The next bit
Monday, October 6th, 2008 02:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerHere's the next page of the novel.
I sent Kaltay and Istalei to get provisions and stood with Branow in the wind. ``What do you reckon to this, then?'' I asked. I valued his opinion; like me he'd been a soldier once, and unlike me, he'd fought Lanbou raiders.
``Beats me,'' he said. ``Like I said, if it's Lanbous, it's not their style. They're bloody good fighters and enjoy it too, but they save their serious fighting for each other---these raids are simple thievery. But if it's not, who the Three would it be?''
``Well the only people I've seen do that kind of thing are pirates, and we're about five hundred miles from the sea and twenty thousand feet above it, so I don't reckon much to that. We're even further from the _______, and we don't have any other enemies.''
``So?''
``So we go and see. But we don't go to Twohills first; we go to Redriver, so we can warn them. And let's get our kit before Kaltay and Istalei turn up looking to justify their names.''
``Huh?'' Branow was not dense, but he could be surprisingly ignorant.
``Kaltay means `hunter' and Istalei means `strong' in the Old Speech.''
``Ah.''
``And Branow means ...''
``Alright, alright, I know what my own name means.''
I chuckled and jogged down the road to my house. I took my sword, a glowstick and my most prized possession, a blasting wand I had given myself as a well-deserved retirement present when I left the army. Well, that's how I see it. I also took the spyglass and ran with it to the inn, but by then everyone had left.
Travelling by night in the mountains is not easy; in fact under normal circumstances, it's bloody stupid. The best you can hope for is a sprained ankle; the worst is a visit from a pack of _______. But of course these circumstances were anything but normal, so the four of us blundered along the trail with Kaltay in front holding my glowstick. At dawn we stopped to eat, then increased our speed to a hundred-hundred; that is, a hundred paces walking and a hundred jogging. We reached Redriver around noon.
Redriver was a village very like ours: a mine standing above terraced fields, with grazing filling in the gaps. We traversed around the hill so we could look down, just in case whoever it was had arrived first. I took out the spyglass, feeling for once pleased with my bad timing, then sickened. They had arrived first.
What I saw was as bad as anything I'd seen in the pirate campaign. The poor git from Twohills wasn't lying: everyone was dead, and it was Lanbous that did it. Bodies were lying around with slices taken out of them by the glaves the Lanbou use. There were also a fair few severed heads, since apparently the Lanbous get more points for swiping off someone's head with a clean blow. But as I swept the spyglass around, I noticed some bodies that had been burnt. That meant sorcerous weapons, and that meant not Lanbou.
There were also a number of Lanbou standing around or attending to their ugly mounts. (If you haven't seen one of them, I can only say that they're like big, spiky dogs---the Three only know why such abominations were created.) I passed the spyglass to Branow. He squinted into it for a while then said ``What the ...'' and shoved the thing in my face, pointing to the right.
I focussed as well as I could with my bruised eyeball, and saw a group of people, definitely not Lanbou, or any kind of person I'd seen before. They were tall, and wearing some kind of grey armour. But the strangest thing was their hair: it was not black but a kind of red colour. And their faces were strange too---not the normal honey colour of our people, nor the darker brown of the pirates, but white like corpses smeared with ash.
I sent Kaltay and Istalei to get provisions and stood with Branow in the wind. ``What do you reckon to this, then?'' I asked. I valued his opinion; like me he'd been a soldier once, and unlike me, he'd fought Lanbou raiders.
``Beats me,'' he said. ``Like I said, if it's Lanbous, it's not their style. They're bloody good fighters and enjoy it too, but they save their serious fighting for each other---these raids are simple thievery. But if it's not, who the Three would it be?''
``Well the only people I've seen do that kind of thing are pirates, and we're about five hundred miles from the sea and twenty thousand feet above it, so I don't reckon much to that. We're even further from the _______, and we don't have any other enemies.''
``So?''
``So we go and see. But we don't go to Twohills first; we go to Redriver, so we can warn them. And let's get our kit before Kaltay and Istalei turn up looking to justify their names.''
``Huh?'' Branow was not dense, but he could be surprisingly ignorant.
``Kaltay means `hunter' and Istalei means `strong' in the Old Speech.''
``Ah.''
``And Branow means ...''
``Alright, alright, I know what my own name means.''
I chuckled and jogged down the road to my house. I took my sword, a glowstick and my most prized possession, a blasting wand I had given myself as a well-deserved retirement present when I left the army. Well, that's how I see it. I also took the spyglass and ran with it to the inn, but by then everyone had left.
Travelling by night in the mountains is not easy; in fact under normal circumstances, it's bloody stupid. The best you can hope for is a sprained ankle; the worst is a visit from a pack of _______. But of course these circumstances were anything but normal, so the four of us blundered along the trail with Kaltay in front holding my glowstick. At dawn we stopped to eat, then increased our speed to a hundred-hundred; that is, a hundred paces walking and a hundred jogging. We reached Redriver around noon.
Redriver was a village very like ours: a mine standing above terraced fields, with grazing filling in the gaps. We traversed around the hill so we could look down, just in case whoever it was had arrived first. I took out the spyglass, feeling for once pleased with my bad timing, then sickened. They had arrived first.
What I saw was as bad as anything I'd seen in the pirate campaign. The poor git from Twohills wasn't lying: everyone was dead, and it was Lanbous that did it. Bodies were lying around with slices taken out of them by the glaves the Lanbou use. There were also a fair few severed heads, since apparently the Lanbous get more points for swiping off someone's head with a clean blow. But as I swept the spyglass around, I noticed some bodies that had been burnt. That meant sorcerous weapons, and that meant not Lanbou.
There were also a number of Lanbou standing around or attending to their ugly mounts. (If you haven't seen one of them, I can only say that they're like big, spiky dogs---the Three only know why such abominations were created.) I passed the spyglass to Branow. He squinted into it for a while then said ``What the ...'' and shoved the thing in my face, pointing to the right.
I focussed as well as I could with my bruised eyeball, and saw a group of people, definitely not Lanbou, or any kind of person I'd seen before. They were tall, and wearing some kind of grey armour. But the strangest thing was their hair: it was not black but a kind of red colour. And their faces were strange too---not the normal honey colour of our people, nor the darker brown of the pirates, but white like corpses smeared with ash.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 04:06 am (UTC)anacosmicism alert (hah, I have an inventor's pride in that word): "since apparently the Lanbous get more points for swiping off someone's head" ... the use of "points" this way seems very 20th century to me. And has an unfortunate "World-of-Warcraft" overtone. Am I being too picky?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 04:55 am (UTC)but do they get bonuses to hit?
Date: 2008-10-06 05:02 am (UTC)Re: but do they get bonuses to hit?
Date: 2008-10-06 08:04 am (UTC)