T A C: Session 08 - A National Pastime Report
General Summary
I am free. Free to walk a street. Free to keep my sword to hand, even though I am a rarity in that I have a sheath for my executioner's blade. Free to breathe warm, ocean air. Free to watch a seller of musical whistles offer his wares to passers-by. He looks at me. He does not offer a whistle, only fear. Fear at my appearance. He feels afraid and that suits me. He is free to feel this way. I don’t need a whistle in any case, I have my own. It comes in the form of the vertical slot in my steel helmet. When I force air through it, it shrieks out a sound. Useful for calling to Sanction and Penalty. They are my Steel leopards. They travel alongside me. They travel with me to the ends of the worlds or the end of my time, whichever comes first. When they join me, I can tell that they have caught some small rodents and fed upon them. Their muzzles show the blood evidence of their recent activity. I stroke their ears. A dangerous thing to do. They are sensitive and Sanction in particular, is wary of its ears being toyed with. I have taken care to have Sanction made a kind of Steel protection for its ears – a feline’s helmet, if you would. Penalty, needed no such helmet so for it I made only a vestigial breast-plate, more like a fashionable collar that hangs down from its neck. The cats were well fed and contented. The city of Valetta provides easy prey… for cats as well. The Bit are on the city. Unlike the four-legged rodents, the Bit must be considered dangerous. Their attempt on Praetor’s life had failed but only because the pair of Bit had been rash. Almost too-too rash to be believable. I am not convinced that this was much more than an intentional act of bluster meant to force a rapid response from the Grand Master of Seneschals. The Bit are elder assassins of the Mule. If dragons create fear then the Mule is a great dragon indeed. The Bit have been given the tools of the dragon they serve. Deception of the mind, grants of immunity to weapons, truce with tricks of the elements… Exemplary foes. I have only seen the evidence of their works. Traps laid and sprung by the made-unwary. Unwary turned to broken corpses amidst spikes laced with illusion and disease. Secret pits that have transformed sorry victims into hapless gelatinous masses, doomed to slither through corridors. Better off dead but very much alive. Walls holed as if by burrowing weevils, dart-filled except for those sections where they have been triggered. In these places, the dead lay in separated, disjointed pieces. The bodies blown apart by the humble darts that are filled with noisome energies that overcome my mind to conceive. Ceiling traps that do not descend so much as suck and pull a passer-by to it. A relatively harmless trap, until the poor soul is then released to fall to the floor below. Should they person land well, then the ceiling would repeat its pull, until the person tires of the game or something is broken be that ankle, wrist or skull. No ordinary assassins then. The Bit had gone to death easily. Gracelessly but surely, as if they had no choice. Others would have run away at the idea of fighting an equal number of Seneschals. If these had not known who they faced, the sight of just two blades more than filling a street’s width, would have been reason enough to give rise to thoughts of escape. The Bit did not run. They died without a curse or grovel. Plain death is always an invitation to uncover more. I felt its tug at my tattered sleeve. To his credit, Praetor did not immediately set to chasing down their trail. We left that possibility alone. I might have suggested it as it was my first inclination but Kryger needed finding. It was easy to let it go. The next afternoon, Praetor and his companion-at-arms, Grey, approached the Distant Port tavern. I watched from my post. Kryger did not hide so much as he was oblivious. Praetor entered the tavern. I let Kryger join the other two inside. Sanction was involved with a pair of roofing seagulls. The cat had been stalking them for twenty minutes, for something to do. Seagulls are odd birds. They roost about cities like Valetta, hover over street-side food vendors and their patrons but are rarely seen at sea. They should be called citygulls or chiphawks. Sanction barely acknowledged my whistled tone. Penalty, always more alert to my call, sat next to me already. Alertness might not be the reason. Penalty had come to rely on action if it was next to me. Being further off meant not noticing that I was at my ‘work’. I and Penalty moved into the tavern. Coming inside I saw the place was filled with late afternoon lunchers. Praetor was quickly seen standing at the bar. At my arrival, he moved, drink in hand, toward me. A thrown knife struck a post, just ahead of where he walked. I looked to its source. Kryger sat with a Lethal. Lethals were something I had not expected to see here. They tended to haunt rooftops and high cliffs, like the birds of prey they so admired. Here was a lethal that had grounded itself. I moved my blade’s tip to the wooden floor. I set it into motion spinning like a child’s top. The hilt ran up my arm, across my chest and down the other arm, coming to a spinning halt in my left hand. Praetor came to me and greeted me. He told me the Lethal was with him. Praetor turned to make his way to the others. I stopped him. If he had stepped uncaring, he might have caused the glyph transcribed by my sword’s tip on to the floor, to detonate. The Grand Master looked at the floor and then at me. I seemed to have met some unspoken test, well. I left the knife alone. There was no need to take it down as I knew who it had been thrown by. Only a fool would touch a knife of a Lethal. Praetor seemed uninterested in it. He went straight to the Lethal. I made myself to there as well. “Lethal.”, I said expansively “Seneschal.”, it responded. Praetor made introductions. I said, “I had not expected a Lethal to be among us. I have fought with some and against some, always to the point of death. They are few as far as I know it. Do you know if there are more?” “Not as many as there are Seneschals. There’s lots of you apparently.” “Only four or so.”, said Praetor, “All found on the Plane of Steel.” “Steel has some affiliation with the Seneschals?” “The swords are close to us in ties of blood. Steel must know this.” The Lethal said nothing at this observation. Kryger made some useless comments about food, weapons, Seneschals and life on the plane of Steel. I interrupted at some points to either explain away Kryger’s naivete or to shut down his talk if it began to go where it should not. Praetor observed most of this without comment. He learns what we two are about, I suppose. I have nothing to hide. I have less than that to fear. The Lethal’s name was Grey. He seemed diffident. He also claimed tiredness more than once. He more or less forced himself to eat and drink. The servant had watered his wine so that it wouldn’t make him drowsy. Despite this measure, the man soon fell asleep. He was so tired that food remained in his mouth. This was a Lethal I had not been with before. There was definitely an oddness about him. He awoke as soon as Praetor approached him, seeming alert enough. He did not try to tell us he wasn’t tired. Instead he went straight back to sleep but more purposefully this second time with a view to getting some actual rest. The three of us shared the responsibility of watching over him. Penalty and Sanction took care of most of this. That allowed we three men to eat, talk and watch the tavern. There were merchants in fair quantity. Some were locals but an equal amount were foreigners. The latter was made up of Kreccidoccian buyers, Maughlten sailors, Shayghan traders and some others we could not decide at. They moved among one another making acquaintances and deals. There were the inevitable Houselanders as well. For the hours the Lethal slept, we didn’t see a knight, only their retainers. Four pages and four squires. The squires seemed to treat each other as brothers might. They bought drinks for each other and talked loudly about fights they had been in. The pages were quieter. They did note the others like themselves but only exchanged subtle nods. There appeared to be less reason for them to talk to each other. The locals spoke mostly about a nearby city called Gervana. They talked about how horsemen were twice in the last week seen riding down the city’s main street causing havoc. Wagons set alight, people knocked about, in one case breaking a man’s legs. The talk centred on the lack of a response from the city’s guardians. I was more interested in the cause. Who were these riders? The Houselands seem to be the sole source of horsemen here. Does this mean they are from the Houselands? Is this not unlawful or if it is, should it not be met by force? I made a note to speak with the Grand Master about this later as he had gone to relieve himself when this had been spoken about. Five hours later, the Lethal awoke. He seemed better for the rest. Talk resumed about the Bit and attacking them in their tunnels beneath the city. I was sure this was what they wanted. Grey did not much care about the plans the Bit might have made. He did listen to what I said though. He agreed that assassins like to lay ‘the trap’. He said that killing somebody was only half of the effort. The other half was in the planning. He might have been reappraising his instinctive desire to attack them head-on. One good plan deserves another… It was then that he noticed his throwing knife had vanished from the post, where he’d thrown it earlier. None of the three of us had noticed its being removed. A brave servant? A greedy merchant? An interested squire? In any event, the person was foolhardy. A Lethal and his blades are never parted. Kryger offered to try to find the ‘thief’ as he felt obligated to do so. He left the tavern directly. I sent Sanction after him. Better a cat’s eyes in the deep of night than mine. Kryger returned to report that the knife’s thief had been apprehended by the town guard and taken to the fortress. Grey was irritated at this news. It did seem almost too efficient. There was no helping it, we would have to go and get the knife back from the town authority. I find the town watch usually dull and unexciting. No, that is not stating the same thing twice. I lifted my hood to intercept the rains, as did my companions. The cats ignored the fine misting they were getting. This weather was nothing compared to the icy storms of the plane of Steel. A brief walk through the drizzle brought us up the embankment and to the stairs of the Valeguard fortress. A powerful sounding name laid waste by the two ineffectual arms-men standing watch at its gate. They crossed their spears with the customary, “Halt –“, and so on. I knocked their spears upward and made them doubt to lower these again or perhaps ever again. They might retire from service if their expressions were anything to judge them by. The city will be safer if they do. Praetor and Grey entered the fortress. It is some kind of a fortress, I suppose. Very small though. Not falling down around our ears at least. A guardsman who’d spied us, ran ahead shouting, “Alarms! To weapons! Alarms!”. This was heard and responded to with the sounds of booted feet and much mixed noise of clattering spears being taken up. This got my energy to grow. I felt the zest for slinging come to my arms. To hasten the ‘meeting’ I called out, “Alarms! Alarms!”. I liked to encourage my foes whenever I could. Praetor did not find my tactic amusing or necessary. It is an old trick, I know… From the hallway perpendicular to the one our gathering troopers and ourselves stood in, a single guardsman approached. He was clearly more experienced. He named himself, Captain Seb-Reb 'Scil. He also mentioned quickly that he was a Houselander. That made a certain sense, made even more sensible when he answered Praetor’s query as to the whereabouts a former commander with, we took over and the existing officers left for easier jobs elsewhere. Once we had indicated what we were here for, the captain made quick inquiry of his sergeant. Sergeant Coal answered that he knew the thief’s cell and that the knife was in the office to be made evidence. Evidence. It was ‘evident’ that the Lethal would not be leaving the knife in their care that long.
