t all that the Hound’s Skull is about. Sometimes Norse men will chain themselves up to prove their strength. Sometimes the crowd or some jakkers, landlords with too much free time like his older brothers used to be, will free a prisoner who fights well. Or at least throw them food to keep them alive. Sometimes a captive grows thin enough to slip their shackles, or turns mad and mauls their fellow prisoners. There are no rules governing how a captive should be chained or freed — only a show which passes the time. It runs all night, too, with torches to illuminate the participants, even if Torfi never tends to stick around that long.
The two girls, compared to some shows he’s enjoyed, are really not much. Just two scared little things that squirms, beg and cower whenever someone with specially good aim finds a nice rock. It’s something his unexpected but not unwelcome spectating companion is vocally not happy about.
“It is an insult to the Hound, and nothing less. To give unto him such paltry gifts who will not fight.” Growls Gothi Bloðugr from under his boar-pelt rug of a coat. Truly, Torfi cannot understand how the ancient man can wear something like that under the sweltering morning heat. It’s probably part of the man’s blessings.
“Well, most of the outsiders don’t even know it as anything other than Chain Rock. Most just think it’s a funny thing we arrange to entertain them.”
“The seasonals I understand.” The shaman accepts. “Their very profession honors the hounds for me to overlook. But they didn’t chain those dregs up. Skeggialings did.” He follows up with.
“You could get rid of them. You are Gothi. I certainly wouldn’t stop you.”
“None of them would try -which is also part of the problem but that’s for another day, pup- The problem is that there’d be replacements as soon as I left.”
“I guess…” Torfi uncomfortably squirms against the tent post he’s leaning on. He never likes talking faith. It goes over his head. Maybe not the best thing when one’s father once was the city’s Gothi’s closest friend. Sometimes Torfi feels that even that, his father’s allies, like Bloody Sven, is just another responsibility he doesn’t know he can shoulder. But Bloðugr is still a man who has stood by him.
“Look at them, what would happen if you released one of your pups on them?” The gothi conities mulling.
“Mh? It wouldn’t be the easiest, but it’d probably rip at least one of them apart. But then the betters would come in and try to kill it for ruining their game and that’s not something I want to try.”
“That’s the problem.” The shaman goes on. “Bets and entertainment. No time for proper offerings and worthy duels and fights. They all understand the basics, even the dumbest of your dogs do. Blood for the blood god. Glory on the field of death. Offer so you may not be offering yourself. Sacrifice, or else. All things children know. But then you tell them that the blood of a starved slave is less valuable than that of the battle-slain foe and suddenly they look like they’ve never attended a ritual in their lives, truly a-”
“Gothi Bloðugr?” A voice interrupts. It’s an easy one to recognize. As time goes on, Torfi feels like he hears it more and more often. “If I could steal you from your audience?”
Adella of the Graelings is an up and coming jakker. One Torfi has never had trouble or aid from. But everyone seems to speak of her, so he’s happy to just bow his head in deference as the one-hoofed shaman bides him goodbye and leaves with the equally cloaked woman, the both of them flanked by Adella’s men.
Torfi doesn’t know what to think of Adella beyond the fact that he’s pretty sure she is not involved with the Reidarsons, which already puts her above half of Skeggi but still. Her eyes are really pretty, he guesses, although he can never really figure out what exact color they are.
But soon enough that’s forgotten as he returns to watching the chained-up girls begging for water. If he had the coin to spare he’d bet on the black-haired one dropping before tomorrow’s sunrise.
“Stop looking at that treeline for even a second and you will be dead you fucking idiots! It’ll be so fast that we won’t even be able to loot your corpses you bastards! That’s how fast those things will pull you in!
Sigmar-fucking-dammit if I get woken up in the middle of the night by one of you idiots contorting in the ground with his guts out or venomed-up enough to breathe blood I’ll just kill the sod then and there to stop the fucking noise. You are sentries! DO YOUR JOB!”
-Quote by Captain Thijmen Rehn. Recorded during his failed expedition in search for Chaqua, the City of Gold.
Outskirts of Swamp Town, Settlers’ Cove
14th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.8 1 Lamat 1 Mol
14th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.8 1 Lamat 1 Mol
The town, if it can be called such a thing, is so much worse for Roland’s senses once he enters it. He had hoped for such a thing to be impossible as he had washed his paints off of his naked skin.
The smells worsen, they worsen so much. He hadn’t even considered such a thing to be possible. There’s the rot, a rot which is alien when compared to that of decomposing plant life or a carcass, both common in the jungle. It’s a worse rot than what he’s smelled when walking the streets of Sudburg or even during his dalliance in Port Reaver. It’s not just the piles of waste humans are so careless about, he can handle that. It’s that here, seemingly, there’s even less of an effort to push them away.
Sudburg, even if its inhabitants have the horrible tendency to just throw bucketfuls of their refuse out their windows and into the streets, is at the end of the day still built upon a coastal mount. Copious rain and the sheer force of gravity makes it so that, with the exception of the thick of the dry season, eventually the slop will make it downwards and outwards.
Port Reaver is worse, of course. But at least Port Reaver hugs the shoreline and exists framed between two estuaries. If nothing else that allows an ease of access to wastage removal consistent enough for some of its inhabitants to at least try.
Swamp Town? Swamp Town is “built” upon coastal marshland, and mostly surrounded by mangroves. Mangroves which act as a tidal barrier. The water gets in with the high tide, but the waves do not, not pushing or pulling any of the filth. The water leaves with the low tide, the filth gets stuck. Swamp Town is a bowl of rotting construction material and warmblood feces that gets inundated and desiccated twice every day. Roland cannot decide which of the two “modes” disgusts him the most. Desiccated it currently winning the debate, however, as it is the situation he’s currently dealing with.
That all combines with further smells. The smells of dirty humans and their sweat, the smells of unclean alcohols and dubious meals. The smell of singed black powder and misery. What’s worse? He can smell and feel it all clinging to his skin, like a lather of nauseating ointments. He’d give one of his arms in sacrifice in exchange of the ability to shed his skin as his fellows do, because otherwise the only way he can imagine he’ll get the putrid smell out will be to simply scrub the entirety of himself raw.
And the smell is far from the only assault to the senses. The noise is almost as bad. One could be mistaken for assuming the droning buzz to be that of rain. It is not. There’s no clouds above him, at least none made of mist.
Flies.
By the millions, and he’s probably underestimating. In some areas, above the worst sources of noxious leachates, they form such thick swarms as to act like smokestacks and heat distortions. Enough of them to feed an entire cohort, if only there were skinks careless enough to poison themselves like that. He wouldn’t feed one of those insects, fried or otherwise, to even the worst of reavers.
The buzzing is truly nerve wracking, and that’s without getting into the sensory assault that is constantly feeling hundreds of the things land on him. He’s stood over week-old hydrodon carcasses with smaller accumulations on the things. And while anywhere else such a situation would have quickly turned into a banquet for flycatcher birds, bats and amphibians, here those animals only thread at night. So he is constantly forced to shake and swat himself free of them. The cohort are most likely still spying him from the treeline, chittering and laughing about how he looks like brain fluke has rotted the inside of his skull with how spasmodic his movement has become.
Some small voice in the back of his mind curses his blessing and how it likely is responsible for how much more attention he’s getting from the insects when compared to the few other warmbloods walking the “streets” under the high noon. It’s a traitorous voice, one he’s happy the flies trying to get into his nostrils and ears are “helping” him ignore.
The fly clouds' pungent sound and horrid tactile sensation somewhat abate as he climbs up the ladder leading into one of the larger stilt-built structures of Swamp Town. The refuse under and around it indicates to him that it’s likely a tavern. The kind of place he’s hoping will give him a good lead. The rungs are slimy and sticky to his touch, but he perseveres.
But the sensorial respite isn’t long. Some of the problems are simply replaced. The smell of combined waste is replaced by the smell of humanity at its worst: Sweat, sickly secretions, unwashed skin, matted and lice-infested hair, alcohol, vomits…
His skin is greatly freed from the flies’ assaults by the heavy and ratty curtain that guards the entrance, but only to be replaced by the stagnant humidity and warmth of too-many warmbloods confined in a badly ventilated hut made from rotting material.
The soundscape… It's not better, it’s less worse. Much less overwhelming buzzing. A lot more hushed talking, the occasional grunt and moan, or phlegmatic cough. But on what his auditory sense gives him a relative break on, sight makes up for.
Not a single one of the warmbloods, and there must be more than twenty of them, looks happy or healthy. Or even just content and hanging on. Males or females, older or younger. They all look too thin or too fattened. Too weak or unhealthily bulky. Scars resemble less the badges he’s accustomed to and more like the obvious points at which an object has been overused. Blemishes and pockmarks from dozens of diseases and ailments he can’t even name are visible wherever skin is in view. He has never been the best judge for what actual attractiveness entails for his race of birth, and he hopes none of those canons fit what he’s seeing right now.
The warmbloods of Sudburg are like working ants, any missing antennae or leg little more than a sign of their hard-working nature and the fact that they are doing what they are meant to: Work hard. The warmbloods of Port Reaver are more varied, some as decorated and groomed as songbirds, others are just like their kin in Sudburg, others look like seasoned predators. Even the thieves of the hated parties which march into Lustria can be physically admired to a degree: Their horrid task makes their hunting desirable, but it’s a hard task they are committed to nonetheless, one that leaves their bodies ready to at least face Lustria. In that way, they are akin to beasts of burden.
The warmbloods of Swamp Town…? If Roland is to keep to the zoological analogies he’s created within his mind, he’d describe them as the sickly animals at the back of the pack. The kind that the herd simply needs to abandon for its own collective good. The kind that tries to look intimidating as it foams at the mouth because of exhaustion. The kind that is skittish enough to run at the snap of a twig in a clearing, but doesn’t have the energy to actually volt.
Their faces look like they’ve been wallowing in carnosaur dung all day long, which isn’t too far from the truth. Some look terrified, as if they expect something or someone to lunge at them at any movement. Others look the opposite, ready to lunge and bite a nose off at the least of gestures.
Roland knows he looks out of place. He’s as “clean” and healthy, too much so by the standards of those of the fourth race skulking and drinking inside the tavern-hut. He’s also larger than almost all of them, but that’s common enough that he almost doesn’t factor it in. He approaches the tavern’s keeper with as little aggression as he can, which is hard considering the discomforting context of the settlement.
“Hello.” He greets in reikspiel. It’s not the native tongue spoken by the majority of warmbloods in Lustria, interestingly enough, but it is their common trade language and one he’s as fluent as he can be in.
“Uh… I guess you are looking for someone, no way one of your kind is looking for a drink at my fine establishment.” The man behind the counter, portly and missing a chunk of his nose, answers. “You’ll have to get one anyways, otherwise you can leave.”
The man’s initial comment, blunt as it is, draws Roland’s interest. “One of my kind?” What could “kind” mean in such a context? The xho’za’khanx of Pahuax do not visit Swamp Town, and even if they did, he may look queer but he does not look like his usual self to begin with.
“You look like a trader’s loose-panted son. I hope daddy knows his son is visiting the fine businesses of Swamp Town.” The man laughs as he serves Roland a mug of thick ale he didn’t ask for, it doesn’t even look cold. “If you are hoping to get your dick wet before you get dragged back to ship, try the next place over. My girl doesn’t work the day shift.”
“My… father knows well where I am. And ahhh , no, I’m not looking for female company. I’m looking for a man-”
“Then I still recommend the next place over, they bought a new slaveboy recently, Kislevite, pale as snow.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m looking for a man. For information on him, to be precise” Roland’s hand tentatively moves to grip the keg, even if just to hide the rising tension in his body.
“Ohhhhhh right, should have said that from the start. Well, I’m sure that if you spend long enough here you will be able to jog someone’s memory, specially if you pay a couple of rounds. You look like you can afford it.”
“I’m looking for a faster route around. The man is a redhead, wears a very clean white-”
“Barra.” The barkeep coughs.
“Excuse me?”
“You are looking for Barra, Barra the Exile. Little cunt is unmistakable. Why you looking for him? I haven’t seen him since I had to ban him from here.”
“Why was that?” Roland inquiries.
“He tried to get dodgy with me multiple times, I had to get a friend to shake him down and made it clear he’s no longer welcome. Same thing in most of the town, he’s a consistent toothache, that ginger rat. What did he do to you? He usually works as a guide for parties inland. And you don’t look like you’d survive two days without boiled water.”
“He… He allegedly did something that greatly interests a friend of mine. I’m doing said friend a favor.”
“Allegedly? Nah, I’m sure he did whatever bothered your friend.”
“Good, that means I’m not wasting time. So, where could I find this Barra the Exile?”
“Well, I’m not sure actually, he is in the town, but most of us like seeing him so little we pretty much block him from our minds. Once again, a few rounds here will probably jog someone’s memories…”
Roland sighs. Of course. He braces for a new assault to the senses, specifically his tongue, as he raises the keg to his lips. Meanwhile his free hand goes for one of the pouches tied to the belt he is using. He ends up fumbling and not getting anything out, that’s how bad the shock of the drink’s taste is.
It’s crest-curlingly sour, and tasted similar to the fermented leaves he remembers having taken at Nicolete’s kitchen during his mission in Port Reaver. Except that had been a good sourness, an intended one. He doesn’t think anything in this beverage was intended. It’s the aberration of drinkstuffs. He can’t avoid swearing in saurian as he swallows the last few gulps down, and hopes the man will simply assume him to be speaking an unfamiliar warm-blood tongue.
“Strong stuff aye? Got it from a guy in Skeggi last month, still have half a barrel of it on- Oh.” The barkeep’s gloating is interrupted by a greedy reaction, as Roland manages to fight off the horrid sensation and slams a few coins into the counter. They are worn and shine-less, the kind found when inspecting captives.
“I don’t have the time to get these people drunk on your behalf.” Roland dryly remarks. “Just help me find him.”
The tavernkeep inspects the coins, unamused. The man had probably hoped to get much more out of an inebriated Roland. Said facial expression changes as he actually counts the value of the coins. Warmblood currency, Roland has found, seems to not devalue no matter how bad the state in which it is found is. Meaning that what to him are just grime and brown-blood covered little pieces of unusable metal, are quite attractive to the overgrown figure behind the wood-worm infested piece of furniture.
“He lives in a tent-covered rowboat in the outskirts up northwest, only way to sleep dry around here if you can’t find a stilt house. It’s not that easy to find among the trees unless you are looking for it, the carp is as gray and lichen-infested as the trees it’s tied to. Otherwise, look for him at The Rotting Tongue tavern. Guido, the owner, is the only one around here who doesn’t hate his guts.” The man gruffly explains as a tapping of his finger implies to Roland that he wants a few more coins, which he gives without much comment.
“Anything else?”
“Well, I’ll give you a piece of advice, free of charge. Whatever you plan on doing when you catch him? Don’t bother searching him, he’s in the habit of wasting his money fast. And if you don’t manage? Don’t follow him into the jungle.”
“Why?”
“There’s a reason he tends to return alone and with equipment to bargain to newcomers.”
“Ah, that does explain things I already knew. I will heed your warnings.” Roland begins to turn as the man continues counting coins, happy about his quick and easy pay being coupled with the possible removal of who Roland is quickly learning is not just suspicious in the eyes of Oxyi-Cho'a.
A hand, however, suddenly pressed against his chest, stops him. It’s sweaty, large by warmblood standards and sports some worryingly ingrown nails. It’s connected to a fitting body.
“Hey pretty boy… Hear you were looking for Barra…?” A man with a leech’s smile intercepts him. “Sorry, but you are going to have to fuck off, I’m first in line and it’s not a short one.”
“How so?”
“I found him last night sleeping in the wrong bed, mine. I was just talking with a couple friends about paying him a visit tonight. And while we’d be ok with you tagging along, you’ll have to be happy with the scraps.” The man does indeed point at a small gathering in the corner of the room. They remind him of the men he was forced to fight during his visit to Port Reaver to recover the stolen game pieces he had taken for haggling. Unkept, of lazy and yet nervous eyes, covered in tattoos and with belts fat with knives.
“That is not something I can agree to.”
“Sad to hear, then I guess you will have to pay up.”
“Pay up? For what exactly?”
“For being a clean-shaven pretty-boy who thinks he can walk in here, jingle his coinage, and get what he wants.”
“Ah.”
Roland is frustrated, tired and greatly bothered by the mere thought of having to even walk the threshold between horrible inside and tortuous outside again. The idea of a brawl does not appeal to him in the slightest.
Next thing he knows, the both of them are falling through the open hair, the fly-containing rope curtain behind them raised by the sudden shove. Roland thinks little, but his body makes sure he lands on top, with the man bearing the brunt of the two and a half meter long fall between the groundlevel of the stilted tavern and the peatbog below.
The splat of the impact is as lacking as the baking heat would imply, but there’s still some give to the thick mud and filth mixture. Enough that when Roland gets up and brutally plants his booted foot on the man’s face, he is able to break the surface tension and mostly submerge it.
It doesn’t take even a minute for the flailing and the painful grip of the man’s hands on Roland’s oppressive ankle to falter, and the man’s fellows never actually poke their heads out to even discern the fate of their spokesman.
Such things, it seems, are common enough in the Swamp Town.
When Barra is woken up by a shift in the light, his blurry eyes meet a long shape blocking the sun and as such casting itself in relative darkness.
“Barra the Exile?” It asks in reikspiel, it sounds tired and frustrated, but relatively young. Even in his still sleepy mind, such details sing sweetly to him.
“Barra the Entrepreneur.” He corrects on instinct. “Who do I have the pleasure of talking with?”
“Roland Welser-Nakor.”
“Well meet sir Welser-Nakor. What brings you to my-” Barra’s arms open wide, gesturing to his rowboat of a home. “-Humble abode?”
“I want to talk with you about your business.”
“Oh, a proposal, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“And why should I listen to it? You have interrupted my nap, after all.”
“I just drowned a man who publicly professed an intent to assault you and likely murder you.” The sun-shadowed figure grunts.
“…”
“In mud and feces.” Roland ads.
“ Oh. ”
Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove
15th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.9 2 Muluk 2 Mol
15th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.9 2 Muluk 2 Mol
It is all too fast, just like the kid taken while playing by the water in what feels but really isn't such a long time ago.
He had simply been running messages once more. Sure, now it was between the different workstations across the large and slowly forming clearing of the Henge instead of across Port Reaver. But that just meant more and shorter sprints.
Then the explosion of sound. It's not a roar. Predators don't roar when they hunt, not the normal ones at least. The only thing that precedes the rending screams is the low rumbling rustle of something large and heavy rushing and crushing its way through the foliage to get to the poor slave who had simply happened to be piling bundles of removed vines in the wrong area.
The sudden shock makes Stefan stumble and stop, makes him forget where to or why he had been running. All he can see is the mass of scales and spikes falling upon a defenseless man.
It’s a good ways longer than most men are tall, something that’s easy to see despite the way its frill and speed confound the animal’s actual silhouette. But it’s not one of the three long horns anchored on said frill that end the man’s life. It’s a beaked mouth armed with teeth and protruding serrations, there’s no finesse about such weapons, they simply clamp around the man’s shoulder and reach all the way to the middle of the chest with their length. Bones crack, blood splatters. But the man continues to scream.
The Trypadon is a medium to large-sized ambush predator, known for its distinctive frilled head, sharp beak and skill as a burrower.
The people closer to the actual catastrophe, because Stefan is damn near to the center of the henge’s plaza while the kill is occurring in the periphery, react in two very different kinds of ways. Some try to help, brandishing their tools, their axes, sickles and other Stephan can’t actually name, and try to threaten it. They are largely unsuccessful. None of the ones wielding shorter tools even dare get close enough to grace the animal’s spike adorned rump and tail, much less the head. And those few with longer tools? The animal stomps and bucks, its claws dig furrows into the already upturned soil and are used to crack and bend the ends of pitchforks and spades.
Most people, though, tools or no tools, simply flee towards the quickly accumulating and loud crowds further from the jungle’s edge.
The scene reminds Stefan of a street dog with something the other mongrels wanted in its mouth. The constant turning and instinctive kicking, the growling, the shaking and slobbering. Only that none of the other “mongrels” had even the slightest chance of stealing the “food.” And that the winning dog is a spiked reptilian predator large enough for Stefan to honestly say it’s the heaviest-seeming living thing he’s ever seen.
Soon enough, once it’s sure none of the people surrounding it pose a real and immediate threat, the animal starts backing up slowly. Then, with another brusk motion, it runs off into the jungle.
This time, he’s not sent for aid to the city or the guard, there’s no scrambling to hunt the beast down or secure the area. People, once they feel certain that the animal will not return for seconds, slowly get back to their work. Most do so much more cautiously, jumping at the flight of birds or crawling away of lizards and insects perturbed by their working of the soil. Eventually even Stephan realizes for how long he’s just been standing there and remembers he has more messages to deliver.
And so the day marches on. There’s no mysterious figure who saves the day or king who organizes a sweep. At least not until the dawn comes, and with it the end of the workday for the slaves and freemen workers.
A few men, perhaps a little more than a dozen, gather around one of the fires with more weapon-like implements, debating what direction they should take or how to organize themselves. They are not loud enough for Stefan to clearly follow the conversation from the inside of the structure that has become his and his master’s camp. But it’s better entertainment than just staring into the bonfire until he’s tired enough to override his own nerves.
“It’ll be pointless unless they catch it before it reaches its burrow. And it probably did so less than an hour after it left, maybe just minutes.” Von Danling points out, making Stefan jump. He had assumed the bark-skinned man to be asleep.
“What? Why?! If they find its burrow, won’t it just be trapped?” He answers with a question, as he’s slowly realizing his masters like him to do.
“A trypadon? No, not in the slightest. When they find it, it’ll have used that frill and all those horns to wedge itself face out in the burrow’s entrance. Whichever unlucky sod tries to approach it by that point will have to fight a wall with teeth on it. The only real option would be digging the entire warren out, and that’s a whole other mess. It all makes them a nightmare to deal with. So much so that the coldbloods see it as a symbol of protection, their guards sometimes even wear their skulls as helms to embody the obstinate things.”
“So they can be killed!” Stefan tries to reason. On the back of his mind, he files in the name of the beast. There’s so many monsters in the Lustrian jungles that he’s not surprised he had never heard of it before.
“What a lizardman the size of an orc can do is not the same as a man.”
“Ohhh…” Stefan mutters,
“You act like you’ve never seen one lad.”
“That’s because I… Haven’t, sir? I’ve heard all the stories but I’m happy that I’ve never corroborated them.” Stefan explains, confused.
That, for once, actually gives the wizard pause. The ancient man turns slightly to look at something over Stefan’s shoulder. When the boy turns to follow the man’s gaze, he finds himself confused. There’s nothing special about that bit of wall.
“Truly?” Von Danling asks, much more interested now. “You have never met one of them? Even in passing, maybe during an unwise visit to the jungle’s edge back before you were a runner for the city?”
“Uuuuh. I don’t think I’d be alive if that were the case.”
The wizard keeps looking at him and the nothingness over his shoulder for a few more minutes. Making Stefan more and more uncomfortable. Returning to their prior topic of conversation ends up being his way out.
“So… If they can’t really scare it off or kill it…?” He raises his elbow to point at the gathering of men.
“It will be back, whenever today’s catch runs out and it gets hungry again. It now knows there’s easy prey in hand here.” The wizard combs his beard with his thin-fingered hand.
“Can’t you help them, sir?”
“I would, but my skills are better spent in more subtle ways. Beasts are not the only thing to deter from entering our henge here.”
“Oh.” Stefan looks down, a cold shudder runs through him. “Shouldn’t we tell the king, then?” The answer he receives a moment later will not help him sleep any sooner tonight.
“I planned on bringing the incident up in our next meeting. But I doubt he’ll do much. After all, seventeen dead men so far is entirely within expectations of a project like the one he is allowing me to carry out.”
The Hound’s Skull, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa
16th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.10 3 Ok 3 Mol
16th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.10 3 Ok 3 Mol
Often, when Torfi is tired and has nothing left on his to-do list to carry out, he will simply laze around with the hounds in the kennels. Today that is not an option, between his mother’s and a couple other hunting parties under the king’s auspices, the kennels have been practically emptied of everything but the pregnant bitches and the pups who have not yet been fully trained. A coincidence in plans Torfi is not happy about.
Usually he, as the new kennelmaster, should have left with one of the hunting parties. The largest one, that’s who his father would have gone with. That’s what he had done the day he did not return. But that’s not the reason why Torfi has stayed behind.
The reasons Torfi has stayed behind are Haimiaz and Eistla. Because with a household of now only four, and the killers of his father still reaping the glory, there’s no telling what might happen to the thirteen and three years old if left alone for too long. And he can’t expect his mother to do so all the time, not without any thralls to help.
So he is staying the day in Skeggi. Not necessarily the entirety of it in the longhouse-by-the-kennels, he would go stir crazy. But he is using the sudden emptiness of his usual place of work to do other tasks that require doing. Such as his current one.
Hounds need collars, leads and chains and all shorts of other knick knacks his father had always taken care of. Both in fixing old ones and buying new ones. Torfi knows all the basics, all the small fixes that don’t take a tradesman to do. Those had been the first skills taught to him by his father.
But kennelmasters and hunters are not leatherworkers. And leather workers are in high demand in a place like Skeggi. So his current task? Waiting until one isn’t so he can make an order.
He’s not just waiting bored out of his mind, of course. The Hound’s Skull isn’t also known as “Chain Rock” for no reason.
He’s not far from Eriksson’s Tower, which is easily visible over the roofs of surrounding buildings. The ancient cairn built by the port’s founder hundreds of years ago, and around which has grown into the default city square of Skeggi, is an excellent tool for finding the slightly less relevant node of streets at the center of which Torfi’s causal entertainment is.
The Hound's Skull is a huge stone lump stolen from the ancient standing monoliths south of Skeggi across Lysa Bay, crudely carved into the shape of a snarling hound's skull by the first priest to set foot on the settlement. It’s no wonder it has long been a place meaningful to his family line.
Stories say that a king once had a great metal loop hammered into the stone, with chains attached to it. All items are there, that’s obvious. Torfi isn’t so sure about the alleged thousand-year old nature of them. Metal rusts fast in Lustria.
But anyways, said chains have manacles attached on the end. Most days, there are one or two citizens with the manacles around their necks, feet, or hands, fighting off other prisoners or folks from the crowd, or dodging any detritus being thrown their way. Today it’s two women.
Sometimes this is a punishment, today certainly is. Passerbys have informed Torfi of the two girls’ status as Imperial thralls who had attempted to kill their master and escape Skeggi. Escape to where Torfi doesn’t know or understand. There’s nothing but a deadly jungle around. But then again that’s the kind of stupidity he’d except from any thrall who tried to betray their master to begin with.
But punishment isn’t all that the Hound’s Skull is about. Sometimes Norse men will chain themselves up to prove their strength. Sometimes the crowd or some jakkers, landlords with too much free time like his older brothers used to be, will free a prisoner who fights well. Or at least throw them food to keep them alive. Sometimes a captive grows thin enough to slip their shackles, or turns mad and mauls their fellow prisoners. There are no rules governing how a captive should be chained or freed — only a show which passes the time. It runs all night, too, with torches to illuminate the participants, even if Torfi never tends to stick around that long.
The two girls, compared to some shows he’s enjoyed, are really not much. Just two scared little things that squirms, beg and cower whenever someone with specially good aim finds a nice rock. It’s something his unexpected but not unwelcome spectating companion is vocally not happy about.
“It is an insult to the Hound, and nothing less. To give unto him such paltry gifts who will not fight.” Growls Gothi Bloðugr from under his boar-pelt rug of a coat. Truly, Torfi cannot understand how the ancient man can wear something like that under the sweltering morning heat. It’s probably part of the man’s blessings.
“Well, most of the outsiders don’t even know it as anything other than Chain Rock. Most just think it’s a funny thing we arrange to entertain them.”
“The seasonals I understand.” The shaman accepts. “Their very profession honors the hounds for me to overlook. But they didn’t chain those dregs up. Skeggialings did.” He follows up with.
“You could get rid of them. You are Gothi. I certainly wouldn’t stop you.”
“None of them would try -which is also part of the problem but that’s for another day, pup- The problem is that there’d be replacements as soon as I left.”
“I guess…” Torfi uncomfortably squirms against the tent post he’s leaning on. He never likes talking faith. It goes over his head. Maybe not the best thing when one’s father once was the city’s Gothi’s closest friend. Sometimes Torfi feels that even that, his father’s allies, like Bloody Sven, is just another responsibility he doesn’t know he can shoulder. But Bloðugr is still a man who has stood by him.
“Look at them, what would happen if you released one of your pups on them?” The gothi conities mulling.
“Mh? It wouldn’t be the easiest, but it’d probably rip at least one of them apart. But then the betters would come in and try to kill it for ruining their game and that’s not something I want to try.”
“That’s the problem.” The shaman goes on. “Bets and entertainment. No time for proper offerings and worthy duels and fights. They all understand the basics, even the dumbest of your dogs do. Blood for the blood god. Glory on the field of death. Offer so you may not be offering yourself. Sacrifice, or else. All things children know. But then you tell them that the blood of a starved slave is less valuable than that of the battle-slain foe and suddenly they look like they’ve never attended a ritual in their lives, truly a-”
“Gothi Bloðugr?” A voice interrupts. It’s an easy one to recognize. As time goes on, Torfi feels like he hears it more and more often. “If I could steal you from your audience?”
Adella of the Graelings is an up and coming jakker. One Torfi has never had trouble or aid from. But everyone seems to speak of her, so he’s happy to just bow his head in deference as the one-hoofed shaman bides him goodbye and leaves with the equally cloaked woman, the both of them flanked by Adella’s men.
Torfi doesn’t know what to think of Adella beyond the fact that he’s pretty sure she is not involved with the Reidarsons, which already puts her above half of Skeggi but still. Her eyes are really pretty, he guesses, although he can never really figure out what exact color they are.
But soon enough that’s forgotten as he returns to watching the chained-up girls begging for water. If he had the coin to spare he’d bet on the black-haired one dropping before tomorrow’s sunrise.
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