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 claiming her family had been attacked by beastmen. While going to visit a nearby landwight shrine with the merchant Baruch, Sepp is caught in the open as the beastmen that attacked the cottage return…
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Sepp and the Voerlund merchant Baruch bounded across the open field that lay between them and the cottage. In those spare few moments, Sepp saw the Dunmarrow whipping themselves into a frenzy as they met the beastmen in battle: bellowing and howling like beasts themselves, beating their blades against their breastplates, spewing long strings of dire words in their harsh language. He could only image what that must have looked like to an enemy. He saw a few of their faces as they whipped around, the eyes were staring, bulging almost, their storm grey a furious dark against the bloodless pallor of their skin. The shock white hair flew wildly as their teeth were bared and brows furrowed. Their black cloaks’ collars framed these frightful visages and flowed like torrents of shadow behind them. The idle notion or feeling passed through Sepp’s head that, were he to get too close, they might not remember him.
Then he crashed into something. Or to be precise, something crashed into him. Sepp staggered back, a thousand thoughts flooding to the forefront of his mind as he looked at the goat-headed creature before him. Save for the oversized animal head (which he, noticed, bore rows of sharp teeth where they ought not to be) and a sort of thick shagginess about the shoulders and waist, its body and limbs looked perfectly human. Dusky flesh, of a complexion like an approximation of a Silverden swarthiness or Baletorian clay, but not quite either. Its eyes stared outwards, like a goat’s, but he knew were focused on him. He had only began to form the thought of how he’d defend himself before a great black sword cleaved its way through the beastman’s shoulder and torso. Darkish blood and long stringy innards fell from it as the creature was kicked over, the northman retrieving his blade. Sepp didn’t recognize this Dunmarrow, and a small worry crept into his stomach. But the man bellowed something and two of the warriors flew to Sepp’s side, pressing him close, blades held out.
Around him, the Dunmarrow fought the beastmen in savage combat. There was no clang of steel against steel, but the dull clunk of impact against metal, the tearing of flesh, the snorts and gurgled roars of beastmen, and the rasps and snarls of Dunmarrow. Black broadswords were swung in singing arcs into limbs and thrust hilt-deep through stomachs. One of the northmen found himself beset by two goatheads, pushed to the ground as teeth sunk into his neck and arm through the brigandine, but as he hit the ground, he was silent, and the two beasts were pulled from him and their throats cut to the spine. Then, there was a great stamping and snorting. A shout of challenge. Sepp saw between his two guards, who were ushering him roughly to the cottage, the thing they had all been dreading. The capalhead towered over its hunched, lumbering goatmen, and stood tall over even the great northmen, a full head or more over even Karel, a particularly hulking specimen of his race. Its flesh was a sort of dirty paleness, not like some Voerlunder’s cream skin, nor the pallid mien of the Dunmarrow or Macha. Grey, almost. Again, like an approximation of something. Its head was that of a great black horse with red eyes, long drooping mane, and a mouth of clenched, twisted fangs. It flexed its sinuous hands as it strode towards the captain, whom it seemed to recognize as the main threat. Karel did not move an inch.
They had been outnumbered and had thinned the ranks, but if tales and rumours were true, that capalhead was worth several of its thralls. In a mere few seconds he saw as flashes of half formed thoughts in his mind’s eye his friends in the cottage, unsure and afraid. He saw the family, cowering in a corner, the din of desperate battle outside their meagre walls getting closer. He saw his father bleeding out in the dirt. Sepp's chest swelled with a searing hot rush that said "never again".
He knew for a fact a few of the vials in his pack had poisons concocted from beastman innards. The stuff roiling about inside them was, his father had once said, quite potent. If collected, preserved from their natural decomposition, and left to stew, they became horribly toxic. What better way to drive off that capalhead than with the blood of its own kind? He hadn’t much time. He tried to signal to his bodyguards to hold on as he fervently dug around his pack. In truth, any of the murky liquids, moist powders, or dark little bottles could be it. He had a good idea of just what level of potency each hex had, it was marked in ink on the bloom around their neck, but of their specific compositions he knew little, save for some of the rarer ones, and none he knew of were what he wanted. It had to be one a small handful, though, and the best he could do was choose and hope for the best—at any rate, something of this strength would drive the beastman off anyway. He reached into the pack with something like a prayer on his lips and wiped several marks off the neutralizing bloom. With a length of charcoal, always kept close, he scrawled the Silverden characters for “horse” and “beastman”, and a mark that acted as good a director for the hex as could be mustered. They were blunt instruments, after all, and while able to be constricted and directed, they were anything but subtle. But he could throw its focus on one big thing, as he had done with the drake.
He thrust his hand out as he finished the final stroke of the bloom, right as the capalhead held back a fierce blow from Karel, grasping his arms and pushing back the broadsword. The captain was struggling to free himself from the beastman’s grip until it gave a scream and curled its fingers as it jerked back from the northman.
And then turned to Sepp.
Its head shaking, snorting steam, and frothing at the mouth, the capalhead bounded forward in an agonized hunch. Sepp froze. Before he could think, the beastman reached out for him as he tried backing away through his Dunmarrow guards. One of them was knocked aside as the thing, with more than animal rage in its eyes, sunk its gnarled fingers into Sepp’s shoulder and lifted him, eliciting a scream of agony. The second guard sent his blade halfway through the thick limb but was met with the thing’s shoulder and he was knocked on his back. The capalhead grasped Sepp’s head in its other hand and began wrenching him about, its fingers still lodged in his flesh. Sepp’s breath shuddered into his lungs as it lifted him, the stink of its steaming breath choking him, the cruel sounds of its guttural ululations deafening him to all else. He slammed the hex held fast in his fist against its head over and over, each strike only encouraging it, until the glass shattered, smearing the poison into the beastman’s eye. Some subconscious part of the apothecary swore in that moment that it spoke, he knew not what tongue such a thing might speak, but he’d be damned if there wasn’t something at least approaching a word in the froth and spitting, a word that was as a seething curse.
He was suddenly dropped to the ground as two black swords were run through the capalhead’s chest, another sword upon its wounded arm, and another upon its leg. Sepp watched, dazed, four Dunmarrow including Karel, their faces white as hoarfrost, their eyes almost black, their teeth bared, hacking their gore-drenched edges into the beastman again and again, until the only steam that rose was from its dismembered corpse. All around them, the other warriors had slain their foes, and perhaps two fled frantically into the distance, unchallenged.
Thrusting his sword into the hard earth, Karel knelt down and held Sepp by the arm. He was still, his eyes staring—the captain stopped, and saw in that second merely a frightened young man, and a friend who had tried to help. Any thoughts of reproach, or of any other words for that matter, left him. The wound on his shoulder was staining the green tunic a nasty dark.
“Are you okay, lad?” asked the captain. Sepp’s eyes darted up to Karel and back down again and around, as he tried collecting his thoughts. A series of short, heavy breaths seemed to focus him.
“I, uh, I think so, thank you,” he added quickly. He winced and held back a swear as they helped him up, and it was the brothers Karmov and Dorach who helped him back to the house.
The clash could, in reality, only have gone on a couple of minutes, but back in the cottage it seemed as if some great shift of time had passed. No doubt every second had felt stretched into a painfully acute awareness. No one spoke when they entered, but looked with eager and anxious eyes. Skivor was meditating in the Silverden manner with his axe out beside him. Seva and Barosh sat by the family, and all were as tense as could be. The Baletorians had been turned to their mountain fervently praying. The Manatarian woman Saror was praying by a window, in sight of the dull sky above. Likely she had seen much of the fight. Baruch was near her, having made it in before, but quiet, unmoving. Sepp looked around the small, single room cottage. By all rights it had been a successful routing, save for the one fallen Dunmarrow warrior who was being tended to by his fellows. Not a single beastman had made it near the cottage. Yet, there was a nervousness in the air that refused to dissipate in the wake of the battle. Aye, it had indeed felt a little too close, a little too quickly. Like their luck had been spread rather thin by now.
Seva and Barosh jumped up when they saw Sepp being helped inside, a few drops of blood landing on the bare wood. They exclaimed in confused tones and fragments their concern.
“Capalhead grabbed him,” said Dorach. Looks of shock were shared, which the Dunmarrow confirmed wordlessly. “His, ah, his medicine had not the effect he thought. But it is dead now.”
“S’eth, a capalhead?” Barosh exclaimed. In Voerlund and Silverden, perhaps the only thing with a reputation second to the grim sight of Dunmarrow mercenaries were horse-headed beastmen, things with a penchant for not just destruction, but cruelty. Naturally, such a reputation was even more heightened amongst rural folk such as them.
“It is dead. Help me see to his wound.”
His tunic and undershirt were removed, but in the interest of keeping him warm, they were draped about him. He could barely move his arm. The thing’s fingers had dug right into him. Sepp made simple orders and requests in addition to the Dunmarrow’s treatment of him. He asked Seva to remove some of that root he had been handing out earlier—though he found then there was precious little left. But it would have to do, and be replaced as soon as possible. The wound was cleaned out with fresh water, and then with a physick similar to his treatment of the girl Solura’s injured leg. He swore out loud when they poured it in, and they let him, then a little stream of blackness flowed out, and when he saw it, Sepp sighed with relief.
Bandaging was procured and applied liberally, and new clothes put back on him—the rest could be washed at a later date. Karel, however, was anxious to have a sort of debriefing with his charges in the cottage after one of his scouts returned. He convened with everyone around the fire pit, Baruch interpreting for the family’s benefit.
“There is but little chance, if any, of the beastmen returning, especially now that their horse-head has been slain. I have had an able scout make a search around the cottage to make sure of this. But we must move out while there is still light, we must make progress over the hills.” The family looked a little worried to once again be left alone, but the captain addressed them. “Worry not, for even a stray is unlikely to approach where it can smell any number of its dead. This, too, has cleared us of any potential problems on the road. I am glad you called to us for aid, young one,” he nodded to the younger girl, Solya.
Sepp remained for a minute while supplies and merchants were gathered into their respective wagons, and Barosh was with him. Sepp wanted to make sure the family would be okay. In truth he had little to leave with them now, but he’d do what he could. This really had come together the best it could have, he’d accepted. Had they been an hour later, these people would have been dead. No doubt about that now. And had they arrived an hour earlier, they’d have moved on and probably been attacked on the road. Solura was hobbling along but seemed much better, as did her father whose head was cleared and was quite voluble in grasping Sepp’s arm in profuse thanks for saving his girls, regardless of the apothecary’s wincing. He was still worried about that knock to the head the man had suffered. But of the salves and mixable herbs he had on him, nothing would do for ailing consciousness. He had no smelling salts, only hexes, which he’d rather not leave for fear of its accidental misuse or poor reception. So, in his own time, he described to them to keep especial care of Marbur—keeping active was good for him now, and to treat Solura’s leg with new bandages and fresh water once a day. Profuse thanks were once again offered, and Barosh even attempted some goodwill words as they bid the family goodbye.
They made a brisk pace to the wagon, the cold creeping under Sepp’s bandages. The earth outside the cottage was fairly unkempt from the battle. They passed the remains of slain beastmen, and Barosh studied them with a morbid curiosity. They were already rotting, or rather, Barosh mused out loud, they were melting. Like they were oozing back into the earth or something.
“My dad used to say to me beastmen were odd,” Sepp said as they gazed upon the mangled remains of the capalhead. “Something about them being a little less—or different, I suppose, than other creatures. He called them elemental.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You know how you sometimes see clouds of things like birds at sunset or in the dawn that kind of vanish minutes later?”
“Yeah...always thought they were birds, or light-tricks or something.”
“No, they’re real. I saw things like them up close once. But they...they’re hard to describe. Apparently things like them come into existence for just a moment and, well, melt away. Like the moment is just right and it...well, the way my dad said it, it’s like the moment gets a shape. Like this thing. Only they last longer, I suppose.” Sepp stopped, and knelt down. He was still for a second, before he opened his pack, took out an empty vial, and scooped a piece of stringy insides into the glass with a stick. Barosh gave him a funny look. “I broke a bottle on this thing’s head, may as well get something back.” Barosh decided he didn’t understand completely, but nodded in assent anyway.
In the wagon, Seva asked after him, with a tact that knew he probably would like to be quiet for a while. Skivor was happy with the short words exchanged and gave Sepp a nod and gruff smile. It was an odd feeling they shared as the caravan took off. Like disaster only narrowly averted. Sepp brooded on his encounter. Should he have used the woad mark? Probably would have done the trick, considering what he did do only made the thing angry. But then again, it more than likely would have killed the capalhead very painfully, and something about that simply didn’t sit right with him, despite the fact he’d nearly been mauled. No matter what, he had thought. Never again. But would there come a day he’d cross that line?
Fair play to you posting on Christmas day as scheduled!