Fable - Ask The Butcher's Bill

[Kol]

Kol sat quietly within his cell, eyes closed, fingers threaded together.

"Fucking scum."​

The words fell from the lips of one of the guards. Two of them stood in front of the iron bars that held him, their voices gruff. Familiar accents tinged their words, though it was neither that of his people nor the cubs that lived to the south.

They were northmen, or something close to it.

"Murdered three people. Fucking Nordwiir. Keep telling the Governor we shouldn't let them in. End up with pricks like this."​

The Sorcerer never opened his eyes, never even heard the two men really. Their voices were drowned out by the dozen whispers that seemed to creep through his skull. The Dark Gods all clamored for his attention, for his action.

Some wanted him to call on his magics. Some wanted him to grab the guard and bite out his throat. Some wanted him to simply sit there and whither away.

All of them called for him. All of them whispered and screamed.

All of them hovered and stared as they waited for him to act.

Only one was helpful. Only one showed him the path that he would truly walk upon. His eyes stayed closed, and yet the Dark God showed him the way. He saw her. Upon a ship. The fire within her gullet, the taste of blood on her tongue.

He saw her there. Skad.

The thought seemed to reverberate. Resound. It crawled through the world and echoed outward towards the Butcher of Eyrr.

It was a mark, a call. A summons.

 

[Skad]

Kol.

It was like a switch.

One moment she was on the deck, imagining the sound that the horse fucker would make when she was choking on our own teeth and in the next it was gone. Every other inclination abandoned when the call struck her blood like the beating of drums, reverberating in a way that felt like home.

<”I have business here, I will return,”> Skad called out abruptly to Gal in her native tongue, having enough respect for the Captain to at least inform her that she was needed elsewhere and with that, she was gone, into the port town of Asar.

No matter what adventure was served before the warrior, no matter where the hands of the Dark Gods lead her, matters of her people would always reign above all. There was no question. Her faith was not only in those unseen hands, but in her kin.

At least, those who were worthy.

As the call thrummed through Skad's veins, she considered the sorcerer, the one who had granted her charge of that fateful warband. What path had he walked in this time? Where had divine whispers lead him? The closer she got, the harder the call until eventually, it felt like the very bones beneath her flesh were vibrating in familiar rhythm.

It brought her to a small, local jail.

Not so unsurprising in a way, the soft southern cunts had always treated their people like savages that only deserved a cage. However, it was surprising that they had managed to capture Kol. Perhaps it was the path laid before him by the Dark Gods, that guided them together once more.

Skad held no hesitation as she walked into the building, the plentiful stains from the battle now darkened and an ominous warning to all who held eyes.

“He my friend,” she grunted in her broken common tongue, daring the guards to try and stop her as their full attentions were now completely focused upon her back, hands already lain upon hilts. It was evident that they expected a sudden rush of violence but they would be disappointed, for now.

She looked to the sorcerer behind the bars, her face ever stoic as if she felt nothing.

<”Kol. What happened?”>

 

[Gal]

The screeching of seagulls and the smell of rotting fish preempted the city itself as they slowly wore into the port of Asar. The nazrani stood at the prow of Kraken’s Maw – her… fifth? ship? – and tugged the thick pelt cloak close around her shoulders in the face of the whipping wind. Her eyes were narrowed to black slits to keep the gale from coaxing unbidden tears, which instead sat upon her lashes in a lattice of prickly ice crystals.

Gal did not like the north.

Still, they had gold and riches like everywhere else, and there were few captains to compete with for the… services she offered. It was less work for more coin, and if she had to put on thicker clothes to cope, then so be it.

They dropped anchor after the hands in the harbor hauled them fast to the outer jetty, tying the brigantine down against the gusts that so often roared across the northern sea. In the usual chaos that followed landfall, Gal almost missed the departure of her newest crewmember – Skad was down the plank and off into the thick of the port before the nazrani had a chance to unfurl her frozen tongue into a coherent question.

She was waylaid further by the northman who pulled her aside, but this was a pleasant diversion. Finally, she was getting her fucking payment.

With a broad grin on her dark face, the pirate turned to the remained of her crew – et al. – and clapped her hands. “I say we have drink, ne? Ta festivant’ bein’ alive an’ da others bein’ morti.”

Regardless of whether they chose to accompany her, Gal strode off the ship and past the palisades. There was a backroom trionfi game calling her name in one of the watering holes on the docks, and a pipe in her pocket that yearned to serve her habit – just as soon as she stuffed it full of leaves and dragged the smoke into her lungs.

But— first things first.

If there was one thing she liked up here, it was the starköl.

 

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

Kjaran would have been off the ship in past years in a flash but he was slow to move this time. Only the prospect of alcohol got him up. He was tired and still processing the fight earlier on. He was always tired after the battle madness.

For want of a better option, he followed the others. At least vaguely familiar faces in the tavern would mean one less potential knife in the back. "Beer" he grunted at the man behind the counter, a bit more sullen now than his usual form.

The first drink went down well. The second went better. He burped appreciatively, it numbed the aches and pains in his body and mind, dulling the senses.

 

[Dhara]

Dhara might not have understood much of what the tanned woman said with her odd accent and stranger words but she understood the most important one: drink.

Slowly she uncurled herself from the coil of rope upon which she had settled herself onto to pass the journey and strode off after the group. More than a few of the sailors moved swiftly out of her way and those that didn't found themselves casually removed from her path. She had been craving a good drink the moment the fighting had been done and the watered down piss sailors called ale didn't scratch her itch. The Jharl cut a fine figure with her face and clothes still painted in the blood of those who had fallen by her hand. Matched with the hard look to her eyes and the tendency she had to finger the shaft of her blade at her hip, it was unsurprising she didn't find herself waiting long to be served.

"Nastoiki," she slammed a palm down upon the wooden bar. The keeper paled but was quick and efficient in filling up a small glass with the pale blue liquor. Dhara knocked it back and slammed the glass down for another, a nasty little curl of her lips the only please the barkeep would get. With sweat beading upon his brow he obliged then simply left the bottle with her.

 

[Kol]

Thankfulness and Appreciation were not something that were often felt in Nordwiir society. Most were out for themselves, fighting to survive and pursuing the struggle on their own. That was how it was, how it would always be.

Save for with a few. "There were three of them."

He explained calmly to Skad, rising from his place on the bench. The Dark Gods were on his side, they always had been, but even he could not stand against an entire city. It was important to know ones own strength, when to accept help.

Kol would never make the same mistake many of his forebears had.

"Nords." He shrugged. "They thought me an easy target, and when they were dead this scum took me in."

At first the Sorcerer had thought of fighting, killing those who came from him, but he was not immortal. Not like Skad was.

Now it was clear to him, this had been intended. The Dark Gods kept him her so that he and Skad could once again meet. "But I believe it is time to go now."

His fingers flittered for a second, and from the darkness the Rune Knife was born once more.

 

[Skad]

The eyes of the guards seared a brand upon the back of the Nordwiir the moment Kol rose from his bench, the hands that had gripped hilts unsheathing a mere glint of their blades with a small shhhk.

Skad nodded as the sorcerer explained his predicament, it was no great surprise that despite his circumstance the guards took him in as their own concept of justice. They were scarcely tolerated here as it was, any excuse to lock them up was taken in a heartbeat. Far easier to pass as a bearfucker and leave swiftly, not so easy when there were three of them dead at your feet.

There was a glimpse of a moment where Kin-Slayer considered retrieving Gal for this next part, but it was one that was quickly drowned by bile. Was the south making her soft? No. This was a Nordwiir problem, there would be no need for outsiders.

<”Then we go.”>

Slowly she turned, her lone eye flitting from guard to guard. Four in total. Face a blank slate of sea-salted battle blemishes. This would be messy, and her crimson chaos would tear all eyes and blades upon her, leaving Kol to work his own gift.


With a practised suddenness Skad darted, her knee rising to crunch into the closest guard's dick. As he doubled over there was a flash of steel, her skinning knife plunging down to the hilt into the soft flesh of his exposed neck towards his sternum

“Fyrir Haraudur!” the Nordwiir hissed into his ear, wrenching and twisting the blade violently before tearing it out with a blessed spray that baptised her features anew.

Then it was chaos. The room devolved into a din of shouts and swears, the attentions, hands and blades of the remaining guards now all firmly upon Skad and no longer on who they should have really been watching.

There was no discipline in it, just maddening limbs of devout passion. Each of the three remaining guards showed more of themselves in the fray than they ever could with words. One, smartly, moved to restrain, grabbing at the wrist that brandished the tribute of his colleague. The second lashed out with fists and feet, seeking more violent retribution.

But the third held no handle over his emotions, his venom for their kind came in an unsheathed sword. He ran her through in a motion that believed that the only good Nordwiir was a dead one. It pushed the air out of her lungs, she could feel the bite of the blade in the next breath that they thought would be one of her last.

They were wrong.

Instead, Skad's hands joined the guard's upon his hilt and she pulled, driving the weapon deeper until their grip was joined at her chest. All the while she bore gritted teeth at him, clamped under pressure that threatened to crack them, that eye wild and wide.

“Mad fucking bitch!”

He was too close, far too close to a woman who had just willingly pulled a sword through herself. Swiftly, the guard learned this as those teeth snapped forward and clamped around the tip of his nose. Skad tore her head backwards and with it came flesh and cartilage within her maw which was only served to be spat back in the man's now disfigured face.

 

[Kol]

Kol didn't watch Skad as she wrought her havoc in the Guard House.

He had seen it a dozen times over.

The woman had slaughtered men twice her size. Had taken the haft of an ax buried to her spine. Once, Kol had seen her directly bisected, her flesh peeled from her bones and her head almost tumbling from her neck. Yet all she had done was to continue to fight. Tearing her enemies apart and ripping into them as only a Nordwiir could.

Skad was dedicated, devout. Perhaps even more so than him.

The Dark Gods were no longer looking at him, were no longer watching him. Their eyeless grins were peering at Skad as she wrought her bloody havoc, tearing into the Guardsmen and ripping them to shreds even as the cold steel of a sword buried itself in her chest.

Kol worked quickly. His knife dug into his forearm, blood spilling from his flesh. It drew down his skin and into his palm. An odd smoking sizzle carrying from the crimson nectar.

His hand flicked forward, and the iron hissed.

Within seconds the blood bit through the metal, eating across the iron until it was naught but a bare wisp of itself. The Sorcerer raised his boot, and with a heavy thunk sent the bars clattering onto the floor. One of the Guards turned, roused by the noise.

Kol whipped his blade forward, landing the point of the curved rune knife directly into his chest. His hand raised a second later, blood upon it steaming and then suddenly dissipating as the knife exploded from within the guardsmen's chest.

His blood cascaded over his fellows and Skad, burning, sizzling like acid as it touched their flesh.

He knew the faithful would survive the pain, would thrive upon it. The Guardsmen however screamed, their cries of pain echoing out within the walls as the horror of their end came upon them.