Running Up That Hill

“Another one, Eel?”
 
“Ael… dreth.”
 
“You tip better, I remember your name.” The bartender gripped the glass and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Another?”
 
“Yeah.” Ældreth sighed. “Two of the same.”
 
The bartender grunted and uncorked a bottle and started pouring.
 
“Anyway, like I was sayin’ Father…”
 
“So, I’m not sure why I’m saying this, since it doesn’t seem to penetrate, but you know, right, you KNOW that you’re not actually part of my flock, right?” Father Cillian Hearne sighed and glanced over at Ældreth, who, yep, was staring ahead and not paying him much mind. “I’m not even sure we’re the same religion, to be honest…”
 
“Like I was saying, Father, here’s how it went down,” Ældreth continued as if he hadn’t heard the cleric speaking. “It started with a murder at the Dannie Embassy, this kid named...”
 
“Yes,” Cillian reminded himself of his vows and gritted his teeth. “We’ve been over that part.”
 
“Oh, yeah,” Ældreth shrugged and continued, not even a little impeded. “Where did I leave off?”
 
Cillian closed his eyes, prayed to his gods for patience and opened them again. “The Cloudwood, I think.”
 
“Right,” the big head nodded up and down in acknowledgement. “The Cloudwood. Of all the things about Flint that have changed in 500 years, there is one thing that has remained constant. The Cloudwood is never simple.”
 
“We went in looking for Nevard, this Skyseer who’s nephew said we didn’t have much time, but had a vision. We should have known it wouldn't be simple. Fate always extracts a price for the knowledge of a Skyseer. Know that and know truth.”
 
The drink appeared in front of him and disappeared in the flicker of the wrist and movement of the throat. “Another!”
 
“We started out on what I thought was solid ground. There was a carriage. A woman screaming within. Men with pistols near the carriage. Bandits in the woods shooting them with arrows. Seemed simple enough on the surface. And this time, heh, this time I’M on the side of the cops. Which still messes with me, to be honest with you. So we act like cops, we flash badges and give ‘em fair warning. Mairi, I told you about Mairi, right?”
 
“The Lady Lomashney? Yes, you did.” Was this penance? Cillian went through his last year or so of decisions looking for what, if anything, the gods could be punishing him for.
 
“Right, so Mairi has the same idea I had, and we flashed badges and told ‘em to stand down and submit and all that. Alright, I might not have followed department procedure to the Letter, but I know this sort, HELLS I used to BE this sort, and I’m kinda proud of ‘Get On the Ground or I’ll Put You In It!’, pretty good, huh?”
 
Cillian’s eyes swiveled over to Ældreth as if to ask if he really expected a priest to validate his choice in death threats.
 
“So, its all violence from there on in… Hey, not me for once! I actually tried to do things the cop way, but we got guys who are best in the scrum. And I respect that. Sig’s a fighter, a smart kid about it, but a fighter’s a fighter, ya know? And so’s the flautist, verbal and not physical violence, but it’s killed dudes, so I’m pretty sure that counts. And the new guy, what’s his name? Edwin, Edvald, something like that, keeping us alive.”
 
“This ‘Flautist’, this is ‘Eoghan’, right?” Cillian, why are you encouraging this old nutter? Why not, it’s not going to stop it if I don’t ask, is it?
 
“Yeah, the Flautist, I said that, right?” Ældreth’s massive shoulders shrugged. “Anyway, we fight and shout and shit, and this carriage, it’s still slipping off this cliff… I mention the cliff yet?”
 
“No, I don’t think you did.” Cillian tries not to sound interested, but there was something pruriently compelling about the cascade of terrible decisions that seemed to be rolling down this hill.
 
“Yeah, carriage is on a cliff, about to fall over. Danger and death and all that. You know how it is, padre. Just another day in the service of the Crown, right?”
 
Cillian absolutely did NOT know how it was, but this was not the part of the story where you said that.
 
“So, we fought and shouted and eventually all the guys near the carriage fuckin’ get their tickets punched by the forest guys… the flautist takes the forest guys’ head guy out of operation, that tongue of his, swear to Sethaba… and we find out, largely though our shouting and their shouting, that it wasn’t really the way that we thought it went down. Chick in the carriage, yeah, she had been kidnapped. Guys with the pistols had been the kidnappers. She was with the forest gang and the pistoleers had kidnapped her. I’ll get to that in a hot second.”
 
Sweet Gods! Why was he still listening to this? Cillian didn’t know what sin he was committing by continuing to listen to this, but it had be something. Right?
 
“So, a fight ends when one side is dead, right? Welp, that happened. The hostage-taking-fuckers all ended up dead. And Renard, that’s the head of the local bros in the woods, the Flautist took away his bow and for one fucking moment we were, in a way, sort of in charge of the situation. So we did what we were good at.”
 
“Mairi talked to the living. I talked to the dead.”
 
“From Mairi, they found out that the local gomers had gotten pressed by the out-of-towners what were dead. The girl in the carriage? She was involved with their field commander, the Renard that the Flautist had disarmed. And they had been in charge of this stretch of road since before any of them had been born. (I remember banditing this part of the roads back in my first life, but that’s something else I need to atone for, ya know, padre?)”
 
“Ældreth, I can only say this so many times, I’m not actually your…”
 
“On my end, I talked to the other side. After they got they dumb asses dead. Poor bastards. The ‘Crossed Pistols’ gang from in town. They had gotten some bad advise, apparently from a Crissillyiri (I’m going to also point out that back in the embassy it was some shadowy-ass Dannie who killed our vic, but nobody wants to hear that, so…) to hit the ‘prime turf’ in the Cloudwoods. It’s dumb-ass advice, but they were too young to know that, so they came out here, got into it with the locals (the “Hummingbirds” dumb-ass name, although, be fair, they actually HAD hummingbirds, so I guess...) and it went bad, so they tried kidnapping Renard’s girlfriend. That’s the girl in the carriage if you haven’t been following…”
 
Cillian had been following. But he felt it would be giving up ground to admit it.
 
“ANYWAY, thing is, the last of them were dead… By the way, Father, I’ve got some messages to deliver from those poor fuckers. Can you assist me with that?”
 
“Of course…” He stopped and thought through the theological ramifications. Fuck it. Yeah. Why not? “Of course I can.”
 
“Good deal. Thanks for that, man. But so they died and taking a hostage was their last desperate move. And it got them killed. But the local guys, these ‘Hummingbird’ guys, who had an actual fucking druid who summoned hummingbirds, if you believe it, these guys appreciated our mission and our not getting (too much) in the way of killing the Crossed Pistol guys.”

“And they sent us to the seer, this Nevard. He could see that something was wrong in the city and he had but one request. Which, for a skyseer, that’s not a lot to ask. Well, two requests really, but one in service to another. He wanted us to lend him our strength (the man’s over 100 years old), so he could get to the peak of Cauldron Hill. Apparently the Curse has gotten stronger since my time? But he needed our strength to get there, ya know?”
 
Cillian’s eyes got wide. Cauldron Hill. Cauldron-fucking-Hill. Famously the most cursed place in Risur. He wanted to tell Ældreth to stop, but some tiny demon in his brain made him hold off. He needed to know how this story ended.
 
“We leave his tent, and there’s this Orc, I’m gonna assume full fuckin’ Berian Orc here, and he’s willing to do a ritual…”
 
Ældreth’s voice trailed off. He wasn’t telling all of it it. And he wasn’t telling it on purpose.
 
“It worked. We shared our life force with him. 24 hours he's got before he goes back to dyin'. He stood as I’m going to guess, he hadn’t stood like for like forty years. And together, Nevard and us, we walked out of that camp and into town. We went to Cauldron Hill. We went to see the Governor there. A full mage, thank Sethaba, who knew the value of a Skyseer. He gives us permission. He gives us protections. Cauldron Hill’s no place for fucking around. Our only price? He has us checking in on the way down. So with that, and 24 hours of Nevard up and strong and young, we trudge upwards...”
 
Ældreth turned towards Cillian and grinned. Ear to ear. Big teeth smile.
 
“And that, my guy, that’s where it gets weird...”