Deathsworn Arc: 02 - The Verkreath Horror Read online

  The Town of Strak

  The relief subsided somewhat as they approached the town. Outside the town, huge pits had been dug and though the contents couldn’t be seen from the road, the sight of a cart load of dead bodies being tipped in gave away their macabre purpose. The workers disposing of bodies were wrapped in heavy layers of clothing, their faces covered. The plague appeared to have attacked young and old. The air was heavy with the smell of rotting flesh, disease and pestilence. Even though the pits had been dug quite far from the road and the towering walls of the town, the air was filled with the smell of the dead.

  Vashni trotted in front and turned her horse to face the rest of the party, “Stop! If we must enter this town, we should take some precautions. Be very careful when choosing what to eat and drink, eat only the freshest, cleanest looking food, avoid water from the town and try to drink wine ideally, or mead and ale failing that. Try to keep your distance from the inhabitants of this town as much as possible. If anyone begins to feel ill, let me know immediately and I will try to whisper the disease away - though I can make no promises about this working.”

  Brael gasped softly and shuddered, Korhan looked at him, “Brael?”

  “Hmmph, I have heard of whispering disease out of people. From my own experience and knowledge I was not convinced such a feat was possible.”

  “She saved the Berger of Trest’s daughter?”

  Brael raised an eyebrow, “Hmmm, yes... But that was a snake-bite which... Hmmm, I wonder how poorly the Berger’s daughter was?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No... Not really, it’s just... Hmmm, all the evidence I have seen so from her actions and deeds, suggest to me that Vashni is a... Hmmm, a very capable ‘whisperer’ perhaps unusually so... Possibly even uniquely so.”

  Brael turned his back on Korhan to follow Vashni who was now riding towards the town. Korhan kicked his heels in and his horse trotted up to his place behind Vashni.

  As they approached the town, a soldier, wearing a ring-mail vestment and and a helmet, with several layers of cloth wrapped around his mouth, stepped out and barred their way with a long spear.

  “Halt! This town is to be quarantined, I urge you to turn back.”

  Vashni, spoke from under her hood, “We are aware of the risks guardsman, we need to speak to the Berger of Strak.”

  “If you enter you will not be allowed to leave.”

  “I am aware of what a quarantine is guardsman, now step aside and us go about our business.”

  “Very well, but do not say you were not warned.”

  Vashni, Korhan, Votrex, Saul and Brael rode past the soldier and up to the town gates. As they approached they managed to cast a fleeting glance into the grim plague pits where the dead had been thrown. Limbs angled awkwardly were sticking out of the mass. The dead could not easily be counted. Carrion birds were perched on the heads of corpses, corpses of men, women and children, pecking idly at their eyes.

  Saul fought back an urge to vomit, as the smell, coupled with the images he was seeing, struck him at the very core of his humanity. He’d been face to face with a near invincible, fire-breathing beast; he’d seen the madness of Ellen desperate to be eaten alive... But this... This was hell, the lack of malice or motive, the mere roll of the dice, chance being the decider of whether one lived or died... That was what made it worse. Disease was so indiscriminate, it had no pity, no remorse, it killed not for gain, revenge or lust...

  As they neared the gates he fought the urge to glance again. A macabre fascination urged him to look into the pits. However, he steeled himself and fixed his eyes straight ahead, not wanting to witness the gaunt features and the death grimace of children, who had not seen ten winters, staring up at him, a picture of agony.

  Korhan felt the same, he leaned back to Saul, “We should not have come...”

  “No... But we cannot leave Callen here, nor Ellen, for all her faulty thoughts about Thrax, we have to assume her words were not her own, but that she had been corrupted by Thrax.”

  As the riders crossed the threshold into the town it became clear what a sorry state the town was in. The air smelled of death, doors on many of the houses had a red cross painted on them, clearly an indicator that these houses had succumbed to the plague. Occasionally a house would be seen with one plank nailed across the door, the red cross visible beneath. This was likely an indicator that the whole household had met their death. By the number of houses with red crosses painted on them, it seemed that maybe three in five households were affected.

  The town itself was of an interesting construction, heavy-set large stone monolithic buildings towered over the narrow streets, with human constructed timber frame buildings nestled between the great structures and in front of them, narrowing what would have been a wide road. Votrex found himself shaking his head in dismay, “Gah... Ruined, they’ve ruined the place... “

  Saul raised an eyebrow and leaned over, “What do you mean Votrex?”

  “This town... It’s not supposed to be so... So... Crammed in, with shacks and lean-to’s thrown up wherever there is space... This used to be a spacious, beautiful place long ago...”

  “Hmmmm, I can imagine... It must have been magnificent when it was under the stewardship of the dwarves.”

  “I find it very hard not to grow a strong disliking of humans wizard, your species has a tendency to spoil things I think.”

  “Sigh... At that you might be right...”

  Brael cast his eyes around the city as he rode. The place was miserable, the rain could be seen running down the stone walls of the taller dwarven buildings, and dripping off the roofs of the timber frame constructions. The human built structures were mainly two or three story, but the dwarf built, stone buildings loomed into the sky above them. The dwarves were impressive engineers; he wondered why they had abandoned this town and made a mental note to question Votrex about it, once they were in front of a roaring fire with a mug of mead or ale in their hands.

  The narrow street began opening out a little as they approached the walled-off citadel, a raised plateau in the centre with what looked like the administrative buildings on top of it. They had to ride single file to allow a small team of emaciated, coughing and lurching citizens, hauling a cart full of corpses down the road, their leader ringing a bell and crying out, “Bring out yer’ dead!”

  Korhan’s watched transfixed, as one of the painted doors swung open, and an ill looking man, weeping, carried a young child, a young girl out, over his shoulder. He paused looking in disgust at the cart before being urged forwards by the bearers. Carefully he laid her out on the cart, she was pale, but with raised lumps visible. She looked peaceful, but sad. There was a brief conversation, inaudible between the man and the bell-ringer. When they’d finished the bell ringer took a short, sharp dagger and made a cut on the edge of the door as the sobbing father entered his house, unable to watch his daughter carried away with the dead.

  Curious Korhan looked at the edges of the door frames they were passing. A door with a red cross on it had three lines carved at forty five degree angles, from high on the left to low on the right. Beneath them were two crosses which followed the same pattern. As he rode further he notices one of the houses with a plank nailed across the door, on the edge of the door frame were seven crosses, clearly indicating their meaning. It seemed the whole town was dying.

  Soon they were on the gently rising ramp up towards the citadel. As they approached the gate, four guards stepped out of their shelter, two aiming crossbows at the companions and two holding them at bay with long spears, “Halt travellers! Nobody is permitted to enter the citadel!”

  Saul lowered his hood, allowing the rain to fall onto his his grey haired head and run down his face, “I am Saul Karza, emissary of Empress Jade, blessed be her name - I need to speak to the Berger urgently!”

  The guards exchanged glances. Then a more senior looking guard, by his slightly more ornate armour and once-white, now faded feather in his hat ste
pped out from the shadows, he was smoking a pipe. He eyed them suspiciously, “Have you just arrived here in Strak?”

  “We rode straight to the citadel upon our arrival.”

  “And none of you are afflicted?”

  “None of us are ill...”

  He eyed them all suspiciously then waved them through, muttering under his breath, “What does it matter? We’re all dead anyway...”

  Saul led the companions through the gateway as the guards parted allowing them to pass. The citadel maintained more evidence of it’s grander past. There were still timber frame structures dotted about the place, but they appeared to be more stables and outbuildings, with the fine stone dwarven houses, which were of fantastic construction dominating the look of the area. The streets were wider and cleaner looking and there were noticeably less red crosses on doors.

  Now that the original buildings were not so hidden by the timber frame shacks as they were in the main area of the town, the companions could admire the dwarvish craftsmanship. In many cases the joins between the large blocks of carved stone could not even be seen, there was clearly no use of mortar, the stonework was so good. The buildings, though tall, had little in the way of windows, occasionally a tiny window could be seen, but it appeared that in these structures, most rooms would not have windows and natural light.

  Vashni, who had been silent up until this point pulled a look of revulsion and glared at Votrex, “I shall never understand your race, cavern-dweller, this city is vile... It looks more like a prison than a place to live...”

  Votrex snorted, “Not everyone wishes to live under the everlasting sky.”

  “Hah! You are worried the sky shall fall on your heads?”

  “Hmmph! No, we simply have a tendency to dwell in... Have you never longed for the cosiness of an enclosed space, private, secure and-”

  “No, I should long to feel the sun on my face and to look up at the sky and the clouds... Confined spaces are not desirable to me in any way dwarf.”

  Saul turned to them, “Shhhh, we are approaching the administrative building.”

  As they approached up the wide, stone paved road, a pair of stable hand’s rushed out to take their horses. Wearily the five survivors of ‘Thrax’ dismounted and handed over their reins.

  The sky was dimming rapidly and the light drizzle that had been falling since they left Thrax’s lair was getting heavier. Entering the administrative building, the difference in building style between the dwarves became even more evident. Thick, polished stone arches and runic carvings, hexagonal polished stone floor tiles, in alternate light granite and dark obsidian or basalt. Everything fitted together perfectly and there was no sign of mortar or tooling on any of the work.

  As they left the entrance tunnel into the main atrium of the tower, an older man in a long brown robe with a bald head and long grey beard held his palm up to them, “Stop! Who are you, why are you here?!”

  “I am Saul Karza, emissary to Empress Jade, blessed be her name, we are here to speak with the Berger of Strak.”

  “You may come no closer until I am assured you are not afflicted. Keep still and no harm will come to you... Kyla, what sense you?”

  A petit figure stepped onto the balcony overlooking the atrium. She wore a purple velvet hooded robe with simple, black, floral embroidery down the front centre line. “Hold still travellers, I am going to cast a spell, do not fear - it will not harm you. If you are found to be afflicted, you will not be harmed, but asked to leave.”

  She began speaking in a low, hypnotic tone, clearly working a spell, a trail of light stretched from her to each of the companions in turn, touching one, then moving on the next. As they did, she formed a confused look on her face. Eventually the tendril of light faded and she screwed her face up, “I cannot understand it, I do not detect the plague in any of you... Yet you seem... Ahhh... The short one is a dwarf yes?”

  Votrex pulled his hood back, “Aye, that I am.”

  “And there are other non-humans in this group?”

  Brael and Vashni pulled their hoods back to gasps from the hidden guards, the man who appeared to be the Berger, and his mages. The old robed man spoke first, “Gravian! And elf! What manner of business has a group such as this in our city?”

  Saul pulled his hood back, “Dragon slaying... We have been to a cave north of Brunwelt, where we have slain a noble dragon... There was a girl to be sacrificed to the beast, we freed her and sent her with a lad from Duramer with instructions for him to bring her here. Has he made his way to you? We told him to try to speak directly to the Berger of this town, under the assumption your town had not come under the influence of ‘the servant of the flame’.”

  “No, he has not been here... The Berger is not seeing anyone at the moment anyway, he is gravely ill, he has succumbed to the plague and we don’t expect him to survive for many days, most are dead within four or five days and the Berger contracted the disease two days ago...”

  “What is his prognosis? Is he expected to survive? If he does not, who will take over as Berger here?”

  “The disease appears to be fatal in every known case, we do not know of anyone recovering from it. Until the Empress is given word that our Berger has passed away and she has appointed a new Berger, Kyla here, the Bergers daughter and my apprentice, shall take over - though given the empress’s lack of interaction over the last few years, I doubt she will even send word back, she will probably simply allow Kyla to continue as Berger.”

  Saul screwed his face up at the young, female mage whom the old man was referring to. “She seems a little young to be running a town, don’t you think? I am not sure the empress would approve.”

  “Hah! As long as the empress receives her tithe, she is not interested in who is running the town. Kyla is wise beyond her years and fair... For the technical aspects of administering the town she has me to assist her, as I assisted her father before her.”

  Kyla snorted, “Hah! Not that there will be much of a town left to run! We have more and more dying every day, Ramon Hern at our door demanding we pledge allegiance to ‘the servant of the flame’, it seems I have not inherited the town at a good time.”

  “And Callen?”

  “No, nobody has been to see the Berger for several days. People have tended to leave Strak in recent days rather than arrive, could your young friend have seen the state the town is in and decided on another course of action?”

  “Possibly, though I know not what course of action he might have decided to take... Brunwelt would be out, due to ‘the servant’... Duramer would be out, tis many days ride, to the east before any signs of civilisation... I suspect if anything he has headed north to Felgard.”

  “It is late, you should not return to the road tonight. If this ‘Callen’ has headed north you will catch up with him soon enough. Please, accept my hospitality for tonight and ride out in the morning, I can allow you to leave by a secret entrance tomorrow, so the guards and the townspeople will believe the quarantine is being observed. You can lodge in one of the empty citadel houses for the evening.”

  The old man looked at her shocked, “Kyla! We do not know these people, your fath-”

  “Yes, yes, I am sure he would not take this action, but with the state the town is in, I feel I have more to gain than I have to lose by trying to forge alliances. With the town weakened as it is, we could probably not even defend ourselves against the untrained, rabble that the ‘servant of the flame’ are... Many of the few soldiers we have remaining are bed bound, the few that are fit to defend the town are strucken with grief at the loss of family members... No, besides, I believe the tale of the dragon slaying is true, and if it is, we are indebted to these people.”

  The old man folded his arms, clearly frustrated, “I do not agree with your decision, but as you wish... I shall organise lodgings for them... “

  Lodging in Strak

  Soon, the party found themselves being led to a tall dwarven house on the corner of two main streets in the c
itadel. The servant whom Kyla had sent to show them their lodgings was a young man, who worked at the administrative building. He looked tired, and spread too thinly, possibly because the plague had caused a shortage of staff and he was finding himself doing more than one persons job. On the way Saul whispered to Brael, “You have knowledge of the arcane arts, what did you think of the spell woven by the acting Berger?”

  “Hmmm, I have seen it before, tis a simple spell in truth. Tis called ‘Farrik’s Flesh Comparitor’ she’ll have sampled several sick people - from a distance of course, and several healthy people. Certain arcane markers would have set the sick apart, our different races probably confused her as we would not sense as being ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ but something else... She seems surprisingly uninclined to tyranny for your ‘Bergers’.”

  “Hmmm, that is true... I wonder if the sorry state Strak has fallen into is partly responsible?”

  Votrex overheard, “Hah! Sorry state? Tis a shambles, I am not surprised the town has succumbed to pestilence and disease... This town was not built for this many people; any infection that enters here would spread quickly...”

  Brael smirked, “But do you know why dwarf?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why it spreads faster in dense populations?”

  “Tis in the air of course! People breathing dirty, infected air... “

  “Alas master dwarf, you are wrong... The plague here in Strak, appears to be a known disease... I have studied it. It is caused by bites from fleas; the fleas live on rats, but migrate to humans... This plague infected the gravian town of Shura Diz, the citizens had been relatively fond of cats, and many kept them as pets, or fed the strays. They believed the cats were responsible for the disease and thusly they culled them. Of course once the cats were gone, the rats could breed more vigorously... And the infection spread faster... Sometimes swift action, based on false beliefs can do more harm than good.”