Weasel Hills Golf & C.C. (hole 19)

(this is meant to come a lot later in Lynia's story but I figure I'll post it anyway despite how many chapters I'm skipping to get here. -ww)

High Queen Jennet stepped forward from the cell door, towards the chained princess hanging from the dungeon wall. She looked as if she were barely any older than the King, but still, seemingly, it was the face of Lynia's grandmother, however wrong it looked when twisted into such anger. "Tell me everything he told you," she demanded sharply. "What's his secret?"

"Everything who told me? Whose secret?" The High Queen's question couldn't make sense to Lynia, no matter how much she rotated it in her mind. He? Which "he"?

"I know he's been talking to you! You've been carrying his damned memory with you ever since you left!" She thrust an arm, with some frustration, towards the ornate quarterstaff on the dungeon floor. Lynia knew it as the artifact weapon, Cloudbreaker; it containing any kind of "memory" was nothing her father had ever told her about.

"Are you talking about Father, or somebody in the caravan? I don't know what you're--"

"Don't act the fool! You're his own blood, however distant, I know you can access it. The device speaks in his voice, gives you visions. Maybe you've thought they're premonitions." She looked inhumanly angry, but the tone of her voice was the kind of growl not often used by royalty, least of all by the good High Queen of Caynea. "But I can tell you, the memory knows no more than you of what the future holds."

"What memory?"

"You are not the one asking questions, girl!" Jennet snatched the discarded Cloudbreaker from the ground and held its tip a mere inch from Lynia's jaw. "What has this device told you?"

"...." She could not manage to speak. Somehow, the questioning was offering Lynia more answers than she'd started with.

"Damnable wench!" The queen suddenly rammed the ornate staff forward. Lynia felt an impact of some kind, but not a physical one; an electrical, almost wind like pulse that pushed her against the dungeon wall. It still hurt, but it seemingly hurt Jennet more than her; the High Queen, as if struck by lightning, staggered backwards, dropping the Cloudbreaker in the process. She only managed to hold herself steady in a bent-over, half-crouched stance. "Hmph," she vented, "I should have known he'd protect it like that. No matter." With this, she staggered out through the cell door, slamming it shut.

The Cloudbreaker lay idle on top of the damp straw, not close enough to reach from Lynia's chains. But it wouldn't do me any good now, thought Lynia from her wall. It can't break these shackles. It can't pick the door open. She said it was some kind of memory, but perhaps to me, all this time, it's been nothing more than a big stick.

She wanted to cry, but before the tears could come, Lynia's vision began to fade, until all was darkness around her.

Adventurer who inherited the family business.

The door to Teah's smithy-wagon opens. On the other side is a tall man, thick with the kind of muscle that comes from honest labor. He turns sideways to fit through the door, careful to avoid banging into the doorway with the oversized hunk of metal that is strapped to his back. Once through, he looks forward to greet the wagon's resident. "Oh," he says, as if surprised at who is inside. "Teah. Haven't seen you since your father..."

"Oh, indeed," says Teah, the traveling caravan's official blacksmith, hanging up her pair of crucible tongs next to her little portable forge and reaching to reduce the heat. "Been about a year since then, hasn't it, Samael?"

"Feels like it." He isn't comfortable with the small talk.

"How's your dad's old farm?"

"The farm hasn't survived, despite my efforts," replies the musclebound man before her, bearing quite a lot of dirt, and a few scars she hasn't seen on him before. "Much as I tried to put out the fires and keep the fighting away from the crops, there's not much left but ash and bloodstains. But I'm glad help arrived when it did, or there'd be even less."

"I suppose this last attack was what did it, huh?" Teah sits on a stool next to the forge and reaches to pull up another, but Samael shakes his head at it.

"The attack before this one, really," he sighs. "I had tried to press on. Hoped at least some of the land was still fertile. But blood doesn't do the crops much good. So...I'm afraid I spent the last week undoing some of your work." He unslings the huge, metallic... thing?... from his back, and balances it on the unused stool.

Teah stares at it for several seconds. It resembles an enormous butcher's cleaver, tied together with strips of scrap leather. She wonders what she ever had to do with something so slipshod, before it occurs to her. "Wait a--isn't that your plow? The one I made for you last year?" The blade certainly looks as if it was one, at some point; there are a few distinctive shapes in it, where it was intended to be attached to a towing hitch strapped to a beast of burden, and it doesn't look particularly sharp, but where it was once cast and bent and meticulously angled into a plowshare, it has now been crudely pounded flat, and pieces of the hitch have been beaten straight and lashed to it to serve as a handle. The entire thing is far too large and heavy to be practical... for anybody but the absolute bear that is Samael.

"It was my plow," is all Samael says back.

"I spent so long melting down all of your father's swords after our King's mandate to disarm..."

"An effort that does not go unappreciated. Father always did want to be useful to his people. If he could fight no longer, then it might as well have been through his old things."

"So what happened? Why is it a sword now? ...again?"

"People wouldn't leave well enough alone. There's been another movement to kill the King, to assume power and amass an army again. Last night's raid was but another chapter of many, since you left. The insurgents and those who haven't the stomach for change... they believe our kind were not meant to settle and build. That we must continue to wander, to fight for our way of life. They would deliver their message in blood, theirs or otherwise."

"That's still going on? Gods damn it all... Riga can't go two years without a power struggle, can it?"

"It's not like we've done very well at staying put. Farms and infrastructure are nice when the people want them to work, but enough Rigans are content with living off the land and pitching their tents wherever they fall..."

"Suppose you'd be the one to know, given how hard you've tried towards the contrary."

"Enough about politics though... I came to have this looked at. Is it safe to keep using?"

Teah glances back at the blade. "Its condition doesn't look too bad for a one-week hack job. The metal's starting to crack in places, but for as damn huge as this thing got, maybe that's why it hasn't shattered yet."

"It was the best I could do with the tools and time I had. At least I got it into enough shape to fight with."

"If I hadn't taken off to work for the caravan... if Dad were still around to smith for the settlement..."

"Don't be too harsh with yourself, Teah. You couldn't have known how it'd go down." Samael had only been here to ask about his weapon, but seeing a friend from his youth in such a state compels him to stay and try to comfort the young blacksmith. He takes one step towards her side, and lays one of his large palms on her back. "What I can tell you is that your plow helped bring life and beauty to my little plot of farmland, for as long as it was able. It has been a good plow. Now, as the times change, so do the needs. And as it happens, Riga has need of able-bodied fighters once more. And so, your plow continues its service, just as its wielder does."

Teah finds the basso of Samael's voice comforting, but it does not relax her. Rather, she feels like crying. "I only joined the caravan because I agreed with the King's decision to disarm. My father didn't, but he supported me despite how I felt. It's been... peaceful, out here, in a way. Fixing wheels and axles is honest work. But Dad saw it differently."

"I remember what he said that day," Samael says. "That weaponry acts as a deterrent. Without a blade at hand, anybody else could act on that and be unopposed."

"I recall that's what your dad said, too. The day he surrendered his swords. It was only me that did it because my dad didn't want to. Both of them kept saying it was a big mistake we were making." She kept trying to let the tears come, but it was just too warm and dry. "The day they both died... I guess they got what they wanted, huh? It proved they were right."

Samael patted Teah on the back again. "If it is any comfort... we still have time to help. We may not be able to return our fathers to life, but to act in service of the justice they both deserve, we still have the chance. You were not trained to fix wheels and axles. You were trained on weapons, armor. There is no better successor to your father's smithy."

She looks at the cobbled plow-sword again. Despite the cracks, the crude fittings, the fact that Samael is even standing here is thanks to this oversized beast of a weapon. "This thing... still bears the spirits of the swords in it. I think I can take it just that bit further and turn it into a real instrument of justice."

Thank you everyone for sharing your writing, your art, and your bits. You can find me @Scampir anywhere.

Mech Pilot who retired peacefully

The Holdout was about the only place in the Crater - what used to be the Sunnr-Kerlaugar border fortification - that anybody could agree was worth being in. It was the mother of all seedy bars, outwardly, but by some miracle, they'd always have fresh goods to eat, drink, or be merry. Not bad for being built into a repurposed bomb shelter briefing room.

Nobody quite knows who started the tradition, but each of the seats at the bar was named after the person who sat there when it was a conference table - and what happened to them in the attack. Half the table had been carved away to make it function better as a serving space, but the chairs were still bolted to the floor. Some of them still had badges affixed to their backsides, indicating for whom it was reserved in wartime. Most people avoided sitting in the one marked "Sievertsen" - "The Banished Baron," the regulars had taken to calling it - out of superstition. Only once was that seat ever filled. Nobody had any idea who the man was that occupied it, but he had ordered one shot of honeyed mead, tipped handsomely, and vanished into the night.

In the small handful of years since the Crater had been occupied by refugees and turned into what could amount to a decent home, the Holdout was the one place that centered everyone. The regulars would take to just about anybody who walked into that door, and treat them like an old friend. That included the bartender, who would - more often than not - give out the day's supply of food for free, and one good drink on top of that. It took a brave soul to ask the bartender why he did it. "You need it to live," he'd said, "the drink especially. Maybe the stuff'll kill you eventually but it eases the tension, and most of us could do with a bit of that with what's going on."

One day, the citizens of the Crater piled into the Holdout to find that the bartender simply wasn't there. He wasn't among the crowd, nobody'd seen him leave, nobody had any idea where else he could have gone. Few people had ever seen him anywhere other than the bar. No explanation could be found. Not even the notice board had anything new on it.

One person took the initiative and stepped behind the bar, and started pouring drinks. Before anybody could question it, they handed out glasses full of whatever was on tap, then personally pulled a wad of cash out of their own pockets and shoved it into the tip jar. It was on them tonight. The first person to receive a glass followed suit, grabbing an uncounted stack from a coat pocket and slipping that into the jar. Half of the patrons left tips. Nobody drank. The person behind the bar grabbed a cocktail fork and rang one of the glasses hanging above the bar, to call for attention and silence. We may not know where things will go from here, they spoke, loudly enough to be heard across the bar, but tonight, we raise a glass to the man who made it all possible. The patrons all raised a collective huzzah.

Wagonmaster Bren yawned in no direction in particular. He'd intended for it to be a sigh, but things were tiring him, and the account ledgers were not helping.

Lynia peeked over his shoulder, having not gotten his attention already. "Bren, is something the matter?'

"Ugh... business," was his reply. He poked a finger at the last line in his book. "The caravan can just about get by, on our trading and the tips we earn from Jasmine's dances, but unless we can find a way to turn a profit, financing the Wagonsguard will become an issue soon." Bren lets out another sigh. "This'd be a lot less frustrating if you being here meant we were getting any funding from the Royal Treasury."

"If I'd thought to take any money before I absconded, you can believe me that I'd have given it all to you."

"And you're sure you're not going to sell that fancy staff of yours?"

"Cloudbreaker is not for sale." Lynia gripped the royal heirloom staff a little bit tighter. It had been uncannily useful, for however much anybody else believed Lynia that it was speaking to her in her sleep.

"I'm joking, Highness. If I thought hawking our weapons was going to keep us afloat longer than one day worth of shopping, I'd have done that by now. But we need a longer term solution."

"There are enough people who'd see fit to attack us, especially if word gets around that I'm here, that keeping the Wagonsguard armed, funded, and well-staffed is not negotiable. I'd imagine you're considering other avenues?"

"It's not a comforting idea, but given that the Caravan already hosts several skilled fighters, I'm considering..." He stopped, as his face scrunched up in half-disgust.

"Mercenary work, yes?"

He held his head in his hands, in a futile attempt to stave off the feeling of dread. "I wish you weren't right about that. I'm not OK with killing people for profit. But the Rigan encampments we've encountered on our route have all needed capable sword-hands for their defense, and it's no secret that it pays well."

"I'll join the fray myself, if it helps us achieve our goals."

"The thought of you killing for money makes me even less comfortable, your highness." He still doesn't seem like he's invoking the title with any sincerity. "You said you were trying to stop a war, didn't you? Doesn't that defeat the point?"

"My success depends on me getting where I need to go. The Caravan is my only ticket. So it's only fair that I chip in where I'm able... and if it's putting down marauders, I'll do what I must." She ran a finger up her staff; it vibrated imperceptibly in her hands, like the purring of an elongated, rod-like cat. "It's got to be less degrading than dancing. I can only pretend to lose fights to Jasmine on stage so many times."

"You could fight her back, you know. The crowd appreciates a little drama in their shows sometimes."

"I'm not positive they enjoy seeing their darling dervish battered and bruised, though..."

"And this, coming from the same person who wants to fight alongside the Wagonsguard?" Bren chuckled a bit, already looking a bit less glum than before. "Well, your willingness is duly noted. Just remember to let me do the negotiations; if you're going to stay incognito during your stay, it's best that you not be seen by whoever is paying us, regardless of whether Jasmine's fake-princess idea actually works."