Manzana-gato 1298

Emmanuel Vacos had been told to watch the goat while the others unloaded the ship and set up camp.

Instead, he had dragged the plump little creature into a meadow, set it down, and ran off into the bushes to enjoy some manzana-gato stolen from the captain. He thought he saw something across the river, but he was too drunk to care. Everyone had gotten a little drunk after getting off of the shit-ridden ship.

He woke up groggily to his shipmates yelling obscenities involving him and the goat, insulting Vacos's mother and complaining about being damn hungry. Vacos slapped at a few insects that had been happily biting him and clumsily climbed out of the bush he had been sleeping under.

De Cuernos Iesu!

The goat was gone. Vacos first wondered if it had wandered off, but then he saw the pool of blood. He immediately thought of some wicked junglee beast tearing the goat apart... but, the blood wouldn't explain that. There was only the one pool splattered upon the grass. There weren't even any pieces left there.

Vacos had worked in a slaughterhouse, a matadero, before he had become a drunken sailor. This looked like a draining out in the commons, like someone had spilled the blood quickly and hauled the corpse away.

Men.... crazy, wild men from the forest. The kind you heard about from old salts who had taken the Spice Winds before. Those savages... they must have taken the goat.

But.... how would a man carry a goat so easily and without sound? How would he do so without spilling more blood? How did he kill it without spilling more blood?

In a drunken fit of hopping logic, Vacos remembered the fairy tales of his youth.

The Hada, the stealers of children up north. If there were Hada to the north, then Mundos Igual affirmed that there were Hada to the south. The Hada had to have done it.

He ran to the camp, insects biting at his sweaty body, thorns tearing into his flesh and clothes. He didn't care. He had to tell them all about the Hada, the winged Goat-Killers.

"E' smells like a piss-drunk cat!" Johnathan, the large Northerner from Lugdin, was the camp sentry. He stopped Vacos' run with a single swipe of his large carpenter arms. Vacos fell to the ground wheezing and hoping he hadn't broken a rib. The Northerners were overly violent, known for killing close friends over games and breaking their own limbs in drunken bets. Johnathan affirmed all of the Southern Orim views of the Northerners, with gusto.

"We got a live one over 'ere! Almost drowned 'ough."

The many idle and hungry crewmen ran to the sound of John's voice.

"Where in the 'ell is the goat, jack-off?"

The small crowd of the camp exploded at Vacos.

"Si, tell us!"
"Gato!"

"The... the Hada they..."

The crowd laughed uneasily. "Fairies? Down 'ere?" Johnathan looked around at the idle crewsmen. "Someone pickled 'ere is lying."

"No, the Hada.... they swooped down from the trees, drained the blood of the goat, left without a trace! I swear it, upon the Blood of the Virgin Maria!" Vacos' eyes widened, he'd heard all about acts of vengeance on and off cramped ships. If they didn't believe him.... and his slowly sobering mind was having a hard time believing him.

The crew laughed. Johnathan hefted up a large piece of wood, maybe a small support beam.

"You'd say the Virgin was a whore, you drunk-ass gato."

Vacos was the first man to die in the Horned Crusade. Telling your shipmates that a fairy stole their next meal is a sure way to get thrown off the ship or, in this case, get beaten to death with wood planks.