The story told here is as true as can be. One dwarf, a moonless night, and twenty men. Guess who did the ambushing?
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By the Dwarven Calendar, which any fool knows is the only true calendar, it was the 11th of Malachite. The days were long and hot, while the nights were, as always, bleak and freezing. The early morning sun cast a rosy glow over the hamlet of Taxmurder, and the birds sang songs of love and valor in the trees. Nobody could ask for a better day on which to kick up their feet and relax.
The miller was doing just that, throwing his arms behind his head and indulging himself in a nice, long yawn. Sitting on his front porch, feet propped up on the cedar banister he'd erected with his own two hands (by personally handing the contractor a healthy gold bonus), the sag-bellied man couldn't have looked more content if he'd tried.
"Wot a perfect day," he said to himself, wondering how much sleep he could get in before that damn wife swatted him out of his chair. Perhaps three hours, perhaps four, depending on how busy the cousins could keep her.
Suddenly, something caught the miller's eye. He blinked, craning his neck forward to see over his bulging stomach.
There, at the edge of the woods, just to the left of his feet. Was that a child walking out of the woods? Perhaps Hob's little girl, he wondered? She'd only been lost for three days. Maybe she'd found her way back, and by some miracle of chance had wound up here at the mill.
The man bit his lip, thinking of the reward money he could claim if presented the girl back to her father himself.
But it wasn't a child, much less a girl. It was small, alright, but it seemed to be some sort of a man. A hairy man. It walked with a stuttering, lopsided gait, halting every few steps to drag one of its legs forward before continuing on.
An animalman?
The terrifying thought lanced the miller straight in the brain, sending a jolt of fear clear down to his cankles. He jumped to his feet so quickly he nearly fell, the chair tumbling with a clatter to the porch.
It can't be! the horrified thought raced through his mind. Not here! Not now!
But as the limping little figure drew closer, the miller's staccato heartbeat reined itself back in and the breath stopped hitching in his lungs. It wasn't an animalman, he saw now. It was just a hairy little man with a beard. He tried to recall the name for such a creature...
Fifty feet away, the hairy little man stopped in his tracks and gave a surprisingly baritone shout. "Ho there, fellow!" he called. "Spare a cup o' ale fer a cripple dwarf?"
A dwarf! That's it! Now the miller remembered. He beamed, setting his chair back upright. Dwarves would do anything for alcohol, he knew. He began calculating how much money he could squeeze out of the little fellow if he sold him some of the stuff he kept locked in the cupboard. It would have to be costly. He hoped the dwarf could pay for it.
"Come on up!" the miller shouted. He didn't offer the dwarf a helping hand. "How're you this foine, foine summer day?"
The dwarf resumed limping, making some sort of gruff noise in the back of his throat. Now that he was a little closer, the miller's myopic eyes could make out a crude crutch and some sort of sling holding up the fellow's right arm. And he was filthy. Everything about him, from his clothes to his skin to his pale hair, was one shade of brown or another.
By the time the dwarf mounted the porch, balancing himself precariously on the crutch and his one good leg, the miller could see that he wasn't just dirty. The various shades of brown and black that smeared every inch of him were bloodstains. And by Ata, there was blood everywhere. Dollops of it had dried on his cheeks and in his twin-braided beard, while rivulets ran down his neck into his clothes. Some of the healthier spatters were still red, a bright crimson that speckled his crusty dogleather clothing. His short hair was chased with little red flecks.
"Pull up a chair," said the miller. He still didn't offer to help the dwarf, figuring it was the guest's job to seat himself if he didn't want to go inside. And he damn well better not go inside, not in that condition. The wife would have a fit. Or she'd have a faint, and that would be even worse.
The dwarf made that gruff noise in the back of his throat again, which carried a vague hint of disapproval, before deftly hooking the spare rocking chair and dragging it over. He had to ease himself into it one inch at a time, grimacing every now and then as he readjusted, before he was able to take a seat. At last, somewhat more comfortable, he gave a heavy sigh and closed his eyes. Within moments he looked to be asleep.
Curious as to the dwarf's state, the miller cleared his throat. He had to clear it twice before the dwarf responded, and even then it was only that throaty grumble. Finally, tired of being ignored, he just gave in and spoke.
"Wot're yew doin out here, mister dwarf?"
A smile curled up beneath the dwarf's mustache. The crust of dried blood on his face split down half a dozen fault lines and cracked around his nose. It was then that the miller caught a healthy whiff of the fellow's clothes and nearly gagged. The distinctive iron stench of blood wafted off the dwarf like the smell of ale and piss wafted out of a tavern.
"Killin'," the dwarf answered. "Turns out I'm awful good at it."
The miller gulped and took a closer look, noticing for the first time the blood-encrusted scabbard belted to the dwarf's side, and the small shield on his back. The shield glittered despite the blood. Was that steel? That had to be steel. It was so shiny.
"Killing?" asked the man. "Well... er... I hope you don't mind me being forthright an' all, but... who and why were you killing?"
"Bandits. Couple nights ago."
Now that was just something the miller couldn't believe. The dwarf looked like a fighter, sure, but in the state he was in it was much more likely that he'd been jumped on the road and robbed of all his valuables. He was wearing a backpack underneath his shield, but it was loose and empty. Besides his weapons, which included a large dagger that poked out of a sheath from behind his belt, all he was carrying was a canteen.
"Sure. Bandits." The miller scoffed. "That's funny and all, but the bandits around here are no laughin' matter. Best not to joke about 'em."
"Their ringleader's name's Kamruk, right?"
The miller chewed his lip. That wasn't a name that sensible people liked to talk about. It wasn't that people were afraid the man would descend upon those who spoke his name. There wasn't even an outright superstitious fear about him. It was just... some niggling little part of his mind worried that maybe Kamruk would know you spoke his name, and he'd come for you. Of course, it had been a few weeks since he'd last showed his face, what with the detachment of soldiers from Peachguard that had come looking for him. But rumor had it that his band had only grown larger since then.
"Kamruk," the dwarf repeated. "That is his name, right?"
"Yeah," said the miller. "That's roit. Why?"
"And this... Kamruk. He wore a really fine red shirt, right?"
"Yeah, and everybody knows that." The miller frowned. "Don't go trying to fool me."
The dwarf chuckled, then reached up and unbuckled his backpack. It slid out from behind him and flopped on the wooden slats of the porch, making a soft whump.. He winced, favoring his arm and leg, before sliding the alpaca wool bag over with his crutch.
"Look in there," he said, wincing again. His teeth were held tight, his jaw barely opening. "I cut the red shirt off of him myself. I'd have brought his head if it weren't so damn heavy."
The miller froze. Was the dwarf serious? He couldn't be. Nobody could just walk in and kill Kamruk all by themselves. He had fifty men, hardened bandits all, and he had eagle eyes. They said he was the finest shot with a bow alive, and he could spot you in pitch blackness from a hundred yards even if you weren't moving. There was no way the dwarf was telling the truth.
And yet the miller's trembling hands reached down to open the bag. His searching fingers came away sticky with blood on the first try, and he almost didn't have the nerve to try again. But a morbid curiosity drove him onward - if he could just prove that the dwarf was lying, he could get rid of him. All his fingers seemed to be finding was a small wad of hardtack rations, rolled up in a canvas pouch. Surely...
There. His fingers found the cloth at the bottom, prickly with dead leaves and all foul with viscera. The smell was awful. It smelled like a dead cat, but worse. Dead human. Iron and guts, with a hint of greasy, unwashed hair.
"This can't be real," muttered the miller under his breath, holding the red shirt up in front of his eyes. It was undoubtedly Kamruk's own. The crimson dye came from hundreds of miles to the south and didn't even exist anymore. You had to make it under the light of the fool moon every hundred years by grinding up rare berries that were too precious as a narcotic to waste on dyes. He told himself that was just a load of rumor, but Kamruk liked to brag that nobody would ever have a shirt like his.
It was crumpled and wrinkled, the dried blood making it appear as if someone had rolled it in mud before leaving it to dry. The designs sewn into the collar, chest, and hems showed arrows and dead men.
"How..."
The dwarf chuckled.
"Oh, it was a tough'n alright. I didn't think I cud do it, y'know. Goin' up against twenty heavily armed, well experienced men. Yew humans 'r tough, I'll give y'that. And big. Damn big."
"Twenty..."
The miller was speechless. All he could do was stare at the shirt. Try as he might, he couldn't deny it any longer. This was the real thing, the genuine article. His head spun. Kamruk finally dead... the roads safe? The rowdy soldiers going home? It was almost too much to consider all at once.
"What's your name?" the miller asked when he'd picked up his jaw and folded his tongue back into his mouth.
"Deler. Deler Kilrudmerseth."
The miller blinked. "Wot kinduva name is that?"
For a moment the dwarf just blinked. Then he laughed, his brow furrowing with pain, sweat glistening on his bloody brow. He kept laughing for a long minute, wheezing and wincing but unable to stop. "It's a dwarf name, you idjit!" he exclaimed when he'd collected himself. "By the buried gods, yew're even thicker'n yew look."
The miller frowned but held his tongue. The killer of Kamruk deserved that much respect, at least.
"It means 'Bronzeluck,'" Deler explained. "It's a fitting name fer me, Iffen I do say so myself. An' I do. My luck ain't golden, and tain't silver neither, but t'least it's not copper." He chuckled. "Luck carried me through this time, that's fer sure."
"How did you do it?" asked the miller. He was incredulous, his face almost reverent.
Deler grinned. Even his teeth were bloody. "Well, that's kinduva long story... And I'd kinda like an ale, first."
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To be continued relatively soon.
Author
Topic: Night Raid - a two-part story (Read 1108 times)