Alright, enough teasing for now.
Now for the “how did we get here” bit.
Come back next week, SIX MONTHS EARLIER…
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Far out upon the Dawn-Kissed Sea, the whaling ship Sanguinary cuts the waves. So far, the voyage has been long and unprofitable, and not a few of the crew are showing early signs of scurvy. But on this day, the simmering discontent of the men is lifted. Dolphins have been sighted off the starboard bow, and the men are hopeful that this means there will be whales too. Whales are creatures of great contradiction to whaling men. They represent great profit, but also great danger. They are called beasts and derided as such, yet they are reckoned to be as smart and cunning as any man, if not more so. It is a whaler’s job to kill them and render their bodies into more valuable forms, and yet there are those who claim that they have souls as men do, and that to kill them is a crime and sin. The men on board the Sanguinary have little time for such philosophical distractions, and least time of all when a whale is sighted. A long boat puts down, and the harpooner in the bow leads the men in song with a deep and resonant voice that carries far across the waves – the better, it is believed, to attract whales. The harpooner sings, and the other men in the boat sing the antiphon:
On this occasion, they are successful, and their harpooner sights the whale, it’s fountain a-blow two score fathoms to port. The tillerman sets his course, and winks at the harpooner while the men labour at their oars. The harpooner flashes a quick smile back, and turns to watch for his prey once more. The harpooner is a taciturn man with few friends on the ship, but all there respect his skill. They even boast of it when in port, and it’s true, the harpooner may actually be the best there is at what he does, but none know why. They don’t know that the harpooner isn’t really a man at all, but a selkie, and that his gift for finding and killing whales is a perversion of the ways of his people. They don’t know that he turned to such perversion in spite and bitterness after his people exiled him for crimes of which he was innocent, all so that the chieftain’s son could marry the bride of his choosing. They don’t know this, but the whales, who have ancient treaties with the selkies, do. The harpooner does not realise it, but he is a hunter hunted. The whale sounds again, and there is a shout as all aboard realise that they are on target. The harpooner readies to throw when the whale next breaks the surface. But the whale does not come back when it should. The men at the oars mutter nervously to each other, while the tillerman calls for them to lay off their rowing and hold position. The harpooner ignores them all. He watches for the tell-tale bubbles that will show him where the whale is. When he sees one, it is already too late, but he shouts a warning anyway. The whale has recognised its peril, and dealt with it directly. It rises directly under the long boat, lifting it easily on its back, until the timbers of the boat snap under the strain, and the men scatter everywhere. The harpooner makes his cast at the last possible instant as he tumbles, and strikes true, just above the whale’s left eye. The whale immediately dives, pulling the harpooner and any other man unlucky enough to be entangled in the rope down with him. The men struggle to be free, and some make it, but three of them are too ensnared to get loose while their air lasts, and they drown. The harpooner is like neither of these. A short, wiry man, he has come prepared. No ordinary man is this harpooner, but rather, a selkie. He speaks the words of enchantment and what had previously appeared to be a fur coat becomes a part of him. A man-shaped seal grips hard on the harpoon rope, and waits for the whale to tire. It doesn’t take long. The whale surfaces, still thrashing and trying to rid itself of the harpoon, but the harpooner reaches up and pushes it in deeper, reaching the great beast’s brain. The whale twists away from him, to gaze at him with its one good eye, and names him traitor, outcast, betrayer and oath-breaker. It curses him with his secret name, known only to his own people before his exile. And as it expires, the words of the curse still on its lips, and the harpooner feels the magicks swirl around him, but knows not what they portend. He knows only that he is afraid. The surviving men from the long boat are pulled aboard by their fellows in the other boats, and he is last of all to go aboard. While the men transform a dead whale into meat, blubbler, ambergris, baleen and myriad other useful substances, he stands apart, wondering what will become of him. Wondering what the nature of his curse will be, and swearing once more to kill the chieftain’s son should they ever meet again. It is only later, when he attempts to shed the seal-skin, that Grigori realises what has been done to him. The skin will not come off, and although on land he can still breathe and walk like a man, he is covered all over in brown seal fur that merges into his shaggy hair and beard. His clothes itch to wear, but he must needs go covered for modesty’s sake. The men laugh to see him, thinking him a beast, and make jokes about dancing bears. When he gets back to port, it is worse still. No woman will lie with him, for love or money; and no man will talk to him other than one he strongly suspects wants to stuff and mount him for display in a carnival freak show. You know those stories about kings and queens going incognito and walking among the simple peasant folk to find out what said simple peasant folk really think? Yeah, they’re bullshit. Every one of them. It just doesn’t work. A royal without a single callus, whose clothes are all un-patched and whose hair has been washed this year, not being noticed? A person without a single practical skill – most monarchs wouldn’t know which way up to hold a broom, for example, and you’d be risking your life to stand next to one holding any sort of gardening implement – managing to fit in among a class of people whose very livelihoods depend on knowing these things and knowing them well? It is to laugh. The best that such a fairy-tale-believing royal twit can hope for is to be humiliated, because the other options are all worse. They are, in ascending order of badness, injury, death and being taken hostage. You might think that death would worse than being taken hostage, but that’s because you’re one of those simple peasant folk who doesn’t understand the complex realities of the international geo-political system. Or at least, that’s what they’d tell you. In truth, princesses are not exactly in short supply, are only really useful for forging dynastic alliances, and are, let’s face it, easy enough to replace should you lose one. The real bad news about having your royal daughter taken hostage is one that anyone would understand: it costs money. Lots of money. And then it costs more again, because a kidnapped daughter will need a bigger dowry than usual to bribe some poor idiot into marrying her. So naturally, when the Princess Amelia decided that she was going to walk among the common people of the realm all unknown, she got maybe five feet from the castle gate without being recognised. Not that anyone said anything to her, of course – one of the practical skills peasants tend to possess is a keen awareness of when their masters need to be indulged – but she was marked. In some ways, this worked out well for her – it meant that she had a certain degree of protection as she walked through the streets. But in the long run, gossip was her undoing. It doesn’t take long for a tasty rumour to circulate, and before long, it reached precisely the wrong pair of ears. Two nights later, a man came up behind her and placed a hood over her head. A few days of being gagged and blindfolded in the back of some carriage later, and the next thing she knew, she was three kingdoms over and didn’t speak the language. Oh, there was a translator, but the man was an obvious lech who she was fairly sure was reinterpreting all the communications passed through him for his own benefit. The attempt to ransom her fell through when a plague wiped out her family and the new royals found it easier to pretend that she’d died with them. (The translator was beheaded after Amelia learned enough of the language to communicate without him and it was discovered that he had been less than trustworthy.) That was two years ago. Amelia is a very different woman now. Forced to make her way as a kitchen drudge, Amelia now knows practical skills she was only vaguely aware existed before all this. She can cook and clean and sew. And oh yes, she can wield a sword. Her escape from her captors, almost a year ago itself now, was a simple enough thing – she simply hid herself in a wagon that was leaving the castle – but life since then has been more complicated. But not worse. On her first night out, she fell in with some brigands, and that would likely have been the end of her if their leader, a good-looking fellow named Lobb, had not been feeling playful. When she challenged him to a duel, he told her that if she drew first blood she could join their band as an equal. So, as he turned to ask one of his followers to loan her a sword, she kicked him in the crotch, then slammed her knee into his face as he doubled over in pain. The resulting nosebleed was agreed by all there to constitute first blood, much to Lobb’s chagrin. Amelia has never looked back. She worked hard and learned fast, and now she could pitch a tent, start a fire, ride a horse – all those things considered too indelicate for princesses to know. More importantly, she could defend herself with a sword, a knife or just her own two hands, and she was even getting more accurate, slowly, with a bow and arrow. She had an insider’s knowledge of where the rich and noble liked to hide their things, and the kinds of passwords they liked to ensorcel treasures with. Lobb’s gang had never had it so good. With her advice, they stole more than they ever had before, and as she grew better at strategizing, did so with less effort, too. Within a few months of joining the gang, she had become the co-leader of it with Lobb (now somewhat less handsome, after his broken nose healed awry, but the had become lovers anyway, although that is another story entirely), and full leader in her own right after Lobb’s unfortunate encounter with the hangman. In her heart, she cherishes a dream of winning back the kingdom to which she is the rightful heir someday. But the only outward sign of it is the veil she wears, that she not be recognized until it pleases her to be so. Hollis Kitson lifted up his head an inch or so and spat blood. Feeling with his tongue, he carefully ascertained that none of his teeth were missing, because from the way his jaw felt, he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t. Luck, it seemed, was on his side for once. So it could have been worse, at least. It seemed to Hollis that he was telling himself that more and more often these days. Still lying facedown in the gutter, he risked turning his head slightly for a better angle of vision. He couldn’t see Fargan anywhere on that side, so he tried looking the other way. Not there either. So it was probably safe to stand up again now. He wasn’t just going to be knocked back down again the instant that he did. Time, he thought, to steal a horse and get as far away from this town as possible, before Fargan talked to his friends, and they all learned what so far only Fargan knew: that the property deeds Hollis had been peddling were about as real as a lover’s promise never to be angry. They would come looking for him, he knew. But it was entirely up to him whether they found him or not. The last thing anyone was expecting was a god to fall out of the sky. Piotr, who was unlucky enough to be standing under the god when he landed, probably expected it less than anyone. Unlike the rest, though, he was spared having to deal with the consequences. The god lay there, groaning. It was Shaeyl, one of the twin hermaphrodite gods of Love and Lovers – her brilliant silver hair was stained and dirty with the chaos of her fall, but her birthmark, in the shape of half a heart, was distinctive and unmistakable. It was also sporting a large cut separating its upper third from its lower third. The humans fled – their kind never could abide the presence of the divine – leaving only their prey, a lone elf, to approach the god. She was in pain, injured and bleeding. The elf was puzzled by this, but there would plenty of time to solve that puzzle later. He moved closer. The god was clearly alive, and surely the man she had landed upon could not have survived such an impact. He checked anyway, to make certain of it. The one called Piotr was dead. A shame she hadn’t landed on Silas instead – without their leader, the humans might have given up the chase entirely, he thought, then chided himself for his lack of charity. So, the humans would be back soon. What of it? In the meantime, he sought to give what aid he could. Such was the code he lived by, and nothing mattered more than. He was distantly aware that the humans who had pursued him had stopped running and started talking amongst themselves. When they had found all their stragglers and re-formed their numbers, they would likely return to finish him, but that was unimportant. They would not attack him again while he stood so near a god, just in case doing so angered the god. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t. The god was unconscious, and her wounds looked like they’d kill a human or an elf, but the elf was fairly sure that he could save her. Gods were naught but mortals writ large. If mortals could heal, then gods must have incredible recuperative powers, surely? All he had to do was help get them started. While he worked, he tried to imagine what could possibly have done this to a god. There were legends of gods fighting, being wounded and dying, but only a truly great power – another god, or more than one – could ever achieve such a feat. In helping this god, although he would almost certainly win her favour, the elf knew that he would make enemies. The same enemies that had done this to her. It didn’t bear thinking about, so he didn’t think about it. It wasn’t germane to the matter at hand. In time, his ministrations began to take effect. The god seemed to be coming around. Finally, her eyes opened, and she gazed about her in puzzlement. The elf suddenly looked up, a distant sound catching his attention. He had hoped to have more time than this, but hopes were futile. They were coming back. And from their voices, they blamed him for the death of Piotr. For a man who spent his life telling tales to others, thought Davos, I do seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time listening to others tell theirs. He signaled to the barman for another round, although he of course would only nurse his. The old men could drink their fill, so long as it made them garrulous enough. How many taverns had he sat in, just like this one, listening to variously angry or proud or bitter or melancholy old men telling tales like these? Always hunting for some idea, some turn of phrase or twist of plot to make into a new song. Davos loved to play, and to sing, and it was an honour to sing the songs created by the great bards who had preceded him, but if all you sang and played was the songs of others, you’d never join their number. Hence, research. A million tales told by old men and old wives, a thousand taverns where they were told, and he was still searching. Still trying to find the song that would make his own legend. This particular night wasn’t looking promising, and Davos knew that despite his best efforts, his attention was wandering. Keeping half an ear to the old men, Davos scanned the room. It was never too early to start looking for a little pleasant company for bedtime, or for a good place to sit or stand and ply his trade. One of the men said something, and he turned back, wishing he’d been paying more attention. But there are limits. You also have to know when someone has gotten lost in memory, and how to drag them back to the present again. Davos was about to prompt the old man for more when he spoke again. “I snuck into his chambers to impress a girl I was sweet on. I must have been maybe 14 years old. The dragon was the largest living thing I had ever seen. He was the size of a large hill, and the sound of his snoring was the loudest thing I can even imagine.” There was a long silence when he had finished, and tears fell from more than one eye at the table. Davos pondered how best to use this story. It would make a fine ballad, full of tragic love, to melt maidenly hearts, he thought. But maybe there was more yet to be teased from it. An idea was forming in his head, of not just telling tales but of making them. He waited for the old man to speak again until he could stand it no more. Finally, Davos broke the silence. Darrus Sharpblade looked up from his forge, and grimaced inwardly. Humans. He didn’t mind humans in most contexts – their food and drink in particular were wonderful – but he hated to talk about weaponry with him. The needs of humans and dwarfs were so different that the conversation was inevitably frustrating and unproductive for everyone involved. A lot of humans made the mistake of thinking of other races as being just like them, only at a slightly different size. They thought of dwarfs as shorter humans and elves as more slightly built humans, and that was all. The highly significant differences in musculature between the three races they completely overlooked. The gods alone knew how they managed to explain away obvious differences in aptitude, such the elvish skill at archery, or the dwarfs’ preference for hammers, axes and maces. Perhaps they just put it down to cultural differences. To a scientician, such as Darrus, cultural explanations were a place to start, nothing more. They explained why the people in one land favoured single edged knives while their neighbouring realms preferred double edged knives. True understanding lay in the physiologies of races. Ever since he moved to human lands, he had made it a point to understand these differences. Scientific medicine required scientific methods, not wishful praying at disinterested deities. It galled him that after more than five decades among humanity, Darrus was still more sought out by them for his talents as a smith than his skills as a healer. Nonetheless, he forced himself to smile at the approaching humans between hammer blows, then returned his attention to his forge. Creating a properly sharp scalpel was no easy task. “Greetings,” he called when he judged them close enough, keeping his hammer raised for the moment. Darrus pulled up the scalpel again for another look, and grunted in satisfaction at what he saw. He was about to quench the yellow-hot metal until he remembered what he would be quenching it in. These two didn’t look squeamish, but a bucketful of blood sometimes leads to the wrong sort of questions, even if it’s only pigs’ blood. Darrus returned the scalpel to the anvil, and aimed to miss it with the hammer. –bang- –bang- –bang- –bang- went the hammer, each time so close that the humans would be fooled, while with his foot, he discreetly nudged the bucket around to the blind side of the anvil, where the humans couldn’t see it. Only then did he quench the blade in the blood. “What is the nature of your friend’s injury?” asked Darrus as he moved to bank the flames. “North,” said the oracle. Phanathon performed the appropriate obeisances of gratitude and departure, although his hurry was only to be away from the oracle, not from his home. He disliked the north for its warmth and the strange ways of its people. His southerly homeland of ice and sea seemed perfect to him, and he had always imagined that the reason people lived elsewhere was because they were insane. No doubt the heat made them so. Now, it seemed that he himself must journey to these strange warm climes, and like as not go mad himself. And why? For some oracle’s nonsense that would only make sense after the fact in any case. He looked around himself quickly, afraid that he had said that out loud. Of course, the oracles were his people’s guides, mentors and protectors, but they were above all else, very, very touchy. It didn’t do to get on the bad side of one of them, not least because to offend one was to offend all. And all the people who listened to them. Which was everyone in the seven tribes. Briefly, Phanathon wondered if he’d somehow offended one of them, but he was pretty sure that he had not. Which was actually worse, in a way, because it meant that whatever nonsense this errand north was, it was something real. It wasn’t just an oracle sending him on some improbable mission so that he’d die horribly (although if that happened, it would hardly be surprising. It just wouldn’t be due to the oracle’s deliberate intent). He realised that while he’d been thinking, his footsteps had carried him to Vaggan’s Watch, his favourite place in the world. From here, you could look out over the southern sea, and on a clear enough day, you could watch the icebergs calve from the Frost King’s Maw. And at any time of year, you could watch the waves crash upon the shore below in foam and thunder, and feel the pleasant sting of the Frost King’s Breath upon your face. It was probably the last time he’d get to look south for a while, thought Phanathon sadly, and he made a special effort to commit the place, and its sights, sounds and scents, to memory. If he was to head north on some fool’s errand, most likely never to return, he would at least carry this place with him in head and heart. |
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