Story Post #7
The Two Rooves
When Prince Vorden and Thannil returned with the Elf's boy-servant, Kaza to tell the Legate that his slave had been killed in an ambush everyone was so raw from the meeting with the Manticore that nothing came as a surprise.
Thannil’s weak gash across the cheek was accepted without comment as the only wound taken in the battle and no further questions were asked. Unaros, the Legate, Karhoun, the Wildlander, Suk, the Orcish leader, all accepted the Elf’s word as fact. Whitecliff had turned too dangerous too quickly to do otherwise.
Olen, the demon-possessed mastiff, trained to smell magic-users and magic items for the greater glory of Izrador stayed silent.
Suk found a stable to bed down in for the night. It was a good building on high ground that afforded a good view of the surrounding area. The roof was sturdy enough with only a slight tilt to allow sentries to watch from above at night with good footing for archery.
The doors were barred and the Fell were left outside to guard the doors, which was better for all. The entourage was growing sick of being in the presence of the Fell’s distended bellies and rank undead hunger. The doors weren’t barred as much as closed solidly, forcing anyone entering through one of the three doors to make noise if they somehow managed to get past the Fell.
Karhoun went to the roof and dry shaved his head with one of his treasures, a straight razor. Once his scalp was a smooth dome over his blonde beard he took stock of the area, getting a feel for this section of the city before dusk fell away into an all too sudden and black moonless night to come.
The Northman saw a Gnomish stranger, creeping through the streets with a crossbow in hand. He was making obvious clumsy signals to other parties. Karhoun did not know the truth of Vorden and Thannil’s interaction with the Gnomes and so he sent for Unaros and told the Cleric of the Northern Shadow that one Gnome was spotted but likely more stalked the streets.
Assuming they had something to do with the bandits who attacked Vorden and killed his slave, Unaros opted to stay put for the night in their defensible position. “With any luck,” Unaros said, “They will pass us by in the night none the wiser. Our forces are too thin at the moment.”
Shortly following the Legate's decree, Thannil handed the Northman a note from Vorden, explaining the truth of the Gnomes and how Bolus was now free and a boat awaited but would depart in the morning. After shredding the note, Suk and Thannil broke bred together, keeping watch as night began to fall.
Thannil had been restless ever since returning and didn’t really understand why he had returned at all. While Suk and Karhoun ate, the Gnome slowly and quietly dangled from the roof and fell to the ground, landing without a sound. He would make his way to the boat, Garl’s Pride, and be among Gnomes again, on the open sea.
Slowly and methodically but most of all, quietly, Thannil made his way from the stables, none the wiser. He was thinking about the series of shadows he would ride out of view when a sharp pain stuck him in the back. Thannil struck out behind him but his attacker’s hands held him close and he passed out before ever seeing his aggressor. Thannil never would see the Halfling who attacked him.
Bolus had run from the Gnomes but as soon as they stabilized their brother’s bleeding, they gave chase, knowing that if the Halfling slave made it to his master it could mean certain death for their new Elven and Gnomish aquaintences. As dusk quickly descended Bolus grew scared with only a dagger to protect him.
He considered it a sign from Izrador Himself when Thannil the Gnomish traitor crossed in front of the window he huddled in. He took out his dagger, quiet as a slave, and put it in the Gnome’s back. The traitor had struck out, given Bolus a nasty punch to the eye but stopped struggling fast enough.
Bolus had seen death often enough but had never actually killed a living thing before then, in the near dark of an abandoned city far from what he considered home, too far from who he considered Master and feeling far from his God’s greatest place of learning. He began to gibber and finally could not stop himself from screaming, “Master! Master! I am sorry, Master! I didn’t know. They tricked me but I got away, Master! Master, please help your loyal slave! Help Bolus!”
He had stabbed the Gnome from the boat, the one who had given him this dagger but that was different. He ran from that, didn’t see the Gnome before him like this one, watching him gasp his last breaths.
The Legate turned to Vorden in the stables, an eighth of a league away and spat, “I thought you said he was dead?”
Vorden looked shocked, “He was. I saw his body.”
As the Legate began barking orders at the Orcs and Goblins, Vorden, the Night Prince, crawled out a stable window into the dark streets, unseen but not unsmelled.
Meanwhile, on the roof, Karhoun sprung into action, easily climbing down from the stable roof and making his way to the screaming.
He was the first to find his way to Bolus who was a frightful sight. The Halfling was covered in blood from head to foot and one of his eyes was swollen shut. Karhoun didn’t know, couldn’t know that it was the blood of two Gnomes he had stabbed that day that covered the slave.
“Quiet fool, would you bring the crossbow bolts of every bandit in the city upon us? Or perhaps the Manticore’s claws?”
Bolus turned his gibbering rant into a pathetic sniffling. Karhoun bandaged Thannil as best he could, not knowing if the Gnome would live. It seemed that too much of his blood coated the Halfling and the cobblestones.
“W-w-why are you bandaging him?”
Karhoun answered quickly, gruffly, “Master Unaros will want him for questioning. Come let’s hide.”
They made their way to a nearby house, a former brewmaster’s manor, but not used as anything but a toilet for goblins for almost a hundred years. They made their way up the rickety stairs and out onto the roof, which unlike the stable roof was slick and steep.
Once on the roof, Karhoun changed the Gnome’s bandages again, trying to see if the bleeding had stopped or not. It had seemed to halt but the Gnome’s breath was almost too shallow to detect.
“Will you take me to Master Unaros?” Bolus asked.
Karhoun shook his bald head, “In time, once I am sure we won’t be leading bandits back to the camp. You made quite a noise back there.”
Karhoun could hear Suk and a few Goblins in the night, tracking them threw the Brewmaster’s pub in the dark. Their Shadow-granted sight allowed them to see the Gnome’s blood in the night-time. Once upstairs, they lost the trail, not thinking to check windows out to the roof.
Slowly and surely, they made their way back to the stables while Karhoun and Bolus sat quietly on the roof over the pale and near-dead Thannil Boatswain.
Praying to Wood
Vorden watched from hiding as the Orcish leader ushered his Goblins into the house. He held his staff close with all nine of his fingers. The Prince held it to his face, unsure of how his noble intentions could have gone so very wrong. He whispered to the staff, an item from his ancestral homeland, the Erethor Forest, “Please, please if anyone is in there. If you can help me I beg of you to help me. Is anyone in there?”
The only sounds he could hear was Suk, grunting distant orders to Goblins in Black Tongue. He was up against the wall of the building, ivy clinging up the walls in the years of abandonment. He held the staff to the ivy and begged in a fierce whisper, “Do something. Do something!”
Miraculously the ivy began to grow thick and strong.
[I had decided that this weapon would only come into its true glory once its iron shods were replaced on its broken ends but that it would certainly have some Druidic powers and I even thought about Plant Growth as one of them. His desperation appealed to me and I thought it made for good story. So the ivy grew]
Not one to take a gift spell in the mouth, Vorden climbed the Ivy to apparent safety.
Meanwhile, Suk had returned to the stable with news that Gnomish blood was thick in a nearby house, freshly spilt. Unaros ordered the party out again, this time led by Olen, the Astriax, Olen, the Demon-Possessed Mastiff, Olen, the Magic-Sniffer.
Karhoun was keeping an eye out for Gnomes, bow in hand, thinking to perhaps kill one or two in order to prove his loyalty to the Legate and keep his cover secure. It was at that moment that Bolus chest ripped as Vorden’s longsword made its way through his back and out the Halfling’s sternum.
The Elf has climbed the Ivy onto the roof and found himself behind the meddlesome slave.
Karhoun, already covered in the blood of Thannil, was now also covered in the blood of Bolus. The Elf took his sword out of the slave and Karhoun thought to grab the body, lest his falling make unnecessary noise that would lead undesirables to their position.
Below the Elf and the Northman, they could hear Olen leading the Goblins by his astute nose. The mastiff padded up to the newly grown ivy, made strong and climbable by magic. He sniffed and smiled, “It smells like Erethor,” he said.
Olen took stock of his hunting party, an Orc and two Goblins. If Vorden and Karhoun were gone over, and the Gnome was still alive or had more bandit allies, this could be a death trap. He had smelled all manner of tracks surrounding this place and numbers were too uncertain.
Causing Vorden and Karhoun to sight in relief, Olen led his party back to the stables to consult the Legate.
Angry and terrible whispering spilled between the Elf and the Northman over the bloody bodies.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?”
“Staying alive.”
“There was no need to kill him. He was usefull.”
“If Unaros had spoken to him it would have meant my death.”
“It has already meant your death, Unaros knows you were lying about those bandits.”
“It is done. What am I to do?”
“What are you to do?”
The Northman tried to kick Prince Vorden off of the roof but he missed. Karhoun teetered on the edge of the roof, above an unforgiving cobblestone road but managed to steady himself.
“Why did you do that?” Vorden asked.
“Good-bye,” was Karhoun’s only response as he jumped from the roof.
The fall was dizzying, an amazing amount of time went by before the sickening contact with the ground. He heard his leg snap. He was wincing, expecting pain but felt nothing, only a fresh coat of cold sweat that covered him from smooth scalp to booted feet. He cried out in pain and frustration.
Suk’s strong arms swept him up while Goblins leveled their spears outward, looking for the Gnomish bandits Olen had sniffed and mentioned.
“How many?” Suk asked.
“Hard to tell, get me out of here. Too many,” Karhoun grunted, bleeding and in pain.
Unaros was waiting and he healed his Wildlander. Karhoun winced as the cold northern wind of Izrador’s healing covered him. It was a terrible sensation but his leg was now right and he wouldn’t bleed to death.
Meanwhile, Vorden lowered Thannil’s body from the roof with one of his treasures, a thirty foot length of rope. He felt someone take the body before it touched the ground and he held his breath, prepared to channel magicks upon enemies.
Two of the three Gnomes they had met earlier, sons of the Garl’s Pride’s captain greeted him in silence. They ushered him down and left that part of the city in stealth and haste.
When they were near the ship they spoke again, “Your Halfling stabbed our brother in the throat with his own knife. What kind of slave was he? Didn’t he want to be free?”
Vorden sighed, “I should have considered the lifetime of conditioning he was put through. I’m sorry.”
As a final apology Vorden saw to the brother and put his healing touch upon him, making sure he wouldn’t die of the near-fatal wound during the long night. Vorden was taken to a secret room made for smuggling illegal cargo like magic weapons, food or Elves. It was no bigger than a closet where he and Thannil barely fit.
Their newfound traveling companions [NEW PC's!] being smuggled by the Gnomes were none too pleased to share the limited space but were intrigued by their newfound company.
Epilogue
Karhoun was asleep, having lost so much blood had winded him. Suk, Unaros and Olen made their way to the roof and made palaver.
Olen looked at Unaros and spoke in a near bark, “The Elf has betrayed you. He has stolen your staff and will no doubt make his way to the Bitch-Queen’s forest to covort with others of his kind.”
Unaros’s mouth was a grim, thin line under his growing black beard, “I counted him as a friend.”
Olen’s mastiff face sneered, “You have no friends. There is no such animal. You should know this. You are a Legate. Izrador is your friend and he doesn’t reward weakness nor stupidity. You allowed the Elf access to it with too little leash because of who his father is.”
Unaros smiled bitterly, “Too little leash indeed. You can track my staff’s scent as long a he is within a mile of you. He could not possibly escape. We will always have you, a compass towards him.”
The Demon shook his mastiff-host’s head, “He has a Gnome with him. Gnomes have ways to ships, ways out to sea. Once he goes beyond a league, we are done and he is lost to us, lost to the Shadow’s justice and lost with your staff.”
Suk took all of his in quietly, not wanting to interrupt the conversation of his betters.
Unaros and Olen bickered while Suk made his way down from the roof. He made sure that his sentries were still awake and that the Fell were still in their positions.
When he came up to the roof again, he cradled something in his arms and smiled.
“Masters. If you would allow me to speak.”
The turned towards the Orc, ready to dress him down for interrupting but then they saw what he had in his arms.
“Masters, the Elf left something behind, it seems. Mayhaps we can find a way to make it talk.”
Kaza lay perfectly still in the Orc’s arms, too frightened to move and confident that his Elven master would not allow anyone to harm him. The boy rubbed the Night King’s sigil, Wizard Marked onto his hand and blinked away tears.
Unaros touched the boy's hair almost delicately and thought to himself, yes, Prince, you have been sloppy. I will give Suk time with the boy, let that loosen his tongue.
If that doesn't work we will make our way quickly to Baden's Bluff and then send our fastest messengers to your father. I wonder what he will say when he finds that his son is making his way to the Erethor Forest. I wonder what kind of Shadow Minions he will grant me to hunt you.
From the Demon-infested Jungles of Aruun to the bone plains of the White Desert; from Izrador's storms on the Kasmael Sea to the bitter winds of the Northern Marches I will hunt you with all of the might and resources of my Night King patron.
End of Chapter I
