Unicorn Lost.

Unicorn Lost.

Postby catch » Tue Oct 01, 2013 5:41 am

It had been long in coming. As the townsfolk settled into their new debauchery, their civilized exclusion, good and solid work-horses dressed in the fine trappings of dressage, there festered, still, a sore-point, a thing of remembered terror shared by Rhaena to those that she changed. Terror. Fear. A denial of that which stalked among them, a frightened, stern demand to let pass a single man, a madman. He had learned quickly of their imposed fear. He had pushed himself upon their parties, he menaced them, coyly and within the law. He did not grasp that it was Rhaena who feared him, but he took full advantage of it, until Ser Stefan had changed his mind, until the Posters began appearing about town.

There was a new law, now, new laws to be enforced by a Civil Constabulary, and these young bravos were not touched in the least by Rhaena's enforced fear. They, like all youths, were full of fire, full of vigor, and it took only a pint or two of fine, Razasan ale before they hit on the idea of a fine night's doing. They took their lead-filled brass sticks, and the took their torches, a full ten of them in their fine dress of gold and scarlet set their raving horses onto the road, out to the Broken Dagger and a small, squat hut beyond, wreathed in the vines that the locusts could not, would not touch. The locusts were wiser.

On that night, only the Dagger and the forest beyond could hear the slam of a heel against the flimsy door, the pitched fight, the bloodthirsty howls, the screams and the slap of flesh on brass and timber. It a fury, it came, and just like a tempest, it did not linger. They did not summon the Rememdium to themselves, as they may have ought, but took themselves and their injured comrades to to the hospital, for only a few horses had stood in the melee. Bruises, broken bones, and the object of their haste, the young Bishop Cowlee, Lord Cowlee's son, with his skull rattling loose on his neck.

"Figured," one of the young toughs said, their elation and enthusiasm undampened even as they gazed down on the corpse. "Got the full brunt of the idiot's fist. Still, we brained him, eh, fellows? Thanks, Doc, but the rest of us need to get on back. Work to do, yet, and we figure the Lady might like a souvenir or three." That was the way these young lads spoke, both cultured and peppered with the mannerisms of a city, not a town, and they all grinned wolfishly, each thinking, of course, of the gemmed horn that the madman was said to hold, and the company itching to get back and ferret it out.

But the mass of inert flesh that they had left was not there, no sprawling form that bathed in his own blood, half-in and half-out of the hut almost too small to contain him. A quick search found him not hiding in what was left of the brush, nor hiding - somehow - in the hut, but only a blood-spoor, faint and dribbling imprints on the ground, was found, staggering away into the wood.

"Thought you said he were well-brained," one boy snapped at another, gruffly. The other scuffed his toe against the clots that were quickly drying, his handsome face a sour mask.

"He was, Shecky. He was rattlin' his death in his throat."

"We'll pick the dogs up, swing about when it's light," another lad, the self-assured one said. "Not spending half the night kickin' around a bloody hut. Well done, boys! We're sure to see accolades and admirations before the sun even rises. Shame about Cowlee, but he died doing the Lady's work, at least.

Nothing but a brooding silence, as ever, from Administrations followed the news, but the towns itself had a collective sigh of relief, restrained as they had been under Rhaena's frightened will. The Civil Constabulary was a resounding success, and, perhaps, they were looked upon a bit more favorably by those untouched and unfortunate, if only for a little while.

The dogs that the hungover boys had gathered refused to pick up the trail, skittering here and there as if they had gone mad, silent and furtive, until the chase must be called off. What of it? There was too much blood and matter about the hut to suggest that he lived; that he had, in the way of lunatics and beasts, crawled off to die. Young Lord Cowlee's funeral was a stately affair, a better place to gather fine food and the admiration of pretty, unmarried girls than the forests surrounding the Broken Dagger.

Before the day was out, the sturdy, little hut was being scrubbed free of blood by the tavern staff, going about their business with the air of bees. In front of the doorway was a growing pile of treasures, string and dead, dried flowers, dozens of sightless dolls that held spider's webs and hummingbird nests, and a single, sturdy little shield, the kind a boy might receive as a Yule-gift; these were burned, without a second thought. They mopped down the floors and walls, and chinked up the places where sunlight came through with good, white lime. They trimmed the vines, leaving only decoration and pattern, liming the logs underneath to wield it into a pretty, spotless, white little hut.

The next morning went up a new, sturdy door, with a small looking-glass in the shape of a heart, and from it hung a sign, in flowery script, "FOR RENT: Inquire Within the Broken Dagger".
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Re: Unicorn Lost.

Postby Cherny » Tue Oct 01, 2013 8:55 am

The sounds of violence wake the boy from a fitful sleep; by the time he realises what they meant, by the time he's scrambled down from the hayloft, barefoot, falchion hilt gripped tight in his hand, it is far too late. He watches from a distance, around the corner of the stable building; too many of them, big lads drunk on power as much as ale, and he still a scrawny child for all that he dares pretend he is a squire. He watches, wide-eyed and trembling with helpless fury as they strut and swagger in their triumph, as they toss pithy quips upon the ragdoll corpse of their fellow and the bloodied hulk of their prey. He watches in hateful silence as they stagger off to the Rememdium, laughing as they compare bruises and battle scars as if they were badges of honour.

Only as their coarse guffaws fade does he creep forwards, across the dark expanse of the tavern lawn. He stoops, he kneels, he reaches out a hand that hesitates, hardly daring to touch silvery skin now mottled with blood and bruises, unable to find a spot that does not bear the livid mark of boot or fist or weighted stick. At length he touches shaking fingertips to the addled man's brow, as if to brush back ashen locks long since sheared short; he chokes on his own voice, eyes burning with grief and rage, as he whispers his friend's name into a blood-clotted, bestial ear.

"C-catch. S-s-ser Catch. Wake up. Please - p-please. We have t-to, to, to go. They'll b-be back." They'll be back, and a boy's loyal heart is no match for a mob of louts with clubs and cruel eyes. "Catch, p-please."

He cannot imagine what it costs the addled man to stir from where he lies; he dares not consider the ordeal of those few dozen yards between shack and treeline; he loses count of how many times they stumble and fall, the boy pressing a narrow shoulder beneath his friend's bruised ribs to keep him from sprawling upon the locust-ravaged grass, for fear that he would not rise again. He pleads, he exhorts, he sobs in desperation, each moment fearing to hear the tread of stout boots and the bray of scoffing voices behind them.

They at last reach what refuge the forest might offer, and the boy leaves his friend for a moment, propped up against a bare-branched oak; he has left his blade at the hut, and he'll need it in case they are pursued. He'll be back in a moment, just a moment, wait here, he'll be back. He runs back to Catch's shack, snatching up the weapon from where it had dropped, breathless by the time he returns to the blasted oak.

His friend is gone.

* * *


The next morning he watches as the Civil Constables continue the hunt, as their hounds fret and cringe and find no trail to follow; he watches sidelong while he grooms Sir Elliot's horse, listening as they bellow and shout to one another. Scattered in the branches overhead, a score of great black crows watch the huntsmen in baleful silence.

* * *


A day later, Cherny sits in his corner of the hayloft amid a meager hoard of salvaged treasures.

The boy had found the madman's shack in the middle of being gutted, scooped clean of its innards, of its vitals, scrubbed and swept and whitewashed until no trace of its occupant, its owner, its true master remained. The trash-fire had been burning merrily by the time he happened upon the scene, and he'd stared aghast at the sight of tavern staff carelessly tossing broken dolls and withered flowers into the flames.

He'd darted forward again and again to save this thing or that - objects he recognised as particularly prized or precious, but which the cleaners treated with clear disgust - until at last they'd grown impatient with his interference and chased him away with brooms and dustcloths.

His fingertips protest as he works, scorched and tender from picking through still-hot ashes; this treasure he'd spotted among a heap of smouldering clothes, Catch's very best town finery, cast into the flames like so many old rags. By the time he'd found a stick with which to drag it free the fire had already gnawed upon the sweat-stained cloth, so he toils with needle and thread to fashion a replacement; a little poque-bag, as Gloria had shown him, a simple little cloth pouch meant to hold pipeweed or marbles or coins, among other things. When it is complete he cuts the excess thread with his teeth, inspecting his handiwork with a critical eye before nodding in quiet satisfaction.

When he eventually clambers down from the hayloft, tucked into his shirt he carries a cloth bag of blackened and discoloured tin stars.
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Re: Unicorn Lost.

Postby catch » Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:45 am

"I will not put no leash to your neck, Catch. I do not want to. I cannot bear to. But if you think you want one -


""Money's why," grunted a man, a farmsman, and he clucked to his draftshorse to hurry the gelding's lethargic pace. And hoping the jar of the cart would silence his boy, who was at that infuriating age where he was sure he knew everything, and his ol' Da knew nothing. Couldn't blame him, though. Ever since the damn locusts, the boy saw nothing of his Da that wasn't ill-tempered, pacing the ruined fields, pushing all his boys - and the girls, too - into dawn-to-dusk labor, struggling to get at least some wheat out of the ruined ground, while Mother cataloged and smoked and pickled until her hands were chapped and her eyes were red from it. Small wonder the boy sullenly questioned him, he with a cart-full of milk, eggs, extra bacon, cabbages, carrots, and sheaves of wheat.

"It ain' just food we'll be needin'. Mother saw to that; we'll have enough t'see us through spring. But we need salt. Sugar. Yeast. What cloth we can get. Horsehoes for the horses, iron nails, maybe a good, fat goose for Yuletide. Need th'wheat chaffed, and ol' miser Waldemar needs payin' fer it, 'less ye don' want bread. Farmin's more'n just seein' yer head above water, boy. More'n jus' growing your basic needs. It's about 'avin' enough for you, an' enough for gold. It's 'bout havin' enough for the townies an' their glims. They'd starve without us, boy. For all the airs they've been puttin' on, as of late, they'd starve. All them parties they're havin' - well. It ain' our business. The fools can starve, come winter, but we need 'em jus' as much as they need us. Townies ain' all bubble-headed arse-kissers, it's th'butchers an' th'smithies, good an 'onest workin' folk that keeps us th'things we cain' make for ourselves."

The farmer glanced over at his boy, the wheels rattling along the well-worn path to town. Papa always said I was too smart t'be a farmer, he thought, his boy looking only a little interested, his brow furrowed sullenly over his eyes. But what other choice would there be? None of his brothers or sisters had lived long past the age of ten, Flux and Fire and Misfortune carrying them all off. His boy, fortunately or unfortunately, wasn't that patient sort. Bright enough, and, as his Eldest, the farmsman hoped that the boy wouldn't run into the ground what had taken him years to build up.

Prosperous enough to have built a real house, two years back. Prosperous enough that the locusts wouldn't kill them, only set them back and tighten their belts.

"Take your time, boy, and think on it," he suggests. He liked the quiet of the road, the jingle of harness, the dappling of sunlight from the trees overhead. He didn't want to spend the time arguing. He had taken the boy with him, hoping to leave the daily trek into town to him, but now he thought that it might be a year or so yet before he allowed him. Show him how farming was more than getting through the year, the way the boy's Grandfather had done. They finally had a good life, a stable life, and the farmer wasn't going to let his own kids squander it away.

They rode on in silence, and that was a blessing. It meant the farmsman didn't have to linger on the troubling news that came to him every time he went into town. He could read, at least, and figure; Papa had thumped the figuring into his head, because a farmer needed to know his numbers, know if he was being cheated by a clever townie, and his Ma had similarly thumped reading into his head. He had read the fliers, yesterday, and couldn't believe his eyes, but the bravos with their sticks had appeared almost immediately. The farmsman felt for his neighbors; he and his boy had scrubbed up good, and dressed in their Sunday best, but some of them didn't even have that much; their Sunday best was something that was clean, but might be frayed, or patched, or ill-fitting.

He was caught in his dour thoughts, but not his boy; the lad suddenly piped up next to him. "What's that?"


if you feel you need one - let it be this: when inside you it is all furious and hurting,


And the farmsman became aware, suddenly, of a sound - a strange, whistling sound - something that ebbed and flowed, like the sobbing of a girl, or the lapping of lake-waves on the shore. It was distant, and that was why he had not heard it, but it seemed every moment that it grew louder.

The farmsman pulled up his horse. "... Deer, maybe. It's ruttin' season." He tried to sound certain, but he had been driving through these woods nearly every day of his life, and it was like nothing he'd ever heard. He slapped the reins on the gelding's rump, urging it to something more like a trot, the wagon rattling and bumping under them.


when it wants to shout, when it wants to hit, when all the world is sick and on fire -


The farmsman had grown up in and around Myrkenwood. He knew all the stories. He'd lived them. He remembered crouching in the old hut that had been their house, his eldest no more than twelve, huddled lightless under blankets as dark things hunted and howled and moved about them. He had lost two children to the Bloody Flux. He had lost friends to the shambling undead, to the Baie, to cults and drow and the culmination of their evil designs. It didn't matter that the past five years had been peace, had been prosperity. From infanthood to a father of five, he still feared the shadows and the unknown.

The strange sound lapped behind them, around them; his boy, remembering those dark, evil times as one remembers a bad dream, clutched at the cart-rail beside him. The farmsman urged his gelding on, and with an explosive blast of air, the beast complied from trot to canter, from canter to gallop. It ran, the wagon rattling fit to burst, and the two humans clung grimly to the frame. The farmsman realized that it was not his goading that set the drafthorse on, but it's own, sudden fear, a nameless and animal dread that crept now into himself, into his boy, the thing that the horse had felt before humanity became aware.


right at that moment, Catch


It was all around them, now, a strange sound that gripped his mind, that struggled at his brains. He was not aware of the hot tears that spilled from his eyes. It was a sad sound, he thought, terrible and sad, everything that was sorrow and rage mingled together, that pounded against his teeth as nausea. The farmsman, through his terror and the effects of the Sound, was blind to everything but the road ahead; he was aware, vaguely, that the boy looked back, looked back, and uttered a shrill, horrible yell, a sound of shock and horror and - and! As a sudden mist squeezed him, closed around his throat, choked him, the farmsman could think only my boy, my boy, spare my boy, as the smell of flowers and rotten meat forced itself into his nose.


you listen to what I have to say.
And we see if we can keep from falling.



He thought that he was dead. Which was strange. If he was dead, how could he think that he was dead? The smell persisted, and that kept him in life. Let him know that he was alive. But it was not until something wet and cold and bristly closed on his face that his body spasmed, lurching to sudden life, caused his fists to come up with a strangled yell that sent whatever woke him scurrying away. He opened his eyes, and the trees were swaying above him, tinged yellow and bronze from the autumn wind.

He was on his back. His body hurt. His boy. The farmsman wrenched himself upward through sheer will, and deer - deer, the road was full of deer - scuttled and shied away in fright, turning their big, brown eyes to him in silent question. To the right of him was the cart, overturned, the eggs smashed and the milk spilt, the sheaves of wheat and cabbages and roots being greedily eaten by the strange, unhurried deer, who went about their task as if they had never seen a human before. The horse was there, too, his traces dangling, all of his terror gone; he cropped among the deer as if he were one of them, chomping down the good fare with relish, his terror-lather of his sweat dried on him in white crusts.

And there, there, was his boy, just now sitting up, looking about him as if dazed. With a cry, the farmsman went to him, staggering like a fawn himself, pushing impatiently at the flanks of deer that were unafraid, that were grudging to move from a thing they should fear. The farmsman took his boy by the shoulders, and he hesitates, for those eyes, those eyes had been a good, if dull, brown, and now they sparkled, like gems, grey - or silver? - he couldn't tell.

"Boy, boy - be ye alright?"

"Aye, Da," the boy answers, almost irritable at the way the man shook his shoulders. "Aw, lay off, Da, I'm fine."

It took a long moment for the farmsman to be sure. Here they were, in the middle of the road, terror still beating in their throats as deer ate flayrah around them. And there were flowers, too, above and behind them, small moon-flowers with white, glistening heads. After their strength came back, the two pushed the cart upright, putting the horse back between the prongs, which it accepted with a long-suffering sigh and a longing glance at a bunch of carrots. Their goods lay spoiled upon the road, but they took up what they could; a bag that had not burst, carrots and cabbages the deer had not yet gotten to.

"Wot 'bout the iron, Da?" the boy asked, as they turned the horse quietly away from the docile deer, going back over their wild ride. "Th'salt an' sugar, an' all that other stuff you was talkin' 'bout?"

"Hang it," the farmsman said, shortly. "We'll send off for 'em. I ain' touchin' this road again."

Behind them, among the deer, lingered a man-form of silver; his blood pooled in the road, and he gazed off after the two with a single, star-black eye.

We do not burn this to the ground when there is the chance, the least chance, that it might yet be put right.


_______________________________________


The day that Cherny stitched together a poque-bag of burnt, bent stars is the day that It began. Myrkenwood was not named in idle, for it was a wood, and for goods to come and go, they must venture into the wood. And those goods, owned by either merchant or farmsman, found themselves besieged. There were no deaths. Despite the gibbering terror of some, which passed quickly, and a few rattled bones and bruises, there were no hurts. But something did not suffer them to pass. Something came upon them, a sobbing, a sound, and swept them all aside. Crates were smashed, barrels were spilled out onto the road, and the wildlife came and gorged themselves upon the food meant for the tables of the well-to-do, or they soiled silks and cloth with their leavings, forgetting that they were ever afraid of men.

The farmers learned quickly. They sat on what goods that they had, and those that could make the journey were turned aside by the bravos, sniffing disdainfully over patched clothes and muddy, calloused hands, their goods and them themselves denied, to their bafflement. But they were not ones to argue with well-dressed, smirking lads, wielding their fancy clubs. They left, and turned what foodstuffs they had to ready for the coming winter.

A noose tightened. Soon, there would be no dainties for party-tables, no sandwiches for delicate hands. The Wood waited, implacable, and the broken, beaten thing within it kept a baleful eye upon Darkenhold, flowers following the uneven footsteps that left blood in their wake.
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