Here is a short story to introduce a new character : the dwarf, Seagrum, a mercenary and slightly dodgy trader with a penchant for the macabre.
In the darkest corner of the
Mud Witch Tavern, a red patch of light glowed suddenly vermillion dulling to a subdued crimson. This was followed by a puff of grey acrid smoke
that wafted casually across the table and the two chairs that were barely
visible in that sombre space of darkness. The smoke had been despatched from a
mouth of variable size containing an irregular collection of teeth and a wet
and pinkish tongue. It should be noted that to those of a more discerning eye,
that pinkness had a distinct tendency towards purple on account of the claret.
The mouth then spat into the blackness that was the slate floor beneath the
table and a badly illuminated hand placed a pipe carefully down upon the sticky
surface of the table alongside a battered leather tankard. The hand and the
mouth as well as the tongue and the spit belonged to Seagrum, a dwarf of
significant stature (for a dwarf) and of a fearsome reputation both as a
mercenary and more recently, as a bounty hunter. The pipe was also his,
although it had begun that particular day in the possession of somebody
else.
This however is the
story of the dwarf and not of the pipe
and so, for our purposes and irrespective of the former owner whose life blood
had ceased to flow some hours before and whose corpse now lay abandoned in an
alleyway somewhere not far from the place now described, we shall give it little further thought. Suffice it to say
that its final contribution at this particular time is to offer a modicum of
pale luminescence – for it could not really be called light – to a character
sitting opposite the dwarf and who at this very moment seemed unwilling to
move, speak or indeed, even to breathe.
“You ‘ave it then?” growled
the dwarf, his eyes suddenly visible in a faint dragon-light that seemed
suddenly to pervade the corner.
“Mn...”
The other appeared to be caught in the act of swallowing
something unpalatable and ended its attempt at higher language with a grunt or
some other indistinguishable offering.
“Do I take that as assent?”
hissed Seagrum with a disdain that was almost palpable.
“Whuh?” came the reply.
“How much you askin’ for it,
laddie?”
“Fufty...” muttered the
other in what has to be taken as a kind of response.
“Beaks!” muttered the dwarf
to himself. He decided to speak to the only person present at the table who
seemed capable of understanding him or indeed of making sensible sounds.
“Let’s start again. You
listen and ...” he paused and offered a nod to the darkness, “... nod.... I’ll
talk.”
He waited a sufficient time
to allow the words to soak in to the dampness that was sitting opposite and
then he began again.
“You have the ...”
He paused as if he was
unwilling to speak the name of the item out loud.
“...merchandise.”
He waited a further moment
before continuing.
“You have a delivery note
for me and it says that it...” the pronoun replacing the distasteful word,
merchandise, “is stored...”
He paused again. This time
he was considering the location of the...merchandise.
“...in a ramshackle
warehouse barely a stone’s throw from here and down by the waterside.”
There was an awkward quiet.
That is the silence opposite continued but at the same time it seemed somehow
to be more uncomfortable.
“You may nod or otherwise
confirm all of this now. It would help to speed things along a bit.” said
Seagrum with moderately exaggerated contempt.
“Mn...” the other nodded
although the movement in the darkness was almost as unnoticeable as the sound
was clear.
“Mn!” repeated the dwarf.
“There’s a little more, isn’t there?... No don’t speak, let me guess.”
He picked up his pipe from
the table and took a few rapid puffs to get the leaf smouldering again. Once
more vermillion luminescence appeared in
the bowl, this time giving a gentle red glow to the tip of a large nose that
sat, slightly off centre above the dwarf’s mouth. Perhaps off centre was a little off the mark
as the saying goes. It was more accurate to say that is was skewed
significantly out of normal by a severe break that had occurred late one night
a few years ago in a brawl in this same tavern.
“The warehouse is secured
with a large and heavy looking padlock that is sadly broken. The chain is rusty
looking but sturdy. The kind of chain that looks like it hasn’t been used in
years. Inside this highly pregnable fortress there were two hooded shapes
lurking in the shadows: both carry long knives and one has a cudgel, the other
a hooked stick of some sort.”
He paused to draw another
puff on his pipe and to give his inversely garrulous friend the opportunity to consider his use of the past tense.
“How does that sound so far?
No don’t answer, let me tell you a bit more.”
He continued.
“Both men look sort of
shifty. One is short and fat, the other also short and not so fat. Both are
poor runts from bad litters. Their clothes have seen better days and better owners,
more likely. They, on the other hand,
don’t know what a better day is. Nor will they ever, now.”
The hooded man opposite him
had not said anything; had not made a sound in fact. To anyone who might have
been sitting nearby, there was nothing coming from him but a faintly damp
smell, rather like that of a wet dog that has lived on the streets for a while.
“Outside in the alleyway
leading to the warehouse - you know, the place where the lamp has been broken
and it gets really difficult to see – there is a large shape. I imagine that
the stench coming off it would fell an ox but no matter. It holds in one paw a
large wooden club – about the span of your arms I would estimate. Its oak or
yew, it’s always difficult to tell in the darkness or until it comes into contact
with something. I always find that oak seems to resonate better – that is, if
the item that it strikes permits it to do so. Obviously bio-organic
material from the animal kingdom doesn’t
usually offer that luxury unless it’s a hyperborean elk – not that you’d get
one into that alleyway – so I imagine that we are never going to know what type
of wooden club your tame troll is actually holding.”
Seagrum took another puff at
his pipe and once more placed it back on the table.
“Beaks, I know that I’m
doing all the talking so just you feel free to chip in.” He paused and seemed
to sigh, “God’s ear, I’d welcome some change from the monotony. You know, it is
possible to get sick of the sound of your own voice.”
“Mn...” said the nameless
one.
“Well, perhaps not in your
case, my loquacious friend.” Seagrum continued with a half laugh more to
himself than anyone else present.
“Sadly, and more is the
point, your troll is never going to know what type of wood he was holding
either,” said the dwarf with a tone of relative finality.
“What d’ya mean?” vocalised
the shape, lurching out of its hitherto inarticulate trance.
“Well, see. That wasn’t so
difficult was it?” countered Seagrum with a smile that failed to rise to his
eyes.
“Of course it’s all in the
detail really, isn’t it?”
There was a long pause
during which time the dwarf’s heart beat with that rhythmically slow thump of,
well, a dwarf’s heart and the human’s thumped to a beat that betrayed the
growing anxiety that he felt.
“I suppose that I neglected
to mention the three feet of poor quality steel that is lying at an obtuse
angle through the entrails of our troll. I always find penetration so difficult
with these lads.”
He made a strange sweeping
gesture with the flat of his hand.
“I guess it’s the hide that
gives greatest problem. After all once you’re in, you’re in, as it were.
Still,” he mused, more to himself than anyone else present, “once the job’s
done...”
He was quiet once more.
“Of course there’s always
the risk that the wretched creature won’t work out it’s dead until after it has
pounded it’s assailant and half its immediate environment into dust, rocks,
squishy bits and what not. Fortunately this particular troll was a bit smarter
than most and so he worked it out pretty fast. He barely had the time to roar a
challenge.”
He stopped talking suddenly
and seemed to stiffen slightly before leaning forward and reaching under the
table as if to rub his knee.
“You’re listening, aren’t
you?” he asked with a slightly sinister tone. “I’d hate to waste this time
explaining if you weren’t actually interested.”
He retrieved his pipe from
the table.
“Mn...” was about as much as
he could expect for an answer and that, in all fairness, was what he got.
“Ok,” the dwarf continued,
puffing a large quantity of acrid smoke into the face of his monosyllabic
companion. “So your tame troll is now out of the picture as it were and into it,
for the last opportunity, steps another figure.
This one has curves though and I have to say that for a witch she is a
pretty good looker, despite the complete lack of fashion sense and sadly
lacking sense of personal hygiene. Long voluptuous curls of rich black hair
with not too much movement amongst it. I like black hair when it’s thick and
coarse. Shame about the beard though, I like a woman with a bit of facial hair
but she had skin that was as smooth as a baby’s arse. Still you can’t have
everything, can you?”
He paused again and looked
for a while in silence at the creature opposite.
“Why do I get the impression
that you’re not listening?” he asked, a slightly more significant hint of
menace in his tone.
“Mn...” came the reply,
sounding perhaps a little more strained than was normal.
Seagrum continued to stare
into the darkness that was the shape opposite and for more than a long period
of time no sounds were heard from either of them. All around in the other
hearts of darkness and doubtful recesses of the tavern, other noises could be
heard. There were of course some casual
or light hearted conversations running sotto voce in the background and,
occasionally, some laughter or perhaps a
vocal disagreement. Then there were the other noises, the pretty much
unmistakeable sounds of couples rutting: a gasp here; a guttural grunt or two
there; some rhythmic pounding of knees on wood and the urgent slapping of flesh
on flesh. A gasp, a moan, perhaps even a fart, a grunt and then silence; at
least relative silence as another set of similar sounds stepped up into the
dark arena or picked up half-way on the same rocky road to relieve the hormone
fuelled reproductive urge.
The sounds gave the lie to
the sense of quiet respectability that seemed to settle on the tavern ‘s gentle
and perhaps too unassuming exterior , opening up a whole new can of worms and
other less savoury plagues that were the consequence of the ancillary business
that was transacted under licence within.
“Mn...” said the dwarf with
the appearance of a temporary reversal of roles. “Was your woman, was she?”
The other person was silent
now; a frisson of almost palpable anxiety hanging above him like a succubus.
“Mn...” said the dwarf once
more. “You did realise that dwarves are pretty impervious to magic, wizardry
and all that kind of stuff, didn’t you?”
More silence and palpating
misery seemed to flow from opposite; the cold fog of growing angst slipping
silently from his thoughts into the cool air and condensing just above the
table surface.
“Anyway, I don’t know what
she said but it sounded kind of dirty. I could feel the hairs on the back of my
hands lifting, “he sniggered almost childishly, “and that wasn’t all that was
rising, I can tell you. Beaks! She sounded hot!”
A moment of unhurried
recollection flowed gently into his thoughts, dispersing itself amongst all the
other stuff that was in there and making him feel somehow a little lighter, a
little less angry.
“You see, I’ve got this
thing that I carry around with me. Got it from another...” he paused as if to
pluck just the right word from his mental lexicon but then with a short grunt
settled with “client. It’s some kind of talisman. Not to save me from the
magic, you know, it’s more to get my own back. You see I don’t like people
whispering stuff at me with a view to giving me grief, even if it sounds as
sexy as hell and gives me a boner that needs a week to settle back down again.
It makes me feel that I have been taken advantage of.”
He permitted himself a short
chuckle in the absence of any sounds whatsoever from across the table.
“That made her gasp, and no
mistaking. Her eyes and mouth popped open like someone had banged her in the
darkness, if you get my drift. Gone, it was. Just like that. One minute
whispering words or wizardry at me, the next minute just another skirt in the
street. That is one good talisman, I can tell you. Magic goes in and it never
comes back out. She ain’t a witch any more.”
He leaned across the table
and gave the shape that was sitting
opposite a shove. The head lolled back, dribbling a little black liquid at the
corners of his mouth. In contrast his face was white; bleached bone white. His
eyes were wide open, staring into sights that no one could guess at; the pupils
huge, dilated and deep.
“Ah, there you have it my
friend.”
He curled his hand behind the back of the corpse’s neck and pulled him
towards the table. The body lolled heavily forward, hitting the table hard and knocking over a tankard , it’s greasy black hair mingling with the
sticky muck that glazed the surface.
“You need to be a bit more
careful about what you drink. You never know who’s been messing with it.”
Seagrum looked appraisingly
at the delivery note that he still held in one hand.
“So, I guess you’ll just
have to take that learning point with you into the next life, if you have one,
you sad bastard. In the meantime, I’ll just have to arrange for collection of
the merchandise from your warehouse before some other piece of vermin attempts
to make off with it.”
He stood up, pushing the
table away from him rather than moving the chair. It was as though the thing
was distasteful to him, even though the whole mess was technically his own
handiwork. He noticed, as he stood, a slightly unsavoury stink rising up from the
vicinity of the dead trader.
“Ah yes, I forgot,” he said
possibly to himself, possibly to the corpse and possibly to no one in
particular, “the poison does have that effect on the subject.”
He stomped, rather than
walked the distance from his alcove to the bar. This was the physiological
influence of his slightly short legs on his rather large and actually quite
muscular, body. His iron-capped boots cracked crisply on the flags, announcing his
approach to the inn keeper even before the dwarf managed to emerge from the darkness
and the subsequent disentanglement
from two pairs of semi-naked
legs. His eyes followed one pair down to the breeches that were gathered
unceremoniously around the booted feet and then the other upwards towards...
well you might get the picture with a meaty male hand massaging the soft flesh
of pale white thigh – with or without the subcutaneous mites.
“I’ll be in my room,” he
said to the man behind the bar as he flipped a small gold coin towards him.
“There’s a bit of a mess in the corner over there but that should cover the
cost of removal and a bit of sawdust or straw to cover the floor – and a decent
profit to you...my friend.”
The man behind the bar
caught the coin, even though he was looking in the other direction. Whether the
second pair of arms had anything to do with it was anybody’s guess but it was a
good catch. The coin went to mouth; was bitten and then flipped into a purse
around his neck. The string was drawn tight before he grunted acknowledgement.
“Oh, ah!”said the dwarf
almost as an afterthought, “there’ll be a woman along in a while; dark hair
good curves – looks a bit like a witch if you know what I mean!” he permitted
himself a short laugh, almost a grunt himself. “Send her up, I’m kind of
expecting ...”
