Private Tales Allirian Nights

[Malak Baske]

To say the Green Hound inn was a budget establishment was a bit like saying a "a fish is coming" in response to an approaching shark. Undoubtedly true, but enough information to properly understand the situation. The downstairs was lit by a single torch at the side of the proprietor. The food menu consisted of a bowl of gruel, served without a spoon. The drink menu was a bit more accommodating, offering both ale and mead. Every step took on the bottom floor could be heard throughout the room, as patrons dared not move to heavily to break a board.

All in all, it was a perfect place for Malak's means. He sat on the right wall of the inn, drinking mead and pretending it wasn't watered down. He had just completed a job for the adventurer's guild he thought was decent money, before he realized how expensive everything was in Alliria. He should have known better, no one paid that well for dealing with measly zera crabs. He had hoped to get a nice knew knife out of that job, but knife selling, like any form of selling, was a sacred art in the town ruled by the Merchant Council.

Across the room Malak spotted a Dwarf order a flagon of ale, only to be joined shortly afterward by a Orc. Alliria was known as a place of business, and such inter-species sights were common enough, but Malak couldn't help but notice their tattoos. The Dwarf sported a red, geometric design across his left shoulder, while the Orc showed a blue tribal tattoo on his face. Both looked distinct, yet Malak couldn't place them. The waiter, or proprietor rather, gave the dwarf his ale, after which the the dwarf put a small box on the table. The orc casually creaked the box ajar, glancing at the contents, then closed it shut and handed the dwarf a purse that could probably pay for a year's lodging at the Green Hound, then walked away with the box. The dwarf looked over at Malak, who turned his eyes towards the proprietor and sipped his mead.

Perhaps this wasn't where he needed to stay. Malak stood and went to the desk and ordered another mead, drank it and ordered another. Hoping if the dwarf had ill intent he might simply see Malak as a drunk. It was then the elf woman burst through the doors.

"Kovec!" She screamed. "Where is it?" Her fingers snapped, and fire formed at her fingertips. She threw a whip of flame at the dwarf, not waiting for an answer.

Malak drew his blade. What the hell was he about to get into?

Seyda

 

[Seyda]

“Rent.” A heavy hand pounded the worn and well grooved cutting boards beside the wash basin.

Seyda looked up and pulled his arms out of near-scalding water, laced with suds from wrist to elbow. Mistress McDoogl, master of the Green Hound, fifth in a long line of matriarchal proprietors, was a heavyset boulder of a woman. With a broad face with eyes too close, a nose that was paradoxically narrow and flat, with hanging jowls that reminded him far too much of a dog that attended one of his class lectures at St. Ninians, McDoogl operated the Green Hound as if every serving wench was after the inn’s savings and every cook and scullery waiter were ne’er-do-wells aiming to pinch from the larders. Three marriages and a small host of bickering children had rung her dry of mirth. Her hand came down on the cutting board once more.

“Rent. Today’s its due and you’re well late, boy. Where’s my coin?”

He bowed at his waist and hastily dried off on a scratchy hemp towel. “Sorry, Mistress. I can’t fathom how it slipped me. Just a sec.”

His haversack and longsword lied by the open doorway leading out the kitchens into the tavern proper. He undid knotting binding his haversack closed and rummaged through layers of spare clothing, text books, vital odds and ends. McDoogl came to stand closer; her shadow prickled the hairs on his nape. After a cold beat, his fingers fumbled and touched at a small woolen purse bulging with Allirian silver. Seyda dampened and quieted the knot of ice-water churning in his bowels, handing the purse over into McDoogl’s meaty palm. He thought rent’s due was another half-week away. His savings disappeared inside McDoogl’s wide apron pocket and with it, his budgeting plans meant to see him through until month’s end. The Mistress rattled on but Seyda’s thoughts deafened her out. He managed a deferential nod and plodded back to the washing basin, about to sink his hands back into the soaking heat. A shoestring allowance, now cut to nothing. His best hope was to scavenge after McDoogl went to bed and put the scraps into a scratch-soup. Maybe filch some hard cheese and flinty bread, things left alone in the larder that none of the cooks bothered touching. Seyda wondered if he could plead something with one of the Professors at St. Ninians or the Scholam…

“…Oh, dog’s bollocks!”

Seyda looked up. McDoogl was at the doorway to the tavern floor, raging with a stout ladle in one hand and shouting blistering obscenities. Hard, bright light lit her profile as though she were less than a hand’s breadth from the common room hearth. He watched her leap back from a shower of bright sparks, still cursing. The footboards in the kitchens shook and jarred. A cook looked up from a stove-top, looking from McDoogl to Seyda. The boy sniffed and screwed up his nose; foul smoke was bleeding under the partition brick wall through gaps in the mortar by the floor. Beyond the Mistress’ coarse oaths and flailing, hoarse cries were sounding from the common room beyond. Seyda felt hands suddenly pushing and slapping at his shoulders towards the door.

“Well go on, you’re that half-breed that’s skulking around the Scholam, aren’t you?” The cook said. “Get out there and sort it out!”

He barely had his hand on his blades’ scabbard before he was foisted out into the common room. A tall elf in elegant green silks embroidered with touches of gold and bright pearling was flicking long whips of liquid fire from her hands. At a stout dwarf, who clutched a broken table-top like a shield and had a stout waraxe readied in his other fist. The Green Hound’s scant few regulars were gone, fled into the evening. Seyda blinked as more bodies came sauntering in through the forward entrance. More elves but clothed in brigand’s leathers and coats of chain-mail, bright scarfs tied off round their throats. Long, slender sabres appeared just as suddenly in their hands. Their narrow, gimlet eyes settled on the dwarf.

“Where is it, Kovec?” The she-elf roared and lathered his makeshift shield with another bolt of fire. Another man, tall with dark hair and eyes like chips of sea-ice, stood away by the far wall. He too was armed and trying to make sense of the worsening scene. Seyda was drawing a blank; none of his favourite stories told of moments like this.

The dwarf sized her and her new entourage up. He wore his hair in a shocked mohawk trailing with long braids clasped in wrought silver. His clothes were modest but well-threaded, rugged for both walking city streets or climbing the Spine of the World. Dark eyes sought out the mercenary across the tavern, to himself, with Seyda feeling like a gawking half-wit.

“I got three solid pouches to anyone who’ll help rid me of the scum!” The dwarf shouted, shaking his axe over the lip of his table-shield. “Three! To anyone!”

“Three!?” McDoogl’s husky voice near squeaked behind him. Her knee jammed into his rump and sent Seyda hurtling toward the elves. “Get in there and get that coin, boy!”

He had time for a brief shout before throwing himself into a roll, drawing his longsword free before coming into a practiced low stance. The elves turned eyes and swords on him. And then a rain of steel streaked at him, and Seyda forgot everything but the Sword.

Malak Baske

 

[Malak Baske]

Three pouches of coin . . .

Average pouch of coin had a hundred and fifty pieces in it . . .

Standard deviation of ten gold pieces . . .

Pouch contents usually followed the normal distribution . . .

Integrate under the curve to find the probability of payoff . . .

That was three more pouches of coin than Malak had!

The swordsman sprung to action, motivated in part by coin and in part by the duet of armored elves coming at him with sabres. Aiming to solve the numbers game through aggression and misdirection, Malak brought his sword to an quick thrust, followed by a slash to his left. Man-bun took a quick step backwards to avoid the thrust, while high fade raised his blade to block Malak's assault.

"This is none of your business dh'oine." Man-bun said the word with a twinge of anger in his voice.

"It never is." Malak said as he pushed his blade against high-fades, and angled it towards his chest before embedding it with a powerful thrust. "Until it is."

"You Devil!" Man-bun screamed and swung his sabre at Malak. The guildsman tried to pull his blade to block the blow and found it had caught on high-fade's leather chestplate. Man-bun's blade came quick, and Malak dropped the sword to allow for a backstep.

Feth. He thought to himself as he pulled out a knife. It was more a tool than a weapon, but better than his hands alone. Man-bun sliced right, then left, then right again as Malak pivoted dodging the first blow, then the second, but caught the blade across his torso on the last blow.

"You know this means war Korvec!" The elven woman screamed behind him as he continued his backstep to avoid Man-bun. "Your clan will be decimated, and your clan name forgotten." The sound of fire cracking through the air came behind Malak, and he was struck with an idea.

Farther and farther Malak backpedaled, taking hold of every bowl, flagon, dish, or drink he could get ahold of and using it as a projectile against Man-Bun. He was quick to bring up his arms and mitigate the blows, until Malak was out of convenient armaments.

Feth. Malak threw what he had left, his knife, then ducked as another whip of molten flame came around, right into the forearms that Man-Bun had been using to protect himself. The leather armor came alight, and Malak charged as the elf yelled in pain. A quick punch to the jaw and the elf was on the floor. Malak picked up Man-Bun's sabre and headed toward the dwarf. After all, what was all this worth if he wasn't getting paid?

Seyda

 

[Seyda]

Fade was slack on the floor, bleeding empty where Malak’s sword point had poked through his ribs. Man-Bun was fully poleaxed, lips split and showing a broken tooth and red gums. The slam-punch could have been enough to break Man-Bun’s skull free of his neck but Seyda wasn’t near enough to tell. He was busy being cut and bled himself, three full-blooded elves with mouths pulled back in scorn slicing and drawing wherever they tested his guard.

For his part, Seyda refused to give the common room as lost ground. Master Johann’s blade grasped, he charged back through their blows, addressing the trio in hacking whirls, breaking and reforming tempo to confuse their sense of rhythm and thus, their control. His slid on and off lines of attack, staggering his guard with ‘unstable’ forms that allowed for punishing counter-strokes. The elves though were more than ‘good’, and slid out of his trapping binds and blade winds before Seyda could find purchase and draw a cut. Stabs and pokes nicked at his forearms and ribs, long slices opening shallow but painful wounds across his hips and the skin of his shoulders. He countered an overhead chop, countered with his own that almost took the elves skull-cap off, spun round on his hip and ducked ‘neath an oncoming slash, striking out simultaneously.

The elf screamed; his torso-trunk petalled opened, falling back wailing and thrashing. Seyda’s bowels felt loose and cold as water. He hadn’t meant that, he hadn’t! The cut was a natural reply to the moment of attack, and Johann’s training and lessons imparted at the Scholam had taught him to seize openings by instinct. The elf was still dying as the others came on, fueling their assaults with fresh, bilious rage. Stories painted the best fencers as hurricanes of killing steel. More than able enough to soak up the blows of a dozen foes without stagger. They were Seyda’s favourite moments in the best tales: blades unsheathed and men falling like grain in a reaping. Right then, he felt like a training dummy being thrashed about. He halted blade-strokes that went for his throat and brachial arteries, wound through a dozen thrusts, not knowing how he got the cuts on his head that were colouring his face red.

A vertical swing sliced for the centre of his skull. Seyda swung up into its stroke, held the elf’s blade still for a moment to grasp it in his bare off-hand, and ran the length of his sword-edge over the elf’s knuckles and wrists. He fell away, hands ruined, dashing out of the tavern into the night. It left Seyda with that last elf now, the tallest swordsman with an almost cruelly beautiful face. ‘Fabio’, the half-elf dubbed him, as slender and magnificently lithe as Seyda was broad shouldered and muscled. Sweat was beginning to sting in the cuts laddering his skin. Fabio looked no less fresh than if he’d climbed out of bed the minute before. The elf sneered and flourished his saber in mocking salute.

After a beat, Seyda’s sword looked to waiver and dip. Fabio moved like a wound-up spring finally loosed. His neat sabre cleaved to smash through Seyda’s meagre, exhausted guard and bisect him to his balls. Seyda angled into a simple parry, letting Fabio’s strike push his the weak of his blade back to ready his arms for the counter-attack. He stepped aside from Fabio’s sabre as it struck the floorboards through empty air and swung. The point-of-percussion, where the strong and weak of a good sword met, found the elf’s narrow skull. Fabio’s head fell open, split as an orange, his body buckling into a nerveless heap of sprawled, twitching limbs. Seyda fought the gorge suddenly choking inside his throat. Wind and winter, he hadn’t meant for any of this…

“Competent,” A voice like a razor gliding on silk broke the haze of green colouring his sight. The she-elf, the fire mage impeccably dressed and impeccably enraged, raised a long, lacquered nail at him. She said no more. A ball of concussive flame struck him square in the plexus. Breath left him. Seyda flew out of the common room past Mistress McDoogl, trailing smoke, boots and pieces of scorched wool cloth.

Malak Baske

 

[Malak Baske]

"Competent" The elf woman screeched, and Malak flipped the nearest table to take cover. He'd no protection from whips of flame or other arcane assaults. He braced, waiting to feel the heat envelope the table, but instead felt it pass by his side. A rightward glance spotted the day laborer being thrown back with a shot of concussive flame.

"Hmm." Malak said, then opened up his sack of magic brews. Gecko's Tail, Ram's Ascent, Wolves Snout, Rabbit's Foot, Bat's Ears . . . Rabbit's Foot. That might do. Sword in hand, Malak pulled the cork with a clench of his teeth and a yank from his neck, then spit the cork and gulped down the potion.

The guildsman clenched his teeth as the concoction rippled changes through his body. New sinew began to forge its way through his legs, magically providing him newly formed strength. Malak took a deep breath, then stood and gave the table a powerful kick.

The table flew towards the elvish fire dancer. Malak didn't wait for the blow of the table to land, but rather used it cover to get closer. He pushed off his back foot and bounded a few couple meters forward, then again. By the time he'd landed his second stride the table had been bisected with a lash by the fire dancer.

"Quick." Her words pierced through the air like the talons of a horncrest. Another whip of flame formed in her right hand. She swung, filling Malak's ears with the crackle of the fire and the snap of the whip's speed. Malak pushed off his left foot, aiming to skip to his right and out of the whip's radius. He narrowly did, but missed the flare forming in her left hand. Malak pulled together his forearms to guard, and flame enveloped his left forearm.

"Dead." Another ball of fire had formed at her right hand and was about to launch before the elf screamed as dwarven steel separated her hand from her wrist. The flame fizzled as her hand hit the floor. The elf cursed and swung around, blasting another round of flame at the mohawked dwarf. He was thrown back, as Malak tried eagerly to quell the fire on his leather armor, batting the flame against anything he thought might weaken it. Finally he took the elven sabre and cut against the bicep of his armor, then threw away the burning excess.

"Phew." Malak breathed peacefully, unhappy at the loss of an armor sleeve, but happy he was able to act before he lost his arm. He looked up and around at the scene of the Green Hound. The elven sorceress was gone.

"Yeh'd best tend to that arm. Just because it's not alight doesn't mean it's fine." Kovec spat, as he planted his greaves unto the burning section of armor on the floor.

"And you'd best ready your purse." Malak replied, as he put the elven sabre on the ground, making his way toward Seyda. What he thought was a simple kitchen boy turned out be something quite more. He was owed, at the very least, a stiff drink.

 

[Seyda]

Inside the kitchens, Malak found Seyda buried under burst cloth sacks of cooking starch and corn flour, partially spread-eagle with bared feet sticking high in the air. Sauce pans, utensils, pots and heavy iron skillets were piled on him, beside the wreckage of a shattered storage shelf that’d broke apart under the boy’s flying weight. Soot and cooking steam drifted in low fogs, curling lazily where torch sconces and chandelier light touched. Mistress McDoogl stood over the mess, thumping her boot uncertainly against the disastrous mound of scattered kitchen ware. The pile groaned. Seyda stirred, slowly extricating out of the refuse, pulling a lid off his face and blinking against banks of hanging flour pouring out of his hair.

“…Achoo!” Seyda blinked. His throat felt parched raw and a hideous ache speared at the bone of his breastplate. Movement was an aching chore. He pushed onto his feet, blinking after-images out of his eyes, feeling the equivalent of batter squeezed flush under a rolling pin. Something then shadowed out the fitful light; Mistress McDoogl, hands planted to her hips, glared thunderously.

“This is perchance the finest mess I’ve ever had visit my inn, boy. Blood and brains on my good floor, my kitchen half wrecked, and not a single chair or table surviving whatever-the-spit that melee was. How precisely is any of that to be righted, hmmn?”

“…Mistress?” Seyda coughed, bewildered by a cloud of flour that burst out his mouth. “Ooff! Mistress McDoogl… I’m sure… With a bit of gold… It can all be laid right…”

“I certainly hope so!”

He eased past her bulk, collecting his old, notched sword off the floor. He slipped past Malak back into the tavern room proper, rubbing at his fitful eyes, a gross film of exhaustion weighing his limbs like cuffs of stone. “Where… Where’s that mage? Did she go?? Is… Is it done?”

“It’s done, lad, the battle’s lost and won,” Kovec said, trudging his short bulk over. A thick, stocky arm patted Seyda’s hip and nearly drove him off his toes. “Didn’t nae expect a whelp dishwasher to wade into that thick mess. Ye acquitted yourself; elf sellswords don’t fight cheaply and you can see the plain reasons why. Knew those blokes too, all whoresons drifted into the Reach looking for cosmopolitan contracts. Wager that pretty boy Es’harde was surprised when you split his pretty little skull open.”

Seyda’s face was gray, staring down at the pair of corpses his blade had hewn into. His blue eyes had lost their startingly keen hues, looking gimlet and stony. He looked up at Malak. “I… I didn’t mean to. I’m not… It’s not like… Wait,” He sucked in a breath and fought down his gorge, trying not to sick-up in front of the pair. “My guts are garbage now…”

“Ha! Y’hear that?” Kovec beamed at Malak. “Many’s a good soldier that hosed up their breakfast after their first kill. No shame in that lad, s’not a pretty business. Now where… Ah. Ahhh, yes… Lemme just look on meself, believe I’ve got that coin about somewhere…”

Malak Baske

 

[Malak Baske]

Malak found the elvish boy buried in flour, starch, and various sackclothes. He seemed fine, so Malak went to the washbasin and began running cold water over his burnt arm. The mistress of the Green Hound seemed to want to give the boy a thrashing, in a landlord-employer power dynamic that Malak didn't quite appreciate. He grabbed the hog-faced woman by her shirt and pulled her in.

"We just fought six members of the Korad, an elvish cartel. They don't leave witnesses. The only reason you have this inn and your life is that boy's sword arm, and it's the only thing that might stop that sorceress from coming back and razing this hole to the ground. I'd start paying him security if I were you."

Malak pushed the woman off and didn't bother to listen to her reply. He hoped that would help the boy, but there was a good chance it would only make things worse. He'd find a way to make it up to him. Turning over to the dwarf he noticed a bombacity, but also a bluntness that Seyda wasn't expecting. It was then he realized what was happening.

This was the boys first real combat. He'd trained, very well it seemed, but never killed a man before. The realization was starting to get to him.

"It's alright." Malak said, and put a hand on the elves shoulder. "Drink this, it'll help the stomach." He handed Seyda a tonic he'd made of ginger root. He had planning on making a brew with it later, but Malak had a tendency to prioritize today over tomorrow.

"Now, Kovec." Malak started and looked the dwarf in the eye. "If you had exaggerated your position, I might forgive you"

"Well, that's kind of you-"

"Yes, but my friend here . . . Well, he lives here. He could use the coin. He took on three of the Korad, your Es'harde included and bested them. But the scary part is, as you've noted, it's his first time. And if turns out he did that for nothing . . . well, it'd almost almost drive you to do it again wouldn't it?" Malak avoided the gut reality of what had happened, but tried to keep Kovec on his toes.

"I see what you're saying." Kovec shrugged "But I only keep the one purse on me at a time. I could pay you that now, and the rest later?" He said holding the purse in his hands.

"I see." Malak said, and took the purse before handing it to Seyda. "So, here's what we'll do. You'll pay us the purse to escort you home safe, and then once you're there you'll pay us the three purse we earned getting you out of that mess."

"Yah'v gon daft if yah think I'll be payin ya to take me to my own home there." Kovec steamed.

"Your own home sure." Malak fought. "But you know as well as I do that miss fire whip is still out there, and you're still her best shot at finding whatever it is you stole from her."

The dwarf cooled from a raging bonfire to what appeared to be a mere bonfire, and finally raised his hands. "Fine. Let's get on the move."