Wealdhold

[catch]

Basil sat in the dark. A long, wandering trip it had been, but it had been made shorter on the return, coming straight down the road from Myrkentown. He had drawn his legs up, legs that ached from the speed of his journey, and he gazed at a point of small light that was the only part, aside from the stool, of the little shack he found himself in.

Myrkentown. That was a potential problem. The other settlements were small affairs, a cluster of houses and loose tenements around a muddied main-street, the tallest building a chapel. Tiny hubs along the trade-roads. But Myrkentown was at the nexus of those trade-roads. No City, certainly, but large enough, and now he had seen the gathering of King's men. She had a militia, she had a garrison, and Basil had seen wealth, even after the stigma of a strange summer, and the brutality of a lean winter.

"Myrkentown could be a problem," he said, his voice an uncertain rumble in the dark. "From wot Ah saw. But there be werewolves. There are - were - drow. They gots a minotaur in t'Constables." A pause, and Basil's nostrils flex as he takes in a deep breath, savoring the redolent scent of herbs. Wanting it. He holds out a clever hand, and he lays out a thin strip of bait.

"They got dragons, too."

Basil knew the familiar forms of the other man that sat with him inside the shack. Dark, because white skin and pale, watery eyes could not stand the light. Dark, to hide the strange proportions, a man with the body of a midget. He felt, more than saw, the expected hitch in the other man's breathing. A thick, misshapen hand passed the pipe, after a moment's hesitation.

"A child told you all this, did he?" The question from the malformed albino was suggestive. Basil drew in the fragrance of the pipe, and he refused to rise to the tone in the other man's voice. He knew its source. It bothered him that he felt his mane lift, no matter his efforts.

"A young feller, yeah," Basil said. He was proud of the control in his voice. "An' a g - young woman. Old enough fer babes, y'ken? An' they said all kinds o'things. F'there were a place I wouldn' mind livin' by, if we gotta live by 'umans at all..."

"Did they promise you anything?" the albino man asked. Pushing. Pressing. Basil could guess why he did it, even as he felt his rage rising. "A boy and a girl. Friendship, perhaps. They boy with the crows, looking for another pet -"

Basil stood, abruptly, and he hadn't known that he had until the action was done, until the stool was clattering on the ground behind him, and his vision was rimmed with red. He gripped the pipe so firmly that he felt, more than heard, the individual fibers cracking under the strain. "Y'son of a bitch," was all he could manage past the roar in his throat, a strangled sort of sound.

They both knew how close he was to striking out. It was a delicate balance between them. It was a deadly game. The albino, a giant's mind restrained by a weak body, and the construct, an unpredictable creature that was tame in all the wrong ways. They glared at each-other, the moment stretched thin, though the singular moment where Basil might strike had passed, with both of them knowing it.

The midget did not, precisely, relent. But his pale eyes moved, watching the way Basil gripped the pipe, and his malformed hand stretches out in silent command. Respectful. Between equals. "I had to see who was speaking." It was as close to an apology that Basil would get, and he knew it. He passed the pipe back to the other man. "The pet or the man. So. Here we'll remain, for now. We've a few options, should the King's men decide to move."

A few options.

But why would they come out here? Basil blinked as he stepped out of the shack, one of the few semi-permanent structures left from a long-ago work crew. In the distance, he saw the black outlines of what he knew to be ogres, keeping an eye on the paths and roads to and from the East Weald and trade roads, and there were a few, last sound of old mallets on older materials, another hasty-added structure meant to provide shelter from a summer's night. He took in a deep breath, to clear his head, and his weary legs found themselves taking a familiar path. It had been a few days since he had seen it.

The giant pit of Golben, where various races and vagrants were coming to rest after long, various flights, really was an impressive sight.

[Rance]

Upon that path, two broad figures approached him. Between them they carried a wide, wooden box whose lid was sealed with a rusty nail at each corner. They were familiar couriers, each sharing the duty of patrolling the outskirts of the decrepit settlement they called their home. Their spines were bent and their bulbous frames were obscured beneath tattered cloaks. Back and forth they bickered, the box occasionally dragging in the earth or knocking against shins when their steps lacked syncopation. A tug of the hemp loop on the left-hand side of the crate sent the right-hand fellow nearly stumbling; in return, he'd wrench the box back and almost teeter the other.

"Ya knoockin' m' legs, ya twat," rattled the figure on the left.

And from the right: "I'd dig ya moother up froom th' groon, y'shit, and make'r lick the bruises ya givin' me. 'Ow 'bout that?"

"Hells with you."

"And with you," came the retort.

Golben was a wide, foggy crater behind them. When they neared Basil, they both loosed their respective grip on the crate and dropped it to the ground. From beneath their cloaks, the two shadows each lifted a fist and hammered their breast-bones in salute. In the gray daylight, they observed Basil with only two eyes -- for each only had one, the pupil as large as a thumbnail. The cloak-hoods couldn't do much to conceal the singularity of their visages: one eye in the middle of the face, one horn like an upturned comma above it. They both grinned.

"Sor," said the one on the left.

"Sor," said the one on the right, more reverent than the other.

From the left, a grumbled kiss-ass.

The giants breathed simultaneously, pride in obedience. A heel knocked against the side of the wooden crate.

"Delivery for ya, Holdmaster Bah-zil."

[catch]

It was unusual. It still tasted strange, the various forms of Sir the others called him. They were a loose band of misfits and vagrants, and Basil didn't know why anyone had to be in charge. If there were anyone, it should be the small albino that he had just left, in his darkened shack, with his herb-thick pipe. In a way, he was. But Basil found the respect of the others, the nominal leadership, an unnerving feeling.

Still, he could take it easier from these fellows. It was easy to think that they mocked him - without malice, perhaps, but mockery all the same - and he could mock them right back.

"Evenin', fellers," he says, grinning up at them. He'd gotten used to the idea of things quite taller than himself. His muzzle tips down, ears flung forward to eye the battered box. "'Ope it ain' fine chiner in there. Yer worse'n' damn runaway bulls."

[Rance]

"Evenin, sor," said one of the cyclopes.

"I 'ate bulls," said the other, touching his yellowed horn in dejection.

As Basil leaned forward to examine the delivery, his senses likely triggered him to nothing out of the ordinary, except for what he saw: all over the crate -- which might have been used to pack away goods in Myrkentown for longer-range exportation -- were scrawled tiny, precise patterns, some perfectly symmetrical, others wild and overlapping their brethren. The scribblings were not the lazy work of laborers with listless bits of coal; no, they were each deliberate and carefully-scrawled, but fine enough that a passing glance would notice nothing markedly out of the ordinary about the parcel.

Wards.

One of the cloaked sentinels hoped aloud, "Maybe it's burr."

"Ain't no burr," snapped his counterpart. "Are ya daft? Ain't no burr what comes in wooden crates."

"Crate full'a bottles."

"No crate full'a bottles," said the other. He blew out a sour breath. He looked to Basil. "You want for us t' oopen it, Holdmaster?"

[catch]

"Jus' don' go fightin' no minotaurs." That was said to the cyclops twins as Basil crouched, the better to inspect the scrawls that marched their way across the splintered wood. They had been impossible to spot, save that those great, blue eyes were keen, and the sun was tilted just right to carve a shadow in the small between-spaces.

He was made by magic, but he was not a magical creature. The runes meant nothing, save that they were cleverly hidden. His fingers play with his beard, for a moment, and then his tusk. He looks up at the ugly visages of twin, single-eyed giants. They did not suffer from carrying it.

"Y'try t'open it?" he asks; and he makes a quick decision, and thrusts a clawless finger at the markings. "Lookit that. Some wizard done it, like. Meanin' fer it t'blow up, or turn ye inter a frog. Y'try t'open it?"

At the hope of burr, Basil grins wide. "Naw. S'prolly megick stuff, like toad's eyes an' cocks."

[Rance]

S'prolly megick stuff, like toad's eyes an' cocks.

Both cyclopes laughed. Their mirth rolled up from their bellies and out of their mouths with the same cadence, a hearty drumroll of laughter. But the towering beast on the right -- the smarter one, Humri -- stifled his humor sooner and said, "Gumri looves the latter, Holdmaster Bah-zil."

At the left of the box, Gumri's single bloodshot eye widened with disbelief. "It's a fib!"

"No, 'e does. Bloody loves'em."

"Bollocks," Gumri spat.

Humri's single brow quirked up. "Ya woont t' prove to the Holdmaster ya doon't? Then oopen the goddamn thing." He winked at Basil -- or was it a blink? -- and pumped his fat thumb in a secret motion as if to say, Get a load of this moron.

"I woon't be caught dead touchin' that megick horseshit," Grumri said. "All that feller says to us was to deliver it, not to oopen--"

"Gumri," the other cyclops soothed, moving around the box to clap a broad hand along his brother's steely spine. Each pat was like a thunderclap, rumbling through the earth under their feet. "Ain't noot a bit wroong 'aving different tastes then oother blokes. It speaks," he paused, taking in an artful breath, as if savoring the aromas of the foggy evening, "to the dooversity of your preferences, brother."

"Really?"

"Really," Humri said.

And slammed his brother's head down into the top of the box.

The wood splintered as the cyclops' flat forehead and curving horn blasted through the topmost planks of the crate. Humri was careful to turn his cheek away from the box and angle the breadth of his shoulder against any impending retaliation from the carved object. But nothing came, no fiery blast, no gust of enchanted wind, no burst of poisonous acid or summoned spiders. He pried Gumri's flattened face out of the shattered wood and tossed his unconscious brother aside with all the effort of a child throwing a corn-husk doll off to the side. Gumri crumpled to the ground behind them. Humri grinned as wide as his gaping maw allowed. "Idiot," he said.

Inside the box, something whimpered.

[catch]

Basil was right there with their antics, thick lips pulled up over pegged teeth and tusks, laughing right along with them - until Humri did what he did, a movement too quick and sudden, and unexpected, for Basil to stop. For a moment he is scuttling, scooting in his backside, desperate to put some distance between himself and the box, cringing away from whatever punishment might emerge. It takes a few, rapid beatings of his heart - one to move, one to hold his breath, one to realize that there was nothing -

And one to act.

In a moment he is on his feet, and a clever hand is fisted, and driven into poor Humri's broad, fleshy nose. And there is strength behind it, the construct being much, much stronger than he looks, and quite as nimble as such a build promises; in the next moment, he was balanced only on the toes of one foot, and with it's clever finger-toes and thumb, he seeks to yank to cyclops' feet right out from under him.

Every line of him is a fury, every hair on his body sticking out, making him far, far broader than he is, far larger, as he advances on the cyclops, sputtering and swearing past his tusks, his accent almost an incomprehensible gibberish.

"Y'gods-damn swine, ye coulda blowed t'whole place oop, bastid, goat-fucker, whoreson -"

Such was his rage that he hopped from foot to foot, on the verge of another attack upon poor Humri's person, but the whimper, the sob from the box, caused him to only utter one, final snarl. Then he stalked to the shattered wood, muttering to himself the entire way. A bright eye peered into the depths of the thing, and after a moment's hesitation, Basil thrust his hands into it, seeking to bring whatever made the noise out.

[Rance]

Humri was still resplendent with humor until Basil's fist clipped him in the face.

The cyclops stumbled, fell, a tower razed as quickly as he himself had flattened his brother. Basil peeled him off the ground, and the bleary eye flicked left, right, trying to wink itself out of surprise. The dumb smile still occupied his blocky face, though when he said, "Oopologies, Holdmaster. Forgive me," the words were subterranean, rife with quiet disappointment.

When Basil's attention turned toward the box, Humri skulked -- with all the grace of a three-legged bull -- back away from the Holdmaster and his delivery, seeking to scoop Gumri up over one of his planked shoulders.

Inside the battered box, a small figure was folded in upon itself like a pillbug. Basil could see the curve of buttocks and thighs as it squatted against the furthest corner of the crate, trying to fold itself into the wood. It held a mangled hand against its mouth, trying to stifle whatever noises might have seeped out from between serrated teeth. Its fingers were long, like bits of elongated wax, and the being cradled his own head in them, their sharpened tips resting somewhere in the midst of a copper-haired scalp.

Two eyes watched Basil, wild and blue. And when the hands came near--

--it screamed.

The figure rocked itself back against the interior of the crate, twisting and thrashing with all the strength of a desperate child. And it was a child, or some wretched imitation of one: only a single, natural left arm and a right leg were all that protruded from its distended abdomen. The other limbs were a brilliant clockwork of wood and iron, replacements scrawled with the same nature of patterns that had been inscribed into the wood of the crate. A cumbersome wooden foot -- encased in a moldy shoe, its heel smeared with flour -- lashed out, scraping inarticulately on the floor of the box.

The crate emitted a horrific smell, the stink of composted leaves and worm-ridden soil. That had been the purpose of the wards, to reduce the stink of the contents. Muffle the sounds, reduce its weight, mask the presence of a being contained within.

"N-...No. Where are my gardens? Can you f-...feel it," he whispered. "My heart? It doesn't whisper, it d-...doesn't sing."

(Numbers. They were all numbers, numbers and skin and bones, but this tusky thing that peered inside, it was a--

--memory.)

[catch]

His first thought was that it was a child. And it looked child-like, with but a swift glance. It retreats from his hands, and Basil utters a grunt, his nostrils flexing shut at the rich smell that roiled from the crate. Then there are the claws; then there is the clockwork wood of it's arms, the roll of a pink tongue between fang-like teeth as it screamed. That flattened his ears, too, the whole of the thing a dizzying assault on his senses.

And a nagging of something, a thought, that he doesn't quite grasp.

By main force he seeks to jab his hands under the boy's armpits. He has a clumsy sort of gentleness, and he seeks to lift the boy, lower limbs dangling, to get a better look at him in the light. His eyes only cement his first impression.

"Don' y'go nowhere," he says, not done with the cyclops brothers by a long shot. The unconscious one, perhaps not, but Basil's bright eyes were fixed squarely on Humri.

"'O brought this 'ere?"

[Rance]

"Ain't noo clue, Holdmaster. Joost by some men seemed like they'd not woont to be seen. If'n you call'em men," Humri said from the ground.

The boy-thing was twisted free of the ruins of the crate at the insistence of Basil's hands. He fidgeted at the extension of Basil's grip, his knees bending and extending, cycling in the air underneath his torso as the Holdmaster lifted him. Where they were fixed with iron casters to the blunted husks of his limbs, the clumsy prostheses clicked and moaned, making the boy -- who could have scarcely been more than letter-years, perhaps seven or eight at most -- look more like a piece of artifice than an actual being. His lips peeled back from pebbles of black, edged teeth. The talon-edged fingertips of his arm twitched, but never rose.

In Basil's arms, dangling like an ornament, he was obedient. His voice clattered, the sound of uneven stones rolling over one another.

"They're gallant," the boy breathed, "th-...those things which knights do. Have you t-...taken your oaths? I have. I have," the child insisted.

His attention shot up over Basil's shoulder. In the distance, near the black smear of the wooded edge of the East Weald, he saw something that wasn't there. His swept-back ears perked. A phantom, an apparition, a nothing caught his eye. "Haven't you flowers," he asked. "H-...Haven't you? I could give them a happy life. I've b-...botanical affinities, the Shape-Maker says."

[catch]

"Ah, swine's tits. Y'didn' kill 'em, did ye?"

The curse was half-hearted at best, and the cyclops would know that that tone of voice meant the construct didn't exactly care if they had or not. He was distracted by the... child, who certainly wasn't a child. Parts of it were an elaborate clock, and Basil was distracted watching how the boy moved, with his magic-fueled limbs.

"Wot?" he asks, drawn from a strange sort of reverie by the boy's unexpected growl, and in answer he only got more gibberish, things of Knights and oaths. Basil watched him a moment before he decided that he'd better answer the thing held in the air by hands jammed under his armpits.

"Ah ain' a knight. Ah mebbe gots vows," he says, and his own voice was like the musing of river rocks in a stream. "Ah lead this place, like. In charge."

His voice took in a bit of a harder tone, and he eyes the boy sternly. "Boy, Ah'm gonna put ye down. Ye don' scuttle off, right? Ye don' scuttle off, an' Ah'll find ye a bit o' food, and mebbe we get a garden fer ye." It was easy to promise. It wouldn't be hard. Botanical affinities, indeed. If the boy could be kept on-task, maybe they'd have something to sell to the towns.

"Ye got m'word as a leader. Ah got yer word as a knight?

[Rance]

"A thrall obeys his l-...lord," chattered the boy. "Obeys. Knights, th-...they obey."

His balance was imperfect. The leg of wood and iron jabbed at the ground below him to find purchase and equilibrium. The joint scraped against its own inner workings. The shoe twisted against the earth. He was in no capacity to run or flee. On the contrary, a spidery series of sharpened fingers snared Basil's trouser-leg. His belly, naked and distended like a blister, was a pale moon in the evening. His cheek crammed itself against Basil's ribs, as though hiding his eyes in the Holdmaster's body would silence the world, cast it into darkness, or suffocate the memories throbbing in his head.

"Ask them t-..to drown," he begged. "The rattlebones. Copper and marrow l-...locks the keys, shuts them up. Be kind, be kind."

Obedience or cooperation was not overtly offered. Instead, the boything latched arms both natural and fabricated to the cumbersome figure that had relieved him of his prison. His tongue clicked in his mouth and bulged against his cheeks, tasting nothing, but tasting everything. His nose drove between two of Basil's intercostals, and the lips -- harmlessly -- danced a lamprey's waltz against tunic-fabric.

Gardens. And copper and marrow. For, here, he might hear his mother sing--

(in the heart of castle's keep / lords and ladies sweetly sleep /
and gold of gold in piles shines / jewels and treasures and fineries /
and feast we do from pewter plates / as King of Kings, he calmly waits /
for jesters, fools, and fiddlestring
while royals dance a joyous jig
they chant the songs for Dukes what fell
safely locked in citadels)

--hear his mother sing lullabies and dovesongs against his ear, wishing him to sleep, didn't realize he was uttering and whispering the lyrics against Basil's hip.

Humri, rolling to his knees and then to his feet, only said, "No, Holdmaster. Kept'em hool, we did. Graciously took the crate, Gumri and I, and they says we wa' to give its coontents sink-chewery , as bid by its maker."