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 |
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