The Path of Poison: Chapter 17
Previously…
After leaving the town of Saumark, the caravan chose to cross the mountains on the long road to Farhaven, where they were flagged down by a girl who said her family had been attacked by beastmen. The party decided to stay with them, both to lend aid, and to mount a defense…
Check out the Chapter Index for all previous installments
Sepp was sitting by the firepit in the mountainside cottage, taking a well-deserved break. His patients were in a good state, but they were damn lucky, he’d thought to himself. Not everyone gets out of a beastman attack in such good condition, especially in such an isolated locale as this. Good thing the caravan had been flagged down, too. Better to face anything here, together, where they could plan and prepare, than be taken by surprise on the road.
He was mulling over this, and turning around thoughts of medicine in his head, when the sound of feet came close to him. He looked up, and saw the Voerlunder merchant Baruch standing near him. His gaze was wandering as he thought of the right words.
“Sepp, was it? Yes?”
“Ah, yes, you’re Baruch right?”
“Yes. I was wondering,” by his slight hesitation, Sepp guessed the man, being a merchant aside, wasn’t normally very voluble, “I would like you to accompany me to the landwight shrine nearby, if you could. You know what a landwight is?”
“I have an idea, yeah.”
“That’s good. Good. Look,” he came a little closer then, “you’re the closest thing to another Voerlunder in the caravan. If you don’t mind.”
“How long do you think we’ll be? The folks here seem fine, but…”
“Not long. They told me it was close, but given the circumstances, there’s safety in numbers. And besides, you drove off that drake yesterday.” He couldn’t argue with that, though he’d rather not be put in that situation again.
“Sure, I can help. What’s it for anyway? I’m just curious.”
“Well, I had wanted to go for the sake of the caravan,” he paused then, looking up, “but I think everyone here would benefit.”
Sepp excused himself for a second and went over to Barosh and Seva who were still with the cottage’s family. Seva seemed to have made fair headway with the lady of the house, Nadya, and her daughters, while Barosh smiled and laughed along, oblivious and completely out of his depth. Seva loudly greeted Sepp with a some regional salutation, he replied with an impressed nod and smile and said “very good” in his thickest Voerlund accent.
“Just let you both know, that merchant Baruch asked me to come along with him to a landwight shrine, so I’ll be gone for...not too long, least ways that’s what he said.”
“Oh, what about,” said Seva, looking back quickly to the family, “what about them?” Sepp crouched down beside her.
“Everyone should okay now, but how is, ah, Marbur?” he asked as he looked to the man, who gave a slow but positive nod. Sepp returned it and said to Seva: “If he looks like he might be falling asleep, I want you to uncork this.” He fished about in his pack and took out a mild hex. Her brow furrowed a little when she saw it. “Wave it under his nose and he’ll perk right back up, at least for long enough until I get back. He just needs to stay awake is all.”
“And this won’t do anything…?” Disquiet laced her words.
“This little slip of parchment, don’t touch it. That’s the bloom. I’ll turn it inwards so it doesn’t get smudged. But really, it’s nothing strong anyway. It just, well, smells absolutely foul.” She looked to lighten back up after that.
“Anything for me?” asked Barosh.
“I can’t leave my whole pack behind!” he laughed. Barosh threw his hands up in mock frustration.
Baruch had been waiting patiently when Sepp returned, and outside the Dunmarrow had pulled the wagons in and made a temporary camp and perimeter around the cottage. The four Baletorians and the Manatarian woman Saror were tending to goods in the wagons. Baruch passed her and they spoke in a Merchant’s Tongue unfamiliar to Sepp, but he got the gist of it. If he was right, they seemed quite close. The Voerlunder then sought out the Dunmarrow captain, Karel, who was inspecting his clusters of soldiers. Sepp actually got a good count of them now, they were eleven in number. They had been twelve, until the drake attacked. They were reclining around the cottage in groups of two and three, but alert nonetheless.
“Captain Karel,” the merchant began with some measure of humility in his voice, “I seek to visit a religious shrine over the ridge yonder, I am taking Sepp here with me,” he gestured to it and the apothecary, “I thought it best to tell you instead of simply leaving.”
“I am glad you did so,” said the captain plainly. The tension in the merchant’s shoulders relaxed. Though he knew Dunmarrow had a reputation, he was still surprised to see it in action. “But I would rather, as your guard, that you take one of my men along, for there is safety in numbers.” He thought for a second. “You’re familiar with the brothers, healer?”
“Karmov and Dorach, yes.”
“I’ll get one of them, they could do with orders.” The captain called out then in a resounding voice of harsh northern words for the brother Karmov, who marched over promptly, and nodded in greeting to Sepp. The captain explained, in his own tongue, his orders to the soldier, who bowed quickly in assent. Before they left, Karel said to them, “Return quickly if you can, there’s no telling when night will fall now.”
The cottage was on a broad slope, almost entirely open save for the higher mountain pass and peak in the distance, and a single ridge which lay much closer. It was behind this ridge, Sepp understood, that the shrine sat. Karmov took the point. The Dunmarrow were all equipped lighter on the road. Sepp remembered back in Saumark that Karel had been in a full breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, plated boots, and great sweeping cloak—all of it black. Karmov wore the breastplate over a thick kind of knee length coat held at the waist by a wide belt. He wore long gloves, breeches, and high, unadorned boots. It was similarly all black. Around his shoulders was a long high collared cloak that strikingly framed his bloodless face and shock white hair. Sepp could only imagine what a dozen or more warriors in this uniform might look like charging towards you on a battlefield, black metal blades held high, shrieking war cries of their frostbitten homeland.
“Good work in there, healer,” said Karmov all of a sudden.
“Oh, thank you. Glad I was here to help.”
“Had we been passing here without your party, I doubt that any one of us could have done much for these people.”
“There wasn’t much to do, thankfully,” he said with a slightly awkward chuckle. Karmov looked around for just a second.
“Don’t be so humble, healer. Should be proud of what you do,” said the Dunmarrow somewhat gravely. “And I say this as a professional killer,” he added with a smirk. Baruch was silent, and had forward a little, ascending the ridge. Karmov jogged up after him, and Sepp followed.
Below them was a shallow dip in the mountainside. Towards the higher peak, the landscape rose sharply, and was strewn with jutting stone. Downslope, it was like much of the rest of the mountainside: slight undulations, and broad sweeps of austere grassland and lone trees. Sitting a short walk away at the lowest point of the gentle depression was the landwight shrine. There was a haziness about the upper air as they walked towards it, a slight disquiet of the clouds perhaps promising rain. As of yet it hadn’t grown any darker, at least not noticeably. Sepp studied the shrine up close now, the first he’d seen like this. He’d seen only one other, that he could at least immediately recall, some days ago upon first entering Voerlund as an aimless refugee. It had looked more or less like this, a decent sized mound of large, loose rocks, resembling a cairn, with a wooden shaft rising from the middle of it. This one’s shaft had strips old, weathered rags attached to it, and most notably, the whole thing was missing the large, altar-like slab of stone the other one had.
Baruch went down to it first, Sepp followed, but Karmov stayed behind them. The merchant approached it with a due reverence, and hand raised with a plain, spoken greeting. He then turned and gestured for Sepp to do the same, and he did so in his best Voerlund sounds. Baruch walked up to it and squatted down, looking about the pile of stones. Sepp noticed almost every single one of them had a design cut deep into them, some appeared to be serpentine shapes and wavering circles, while others looked like they were highly stylized or abstract faces. Of the landwight, perhaps, was his thought. Baruch took a few of the stones away and replaced them quickly—he knew what he was looking for, Sepp supposed. Finally he found the right one, fairly low down. He set it on the springy grass, for the growth around the shrine just a little ways about had a livelier colour than the rest of the mountain they’d seen. The merchant then removed from inside his coat a wrapped bundle of twigs, tied with a thin string. The second they were removed from the wrapping, their perfume assailed Sepp’s senses. Baruch turned when he heard the light cough.
“What, uh, is that for? An offering?”
“Yes. Think of it like a gift of food.” The merchant then placed that small bundle inside the cairn itself, and then removed something else from his coat—a short length of black material, a fabric. In fact, a piece of wagon canvas. He gently pushed that into the aperture, too. “So the landwight knows who and what this is for.” Both things were placed just deep enough that he could replace the stone neatly, but before he could, Sepp stopped him.
“Baruch, could I give something?” The merchant shrugged and moved aside. Sepp crouched down to where he was and opened his pack. Various small medicinal bottles, bundles, pouches, samples. In that moment he became keenly away that this may very well be the extent of his medicine for a while. But he was already here, and this was aid he was getting for everyone. He took out a small wrapped up length of a thin, light stem. The inside still had its juices. It was something one would usually let seep into a cup of water to be drank, it was a kind of stimulant. He’d considered using it on Marbur, the fellow with the head injury, but had decided against giving him anything like that with a prolonged effect. As he placed it in, he spoke under his breath, entirely unaware if there was any etiquette he was to follow, and he spoke in Silverden words.
“I hope you like this. It will give you energy, if you need anything like that. Please watch over the caravan, or at least the families on the mountainside, or my medicine...thank you.” He went to step back.
“Replace that stone,” said Baruch. Sepp apologized—both to the merchant and the landwight—and set the stone back. Abstract as it was, it looked kind of cheerful, he thought.
“Thank you for coming, Sepp,” Baruch said before he called to Karmov and began trudging back to the ridge. Sepp followed, and after a minute or so, spoke up, not particularly desirous of a silent walk back to the cottage.
“I thought these shrines had altars or some such, no?”
“Some do. In proper villages, towns, guard barracks, they’ll have them. People leave offerings and it’s someone’s duty to place them in the shrine itself. In rural places like this they’ll do it themselves. They do not have anything like this in Silverden?”
“Not really...my father was a Voerlunder, he used to say landwights and Silverden graveyards were very similar. But we don’t pray or offer or anything at all.”
“You don’t seek assistance from your ancestors? Saints?”
“Not so much as folk seem to do here. For us, we meditate and hope for insight. The dead are just...there, helping the Serpent’s order.”
“Funny,” said Karmov, “in the Macha Clanhold they too have something similar, invisible things in the wilds. Only they work to keep them in check. Typical Macha.”
“What are they called?” asked Sepp.
“In Macha tongue they are called properly Kynarrach, or Ardimmur—the name most foreigners know is called literally, the Dark White Ones. Not like your landwight and spirits.”
“How so?”
“Everything is a battle in Macha.”
“Is there anything like them in Dunmarrow?”
“No,” he answered. “There is just ice and death.”
As they approached the ridge, Karmov suddenly dropped low as a sound cut through the still, wintry air. His head darted around, seeking a source. Sepp and Baruch shared a worried expression. Though none of them spoke, each of the three thought the same thing. The northman gestured to follow him, slowly. He crept up the ridge, and again, there came a sound through the air—far off, followed by two more in answer. Karmov’s sword flew from its scabbard with a screech, a broad blade of dark metal ending in a diamond tipped point. Then suddenly, roars in the Dunmarrow tongue from the direction of the cottage. Karmov looked back to his charges only once.
“Stay close to me!” His harsh accent coated every word. His cloak was draped about him and he ran forth like a living shadow. Sepp and Baruch ran low up the ridge after him, trying to keep pace with the warrior.
As they gained the top of the ridge, shouts and bleats erupted from afar, towards the peak. A dozen or more loping and leaping forms cascaded across the open span, and though from this distance it was hard to discern what exactly they looked like, there was one noticeably larger than the rest. There could be no doubt the beastmen had returned, a capalhead among their ranks.
“Come!” growled Karmov as the other two ran with him. The Dunmarrow company below stood out like black blots on the dull, stark landscape. The mercenary bellowed to his captain in the native tongue. Karel pointed to some other location and Karmov ran to it with only a nod to his charges.
“House! Now!” roared the captain, standing tall, gleaming black sword unsheathed, cloak flowing with his rapid movements. Sepp and Baruch obeyed. Only one thought rung wordlessly in the apothecary’s head in the mere minutes from the ridge.
He had to protect his people.
No matter what it took.