A new Wolves upon the Coast campaign has commenced.
Spoilers for Wolves upon the Coast follow, of course. 1200 words.
HEY, NOW HEAR
What the axe and arrow of the Whalekillers
Did in days gone by,
What deeds made their power.
DUGSON, bald and bold, whale-rider;
PICTIDOTTIR, lithe and fierce, blubber-monger;
KNUT, frail and cocksure, ogre-slayer;
BILL NINE-TOES, young and posturing, whale-killer,
SLEW their master Sturla Snorrison on the first of Thrimilch,
Took the Sundrgammr
Its dozen rowers
To the beaches of Ruislip,
Where a whale lay dying across the sand.
“I will ride this whale!”
“I shall put an arrow in its eye!”
“I should ride it longer than Dugson!”
“I ought kill it with my axe!”
And Dugson did mount the leviathan,
And Bill’s blows stilled its eyes before they were pierced,
But the great fish’s jaws seized on Knut’s shield,
Before its thrashing stilled.
Flensed and gutted
The whale belly gave up a pearl and statuette,
Curious and angry.
A boat-full of blubber,
They sailed in the rain.
“Where shall we raid?”
“But we are free men now!”
“Maybe the town seen shall provide clews to targets…”
“We are overloaded with blubber, which I will trade!”
“My traffic will be the best!”
Boasted Knut, who knew no tongue here.
To Culemwardern, on the River Suck,
The fishers retreating,
Cnogba greeting,
The thyle of Cioran the taoiseach,
Who knelt not to any god or man.
“Who are you with your arms and your maille,
brought by a tall keel along the sea’s road, with your stores of blubber?”
Pictish the old man spoke,
After Bill feigned ignorance,
And Pictidottir answered
“East from Albann.”
“I ask, ‘What is the price of your face?’
“Are you cow-lords, ceorls, or thralls?
“Are you Ceatharna … robbers?”
“We are freed men,
Whale-butchers,
Tradesmen bearing blubber.”
The thyle spoke of the town’s trouble
And looked to the sky.
The moon full sat above this exchange
Of whale-meat for coin and maille.
The Whalekillers sought an account of Ruislip,
This island.
The village near, Cloyne:
Savages, swine-herders;
Another beyond,
Fanatics who painted themselves blue
And carried on with orgies in the night;
Beholden to the druids
Who once saved Ruislip
Taking bones from an empire
Centuries ago,
But now these soil-eaters
Try to bring down civilization.
The empire's ruins lurked in the forest,
And surely death too,
For some of its guardians
Remained.
Lynx and wolf stalked the wood
As did the Dyndur,
Ore-men, twisted and angry,
Night hunters for their needed flesh.
A promise made and weapons surrendered,
A half-dozen left at the boat,
The rest
To fete and feast
With the warriors of Culemwardern
In the taoiseach’s mead hall.
The mistress blessed his cup in proper fashion,
And Cioaran drank from the mighty horn.
(Knut thought to sup from its lip
After a goad from Dugson.)
Praised Ailan and Bradan as the town’s
Guardians.
Bid all to drink.
His men numbered four dozen, at least.
“The hard days are over!
There are no crosses here, no kings,
We do not bend or yield
And trust our own strength!
Yet fate has sent us
Whalekillers to vanquish the
Tesh-Tesh!
(Bill understood tearing and pieces in this name.)
Tonight we fete and feast!
For Culemwarden will be secured!”
Cnogba and Pictidottir
Deciphered this speech for the rest
(save Bill)
“Tell him I rode the whale,” insisted Dugson,
Pictidottir wisely refrained,
Spoke of Bill’s killing blow.
“Where does this Tesh-Tesh live?”
“A roost across the water.”
“It is half-horse and half-hawk!”
“It ceaselessly screams!”
“It takes the catch!”
“I shall fell the Tesh-Tesh!” declared Dugson
And was clapped on the back.
The ale here was sweet, honeyed,
The repast scant, venison and fish.
The Whalekillers sat at the lower tables.
This is what Bill was born for.
A warrior at the lower tables
Yet wearing maille
Spoke into Nine-Toes’ ear,
“Cioran’s a coward for renting you and yours;
It’s a taoiseach’s job to protect the town.
It’s Cloyne that summons the Tesh-Tesh.
Filthy soil eaters, bringing down what man has erected.”
Bill asked.
“That’s Forgall,
Says he’s sprung from Brythonic bloodlines,
Ealdormen of Albann.
His mother goads him, but
He’s not the warrior Cioran is,
Or even his ceorls.”
“I will drink everyone under the table!”
Knut barely lasted a cup,
Slept beneath a bench.
Pictidottir left the hall for fresh air.
A commotion at the gate:
Norse voices, her crew!
A monster had come,
A man thick of muscle,
Tall enough to wield a tree.
Gwallog and Idnerth slain,
Hedrek carried off.
The rowers’ knives were bright with blood.
“I will avenge their deaths!” the daughter of Picts swore.
A sleep uneasy in the mead hall,
Except for Knut.
A morning sick.
“We must recover Hedrek.”
Cnogba reminded the Whalekillers of their Oath to Cioran,
Warned them to tarry not.
“We need all to take the Tesh-Tesh.”
Aodh, Bergr, Cingetorix, Drystan, Ealdgyð, Fingal
And the mule
Came, and three stayed with the karvi,
And to bury the dead.
The path not road
Wet from the rain still falling
Held the print of feet
Much larger than a man’s.
Along the trail
They smelled the stink of the sea,
They smelled sweet flowers,
They smelled death and rot.
Bones.
A trail of bones,
A deer’s skin, flaccid,
Missing its bones.
A hovel of stacked drystone
Twice a man’s height,
Six chambers like rock hives.
Six thousand bones.
Rats creeping in the grass.
A monster mumbling,
Holding a sack
And a log.
“I will strike the first blow!” announced slow Knut.
Pictidottir’s arrow sank into the Ogre.
“Bones … Rats!” Bill heard.
The Ogre’s branch struck Knut’s shield from his hand.
Nine-Toes’ bolt struck true.
At last Knut struck the killing blow.
The first, by some considerations.
Half of Hedrek’s bones
Had been taken out,
Fresh gore upon the piles.
He was buried with a freedman’s honor
Having escaped thralldom.
A filthy task to search the mounds:
Four hundred coin, thin and ragged,
Gold thread and shell strings, too,
The Ogre’s prey’s.
A pricked goatskin and rotted wolf pelts,
“They will degrade our countenance!”
Of the last.
A Monster slain
Stories of the world’s Terrors filled the return walk:
“The sea forgets its sibling and others sorrow,”
Knut’s father had said.
“They wait in the labyrinth to rip you in half,”
A sailor had told Pictidottir south of Albann.
“They wake from the bog, sick, hungry,”
A child’s warning.
“Deep within the earth sit smoking, shadowed thrones.”
This was known.
Knut thought on shadows, told the others of
The Black Strath:
The forest that ate Fortu’s men,
Yet the vault of the kingdom,
So the Queen fed her youth to the trees.
This reminded Pictidottir of
Another Queen’s treasure:
Dyfid’s beneath Caer Dymunol
When the Norse came,
The portions that survived the
Conflagration, that is.
Ah, said Dugson,
“The Norse cannot sail the River Rynd
(which descends from the Black Strath).
The river monster there
Delights in Norse blood.”
His boast hung over his head
Over the Whalekillers
That evening:
The Oath to slay the flying Tesh-Tesh.
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