Warchildren Scene 7

Magnus awoke the next morning in his bed with a powerful headache and a foul taste in his mouth. He sat up and swung his legs off the straw mattress and over the side letting his bare feet settle onto the cold flagstone floor of the rectory. His head swam and he waited while the urge to empty the contents of his belly onto the floor passed. The taste of stale beer and vomit filled his mouth.

        I need to stop drinking with Arn, he moaned. Arn challenged him to a drinking contest at least once every ten-day. Magnus always regretted accepting such challenges but it had been a tradition since they were old enough to be drinking ale. Some nights he woke up with more coin in his purse than when he started with and some nights, like last night, he woke up with considerably less.

        His room was cool as someone had opened the window since he left. Thank the Dragon for small favors, he thought. A hot stuffy room would have only made his misery worse. He needed to bathe, he felt filthy. He always felt filthy after an evening drinking with Arn and Wyndreth. He felt dirty inside and out and the overwhelming need to cleanse himself washed over him. First things first, he thought as the bile rose up in his throat.

        He stood up and had to hold onto the wall to steady himself. He followed the wall down the hall towards the privy. The stench from the privy was overwhelming and he ran to the hole in the bench and emptied what was left of his gut into the darkness of the hole. The smell of piss and shit floated up to greet his face as he bent over the hole in the wooden bench. Beer flavored vomit flooded his mouth as he heaved again and again.

        I'm never gonna drink again, he had time to think before another wave of nausea overtook him.

        He spent a long time in the privy paying for the night before. His entire body convulsed with each wave of nausea. He felt retched.

        Finally it was over when he felt like the next thing to come out of his mouth would be a vital organ. He stayed there for awhile just to be sure. Last night he had punished his liver and this morning was its revenge. Weak and shaky he made his way down the hallway to the small kitchen of the temple for a light breakfast. A very light breakfast.

        He found his brothers and sisters already sitting at the long wooden table eating. They all looked his way and smiled. Some of them laughed softly and shook their heads. Of course they all knew about last night already. Arn sat there completely unphased by last night's debauchery. By the Dragon's Eyes that stupid dwarf can drink.

        “Good morning champ,” Arn shouted and chuckled. “All hail the Blue Bottle's new Champion of the Stout!”

        Everyone at the table began to clap and shout at the pained look on the young man's face. Smiling faces and laughter surrounded the long table filled with food. The war children  met for breakfast at the beginning of the day before heading off to work. An odd and jovial family. They were as different as any group of people could be, yet they made it work. Father Mathias stood at the hearth cooking while Cogwyn served the food and took away the dishes. 

        Magnus staggered under the verbal onslaught and leaned against the door frame leading into the kitchen. He grabbed his head and covered his eyes. “Stupid dwarf. This is all your fault. Again.” Magnus staggered from the door frame into the kitchen and placed some fruit and an egg onto his plate. “And could you keep your voice down? My head is killing me no thanks to you.”

        Arn laughed uproariously, nearly choking on a piece of bacon. He coughed and spluttered red faced from humor and lack of air. Ugadda reached around and “patted” Arn on the back nearly knocking him face first into his plate but clearing the culinary obstruction.

        Magnus sat down across from Ugadda and the still spluttering Arn. Cogwyn brought him a large mug of cold water. He sat at the end of the table nursing his headache and picking at his breakfast. He was feeling ill again but he would not give in to the nausea. He wouldn't give Arn the pleasure of seeing him stumble for the privy.

        He caught sight of a figure in the doorway of the kitchen. Wyndreth's bedraggled form stepped into the room and was immediately greeted with shouts of welcome. Magnus groaned as new waves of pain flooded his already throbbing skull. Wyndreth looked as if he did not get much sleep last night. The bedraggled porter had dark circles under his hooded eyes and looked a little pale this morning. He hardly said a word as he walked through the kitchen and into the hallway leading to the rectory. He smelled of vomit and booze.

        “Not gonna eat with us Winn?” Cogwyn asked as he moved past her. Her voice was a soft purr.

        “No” he mumbled barely making a sound and then he was into the hallway.

        “Is he still moping about that harlot he was seeing?” Arn asked no one in general. He had thought that poxy wench he spent the night with last night would have cheered him up. His latest woman had broken it off with him after he had confessed his feeling of deep affection to her. Wyndreth had always been a melancholy soul. No matter how much the family tried to include him he always slunk off by himself.

        “I found more cows slaughtered last night out in the old miller's field.” Mialee said to the assembled family, trying to change the subject. “There was hardly anything left but bones and blood soaked pasture. That is the sixth attack this month.”

        “Any idea what is doing it?” Cogwyn asked as she placed a plate full of hard boiled eggs in the center of the table.

        “I found tracks in the field but none leading to it.” Mialee confessed. “I don't recognize them. I have seen the sign of nearly every animal in the forest and I have never seen anything like them before.”

        “What did they look like? Maybe Father knows.” Arn offered around a mouth full of egg.

        “They had four clawed toes, three in front and one in back. They looked like a large bird's but whatever did this had four legs no two. It was also about as big and heavy as a draft horse.” Mialee said with a puzzled look on her face.

         Father stopped cooking and turned away from the hearth and toward the conversation at the table. “You say there were no tracks leading into the field?” Mathias asked, intrigued.

        “No tracks I could find Father. As big as this thing is, it would be very hard for it not to leaves tracks everywhere it goes.” She looked flustered and worried. She did not like the idea of something that big and dangerous moving around in the area. “I would have noticed something that big moving into the field. I searched around the field just about all night and didn't see a thing.”

        “And you say it only attacked old man Whisnant's cows?” Ugadda piped in.

        “I only found two dead cows. What was left of them anyways.” Mialee offered. “I thought I saw something fly across the sky last night while I was near the field. It passed right in front of the Hunter and then disappeared behind the tree line to the west.”

        “So it is big as a draft horse, it flies, and it eats two cows every five days or so.” Ugadda summed up the description of the beast they were talking about.

        “Tolduso the armorer was complaining that the merchant who was supposed to deliver a special piece of hide from Stormhaven was over a ten-day late. Maybe these are related somehow,” Arn offered. “He says he was supposed to receive a piece of dragon hide. I told him he was being cheated because dragons don't exist except in myth and legend. I mean who has ever seen one?”

        “The children of the Dragon Ascendant do exist you ignorant dwarf,” Magnus immediately spoke up from his gastrointestinal difficulties for the first time during the discussion. “Dragons are as rare as adamantium, so of course you haven't seen one. You might spend your entire life without ever seeing one in the flesh.”

        “Have you seen one before, paladin?” Arn challenged.

        “Yes I have.” Magnus countered.

        “Where? When?” Arn asked with a smile on his face.

        “Last summer at the spire. A dragon came to me in a vision.”

        “In a vision! Ha! I meant a real one Magnus, not the fevered imaginings of your starved brain while you had been fasting for what? A ten-day?” Arn laughed.

        “It was real! Brainless Dwarves! You don't believe in anything you can't smack with your hammer,” Magnus stood up from the table clutching at his pounding head and left the kitchen  for the gardens and some quiet meditation.            

        Father Mathias paced around the room deep in thought as the youngsters talked and offered theories about what could have done this.

        A dragon? Here?! A dragon meant the Legions. The Legions should have been a long way from here on the frontier or inside the capital, guarding the Undying Emperor. 

        He needed to speak with Lord Markkson and warn him.

        Father Mathias left the Temple after breakfast and made his way to the stone keep of the Lord Mayor. The sun had barely cleared the Hunter's Pillar and the town was already bustling. Various people stopped Father Mathias to chat or to ask his advice on many different matters. Mathias dutifully stopped and spoke with his parishioners and answered their questions or gave what advice he could. The normal short trip up the hill to the keep took well over an hour. The keep dominated the hill overlooking the town of Tumble Falls. A long narrow switchback road led up the hill to the gatehouse of the keep. A single guard of the town watch stood sentry at the gatehouse. As Mathias approached the guard offered him a smile.

        “Greetings Father Mathias. What brings you here so early in the day?” the guard asked. The guard's chain armor was clean and polished and his clothes were clean. He had taken a bath recently and Father Mathias was quietly impressed.

        “I need to speak with the Lord Mayor, Tomas, it is quite urgent.” Father Mathias responded with all seriousness.

        “Of course Father go on in. I have to warn you though, the Lord Mayor has a full day, he does.” the guard said jovially.

        “Thank you Tomas. I will see you next Dragon's Day for services?”

        “Yes Father. You know me. I never miss a sermon. Better safe than sorry is what I always say,” the guard added as he opened the heavy wooden door for Mathias.

        Father Mathias stepped into the darkness of the keep's hallway. He stopped for a moment to let his eyes adjust from the bright morning daylight outside. The interior of the keep was lit occasionally by torches but compared to the morning sunlight it was very dark in the hallway. Once his eyes could see again he made his way down the very narrow hallway toward the guardroom at the end. The cold stone of the keep pressed in all around him. He passed narrow arrow slits in the walls and murder holes in the twenty foot tall ceiling. It was difficult to be in the keep without being constantly reminded that the structures entire reason to being was to slaughter intruders who breached the walls and sought to sack the keep itself. Even when the Dread had sacked the town they had not bothered to storm the keep. The defenders had been helpless to stop the sack of the town. Too few to sally and drive the invaders off but too many to make the keep easily taken.

        The guard at the end of the hall recognized Father Mathias and gestured him up the stairs to the Lord Mayor's hall. The interior of the small keep was cool and slightly damp and would stay that way even on the warmest summer day. The stairs spiraled up in a very narrow path toward the hall on the second floor where the Lord Mayor heard town business. The stairs were narrow to hinder any intruder who made it this far and spiraled up and to the right to interfere with an enemy soldier's shield or sword arm.

        When Father Mathias exited the stairs he had to duck through the low lintel, almost completely doubled over as he entered the room. A defender would have an easy time killing any enemy soldier who entered the room. Every aspect of a good keep was designed with the murder of an enemy in mind. The Lord Mayor's keep was a good, solid, no nonsense keep. Just like the Lord Mayor.

        When Mathias entered the audience hall the Lord Mayor was arbitrating a land dispute between two tenants. His tall frame loomed from behind his very functional desk. The close cropped hair on his head was chestnut brown and graying at his temples. He wore a fine cotton tunic of a rich indigo embroidered with silver griffons rampant on his chest. An almond sized sapphire hung from a silver chain around his neck. His hands were clasped together in front of him with his elbows resting on the desk as he listened intently to the arguing tenants.

        “I swear Mi'lord that he moves the boundary stones every ten-day.”

        “Liar, ye cannot count past ten, so how di' yea know stones are moved?” the other farmer countered angrily.

         “Silence!” the Lord Mayor barked from behind his desk and both of the farmers immediately fell quiet, their eyes dropped to the flagstones. His voice was strong and deep like underground river. “I will send out my steward to measure the parcels in question. Whoever is wrong will answer to me.” He waved them out and looked around the room at the other petitioners and let his gaze fall on Father Mathias. “Father. What brings you here today?”

        “I must speak with you Lord Mayor.” Mathias said with utmost seriousness. “In private, preferably.”

        “A recess until after mid sun.” The Lord Mayor intoned. The Lord Mayor asked, “How private?”

        “Very private Mi'lord,” Mathias replied.

        “Follow me then,” The Lord Mayor said as he walked across the hall and unbarred a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. He led Mathias up another set of winding stone stairs to the battlements. The stairway echoed with the sound of their feet on the flagstone stairs. He unbarred the wooden trap door in the ceiling of the keep and they climbed out onto the battlements of the tower. The air was fresh with a light breeze bringing the wood-smoke smell of a few farms' hearth fires from the east of the town. The sounds from the bustling little town drifted up the hill and the walls of the battlements. Distant and muted though they were the Father Mathias could still make out the singing of the dyer's as they dyed cloth near the square. The sound of hammers and saws could be heard as the carpenters built the new stable for Krys the farrier. The old barn had burned down last ten-day during a lightning storm and nearly taken the town with it. The entire town had turned out to form a bucket brigade from the river to contain the blaze. It had been a close run thing but they only lost the farrier's barn instead of the entire town.

        They both walked over to the crenelation's of the tower top and looked out over the vale. The land swept ever so gently  upwards in the distance where they could see distant continents and seas many months journey away. Shadows from the celestial pillars floated across the land in bands of pitch black night. The curve of the globe was eventually lost in the massive distance. The world completely surrounded the sun. As far as anyone knew, the World had never been traversed by any single person. It was just too enormous. Beyond comprehension.

        Mathias believed the gods created the world and the pillars to hold up the sky in a ten-day. He believed that the gods resided in the pillars but would walk the world from time to time as well, as strangers. Thirty different pillars for thirty different gods. Each of the gods held sway over a different part of the world and for different reasons. Some gods like the Dragon Ascendant were good gods and watched over and protected their people. Some gods like those who were patron to the Dread, were outright evil. All gods served their own ends and no mortal could ever fathom what those ends were.

        “What news Father that requires us to speak on the battlements?”

        Father Mathias turned and said, “We have a dragon in the area. A young one by the looks of it.”

        “What evidence do you have to back up your claim?” the Lord Mayor challenged.

        “There was another attack last night. Some of Old man Whisnant's cows were killed and devoured in his pasture. Mialee found some tracks in the field. None of them led into the field and the way she described them sounds like we are dealing with a young dragon. She also caught sight of it flying towards the west.” Father Mathias recounted the information Mialee had given him just that morning.

        “This is not good Mathias,” the Lord Mayor said as he braced his hands against the crenelations. “My men cannot take a Dragon, young or not.”

        “It has just eaten and will be lethargic,” Mathias offered. “If we could find it's lair and kill it while it slept it might be possible.”

        “That is an awfully big if, Mathias.”

        “Yes mi'lord, it is. What choice do we have. There have been no traders from Stormhaven in a few ten-days,” Mathias went on, “It is possible that this dragon has been raiding caravans and merchant wagons as they pass by its lair. It is also possible that other creatures might be working with this dragon. The truth is we just don't have enough information to go on. The town needs those supplies from Stormhaven and if more cattle are taken it will begin to affect our trade goods and food supplies.”

        “I have not mentioned this to anyone save my wife and the captain of the guard but bandits have also been raiding merchants to the east traveling from Hammerfall Hall. Since the Dread came through we have had neither news nor trade from the lake towns to the north. Scattered tribes of the Dread still infest the woods to the south interfering with trade from Granite Falls and Woodhaven. Little trade passes up and down the river these days. We are isolated here and I fear someone is trying to cut us off from the outside. I do not want to create a panic within the town. So an open bounty on this dragon of yours is out of the question.” Markkson though out loud, “We need to open up the trade roads once again or the town will never recover from the financial loss.”

        “Perhaps a call for volunteers for a dangerous mission. A small group, maybe five or six to find the dragon's lair and kill it before it rouses from its slumber once again.”

        “Perhaps, Father.”

        “If we don't kill it now,” Father Mathias went on. “We will not be able to stop it when it gets larger and it will get larger at this rate.”

        “Would the Warchildren volunteer for such a mission?” Markkson asked turning to gauge Mathias response.

        “Some of them will,” Mathias said with worry in his voice. “Arn and Magnus definitely will. The others may follow their lead.”

        “Ask them Father and offer them five hundred gold suns for the head of the beast if it is a dragon. Two hundred if it is some lesser beast. Do you think there are creatures that would risk getting eaten by a hungry dragon to assist it?”

        “Possibly Mi'lord, there are always those who would seek to use a dragon's strength to further their own goals. This dragon could also be a young mount for one of the Gray Watch. ”

        “What would the Gray Watch be doing here in the midlands? Could there be an operative her in Tumble Falls?”

        “There very well could be Mi'lord. If there is we may never know it. Have there been any reports of missing persons or unexplainable deaths lately?” Father Mathias looked over the battlements toward the west. “There is a chance it could be lairing in the caves beneath the old guard keep. It is close to the old road and hidden among the woods. The Gray Watch could be using it as a temporary base of operations in the area.”

        “They could be anywhere Mathias.”

        “Yes it could Mi'lord, but the old keep is the best place to start.” Mathias turned and walked over to the trap door and the sure to be busy walk back to the Temple.

        “You are the expert in this Mathias.”

        The walk back through the town was filled with the bustle of a small town going about its business. Townsfolk once again stopped Father Mathias on the street and asked for his blessing or advice. He smiled and listened to their problems or prayers. He blessed them and gave them what advice he could. His mind was far away though he did not show it. He had seen dragons before. In all their fury and all of their majesty. He had not always been a priest.

        The sky was darkening to the west of town. A tall thunderhead was forming over Stormhaven. There would be a storm for sure.

        The Storm god would have his fun tonight, Mathias thought.

        He made his way down the cliff side path leading to the riverside. He could see the shining golden dome of the Temple cresting over the rooftops. The temple dominated the riverside like Lord Markkson's keep dominated the hilltop side of town. There were other temples in town to other gods but none as influential as the Temple of the Dragon Ascendant.

        Father Mathias had been the High Priest (well the only priest) for the last twenty years. The only family he had ever known had been the Legion and his Warchildren. One he had left behind to seek penance and the other he was about to ask to go into danger without him. A danger he could no longer protect them from. He had trained the ones who showed an aptitude for the martial traditions as best he could. He had been a fierce warrior once upon a time but never a master of any particular weapon or style. He had a soldier's practicality in such matters. A soldier's preferred weapon was not always to hand and so one used what instruments they had. Arn, Magnus and Ugadda were his best students of war and death. They had taken to the warlike arts as a babe to the teat.

        Cogwyn and Mialee were more gentle souls and had learned much of the healing arts and diplomacy. They tended the sick whether person or animal and found it difficult to harm the gods' other creatures.

        Wyndreth possessed a dark soul and always snuck off into the back streets of the riverside. He had never worked so far as Mathias could tell but always had enough coin for women and ale. Mathias did not ask him where the coin came from as he knew he would not get an honest answer. Mathias would never give up on one of his “children” but sometimes Wyndreth tested that stance sorely.

        Mathias knew their strengths individually were excellent but was unsure if they could learn to work as a team. In order to overcome and slay even a young dragon would require enormous skill, courage, teamwork and the Dragon's own luck.