Birthright Chapter Eight
Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 3:38 am
Roelir 1st, 551 MR
TORTHUR
The first, rushed effort of the taxidermist creates too poor a disguise to fool anybody paying attention. The man asks for more time. After a couple of weeks of sewing, re-fitting, padding, and so on, he finishes a much better disguise for Torthur, one that really does look like a small bear, at least in poor light.
...
WITHIN THE WALLS OF LOFTON
After being smuggled over the river by night, Torthur and Clyde are taken into the walled city of Lofton in the dim morning hours riding in the back of a cage-wagon driven by Petrus. Atli’s associate. Clyde and his ‘baby brother’ get a look at the cramped, shabby, smoky town. The cage’s iron bars rattle as the heavy vehicle rolls across filth-choked potholes and over uneven paving stones. Here and there, dirty faces of the poor peer from wretched tenements or close little huts, watching the cart’s passage. The infiltrator dwarf notes more beggars and idle men on the morning scene than busy workers or traders, in contrast to the almost feverish post-siege bustle of Haes.
A fat, ugly butcher with a skull as bald and pale as an egg stands hacking meat in the open doorway of his shop. As the wagon rattles past, the man turns to stare at Torthur-bear and Clyde. He cries out, ‘’New bears! About time!”
Lurking in the stoop of a nearby doorway, a ragged young boy takes the butcher’s distraction for a chance to swipe some cut meat from the table---but the big man reacts with speed that belies his bulk, chopping a couple of fingers from the little thief’s right hand!
The boy screams and runs into an alley. The butcher guffaws, his great gut under the bloody apron shaking with mirth.
Torthur’s wagon carries him away from the butcher shop, but he has time to at least mark the location.
…
The wagon reaches a tall timber enclosure that rises under the shadow of a castle or citadel. Petrus speaks briefly with a couple of thugs dressed in studded leather and carrying clubs. The swarthy wagoner takes a small purse from one of them, and presently rolls his wagon into the enclosure through a narrow gate.
Torthur sees that he has entered some kind of theatre or arena, with rows of seats rising around hard-beaten dirt circle forty-odd yards in diameter. A tall, stout wooden pole rises like a limbless, leafless tree in the center of the courtyard, hung with heavy black iron chains. Near the castle walls that overtop one end of the wooden fence round the arena rises a wooden viewing box, set higher than the other seats. Down on the ground at opposite points along the circles points, equidistant from the viewing box and the gate that admitted Torthur’s cage-wagon, two portcullises open onto ramps leading down into pits or cellars of some sort.
Six more men with truncheons and armor jacks unlock the back of the wagon and lead the chained bears (or rather, a bear and a dwarf in disguise) to one of the portcullises, which raises for them with a ratcheting sound as of a hidden crank or chain mechanism at work.
Clyde groans, rattling his chains, as if he has begun to realize this is no game. The men cautiously lead Clyde down into the pit, where they fix his links to an iron ring set in the stone wall.
A foul, musty stench rises from the dark cellar. Torthur’s heat-vision begins to work once he’s out of the hazy sunlight. He sees two other bears down here, both lean and miserable-looking, chained to the wall.
One man remarks in a nasty tone, “The mangy cub is fat and slow. It won’t last long against the hounds, I reckon.”
The iron barred gate at the top slams shut with a dreadful clank.
The Alamiens walk away.
Petrus, peering down into the pit, quickly throws something down the ramp while no one seems to be paying attention to him.
Tothur looks down into the dirt and spots a brass key, still glowing warm with the heat of Petrus’s palm.
TORTHUR
The first, rushed effort of the taxidermist creates too poor a disguise to fool anybody paying attention. The man asks for more time. After a couple of weeks of sewing, re-fitting, padding, and so on, he finishes a much better disguise for Torthur, one that really does look like a small bear, at least in poor light.
...
WITHIN THE WALLS OF LOFTON
After being smuggled over the river by night, Torthur and Clyde are taken into the walled city of Lofton in the dim morning hours riding in the back of a cage-wagon driven by Petrus. Atli’s associate. Clyde and his ‘baby brother’ get a look at the cramped, shabby, smoky town. The cage’s iron bars rattle as the heavy vehicle rolls across filth-choked potholes and over uneven paving stones. Here and there, dirty faces of the poor peer from wretched tenements or close little huts, watching the cart’s passage. The infiltrator dwarf notes more beggars and idle men on the morning scene than busy workers or traders, in contrast to the almost feverish post-siege bustle of Haes.
A fat, ugly butcher with a skull as bald and pale as an egg stands hacking meat in the open doorway of his shop. As the wagon rattles past, the man turns to stare at Torthur-bear and Clyde. He cries out, ‘’New bears! About time!”
Lurking in the stoop of a nearby doorway, a ragged young boy takes the butcher’s distraction for a chance to swipe some cut meat from the table---but the big man reacts with speed that belies his bulk, chopping a couple of fingers from the little thief’s right hand!
The boy screams and runs into an alley. The butcher guffaws, his great gut under the bloody apron shaking with mirth.
Torthur’s wagon carries him away from the butcher shop, but he has time to at least mark the location.
…
The wagon reaches a tall timber enclosure that rises under the shadow of a castle or citadel. Petrus speaks briefly with a couple of thugs dressed in studded leather and carrying clubs. The swarthy wagoner takes a small purse from one of them, and presently rolls his wagon into the enclosure through a narrow gate.
Torthur sees that he has entered some kind of theatre or arena, with rows of seats rising around hard-beaten dirt circle forty-odd yards in diameter. A tall, stout wooden pole rises like a limbless, leafless tree in the center of the courtyard, hung with heavy black iron chains. Near the castle walls that overtop one end of the wooden fence round the arena rises a wooden viewing box, set higher than the other seats. Down on the ground at opposite points along the circles points, equidistant from the viewing box and the gate that admitted Torthur’s cage-wagon, two portcullises open onto ramps leading down into pits or cellars of some sort.
Six more men with truncheons and armor jacks unlock the back of the wagon and lead the chained bears (or rather, a bear and a dwarf in disguise) to one of the portcullises, which raises for them with a ratcheting sound as of a hidden crank or chain mechanism at work.
Clyde groans, rattling his chains, as if he has begun to realize this is no game. The men cautiously lead Clyde down into the pit, where they fix his links to an iron ring set in the stone wall.
A foul, musty stench rises from the dark cellar. Torthur’s heat-vision begins to work once he’s out of the hazy sunlight. He sees two other bears down here, both lean and miserable-looking, chained to the wall.
One man remarks in a nasty tone, “The mangy cub is fat and slow. It won’t last long against the hounds, I reckon.”
The iron barred gate at the top slams shut with a dreadful clank.
The Alamiens walk away.
Petrus, peering down into the pit, quickly throws something down the ramp while no one seems to be paying attention to him.
Tothur looks down into the dirt and spots a brass key, still glowing warm with the heat of Petrus’s palm.