A warrior climbed a mountain of flesh, a bundle of cloth and memories in his arms. The skin he climbed was old with a texture like worn leather and the color of a moonless night. It shifted with uneasy breaths and the yieldings of its own flesh. Finally, he reached its summit, a face lost in folds of fat, eyes atrophied under unending flesh, jaws drooling for lack of better things to do. But the mind yet functioned, and so did the mouth. The Igwa opened his gargantuan jaws wide and the warrior threw in the bundle.
Newborn babes always had the sweetest of flesh memories. They had the sparks of their mother and father, pure from the crucible of lovemaking. They had something else, too. The memories of their own births, memories which faded unlike any others. The memories of the beginnings of their world, reaching out for warmth, yearning for food, discovering motion. Blind, blissful, open, innocent memories. Only found in newborn babes.
The Igwa did not bother to chew. He merely swallowed the babe whole. He could feel its screams as it went down his throat, he could feel them end as it hit the pit of his stomach. He felt the satisfaction of truly knowing the world the minute the flesh began to be digested. Then the Pygmy had to ruin it.
The Pygmy had come into existence. The Igwa knew it, even if his eyes could not attest to it. "Pygmy!", the mountain of flesh cried, in a voice which could shake true mountains. "Igwa!" the pygmy called back, in a voice that could not.
"Why do you come, Pygmy?", The Igwa spoke in his deep, resonating voice, a voice that pushed through innumerable layers of fat to come out honeyed.
"There is a woman," spoke the Jew. The Igwa only gave out a laugh, small bloated arms being thrown up, visible for a second against the mountain of flesh.
"There is always a women with worldly men", he spoke before continuing with a deep, bone-shaking laugh. "Is it She-Who-Bleeds, Pygmy?"
The Jew nodded for The Igwa heard the beard ruffle against the Jew's own fat. Then he let out a sigh, for the newborn feeling had left him. Damn Pygmy. "She is inviolate," he rumbled, "To touch her would anger All-That-Is. I could send Reavers to feast upon her tribesmen, but even they could not touch her or those marked with her blood, for their hands are Mine."
The Jew let out a sigh of indignation. He had made clear his lack of faith in All-That-Is. "Do you know of her prophecy, Igwa?" Indeed he did. He had eaten whole a warrior from her tribe, and that warrior had held memories of her proclamations. "But, Pygmy, do you know of the not-wholeness of it? Death-but-not-quite is upon the man with the spark."
The Jew was surprised, he shuffled his feet. "How do you mean, Igwa?" The Igwa laughed, his fat tumbling in waves as he did. "He has lost the ability to give her his spark. He is not a man any longer. Dark hot metal cut into him and removed the flesh." The Igwa's words hung in the air.
"Igwa, I will be more sure of this women when she is dead. If you cannot help me, perhaps I will go to another...." Kozeba let his words hang, much as The Igwa had done.
"You mean Djeli? For none of the other Darkest are large enough save our feast-gifts." The Igwa merely shuffled, his useless arms stirring once again. "Djeli will do no more than I." Then anger entered those shuffling folds. "You presume to threaten The Igwa, who has feasted for millenia, who still digests millions! Leave me, Pygmy. I have no fondness or feast for you. Go to Djeli if you wish, but know that if the babe is born, I shall feast on it before any other. Perhaps I shall feast on you."
The Pygmy left existence and The Igwa tried to resume the memories of the newborn. But they had already faded. He would have to get his warriors to bring him another.
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Scales crackled and popped as a snake-man gave an annoyed hiss at the flame which had flicked onto his face. He did not see the Jew who flickered all the flames, did not see the Jew hobble into existence. His eyes were burning with smoke and there was the tang of his seared flesh in his nostrils.
Kozeba did not notice the snake-man either. He was not in Serica for entertainment, though his goal was a house of courtesans. He made his way through the crowd, a commanding aura pushing those aside from an already strange.... thing. Some vendors called out his name in their tongue, knowing something of his wealth. He ignored them, and continued through the cramped streets of Zinhai before coming to a well-kept manor, red lights within the windows.
This was Xanfu Zhi's favorite courtesan house, Kozeba was sure of it. If he was not here, he could be found in his academy and that was only a hop for the Jew. Kozeba entered, to be greeted by a slim courtesan, clever looking as all of the spy-whores of the Middle Kingdom. She was young for a mama-san, but then no courtesan ever lived to old age.
"Mama-san, many greetings. Is Xanfu Zhi using your services?"
The courtesan did not look up from her papers, papers with scribbled notes and schedules. "No. And he shall not be returning to this place."
Kozeba narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "And why is that?" Courtesan-houses were notorious for political take-overs, Xanfu Zhi had been active in politics as of late.
The courtesan looked down on him with returned suspicion. "He was trafficking with illegal spirits and was executed by order of the God-Emperor. Were you one of his.... students?" Kozeba could hear the venom in those last words. He did not want to check the Academy. He popped out of existence as the whisper spell was on her lips.
Damn, came his thoughts in the void. Xanfu Zhi was the man who had made the most progress on Horatius' ague. I should have guessed his politics would end him. I spent enough time wandering this void for him, finding those emperors for counsel on the snake-men.
My, how many odd friends I have, came the tumbled thoughts. Smile, and be gone came a voice without mouth.
----------------------------
Kozeba hobbled into existence before a rearing horse. The horse tumbled at the crackle of the void, crushing its snake-man rider. Kozeba just laughed, and a chorus of the closest thing snakes had to laugh followed. The rider was incompetent, for his horse to be scared by such a thing. Even an anomalous Jew popping up out of nowhere.
Khanaalkhatan was always a confusing city, precisely because it wasn't a city. It was a flat section of the steppe, marked with the ancestral mounds of all the tribes. The city proper was just makeshift tents and cooking fires, with free ranges for horse and rider. It shifted with the seasons.
Kozeba found his way though. Some of the men who rode with Chingiss knew "Sshort-Flesh", and so trotted the Jew to Chingiss' own tent. It was a grand tent, to be sure. Kozeba looked at the fiber and gave a silent chuckle. Human flesh of Serican hue. Spoke wonders of Chingiss' conquests. Kozeba merely gave a command to the snake at the front of the tent, he had no time to deal with formalities.
A deep blood red snake had his body wrapped somewhat luxuriantly around a naked Serican female. His tongue danced upon her neck, and she seemed to have fainted from shock. He let a razor sharp fang glide upon her exposed neck, drawing a slow stream of blood. Then he seemed to notice Kozeba and let out a cough of phlegm and blood upon the woman's face.
That was Chingiss. And the rumors of his own sickness were true. Chingiss looked over at the Jew for a moment. Then he unlocked his jaw and tore into the throat of the fainted woman. She gave nary a cry, her blood spilling upon his scales and the dirt floor. His tongue lapped at the fresh blood. Then he upturned his tongue and gave a throaty rendition of a human tongue.
"Sshort-flesh, wh'hat know you of virgin blood?" Chingiss spit some of the blood dribbling from his jaws upon the floor. Kozeba looked at the girl, who finally showed some motion, before it was all gone. "I think th'hat was not a virgin. Ssericanss tell me virgin'ss blood will cure me. But how do you ssoft-flesshs know a virgin from a not-virgin?"
Kozeba took a moment to respond. "I am afraid that I was here for a cure myself, Chingiss." Chingiss gave that snake-man laugh, a tittering of hisses and clicks and wheezes.
"I care about myself over all otherss, Shhort-Flesh. Go elssewhere. Not here. Any virgin iss mine. Any cure iss mine." He brought all four of his arms to point at his chest, and raised himself high upon his muscular tail.
"Do not forget who opened the gates of Samarkil, Chingiss." Chingiss lapped his tongue at some of the fresh blood pooled in the woman's throat. "Do not forget, sshort-flessh, who killed every ssoft-flesh in the wallss of Ssamarkil. I have nothing to offer you."
"Shhort-flessh, I am death sstolen upon a horse. And death hass finally found a rider to catch up to me." There was another cough of blood and phlegm, all upon the girl's gutted throat. "I will not help you with a cure. Perhaps death'ss riders, those sserpentss who sshall ssuccseed me, will have more interesst in you, sshort-flesh. I h'have none. Leave me."
Kozeba did. He hopped through the void to the last friend he could think of......
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
On the Maggot-Mills 1301
Shit and blood and vile mixtures of the two clung to his skin. Samuel Axe looked down and laughed. Bile was escaping from the corners of his mouth, he vomited, raw fish and onions to clear his palate.
It wasn’t disgust so much as strenuous exercise that caused the reversal in fortunes of his dinner. Proctors, those cockless tongueless freaks who flecked the bloody air with their stumps for tasters, swung pikes in menacing figure eights as the last of piss ridden Lugdimer ball breakers and the vestige of organized crime fled the scene.
The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas formed an impenetrable wall of crazy flesh and hardened steel. Samuel Axe stood in front of that wall before his knee gave out. He smiled and enjoyed the blissful lack of pain.
Whips and swords and the insincere little daggers with brass knuckle charms scattered the remains of the dead. It was a motley mix, a few low draw crossbows had been employed by the Brownankle against the Leatherback, so Brothers of the Order lay dead and dying, puffs of foamy red blood flowing between their clenched teeth.
The orders had been to battle the Brownankles to their lily white knees and secure the redlains for Eduardo. This had been done, but not without some price.
Samuel Axe dropped the sword that lingered on in his hands and fell backwards, his broken lips parting for the rain that soon fell and washed away the bloodied and scorched earth.
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Nobody was certain what was in the holy water. But holiness alone didn’t do what it did to men. Tiredness melted away, the Proctors laughed and trilled their raspy dirges while the Leatherbacks were on the march.
They saw blood. The vision began to tunnel as they had come into Lugdim. The heart leapt from its ignoble cage and men felt far, far away from what was happening. Pounding feet sent up shockwaves that shook the dust out of the air, Leatherbacks were a purifying force; everything was cleaner after they’d marched by.
Every tendon, every fiber, every last accent of being pulled itself upright and stood to attention, all the men got hard, their dicks waving in the wind that got between the fabric in their pants while they marched. Muscles long atrophied were kicked and beaten by the holy effects of just a bit of that blessed water on their lips.
Proctors, Sam hated Proctors, they gurgled like retarded babies, their tongues lost to fanaticism, their dicks lost to stupidity, their throats ashy and dust swollen from no use. They gurgled and swung their pikes back and forth at one another, a test of skill, and a test of resolve.
The Knight-Master marched at the head, all men behind him, as they came upon the cold gray city of Lugdim.
It had been a simple assignment, find the Brownankles. Kill them all. The most reasonable explanation for the need to destroy every last bit of the Brownankles wasn’t because they were pagans, which they weren’t.
No, it was probably because they had stopped paying their protection racket to Eduardo. Which was fine, not everybody paid their operating fees, but when they killed more than a few of the Phalange, Eduardo’s own insane yet useless personal guardsmen, who had been sent to inspect their coffers, well, that’s when things had gotten interesting.
It didn’t help that the Brownankle v. Phalange street rumble had found itself ending up in the Jewish Quarter, which was mostly burnt to the ground, the little enanos bastards fleeing into the redlains and into the few Jew havens outside of the Quarter, mostly though the little Semitic midgets had become homeless.
Homeless Jews are most definitely more likely to curse you, so when Eduardo woke up one day with the Stiffening Boils climbing up his ass he decided that the only way to placate the Jews, and by extension their insane hemorrhoid inducing god, was to have the Brownankles driven from Lugdim and their intestines to be spread along the redlains.
Men, women, and the more intelligent specimens of children fled before the Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas. The dumber specimens of children were on occasion mistaken for very brash enanos and flung to the sides, their bodies mostly intact, but their spirits broken.
It had been slow going until they’d come to the maggot-mills, an interconnected system of flooded streets that the Brownankles controlled, they shipped freight here and there within the city, stopping to plunder the endless treasures of long flooded basements and airtight water resistant chests, which more often than not held more brandy than most men thought healthy.
Apparently, this was where the Brownankles got most of their money. And for being allowed to sell this particularly exquisite vintage of brandy with no taxes from Lugdim they, the Brownankles, were expected to pay a fee, this minor, almost miniscule fee, paid in full to Eduardo’s coffers, was the only reason that the Brownankles were still allowed to sell their recovered brandy. It was their only protection they had from the Taxman.
Eduardo was a bit slow in realizing their debt.
Now though, now they had no recourse. The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas were honorable men. Honorable men do not take the bobber pound of iron, honorable men prefer a fleshier, more screaming prone form.
It was honorable men who lined up and drew breath that glistened with swords and it was honorable men who swung the wicked whips and it was honorable men who sidled up against the houses of the redlain and gurgled something to the effect of “We shall not be moved.”
It was honorable men who watched the water bubble and brew, like a thousand angry fish lashing out for bread. It was honorable men who paused on the edge of the deep ponds known as the maggot-mills, unable to march further.
It was honorable men who came to realize the terrible sight before them. Like the unending march of seasons, the approach of death and the inevitability of taxes the massive almost bean pods would float up from below the water.
The first one popped up. “Brothers, ho!” A mighty rain of javelins bounced off of the bean pods and Samuel Axe was about to suggest that maybe these weren’t the particular bean pods that brought only death to those who opposed them.
Samuel Axe was fucking wrong. Twenty more popped from the maggot-mills in as many seconds. They were, big. That was the only word that even managed to describe them.
Another rain of javelins and still more popped up.
Bean pods usually don’t hiss. These did. The massive bean pods hissed and their top half popped off, smacking wet and ready on the open yet still mostly stagnant water of the maggot-mills.
Men stood ready, like foolhardy explorers they’d ridden inside these little underwater contraptions and popped up ready for battle. Now the javelins rained down, and arrows sprung back.
The two lines of Brothers directly in front of Samuel screamed and curdled and fell clutching at the massive sucking wounds in their chests, stomachs, and groins. The ones who got hit in the head didn’t even get the dignity of a dramatic death.
Gore sprayed backwards in waves. Proctors gurgled something to the effect of “maybe we should move now” and men moved. They fell back, packed, orderly, efficient, panicked.
The second volley fell at their feet, only a few died. With their shock and awe advantage lost the Brownankles had to paddle closer and closer to fire slow draw crossbows at quick tempered men.
When the Brownankles came ashore, well then they were well and truly screwed. The Poor and Shirtless Knights are a tough breed, called Leatherbacks for a reason. They surged.
And that’s when Samuel saw the gleam of forty arrows pierce the sky. He screamed and his Brothers screamed with him. The slowest ones died as the Leatherbacks plowed into the front lines of the Brownankles.
Samuel out front, that wicked whip curved like a blade made from hurricanes. It danced across the air, part terror, part cane, part spear. He twisted it and found the satisfying crack of head and neck separating to be simply delightful.
He gathered speed. While the cockless rockers known as Proctors gurgled and stabbed to break up enemy formations the Knight-Brothers would spread out, diving into the midst of battle, their whips cutting and keeping the well armed hounds at bay.
Samuel’s sword answered the calls of the more inquisitive, hacking away, stabbing, slashing in desperate strokes as he wheeled around and let them know his anger.
The bolt in his shoulder went unnoticed; he was too busy slicing men in half. Twirls are reserved for dancers, Samuel twirled now, the world he saw before him was a slow moving caricature of itself.
Limbs and the fates of men hung in midair, Proctors skewered victims, one of the Brothers sliced a man’s intestines out with a flick of his wrist and the long untwirling madness that was the whip.
Pivot and stick the landing, Samuel’s blessing made him laugh off the idea of pain or fatigue, when he was done fighting he would fall where he stood, his body too tired to move, and Christ would protect him then.
His sword, his sword was deep in some other man and he lacked a way to fight off this interloper. The whip was too far away and this bastard was real close.
So Samuel grabbed the other man’s balls and clenched with a fury. The other man blacked out and Samuel was quick to crack his neck with a well placed boot.
There it was, his sword was back in his hand, a pile of dead men, all with the little band of gunked up skin around their ankles and wrists, the water of the maggot-mills dyeing their skin.
A call for the regrouping sounded and Samuel tried to walk. His knee would not budge, so Samuel stayed. He stood as the unshakeable pillar that he was, brandishing his wicked whip and his sword with guts hanging from the end, a most dramatic flourish.
He laughed, and then he fell. Samuel Axe collapsed, tired and happy, unconscious in the extreme, but fulfilled.
It was a bonus that he woke up alive, his Brothers tending his wounds.
It wasn’t disgust so much as strenuous exercise that caused the reversal in fortunes of his dinner. Proctors, those cockless tongueless freaks who flecked the bloody air with their stumps for tasters, swung pikes in menacing figure eights as the last of piss ridden Lugdimer ball breakers and the vestige of organized crime fled the scene.
The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas formed an impenetrable wall of crazy flesh and hardened steel. Samuel Axe stood in front of that wall before his knee gave out. He smiled and enjoyed the blissful lack of pain.
Whips and swords and the insincere little daggers with brass knuckle charms scattered the remains of the dead. It was a motley mix, a few low draw crossbows had been employed by the Brownankle against the Leatherback, so Brothers of the Order lay dead and dying, puffs of foamy red blood flowing between their clenched teeth.
The orders had been to battle the Brownankles to their lily white knees and secure the redlains for Eduardo. This had been done, but not without some price.
Samuel Axe dropped the sword that lingered on in his hands and fell backwards, his broken lips parting for the rain that soon fell and washed away the bloodied and scorched earth.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -
Nobody was certain what was in the holy water. But holiness alone didn’t do what it did to men. Tiredness melted away, the Proctors laughed and trilled their raspy dirges while the Leatherbacks were on the march.
They saw blood. The vision began to tunnel as they had come into Lugdim. The heart leapt from its ignoble cage and men felt far, far away from what was happening. Pounding feet sent up shockwaves that shook the dust out of the air, Leatherbacks were a purifying force; everything was cleaner after they’d marched by.
Every tendon, every fiber, every last accent of being pulled itself upright and stood to attention, all the men got hard, their dicks waving in the wind that got between the fabric in their pants while they marched. Muscles long atrophied were kicked and beaten by the holy effects of just a bit of that blessed water on their lips.
Proctors, Sam hated Proctors, they gurgled like retarded babies, their tongues lost to fanaticism, their dicks lost to stupidity, their throats ashy and dust swollen from no use. They gurgled and swung their pikes back and forth at one another, a test of skill, and a test of resolve.
The Knight-Master marched at the head, all men behind him, as they came upon the cold gray city of Lugdim.
It had been a simple assignment, find the Brownankles. Kill them all. The most reasonable explanation for the need to destroy every last bit of the Brownankles wasn’t because they were pagans, which they weren’t.
No, it was probably because they had stopped paying their protection racket to Eduardo. Which was fine, not everybody paid their operating fees, but when they killed more than a few of the Phalange, Eduardo’s own insane yet useless personal guardsmen, who had been sent to inspect their coffers, well, that’s when things had gotten interesting.
It didn’t help that the Brownankle v. Phalange street rumble had found itself ending up in the Jewish Quarter, which was mostly burnt to the ground, the little enanos bastards fleeing into the redlains and into the few Jew havens outside of the Quarter, mostly though the little Semitic midgets had become homeless.
Homeless Jews are most definitely more likely to curse you, so when Eduardo woke up one day with the Stiffening Boils climbing up his ass he decided that the only way to placate the Jews, and by extension their insane hemorrhoid inducing god, was to have the Brownankles driven from Lugdim and their intestines to be spread along the redlains.
Men, women, and the more intelligent specimens of children fled before the Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas. The dumber specimens of children were on occasion mistaken for very brash enanos and flung to the sides, their bodies mostly intact, but their spirits broken.
It had been slow going until they’d come to the maggot-mills, an interconnected system of flooded streets that the Brownankles controlled, they shipped freight here and there within the city, stopping to plunder the endless treasures of long flooded basements and airtight water resistant chests, which more often than not held more brandy than most men thought healthy.
Apparently, this was where the Brownankles got most of their money. And for being allowed to sell this particularly exquisite vintage of brandy with no taxes from Lugdim they, the Brownankles, were expected to pay a fee, this minor, almost miniscule fee, paid in full to Eduardo’s coffers, was the only reason that the Brownankles were still allowed to sell their recovered brandy. It was their only protection they had from the Taxman.
Eduardo was a bit slow in realizing their debt.
Now though, now they had no recourse. The Poor and Shirtless Knights of Saint Ulfilas were honorable men. Honorable men do not take the bobber pound of iron, honorable men prefer a fleshier, more screaming prone form.
It was honorable men who lined up and drew breath that glistened with swords and it was honorable men who swung the wicked whips and it was honorable men who sidled up against the houses of the redlain and gurgled something to the effect of “We shall not be moved.”
It was honorable men who watched the water bubble and brew, like a thousand angry fish lashing out for bread. It was honorable men who paused on the edge of the deep ponds known as the maggot-mills, unable to march further.
It was honorable men who came to realize the terrible sight before them. Like the unending march of seasons, the approach of death and the inevitability of taxes the massive almost bean pods would float up from below the water.
The first one popped up. “Brothers, ho!” A mighty rain of javelins bounced off of the bean pods and Samuel Axe was about to suggest that maybe these weren’t the particular bean pods that brought only death to those who opposed them.
Samuel Axe was fucking wrong. Twenty more popped from the maggot-mills in as many seconds. They were, big. That was the only word that even managed to describe them.
Another rain of javelins and still more popped up.
Bean pods usually don’t hiss. These did. The massive bean pods hissed and their top half popped off, smacking wet and ready on the open yet still mostly stagnant water of the maggot-mills.
Men stood ready, like foolhardy explorers they’d ridden inside these little underwater contraptions and popped up ready for battle. Now the javelins rained down, and arrows sprung back.
The two lines of Brothers directly in front of Samuel screamed and curdled and fell clutching at the massive sucking wounds in their chests, stomachs, and groins. The ones who got hit in the head didn’t even get the dignity of a dramatic death.
Gore sprayed backwards in waves. Proctors gurgled something to the effect of “maybe we should move now” and men moved. They fell back, packed, orderly, efficient, panicked.
The second volley fell at their feet, only a few died. With their shock and awe advantage lost the Brownankles had to paddle closer and closer to fire slow draw crossbows at quick tempered men.
When the Brownankles came ashore, well then they were well and truly screwed. The Poor and Shirtless Knights are a tough breed, called Leatherbacks for a reason. They surged.
And that’s when Samuel saw the gleam of forty arrows pierce the sky. He screamed and his Brothers screamed with him. The slowest ones died as the Leatherbacks plowed into the front lines of the Brownankles.
Samuel out front, that wicked whip curved like a blade made from hurricanes. It danced across the air, part terror, part cane, part spear. He twisted it and found the satisfying crack of head and neck separating to be simply delightful.
He gathered speed. While the cockless rockers known as Proctors gurgled and stabbed to break up enemy formations the Knight-Brothers would spread out, diving into the midst of battle, their whips cutting and keeping the well armed hounds at bay.
Samuel’s sword answered the calls of the more inquisitive, hacking away, stabbing, slashing in desperate strokes as he wheeled around and let them know his anger.
The bolt in his shoulder went unnoticed; he was too busy slicing men in half. Twirls are reserved for dancers, Samuel twirled now, the world he saw before him was a slow moving caricature of itself.
Limbs and the fates of men hung in midair, Proctors skewered victims, one of the Brothers sliced a man’s intestines out with a flick of his wrist and the long untwirling madness that was the whip.
Pivot and stick the landing, Samuel’s blessing made him laugh off the idea of pain or fatigue, when he was done fighting he would fall where he stood, his body too tired to move, and Christ would protect him then.
His sword, his sword was deep in some other man and he lacked a way to fight off this interloper. The whip was too far away and this bastard was real close.
So Samuel grabbed the other man’s balls and clenched with a fury. The other man blacked out and Samuel was quick to crack his neck with a well placed boot.
There it was, his sword was back in his hand, a pile of dead men, all with the little band of gunked up skin around their ankles and wrists, the water of the maggot-mills dyeing their skin.
A call for the regrouping sounded and Samuel tried to walk. His knee would not budge, so Samuel stayed. He stood as the unshakeable pillar that he was, brandishing his wicked whip and his sword with guts hanging from the end, a most dramatic flourish.
He laughed, and then he fell. Samuel Axe collapsed, tired and happy, unconscious in the extreme, but fulfilled.
It was a bonus that he woke up alive, his Brothers tending his wounds.
The Laird's People 1301
“'E Laird's people bairn Jews quicker 'an wood!” The Messiah's unkempt lousy beard brushed Ignatius' sleeping face. “'Ave yeh bairnt a Jew to-day?!”, the Messiah screamed at a still drowsy Ignatius.
Ignatius swatted the crazy Jew's face and was tempted to use the fiend's fire. Then he saw the merchant in his cheap inn room's crooked doorway and he eased up. “Have you found me a ship?”, Ignatius grumbled.
“Aye.” said the merchant with more than a little bitterness. “And way're goin' with you.”
“Si,” Ignatius nodded, “But why the change of heart?”
The messiah cackled and spread his arms wide. “Cause your Laird 'ecided 'E was gonna bairn 'e crop of 'e Jewish people and 'e did strahk-” The merchant ended the Messiah's rant with a harsh glance.
“Shut up, brother,” he said coolly and looked straight at Ignatius. “Eddy decided to draft all male Jews into his army. So, all the people who hate Eddy or hate Jews or maybe hate both came up with the great idea o' killin' every Jew they could find.”
“The only Jews left are Eduardo's or are on the Thymenes already. Maybe there's some security in a hole ya just can't get here. I don't know. But we have a clan-brother who ain't doin' so bad in Valencia, so we're going to play the poor cousin to him.” The Merchant grinned and produced the rosary beads from a pocket. “And we'll have the protection of the Mother Church the whole way.”
Ignatius' eyes watched the rosary beads closely. He would have to nab those back, a priest without his rosary beads was.... a disgrace. The Merchant noted Ignatius' interest in the beads and said quickly, “But we'd best hurry to the Thymenes. Our man has little time to waste. You can't in his business.”
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Samuel Axe could feel no pain. His legs bore gashes from his time as a beggar, cuts made expertly for appearance and avoidance of a limp. His back was as scarred as the Grandmaster's though he was only an initiate.
But he was not a leper, no, his condition was a mark against his mother's honor for birthing a bastard or, as the Order said, a blessing from God himself. The Order had made quick use of his..... blessing.
Samuel threw a blood-soaked rag upon the upside down Cross. He was done with his prayers for the day. He exited the small penitent chamber, wiping his sweat and sandy hair from his face.
The Knight-Brothers were sparring with Initiates. Samuel was still learning the Order's way of fighting, with sword and whip. His hands were used to nothing more than a dagger, but he could take a blow better than any other on the sparring ground. Dedicants sat by the side of the sparring grounds, light blows with light whips upon their fresh skin. Samuel sat beside them, the blood running down his back a symbol of his strength and devotion.
A Knight-Master, lean, strong and bloodied with hooked scars upon his face, entered the grounds and called all to order with a crack of his whip and a bellowed “God wills it!” The Knight-Brothers put down their sparring arms and stood at attention.
The Knight-Master cracked his whip once again and the Initiates and Dedicants came out of their haze and awe to stand at attention. The Knight-Master spoke, the scars upon his cheeks twisting in odd patterns, “Our King and Honorary Brother Edward has called out for muster from all the Orders of his realm. As we're the only Order worth the blood God gave us,” The Brothers gave out a loud resounding “God's Wounds!” and raised their fists, “....he's called out a muster from us.”
“Raise your fist if you'd like to break pagan's faces for Edward.” Every fist shot up, even among the fresh Dedicants. The Knight-Master looked at the fresh young backs. “Next time, Dedicants. Anyone Initiated may go to fight.”
Samuel had his fist up. The Knight-Master inspected the best of the sparring grounds, Knight-Brothers all, then came to inspect the Initiates. He took a look at Samuel's rended back and said, “You'll do.”
Samuel was ready to kill for the Order that judged him blessed. He got his equipment, cruel whip and broadsword, had holy water sprinkled upon his back, and joined the other Leatherbacks for their march into the cold gray city of Lugdim.
-----------------------------------------------
Ignatius skulked behind the Jews in penitent's cowl as they nimbly traced the redlains and alleys. A Proctor stood at the end of one of the alleys and Ignatius ambled past the tongueless man almost without a care. The Jews waited for the silent enforcer to leave their sights and then ran forward.
A procession of flagellants passed behind one of the redlains, the crack of their whips and their cries of exultant pain echoing down the redlains. And then, they were upon the Thymenes.
“I ain't got much time in 'is business.”, the boatman grinned as Ignatius and the Jews boarded his small rowboat. The Jews laid down flat and Ignatius pulled his cowl tight as the man started to push his boat into the Thymenes.
“So, a padre and two enanos? I been doin' the Orim trade for a long time and ain't never carried such queer cargo.” The boatman kept rowing, down the Thymenes. The stirring of the water brought out a smell Ignatius wished he could avoid. To be back to the clean waters of the church!
But Ignatius grinned under his cowl nonetheless. “Eduardo seems able to draw all of his enemies into the same net.”
The boatman spit into the water. “Ain't that the truth? Makes me damn sorry I hauled his podder's ass up here....”
Ignatius looked up incredulously at the grinning boatman. “You carried Alphonse to Lugdim?”
The boatman pulled his oar up from the water and gave pause. “Aye. Back in the Northern Crusade. Sneaky bastard didn't want to land with his men, wanted to avoid most of the battling and take all the glory later. So he hired the youngest, firiest, fastest damn smuggler on the Channel trade.”
The boatman resumed rowing. “He hired me. I was usin' my old captain's name at the time though, so maybe I misled him a bit. But that bastard deserved to die. The captain, not Fonze.”
Ignatius looked back at the bottom of the boat and tried to pull the cowl tighter against the smell. “I don't believe you, but you sure can spin a tale, smuggler.”
“Hell, don't believe me. But I'm not the youngest anymore, but I'm still the firiest. And I got better tales.” He pointed at the Merchant. “He's my brother, believe it or not. And my mother is a giant. Biggest damn woman you'll ever see, not that you'll ever see her.” He gave the sign of the Horned Cross without missing a beat with the oar. “May He rest her soul.”
Ignatius laughed nervously. “What about you, Jew? What say you?” He pointed a lone finger at the Merchant, cowering under the boards.
“He gives no lie about being my brother..... but I cannot tell you of the size of his mother.” The Merchant gave a sideways glance to the boatman and grinned a Jewish smile- crooked, greedy, controlling.
An annoyed gurgle came from the none-too-far-off shore and Ignatius shot a quick glance towards the the sound. There was a Proctor, pastoral staff in hand. But it seemed he was annoyed at the smell and not the boat with fugitives. Funny. Ignatius didn't think the man could smell, what with his lack of a tongue. That peculiar asceticism always unnerved Ignatius..... even if it was one of God's Wounds.
The boat kept moving down the Thymenes and the boatman kept talking of his tales, of meeting with Kings, of fighting in armies, of capturing and raping young ladies. Ignatius drifted in and out of the conversation.
“I got two sons in Orim, y'know.” The boatman said it loudly, as if knowing that Ignatius was paying him no mind.”
“Really?” Ignatius answered, listening as he had been just to avoid offence.
“Well, only one of 'em was a rightful son. Other took the bastard name of Bull. Both named John like me 'ough.”
“Bastard name?” Ignatius had never heard of such a thing; bastards in Orim went without a name or posed as nephews.
“Septs, from the stars. Old Gods, you know. But I treated him like a real son. Just had to keep up appearances. Got no quarter from the wife or him over all 'at.”
“Their tales would make you laugh even harder. 'Eir Jew friend tells me my Bull nearly owns Orimmo and is about to be made a duke or somethin'. He's a bastard an' he'll outrank his father!”
Ignatius knew of the street gangs of Orim, although it had taken him a blink to connect Tauros to Bull. He knew of the man.
“And my rightful son, younger fella, John Brydges just like me, done become a captain like I did. And 'e's fighting the Hada de la Sur.... if'n 'eir Jew friend is right. Doin' better 'an is father, if Jew's gold rings true.”
Ignatius nodded solemnly. “Those Elves, I think, are why I have been called back to Orim. Everyone knew me as the Hada Killer for a time.... but it was really no difficulty. I'm not a martial cleric.” And even the gold did not make Ignatius any more enthusiastic about having to fight any Elves.
“Oh, elves, I know elves. Strangled one up in Old Skany and....”
Ignatius quit listening and drew his cowl tight against the smell, hoping the real ship was close.
Ignatius swatted the crazy Jew's face and was tempted to use the fiend's fire. Then he saw the merchant in his cheap inn room's crooked doorway and he eased up. “Have you found me a ship?”, Ignatius grumbled.
“Aye.” said the merchant with more than a little bitterness. “And way're goin' with you.”
“Si,” Ignatius nodded, “But why the change of heart?”
The messiah cackled and spread his arms wide. “Cause your Laird 'ecided 'E was gonna bairn 'e crop of 'e Jewish people and 'e did strahk-” The merchant ended the Messiah's rant with a harsh glance.
“Shut up, brother,” he said coolly and looked straight at Ignatius. “Eddy decided to draft all male Jews into his army. So, all the people who hate Eddy or hate Jews or maybe hate both came up with the great idea o' killin' every Jew they could find.”
“The only Jews left are Eduardo's or are on the Thymenes already. Maybe there's some security in a hole ya just can't get here. I don't know. But we have a clan-brother who ain't doin' so bad in Valencia, so we're going to play the poor cousin to him.” The Merchant grinned and produced the rosary beads from a pocket. “And we'll have the protection of the Mother Church the whole way.”
Ignatius' eyes watched the rosary beads closely. He would have to nab those back, a priest without his rosary beads was.... a disgrace. The Merchant noted Ignatius' interest in the beads and said quickly, “But we'd best hurry to the Thymenes. Our man has little time to waste. You can't in his business.”
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Samuel Axe could feel no pain. His legs bore gashes from his time as a beggar, cuts made expertly for appearance and avoidance of a limp. His back was as scarred as the Grandmaster's though he was only an initiate.
But he was not a leper, no, his condition was a mark against his mother's honor for birthing a bastard or, as the Order said, a blessing from God himself. The Order had made quick use of his..... blessing.
Samuel threw a blood-soaked rag upon the upside down Cross. He was done with his prayers for the day. He exited the small penitent chamber, wiping his sweat and sandy hair from his face.
The Knight-Brothers were sparring with Initiates. Samuel was still learning the Order's way of fighting, with sword and whip. His hands were used to nothing more than a dagger, but he could take a blow better than any other on the sparring ground. Dedicants sat by the side of the sparring grounds, light blows with light whips upon their fresh skin. Samuel sat beside them, the blood running down his back a symbol of his strength and devotion.
A Knight-Master, lean, strong and bloodied with hooked scars upon his face, entered the grounds and called all to order with a crack of his whip and a bellowed “God wills it!” The Knight-Brothers put down their sparring arms and stood at attention.
The Knight-Master cracked his whip once again and the Initiates and Dedicants came out of their haze and awe to stand at attention. The Knight-Master spoke, the scars upon his cheeks twisting in odd patterns, “Our King and Honorary Brother Edward has called out for muster from all the Orders of his realm. As we're the only Order worth the blood God gave us,” The Brothers gave out a loud resounding “God's Wounds!” and raised their fists, “....he's called out a muster from us.”
“Raise your fist if you'd like to break pagan's faces for Edward.” Every fist shot up, even among the fresh Dedicants. The Knight-Master looked at the fresh young backs. “Next time, Dedicants. Anyone Initiated may go to fight.”
Samuel had his fist up. The Knight-Master inspected the best of the sparring grounds, Knight-Brothers all, then came to inspect the Initiates. He took a look at Samuel's rended back and said, “You'll do.”
Samuel was ready to kill for the Order that judged him blessed. He got his equipment, cruel whip and broadsword, had holy water sprinkled upon his back, and joined the other Leatherbacks for their march into the cold gray city of Lugdim.
-----------------------------------------------
Ignatius skulked behind the Jews in penitent's cowl as they nimbly traced the redlains and alleys. A Proctor stood at the end of one of the alleys and Ignatius ambled past the tongueless man almost without a care. The Jews waited for the silent enforcer to leave their sights and then ran forward.
A procession of flagellants passed behind one of the redlains, the crack of their whips and their cries of exultant pain echoing down the redlains. And then, they were upon the Thymenes.
“I ain't got much time in 'is business.”, the boatman grinned as Ignatius and the Jews boarded his small rowboat. The Jews laid down flat and Ignatius pulled his cowl tight as the man started to push his boat into the Thymenes.
“So, a padre and two enanos? I been doin' the Orim trade for a long time and ain't never carried such queer cargo.” The boatman kept rowing, down the Thymenes. The stirring of the water brought out a smell Ignatius wished he could avoid. To be back to the clean waters of the church!
But Ignatius grinned under his cowl nonetheless. “Eduardo seems able to draw all of his enemies into the same net.”
The boatman spit into the water. “Ain't that the truth? Makes me damn sorry I hauled his podder's ass up here....”
Ignatius looked up incredulously at the grinning boatman. “You carried Alphonse to Lugdim?”
The boatman pulled his oar up from the water and gave pause. “Aye. Back in the Northern Crusade. Sneaky bastard didn't want to land with his men, wanted to avoid most of the battling and take all the glory later. So he hired the youngest, firiest, fastest damn smuggler on the Channel trade.”
The boatman resumed rowing. “He hired me. I was usin' my old captain's name at the time though, so maybe I misled him a bit. But that bastard deserved to die. The captain, not Fonze.”
Ignatius looked back at the bottom of the boat and tried to pull the cowl tighter against the smell. “I don't believe you, but you sure can spin a tale, smuggler.”
“Hell, don't believe me. But I'm not the youngest anymore, but I'm still the firiest. And I got better tales.” He pointed at the Merchant. “He's my brother, believe it or not. And my mother is a giant. Biggest damn woman you'll ever see, not that you'll ever see her.” He gave the sign of the Horned Cross without missing a beat with the oar. “May He rest her soul.”
Ignatius laughed nervously. “What about you, Jew? What say you?” He pointed a lone finger at the Merchant, cowering under the boards.
“He gives no lie about being my brother..... but I cannot tell you of the size of his mother.” The Merchant gave a sideways glance to the boatman and grinned a Jewish smile- crooked, greedy, controlling.
An annoyed gurgle came from the none-too-far-off shore and Ignatius shot a quick glance towards the the sound. There was a Proctor, pastoral staff in hand. But it seemed he was annoyed at the smell and not the boat with fugitives. Funny. Ignatius didn't think the man could smell, what with his lack of a tongue. That peculiar asceticism always unnerved Ignatius..... even if it was one of God's Wounds.
The boat kept moving down the Thymenes and the boatman kept talking of his tales, of meeting with Kings, of fighting in armies, of capturing and raping young ladies. Ignatius drifted in and out of the conversation.
“I got two sons in Orim, y'know.” The boatman said it loudly, as if knowing that Ignatius was paying him no mind.”
“Really?” Ignatius answered, listening as he had been just to avoid offence.
“Well, only one of 'em was a rightful son. Other took the bastard name of Bull. Both named John like me 'ough.”
“Bastard name?” Ignatius had never heard of such a thing; bastards in Orim went without a name or posed as nephews.
“Septs, from the stars. Old Gods, you know. But I treated him like a real son. Just had to keep up appearances. Got no quarter from the wife or him over all 'at.”
“Their tales would make you laugh even harder. 'Eir Jew friend tells me my Bull nearly owns Orimmo and is about to be made a duke or somethin'. He's a bastard an' he'll outrank his father!”
Ignatius knew of the street gangs of Orim, although it had taken him a blink to connect Tauros to Bull. He knew of the man.
“And my rightful son, younger fella, John Brydges just like me, done become a captain like I did. And 'e's fighting the Hada de la Sur.... if'n 'eir Jew friend is right. Doin' better 'an is father, if Jew's gold rings true.”
Ignatius nodded solemnly. “Those Elves, I think, are why I have been called back to Orim. Everyone knew me as the Hada Killer for a time.... but it was really no difficulty. I'm not a martial cleric.” And even the gold did not make Ignatius any more enthusiastic about having to fight any Elves.
“Oh, elves, I know elves. Strangled one up in Old Skany and....”
Ignatius quit listening and drew his cowl tight against the smell, hoping the real ship was close.
You Say You Want A revolution? 1301
The Revolution deserved a Mass. And though it was one called on desperate terms, it drew in all of the people important to the King's Opposition. There was the ailing Horatius, the sacrifice for the Free Church of Orim. There was John Bull, Tauros, the tattooed Northerner of impossible strength whose gangs ruled the streets of Orimmo. There was Henri, Duke of Braganza and ostensible King of Port-au-Prince, who had tied his star to the revolution to revive his forgotten kingdom. There was Arianna, widowed Baroness of Castleset, ever embittered at her husband's death by Alphonse, and her newest consort, the Pretender Charli, a Lochaber nephew of Alphonse. There was the Caudillo Tomas Jorge, who ruled the south with a lash. And there was a new man, shifty, by the Lugdimer name of Lloyd, come to represent Alphonse's only surviving son, Eduardo I.
But one important face was missing and everyone knew it. Don Juan Callisto, the popular face of the King's Opposition, young, brilliant, flamboyant..... the man who had whored himself to Alphonse. And this Mass had been called to choose his successor.
But before the discussion could begin, an overly fat Jew appeared in the room with a crack, floating on a stone slab. “May I introduce to you,” came Horatius's wheeze, “Kozeba, the Jew Who Can Divide by Zero.”
“Come here, Kozeba.”, came the next wheeze. Kozeba hovered his way over to Horatius's deathly altar. “Kozeba,” came the whisper, “found you a cure for my ague?”Kozeba fidgeted, his untrimmed beard falling from the peak of his oversized stomach. “No. Bagdemagus is too good a hexer for me to contest.”
“Alas, that is my fate then.” He gave out a sickening wet cough, full of phlegm and despair. “Found you Christ then, Kozeba?” Kozeba grinned, blackened teeth showing. “I think I heard him on another plane.... but its always hard to tell one God from another.”
Horatius pulled himself up and over the altar, jumping down to the floor with one hand steadying him against his lost leg. “Well men, which of you will replace the whore?” His desperate eyes scanned their Mass.
Henri stood up, throwing his cape behind him. Always a fop. “I could replace that whore. The Don Juan was a playboy and nothing more.”
Horatius shook his head. “No.” Henri's loyalty to Orim would always be suspect- he would not do. Horatius already knew who the discussion would come down to. Arianna was a woman, Charli a fool (and if rumors rang true, a frocio). No, the only candiates were Bull and Tomas. Neither held a formal title, but that could be changed.
Lloyd spoke in perfect Orimmo. “What of Eduardo? He holds no great loyalty to his father.” Horatius shook his head again. “No,” he whispered, his voice growing again after a quick cough. “We would respect his throne in Lugdim, but it would take an act of God for us to accept one of Alphonse's spawn on Orimmo's throne.” Horatius hoped leaving the chance for an act of God would sate the fool on the northern throne.
“What of Charli?” Arianna said, the boy hiding shyly behind her. Horatius gave a hollow, creaking laugh. “I care not for his bedroom antics, Baroness. He is a boy and though he will take the throne when we succeed, he cannot lead the effort.” The old widow blushed and Charli snickered behind her. Unsuitable. Horatius wondered if Arianna enjoyed the boy's unnatural leanings herself.
Tomas spoke up, his rough dialect and plain clothes betraying his untitled status. “I could do it.” Horatius looked at John Bull first. Bull wasn't as dumb as his namesake, even if he was as strong. He knew he could contest it, demand to replace the Don Juan. But he knew that he was a foreigner, an odd one at that, and that opposing Tomas would lead to Tomas leaving the revolutionary fold. He knew what was best.
John Bull nodded and grumbled. “I could get behind that.” The others finally nodded in agreement.
Tomas would do. He wasn't as youthful or brilliant as Don Juan Callisto had been, but he was brutal and efficient. He was the Iron Duke of the South, the bastard son of an old duke who had threatened power from the hands of the real nobles. Alphonse hated him. He would be a good opposition leader, even if it would take some work for him to get titled.
“Its decided then. Tomas shall become the Leader of the Opposition.” Horatius projected sternness in his crackling voice.
Horatius wondered if he should put out the Tithes for the members of the Free Church once again..... but that was work for the next day. Now, it was time for the Mass. Kozeba disappeared as the steaming cattle was brought into the room.
They shared the sticky gobs of half-cooked beef flesh, chewed on the fat and mulled over other issues. Then they drank the blood-water from the Blessed Horn and Horatius began to lead them in a rollicking phlegmatic prayer.
The Revolution had its Mass.
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Kozeba appeared in the darkness, as Horatius was sleeping. “Father of the Free Church, awake.” It was not a prodding whisper, but a command spoken with that aura of magic. Horatius opened his eyes and turned to the Jew.
“Kozeba, you keep odd hours even for a Jew. What is it that you need?” Kozeba wrinkled his nose at the smells of a primitive apothecary, Horatius was smothered in something like currant jelly.
“It is something you need, Father. I know why the Don Juan Callisto betrayed you- and his reasons are more dangerous to your revolution than he could ever be.” Horatius pulled himself up.
“Why?!” His voice was frantic.
“Alphonse has found another source of gold. Whole cities of it, cities upon not-quite-human flesh. And Callisto has been conscripted to march across the desert for it.”
“If...” Horatius started coughing, a hacking, whooping cough. “If Alphonse gains more gold, he will be unstoppable.” said the Jew, finishing the ailing priest's thoughts for him. “But do not worry, father. There is another man, a Northman named John,” Kozeba smiled at that little slip, “who I am watching for my own reasons. But he is also involved with this quest for gold, and I shall try and stop him. Permanently.”
“If your actions help us, Kozeba, we shall not forget it.” Horatius looked down at the fat Jew, who merely gave a cringing smile. “I don't care for that, Horatius. Just get your men to watch the Treasury and the ports and I will inform you when this Captain John is dead.”
“I'll.... I'll have to call out the Tithes and the Commission of Array for this.....” Horatius looked like he was going to get up and start working on it in the middle of the night.
“Sleep, Father.” Another command, with that aura of magic. And then Kozeba was gone, to who knows where.
But one important face was missing and everyone knew it. Don Juan Callisto, the popular face of the King's Opposition, young, brilliant, flamboyant..... the man who had whored himself to Alphonse. And this Mass had been called to choose his successor.
But before the discussion could begin, an overly fat Jew appeared in the room with a crack, floating on a stone slab. “May I introduce to you,” came Horatius's wheeze, “Kozeba, the Jew Who Can Divide by Zero.”
“Come here, Kozeba.”, came the next wheeze. Kozeba hovered his way over to Horatius's deathly altar. “Kozeba,” came the whisper, “found you a cure for my ague?”Kozeba fidgeted, his untrimmed beard falling from the peak of his oversized stomach. “No. Bagdemagus is too good a hexer for me to contest.”
“Alas, that is my fate then.” He gave out a sickening wet cough, full of phlegm and despair. “Found you Christ then, Kozeba?” Kozeba grinned, blackened teeth showing. “I think I heard him on another plane.... but its always hard to tell one God from another.”
Horatius pulled himself up and over the altar, jumping down to the floor with one hand steadying him against his lost leg. “Well men, which of you will replace the whore?” His desperate eyes scanned their Mass.
Henri stood up, throwing his cape behind him. Always a fop. “I could replace that whore. The Don Juan was a playboy and nothing more.”
Horatius shook his head. “No.” Henri's loyalty to Orim would always be suspect- he would not do. Horatius already knew who the discussion would come down to. Arianna was a woman, Charli a fool (and if rumors rang true, a frocio). No, the only candiates were Bull and Tomas. Neither held a formal title, but that could be changed.
Lloyd spoke in perfect Orimmo. “What of Eduardo? He holds no great loyalty to his father.” Horatius shook his head again. “No,” he whispered, his voice growing again after a quick cough. “We would respect his throne in Lugdim, but it would take an act of God for us to accept one of Alphonse's spawn on Orimmo's throne.” Horatius hoped leaving the chance for an act of God would sate the fool on the northern throne.
“What of Charli?” Arianna said, the boy hiding shyly behind her. Horatius gave a hollow, creaking laugh. “I care not for his bedroom antics, Baroness. He is a boy and though he will take the throne when we succeed, he cannot lead the effort.” The old widow blushed and Charli snickered behind her. Unsuitable. Horatius wondered if Arianna enjoyed the boy's unnatural leanings herself.
Tomas spoke up, his rough dialect and plain clothes betraying his untitled status. “I could do it.” Horatius looked at John Bull first. Bull wasn't as dumb as his namesake, even if he was as strong. He knew he could contest it, demand to replace the Don Juan. But he knew that he was a foreigner, an odd one at that, and that opposing Tomas would lead to Tomas leaving the revolutionary fold. He knew what was best.
John Bull nodded and grumbled. “I could get behind that.” The others finally nodded in agreement.
Tomas would do. He wasn't as youthful or brilliant as Don Juan Callisto had been, but he was brutal and efficient. He was the Iron Duke of the South, the bastard son of an old duke who had threatened power from the hands of the real nobles. Alphonse hated him. He would be a good opposition leader, even if it would take some work for him to get titled.
“Its decided then. Tomas shall become the Leader of the Opposition.” Horatius projected sternness in his crackling voice.
Horatius wondered if he should put out the Tithes for the members of the Free Church once again..... but that was work for the next day. Now, it was time for the Mass. Kozeba disappeared as the steaming cattle was brought into the room.
They shared the sticky gobs of half-cooked beef flesh, chewed on the fat and mulled over other issues. Then they drank the blood-water from the Blessed Horn and Horatius began to lead them in a rollicking phlegmatic prayer.
The Revolution had its Mass.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Kozeba appeared in the darkness, as Horatius was sleeping. “Father of the Free Church, awake.” It was not a prodding whisper, but a command spoken with that aura of magic. Horatius opened his eyes and turned to the Jew.
“Kozeba, you keep odd hours even for a Jew. What is it that you need?” Kozeba wrinkled his nose at the smells of a primitive apothecary, Horatius was smothered in something like currant jelly.
“It is something you need, Father. I know why the Don Juan Callisto betrayed you- and his reasons are more dangerous to your revolution than he could ever be.” Horatius pulled himself up.
“Why?!” His voice was frantic.
“Alphonse has found another source of gold. Whole cities of it, cities upon not-quite-human flesh. And Callisto has been conscripted to march across the desert for it.”
“If...” Horatius started coughing, a hacking, whooping cough. “If Alphonse gains more gold, he will be unstoppable.” said the Jew, finishing the ailing priest's thoughts for him. “But do not worry, father. There is another man, a Northman named John,” Kozeba smiled at that little slip, “who I am watching for my own reasons. But he is also involved with this quest for gold, and I shall try and stop him. Permanently.”
“If your actions help us, Kozeba, we shall not forget it.” Horatius looked down at the fat Jew, who merely gave a cringing smile. “I don't care for that, Horatius. Just get your men to watch the Treasury and the ports and I will inform you when this Captain John is dead.”
“I'll.... I'll have to call out the Tithes and the Commission of Array for this.....” Horatius looked like he was going to get up and start working on it in the middle of the night.
“Sleep, Father.” Another command, with that aura of magic. And then Kozeba was gone, to who knows where.
Mutiny..... Again 1301
The Mekreti named Rape was a troublesome fellow. Perhaps he cared for his countrymen, dying as they were, or perhaps he was just the kind of bastard to use any sort of problem as a way to take control. Either way, he was planning a mutiny. The physico knew it. Jhonen knew it, through one of the simple whisper spells any seaman had to know.
“We'll go aground at the Hellhounds,” was the whisper back.
The Mekreti named Rape was a dim fellow. He did not cry for mutiny as the ships approached the Isles of the Hellhounds. No, he did not cry for mutiny as his countrymen quickly forgot the troubles of rowing. He only cried for it when the physico had one of his countrymen wrestle him to the deck and throw him onto a rowboat.
His co-conspirators looked on in silence. It had been made clear they would have their life and freedom if the man named Rape was killed. In the gamble for such things, men will always bet other's lives first.
The Mekreti named Rape was a weak fellow. He squirmed and cried and begged as his hands were tied to a post on some lonely beach. He squealed as they gagged him, fidgeted as they bound his legs. Screamed into the cloth as Jhonen lightly tapped his back with a thick wooden cane.
Then the light tap wasn't a light tap at all, but a heave with all the force of a Northman. The Mekreti's back gave a sickening crack and his bound legs went limp. The Mekreti would have bitten off his tongue if not for the cloth. Jhonen returned to lightly tapping the Mekreti's back, between the shoulders. And then he heaved again, and the man's arms fell limp the same as the legs.
The Mekreti passed out with a whimper and a tightening of his jaw. “Let's return to the boats”, Jhonen said, staring satisfied at the beaten man, “And deal with the rest of our Mekreti friends.” Jhonen and his men returned to their boats, leaving the man named Rape to die on those desolate sands.
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Not all of the Mekreti wished to be left to their own devices on those Isles. The old, the sick, the city pampered, they begged to be let off the ships. But many others, many more begged to stay. Old nomads with scars marking their old allegiances, boys with senseless eyes that had never seen a home, battle scarred men who knew of nothing but struggle..... they begged to stay.
One of the men, a boy who spoke Ruhmish, likely caught in some city clan-feud, told the physico their reasons. ”We have seen nothing but the struggle. Under the branch of the Deraxti, under the cross of Orimmo, under the unwashed feet of our own neighbors. And many of us have come to like it. To live like old women and die on untended beaches.... this is not our way. We wish to die and do so in killing.” The boy's name was Hajz-naya, Journey, a fitting title.
Jhonen liked him.
The sailors got to work dividing up the Mekreti and preparing to drop many of them on the islands. There appeared on the horizon a dhow with triangular sail and cross emblazoned. They approached quickly, the winds hastening them to Jhonen's ships.
Their faces were like dogs- but those were only masks. Jhonen knew of the true people of these Isles. They asked, in their Portau dialect of Orimmo for the Captain. Jhonen spoke for a bit and agreed to meet their Grand Master on the largest island. The Domini Canes had noticed his presence.
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“Do you wish to live?” was the whisper in the dark. The cloth in Rape's mouth sizzled away with the flavor of smoke and a tang of warmth. “Si,” came his Orimmo response. “Will you offer your life and your soul for my cause?”
“Si,” he said, wondering what torment this was. Then fire entered his veins, burning his limbs, crackling along his spine..... and then he could feel and move as he hadn't done since his punishment.
“Are you one of the tricksters?”, he cried into the darkness. “Yes,” there was a laugh echoing like the void, “but not one you would know of.”
“Brace your mind for this,” and with that, Rape disappeared from the beach with a flash and a mad tingling in his skull.
“We'll go aground at the Hellhounds,” was the whisper back.
The Mekreti named Rape was a dim fellow. He did not cry for mutiny as the ships approached the Isles of the Hellhounds. No, he did not cry for mutiny as his countrymen quickly forgot the troubles of rowing. He only cried for it when the physico had one of his countrymen wrestle him to the deck and throw him onto a rowboat.
His co-conspirators looked on in silence. It had been made clear they would have their life and freedom if the man named Rape was killed. In the gamble for such things, men will always bet other's lives first.
The Mekreti named Rape was a weak fellow. He squirmed and cried and begged as his hands were tied to a post on some lonely beach. He squealed as they gagged him, fidgeted as they bound his legs. Screamed into the cloth as Jhonen lightly tapped his back with a thick wooden cane.
Then the light tap wasn't a light tap at all, but a heave with all the force of a Northman. The Mekreti's back gave a sickening crack and his bound legs went limp. The Mekreti would have bitten off his tongue if not for the cloth. Jhonen returned to lightly tapping the Mekreti's back, between the shoulders. And then he heaved again, and the man's arms fell limp the same as the legs.
The Mekreti passed out with a whimper and a tightening of his jaw. “Let's return to the boats”, Jhonen said, staring satisfied at the beaten man, “And deal with the rest of our Mekreti friends.” Jhonen and his men returned to their boats, leaving the man named Rape to die on those desolate sands.
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Not all of the Mekreti wished to be left to their own devices on those Isles. The old, the sick, the city pampered, they begged to be let off the ships. But many others, many more begged to stay. Old nomads with scars marking their old allegiances, boys with senseless eyes that had never seen a home, battle scarred men who knew of nothing but struggle..... they begged to stay.
One of the men, a boy who spoke Ruhmish, likely caught in some city clan-feud, told the physico their reasons. ”We have seen nothing but the struggle. Under the branch of the Deraxti, under the cross of Orimmo, under the unwashed feet of our own neighbors. And many of us have come to like it. To live like old women and die on untended beaches.... this is not our way. We wish to die and do so in killing.” The boy's name was Hajz-naya, Journey, a fitting title.
Jhonen liked him.
The sailors got to work dividing up the Mekreti and preparing to drop many of them on the islands. There appeared on the horizon a dhow with triangular sail and cross emblazoned. They approached quickly, the winds hastening them to Jhonen's ships.
Their faces were like dogs- but those were only masks. Jhonen knew of the true people of these Isles. They asked, in their Portau dialect of Orimmo for the Captain. Jhonen spoke for a bit and agreed to meet their Grand Master on the largest island. The Domini Canes had noticed his presence.
-------------------------------------------------------
“Do you wish to live?” was the whisper in the dark. The cloth in Rape's mouth sizzled away with the flavor of smoke and a tang of warmth. “Si,” came his Orimmo response. “Will you offer your life and your soul for my cause?”
“Si,” he said, wondering what torment this was. Then fire entered his veins, burning his limbs, crackling along his spine..... and then he could feel and move as he hadn't done since his punishment.
“Are you one of the tricksters?”, he cried into the darkness. “Yes,” there was a laugh echoing like the void, “but not one you would know of.”
“Brace your mind for this,” and with that, Rape disappeared from the beach with a flash and a mad tingling in his skull.
The First Step 1300
The First Step 1300
The agente was a man of silken shadows, an effeminate second son of a second son. He arrived late in the year, for the winds of the Herakleian Sea were already turning. He was a little fool, an incompetent and worse yet, a thief.
Jhonen had been told to kill him by Alphonse. "If he is innocent of worldy corruption," and there the rey smiled, "God may judge him so." And surely enough, when Jhonen killed him, there were all the signs of thievery. The man had far too much money on him, and had a fake signet with which he could affix the rey's seal. But he held a cross and the beads of a rosary as well.
In any case, it was fun to see the squealing man's head pop open like a ripe melon full of sap and pulp.
Jhonen didn't like the thought of leaving Valencia in the cooler winter months. The Stream of the Seventh Labor would push his ships far and away, northward to home. But hopefully, just hopefully, they could find port in the Isle of the Hellhounds or elsewhere and ride out the shift in current there- and so be a step ahead of any other outbound ships.
Going out of the Canal of would be the difficult part. The narrow canal, cut from the lands of Orim and Mekret in times immemorial by gods or men long forgotten, funnelled all the northeasterlies of the Stream and pushed them into the Marezuelan Sea. Going through a canal the length of Orim.... was no mean feat. The sails would be useless.... and all men would have to be on oars.
Jhonen wondered if he could buy a few hundred Badoo to do the work more efficiently than the spoiled sailors and mercenaries who made up his crew. And with less complaint.
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The smooth stone walls of the Augean Canal were covered on one side by flesh-eating lilies. The deadly flowers had been fed by the tree-lords of Mekret to keep pesky Orimmo- or rebellious Badoo- from invading or escaping their lands. And the lilies had worked, for a long time, keeping the Orimmo out until the Infernal Crusade burned away huge swathes of the flowers.
Now, the lilies hung dead, their thick vines brown and salted, the flowers wilted or dry and crumbling. Jhonen watched the cliff face closely, finally seeing the scorched trail in the vines where men had burned a path down to the sea.
Jhonen brought his ship in close, and saw all the evidence of man. Scaffolding, of lily vines and desert woods, came down nearly to the water line. Jhonen brought his personal ship, the Lionhound, as close to the scaffolding as he could.
He tied up the ship, wondering if the flimsy dried materials could hold it against the strong currents heading east. Then, with the physico and the large loyal man (now named Blood by the crew, for he had been the sleeping mate drenched with Raton’s…. overflow) he headed up the scaffold, leaving his flagship nearly loose in the frothing sea.
The village was small but, after finding a Badoo who spoke Orimmo, it turned out to have a burgeoning slave market. The moon rose and fell, and the slaves were shipped in from the merchant-king’s estates. For only a relatively small fee in gold, Jhonen found more slaves than he could even use. They were scarred desert men and petty thieves or peaceful nomads caught in a tribal struggle. Their bodies almost had the appearance of wood, from the muscles tight on their thin frames or the faces slowly weathered by wind-blown sand.
And they would half-kill themselves rowing before Jhonen dumped the survivors on some island or into the jungles far below Mekret and the Sand Sea. Many of them knew it by the looks upon their faces. Looks that reminded one of the Voidtouched. Senseless.
The first step on a journey is always the hardest part. Especially for men whose purpose is to die. Jhonen smiled, for he had no intention of dying.
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The agente was a man of silken shadows, an effeminate second son of a second son. He arrived late in the year, for the winds of the Herakleian Sea were already turning. He was a little fool, an incompetent and worse yet, a thief.
Jhonen had been told to kill him by Alphonse. "If he is innocent of worldy corruption," and there the rey smiled, "God may judge him so." And surely enough, when Jhonen killed him, there were all the signs of thievery. The man had far too much money on him, and had a fake signet with which he could affix the rey's seal. But he held a cross and the beads of a rosary as well.
In any case, it was fun to see the squealing man's head pop open like a ripe melon full of sap and pulp.
Jhonen didn't like the thought of leaving Valencia in the cooler winter months. The Stream of the Seventh Labor would push his ships far and away, northward to home. But hopefully, just hopefully, they could find port in the Isle of the Hellhounds or elsewhere and ride out the shift in current there- and so be a step ahead of any other outbound ships.
Going out of the Canal of would be the difficult part. The narrow canal, cut from the lands of Orim and Mekret in times immemorial by gods or men long forgotten, funnelled all the northeasterlies of the Stream and pushed them into the Marezuelan Sea. Going through a canal the length of Orim.... was no mean feat. The sails would be useless.... and all men would have to be on oars.
Jhonen wondered if he could buy a few hundred Badoo to do the work more efficiently than the spoiled sailors and mercenaries who made up his crew. And with less complaint.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The smooth stone walls of the Augean Canal were covered on one side by flesh-eating lilies. The deadly flowers had been fed by the tree-lords of Mekret to keep pesky Orimmo- or rebellious Badoo- from invading or escaping their lands. And the lilies had worked, for a long time, keeping the Orimmo out until the Infernal Crusade burned away huge swathes of the flowers.
Now, the lilies hung dead, their thick vines brown and salted, the flowers wilted or dry and crumbling. Jhonen watched the cliff face closely, finally seeing the scorched trail in the vines where men had burned a path down to the sea.
Jhonen brought his ship in close, and saw all the evidence of man. Scaffolding, of lily vines and desert woods, came down nearly to the water line. Jhonen brought his personal ship, the Lionhound, as close to the scaffolding as he could.
He tied up the ship, wondering if the flimsy dried materials could hold it against the strong currents heading east. Then, with the physico and the large loyal man (now named Blood by the crew, for he had been the sleeping mate drenched with Raton’s…. overflow) he headed up the scaffold, leaving his flagship nearly loose in the frothing sea.
The village was small but, after finding a Badoo who spoke Orimmo, it turned out to have a burgeoning slave market. The moon rose and fell, and the slaves were shipped in from the merchant-king’s estates. For only a relatively small fee in gold, Jhonen found more slaves than he could even use. They were scarred desert men and petty thieves or peaceful nomads caught in a tribal struggle. Their bodies almost had the appearance of wood, from the muscles tight on their thin frames or the faces slowly weathered by wind-blown sand.
And they would half-kill themselves rowing before Jhonen dumped the survivors on some island or into the jungles far below Mekret and the Sand Sea. Many of them knew it by the looks upon their faces. Looks that reminded one of the Voidtouched. Senseless.
The first step on a journey is always the hardest part. Especially for men whose purpose is to die. Jhonen smiled, for he had no intention of dying.
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Offering 1301
Lmumba had eaten the flesh offered by a man whose son had offered a pound of his own who had tasted the bitter flesh of man and knew their tongues and knew of their darker than the darkest lords and..... Lmumba fainted.
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"I name this land Caroline." The soil screamed as the pole found its way into thick, clay-like soil. "In honor of the Queen-Mother of All Lochaber, in honor of the womb that bore the Blessed Child, the Sun King Hugh Magne."
Black faces stared in silence, hearing the voices of those lost to flames as they still stood in the air as dust. White faces looked out from their inhuman beards, their frightening suits of metal, looked at the black faces and saw.... nothing. Only the leaves of the jungle. One white man seemed to give a shudder as he stared into the forest. Lmumba could taste his flesh upon her tongue.
"It's a bad job."
"Whats 'at?"
"That whole shipment of slaves.... killed."
"If 'ey was resistin'......"
"All of 'em? Ain't no people in the world all fight to the death. And I would know, I've fought 'em all. Deraxti, Ayrabs, Badoo, Wehrwulfen...." He gave a scarred smile, and Lmumba could feel that leathery skin slide down her throat.
"Well, there is that one-"
And with that, Lmumba saw only the glimmering haze of combat, like hot air rising from a stone. She saw the assegai tear through the two men's conversation, watched as stone and bone met screaming stell,and tasted as the warrior who had offered a pound of flesh for one last story to his grandfather took more than a pound of the empty flesh-thoughts of man.
And, suddenly, she knew that one. The One-Who-Grokked-But-Should-Not-Have. And she saw the torment of prophecy. There was no goat skull to explain this horrendous turn of events. Only the labored digestion of human flesh.
"Hold him down!" The man with the leathery skin.
And there He was, the one whose seed-spark Lmumba needed. The Griot, picked clean of all his flesh, lay off to the side. The One was full to the point of retching, blood and bits of flesh accumulated on his mouth. His teeth wore a dark clotted red and Lmumba desired nothing more than to embrace him and take his tongue deep, tasting the invigorating blood of a griot together. She had acquired a taste for the rich and bloody secrets in the minds of griots.
But there was no sign of hope upon the One's face. A look staring off into the Endless Void, like the fo of her village. Like a crazy man.
A hand covered in metal, metal that screamed of little girls in port towns, came against the One's bloodied face. "Physico, you are sure this will work?" The man with the scarred smile was talking to shadow of a man, thin and sickly.
The physico pushed up clear stones upon his face- held with a rim that spoke of death. "Well, milord, it works in stock animals. Gelding a bull produces an altogether calm animal." The One gave only a coughing sputter. He had no energy, and gave a twitch upon the ground. There was a third voice, of the man who had stabbed the earth itself. "There shall be a bonus if it works, physico."
The metal that screamed of little girls left the room with the scarred meal. And then the physico unwrapped cruel, cruel, screaming, crying, wretching instruments with hooks and dried blood and.....
Oh, the torment of prophecy!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We bring an offering to you, She-Who-Bleeds." A young warrior, from a different tribe, laid a tray of raw meat at her feet. "We hope that your gift of fertility will aid our village."
Lmumba looked upon on the youth, and the youth put his tongue before his teeth in embarassment. This tribe was... an odd one, to be sure. Plenty of warriors, but a paucity of women. And as the midwives say, what use is a man when the babe cries to suckle? Lmumba was used to some degree of reverence when visiting another tribe. She was inviolable in her fertility. No tribe could touch her, under code of honor. But this tribe was pandering, reverent. They had fought for women, to no avail, and now found many willing to join them.
She had heard them all talk of the loss of their women. The younger children said women had just left one day, walking off into the sunset. The older men said demons from the north took them, to be used as carnal toys after they lost the griot's forebearance. And apparently, in the northern villages, that was not an all too uncommon occurrence. The young warriors said they didn't know what to think.
The griot himself was elderly and sickly. He was already losing control, as evidenced by the many fo of his village.
A child with glowing eyes danced naked around the lmumba tree, endlessly. She was a Not, a child stuck as a child but not a child, a vessel filled with the void. They were common, especially in the wake of white men and in the north, of demons. And old codes required tribes to adopt them, for good fortune. A silver tray of fruits was brought to the child who danced in ecstasy, and the little savage eagerly gobbled it up, nectars and juices dribbling down her chin before she gave a cackling laugh and returned to her dance.
Their griot had not found a suitable boy to pass his seed-spark on to. Lmumba had heard of this in her feast towards the white men, and had a novel idea. She came to this village and offered herself to take the seed-spark, to share all the experiences of their lives and those they had eaten, to act as a marriage until he passed on. And of course, some were offended. The griot's code of abstinence was well-maintained. But soon the older men of the village gave way, desiring the many young unwed Lmumba had brought to her.
She had only to wait for the griot himself to take the offer. It would not be long, for the thirst in his eyes was stronger than a fo wandering from the Great Sand Sea. His spark had never seen release, and he was growing old.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"I name this land Caroline." The soil screamed as the pole found its way into thick, clay-like soil. "In honor of the Queen-Mother of All Lochaber, in honor of the womb that bore the Blessed Child, the Sun King Hugh Magne."
Black faces stared in silence, hearing the voices of those lost to flames as they still stood in the air as dust. White faces looked out from their inhuman beards, their frightening suits of metal, looked at the black faces and saw.... nothing. Only the leaves of the jungle. One white man seemed to give a shudder as he stared into the forest. Lmumba could taste his flesh upon her tongue.
"It's a bad job."
"Whats 'at?"
"That whole shipment of slaves.... killed."
"If 'ey was resistin'......"
"All of 'em? Ain't no people in the world all fight to the death. And I would know, I've fought 'em all. Deraxti, Ayrabs, Badoo, Wehrwulfen...." He gave a scarred smile, and Lmumba could feel that leathery skin slide down her throat.
"Well, there is that one-"
And with that, Lmumba saw only the glimmering haze of combat, like hot air rising from a stone. She saw the assegai tear through the two men's conversation, watched as stone and bone met screaming stell,and tasted as the warrior who had offered a pound of flesh for one last story to his grandfather took more than a pound of the empty flesh-thoughts of man.
And, suddenly, she knew that one. The One-Who-Grokked-But-Should-Not-Have. And she saw the torment of prophecy. There was no goat skull to explain this horrendous turn of events. Only the labored digestion of human flesh.
"Hold him down!" The man with the leathery skin.
And there He was, the one whose seed-spark Lmumba needed. The Griot, picked clean of all his flesh, lay off to the side. The One was full to the point of retching, blood and bits of flesh accumulated on his mouth. His teeth wore a dark clotted red and Lmumba desired nothing more than to embrace him and take his tongue deep, tasting the invigorating blood of a griot together. She had acquired a taste for the rich and bloody secrets in the minds of griots.
But there was no sign of hope upon the One's face. A look staring off into the Endless Void, like the fo of her village. Like a crazy man.
A hand covered in metal, metal that screamed of little girls in port towns, came against the One's bloodied face. "Physico, you are sure this will work?" The man with the scarred smile was talking to shadow of a man, thin and sickly.
The physico pushed up clear stones upon his face- held with a rim that spoke of death. "Well, milord, it works in stock animals. Gelding a bull produces an altogether calm animal." The One gave only a coughing sputter. He had no energy, and gave a twitch upon the ground. There was a third voice, of the man who had stabbed the earth itself. "There shall be a bonus if it works, physico."
The metal that screamed of little girls left the room with the scarred meal. And then the physico unwrapped cruel, cruel, screaming, crying, wretching instruments with hooks and dried blood and.....
Oh, the torment of prophecy!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We bring an offering to you, She-Who-Bleeds." A young warrior, from a different tribe, laid a tray of raw meat at her feet. "We hope that your gift of fertility will aid our village."
Lmumba looked upon on the youth, and the youth put his tongue before his teeth in embarassment. This tribe was... an odd one, to be sure. Plenty of warriors, but a paucity of women. And as the midwives say, what use is a man when the babe cries to suckle? Lmumba was used to some degree of reverence when visiting another tribe. She was inviolable in her fertility. No tribe could touch her, under code of honor. But this tribe was pandering, reverent. They had fought for women, to no avail, and now found many willing to join them.
She had heard them all talk of the loss of their women. The younger children said women had just left one day, walking off into the sunset. The older men said demons from the north took them, to be used as carnal toys after they lost the griot's forebearance. And apparently, in the northern villages, that was not an all too uncommon occurrence. The young warriors said they didn't know what to think.
The griot himself was elderly and sickly. He was already losing control, as evidenced by the many fo of his village.
A child with glowing eyes danced naked around the lmumba tree, endlessly. She was a Not, a child stuck as a child but not a child, a vessel filled with the void. They were common, especially in the wake of white men and in the north, of demons. And old codes required tribes to adopt them, for good fortune. A silver tray of fruits was brought to the child who danced in ecstasy, and the little savage eagerly gobbled it up, nectars and juices dribbling down her chin before she gave a cackling laugh and returned to her dance.
Their griot had not found a suitable boy to pass his seed-spark on to. Lmumba had heard of this in her feast towards the white men, and had a novel idea. She came to this village and offered herself to take the seed-spark, to share all the experiences of their lives and those they had eaten, to act as a marriage until he passed on. And of course, some were offended. The griot's code of abstinence was well-maintained. But soon the older men of the village gave way, desiring the many young unwed Lmumba had brought to her.
She had only to wait for the griot himself to take the offer. It would not be long, for the thirst in his eyes was stronger than a fo wandering from the Great Sand Sea. His spark had never seen release, and he was growing old.
Damn Jews.... Again 1301
Fiend's fire crackled on Ignatius' fingers, a damning spell. But then, he was a priest who could afford some small damnation, which was no mean feat for Orimmo clergymen. This was a dark meeting in the redlain, where Lugdim's butchers drained their waste slowly into the Thymenes. The pungent sour-sweet smell of death turned up Ignatius' nostrils.
The Jews, the worst of the worst in Lugdim, criminals even when surfaced, were the only men Ignatius could take his grievances to. King Eduardo, the little whore's son, had decided not to return Ignatius to Orim. Or let him out of Whitehall, at that.
The Phalange had followed him in the streets as Proctors had circled the inner rings. He had reduced one bully boy to little more than shreds not fit to a redlain, all with a relatively mundane prayer, and the Phalange had given up. And when a tongueless Proctor had cornered him, silent grating moans coming from underneath the white cowl, Ignatius had merely fought back with monastic focus, eventually wrestling the pastoral staff from the spectre of a churchmen and jamming the blunt object into his fragile throat.
But Ignatius was more fearful now, as two dirty Jews stood before him. He had heard much of Jewish magic, and from what he knew, no Jewish male was without the gifts of their God. So, he kept the fiend's fire close.
One of the Jews, a dirtier one with the crazed eyes of a messiah and a beard to match, gave out a cackle, arching his hunched back as far as he could. "'Is Laird's man wants salv-ae-shun from 'e Laird's fair-saken, yesss?"
Something solid and slimy slivered its way past Ignatius' boots. He didn't bother to look; he couldn't bring his eyes from the two Jews. The relatively less dirty Jew, one with a well trimmed squared off beard and cold merchant eyes, stared at Ignatius just the same.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways. He always finds a path for the faithful.”
The merchant of a Jew smiled at that. Any customer assured of their own good fortune was an easy mark. The messiah of a Jew gave a crooked frown, his teeth getting in the way of his lips. After a moment of whispering between the two, with a mad cackle and a mercantile grin here and there, the merchant spoke.
“What can we do for you, Pilgrim?” The voice said much more than that. What can you do for us, Pilgrim?
Ignatius studied the mad Jew for a moment. What had he said in those whispers? The merchant’s place was obvious; crime was a business as any other. But few criminals could afford zealotry. He was unnerved.
“I need passage to Lugdim. Without Proctor or Phalange watching.”
The messiah gave a high pitched shriek of laughter. “We’ll poke ‘eir eyes out!” The merchant held his hand out, close to his friend’s mouth. “And what payment, Father?” The glint of money showed in his smile. Straighter teeth than the messiah.
“I…. have five and twenty bobbers.” The Merchant showed some disappointment in internal calculations. “Gold, not iron.” A moment of recognition and all was fine. “The Holy Number when we set off, the Serf’s when we land. And I can offer you sanctuary of the Father Church when we set foot in Gascon.”
Both Jews gave out a laugh at that. “Here, we can see the sky, Father. Why would we take the mines of Gascon? Why go out veiled, hmm?” The messiah gave his arching, cackling laugh. Some butcher shop let rotten offal slide ungraciously into the lain.
Ignatius was surprised. Most Jews, in Orim at least, would jump at the Church’s protection. “Yet, here you are criminals.” This time the merchant laughed. “Better than being in a Jew-hole. We, Orimmo, are only criminals because, by definition, the King cannot control us.”
The messiah gave out his laugh again. “Get back in your hole, you Jew! A Jew-toll for you!”
“Jews can only be butchers or blacksmiths. And only so many butchers and blacksmiths can be Jews. But any amount of Jews can be criminals.” He gave a smile, and brought his thumb to his nose. “Damn King Eduardo.”
“My offer of sanctuary still stands.” The merchant looked the priest over, wondering if he could aim higher than the twenty-five bobbers. He decided he could.
“And your rosary beads, Father.” Ignatius let his guard down for a moment, the fiend’s fire fizzling. What use would a Jew have for the beads, born of Lochaber amber and Orimmo blessings? But, he had no choice. If not for the trinket, and some Jews loved trinkets, he would have to pay many more bobbers.
And priests free of sin don’t make much.
The top half of a still bleating calf fell into the redlain, and a butcher's cries to his apprentice ran through the steep, bloodied alley.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bagdemagus was the worst sort of Jew. He was a long-lived Jew. And sure, it had brought him some fortune, in Alphonse’s service and earlier that of Faustus but his longevity was born and acted upon in damnation.
No one seemed to know quite how old he was. Even Bagdemagus himself sometimes forgot. But he remembered watching the Lion eat the Christ’s flesh, and he remembered the Nebuchad Captivity and the Nilotic Exodus and well, all those great events in the far off past.
He even remembered his moment of exile, although he could not give it a year. He had stood up before the Sanhedrin and declared that God was not Seven into Two and Twenty, but that God was Three wholes, One part in ten, Four parts in one hundred and One in a thousand and so on, before he was forsaken and thrown out, to forever wander.
It was the worst of crimes to deny the nature of the God Outside of Lines, the God who led Moise in his forty year Sacred Circle. And that denial had severed him from the bonds of life and death that any other Jew enjoyed.
It was not a longevity he could pass on. But Alphonse did not know this. Nor did Faust before him. Bagdemagus had discovered many things in his time, but nothing close to eternal life. He could drag Alphonse’s life on as long as possible, however. His travels to far-off Serica had yielded many delights….. and horrors.
The Serican formula of virgin’s blood and quicksilver would let Alphonse live on. But he would end a mindless spectre with an appetite one small virgin could never hope to quench and remain alive. How long it was until that moment….. well, Bagdemagus was studying just that. It was a relatively new formula to him.
Bagdemagus was a Jew deserving damnation.
The Jews, the worst of the worst in Lugdim, criminals even when surfaced, were the only men Ignatius could take his grievances to. King Eduardo, the little whore's son, had decided not to return Ignatius to Orim. Or let him out of Whitehall, at that.
The Phalange had followed him in the streets as Proctors had circled the inner rings. He had reduced one bully boy to little more than shreds not fit to a redlain, all with a relatively mundane prayer, and the Phalange had given up. And when a tongueless Proctor had cornered him, silent grating moans coming from underneath the white cowl, Ignatius had merely fought back with monastic focus, eventually wrestling the pastoral staff from the spectre of a churchmen and jamming the blunt object into his fragile throat.
But Ignatius was more fearful now, as two dirty Jews stood before him. He had heard much of Jewish magic, and from what he knew, no Jewish male was without the gifts of their God. So, he kept the fiend's fire close.
One of the Jews, a dirtier one with the crazed eyes of a messiah and a beard to match, gave out a cackle, arching his hunched back as far as he could. "'Is Laird's man wants salv-ae-shun from 'e Laird's fair-saken, yesss?"
Something solid and slimy slivered its way past Ignatius' boots. He didn't bother to look; he couldn't bring his eyes from the two Jews. The relatively less dirty Jew, one with a well trimmed squared off beard and cold merchant eyes, stared at Ignatius just the same.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways. He always finds a path for the faithful.”
The merchant of a Jew smiled at that. Any customer assured of their own good fortune was an easy mark. The messiah of a Jew gave a crooked frown, his teeth getting in the way of his lips. After a moment of whispering between the two, with a mad cackle and a mercantile grin here and there, the merchant spoke.
“What can we do for you, Pilgrim?” The voice said much more than that. What can you do for us, Pilgrim?
Ignatius studied the mad Jew for a moment. What had he said in those whispers? The merchant’s place was obvious; crime was a business as any other. But few criminals could afford zealotry. He was unnerved.
“I need passage to Lugdim. Without Proctor or Phalange watching.”
The messiah gave a high pitched shriek of laughter. “We’ll poke ‘eir eyes out!” The merchant held his hand out, close to his friend’s mouth. “And what payment, Father?” The glint of money showed in his smile. Straighter teeth than the messiah.
“I…. have five and twenty bobbers.” The Merchant showed some disappointment in internal calculations. “Gold, not iron.” A moment of recognition and all was fine. “The Holy Number when we set off, the Serf’s when we land. And I can offer you sanctuary of the Father Church when we set foot in Gascon.”
Both Jews gave out a laugh at that. “Here, we can see the sky, Father. Why would we take the mines of Gascon? Why go out veiled, hmm?” The messiah gave his arching, cackling laugh. Some butcher shop let rotten offal slide ungraciously into the lain.
Ignatius was surprised. Most Jews, in Orim at least, would jump at the Church’s protection. “Yet, here you are criminals.” This time the merchant laughed. “Better than being in a Jew-hole. We, Orimmo, are only criminals because, by definition, the King cannot control us.”
The messiah gave out his laugh again. “Get back in your hole, you Jew! A Jew-toll for you!”
“Jews can only be butchers or blacksmiths. And only so many butchers and blacksmiths can be Jews. But any amount of Jews can be criminals.” He gave a smile, and brought his thumb to his nose. “Damn King Eduardo.”
“My offer of sanctuary still stands.” The merchant looked the priest over, wondering if he could aim higher than the twenty-five bobbers. He decided he could.
“And your rosary beads, Father.” Ignatius let his guard down for a moment, the fiend’s fire fizzling. What use would a Jew have for the beads, born of Lochaber amber and Orimmo blessings? But, he had no choice. If not for the trinket, and some Jews loved trinkets, he would have to pay many more bobbers.
And priests free of sin don’t make much.
The top half of a still bleating calf fell into the redlain, and a butcher's cries to his apprentice ran through the steep, bloodied alley.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bagdemagus was the worst sort of Jew. He was a long-lived Jew. And sure, it had brought him some fortune, in Alphonse’s service and earlier that of Faustus but his longevity was born and acted upon in damnation.
No one seemed to know quite how old he was. Even Bagdemagus himself sometimes forgot. But he remembered watching the Lion eat the Christ’s flesh, and he remembered the Nebuchad Captivity and the Nilotic Exodus and well, all those great events in the far off past.
He even remembered his moment of exile, although he could not give it a year. He had stood up before the Sanhedrin and declared that God was not Seven into Two and Twenty, but that God was Three wholes, One part in ten, Four parts in one hundred and One in a thousand and so on, before he was forsaken and thrown out, to forever wander.
It was the worst of crimes to deny the nature of the God Outside of Lines, the God who led Moise in his forty year Sacred Circle. And that denial had severed him from the bonds of life and death that any other Jew enjoyed.
It was not a longevity he could pass on. But Alphonse did not know this. Nor did Faust before him. Bagdemagus had discovered many things in his time, but nothing close to eternal life. He could drag Alphonse’s life on as long as possible, however. His travels to far-off Serica had yielded many delights….. and horrors.
The Serican formula of virgin’s blood and quicksilver would let Alphonse live on. But he would end a mindless spectre with an appetite one small virgin could never hope to quench and remain alive. How long it was until that moment….. well, Bagdemagus was studying just that. It was a relatively new formula to him.
Bagdemagus was a Jew deserving damnation.
For Thine Is The Kingdom 1300
"Forgive me, father, for I have sinned." An altar with a man lain like a sacrifice dominated the room, a younger and healthier man bowed before it.
"From whence have you come, my Son?" The voice creaked with the miasma of plague. His skin, yellowed and blotted against marble-white silks, showed the progression of his curse.
"I have come from the court of our enemy, Father. From parlee with the False Christ." The young man's handsome face cringed in expectation.
The sacrifice of a man pulled his flesh-overladen body up with much effort and turned a balding head to the younger man. "This is not a sin in itself, Callisto. I stood before him for many years, as Patriarch. What in his presence has been wrought?" The altar spoke with suspicion.
"I... I... have renounced the King's Opposition...." Callisto shifted back from the altar, raising one knee to stand. "With my hand upon the True Cross."
Blood-shot eyes gave a look that spoke of fiend's fire. "And what did he give you, Caudillo?" The insult of vulgarity was not lost on Callisto. "Wine? Land? Or was it women?! That was always your weakness, Caudillo."
"He gave me nothing, Holy Father. It was what he took...."
"I do not care about your price, you cur's son! A handful of silver or the whole of Gascon.... a hanging for you nonetheless!" Blood rushed to the sacrifice's face, his pallid features going scarlet and veins went purple.
"He took my daughter, Horatius..." The voice was soft and moved away from the altar with its master.
"I do not care for that whore's afterbirth!" The sacrifice flung itself from the altar, landing on a lame, gout-ridden leg and a long burnt-away stump. "I gave my all for the Old Way of Christ! I gave my wealth, my name, my damnable leg! I have this... ague because of his stunted Jew! Do you care nothing for the Old Believers, for the King's Opposition, for ME?!"
"Not above my own flesh, Horatius." Callisto spoke barely above a whisper.
"There are many more gutter-rats just like this girl, born of that same overused piece of flesh. Why do you care?!"
"She is born of Melinda, Father. She was..."
"She was nothing to you. And don't you dare take that tongue into mischief!" Callisto pursed his lips. "I gave you a virgin as great as Maria and you squandered her."
"I was a fool. Had the Lord not taken her...." Horatius stumbled and held himself up with one arm upon the altar. "....the Scarlet Pox you gave her would have. Leave, Callisto. I would kill you here, if not for my curse and if not for the frocios following your podex."
Callisto turned away and Horatius tried to pull himself back onto the altar. "My apologies, Father."
"There is no forgiveness in revolution." Horatius fell from the side of the altar, and Callisto walked on.
-----------------------------------------------
"Eduardo is as useless to me as a eunuch is to a woman."
"Rey, he is your son, and he needs more men..." The adviser was whining, nasal and ugly- inbred and oh so Orimmo.
"Pah! He is a fool. Let him take his herd of thugs out into the countryside. No more levies, no more gold, no more Wehrwulfen. Tell him he is on his own. Keep my men at the mines, and on the road to Lugdim, and let him figure out the rest of that wilderness."
"And what if he can't, milord?" The man was obviously wed to this effort. Eduardo could at least bribe people, not that it took much skill.
"Someone will kill him, and I'll be able to make someone competent or at the least, controllable, ruler of that Northern shithole. How is that old Queen, Matilda?"
"She would never bow to you, Rey. No one good in Lugdim would. She lives out in a hut by Oldhedge and Eduardo wants to break up the secret masses there. But he can't if you don't give him men...."
"I will give him nothing. I already gave him life and a Kingdom of his own. What more can he really ask of me? If he is so strained, maybe he can arm women? I remember horrible things about Lugdimer women, and have the scars to prove it." Alphonse grinned, and the adviser squirmed. He had tried Lugdimer women, and probably had his own regrets. Not the most fair of folk, and certainly not the most clean or attractive or gentle. "Or maybe he can act like an old Nilotic, and build an army of Jews? I know Jews wander unveiled near the Thymenes. Ha!"
"It is not funny, Rey. All of Lugdim will fall if he can not own the countryside."
"Then send him my suggestions and the best of my regards. I really don't care for the north anymore."
---------------------------------------------
The Darkest of the Darkest.... Lmumba had brought her tribe far, digesting many tribes to flee from the pale-faces. And they were still digesting tribes.
But to stand before the place where trees bled and the soil screamed and griots larger than tusk-beasts ate a warrior daily and more feet marched than she could count..... that was true terror.
Lmumba fasted for days, hoping some vision would give her some sign of where to go, where to find the seed of the One Who Should Not Have. And she saw nothing. Nothing but horrible visions of the land where trees bled and gold split the ground with stomach curdling screams.
The pale-faces were not so frightening, and their bitter flesh did hold some knowledge, if stale and unfilling. She would taste their flesh, where the Darkest of the Darkest would drown her in there flesh.
Her tribe would march back to meet the Pale Tribes from the Sea. She already knew, from the leathery flesh of a hunter who had graciously eaten an elder who had sampled a pale-face as a gift from his son, that there were more than before.
"From whence have you come, my Son?" The voice creaked with the miasma of plague. His skin, yellowed and blotted against marble-white silks, showed the progression of his curse.
"I have come from the court of our enemy, Father. From parlee with the False Christ." The young man's handsome face cringed in expectation.
The sacrifice of a man pulled his flesh-overladen body up with much effort and turned a balding head to the younger man. "This is not a sin in itself, Callisto. I stood before him for many years, as Patriarch. What in his presence has been wrought?" The altar spoke with suspicion.
"I... I... have renounced the King's Opposition...." Callisto shifted back from the altar, raising one knee to stand. "With my hand upon the True Cross."
Blood-shot eyes gave a look that spoke of fiend's fire. "And what did he give you, Caudillo?" The insult of vulgarity was not lost on Callisto. "Wine? Land? Or was it women?! That was always your weakness, Caudillo."
"He gave me nothing, Holy Father. It was what he took...."
"I do not care about your price, you cur's son! A handful of silver or the whole of Gascon.... a hanging for you nonetheless!" Blood rushed to the sacrifice's face, his pallid features going scarlet and veins went purple.
"He took my daughter, Horatius..." The voice was soft and moved away from the altar with its master.
"I do not care for that whore's afterbirth!" The sacrifice flung itself from the altar, landing on a lame, gout-ridden leg and a long burnt-away stump. "I gave my all for the Old Way of Christ! I gave my wealth, my name, my damnable leg! I have this... ague because of his stunted Jew! Do you care nothing for the Old Believers, for the King's Opposition, for ME?!"
"Not above my own flesh, Horatius." Callisto spoke barely above a whisper.
"There are many more gutter-rats just like this girl, born of that same overused piece of flesh. Why do you care?!"
"She is born of Melinda, Father. She was..."
"She was nothing to you. And don't you dare take that tongue into mischief!" Callisto pursed his lips. "I gave you a virgin as great as Maria and you squandered her."
"I was a fool. Had the Lord not taken her...." Horatius stumbled and held himself up with one arm upon the altar. "....the Scarlet Pox you gave her would have. Leave, Callisto. I would kill you here, if not for my curse and if not for the frocios following your podex."
Callisto turned away and Horatius tried to pull himself back onto the altar. "My apologies, Father."
"There is no forgiveness in revolution." Horatius fell from the side of the altar, and Callisto walked on.
-----------------------------------------------
"Eduardo is as useless to me as a eunuch is to a woman."
"Rey, he is your son, and he needs more men..." The adviser was whining, nasal and ugly- inbred and oh so Orimmo.
"Pah! He is a fool. Let him take his herd of thugs out into the countryside. No more levies, no more gold, no more Wehrwulfen. Tell him he is on his own. Keep my men at the mines, and on the road to Lugdim, and let him figure out the rest of that wilderness."
"And what if he can't, milord?" The man was obviously wed to this effort. Eduardo could at least bribe people, not that it took much skill.
"Someone will kill him, and I'll be able to make someone competent or at the least, controllable, ruler of that Northern shithole. How is that old Queen, Matilda?"
"She would never bow to you, Rey. No one good in Lugdim would. She lives out in a hut by Oldhedge and Eduardo wants to break up the secret masses there. But he can't if you don't give him men...."
"I will give him nothing. I already gave him life and a Kingdom of his own. What more can he really ask of me? If he is so strained, maybe he can arm women? I remember horrible things about Lugdimer women, and have the scars to prove it." Alphonse grinned, and the adviser squirmed. He had tried Lugdimer women, and probably had his own regrets. Not the most fair of folk, and certainly not the most clean or attractive or gentle. "Or maybe he can act like an old Nilotic, and build an army of Jews? I know Jews wander unveiled near the Thymenes. Ha!"
"It is not funny, Rey. All of Lugdim will fall if he can not own the countryside."
"Then send him my suggestions and the best of my regards. I really don't care for the north anymore."
---------------------------------------------
The Darkest of the Darkest.... Lmumba had brought her tribe far, digesting many tribes to flee from the pale-faces. And they were still digesting tribes.
But to stand before the place where trees bled and the soil screamed and griots larger than tusk-beasts ate a warrior daily and more feet marched than she could count..... that was true terror.
Lmumba fasted for days, hoping some vision would give her some sign of where to go, where to find the seed of the One Who Should Not Have. And she saw nothing. Nothing but horrible visions of the land where trees bled and gold split the ground with stomach curdling screams.
The pale-faces were not so frightening, and their bitter flesh did hold some knowledge, if stale and unfilling. She would taste their flesh, where the Darkest of the Darkest would drown her in there flesh.
Her tribe would march back to meet the Pale Tribes from the Sea. She already knew, from the leathery flesh of a hunter who had graciously eaten an elder who had sampled a pale-face as a gift from his son, that there were more than before.
Alms for the Dead 1300
Ignatius ambled between the gravestones of Lugdim, the city from which the kingdom took its name. Not many in this graveyard were Horned Ones, their gravestones including praise for the great river spirit Thymenes or the benevolent sea spirit Orka or the Oak-Lord Nemeton. Ignatius wondered idly whether their descendants paid for their ancestor’s baptism, or if they cared about those in the fiend’s fire. He guessed that, like many, they simply did not care.
But no matter. He was here to enjoy the Lugdim Outremer not worry about men’s eternal souls. Lugdim was a ringstaad, built in concentric circles around a center in the deepest widest part of the Thymenes. The inner rings of the city were cold, dead and gray, occupied with achingly empty cathedrals, abandoned manors and the twisting halls of government. There, Church Proctors controlled the city according to their useless Northern ideasl, all while the Phalange, street-thugs and foppish second-sons in King Eduardo’s employ, defied those very ideals.
The outer rings, while certainly cold and gray, were intensely alive. Ancient codes had restricted graveyards to these outer rings, while Church proctors forced ungodly activities to the Outremer. Whorehouses, taverns and even theatres! And without the Phalange or Proctors to roam the streets, vulgar men of vulgar trades took to hiring all the scum cities tend to draw in. Gaudily dressed yeomen, pining for some golden age with their rusted knives, stood on every street, glaring angrily at all passerby, daring not to touch. Interfering with business would be, well, bad business.
They gave Ignatius some room. He didn’t wear a Proctor’s garb, but wore his country parish’s ritual vestments. As most were country-boys brought in as city-men, they gave any country preacher some degree of respect.
As Ignatius came near a theatre, his desired ungodly vice, he sighted a large man in colorful garb, waving his hands as if plying a trade and yelling just the same. But when Ignatius gave some attention to his words, he noticed the unmistakable air of godliness in the words.
“…your coin hits the bowl, the soul leaves its damnation. Can you, yes you…” A sausage fattened finger pointed at some docksmen in the crowd. “… hear your kinsmen crying out ‘Save us from this with but a bobber!’ Can you not hear the fiend’s whips upon their flesh, the fire sizzling their fat with the pop! of a morning wassail? Give your alms for the Dead! Free them from everlasting damnation and….”
A man who smelled of an abattoir spoke above and with the murmur of the crowd. “Ol’ Tetzel, always th’ spectacle!” He smiled a toothless smile to Ignatius who stood horrified and dropped a bobber into Tetzel’s open bowl. The iron coin’s ringing supposedly signaled the salvation of one long passed.
What common and scandalous preaching, fumed Ignatius. What manner of man was this Tetzel, this plier of men’s souls! Would these coins go to some patron’s pocket or to the Father Church? Ignatius was disgusted and… then he let it pass. He wouldn’t need to care about this God-forsaken land much longer.
He continued into the theater; Tetzel’s crowd falling apart behind Ignatius, their near-pagan trickster having left them. This was the one thing he could appreciate about Lugdim. Nowhere in the world were there better playwrights, unfettered as they were by the illegality of their trade. Ignatius thought that in far-off Serica, where prostitutes were servants of the state, the trade must have fallen behind in craftsmanship to the West, for the same had happened with the Southern playwrights to the Northern. Who in the South could compare to Marlouis, the half-Lochaber bastard, or to Hastivibrax, the rising star of criminal playwrights who adopted even a false name for all of his performances? Perhaps the Don Juan Callisto and that was due to his criminality. In the South, plays were written for the state. Here, they were written in spite of the state.
The theater was showing one of Hastivibrax’s works, though it was not his theatre or company. One exchange in the inflammatory piece caught Ignatius’s ears and emboldened him:
“Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Vercetorix, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are under them.”
Ignatius left the performance satisfied with the word play, inspired by the hatred of Eduardo and the love for Mother Lugdim. And the next day, he would beg at that King’s feet to leave this damned land. Hastivibrax would have wept at such a man enjoying his play.
But no matter. He was here to enjoy the Lugdim Outremer not worry about men’s eternal souls. Lugdim was a ringstaad, built in concentric circles around a center in the deepest widest part of the Thymenes. The inner rings of the city were cold, dead and gray, occupied with achingly empty cathedrals, abandoned manors and the twisting halls of government. There, Church Proctors controlled the city according to their useless Northern ideasl, all while the Phalange, street-thugs and foppish second-sons in King Eduardo’s employ, defied those very ideals.
The outer rings, while certainly cold and gray, were intensely alive. Ancient codes had restricted graveyards to these outer rings, while Church proctors forced ungodly activities to the Outremer. Whorehouses, taverns and even theatres! And without the Phalange or Proctors to roam the streets, vulgar men of vulgar trades took to hiring all the scum cities tend to draw in. Gaudily dressed yeomen, pining for some golden age with their rusted knives, stood on every street, glaring angrily at all passerby, daring not to touch. Interfering with business would be, well, bad business.
They gave Ignatius some room. He didn’t wear a Proctor’s garb, but wore his country parish’s ritual vestments. As most were country-boys brought in as city-men, they gave any country preacher some degree of respect.
As Ignatius came near a theatre, his desired ungodly vice, he sighted a large man in colorful garb, waving his hands as if plying a trade and yelling just the same. But when Ignatius gave some attention to his words, he noticed the unmistakable air of godliness in the words.
“…your coin hits the bowl, the soul leaves its damnation. Can you, yes you…” A sausage fattened finger pointed at some docksmen in the crowd. “… hear your kinsmen crying out ‘Save us from this with but a bobber!’ Can you not hear the fiend’s whips upon their flesh, the fire sizzling their fat with the pop! of a morning wassail? Give your alms for the Dead! Free them from everlasting damnation and….”
A man who smelled of an abattoir spoke above and with the murmur of the crowd. “Ol’ Tetzel, always th’ spectacle!” He smiled a toothless smile to Ignatius who stood horrified and dropped a bobber into Tetzel’s open bowl. The iron coin’s ringing supposedly signaled the salvation of one long passed.
What common and scandalous preaching, fumed Ignatius. What manner of man was this Tetzel, this plier of men’s souls! Would these coins go to some patron’s pocket or to the Father Church? Ignatius was disgusted and… then he let it pass. He wouldn’t need to care about this God-forsaken land much longer.
He continued into the theater; Tetzel’s crowd falling apart behind Ignatius, their near-pagan trickster having left them. This was the one thing he could appreciate about Lugdim. Nowhere in the world were there better playwrights, unfettered as they were by the illegality of their trade. Ignatius thought that in far-off Serica, where prostitutes were servants of the state, the trade must have fallen behind in craftsmanship to the West, for the same had happened with the Southern playwrights to the Northern. Who in the South could compare to Marlouis, the half-Lochaber bastard, or to Hastivibrax, the rising star of criminal playwrights who adopted even a false name for all of his performances? Perhaps the Don Juan Callisto and that was due to his criminality. In the South, plays were written for the state. Here, they were written in spite of the state.
The theater was showing one of Hastivibrax’s works, though it was not his theatre or company. One exchange in the inflammatory piece caught Ignatius’s ears and emboldened him:
“Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Vercetorix, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are under them.”
Ignatius left the performance satisfied with the word play, inspired by the hatred of Eduardo and the love for Mother Lugdim. And the next day, he would beg at that King’s feet to leave this damned land. Hastivibrax would have wept at such a man enjoying his play.
With Blood, Overflow 1299
It was not well-known that the Vicar of Christ, Alphonse XV, kept a Jew in the Palazzio de Cabra. It was one of the few secrets of the grand castle of Orim that was actually a secret.
The Jew was Bagdemagus, a Jew known only by Jews. He was a heretic, a scoundrel, a dangerous dabbler in the darkest of arts. And for all of these qualities, he found shelter in the Palace of the Horned Lord.
He was housed in a cellar on the farthest side of the Palace. It was beyond the King's Quarter's, so any servant there would have business only on Alphonse's whim. Alphonse knew some still came; his Hillmen servants fancied a staircase not far off from the Jew's quarters for... rather immoral acts. But none so far had found the Jew wizard.
"I bring the virgin's blood.", the voice rang out in darkness.
Silence, more darkness and then, a spark and a snap of fingers. The entire cellar went alight as torches around the room went ablaze.
The Jew Bagdemagus sat hunched over his table, intent on some article of study. Alphonse, his King and Liege of the Dark, approached, wearing the woad robes he found comfort in.
"Did you mix it with holy water as I said?" The Dwarf, even in his high chair, was dwarfed by elderly Alphonse. He reached out a hand for the vial of virgin blood.
"Yes, its still warm. Good." The Dwarf turned the vial from side to side, watching the crimson liquid move. "Viscosity seems right. Tisn't clotting. Now, for the final test on the matter, be it a virgin's or a whore's?"
"Of course it is a virgin's.", Alphonse said with an indignant. The ugly Jew smiled. "You will excuse me if I do not let your opinions muddle my science, Rey. Besides, from what I hear, you know more of the whore." Smiling, he produced a clear glass lens, the type used in Deraxti far-seers from one of his pockets. He brought the lens to his eye and the small bottle of blood to the lens. His face contorted in perverse satisfaction.
"I hate to say this, Rey, but you have a dud virgin on your hands."
"Impossible.", Alphonse said with shaky resolve.
"Okay, fine. Someone else has a dud virgin on their hands.... or other appendages. I assume you would remember taking this virgin, Rey."
Alphonse closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. His face was going pale. "Are you sure about this, Jew?"
"More sure than you were." Bagdemagus had an offensive, nasal voice that made everything seem insulting. The fact that everything was insulting seemed to matter little.
Alphonse turned around sharply to exit the cellar. "Where are you off to, Rey?", Bagdemagus asked without looking up from whatever his work was.
"To kill my daughter and find a new virgin." Alphonse hurried up the staircase.
"Do virgins come used?", was the taunting reply after the onset of darkness. Alphonse heard it going up the staircase.
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"The bowl.... it overflowed while you were in Orim, Capitan." The physico was a man who looked always on the edge of jaundice, a man who spoke with an odd confluence of the sailor looseness and the Universario precision.
"Who ratted?" Jhonen leaned on his cane menacingly, as if to strike the one who broke the blood bond. That would be beating a dead horse or, in this case, a rat.
"Raton, funnily enough. I stepped into the cabin yesterday and there..... the bowl, overflowed, bloody it was." The physico looked down in almost pity for his cabin's floor. It had seen bloodstains before, but not such blood as that. Not a man drained entirely of that humor. It still wasn't dry, and there was the smell in the wood, which would remain for a long time to come. For some reason, the smell reminded Jhonen of Mass. "Raton's mates said he started rattling on about cities of gold and the next thing they knew, he was pale and slumped over, with liquor flowing from his mouth."
"Physico, remind everyone of the blood bond when they get on ship. You're my bosun, because I don't think Raton can do it any longer." Jhonen looked at the cabin floor once again. He felt great pity for any of the sailors lodging below when Raton's blood poured down. "And throw the bowl in one of the nets. Because I'm certain someone else will be a little Raton before we even get out of port."
"What of the rat's share?" Jhonen grinned, he had seen the gleam of gold in those jaundiced eyes. "It will be divided between myself and my officers. You are an officer now." The physico smiled.
"When do we leave port?"
"When the royal agente arrives with our funds. The King thinks we need them, and its best if he keeps thinking that."
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Abram strode into Zhelyazo's foundry unannounced, nearly wrenching the door off of its weak brass hinges. If that was not a sign of quality metalwork, Abram did not know what was.
Abram threw a large metal cast, resembling a mold, onto the smith's table.
Zhelyazo looked up from his mundane task. He was hammering out the gold; it melted better in sheets and let him find any impurities in the metal without melting it all out.
"I can't take any more work, Abram. Thees is going to be hard enough to feenish."
"Its not work. Its a gift, Zhelyazo."
"I do not... understand, Abram." Zhelyazo's voice was unsteady, he had always feared working with Ser Thumbscrews. Abram put a hand forward and took a hammer off of the table.
"Oh.... no....."
"Which leg do you favor, you Iron mongrel?", Abram said in a growl.
"Wha.... why?" There was fear in his voice. In deference, he hunched over as far as his deformed back would allow.
"Which leg?" Abram adjusted his grip on the mallet.
"The... the right." Zhelyazo put no thought in it, hoping only that he would spare one of his legs.
"Wrong answer." Abram swung the hammer quickly, hitting Zhelyazo in the side of his left knee. The knee buckled inward. There was a crack, a cry of hideous pain and then, a fall.
Zhelyazo's nose first caught the table, with a bloody spurt and a painful crunch. Then, the top of his jaw came to the edge, breaking teeth on the hard stone edge. He slid to the floor on the side of the table after that.
Zhelyazo spit blood upon his smock. Abram, standing over the toppled hunchback, spit upon him. "Jorobado, your deformed back marks you as impure. Hold your tongue on matters of purity, you Rossiyan son-of-a-whore." The response was groans and a mostly incoherent Bastard!
"I am not the bastard. You are. I brought you here, you little pendejo. I made you the.... failure you are today. And you should be glad for even that."
Abram hefted the metal cast off the table and threw it on the hunchbacked little Jew. "After you pass out and wake up, put on that brace. And finish this work before Jhonen arrives back from Orim. Otherwise, I shall break something else. Your daughter's pesca would be nice to break into, I judge." Zhelyazo only groaned and closed his eyes in escape from the pain.
"Hey, you, pendejo! Guard this door till that jorobado wakes up. Ser Screws will pay you well." Everything faded for Zhelyazo.
-------------------------------------------------------
Lmumba lay upon a rock, basking lazily in the sun. She had eaten much over the past few days, and was still digesting the griot of the village she lay outside of.
The members of that tribe were not yet under her full control, but they were being soothed as she grokked knowledge of the flesh. Already, the unmarried and widowers were finding new women to take their seed. And plenty of seeds were being sown. She imagined what it would be like to be an animal, with no choice over fertility. No, her people's way let them make children as needed, with none of the imbalance of nature.
Not that Lmumba could really compare herself now. As Griot, she was always fertile. It was an odd symbol of connection with the Gods and Peoples over her. It was animalian in the worst possible sense.
She wrapped the clan's old banner around her naked body as the sun began to set. And then, the banner began to speak to her as the skull had.
"Off, in the rising sun's path, you will find one who has grokked but should not have. Find him and take his seed-spark, Virgin-Griot."
There was a loud scream following the talk. The banner held no sound after that. She discarded it, it was not very warm anyways.
Lmumba looked off into the dark horizon. her men would accept any warpath, no matter how seemingly stupid. No War-chief had yet risen to challenge her supreme authority. They would march as soon as she digested her last meal.
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Maria Erasma sat upon a blunt pole, hoping for death to come soon. Her lover, the Hill-men's hetman, did the same, his spasming arms reaching out for her touch. They were too far away, and it was likely just a twitch.
She finally felt something tear inside of her, and felt the cool rush of blood in the midnight breeze. She would have screamed if not for the rag in her mouth. Besides, her father wanted to make sure she didn't gnaw off her lips or break her teeth or do anything unbecoming to her head. She felt organs shift inside of her, stretching the skin of her belly as the pole pushed its way up her body.
Alphonse XV looked at her from his balcony. He was tired of his family's incompetence. He had hoped to marry Maria Erasma off to someone able, and take his grandchild as heir. But no, Maria had to break her pesca with a damned Hill-man. She couldn't have even done with a noble, to which things could be patched up. No, she wanted death.
Of course, the entire castle knew long before Alphonse did. Only when he came questioning serving girls with thumbscrews did someone tell him. And they did so reluctantly. Alphonse also found something he was not as surprised at. News of the golden cities along the Spice Winds had already made course through the castle. next, they would be in the city and then the world. He had hoped to keep it secret, but it would still give him great fortunes to have even a small stake of that people's riches.
Finding a virgin girl had not taken rumors. It had simply taken looking. A certain Don Juan Callisto, an independent, rebellious and foppish sort of noble, had a little girl the age of five. Alphonse took her into his custody. It served many purposes. He would have his virgin's blood, maybe a wife to use for leverage with the dons, and, to ransom Don Juan Callisto into the trained petulance of an agente.
1300 looked to be an interesting year ahead.
The Jew was Bagdemagus, a Jew known only by Jews. He was a heretic, a scoundrel, a dangerous dabbler in the darkest of arts. And for all of these qualities, he found shelter in the Palace of the Horned Lord.
He was housed in a cellar on the farthest side of the Palace. It was beyond the King's Quarter's, so any servant there would have business only on Alphonse's whim. Alphonse knew some still came; his Hillmen servants fancied a staircase not far off from the Jew's quarters for... rather immoral acts. But none so far had found the Jew wizard.
"I bring the virgin's blood.", the voice rang out in darkness.
Silence, more darkness and then, a spark and a snap of fingers. The entire cellar went alight as torches around the room went ablaze.
The Jew Bagdemagus sat hunched over his table, intent on some article of study. Alphonse, his King and Liege of the Dark, approached, wearing the woad robes he found comfort in.
"Did you mix it with holy water as I said?" The Dwarf, even in his high chair, was dwarfed by elderly Alphonse. He reached out a hand for the vial of virgin blood.
"Yes, its still warm. Good." The Dwarf turned the vial from side to side, watching the crimson liquid move. "Viscosity seems right. Tisn't clotting. Now, for the final test on the matter, be it a virgin's or a whore's?"
"Of course it is a virgin's.", Alphonse said with an indignant. The ugly Jew smiled. "You will excuse me if I do not let your opinions muddle my science, Rey. Besides, from what I hear, you know more of the whore." Smiling, he produced a clear glass lens, the type used in Deraxti far-seers from one of his pockets. He brought the lens to his eye and the small bottle of blood to the lens. His face contorted in perverse satisfaction.
"I hate to say this, Rey, but you have a dud virgin on your hands."
"Impossible.", Alphonse said with shaky resolve.
"Okay, fine. Someone else has a dud virgin on their hands.... or other appendages. I assume you would remember taking this virgin, Rey."
Alphonse closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. His face was going pale. "Are you sure about this, Jew?"
"More sure than you were." Bagdemagus had an offensive, nasal voice that made everything seem insulting. The fact that everything was insulting seemed to matter little.
Alphonse turned around sharply to exit the cellar. "Where are you off to, Rey?", Bagdemagus asked without looking up from whatever his work was.
"To kill my daughter and find a new virgin." Alphonse hurried up the staircase.
"Do virgins come used?", was the taunting reply after the onset of darkness. Alphonse heard it going up the staircase.
---------------------------------------------------
"The bowl.... it overflowed while you were in Orim, Capitan." The physico was a man who looked always on the edge of jaundice, a man who spoke with an odd confluence of the sailor looseness and the Universario precision.
"Who ratted?" Jhonen leaned on his cane menacingly, as if to strike the one who broke the blood bond. That would be beating a dead horse or, in this case, a rat.
"Raton, funnily enough. I stepped into the cabin yesterday and there..... the bowl, overflowed, bloody it was." The physico looked down in almost pity for his cabin's floor. It had seen bloodstains before, but not such blood as that. Not a man drained entirely of that humor. It still wasn't dry, and there was the smell in the wood, which would remain for a long time to come. For some reason, the smell reminded Jhonen of Mass. "Raton's mates said he started rattling on about cities of gold and the next thing they knew, he was pale and slumped over, with liquor flowing from his mouth."
"Physico, remind everyone of the blood bond when they get on ship. You're my bosun, because I don't think Raton can do it any longer." Jhonen looked at the cabin floor once again. He felt great pity for any of the sailors lodging below when Raton's blood poured down. "And throw the bowl in one of the nets. Because I'm certain someone else will be a little Raton before we even get out of port."
"What of the rat's share?" Jhonen grinned, he had seen the gleam of gold in those jaundiced eyes. "It will be divided between myself and my officers. You are an officer now." The physico smiled.
"When do we leave port?"
"When the royal agente arrives with our funds. The King thinks we need them, and its best if he keeps thinking that."
---------------------------------------------------
Abram strode into Zhelyazo's foundry unannounced, nearly wrenching the door off of its weak brass hinges. If that was not a sign of quality metalwork, Abram did not know what was.
Abram threw a large metal cast, resembling a mold, onto the smith's table.
Zhelyazo looked up from his mundane task. He was hammering out the gold; it melted better in sheets and let him find any impurities in the metal without melting it all out.
"I can't take any more work, Abram. Thees is going to be hard enough to feenish."
"Its not work. Its a gift, Zhelyazo."
"I do not... understand, Abram." Zhelyazo's voice was unsteady, he had always feared working with Ser Thumbscrews. Abram put a hand forward and took a hammer off of the table.
"Oh.... no....."
"Which leg do you favor, you Iron mongrel?", Abram said in a growl.
"Wha.... why?" There was fear in his voice. In deference, he hunched over as far as his deformed back would allow.
"Which leg?" Abram adjusted his grip on the mallet.
"The... the right." Zhelyazo put no thought in it, hoping only that he would spare one of his legs.
"Wrong answer." Abram swung the hammer quickly, hitting Zhelyazo in the side of his left knee. The knee buckled inward. There was a crack, a cry of hideous pain and then, a fall.
Zhelyazo's nose first caught the table, with a bloody spurt and a painful crunch. Then, the top of his jaw came to the edge, breaking teeth on the hard stone edge. He slid to the floor on the side of the table after that.
Zhelyazo spit blood upon his smock. Abram, standing over the toppled hunchback, spit upon him. "Jorobado, your deformed back marks you as impure. Hold your tongue on matters of purity, you Rossiyan son-of-a-whore." The response was groans and a mostly incoherent Bastard!
"I am not the bastard. You are. I brought you here, you little pendejo. I made you the.... failure you are today. And you should be glad for even that."
Abram hefted the metal cast off the table and threw it on the hunchbacked little Jew. "After you pass out and wake up, put on that brace. And finish this work before Jhonen arrives back from Orim. Otherwise, I shall break something else. Your daughter's pesca would be nice to break into, I judge." Zhelyazo only groaned and closed his eyes in escape from the pain.
"Hey, you, pendejo! Guard this door till that jorobado wakes up. Ser Screws will pay you well." Everything faded for Zhelyazo.
-------------------------------------------------------
Lmumba lay upon a rock, basking lazily in the sun. She had eaten much over the past few days, and was still digesting the griot of the village she lay outside of.
The members of that tribe were not yet under her full control, but they were being soothed as she grokked knowledge of the flesh. Already, the unmarried and widowers were finding new women to take their seed. And plenty of seeds were being sown. She imagined what it would be like to be an animal, with no choice over fertility. No, her people's way let them make children as needed, with none of the imbalance of nature.
Not that Lmumba could really compare herself now. As Griot, she was always fertile. It was an odd symbol of connection with the Gods and Peoples over her. It was animalian in the worst possible sense.
She wrapped the clan's old banner around her naked body as the sun began to set. And then, the banner began to speak to her as the skull had.
"Off, in the rising sun's path, you will find one who has grokked but should not have. Find him and take his seed-spark, Virgin-Griot."
There was a loud scream following the talk. The banner held no sound after that. She discarded it, it was not very warm anyways.
Lmumba looked off into the dark horizon. her men would accept any warpath, no matter how seemingly stupid. No War-chief had yet risen to challenge her supreme authority. They would march as soon as she digested her last meal.
----------------------------------------------------------
Maria Erasma sat upon a blunt pole, hoping for death to come soon. Her lover, the Hill-men's hetman, did the same, his spasming arms reaching out for her touch. They were too far away, and it was likely just a twitch.
She finally felt something tear inside of her, and felt the cool rush of blood in the midnight breeze. She would have screamed if not for the rag in her mouth. Besides, her father wanted to make sure she didn't gnaw off her lips or break her teeth or do anything unbecoming to her head. She felt organs shift inside of her, stretching the skin of her belly as the pole pushed its way up her body.
Alphonse XV looked at her from his balcony. He was tired of his family's incompetence. He had hoped to marry Maria Erasma off to someone able, and take his grandchild as heir. But no, Maria had to break her pesca with a damned Hill-man. She couldn't have even done with a noble, to which things could be patched up. No, she wanted death.
Of course, the entire castle knew long before Alphonse did. Only when he came questioning serving girls with thumbscrews did someone tell him. And they did so reluctantly. Alphonse also found something he was not as surprised at. News of the golden cities along the Spice Winds had already made course through the castle. next, they would be in the city and then the world. He had hoped to keep it secret, but it would still give him great fortunes to have even a small stake of that people's riches.
Finding a virgin girl had not taken rumors. It had simply taken looking. A certain Don Juan Callisto, an independent, rebellious and foppish sort of noble, had a little girl the age of five. Alphonse took her into his custody. It served many purposes. He would have his virgin's blood, maybe a wife to use for leverage with the dons, and, to ransom Don Juan Callisto into the trained petulance of an agente.
1300 looked to be an interesting year ahead.
Not Enough 1299
"Swear it upon your God, Jew." Jhonen stood hunched over in a small, dark foundry. Dwarven settlements were not built even for Orim, and Jhonen had a Lugdim King's foot upon any Orim.
"I cannot, Senor Jhonen." The hunchbacked Dwarf known as Zhelyazo gave a pitiful bow while examining one of the trinkets Jhonen had produced. His eyes glittered with greed.
"Do you not believe in the God of the Jews?"
"I do, and this is why I cannot swear such a thing. He Who Hides Between the Lines cannot be sworn upon by a mortal."
"What is the point of a God if you cannot use him to prove your virtue to others?" Abram, sitting comfortably upon a couch that would fall under Jhonen's weight, chuckled and stroked his black, well-trimmed beard. "Jews have asked this for millenia, Jhonen. There is no good answer."
"Then why should I trust this Jew of Iron?" Jhonen did not even make eye contact with Zhelyazo.
Zhelyazo grinned a comical grin. Scars and burns covered his face, and a fresh burn covered the tip of his long blunt nose. Cuts and chipped teeth marked where hard hot metal hit soft flesh or cold teeth. His face had the wrinkles of badly tanned leather left out to dry. Where Abram was simply ugly, Zhelyazo was worn-out.
"You trust me more than men, elsewise you wouldn't have crawled through mule shit to get to me." Zhelyazo turned his weathered face to Abram and leveled an accusing finger at the reclining Dwarf. "And you trust that Jew. Never has Valencia seen a worse scoundrel. There are whores more trustworthy." Abram merely laughed and reclined further. He had given Zhelyazo this job, he would do well to remember that. Later, he would remember it, Abram was sure. With all the pain of, at least a broken nose.
"That scoundrel is my clan brother." Zhelyazo gave a high-pitched laugh, his face crunching up further. "Jew and Gentile? Uncircumcised and circumcised? You only see such things in Arab orgies!"
"Zhelyazo...." Abram spoke in warning tones. Jhonen had already brought his hand around the little weathered Jew's face. His skin did feel like old leather.
"You stand upon a yew branch. Get to the end and get a slap on the backside." He released his hand from the Jew's face. "Now, Jew, what will ya give me for my trust?"
Zhelyazo looked at Jhonen with a snarl but.... then his eyes glinted with gold, and with his failures in the foundry business. "I can not take a Clan Bond with you, I am not impure as some." He cast a glance at Abram, who yawned and stroked his beard again. A broken leg would be little hindrance to Zhelyazo's trade, he decided.
"But I can tie you to my Clan Bond." He breathed in heavily, and looked around his dingy foundry. "I will give you my daughter."
Jhonen threw his head back to laugh, with a loud thud! He still laughed, but with some hint of pain. "What am I to do with a Jewess?"
Abram sat up from his reclining. "Jhonen, this is not Ludgim. Jewesses are allowed up-world in Valencia. The Dons who aren't frocios keep them around for quick and easy play, and to ensure that the Dwarf-tolls are used." Jhonen visualized a blue-blooded Don mounting a small deformed Jewess. It was laughable, but certainly within the Dons' realm of perversity. "He would be honored, Zhelyazo of the Iron. Honored." Abram spoke for Jhonen, which got him a dirty glance.
Abram didn’t notice. He simply stroked his beard and wondered if he could borrow Zhelyazo’s daughter from Jhonen. He could use some quick and easy play himself, even if he wouldn't have the height advantage of a Don. He was still certain he could force the young girl’s legs open.
Jhonen and Zhelyazo haggled out a price, the Jew always trying to keep ahead in bargaining.
“Fine, Jew Zhelyazo, one in ten parts of this sack. Deal?” Zhelyazo’s greed floundered for a moment, wondering how many sacks there were. “Deal.” Jhonen extended his hand to Zhelyazo and he clasped it, unsure of the custom. Jhonen shook the small smith’s arm nearly out of socket, but was surprised to find that the burly Jew could hold his own.
“How many sacks are there? One or two more?” Obviously he was considering taking some more out of the sacks by his tone of his voice,
“About twenty. Never thought I’d out-Jew a Jew.” Zhelyazo looked about to speak, Jhonen interrupted. “I’ll be taking your daughter now.”
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Jhonen and Abram ambled out of Zhelyazo's dilapidated foundry. They were in the Dark Quarter, where magical lights failed and only the drains of muck-pits filtered in light or air. The place reeked. At least in Zhelyazo's foundry the heat and oils and sweat blocked out the shit in the air. Some perfume graced the air, but it was not enough.
Rebeccah stood respectfully behind them. Jhonen had never seen a Jewess before; he had assumed they were as ugly as a horse's ass, same as the males. Rebeccah was certainly not. About four of a Lugdim King's feet, she was, a head or so taller than Zhelyazo and had a few motes on Abram. She had no beard under her veil, Abram's bar-room jokes were tossed out. She was attractive in an exotic manner; her looks reminded Jhonen more of the swarthy slaves of the Deraxti, not of any Jews. Maybe some Dons did have good taste.
Some hungry and dirty youths stood on the street-corner. Probably standing there to rob passerby in the dark, illegal quarter. They recognized Abram, not many scoundrels didn't. Their faces showed fear at the sight of Jhonen. They would have hard time bringing down an Orim, much less a Northman.
One of them, presumably the band's leader, threw long, oily hair out of his face. A mistake, that, his nose was crooked and his face beset with sores.
"Ey, Screws," The youth leader called Abrams by his criminal name. "Qui es puta?" His voice was scratchy and upon speaking, the smell of alcohol became obvious. Cheap, gato piss.
Abram bared his teeth in a comical grin. "El Gigante's lady-friend. Wish to call her a whore again?"
The youth flipped his hair back into his face and took a quick step back. "Nah, Scr... ser Screws. Tell El Gigante to have a good time. I'd reach under that veil, gimme half a'chanch." The youths all chuckled, but stepped back as Jhonen and Abram approached the corner.
Rebeccah walked closer behind them after that. Jhonen could feel her layered cloth wrappings rubbing against his back.
"Give's someone to knife next time, Screws! Not some God-be-damned giant!", the youths yelled after they had gained some distance. "Ja, or give us a good puta!"
Abram laughed. "So, Jhonen, going'ta reach under her veil?"
"No."
"Really? I think she would love to see something uncut." Rebeccah blushed at that, her darkened cheeks obvious even underneath the veil.
"No," he said, and seeing the grin on Abram's face, "And I won't leave her for you either."
Abram didn't quit smiling. "You're no fun. But I'm certain the Lady will find you fun. The entire mote of you." Jhonen gave the little Jew a light slap on the head. "Its more than a mote." Rebeccah blushed further.
They exited the ill-lit Jew-toll, the illegal tunnel into the ghettos of Valencia. Everything but Rebeccah smelled like mules. Her perfume was still not enough.
"I cannot, Senor Jhonen." The hunchbacked Dwarf known as Zhelyazo gave a pitiful bow while examining one of the trinkets Jhonen had produced. His eyes glittered with greed.
"Do you not believe in the God of the Jews?"
"I do, and this is why I cannot swear such a thing. He Who Hides Between the Lines cannot be sworn upon by a mortal."
"What is the point of a God if you cannot use him to prove your virtue to others?" Abram, sitting comfortably upon a couch that would fall under Jhonen's weight, chuckled and stroked his black, well-trimmed beard. "Jews have asked this for millenia, Jhonen. There is no good answer."
"Then why should I trust this Jew of Iron?" Jhonen did not even make eye contact with Zhelyazo.
Zhelyazo grinned a comical grin. Scars and burns covered his face, and a fresh burn covered the tip of his long blunt nose. Cuts and chipped teeth marked where hard hot metal hit soft flesh or cold teeth. His face had the wrinkles of badly tanned leather left out to dry. Where Abram was simply ugly, Zhelyazo was worn-out.
"You trust me more than men, elsewise you wouldn't have crawled through mule shit to get to me." Zhelyazo turned his weathered face to Abram and leveled an accusing finger at the reclining Dwarf. "And you trust that Jew. Never has Valencia seen a worse scoundrel. There are whores more trustworthy." Abram merely laughed and reclined further. He had given Zhelyazo this job, he would do well to remember that. Later, he would remember it, Abram was sure. With all the pain of, at least a broken nose.
"That scoundrel is my clan brother." Zhelyazo gave a high-pitched laugh, his face crunching up further. "Jew and Gentile? Uncircumcised and circumcised? You only see such things in Arab orgies!"
"Zhelyazo...." Abram spoke in warning tones. Jhonen had already brought his hand around the little weathered Jew's face. His skin did feel like old leather.
"You stand upon a yew branch. Get to the end and get a slap on the backside." He released his hand from the Jew's face. "Now, Jew, what will ya give me for my trust?"
Zhelyazo looked at Jhonen with a snarl but.... then his eyes glinted with gold, and with his failures in the foundry business. "I can not take a Clan Bond with you, I am not impure as some." He cast a glance at Abram, who yawned and stroked his beard again. A broken leg would be little hindrance to Zhelyazo's trade, he decided.
"But I can tie you to my Clan Bond." He breathed in heavily, and looked around his dingy foundry. "I will give you my daughter."
Jhonen threw his head back to laugh, with a loud thud! He still laughed, but with some hint of pain. "What am I to do with a Jewess?"
Abram sat up from his reclining. "Jhonen, this is not Ludgim. Jewesses are allowed up-world in Valencia. The Dons who aren't frocios keep them around for quick and easy play, and to ensure that the Dwarf-tolls are used." Jhonen visualized a blue-blooded Don mounting a small deformed Jewess. It was laughable, but certainly within the Dons' realm of perversity. "He would be honored, Zhelyazo of the Iron. Honored." Abram spoke for Jhonen, which got him a dirty glance.
Abram didn’t notice. He simply stroked his beard and wondered if he could borrow Zhelyazo’s daughter from Jhonen. He could use some quick and easy play himself, even if he wouldn't have the height advantage of a Don. He was still certain he could force the young girl’s legs open.
Jhonen and Zhelyazo haggled out a price, the Jew always trying to keep ahead in bargaining.
“Fine, Jew Zhelyazo, one in ten parts of this sack. Deal?” Zhelyazo’s greed floundered for a moment, wondering how many sacks there were. “Deal.” Jhonen extended his hand to Zhelyazo and he clasped it, unsure of the custom. Jhonen shook the small smith’s arm nearly out of socket, but was surprised to find that the burly Jew could hold his own.
“How many sacks are there? One or two more?” Obviously he was considering taking some more out of the sacks by his tone of his voice,
“About twenty. Never thought I’d out-Jew a Jew.” Zhelyazo looked about to speak, Jhonen interrupted. “I’ll be taking your daughter now.”
--------------------------------------------------------
Jhonen and Abram ambled out of Zhelyazo's dilapidated foundry. They were in the Dark Quarter, where magical lights failed and only the drains of muck-pits filtered in light or air. The place reeked. At least in Zhelyazo's foundry the heat and oils and sweat blocked out the shit in the air. Some perfume graced the air, but it was not enough.
Rebeccah stood respectfully behind them. Jhonen had never seen a Jewess before; he had assumed they were as ugly as a horse's ass, same as the males. Rebeccah was certainly not. About four of a Lugdim King's feet, she was, a head or so taller than Zhelyazo and had a few motes on Abram. She had no beard under her veil, Abram's bar-room jokes were tossed out. She was attractive in an exotic manner; her looks reminded Jhonen more of the swarthy slaves of the Deraxti, not of any Jews. Maybe some Dons did have good taste.
Some hungry and dirty youths stood on the street-corner. Probably standing there to rob passerby in the dark, illegal quarter. They recognized Abram, not many scoundrels didn't. Their faces showed fear at the sight of Jhonen. They would have hard time bringing down an Orim, much less a Northman.
One of them, presumably the band's leader, threw long, oily hair out of his face. A mistake, that, his nose was crooked and his face beset with sores.
"Ey, Screws," The youth leader called Abrams by his criminal name. "Qui es puta?" His voice was scratchy and upon speaking, the smell of alcohol became obvious. Cheap, gato piss.
Abram bared his teeth in a comical grin. "El Gigante's lady-friend. Wish to call her a whore again?"
The youth flipped his hair back into his face and took a quick step back. "Nah, Scr... ser Screws. Tell El Gigante to have a good time. I'd reach under that veil, gimme half a'chanch." The youths all chuckled, but stepped back as Jhonen and Abram approached the corner.
Rebeccah walked closer behind them after that. Jhonen could feel her layered cloth wrappings rubbing against his back.
"Give's someone to knife next time, Screws! Not some God-be-damned giant!", the youths yelled after they had gained some distance. "Ja, or give us a good puta!"
Abram laughed. "So, Jhonen, going'ta reach under her veil?"
"No."
"Really? I think she would love to see something uncut." Rebeccah blushed at that, her darkened cheeks obvious even underneath the veil.
"No," he said, and seeing the grin on Abram's face, "And I won't leave her for you either."
Abram didn't quit smiling. "You're no fun. But I'm certain the Lady will find you fun. The entire mote of you." Jhonen gave the little Jew a light slap on the head. "Its more than a mote." Rebeccah blushed further.
They exited the ill-lit Jew-toll, the illegal tunnel into the ghettos of Valencia. Everything but Rebeccah smelled like mules. Her perfume was still not enough.
The Imam of the Lake 1299
"Oh Revered Imam of the Lake, will you renounce your faith in the false tree speaker Mehemet and accept the Horned Christ as your One and Only Saviour?" Alphonse XV, Vicar of the Horned Lord, stood before a large tree, speaking with all the conviction he gave to cardinals or perfecti.
The tree shuddered, branches swaying with laughter, the knotted face on the front of the wood grinning.
"All of you Crucasigneti make me laugh. You have no other way to start a conversation?" The voice was gravelly and mumbled, any voice coming from bark was.
"Imam, will you renounce the false prophet?"
The tree continued laughing.
"You People of Books do not understand the importance of the Tree-Speaker Muhammed. He was a great man, especially for lacking roots. He brought my people their Second Water, the cool, sweet life-giving Faith. Without him, we would be nothing but oasis-wandering nomads. But with Him, well, here I am, rooted outside of man's greatest city."
The city of Orim lay on the horizon, separated from the large Imam and his island by the cool waters of the Orimmo Lake.
"Great good it has done the Asht-al-Deraxt. You treefolks have been driven back, burned out, and reduced to oasis-wandering nomads, all by the cleansing vigils of the Horned One."
The tree closed his eyes, and gave a low grumbling sound. "That would give me reason to damn him, not praise him. Did you come here to argue about my faith, Oh King? You will find not a convert, and if you have come for one, I will bid you away."
"No, no, Revered Imam, I did not come for a convert, even if I hoped to find one." Alphonse smiled, they had been through this all before. The tree smiled back at him, it was their ritual. "I came to ask about the Hada de la sur."
"The fairies of the south? I did not know your dons had made it into the spice trade."
"I did not come for a convert or for jokes, Revered Imam. I came for answers." Alphonse looked about the small island. His men had cleared it of all vagrant and then ferried themselves off to the city. Still, one could not be too careful. "A captain came to me under my Viceroy. My corrupt pox-marked Viceroy, truth be told, and that is why I come to you for questions." Alphonse paused, looking around once again. There was nothing else and no one else on the island. "He brought gold, a very large amount of gold, even with all the lodes struck under the Hillmen's feet and in the Lochaby East. He said there were people- Fairies, Elves, whatever, who lived in the jungles along the Spice Winds. He said they dressed in gold while their children pranced about in silver. Is this true?"
"Hrmmm...." The knotted face tightened, its eyes covered with wood. "I have heard some tales, but my knowing-roots do not go that far afield, Oh King."
"What do you know?" Alphonse's face was pleading.
"I know nothing, but I can tell you something, things my telling-roots have taken up. There are peoples with an abundance of gold in the lands of the South. They are not human, they are not Deraxti, but they are not like the Aelfir either. And with their height it is certain they are not Jewish, not of the B'nai Elohim." The tree gave a large grin, revealing a knotted hole which had been nested in for years. Alphonse laughed as a bird flew from the Imam's opened mouth. "Do your Captain's Hada wear piercings and have writings upon their skin?"
"Yes, he mentioned many unbelievable practices."
"He speaks the truth, so his believability matters not. My people have traded on occasion with these so-called Hada, and always they wear gold or silver upon them. Some even took to writing the Shahada upon their skin, although it was more admiration of the trees involved than affirmation of the Great Tree-Speaker."
"Have they cities of gold in the jungle?" Alphonse's eyes held hunger, beyond what any man should hold for that shiny yellow metal. The Imam's people rejected most material comforts, although was more from their nature as trees than any moral stand.
"They do not build with gold or anything quite so solid. They build mostly with, well...." The tree gave a shudder. "Trees. At least you crucasigneti use stone much of the time. But, anyways, if tales hold true, their numbers bely a city of gold built upon flesh. Tales do not often hold true, so remember that I said this." The hunger in Alphonse's eyes faded for a second.
"Imam, I have long asked you for a price to your services. As your advice will bring me more wealth than I could ever imagine, name it now."
The tree once again knotted his face and closed his eyes. A low rumbling sound came from underneath the bark. "You are now Lord in the East, having inherited it from that Lochaber fool nephew of yours?"
"Yes, Otranto was a fool and a nephew. What do you wish from the Holy Land?"
The tree opened its eyes. "Bring me a rose-maiden of the Eastern Horns. I grow old and tired of this lake, but my roots have grown deep and my bark heavy. I could use a new fragrance here, and my bark and roots could use someone to entwine with. Besides, I think this island could stand a few more trees." The rest of the island was bare, save a few bushes and the lush grass.
"It is done, Imam. I will have my agente see to it immediately."
The tree smiled. "He is a fairy of the East, I am sure."
The tree shuddered, branches swaying with laughter, the knotted face on the front of the wood grinning.
"All of you Crucasigneti make me laugh. You have no other way to start a conversation?" The voice was gravelly and mumbled, any voice coming from bark was.
"Imam, will you renounce the false prophet?"
The tree continued laughing.
"You People of Books do not understand the importance of the Tree-Speaker Muhammed. He was a great man, especially for lacking roots. He brought my people their Second Water, the cool, sweet life-giving Faith. Without him, we would be nothing but oasis-wandering nomads. But with Him, well, here I am, rooted outside of man's greatest city."
The city of Orim lay on the horizon, separated from the large Imam and his island by the cool waters of the Orimmo Lake.
"Great good it has done the Asht-al-Deraxt. You treefolks have been driven back, burned out, and reduced to oasis-wandering nomads, all by the cleansing vigils of the Horned One."
The tree closed his eyes, and gave a low grumbling sound. "That would give me reason to damn him, not praise him. Did you come here to argue about my faith, Oh King? You will find not a convert, and if you have come for one, I will bid you away."
"No, no, Revered Imam, I did not come for a convert, even if I hoped to find one." Alphonse smiled, they had been through this all before. The tree smiled back at him, it was their ritual. "I came to ask about the Hada de la sur."
"The fairies of the south? I did not know your dons had made it into the spice trade."
"I did not come for a convert or for jokes, Revered Imam. I came for answers." Alphonse looked about the small island. His men had cleared it of all vagrant and then ferried themselves off to the city. Still, one could not be too careful. "A captain came to me under my Viceroy. My corrupt pox-marked Viceroy, truth be told, and that is why I come to you for questions." Alphonse paused, looking around once again. There was nothing else and no one else on the island. "He brought gold, a very large amount of gold, even with all the lodes struck under the Hillmen's feet and in the Lochaby East. He said there were people- Fairies, Elves, whatever, who lived in the jungles along the Spice Winds. He said they dressed in gold while their children pranced about in silver. Is this true?"
"Hrmmm...." The knotted face tightened, its eyes covered with wood. "I have heard some tales, but my knowing-roots do not go that far afield, Oh King."
"What do you know?" Alphonse's face was pleading.
"I know nothing, but I can tell you something, things my telling-roots have taken up. There are peoples with an abundance of gold in the lands of the South. They are not human, they are not Deraxti, but they are not like the Aelfir either. And with their height it is certain they are not Jewish, not of the B'nai Elohim." The tree gave a large grin, revealing a knotted hole which had been nested in for years. Alphonse laughed as a bird flew from the Imam's opened mouth. "Do your Captain's Hada wear piercings and have writings upon their skin?"
"Yes, he mentioned many unbelievable practices."
"He speaks the truth, so his believability matters not. My people have traded on occasion with these so-called Hada, and always they wear gold or silver upon them. Some even took to writing the Shahada upon their skin, although it was more admiration of the trees involved than affirmation of the Great Tree-Speaker."
"Have they cities of gold in the jungle?" Alphonse's eyes held hunger, beyond what any man should hold for that shiny yellow metal. The Imam's people rejected most material comforts, although was more from their nature as trees than any moral stand.
"They do not build with gold or anything quite so solid. They build mostly with, well...." The tree gave a shudder. "Trees. At least you crucasigneti use stone much of the time. But, anyways, if tales hold true, their numbers bely a city of gold built upon flesh. Tales do not often hold true, so remember that I said this." The hunger in Alphonse's eyes faded for a second.
"Imam, I have long asked you for a price to your services. As your advice will bring me more wealth than I could ever imagine, name it now."
The tree once again knotted his face and closed his eyes. A low rumbling sound came from underneath the bark. "You are now Lord in the East, having inherited it from that Lochaber fool nephew of yours?"
"Yes, Otranto was a fool and a nephew. What do you wish from the Holy Land?"
The tree opened its eyes. "Bring me a rose-maiden of the Eastern Horns. I grow old and tired of this lake, but my roots have grown deep and my bark heavy. I could use a new fragrance here, and my bark and roots could use someone to entwine with. Besides, I think this island could stand a few more trees." The rest of the island was bare, save a few bushes and the lush grass.
"It is done, Imam. I will have my agente see to it immediately."
The tree smiled. "He is a fairy of the East, I am sure."
A Banner of Voices 1299
Lmumba lay naked in a cold stream. Dried blood came off without much scrubbing. The water's cool rush and pleasant sound calmed her shaken spirit.
She heard a women screaming in virginal pain, and she heard a man's soothing words coming from the trees. One sign of her people's descent into savagery. They were.... fornicating, without a pact or rite between them.
What could be expected of a people who had lost their Griot and their Chief? A Chief alone could not keep his people from savagery, that required the spiritual power of the Griot. Before long, they would be animals, chasing other animals between the trees, glutting themselves on flesh and sex.
Everyone was following Lmumba, but they were jungle-cats following one with more spots. Lmumba was the Spirit-Finder, the Spirit-Killer, and she held that beast's head and skin. She had the griot’s banner, she had the tribe’s respect. But neither was held too tightly.
Lmumba pulled herself up from the creek bed, pulling loose gold pebbles into the cold stream. The creek flowed towards her people’s dead villages. She shook the water off of her dark body, and started to walk to the camp of her dying people.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It spoke to her.
The skull. With the voice of their departed griot.
At first it was just mumbles and screams, but then the sounds calmed and words became distinguishable. She brought the skull closer to her, laying crouched as she was.
“I must pass on....” There were mumbles, curses, a wheeze.
“My spark..” There was a loud scream
“Will you take it?” The voice moaned, and the jaw of the skull clattered.
Lmumba wetted her lips, a piercing being withdrawn into her mouth. “But.... I am a women, Passed One.”
“Oh.... You are? Death is blind in these things, child. But it matters not, I do not need to give you the knowledge of flesh, for my flesh is ashes. But I will give you the spark in a different manner.”
The skull pulled away from her, jaw clattering in the cold air.
“Eat the skull. Take it into you and save your people. It is bare-bones knowledge, but it is knowledge enough.”
With that, the skull dropped, shattering on a rock. A scream echoed out. Lmumba stooped to the ground, picking up the shards, and swallowing those small enough. The rest would have to be ground up.
“You will be Marked. Do not be afraid of it, child. Show the tribe your blood and they will follow.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lmumba stood before the tribe assembled, arms outstretched. Her arms were bleeding at the wrist, her cheeks were marked with blood-red tears, she was menstruating, blood flowing down her legs. It was her first such bleeding in all manners. The light was dim, the canopy blocked the burgeoning sunrise.
Her eyes brightened and so did the dark forest clearing they were assembled in.
“I am your Griot; I have eaten the skull of the meat-spirit and the voice of the One Who Passed.”
She paused. Her voice held in the air for longer than it seemed possible. Already, the magic of griots was coming forth in her, following the Marks of Blood. A warrior brought forth the goat skin and placed it upon her naked shoulders.
“We have now fought a most strange people. These are people of death in their long-beards and pale-faces. They do not trade flesh for flesh in war, as we do. They do not eat our griots and take our people as their own. They simply kill, like animals without hunger. They burn flesh in pits and pick out of the ashes- metals, carriers of life and death. We can not fight them as we fight other clans. We must flee and hope the forest can stop these servants of the end.” Lmumba's knees buckled, but she pulled herself up.
The tribe cheered, their griot wobbled and fell to the ground. She was new to such powers and thoughts. Her tribesmen rushed forward to lift her bleeding body in celebration. They would carve out a new life in a different land. Now to find a weak tribe and eat their griot........
She heard a women screaming in virginal pain, and she heard a man's soothing words coming from the trees. One sign of her people's descent into savagery. They were.... fornicating, without a pact or rite between them.
What could be expected of a people who had lost their Griot and their Chief? A Chief alone could not keep his people from savagery, that required the spiritual power of the Griot. Before long, they would be animals, chasing other animals between the trees, glutting themselves on flesh and sex.
Everyone was following Lmumba, but they were jungle-cats following one with more spots. Lmumba was the Spirit-Finder, the Spirit-Killer, and she held that beast's head and skin. She had the griot’s banner, she had the tribe’s respect. But neither was held too tightly.
Lmumba pulled herself up from the creek bed, pulling loose gold pebbles into the cold stream. The creek flowed towards her people’s dead villages. She shook the water off of her dark body, and started to walk to the camp of her dying people.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It spoke to her.
The skull. With the voice of their departed griot.
At first it was just mumbles and screams, but then the sounds calmed and words became distinguishable. She brought the skull closer to her, laying crouched as she was.
“I must pass on....” There were mumbles, curses, a wheeze.
“My spark..” There was a loud scream
“Will you take it?” The voice moaned, and the jaw of the skull clattered.
Lmumba wetted her lips, a piercing being withdrawn into her mouth. “But.... I am a women, Passed One.”
“Oh.... You are? Death is blind in these things, child. But it matters not, I do not need to give you the knowledge of flesh, for my flesh is ashes. But I will give you the spark in a different manner.”
The skull pulled away from her, jaw clattering in the cold air.
“Eat the skull. Take it into you and save your people. It is bare-bones knowledge, but it is knowledge enough.”
With that, the skull dropped, shattering on a rock. A scream echoed out. Lmumba stooped to the ground, picking up the shards, and swallowing those small enough. The rest would have to be ground up.
“You will be Marked. Do not be afraid of it, child. Show the tribe your blood and they will follow.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lmumba stood before the tribe assembled, arms outstretched. Her arms were bleeding at the wrist, her cheeks were marked with blood-red tears, she was menstruating, blood flowing down her legs. It was her first such bleeding in all manners. The light was dim, the canopy blocked the burgeoning sunrise.
Her eyes brightened and so did the dark forest clearing they were assembled in.
“I am your Griot; I have eaten the skull of the meat-spirit and the voice of the One Who Passed.”
She paused. Her voice held in the air for longer than it seemed possible. Already, the magic of griots was coming forth in her, following the Marks of Blood. A warrior brought forth the goat skin and placed it upon her naked shoulders.
“We have now fought a most strange people. These are people of death in their long-beards and pale-faces. They do not trade flesh for flesh in war, as we do. They do not eat our griots and take our people as their own. They simply kill, like animals without hunger. They burn flesh in pits and pick out of the ashes- metals, carriers of life and death. We can not fight them as we fight other clans. We must flee and hope the forest can stop these servants of the end.” Lmumba's knees buckled, but she pulled herself up.
The tribe cheered, their griot wobbled and fell to the ground. She was new to such powers and thoughts. Her tribesmen rushed forward to lift her bleeding body in celebration. They would carve out a new life in a different land. Now to find a weak tribe and eat their griot........
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