Part 1 - The Rusty Scabbard
The Zombie
Jeranna stared upward at the stars; mind gripped with a sort of gibbering terror that most would identify only with the most terrifying nightmares the mind can conjure. But Jeranna’s terror was not a product of her mind. It had been forced upon her, a twisted reward for her bravery in trying to protect the sword. She had failed, and this was her punishment. She prayed that it would be over soon, but silently she feared that this would never end. She prayed for death, but feared that she had already passed somehow beyond it.
A sound ripped her from her terror, returning her twisted thoughts to the task at hand. What task? Was there a task? She couldn’t think, and she could barely breathe. Somehow, she suspected that she didn’t really
have to do either.
The sound, again. A hollow, echoing thud. Pain and an unidentifiable
wrongness screamed through her muscles as she tried to sit up. Heaving her battered torso up, the stars disappeared. As her eyes slowly refocused, the great black sea above was replaced by a dirty, barnacle encrusted hull, bobbing heavily through the midnight of a sea below.
No—not a sea. A river. She had reached her destination. What destination? Where was she going? Where were these thoughts coming from?
Impulse defeating thought in a battle that Jeranna was not even half-aware of, she rose from the deck of the tiny lifeboat, unfeeling hands searching for purchase on the hull of the ship before her. Nothing. She had to reach the docks. It was a necessity, the only thing keeping her in this grim parody of life.
Her once-manicured hand straightened, and without thinking, she slammed it forward, driving it deep into the wood of the ship. She felt no pain as splinters drove deep, stripping the flesh from her arm. Raw muscle, bone and blood glistened in stark contrast to once-perfect ebon skin.
Her muscles screamed as she pulled herself upward, driving her left hand into the ship’s wooden flesh, slowly ascending as her mind cried out at the nightmare of her actions. She was trapped, a prisoner in her own body, made to witness as she slowly tore herself apart.
Finally reaching the ship’s deck, she flung herself over the railing, landing heavily on the dry, salt-smelling deck. Her arms were ruined, bleeding masses—little more than strips of skin and muscle loosely hanging from the bones of her arms. Part of her thanked the Light she could feel nothing beyond the screams of muscle; that true pain seemed to have been taken from her sometime
before. Part of her silently screamed in uncomprehending terror at what she had become.
Sluggishly pulling her legs beneath her, she stood on the deck of the vessel, her head slowly turning to take in the scene before her. A city shined in the moonlight of Homonaes and Tamaeres. The stars above blended seamlessly into the torches of Thanesport, each a tiny flame in a sea of darkness.
But Jeranna could not linger; she had a mission. A quest. A single purpose pulling at whatever remnant of a soul dwelt within her ruined body.
Hurriedly, she crossed the merchantman’s empty deck, blood covering the remains of her hands, eventually dripping to the deck below. Leaving two crimson trails in her wake, she stumbled toward the ship’s ramp, and then down it to the dock, below.
* * *
Arthur Cawys
Arthur Cawys stared out at the floor with squinted, pig-like eyes from behind a bar that seemed both ancient and hastily constructed. A dirty rag wiped out countless wooden mugs as the tavern’s myriad patrons roared and whispered about their business between his comfortable spot behind the bar and the ramshackle stage he had constructed a few years ago. Men and women of a hundred shapes and sizes ate, drank, shouted and fought atop a dusty packed earth floor covered in what might once have been sawdust, pushing their way between half-broken chairs, tables, benches and stools.
The tavern was disgusting. For Cawys, the grime was almost a point of pride. For most of the patrons, he assured himself, it just made the place feel more like home. Fish-smelling dockworkers and sweaty, unwashed mercenaries all crowded onto the uneven floorboards of the ramshackle former warehouse, batwing doors swinging in and out to the stagnant Bleeding Star River. This was the Rusty Scabbard.
Outside, the Blue Star hung in the air, a harbinger of doom. More than a few of the superstitious men that frequented the Scabbard spoke in hushed tones of the ill-wind that blew in from the sea, covering the docks with a thick, impenetrable haze. As if to punctuate their dire tidings, lightning flashed in the sky above, racing downward to the sea before reversing course to strike back among the black clouds that spawned it. The rumble of thunder followed the brief illuminations of each strike, rolling over Thanesport like an earthquake of sound. The clouds brought no rain, and dust filled the air no less than fog. Across the city, Cawys was sure that the people of Thanesport were grimly reminding their whimpering children that were reasons to fear darkness.
But the Blue Star held little dread for Arthur Cawys. Even as his thirsty patrons warily eyed the grim sky through the yellowed windows of the common room, the portly innkeeper chuckled to himself. The Blue Star always brought fear, and fear always brought a tidy increase in his
other businesses. No one had approached him yet for a ward against evil – but the night was still young. He laughed out loud as he remembered where his foolproof wards had come from.
If only they knew.
A tall, slender woman stood at one end of the bar, her expression displaying a careful mix of hostility and superiority. A dusty cloak hung across her narrow shoulders, and she clutched one of the dirty wooden mugs between her breasts, almost as if she were afraid of touching anything in the filth-ridden inn. A sword hilt protruded conspicuously from the cloak, probably the primary reason that she had remained unmolested for so long in this wretched hive of scum and villainy.
To her right, a dark slender man laughed as a half-conscious dwarf tried to lower himself from one of the Scabbard’s rickety chairs. He stumbled across the rickety floor as the younger man—a mid-elf—hissed his laughter at the whiskered mercenary’s antics. As the dwarf stumbled into the young warrior at the bar, he managed to mumble a quick “sorry…” before collapsing against the bar, itself. As his compact form slammed into the unstable stack of used deck planking and driftwood, drinks jumped and then spilled, splashing their contents across the pitted surface that the woman had been leaning on. She scowled. He never noticed. There was whiskey to be had, and Cawys was happy to serve him.
Any old port in a storm, they said. Cawys had an addendum.
Any old coin from a drunk. Once more, he chuckled to himself.
Behind the dwarf, a hulking brute of a half-orc shoveled gruel into his toothy, tusked mouth, grinning happily around a stained spoon. A mug of ale had been set before him, but had been ignored in favor of what Cawys knew was a foul and flavorless mush. He was too cheap to buy hog slop, and the gruel was the next cheapest thing. At last count, he had eaten over a dozen bowls of the Scabbard’s maggot-ridden pulp.
Across the floor, a young mid-elf stared intently at the crowd around her. Plainly fascinated by the dizzying array of creatures that crowded into the tavern, she remained blissfully oblivious to her surroundings. Though she did not yet know it, her purse had been stolen hours ago.
Cawys’s small eyes covered the entire tavern, but these were not regulars, nor did they have the swagger of mercenaries. He had no idea why they had chosen his bar, but they reeked of
trouble. He filled mug after mug with watered ale, and distributed whiskey to the waifs he employed to work the floor, but his eyes never left the newcomers for long.
Back at the end of the bar, the slender woman with the sword waved her empty mug in his ruddy, well-cushioned face. His lips parted in what he thought would appear to be a sincere smile, a toothy grimace as likely to cause nausea as ease. Seeing that his grin hadn’t warmed the air between them, he thought he’d try a little friendly conversation.
“What do you want now, lady?” he grunted, as his rheumy eyes wandering down toward her chest in uncontrolled lust.
She dropped the mug on the uneven bar, crossing her thin arms over her breasts. She cleared her throat, bringing the bartender’s eyes back to her face. “Master Cawys, I would like another ale. This time, please try not to water it down where I can
see you.”
Disappointed that the brief conversation had not included an offer for
closer acquaintances, he grunted an affirmative over the dull roar of the crowd, and took the mug to be refilled.
Lightning flashed in the doorway, screaming daylight breaking through the heavy cover of night, bringing the roar of the bar to a hushed whisper. In the split second of false sun, a single obsidian figure filled the long-empty portal. A man-shaped piece of midnight lurched forward, Shadow itself fighting into the fire glow of the tavern.
Not a man. A woman. Ivory tresses hung limp against her ebon face, a stark contrast to the blood on her arms, and the darkness of her uniform. She took a single, hesitant step forward. Then, eyes rolling back into her head, she collapsed to her knees, as if her bones had suddenly fled.
At the sight of the uniform, Cawys muttered a foul oath. A Talon! Kingshield, by the look of her. Before he could demand that the bleeding woman be removed from his bar before her obviously imminent death brought him unwanted attention from the city watch or worse, the already tense crowd rushed toward her, shouting among themselves loud enough to drown Cawys’s powerful voice.
Cursing still louder to himself, Cawys heaved himself over the bar, muscling his way through the crowd of thugs and thieves. As he broke through the throng of unwashed mercenaries, the bar fell into a stunned silence. Thunder rumbled outside, but no one dared utter a word.
Piercing the fearful hush, the fallen Talon could be heard, muttering. Like a tide of words, her voice grew stronger, washing over the stunned onlookers like the tide. Even as she seemed to wither before their eyes, her voice continued to grow, filling the rough-hewn rafters of the common room.
Rising into a screaming crescendo from some unseen agony, there could be no mistake as to what she bellowed. Her soul seemed to flee with the word, leaving the body lifeless in its fearful wake. They would all remember, for it was this one word that shaped their lives from this point forward.
"
PIRATES!" the dying woman had screamed. Now, she lay dead. Soon, the world would explode into madness.
The swordswoman pushed through the mob of onlookers, blue eyes hardening at the sight of death on the tavern floor.
“What happened to this woman?” she asked, addressing no one in particular.
The skinny man from the table by the door (The one buying all the whiskey for the dwarf, Cawys thought) spoke up as he knelt beside the black-uniformed corpse. An amused smile played across his dark face, white teeth shining in the darkness of the tavern’s doorway. “I would have thought it was obvious - she died, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” the warrior snapped as she pulled a leather gauntlet from her left hand, and then reached down the Alder woman to feel for a pulse.
“I thenk it’s a lost cause, missy…” a voice slurred from behind the smiling man. “Even if sh-sh-she hadn’t ‘a just dropped into our laps, she’s lost more than a wee bit of blood…” it continued, resolving out of the crowd in the form of a red-faced Dwarf.
Cawys started to speak, ready to demand that she be dumped in the harbor before someone came looking for her, but was interrupted by two familiar faces from across the crowd. “I’ll help,” they said in unison. Both were athletic, and had at least some Human blood running through their veins. But there the similarities ended. One was enormous, a mountain of tightly-corded muscle wrapped in gray-green skin. The hungry half-orc. The other moved like a dancer, but had the face of a horse. Cawys was unaware, up to that point, that there was such a thing as ugly grace. Afterward, he would need no convincing.
Looking across the body at each other in shock at their unexpected unison, they quickly shrugged before joining the warrior woman around the body.
Before they could confer further, a voice rang out over the heads of the crowds. Still musical even as it shouted, Cawys winced to himself. The Bard. She had arrived almost a week ago, insisting that she be allowed to perform on the stage. After he had repeatedly told her that he would not pay her, she had simply shrugged and asked if she could perform there, anyway. He had agreed. Now, he imagined, he would pay the price for his magnanimousness.
“Pirates!?” she said, almost giggling. “Pirates!? There haven’t been pirates on the Placid Sea for two hundred years!”
Cutting off what was surely intended as a longer tirade, thunder crashed outside the walls of the tavern, bringing with it a momentary blast of light from outside. The crowd gasped as yet another shadow filled the doorway.
As it stepped rather than stumbled into the torch lit common room, the gasp was released in a low collective sigh. There would be no more death. At least not yet.
Tall and dark as he moved through the doorway, his hand never strayed far from the long saber at his hip. Though what he wore was no uniform, it was not far from it. Cut in the style of the Talon Shiplords, the man carried himself like a captain. Cawys had the displeasure of knowing the man. “Darkson,” he growled.
The man let a smile cross his mustachioed face, soon bubbling forth as quiet laughter. He inclined his dark-haired head to the innkeeper, “Master Cawys.” Standing calmly in the flashing doorway, he continued with a voice that commanded attention, if not outright loyalty.
“You should heed the woman’s warnings,” he said as he motioned calmly toward the corpse they had surrounded. “Though piracy has long been absent from our shores, it appears to have come again. The
Skyracer was taken a few nights ago, on the lane between here and Oceanus. Carrying an artifact of some import to the King, I’m led to believe.”
The swordswoman stood from her crouch, squaring herself in front of the smiling, arrogant captain. “Who are you, and how could you know such a thing?” she asked, suspicion evident as she stared at him, her cold blue eyes mirroring his own.
The man laughed again, walking through the parting crowd. As he pulled a chair from one of the tables and put his shining boots up, he continued. “I’m surprised you’ve never heard of me.”
She grunted. “I’m not.”
Another laugh escaped the man. “It would seem not!”
Clearing his throat, he continued as all eyes moved from the corpse, to him. “My name is John Darkson. At the moment, I’m captain of but one ship, but there was a time when I commanded hundreds. Tain…er…the King and I have been close for a number of years. I assume by your ignorance, young lady, that you haven’t spent a great deal of time at Court?”
She crossed her arms loosely beneath her breasts, leaving her right hand near the hilt of her sword, but said nothing.
Despite her silence, he continued, “As for how I know what happened, I saw it. The
Skyracer was set upon by an enormous ship that seemed to materialize out of a fog bank.”
His face turned serious, all traces of a smile washed away, “I don’t know what that ship was, but it was large enough that it could have swallowed the Skyracer whole, masts and all. Her hull could have been no more than fog itself, for all I know…but I’ll never forget the flag. Pirates though this woman’s killers may be, their master is what we should truly fear. Flying in the wind above its black sails was the emblem of evil itself, the Eye of the Bluestar!”
The crowd gasped. Cawys’s eyes rolled back into his head with unmitigated annoyance.
Darkson stopped for a split second, what in other circumstances might have been called a theatrical pause. “Be wary, all of you…the Eye could fall upon us at any time!”
Cawys raised an eyebrow at the Captain’s dramatics, but kept his thoughts to himself. Lies ran thick in the air that night, but he was not foolish enough to disabuse anyone of their superstitions. Fear, he assured himself, was big business.
At the conclusion of Darkson’s speech, the newcomers moved. The swordswoman nodded curtly to the captain, her own mouth pressed into a thin line in a parody of his returning grin. “Your warning is appreciated, Captain, but a true servant of the Kingdom would have offered help to the Skyracer if its cargo was as important as you made it seem, no matter the risk. What I cannot do for the lost ship, I will do for this brave woman, who sought to warn us all.”
She turned to look at the crowd. “I’ll need help getting her to the closest temple. I felt no pulse, but there must be something we can do.”
The immense half-orc stood, easily cradling the fallen Talon in his arms. “I help.” He stated.
The ugly mid-elf stood as well, unlimbering a bow from the bedroll she had worn into the tavern. She simply nodded, trusting action to communicate what words could not.
The bard came forward as well. As she brushed past Darkson, she let her fingers trace over the captain’s shoulder. Cawys could see something pass between them, some message in the look (and touch) they shared. They knew each other! She came to stand next to the man in the shadows, subtly pushing the dwarf back into the mass of fearful flesh.
Drink having worn away any restraint, the dwarf pushed back, causing the bard to stumble forward. She whipped around with a fearful snarl across her face. Before she could speak, Darkson nodded almost imperceptibly, and the dwarf’s companion placed a calming hand on her shoulder. His gleaming teeth showed themselves again, and he said, “Sorry m’lady. My friend meant nothing by it. Our work is the lady Talon.” Cawys tried to hide his shock. Something big was happening here. Darkson was playing the crowd like a harp.
Wheels within wheels, he thought.
The smiling man looked up at the swordswoman, “Tell us what we can do to help.”
Turning her back to Darkson, she began barking out orders.
