BECMI Chapter 97 – A Blood Price

Meaning octagonal with a hole in the center, and of red gold, gold slightly alloyed with copper.

This announcement created quite an uproar throughout both the tribes of anthros and the dwarven clans. In no time both sides had sent scouts to find the Regent who had indeed gone suddenly missing from his prison, and there indeed he and the other three dwarves were found, leaning against mounds of stone, chains still upon their arms, scarred and shrunken from malnutrition and torture… and locked inside a stasis shield that bounced the hardest magical weapons, strongest spells, and even the rocks of giants as if they were nothing.

And floating above the pedestal in the center of the four dwarves was a number.

Dwarf met beast-man, and there was violence.

The numbers increased rapidly, going up as beast-men died, and going down as dwarves sometimes died in turn.

In one week, it was 1204 and 49.

The aghast dwarves wanted to build a fort around the Regent and his guards to shelter and secure them. The beast-men objected, and the numbers went up. And up. And up.

The construction of the fort was abandoned. The tribes of beast-men took up vigil at the end of Coover’s Pass and the dwarves at the other, with small units very near to the Regent and his guards, making sure of no trickery.

Uneasy peace settled across the hills. The chiefs of the beast-men tribes wanted their Blood Price, and they could see how large that number was going to be, for despite not being literate, they understood the number when their eyes fell upon it.

There were many calls from outraged dwarves, demanding that I return and lift the Curse and the Blood Price, and I ignored them all.

This point was hammered home when the Bond-Gifts of three Dwarf-friends—King Antius, Pious Godfrey, and the Azure Knight—were returned to the Steward of the Halls, with accompanying letters that declared, seeing who such gifts had been given by, they could not claim to be true Dwarf-friends. Himmelstern had clearly acted in a manner not befitting a true dwarf. They would call him friend, but they clearly could not be named a Dwarf-friend, friend to all dwarves, by such a dwarf.

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Perhaps if the Councils of Thanes of the Halls voted to name them Dwarf-friends after the Regent was released, this might be a true honor, and not merely another bond to be broken at a whim by the dwarves.

Dwarven protests died away under the withering undertones in the letters, and they set about forging the Blood Price and trying to reclaim what honor they could. It would take them some time and effort, and the Blood Price was steep… but the pockets of the dwarves were deep, and if giving up so much gold made them bleed, the wound to their honor was far deeper yet.

As for me, I was hunting.

Scrying to locate someone was actually not that difficult to do, as long as they didn’t have the magic to stop you. I had a good look at the faces of everyone involved in that effort, and simply focused first on the warriors, elite as they might be, because they were the least likely to have that protection.

But I didn’t immediately go right after them. Instead, I followed their path of retreat.

With the tang of murdered souls clinging to them, as well as a precise sense of time, going back to the moment of their withdrawal from Torford Abbey was not hard. The spell that would follow their path might give other information… and since all I was doing was following their path, not trying to Read the past directly, it was much easier to follow.

I zipped overland at easily twice the speed the flying Khirifi adherents of Gulguz had moved at, following their trail. I didn’t have to go very far, as the Rustflow coming down out of the Ferrus Peaks was not far. They came to the shores of the river, and immediately the trail turned downstream and faded away, the water washing away the Divination magic.

So I went Reading back in time to see who they had rendezvoused with, knowing any Khirifi ship from the Duchy of Elb would have been long spotted before this. While they could have infiltrated from the Fens to the west, there were too many eyes watching and they would have been seen by too many people for security. No, they’d crewed a sea-going vessel and sailed around the Dark Sea and through the complex of the Tangle, the ever-shifting sandbar-prone mouth of the Forge, which meant they’d hired a local who knew the waters.

I eyed the ship there, the captain who was definitely not Khirifi, and the name across the prow.

Well, someone was taking money for all the wrong reasons, and now they were going to pay for it. It was a shame the Khirifi didn’t home, because I could have traced that back perfectly to where they’d come from.

Now this mercenary captain was going to find out that some things you really shouldn’t get involved in, because a ship was very, very easy to track, be it by its captain or its crew.

The attack, when it came, was quite sudden. Theophilus Peginar himself was at the wheel, taking a load of copper ore from the Duchy of the Mounts and leather from the Khirifi at Gullport east to Nurmark, his new home port. The scarred and weather-beaten sailor, a lifelong seaman, had originally been born and lived in Gullport, but with the coming of the Khirifi he had wisely pulled up sail and moved his home to the busiest trade city of the North, just in time for, among other things, the man who’d loaned him a ruinously usurious amount of coin to purchase the , his ship, to die in the chaos of fighting when the Khirifi took the city.

Pity, that. It still made him smile to think of the fat and greedy fuck being stuck full of Khirifi spears and burning inside his fancy home, cowering in fear as the barbarians took the city.

It was a pity he didn’t have extra travelers on this trip. The Khirifi paid well for him to move their agents around, and both Darkmoor and the Ertobolle paid well to be informed of such things… or misinformed, because the Khirifi paid well and he didn’t want to be caught out in lies with their severely uncompromising red-robed Fire priestesses.

The cut through the seas with speed and grace despite its heavy load. It wasn’t as fast as an Ertobelle longship at full sail and oars, but it could outrun one long enough to make for a safe harbor, and the Darkmoor Navy, small as it might be, was vigilantly uncompromising when dealing with the Northmen raiders.

Still, his ship was known, and he did business with all sides, so they mostly left him alone as he plied his trade.

Morgan, his daughter, came out of their shared cabin, holding a bowl of warm stew for him, and equally warm mulled wine. Her chest was bound and the padding hiding her curves was getting harder to conceal her gender with every passing year, but soon enough she would be skilled enough to set aside those things… although he’d likely have to hire a new crew when that happened.

He nodded to her as he accepted the late meal, stepping aside to let her take the helm for the short time he would need to eat. It was late, but his shift would not be over until the moon was high and the second mate came to take the wheel until the early morning, when Constanto, the first mate, would take over.

The wind was firm, blowing across the cold waters of the Dark Sea and picking up its chill, but they were long inured to it, with oilskin leather jackets cutting the wind to something tolerable. It would be another day to Nurmark, delivery of his cargo, getting paid, and seeing about getting a new load.

When the great gaping black Skull with blossoming roses in its eyes appeared out of nowhere in front of the , screaming at them with the voices of a thousand damned souls, his stew and wine went flying as he flinched in horror. His daughter froze in utter shock as the massive jaws opened up wide, wider, leading to the pits of Hell…

He tried to lunge for the wheel and turn the ship aside, but it was too late, and he could only scream with his daughter as the entire ship plunged into those open jaws, the mainsail splintering and ripping loudly as it was sheared clean through, and the vanished from the waters of the Dark Sea.

There was a crunch and rasping of impact, and both Theophilus and his daughter were thrown forward by the impact of the slamming into something and being brought to an utter and complete halt. Startled shouts from the crew thrown from their hammocks sounded below, along with the crashing and crunching of shifting cargo and scattering supplies at the abrupt stop.

Theophilus clawed himself up off the railing he’d nearly gone right through, looking around wildly.

All around was black. He could not see what held them, could not see the stars, feel a wind, hear anything. The mainmast was sliced clean through, as if by a giant knife, and the bottom of the sail fell limply down, unable to reach the deck, like a defeated curtain.