Open Chronicles The Heart of the Taiga

[Adam]

Taketan Teahouse, nestled between the fringe of the Taagi Baara Steppes and the River Sayve ...

I've never been one for long conversations, self-reflection or thinking things through. Instead, I've always been what they call a "doer", at least that was the phrased used in my motherland. Don't think, just do. Get up early, start doing and don't stop doing until the sun goes down and the light leaves the world again. If you give your mind the chance, pesky thoughts will slip in and your mind will always turn to darkness ... that's a creed that I always lived by. It's always best to stay busy. But as I sat in this smoky "teahouse", on cushions in accordance the barbaric local customs, with my back fuckin' sore and an uncomfortability that alternated between whichever arse cheek was carrying the most weight, I was wondering if I should start thinking things through anymore.

"This is dumb, mate." That was my new mate Greaves accosting my thoughts with his broad drawl. Greavesy was a tough one to pin down. He was older than me (which wasn't hard), bigger than me, a better fighter than me, faster, more vicious, stronger, angrier ... he was also overly sensitive, a serial pessimist, and spent most of his time desperately trying to convince me and the rest of the fellas that he was a great guy. Would give you the shirt off his back though. "I'm going to tell Wat that we shouldn't be doing this."

"Yeah." I said, absently agreeing to avoid a pointless argument. The truth was, the time to raise any concerns was weeks ago, when Wat had accepted this contract. I hadn't been doing mercenary work long by that point, but I knew that we were desperate and Wat had accepted this deal so we could eat and feed the horses another two weeks. I also knew that it was a fuckin' dumb contract and that the plan fuckin' sucked.

"What?" said Greaves, "it is dumb!"

"I know mate," I said. "We're about to go after a tribe of centaurs to retrieve some princess or lady or whatever for her short, fat dad in the middle of the steppes which provides no cover or concealment, and they can move faster than we can. And there are more of them than there are of us, way more. And we're not gettin' paid enough. I know."

Greaves sighed, satisfied that his reasoning was correct. "I'm tellin' Wat."

"Okay mate," I said, and turned back to my small bowl of alcoholic milk that tasted like someone had turned yoghurt into cat piss. I played absently with the wooden hilt of my old iron sword, a few things playing on my mind. I watched old (he was in his thirties), stocky Wat, the only one of us who had earned enough to afford a chain mail shirt, moving around the teahouse and trying to convince an assortment of local riverlanders, steppe horse masters and random adventurers to join us and wondered if anyone would be dumb enough. But I was more concerned about the further future. Would I survive this? After all, I was only nineteen, and I felt like I really hadn't started living yet.

 

[Cato]

"'More like to convince the Goddess to wet your cock but I wish you luck." Cato gave the stocky man, Wat, a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. The mercenary's words were surprisingly genuine. Mostly cause he was one of the dumb bastards that agreed to this thrice-fucked rescue mission. He knew it was going to take more than a few swords to see this through. Also most weren't too keen fighting Centaurs on their own territory, and for good bloody reason.

Once again the mercenary cursed his lack of foresight. A flaw common among his type. It was easy to make promises when you never knew if the next sunrise was coming. Cato owed the Baron a favor and going back on his word wasn't an option. The Company had a thing about giving your word, was as good as a contract. Breaking a contract without reason was a good way to get shivved. Gods only knew the bastards in the Third would jump at the chance.

He was still muttering curses to himself as he found himself before a dour-looking lad. "Got the look of a man regretting every damned choice he's made. Or could be that's just the horse piss you're drinking." The mercenary's grin was knowing. It's probably how Cato looked every morning. Not that he had a mirror to check. "Name's Cato. You one of Wat's lads then?"

Adam

 

[Sigrith]

"Centaur tracker?" a gruff looking man exchanged a glance with his crew. It was the sort of glance you gave your buddies to see how much they agreed that the proposed idea was a complete wash. The same man gave Wat a leery shake of his head and then refused to talk to him anymore.

Wat would find his search for a tracker woefully cursed. As others heard his asking, they'd turn him away before he got a foot into their conversations or meals.

"You might ask Miss Wolf," said a young komodo servant, gesturing with a nod of their head toward the side exit few people used, "she tracked down a stolen servant last week."


Miss Wolf was not quite what Wat was expecting. At least not when addressed with a title such as Miss, no matter how correct the latter part of the name was. Miss Wolf was indeed an actual wolf, and what a wolf she was. Someone who'd ventured as far north as the Tundras would wager she was a direwolf, though her own size rivaled those as well. Nearly big enough to ride as a mount into battle ... if she'd not be insulted by the thought of it.

Wearing a pelt black as ebony, chalky white dusted the tips of her ears, hackles, and tail while two mismatched eyes watched Wat as he approached and lowered a plate of table scraps to the ground before the wolf--as the servant had instructed of him. The wolf made no show of etiquette, and gulped down the offering with a maw that could have ripped the man's head clean off his shoulders. Plate clean, it sat up. A purple tongue passed over her snout as she listened to Wat's story.

"I see," said the wolf, catching the man off-guard with her spoken words, "and what do you offer in return for my aid?"

A wolf had no need of riches or gold.

Adam Cato

 

[Adam]

Wat, Captain of the Allirian Mercenaries (so named to give an air of established competence), was a difficult man to read and make no mistake about it. I didn't really know what I felt about him, even if I took the time to sit down and really figure it out. He'd been good to me and the boys so far; he was fair when dividing the meager pay and spoils from our successes, but was likely to explode with rage at the first sign of failure or any hint of discontent. He seemed wickedly smart some days and completely out of his depth emotionally on others, and it was clear that the only reason that he was the Captain was there was a lack of any other reasonable candidate.

Greaves was definitely smarter than Wat and a better fighter, but he was emotionally stunted and had no self awareness, was divisive amongst the rest of the fellas and was quick to violence. Me? Far too green. Lochen, a tall blonde lad from a dairy farm out east was a dead shot with a bow but even more of a whelp than me. The rest of the fellas? Just happy to be around and turn beef jerky into shit if you ask me. Jos, a big, confident and deceptively quick man a few years older than me was really the only bet ... and in my estimation, would be Captain sooner rather than later. He was decisive, jovial and charismatic, and Wat knew it. He clung to his position with the desperation of a man hanging from the face of a high cliff. As I watched him moving around the tavern, trying in vain to get more numbers to our little suicide mission, I couldn't help but feel for the man.

"Got the look of a man regretting every damned choice he's made. Or could be that's just the horse piss you're drinking." I looked up to see another man favouring me with a smug grin. He was tall, a mess of black hair, tattered clothing and weapons. So just like the rest of us. I raised an eyebrow and grunted. Pot, meet kettle, I thought. "Name's Cato. You one of Wat's lads then?"

"Yeah," I said, trying to get a better read of the guy. 'Cato' wasn't a name I was familiar with, but he looked deadly enough. Probably deadlier than me, so I gestured from him to sit down. "Adam. Welcome to the shitshow."

He was older than me and I could see the glint of mail under his overcloak, so he'd obviously been in the game a while and had made some coin? So why was he here? Anyone with half a brain would know that this was a high risk, low reward operation, and anyone who had been around this game for a time would stay well clear. Only the most desperate type of operators would even have a sniff; that's how Wat had got them into this mess. And I was curious enough to ask him.

"So who do you owe coin to, big fella?" I repaid his grin in kind. "Or did you fuck the Baron's wife so he's tryin' to get you killed?" Before me lay a piece of parchment and some small wooden chess pieces. I couldn't read or write (didn't see the point) and I couldn't play chess but I could draw, and I could plan. I wasn't planning on dying during this errant venture

Cato

---Break---

Wat had been doing this line of work for fifteen years, and hadn't planned on doing it for more than five. It is amazing what happens when one sees himself lose the sense of purpose of his youth, and his appetite for risk. Now Wat simply tried to stay alive. He and his little band had been operating between the Reach and the Spine for years, but never in his life had he heard of, let alone seen, a talking wolf. And the thing was massive. Unnatural, even more so than these strange, filthy people who inhabited the banks of the Sayve. He hated them, but the only feeling he could conjure up for the wolf was confusion. The Backwater Kingdoms, where he and his fellas were from, was a sheltered part of the world. A talking wolf was almost beyond his comprehension.

"I see, and what do you offer in return for my aid?" Wat felt his jaw fall almost to his knees and caught himself, trying to appear composed despite being clearly out of his depth. He searched for words and couldn't find many, instead staring hard at the ground as if he was trying to make grass sprout from it. After a few seconds he spoke, incredulity tinging his higher-pitched voice.

"Fuck, I dunno," the stocky man laughed. "Whatever a talking wolf wants? A favour?"

This was as out of his depth as Wat had been in his entire life, and he was starting to culminate mentally from the sheer oddness of it all.

Sigrith

 

[Cato]

"Might be underselling it a bit," Cato said with a chuckle as he took a seat. The lad was young but seemed like he knew his way around the business. Probably had seen a proper scrap or two. Most didn't make it past their first. Never really got easier. You learned what jobs to take, and which to avoid. At least you were supposed to and yet here he fucking was. Some godsdamned Steppe inn without a chair in sight. Well, better than face down in some Allirian ditch.

The mercenary sighed at the lad's question. "Owing coin's not the problem-not this time leastways." A man like Cato always owed someone. Really just the brothels in Alliria, and maybe a few inns. Mostly the whores though. "Better if I had with the missus. Think the Baron would've just tried to kill me outright. No, bit more complicated than that." His mind wandered for a moment. "He helped me and my boys out of a bind a few years back."

Nothing was ever free in this world. Cato was a bloody sellsword, he should've known better. "How'd you get tied up with Wat? 'Suppose he wouldn't have a chance to mention it but we met on a contract a couple years ago. Man knows his stuff, not surprised he's still kickin about. Though that's like to change for all of us here real soon."

Adam Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

"Fuck, I dunno," the stocky man laughed. "Whatever a talking wolf wants? A favour?"

The wolf's skull tilted downward, affixing its weirdly mismatched eyes on the man and the confused awe he bungled to hide. These summerlanders, so simple. Barely more substance to them than the prey they hunted for their meals. Nary a hint of spirit, and certainly not a lick of ether.

Souls as barren as the desert. The meat on his bones was probably just as dry and tasteless.

But favors had value where she came from.

"Any favor of my asking in return for my aid in tracking the centaurs?" the wolf repeated, paused to consider, honed her gaze in on his right hand, "Cut your thumb and it will be done."

 

[Adam]

The older bloke, Cato, seemed to be the kind of mercenary who understood that this business wasn't all about killing. There was another side to it that most seemed to ignore, the softer side that shared a commonality with pretty much any other line of work. At the end of the day, mercenary work was all about talking to people and helping them out. If you seemed like a good enough fella and were happy to do another merc a favour out of the kindness of your heart, the more likely you were to get cut into bigger jobs, and the less likely you were to get killed when there was a choice to be made. Good mercenaries looked after each other where they could while the bastard types got done away with whenever they lost any sort of leverage. That's how, I figured, an old fella like Cato had stuck around for so long. I sought to emulate that longevity.

So the fact that Cato knew Wat wasn't surprising. For all of my reservations about the man losing his edge a little, Wat was a good mercenary and did in fact know his stuff. Despite our scraggy appearance and our lack of high paying contracts, I generally found that our little company was better organised than most. Apart from Wat we had three Lieutenants (Jos and Greavesy were two of them) who had five to eight of the fellas working directly for them, which meant Wat only had to tell three people what to do, not twenty. Each of the three groups had separate roles, but each could fight. Greaves' boys were good at fires, explosives and battering open doors; Jos' boys were the heavy hitters; and I worked for Dav, who led the scouts. It was a pretty good little set up.

"How'd you get tied up with Wat? 'Suppose he wouldn't have a chance to mention it but we met on a contract a couple years ago. Man knows his stuff, not surprised he's still kickin about. Though that's like to change for all of us here real soon."

"A couple o' years ago I ran with a different group of fellas as a yngling. We ended up on different sides of the same job and Wat's boys got the best of it, pretty handily. Instead of leaving me corpse in a canal somewhere he offered me a job. So I took it." I took a swig of my alcoholic goat milk-piss and grimaced. "As for not kickin' about after this contract, speak for yourself mate. I ain't fuckin' dying'."

I figured I was probably coming across a bit grumpy and grinned, raising an eyebrow to show that while I was serious, I was open-minded enough to stick this shit show out.

"What about you then, mate? How long you been part of our esteemed profession?"

---Break---

Wat internally groaned, knowing that he'd fucked up. Owing a favour to a talking, gargantuan wolf was not a good spot to be in no matter where you were from or what your daddy was named. But he also realised that he had no choice but to put his money where his mouth was. He needed a tracker and needed one bad. If he could get close to the band of centaurs without them catching wind, his chance of survival went from none to slim, but at least it registered on the survival scale.

The favour he could deal with later, if he even survived. Though hell know what a talking wolf would need his help with.

Grimacing, Wat produced his knife and cut his thumb, a few drops of blood dropping at the wolf's feet.

"Done then," Wat grunted. "We leave at dawn."

The stocky mercenary Captain wondered if he'd just made an excellent bargain or had signed the contract for his own doom. Time would tell. He looked back at the wolf, knowing that he needed to do what he could to make this working relationship a good one. Despite his misgivings about dealing with a talking fenrir, he knew that having her as an ally could potentially be a greatly profitable partnership in the future. So a little kindness might be able to take him a long way.

"What's your name then, Miss Wolf. Or what can I call ya?"

Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

Pleased with the offering, the wolf's maw split into a ghastly grin of fangs.

"Darkstride," it growled in response, then turned its back to the man and bedded down for the night beneath the tree he'd found it under.

 

[Cato]

"And here I thought almost dying was supposed to knock some sense into you," the mercenary retorted with a cynical chuckle. "Good man, Wat. Not many in this business would bother." Gods know I fucking wouldn't. Lad didn't need to know all that though. Last person that'd shown Cato any kind of charity was the old sergeant in the Watch. Pulled a sewer rat like him out of the slums. Didn't do him all that much good. Old man kicked it not long after and Cato was shot of the city guard only a few months later.

That was about as good as his childhood memories got. "Probably since I was a few years younger than you. Tried living an honest life, gods know it didn't take. Been near ten fucking years since I joined up with the 'Shields, Blackshields that is." Cato's expression was one of momentary amusement. "Guess you could say my 'family' is a bit bigger than yours. 'Course all that really means is I got more knives at my back. Can't say I've ever been bored." His grin was practically feral.

He turned to his cup, wondering when the last time he'd just had normal fucking conversation.

Adam Sigrith