[Mkguild] Snow Storm- Part 4

[Hallan Mirayas]

February 25

 

    Misha need not have worried, at least about
Xavier and Wolfram.  Xavier warmed up over time, especially once they
found the common ground of each having a sister in the Marigund Mage Guild.
 Wolfram, realizing that he wasn't going to impress his way into the Long
Scouts in a day, settled down into being reliably competent.  Misha could
see why George wanted to keep him: there was good potential in the man.

 

    For an improvisation, Drift's plan bore fruit
quite quickly as their week in Glen Avery passed.  It started out (to
Xavier's groan at the cliché of it all) at the Glen Avery tavern.  Lars
vaguely remembered Drift's father and his sudden death, and pointed them to one
of the older Glen scouts, now retired due to injury.  "Better be
warned, though," the bartender said as he directed them to a home just
outside the Glen.  "He's a grumpy old cuss, and his place isn't kind
to those with sensitive noses."

 

    "Yeah, what do you want?"  Lars'
warning had not been idle.  The former scout's home, a ramshackle
wood-and-stone cabin, looked like it had survived at least five attempts at
burning it, and it could be smelled from much farther away than it could be
seen.  This was to be expected: it was a leather tannery.  Urine,
dung, rotting meat, and even worse odors drove Xavier to moisten a handkerchief
with several drops from a small bottle of perfume and clutch it over his nose
in desperation.  Meanwhile, Drift tried
to persuade the hostile brown eye glaring at him through the barely-opened door
to come out and talk for a few minutes.  "I'm busy!" the eye
snapped, but a voice from inside the cabin drew its attention away for a
moment.  When the eye returned, its ire seemed to have banked a little, or
at least partially found another target.  "All right, fine, gimme a
minute," it growled, and the door shut hard.

 

    The quartet of friends glanced at each other as
a thud-clump, thud-clump resounded from inside, and then the occupant of the
cabin stepped forth carrying a torn-off leg of cooked meat still hanging on a
thick thigh bone.  He was a short, bearish creature clad in leather and
furred pelts, black-furred save for a grimy white 'V' across his shoulders and
chest along the collarbone.  A short, otterlike tail stood out behind him,
bushed with irritation, and a wooden leg carved in crude imitation of its
fellow ended his right leg from the knee down.  "What do you want?"
he snapped.  "Hurry up.  I'm missing dinner."

 

    "I...  um..."

 

    Misha stepped in for the suddenly intimidated
samoyed.  "My friend would like to hire you for a job, if you're able
to do it.  His father was killed in the area several years ago, and we
were told that you were the one who first found the body."

 

    "I found a lot of dead bodies," the
bear-otter growled, taking an enormous bite out of the shank in his hand and
spraying spittle around it while he chewed.  "Narrow it down or don't
waste my time."

 

    "A goat," Drift replied, and then
hastily amended.  "A goat-cursed Keeper, gray fur, short horns.
 He was found in the area with a lutin blade through his chest, six years
ago."

 

    "Ah.  That one.  What's in it
for me?"

 

    "This."  Drift underhand tossed
a small pouch, which the bear-otter caught from midair with a clink of coins.
 Several pieces of silver spilled out into his palm, with the glint of
more inside.

 

    "This is nearly two weeks' wages,"
the leathermaker said with grudging admiration, judging the quantity by weight
and sound alone.  He quickly hustled the surprise out of his voice and
dropped it back into its rude growl.  "All this supposing I can
remember where-"

 

    "And guide us to-"

 

    "And guide you to someplace where some old
goat got himself killed- ow!"

 

    "Byron!  For shame!"  An
old human man, gray of hair and wearing an incongruously feminine apron,
stepped out of the cabin from behind the animal Keeper.  His face had a
pinched, nearsighted look and he squinted for a moment to take a look at the
visitors.  Finally, he rounded on the beastly Byron and snatched the money
pouch away.  "Quit acting like a child!  This young man is
looking for his father's death site.  You will show him where it is this
very evening and without any more of your lip, or I'll break a switch off on
your backside like you were still two years old and just you see if I don't!"
 As he spoke, he drove the beast-man backward with sharp jabs of the metal
ladle in his hand, the one he had earlier used for a rap between the ears.
 "You spent the last three days complaining about how you're sick of
being stuck inside.  Well, the snow's melted and the ground's dry enough
for you to walk without your stump leg sticking, so go take a walk!"

 

    "Ow!  Dammit, Ma!  Ow!"
Byron cursed, and swiped at the swinging ladle, then tried to parry it with his
half-eaten leg shank.  He got smacked hard on the nose for his trouble.
 "All right!  Fine!  I'll do it!  Ow!  Just quit
hitting me!"

 

    "Nice pressure point strikes," Misha
murmured under his breath.

 

    Byron speared the fox with a venomous but
impotent glare, and then shoved his way back into the cabin with a muttered
string of curses.  He returned with a wide-footed cane and stumped down
from the porch, still muttering obscenities with a variety and fluency that
would do credit to a full army battalion.  "Come on," he snarled
as he started off into the woods, ripping the last of the meat off the shank
with his teeth and gripping the leg bone in a clenched fist like a primitive
club.  "I haven't got all day."

 

    "What is his problem?" Drift asked,
lagging behind for a moment with the old man to reclaim his money pouch.

 

    The old man sighed, handing the small leather
bag over.  "His leg pains him badly, especially when a storm's coming."

 

    "A storm?  How far off?"

 

    The old man eyed the sky through the treetops.
 "Hard to tell...  could be a few hours, could be a few days.
 The stronger the storm, the farther off he feels it."

 

    "My friend is a weather mage... he would
have told me if a storm were on its way."

 

    "Well, I can't say as I can argue with a
storm mage," the old man hedged, "but my boy's not been wrong yet."
 He gestured with the ladle toward the departing group.  "Now
you hustle off after him or you'll get left behind.  I hope you find what
you're looking for."

 

    Drift needn't have hurried, and soon wished he
hadn't.  The smell of the tannery clung to Byron with the tenacity of a
lover: a putrid, stomach-churning cloud that trailed behind him when he walked,
yet refused to dissipate no matter what strength of breeze Xavier called.
 It maintained the bear-otter's personal space quite effectively as
everyone else jockeyed to stay upwind.  "No, I don't bathe much,"
Byron snapped when he caught the leopard's incredulous sidelong glance.  "It's
half the reason the lutins don't bother me."

 

    "And the other half?" Misha asked,
the least affected by the stench thanks to years as a siege engineer.

 

    Byron grinned, a twisted smile of yellowed
teeth and savored malice.  "Because I'm a mean bastard trapmaker with
a lot of time on my hands.  Don't step there."  Without breaking
stride, he reached out with his cane and jerked Wolfram away from an
unremarkable stretch of path.

 

    The ram paused, confused, but Misha took one
glance and walked around the spot.  "Booby trap.  Watch your
step."  Continuing on once he'd made sure that his companions had
made it past the booby trap without incident (and after discouraging Drift from
trying to figure out how it worked), he caught up to the trapmaker.  "I've
heard of you.  The lutins call you Slow Death."

 

    "I know.  When they piss me off, I
make sure I live up to it."

 

    "You do realize we've negotiated a truce
with them now."

 

    "Yeah, I know."  Byron hawked
and spat, his muzzle wrinkling in a disgusted snarl.  "Like that will
last.  What a stupid decision."

 

    Misha's eyes narrowed. "So you think we
should just keep fighting the lutins endlessly?"

 

    "You think we won't?  We should have
killed off all the little green monsters when we had the chance."

 

    "Fighting the lutins endlessly didn't help
the empire," the fox responded. "We have to at least try to end it."

 

    "Hmmph," Byron harrumphed, unable to
deny the logic of that.  Not that he didn't try.  "Won't last,"
he grumbled and stumped onward, refusing to be drawn into any further
conversation aside from an occasional 'Don't step there' or 'Don't touch that'.
 Every so often, he stopped to renew a set of claw marks raked into a
tree's bark, a broad-mouthed 'V' mimicking the distinctive pattern of white
along his collarbone.  The message was clear, a warning to lutin intruders
and Metamor scouts alike: 'This is my territory.  Stay out, or else.'
 Their guide's taciturn manner and the growing paranoia invoked by his
numerous booby traps brought a damper down on conversation in general, and
silence descended on the group until they reached their destination.

 

    Unsurprisingly, Byron's first words were, "Don't
touch anything."

 

    Two years ago, a ferocious windstorm had
descended upon Metamor Valley.  To Metamor it had brought a tornado, but
to the Glen it had only brought tree-flattening winds.  When the Glen's
timber crews ventured out afterward, they had discovered something remarkable
in Byron's 'hunting territory'.  An oak, one of the ancient monarchs of
the forest, had toppled roots and all, ripping open the hillock upon which it
had grown.  This left a miniature amphitheatre, roofed by a lid of roots
and drained by a small spring that burbled and bubbled near the entrance.

 

    It was to this spot that Byron led them, and he
repeated himself as he carefully stepped into the sheltered earthen cave.
 "I mean it," he said, his voice for once lacking its habitual
snarl.  In its place, it held the wary tension of someone trying to sneak
up on a large, highly venomous, and extremely irritable snake.  "Stay
outside.  Do not touch a damn thing.  Don't even breathe in
here without my say-so."  Moving with the ginger care of a tightrope
walker, Byron made his way across the room, visibly planning each footfall
before he made it.

 

    "What do you think this one is?"
Drift quietly asked Misha, but it was Byron that answered.

 

    "My masterpiece.  Shut up and stop
distracting-"

 

    Click.

 

    Five sets of eyes widened, and Byron dove for
the ground.  A storm of metal darts
lacerated the air where he'd just been standing, scything at waist height
across the entire alcove.  Rolling to the side and pulling his legs up
into a tight ball, he dodged a second hail of metal that descended from the
ceiling to rip up nearly the entire floor.  Only the spot where he lay
remained untouched.  The thigh bone he'd carried for an after-dinner snack
lay shattered on the ground nearby, speared by two darts, and a third hummed
like an angry wasp in the hard wooden calf of his artificial leg.

 

    The bear-otter carefully uncoiled and shot a
furious glare at the shocked faces looking in.  "Dammit.  It'll
take -hours- to reset this damned thing," he complained as he jerked the
dart from his leg, and then threw his cane at Wolfram when the ram tried to
come in to help him up.  "Don't step there.  It's a trap that
will kill you."  Levering himself with difficulty to his feet, he
waved them away from the door with the back of his hand.  "You do whatever
you need to do out there," he said to the samoyed.  "Your pa was
found right next to this tree before it got knocked over.  I'll let you
know when it's safe to come in, if you need to."  Misha was just
starting to draw the three of them away when Byron's voice called out again.
 "And if you see a cairn of rocks out there, for Sammekh's sake,
DON'T TOUCH IT!"

 

    Four sets of eyes exchanged glances, and Xavier
circled one extended finger next to his ear in the universal gesture for
‘crazy’.  Misha nodded.  "Smart, but... yeah."

 

    "I HEARD THAT!"

 

    While Misha and Drift circled around to the far
side of the hollowed hillock to search, Wolfram and Xavier swung wide, out into
the forest where they could secure a perimeter.  Every so often, Xavier
pulled a metal rod from a pack Wolfram carried and stuck it into the ground,
each giving a soft hum before going silent as they attuned to their
surroundings.  "Is he sleeping any better?" the leopard asked.

 

    Wolfram shook his head.  "He thinks
he's being quiet enough to fool me, but he's still having nightmares.  If
his thrashings are any judge, pretty bad ones."

 

    "I'll pick up some sleeping powders from
the town healer tonight when we get back.  Can you get them into one of
his drinks?"

 

    "He won't thank you for it."

 

    "Probably not," Xavier replied with a
shrug, "but it's for his own good.  He needs to rest.  You've
seen how tired he looks.  Can you do it?"

 

    Wolfram shrugged the rapidly emptying bag
further up onto his shoulder.  "Yeah, I can do it," he replied,
and kept the rest of his thought to himself.  I can, I'm just not
certain if I will.  "If I see the chance to.  I can't
make promises."

 

    "Fair enough."

 

-----

 

Feb 26

 

    Hidden away in a secret room lit by a single
candle, Alexastra winced at her reflection in the mirror.  "A closer
escape than I would have liked," she said to herself as she dipped a cloth
in a small basin of water and dabbed at a long cut over her eye, carefully
mopping the blood while it healed.  Her healing wasn't as fast as an imp's
regeneration, but at least it didn't sting so badly.  It also didn't take
enough daedric energy to disrupt her stealth and reveal her to Kyia and the
Lothanasi.  That alone would have made it worth the wait even if it had
hurt like a week-long stay in Lord Revonos' personal torture chambers.

 

    Still, all things considered, I would
consider that a successful bit of mischief.  It should keep Linafex
occupied for quite some time.  Implicating Linafex in a
northward-bound smuggling ring had probably been enough of a distraction, but
she'd decided to sweeten the pot with a little something extra.  How she
wished she could watch the hound Keeper try to explain, either to the Watch or
to his wife, the hand-sculpted statuette of Duke Thomas she'd hidden in his
workshop.  A naked and quite explicit statuette of Duke Thomas.

 

    Ah, to be a fly on the wall for that
conversation.  A malicious chuckle echoed into the darkness as the
wound over her brow closed.

 

    Next up...  Thestilus.  She
dabbed once more at her fur, clearing away the last hint of crimson, then set
the cloth down and examined her unmarked reflection in the mirror, smiling with
satisfaction.  Brushing her fur back into place with the side of a claw,
she allowed herself the indulgence of anticipation, and the far wider smile
that thought brought to her lips boded very ill for her former partner.

 

    Her merriment died a sudden death as an
unfamiliar noise reached her ears.  From the moment she'd created her
secret room in the sewers under the Jolly Collie Tavern, she'd made a point to
familiarize herself with all of the usual sounds of the area.  The echoing
click of claws on stone was not one of those.  Careful to make as little
noise as possible, she emptied the washbasin into a small drain and put it
away, then reached for her hand crossbow and nocked a bolt with the stealthy
smoothness of a trained assassin.  At the same time, she shifted shape
from a fruit bat Keeper to a dark-haired human woman- it would not do to have
Alexis linked to this should worse come to worst- and sank back into the
shadows.

 

    Claws on stone in a quadrupedal gait suggested
an animal of some sort, but they were too spread out and too heavy a footfall
for it to be a normal beast.  The next most logical source would therefore
be a taurform Keeper, but how would one of those fit down here?  She shook
her head, dismissing the useless question as the footfalls continued past her
hideaway.  As long as they didn't spot the secret door, she had no cause
for concern-

 

    The footfalls stopped short.  Then they
reversed themselves, and Alexastra silently cursed as she heard an
investigative sniff at the base of the door.  She reached for the door of
one of her several escape tunnels, just to make sure it was unlocked and ready
for a hasty exit.  She also reached for a tin of powder that would numb
the nose of any beast trying to track her by scent.  Still, as long as they didn't start hunting
for the latch-

 

    Scratch, scrabble, scratch- click!

 

    Damnation!

 

    She heard the latch click as the same moment
that she realized, to her professional horror, that she'd left the bloodied
cloth on the nightstand!  That was a trace spell just begging to
happen, and she wasted a second that she couldn't afford to spare incinerating
it with a mortal-style fire spell while the secret door to her hideaway swung
open.  The small fire distracted the intruder long enough to get a good
look at him, and her brow furrowed in confusion.  In the doorway stood one
of the largest dire wolves she had ever seen outside of Lilith's own kennels.
 Where had it come from?  Hadn't Drift taken all of Metamor's dire
wolves off to-

 

    The wolf's head turned and the two locked eyes.
 Both froze, shocked into momentary paralysis by mutual recognition.
   "Of all the- You?!  Damn it, I do not need more
distractions!" Alexastra snarled, then fired her crossbow and leaped for
the shelter of a sturdy writing desk.  The wolf dodged the bolt and then
lunged for her, but his delay had bought her a second's head start.  She
made the most of it, sweeping up the chair and smashing it across his face
before diving under the desk, slapping open the hidden panel, and crawling as
fast as she could into the escape tunnel.

 

    She wasn't quite fast enough, and a
massive paw slapped down on her ankle.  Black claws snagged on her boot,
and the jolt of it jarred the crossbow out of her hand.  To her
frustration, it bounced just out of reach.  He dragged her back, preparing
to bite her in half, but she grabbed one of the tunnel braces to counter.
 Seizing the moment, she rolled onto her back, shapeshifted her free foot
into a hawk's talons, and raked it down the wolf's paw.  The talons didn't
draw blood through the beast's thick fur, but they hurt and he let go with a
yelp.  

 

    Alexastra scrambled deeper into the tunnel,
back out of reach, and retrieved her crossbow, checking it hastily before
blowing out a sigh of relief.  No damage.  A cavernous growl chased
after her, and she whirled around to bring her weapon into line for another
shot.  Framed by the desk and nearly sparking with fury, a yellow eye
glared at her for a moment before jerking back out of sight, taking the paw
along with it before she could shoot either one.

 

    She almost kicked out the support that would
collapse the end of the tunnel, ensuring her escape, but then paused in
frustration.  First Malabrinium and now -him-? she raged inside.
 Is everyone who has ever seen through my disguises here?
 If she let him go, he'd expose her.  There was no question, not
after what she'd done to him the last time they'd met.  Worse, she'd forgotten to scatter the scent-masking
powder before running.  All of her
Metamor disguises, especially Alexis, were compromised by that damnably
effective wolven nose, and again she cursed herself for her mistake with the
bloodied cloth.  If she killed him, she'd
just have to come back at the new moon and kill him again.  And then again
the next month.  And the next...  Not exactly unappealing, given
their history, but tedious in the long run.  That left one other option,
and her lips curled in pained distaste as she thought it.  This was going
to be expensive.

 

    Shifting her hawk-taloned foot back into a
boot, she settled prone on the tunnel floor and lined up her shot.  It was
for just such a contingency that she had made sure the 'door close' trigger to
her secret room had been in line-of-sight of every single escape tunnel.
 She fired, hitting it square, and the stone door ground shut behind him before
the wolf could stop it.  Next, she opened a small compartment in the stock
of the crossbow and pulled out a single, heavily enchanted bolt.  It was a
special one, obscenely expensive to make.  This she also nocked and fired.
 It hit the wall with the sound of an angry hornet and, unbroken,
ricocheted onward seeking someone to sting.  It found something on the
third bounce.  Ping-ping-ping-whack!  The wolf yelped, and Alexastra
bared her teeth.  She hoped it had hit that interfering bastard somewhere
delicate.  Nocking a regular bolt for the sound of it, she called out, "I
have plenty more just like that one, Saelor."  She lied with the
forceful conviction of someone growing used to having to play outrageous
bluffs, and used the old name she'd known him by back in the days of the
Suielman Empire just to twist the knife.  "Now shut up and listen or
I'll fill you so full of them you'll think you'd been born a pincushion."
 Taking a deep breath, she pushed ahead before her ego could try to
advocate the monthly killing again.  Well, maybe as a backup plan...

 

    "I'll make you a deal..."

 

    Some time later, Alexastra curled up in Drift's
bed.  She had nowhere else to go.  It felt cold and empty with him
gone, but at least it smelled like him and she could imagine his arms holding
her.  As she drifted off, she groused a short complaint to her mistress,
Nocturna: A little warning that he was coming would have been appreciated.

 

    In her dreams, she heard Drift's voice in her
ear, but with Nocturna's words.  None was needed.  You handled him
perfectly.

 

    The first few times Nocturna had taken over a voice in her dreams,
the mental dissonance had jarred Alexastra awake.  Now, she was too tired
to care.  Tell that to my nice, comfortable hideaway.  Now the
place will smell like dog... and not in a good way.  If he marks territory
on my furniture again, I swear I'll neuter him.  Rolling over in her
sleep, she pulled the covers tighter and sank into dreamless slumber.

 

-----

 

    Drift jolted awake with a gasp and clutched at
his chest in the darkness, then sagged back on the bed and focused on getting
his heart to stop racing.

 

    It was a good plan, but it died stillborn when
he heard the floorboard creak next to his bed.  Whirlwind was swinging
even before he realized he'd snatched it from under the pillow, and the
intruder yelped in pain as the collapsed battle staff caught him across the
arm.  Something flew against the wall and shattered, and a voice grumbled,
"That is the last time I try to wake you up without a ten-foot
pole.  Ow."

 

    "Wolfram?" Drift asked, still trying
to sort dream from reality.  The room's utter darkness didn't help, deep
in the caves of the Glen Avery inn.  "What- are you all right?"

 

    "I'll probably have a bruise the size of a
dinner platter under my wool tomorrow, but I'll live.  I think the
sleeping medicine I was going to offer you is a complete loss, though.
 The tankard, too."

 

    "Sorry."

 

    The ram snorted softly, crouching down and
trying by feel to find the pottery shards in the dark before he stepped on
them.  "So this is why you insisted on the bed against the wall: it
leaves your smithing arm open to swing."

 

    "Pretty much."  Drift groped for
the bedside table nearby.  "Wait, let me get my-"

 

    The door to the room swung open with a
brilliant white flash, and Drift and Wolfram both flinched and shielded their
eyes from the painful brightness.

 

    "-light.  Ow.  Hi, Xavier."

 

    The black leopard, clad in a nightshirt, a
glowing white orb flickering and arcing in his upraised palm like a living
thing, lowered his rapier when he saw Drift and Wolfram were the only two in
the room.  Behind him, Misha also relaxed his guard.  "Are you
all right?  I heard a crash."

 

    "Yeah," Wolfram answered before Drift
could reply.  "I just dropped a pitcher, that's all.  Hold the
light up so I can find the pieces without stepping on them, will you?"

 

    Xavier flicked the white orb into the room,
brightening it with an actinic flash, and Misha edged around the leopard to
help with the cleanup.  "Are you sure that's all that happened?"
he asked, peering carefully at Drift's expression.

 

    The samoyed didn't disappoint him, replying
with an embarrassed smile.  "He startled me in the dark and I took a
swing at him."  He held up Whirlwind for a moment, and then tucked it
back under the pillow.  "Sorry."

 

    "I'll be fine," Wolfram replied
before Misha could ask, flexing his wrist with only a minor wince.  "At
worst, I'll have a bruise for a few days.  It was a glancing blow."

 

    "If you say so," the fox replied,
still not completely convinced that there wasn't more to the story, but at
least mollified that no permanent damage was caused.  "Let me know in
the morning if you have any problems."

 

    "Will do, boss."

 

    A few minutes of cleanup later, Xavier and
Misha headed back to bed, and Wolfram eyed Drift over the flickering glow of a
lit candle.  "Want to talk about it?" he asked finally,
carefully plucking a sliver of ceramic from the split of his right foot-hoof
and flicking it aside.

 

    Drift's eyes slid away from Wolfram's, and his
voice turned deliberately neutral.  "Not particularly."

 

    "All right.  Whoever you're chasing
in your nightmares better hope you don't catch them." Drift looked up,
startled, and Wolfram snorted in amusement.  "We’ve been sharing a
room for a week, and you talk in your sleep.  But that’s enough about
that."  Changing the subject, he grabbed the samoyed's wrist and
lifted him to his feet.  "C'mon.  I've got a surefire
get-back-to-sleep-fast method."

 

    Drift grimaced, remembering the usual common
ingredient in any of Wolfram's 'surefire cures'.  "Am I going to have
a hangover in the morning?"

 

    "Only if I make it wrong."

 

    "Why does that not fill me with
confidence?"

 

    "Oh, ye of little faith..."

 		 	   		  
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