Blinding a Wyrm (WutC Session Five)

A Whalekiller is lost during the aborted heist of a Dragon's hoard, but the Monster is left sightless.

Spoilers for Wolves upon the Coast follow, of course. 950 words.

HEY, NOW HEAR 

What the sword and twisted bone of

The Whalekilers – The Wyrm-Unsighters

Did in days gone by,

What deeds made their power.

KNUT the wise, first to run;

BILL, hillock-climber;

PICTIDÓTTIR, Dragon-emblinder,

DUGSON, forburnt Serpent-excecator;

FLED the grasping monks

Of St. Olham;

FOUND the barrow

Of Kindee’s sleeping WYRM;

TOOK a single coin from Its TROVE,

To wake It,

And CLAIMED both its eyes,

But not before It did Dugson IMMOLATE.

Prior:

Pictidóttir’s theft deferred,

Knut’s sermon-nap interrupted,

Dugson innocent of his forthcoming fate,

Monks a-fluster.

God-hating soil-eaters suspected of the coffer’s ravaging,

The abbot’s upbringers, forsworn.

His old master, impalpable and bloody,

Revenging,

The monks believed.

Wolves’ howls distant, too,

Certainly the schemes of these Druids.

(How would the monks afford their wines, their slaves, their calfskins?)

A question of Pictidóttir’s honor and “wise” owner (a voice silenced),

Knut answers not but asks,

“You are not eunuchs?”

The brother exasperated, “No! Our stones remain!

“The Council of Carthage prevents us from taking wives

“But men have needs

“And who would complete the women’s labors here?”

Preparations to defend Olham’s treasure proceed,

And the Whalekillers depart,

Sailing southward to the empty hamlet,

Once Olham’s fish supplier.

Odd seafoam and rotted remains,

Seabirds’ nests and shell-filled hut husks,

“Let us leave here,

Before the night brings what it brings.”

In the rain,

The Sundrgammr finds Ruislip’s end,

A channel crossed to view the island opposite:

A single barrow,

Huge,

Trees cleared around.

The Whalekillers return to Ruislip’s shore,

To camp (Dyndur be damned)

Away from any restless dead.

The middle-night watch interrupted 

By four bumbling monks,

Chasing druids, they say,

Begging food,

Speaking of the village Killucan’s 

Obligations to the monastery:

Fish, from the river

Not the sea.

The tribute should be amended,

The brothers agreed,

To beef.

Conversation turns to

The seashells of Scanntra

Blamed on mare-men.

“Are they the Druids’ accomplices?”

“That is a good question.”

Not divulging the barrow,

The Whalekillers speak of treasure,

Murky tales heard:

The treasure-sleeper may never be harmed ... by the mundane;

A small, locked book, the hag’s torture chamber;

A rat-king’s tail, vibrating concordantly with nature;

A dusty wine remolding;

One cenobite added a concern to the list:

“Some die in the service of copying codices:

A great honor or a great heresy.”

At dawn the monks besought

Conveyance to Killucan,

But were bade to walk,

As the Whalekillers shove off to their 

Fate

Across the strait.

The ground near the hummock 

Rumbles,

No trees grow atop.

A mouth, stoned arch,

Faces away from the sea,

Opening into the barrow.

A lantern’s shine 

Into the darkness,

Reflects:

Coin and scale,

A slumbering, snoring beast,

Larger than any cow,

More legs than a spider.

“A Dragon” mouthed.

“You should plunder Its fortune,”

Dugson

Tells Pictidóttir.

A plan is formed.

“Steal Dragon’s treasure,” she scrapes in the mud.

The Pictdam strips down:

Handing her creaking leathers to Dugson,

Her coin to Knut,

Her bow to Bill.

The rowers return to the karvi, 

Bill climbs the knoll in the rain,

Knut and Dugson stand in the barrowmouth,

The snore’s breeze pushing their hair.

Pictidóttir steps inside.

The Wyrm sleeps atop Its mound:

Coin to fill two knarrs;

Ingots gold and silver;

A golden torus burdensome to two oxen;

A dozen hauberkes and byrnies, scorched;

A bone blade, twisted and toothed. 

The Silent clutches the Druid’s necklace,

And filches a single coin

–WHO DARE TOUCH WHAT IS MINE?!--

 

Knut bolts

Bill hunkers

Pictidóttir sidesteps

And

Dugson transfixes.

All the Wyrm’s legs move,

A blur,

Just missing the Pictdam,

Its jaws piercing the whalerider’s maile.

“I will take out this Dragon’s eye!”

And he does.

Bill leaps from the hill

Planting axeblade in the mud,

And flees for the vessel.

Knut runs onto the sand,

Demanding

The boat be dragged to water.

Pictidóttir drops the coin,

Grabs the bone blade,

Swings at the Wyrm’s haunch,

The wicked, toothy weapon,

Striking nothing, revealing a woman.

The dragon shrieks at Its

Exoculation,

Bathes Dugson in flame,

His head and chest

Cremated.

Knut aboard the boat,

“Wait!”

To anxious rowers,

Bill staggers headlong

Across the sand.

I will kill this Dragon,

Pictidóttir thinks, to the gods,

Her breast swells,

Pride like she’s never known,

Wyrmclaws scarcely felt.

The squirming weapon planted in the Wyrm’s last

Eye.

Fire boiling rain to steam,

She sprints

But,

Even blind It knows her,

And with many legs,

Talons strike again.

She leaves the bony blade 

And scurries, angled,

Flames licking but the relic.

Bill aboard, 

The rowers stroke,

“Wait!” hisses Knut, less wise.

The rowers stroke,

Knut strikes Bergr’s skull,

And the tide pushes the Sundrgammr 

Beachward.

Wyrmward.

Pictidóttir splashing, across the gunnels

“ROW!”

The unsighted Dragon scuttling

“ROW!”

The black Wyrm into the surf 

“ROW!”

The water scalding behind

“ROW!”

The mad beast thrashing,

Covered by the waves.

It did not,

Could not,

Follow across the channel.

The Pictdam laying amidship,

Just breathing,

Tears veiled by raindrops.

Hours later:

The Sundrgammr atop Ruislip’s sands,

The wreck of a fishing vessel

On the cape’s far side,

Hamlet smoke in the distance,

Seen through a break in the rain.

“We need the Dragon to guard 

Our treasure

Until we get a bigger boat.”

“We must honor Dugson!”

“A contest of strength in his memory!”

Pictidóttir heaves a stone across the sand.

Bill heaves a stone across the sand.

Knut heaves a stone

Its weight judged lackluster,

And he heaves again,

Clearing the others’ tosses.

Bergr watches, skull throbbing,

He should have honored 

The Wyrm-killed, too.

The Pictdam spends the day

Scratching a boulder

In the runes of her people.

“With two strikes,

Dugson and Pictidóttir 

Put out a black Wyrm’s eyes.”

A glorious, costly deed.

Ruislip's End Found

Dog Den and Monk Money (WutC Session Four)

The adventurers regroup to fight a supernatural beast and contemplate an ecclesiastical heist.

Spoilers for Wolves upon the Coast follow, of course. 950 words.

HEY, NOW HEAR 

What the tools of the

The Whalekilers

Did in days gone by,

What deeds made their power.

KNUT, cottar-killer and cur-crusher;

DUGSON, Druid-mangler;

BILL, monk-interlocutor;

PICTIDÓTTIR, abbey-burglar,

SLEW the Druids’ fervid theomen

On Ruislip’s west road;

RECLAIMED the ruined mask from the Mocking Hound’s grotto

For the Faceless Man of Dorbog;

SAILED to St. Olham’s Abbey,

And heard the sermons on its MARTYRS,

While grasping at its TREASURY half-known.

Along the storm-soaked trail at land’s edge,

Set upon by the vicious savagery

Of the shaman’s husbandmen,

Dugson & Bill struck at the mystic’s arm

To put a seed-filled skull to the ground,

And then its bearer,

To Bill’s swagger.

Knut bragged that he

Might outdo Dugson

And felled three himself to the swordsman’s two,

After taking many blows.

One fanatic lived

To flee into the rain.

“Speak our names from the mountains, þrall!”

In Norse, not the zealot’s tongue,

But Ruislip has no peaks, anyway.

The rest: gulls’ feasts.

The Whalekillers: one seed-packed skull

& nine spears richer.

From mad-dogs of men

To the dog of men’s madness,

At shore’s ledge, breakers smashing, sand a-churn

Bill sighted a grotto’s mouth.

As the sea-surge fled, they roped below,

The oarsmen keeping the donkey

Clifftop

In the downpour.

Barnacles climbed the cavewalls,

The Whalekillers probed, laughter taunting

And spikes thrown, 

Sunk in Bill’s chest,

Both ends a-gore,

The Hound shaping hate’s deeds  

In the wet dark.

“What was his wage?” in Ruis,

The Two-Faced Dog spoke,

But it would not banter,

Only cackle and sneer,

A Beast with a heart of spite.

Failed slayers lay 

Amidst the cavity’s dripstone,

Rotting a hundred days, or more,

Asleep forever atop a rock pillow,

In moldering garb from afar.

The Whalekillers

Would strip all they knew: 

Coin & pendant,

A double-stoppered flask,

A book’s leather cover,

Its shred pages the Beast’s nest.

Beset by the Laughing Hound,

A muzzle-stretched face,

Their fates surely in the balance,

Pictidóttir scratched “my kill” in the wall.

Sword & axe hacked

Yet its hide turned flail & arrow.

Two shields sundered

And Nine-Toes’ thigh was rent,

Dropping him to the floor

As was his wont

During clashes at sea’s edge.

“Check his toes! Are there but eight now?”

Finally,

Knut, Ogre-killer & zealot-feller,

Ruined its skull.

It barked as it died

And shriveled to a dog’s size, 

The mask withered to pulp,

Dugson’s oath undone, Pictidóttir’s unmet,

While Knut’s glory throve.

The storm’s tide had returned,

Sea’s foam writhed in the lower caves.

The mail-clad waited, as fuel burned away,

Scabs growing atop their wounds.

The oarsmen wavered in the tempest,

But stayed until ropes were climbed.

The storm lifted, birthing a fog,

The moon lent no light, and

The Whalekillers collapsed

In the emptied homes outlying Dorbog,

Teaching the Faceless Man his fate 

After breaking their fast.

The face was spoilt, his pledged reward long-stolen,

His rage bore forth in his disgrace:

“The goþ haþ tunished your carelessness,

I should haþ kicked that hound nor!” he sputtered,

And returned to his solitude.

Dorbog’s gates were opened and

Trades were made, unseen Pictidóttir swiping hacksilver.

“Donnagh the taoiseach has taken up with a druid,” Bill learned,

While the sickly drank loudly,

And spoke of St. Olham’s to the south.

To the abbey, adock at dusk,

A book cover to offer but

Rejected for heathenry,

The monster-slayers slept aship,

Crowded by foodstuffs.

In the warm dawn

The gate’s monk–

Front pate shaved ear to ear–asked

“Are you the Devil’s brigands?”

Bill professed the blades and bows

Were to fend off Dyndur

And other dangers of 

Road and sea,

And removed his pagan neckpiece.

Pictidóttir lurked in her own neckstrap’s fuscation,

While Knut and Dugson awaited translations,

Bill half-recalling the church lessons of his youth.

“Do you traffic in wine, calfskins, or slaves–

That girl here last eve, is she for sale?”

“We can offer a book’s cover–”

Dugson lifted the shreds, too

The holy man gasped.

A reader spoke a tiny inscription

Inside the Gospel:

“Ealdorman Ælfred of Ergyng

Ransomed from Norse supplanters

Of the church of Eoforwic, now called Jork.”

(Ergyng the last Brythonic kingdom of Albann,

Across Ruislip’s channel.

King Cadoc’s court roams, shifting each day, 

Lest the realm fall to ruin.)

Pictidóttir herself roamed, finding

Ꝥrall-girls in gardens,

Drystone monk huts,

A church with biered coffin and wine, and

The abbot’s narrow tower.

The others–promised the abbot’s audience–

Sat abench near Saint Olham’s remains.

For Brother Cuana’s sermon, 

A history only one fathomed.

Brother Cuana’s drone was not unpretty, and

Lauded Romans, Impossible to witness, marble perfection,

The Faith’s bearers to Ruislip,
Many martyred by the hard pagan Ruis.

“And praise to Ruadhraighe,

The first convert king,

His Eyebiter bringing down moor-heathens for Christ,

Drowned with his dozen gesith.

All martyrdoms are according to the will of God.

Bishop Olham of Caernfon,

Saving villagers souls,

Stripped of his clothes and flesh

By the beasts and taran of Ruislip.

And St. Baglan,
King of Umbria, 

Who raised up Culemwardern’s church

Even when the Druids took his eye,

And one each from his two sons.…”

Bill rendered what he could.

But a scribe on the tower’s floor,

Pictidóttir climbed for the second window,

The abbot within,

Composing a letter with wine & clamor,

A chest by his bed.

The Pictdam snagged wallstone thrusting inside.

Abbot Sean leapt,

“Satan?!”

(The word Pictish as Ruis.) 

Guttural words, from the prelate,

Like a mouth filled with dirt,

The tongue of the fanatic with the seed-packed skull.

Pictidóttir tipped the candle.

The abbot fled the stairs

For Brother Marius’ aid below.

Neither pick nor prybar

Would burst the coin-filled coffer,

And she went out the window,

Before her witch-craft failed,

Vellum falling floorbound.

Cave explorations not pictured

The Life and Death of Beasts (WutC Session Three)

The adventurers, down another man, return for even more.

Spoilers for Wolves upon the Coast follow, of course. 800 words.

HEY, NOW HEAR 

What the three-eyed necklace and the grapnel of the
Housebreakers of Cioran,

The Whalekilers

Did in days gone by,

What deeds made their power.

DUGSON, the spire’s climber;

PICTIDÓTTIR, the heirloom’s robber,

PILFERED Culemwarden’s taoiseach

While his town was assailed;

ENDED the bloodline

Of the Tesch-Tesch;

SAILED the oceanward coast

To find Dorbog,

And the depredations of the

DYNDUR and the TWO-FACED DOG.

Awakened before dawn, amidst a deluge,

The Dyndur swarming Culemwarden’s walls,

Their hateful deeds by the dead of night.

Unseen Pictidóttir feeding Cioran’s hounds

To filch his great Cup,

(She had written this boast in the mud.)

While the Ore-men stole away townsmen

From the walls,

Dragging away all fallen.

Dugson,

Naked but for shield & blade

Brought his sword

As the battle was done,

Never striking a foe,

All twisted limb and face,

Maille rotted and rusted,

Who die in the sun.

We should go!

Heaven’s pelting water slowed the return 

To the forbidding spire,

Dugson fitted unlike before.

A chick, with hoof & claw

Wings unformed,

Lay beneath the spire.

Dugson did climb!

Two chicks anest and torn nets

His reward.

(Two more devoured, by their brothers)

He dug their shit

Like Bill before,

And found naught but dung.

“Mercy,” he said,

And slew both the starving 

Things.

The thievery looming

They chose to shore

Near their namesake’s corpse.

Friggsdag brought fog

A disguise to get past 

Culemwarden

Up the Suck,

But for the grunt of rowing men.

West, then

Safety, ha!

Skirting close to obscured auks’ shores 

Landing to find

Smells pleasant and sour,

Tasted through the South Wind.

The Whalekillers met the Ocean’s edge,

The End of the World.

Camped next to hilltop stones,

Runes read by

Dugson 

Who told of learning Sturla’s letters.

A Norseman’s boast:

"Hwrulf threw this stone from the hill behind which the sun sets.
Before that, he slew a barbarian chief."

The other menhir, larger,

Bore the tongue of the Druid.

Dugson scratched his own letters

On the stone, and

Teeda presented the charms

Knitted of hair & blood.

None would matter

Erelong.

A new Moon’s 

Dawn brought the howls of the Dyndur

In the forest near,

And warmth,

Burning off the fog.

South

They sailed past high tide’s rocky shore 

To find 

Dorbog,

Pummeled by the Western Sea.

Square homes of the Norse,

Round cottages of the Ruis,

Barnacles atop a fortress stacked

Long long ago.

A merchant’s boat unloading

Amidst three warships & fishers’ boats,

Weapons of war, spear & sword.

Norse they heard through the fog

Voices gruff.

“Declare who you are!”

“I am Dugson who fought the Tesch-Tesch &

Fought off the Dyndur

At Culemwarden. They call me ‘the brave’.”

A reply, distrustful:

“It is true the Dyndur roam now. 

Who is your companion?”

(Whispered: “What do we call ourselves?”
Silence from Pictidóttir.)

“Teeda … uh … the Brave.”

A voice again, doubting:

“Did you slay the Ogre?”

Dugson nodded

“Donnagh nephew of Dennagh, Dorbog’s lord,

Will not host you,

He keeps the peace.

Leave your weapons.

You may make your trades and go.”

Two dozen soldiers amidst crumbling stone

Spoke of fighting to protect their homes. 

“We watch against the enemies 

That fall in the sun.”

Dugson spoke:

“That is honorable.”

Pictidóttir was silent.

The people of Dorbog wan,

Drinking out-of-doors,

Rusted blades stacked.

The Whalekillers bought their fare,

Fish,

And learned of a faceless man

Who offered a bounty

For his own face.

The village outside the walls

Had been sacked

By the Dyndur,

Its people and knives taken,

But stores remained.

The Whalekillers stripped the larders.

From one hut hung

Words scribed for a tongue

The Whalekillers knew not.

The man inside had

No lips

No nose

No eyes

No face.

He spoke with sorrow,

But without lips.

A dog 

Had taken his face,

A dog

A horse’s size,

A dog

With dangerous tail,

A dog

That mocked.

He promised silver.

“I will get back your face!” 

Wishing not to waste the sun,

The Whalekillers

Rowed up the bog River Barrow

Into the fog.

Waterlogged

Deer

Goats

A wolf

A ruin

Marked the waterway’s banks.

The Whalekillers wanted no more

Of this foul place.

They reckoned the Dyndur

And their outrages

To the north,

And camped the putrid left bank.

Thunder rumbled.

The moon’s day’s morning

A tempest,

The Barrow 

A torrent, a boiling flood.

They rode, thrashed, to the mouth,

Permitted Dorbog’s docks

In the storm.

Disembarked,

With donkey (not even a shield’s silver!),

With Cioran’s Cup,

Against a laughing dog, and,

A Oath to replace a face

In the storm.

Session 3: The First Major Explorations