by catch » Thu Sep 26, 2013 6:04 am
For two days and nights, they lingered. Myrkenwood had become a breadbasket, an uncommon burst of fertility under the warm, blessing sun, that even a million ravenous maws needed some time at their task. Farmers could helplessly watch, though some went out with their boys and their men and attempted, in desperation, to beat some of the jeweled beasts away. In town, one went only to the tasks that were needed, and scuttled from building to building with a mouth-covering and shawl to keep the things from blundering, buzzing, into face and hair. They drowned by the hundreds in any open bucket of water, fouling horse-troughs and uncovered wells with the stacking of their bodies. There were accidents; high-spirited horses went mad, and even the most stoic ass could not stand the feel of chitin-bodies slamming against nose and eyes, an infernal buzzing about their ears. A broken bone or two, nothing worse; a lad had the senses knocked out of him by the rearing of his pony.
The sound of droning wings, of the cacophonous buzzing of mating-pairs, became a background noise, a constant memory of the swarm that bored into the brain, refused to go away. Until, this morning, it stops, a sudden and deafening silence.
The swarm has moved. There linger the red-and-gold locusts, of course; locusts in their hundreds, unwilling - as of yet - to move on. But the body of the swarm has pressed on, riding the eastern wind, likely to perish in the cold heights of the Sikasoon Mountains before ever reaching Derry or Thessilane.
Behind them they leave devastation. Those farmers who toiled tirelessly are spared scattered fields of their crops, driven to exhaustion, yet grimly satisfied. The root vegetables linger on on those who had the presence of mind to stake covering over them, everything from cheese-cloth to priceless, heirloom quilts pressed to the task. Whatever lies in the greenhouse of Darkenhold, or the scattered solars of those rich enough to own them - yet what had been grown there, due to Rhaena? Flowers, and hardly edible, save to locusts, and their brothers have downed every last, colorful bloom. Strangely, there is a circle of green that lingers, a five-foot radius around a madman's lonely shack, where no locust has dared to land.
Cellars and store-houses are still full of the bounty of summer, save in the rare instances where chinks were not properly covered, and locusts wriggled in. Pickle-jars line shelves, sheaves of wheat stack to the ceiling, while their threshed brethren lay in stout, oaken barrels. Perhaps another crop can be quickly put in the ground, before the frost comes, if men and women could be prised away from parties and frivolities...
_____________________________________________
"To hell with Madame Farwyn, and to hell with her party. She can get her cakes from somewhere else."
"But, Master -"
Tom Baker was a practical man, and a true artist. His specialty has always been in the realm of treats and specialty breads, never stooping himself to the coarse, good fair that townsfolk ate every day. He had seen a grand rise in his business with Olwak, and now her Vice-Governor, for he could make truly delicate, icing-filled cakes, so slight that it was an explosion of flavor on the tongue before it melted away. Or tiered cakes of grandeur. He had, in fact, been working on a truly marvelous cake for Farwyn's party, the centerpiece that was an edible dragon, with nostrils that really spewed fire. It lay, now, under Tom's knife, his grey eyes steely under his bushy, white brows as he regards his apprentice with a look that shut the boy's mouth.
"This ain't a time for fancies and cakes, boy. Don't know if you ever lived through famine. I have. I'll be damned if I waste good flour on fripperies. Yes, fripperies. I don't got no illusion about my craft. No more cakes. We stick with bread, good bread, and we don't fill it with sawdust. If I'm wrong, no harm done. If I'm right - we'll be wantin' bread far more than cakes, I wager."
_______________________________
A few others, those free of mind, did the same thing as Tom Baker. Over the course of the day, the wiser businessmen who were eager to spring on new clientele suddenly changed back to their good, though base, fare. Tea was turned around and sent away, to be sold north or south for coin or traded for sundries that would keep, like mead and beer. The fancy, elaborate menus became a bevy of soup and stews, items that could be prepared in bulk, and easily served. The fancy linens were taken down, in helpless defiance of the Vice-Governor's laws, because such fripperies could be quickly sold.
The keen-eyed, and the wise, prepared for the worst.