Vol.5, Ch.2, P.6
“Charmin’ place for a tryst, this,” remarked Frieda. “An’ passin’ bold besides, to live ’mongst birds than the bats below. What’ver ’appen’d to runnin’ an underground resistance?”
Former Artean. The mercenaries’ guildhall.
Up to its second storey and into a relatively tidied office had the freelance been let through. There upon the visitant’s settee was she sat. Hot tea was served on the table. And beyond it, sitting across from Frieda, was a man in the summer of his manhood: Dennis, master to the mercenaries of this guild.
Umbre dark was his hair, like the soil of a shaded grove, whilst adorning his chin was a beard trimmed to a chicness quite unbeseeming a man of this business. That his stature stood a trifle shorter than the average fellow, and that his immediate mien altogether looked rather light and leisurely, helped little in that regard. Yet, there was something to the air about him. “Short” he was, yes, but by the sharpness of his sinews and the crystal clarity of his eyes, he was as a dagger keen and cutthroat, never to be dared, never to be doubted. Indeed, though at present was he retired from mercenary work, it was readily evident that under his belt was much bloodshed and a great many battles.
“‘Underground’ be but a pretty word for’ee,” he answered Frieda, smirking. “Can’t get bugger-all done if I can’t dot me i’s nor cross me t’s down in the dark, now, can I?” Warm and easy was his speech, but in truth, Dennis had rather been taken aback by Frieda’s visit. Upon this very day at this very hour was he to receive in this very room an envoy from the Nafílim. And yet, who was it that had shown up but this fine old friend of his. “In any case, I’ll be frank withee, Frieda,” he said, “ee ain’t thy face I were expectin’ today.”
“Aye? ’Tis a long story, but I’ll not bore ya,” Frieda assured him with some mirth of her own, before having herself a sip of the tea. It was in Tallien where she had long based herself, to be sure, but here in Artean, too, did she keep many a contact, Dennis being one of the more intimate of them. “So, how be things ’ere, ’ey?” she asked him. “Busy-bees, I bet?”
At that, Dennis blinked. Not that Frieda’s words offended him to any degree. True, he was something of a top dog amongst the mercenaries in this corner of the world, and being Frieda’s senior by a generation, he very well deserved a degree of deference from her. Yet that was hardly on display. She spoke as easily as he and felt all at ease, and Dennis would have it no other way. They were on terms too affable for that, after all. Nay, what had caught his ken was the chink in Frieda’s facade, and for that, he chuckled softly to himself.
“What?” asked Frieda, cocking a brow. “Summat funny?”
Dennis waved his hand. “No, no,” he answered. “Just, well, ee right tickles me toes to see Frieda the free spirit startin’ off with a pleasantry—like some dusty ol’ diplomat.”
“Aye, what’s this ’bout ‘dusty’!” Frieda grumbled, pouting as she set down her saucer. It was seldom that so easily could she be teased. Evidently, the many days off the battlefield had dulled little her senior’s conversational edge.
“Frieda, me love,” Dennis said to her, “I’ve a-knew thee long enough to know thou bain’t cut out for go-betweenin’ an’ all that ’um-drum. But then again, if thou bist a-sat in that there seat—an’ on this day of all days, much less—well, then that right raises the question, innit?” Dennis leant a little closer, and with a voice tinged with seriousness, said, “Them Nafílses—they trusts thee much, doesn’t they?” A pause followed, in which course, the master mercenary wetted his own lips with a bit of tea before continuing. “But ’as thou return’d the favour?” he asked on. “That, I wants to know.”
“Well…” began Frieda, picking her next words, “…not fully.” That came out uneasily. Her brows flattened for it. “’Tis ’ard-goin’, Dennis,” she confessed. “I feel a mite lost ’bout it all, really. I mean, all my life, I’ve right well seen ’em as en’mies—an’ that ain’t a spot easy-scrub’d off, if ya catch me.”
“Then why?” Dennis asked again. “Why sit in that seat?”
Gentle was his tone, yet steeled with an unmistakable sternness. Much weighed on the answer to his question, and Frieda knew it, felt it full upon her shoulders.
“‘Why’…” she echoed thoughtfully. “Well, ’fore I say aught else, let me say this: I ain’t no daughter o’ Londosius, Dennis. Not ’nymore.”
“Aye. What’s a-made thee fly the coop, then?” pressed Dennis, before finding himself the one picking words. “Were ee… that, if thou’lt pardon me askin’? The nightmare what’s a-went down in Albeck?”
Frieda nodded. “That, indeed,” she answered darkly, “an’ a bloody encore o’ it, too.”
“…Dear, oh dear,” murmured Dennis. He then sighed. “I be right sorry to ’ear that, Frieda. Truly.”
Ina and Carola—a twain of tender friends to Frieda, and as well, by Bartt Tallien’s lustful hands, victims yet again to the perversions of Londosian high society. Not that the freelance herself had been any less abused, but Frieda being Frieda, the foulness wrought upon her two friends seemed infinitely more unforgivable. For it was a fact that the late lord Bartt was privy to their past sufferings in Albeck when he had ordered the two’s kidnapping; that he heeded sooner his salacious urges than his better senses—despite his being a landed lord of Londosius, a former mareschal of the Order, a man who ought have ensampled the virtues of the realm. And so what else could Frieda have felt when all the dust had settled at last? When by her blade the blood of justice was drawn from Bartt’s own bosom? Naught but disillusionment—disloyalty to the very land that bred and brooked the villainy of the viscount and all his ilk.
A wry smile passed upon Frieda’s face. “Makes two o’ us now, innit?” she noted.
“Aye,” answered Dennis, quiet. “Two, indeed.”
Artean—in recent memory, a territory twice-scarred by a lord and his lordling. Living on this land was no heaven, admittedly, yet even that seemed halcyon to the hell these high men had heralded. For by them were fields and families buried, sons and fathers sacrificed, hopes and dreams destroyed. And not seldom, when dusk is fallen upon its streets and all the bustle settled unto a silence, could the murmur of mourning yet be heard.
Dennis’ had been a family rather well-off. They tilled and tended their fertile fields, wanting never for food or warmth. Such, the prior lord saw, was reason enough to saddle them asudden with a tax, new as it was unwieldy. The artists’ scholarships, or whatsoever the lord’s pet projects had been that time around, would certainly not pay for themselves, after all. Yet, so burdensomely was Dennis’ family levied that all too soon did they then sink into destitution.
The master mercenary himself had been the second of three sons. Hard put as the house had become, the youngest of the brothers had soon decided to set off from home, that he might seek servile work in the manor of some other lord in some other land, and thus unburden his family with one less mouth to feed. It was bright tidings, indeed, when he had writ back of his successful employment, but all the more a dark day when news of his death was delivered to them. Yes, death; mere moons after parting from their homestead porch, mistreatment and malady had taken Dennis’ dear little brother, leaving him to perish frail, famished, and far from his beloved family.
The eldest, for his part, had been supporting their parents as best he could, that this family oh so fragile might hold together yet. Only, it had been precisely when their debts had turned untenable when unto their ears came word of their youngest’s passing. And so, sapped and sorrowed, both mother and father thought to follow him. Finding their cold necks noosed the next day, the eldest son then, too, sank into despair. So bereft and so bereaved was he that all his after-days were spent deep in his cups. Two years thence, and he passed—alone in a dim and dingy tavern corner, after having belched asudden a final glut of tired blood.
Dennis himself had been no less desperate. Like his younger brother, he had parted from hearth and home, to make of himself a mercenary and risk life and limb to someday strike the family debt. But being too green and gullible, his daily toil had afforded him little more than a plate of scraps on the very best of days. And so explained his eternal shame, the unhealing hollow in his heart: by the time Dennis had attained to some repute, his family had all of them long since perished.
He could not save them. He could not soothe them. His mother, his father, his two dear brothers—even now could Dennis see them, sorrowed and slumped, waiting, waiting, waiting for him to come home.
But with that wound was awoken in him, also, a deep-seated hatred for the Creed and Country that had so stolen away his family. And so the rest was history: founding the Cutcrowns, he and his long-resisted the realm from the shadows, bringing Artean to the brink of riotous eruption against their languishing lord and his ruthless son. But before the nobles could be brought to the gallows, the rug was pulled from under all of Artean, and by what but a Nafílim invasion. The banners turned; a new wind blew—Artean was now a land of Londosius no more.
Yet, as far as Dennis was concerned, his war was far from over, for the lord and lordling had hardly been his sole vendetta. No; it was Londosius itself. Londosius and all its systems and institutions—the very soil that let sprout such lords of sin.
“But, back to the straight,” said Dennis, his voice smooth and stern again. “Whether we be willin’ to work with the dark ones, I’ll save for later. Frieda, thou’st got a second reason, I reckons? For jumpin’ o’er to their ship?”
“I’ve got, aye,” answered Frieda. “’Nother good mate o’ mine—’e’s boarded it ’imself, see.” The freelance took a deep breath, and from there on, spoke at length to Dennis about Rolf the rebel. About her glad debt to him; about her great trust in him; about how worthy and wonderful a warrior he was. “So, I thought to myself,” she said, “maybe ’tis worth wagerin’ aught an’ all on this, if a man like ’im saw fit to cast the die.”
“That be gurt like the Frieda I knows,” Dennis remarked with mirth.
“An’, er…” Frieda continued, “…well, it might sound daft, I know, but, believe you me, Dennis. The ones up there in Hensen—the more I meet ’em, the more I reckon ’em a folk fine an’ fair. Not like the infernal fiends the pastors make o’ em, no. In fact… I right well think we can all live ’gether someday, ya know? Hand-in-’and, even.”
At that, Dennis fell silent.
To which Frieda stammered, “Ah, well, er, I-I means it, I do. Maybe not with the rightest words, but…”
Dennis chuckled. “Thy tongue bist a-totterin’, Frieda,” he teased her. “Not a gurt look for a diplomat, I’ll be honest. The mercen’ry’s mantle suits thee better, ee does. That reminds me…”
“What?”
“Rolf—thou speak’st pretty ’otly of ’im, ey? If I wasn’t any wiser, I’d say—”
“N-no, ’tis not like that,” Frieda said, shaking her flustered head, “…or at least, I don’t think. He’s well-earn’d my respect, at least, I’ll give ya that.”
Dennis gazed thoughtfully at Frieda’s expression. He had heard tell of this Rolf before. A sicarius setting knife to Londosian necks—to all societies of Man; the sheep expelled from Yoná’s herd; the treacher in league with the Nafílim. Such was what the whisperers had hissed down his ears.
Albeit Dennis and his underling mercenaries were themselves not exactly the most pious amongst the pasture, either; despite knowing Rolf to be Deiva-spurned, they in fact did not detest him all that very much. Certainly was it so that Londosians taking up the sword do so with a rosary resting upon their lips, but for Artean’s soldiers of fortune, it was sooner the coin that they kissed. Doubtless their many dealings with the Roland Concern had much to do with it. Indeed, being fiercely independent down to their roots, the mercenaries of Artean displayed a brand of pragmatism much alike to the Rolanders’.
Ah yes. Them. The Rolanders… Dennis deeply thought. “Speakin’ of, ol’ moneyman Torry ’imself’s got into their good graces, too, innit?” he then said.
“Aye, he has,” answered Frieda. “No more a lover o’ Londosius than we, sure ’nough.”
Dennis rubbed his chin in further ponderance. The Torry he knew was a man wise beyond his winters. Wizened, even. The sky would fall long before a ken of Torry’s capacity would reckon awrong. And then there was Ström, and Tallien, too. Those provinces flew now the Nafílim flag, and seemed all the better off for it.
“…‘Assistance’,” Dennis said, slow and emphatic. “That be what ye all wants from us Cutcrowns, correct? For the next gurt big battle?”
“That we do,” said Frieda, hopeful. “Assistance, not alliance—that’s as far as you’re willin’, innit? Then that’ll be right what we ask: an attack timed to ours. No more.”
Dennis rose and went to the west-facing window, and there searched the grey and raining sky. Three sides, three armies—one effort to fell Isfält’s mountain, he thought. One from Former Tallien to the north; one from Former Artean here in the east; and the last from the Reùlingen lands south. By Rolf and company’s designs, each force were to fight their own front, and simultaneously, no less. But that was it. No further sophistication nor coordination was planned beyond that. And neither did they desire it. Two races, two bitter rivals, made asudden to march hand-in-hand into a battle as dire as it was decisive? A fool’s risk, that.
The master mercenary thought such thinking quite sound himself. For their part, his and his hireling horde’s devotion to the Deivic creed was as faint as their fainness to scorn the ungraced and his Nafílim friends. But only faint by comparison. Indeed, for centuries had such doctrines been tempered, and not in a day’s hours could they be undone.
Yet Frieda herself had said it: this was to be an assault by assistant forces, not an alliance. If such was their expectation, then there was much appeal, even for Dennis, to join the fray. He doubted his men would complain much; that this struggle of the Nafílim’s was but a stepping stone for their resistance ought be an easy swill for them to swallow.
And then there was the matter of trust, of which for Frieda did Dennis nurture much. Certainly, he had his reservations about Rolf, but if Frieda trusted to the ungraced as much as Dennis did her, then perhaps this Rolf might not be so bad a man as the master mercenary once held him.
What’s more, in his heart did Dennis hail the Reùlingen for their liberation of Artean from Londosian tyranny. Returning to them the favour, therefore, did not seem to him too silly an idea.
“Londosian law an’ order…” Dennis mused as he looked out of the window, “…ordain’d, crystallised by one mountain ’oly an’ divine—a-sat right there in Isfält. An’ just the same be ee a base of power to the Deivic Quire. Frieda, thou ought know ’ow badly we wants to brin’ down the ’ammer on that bloody lump of rock.”
“I do, aye,” Frieda nodded. “But, will you?”
“‘The en’my of me en’my be me friend’,” uttered Dennis, seemingly weaving his thoughts aloud as he walked slowly back to Frieda. “Joinin’ swords with such ‘friends’ be a strategy as common as’ee be correct. An’ that ‘en’my’ to us be what else but the law an’ order of Londosius—an order reekin’ an’ rotted…”
Sitting nervous, Frieda withheld any reply.
“…More so now, e’er since the king took ill to ’is bed,” Dennis mused on. “’Is princess daughter’s a-did a grain of good with what little she’s got, I’ll admit, but ‘good’ ain’t nearly enough. No… Londosius’ golden days be number’d, I reckons.”
“…An’ I, the same.”
“Battlin’ shoulder-to-shoulder with the Nafílses,” said Dennis aface Frieda. “Never once imagined a time when anysoul would sooner think’ee a sound strategy than an insanity. But maybe that time be come. Maybe the elden days be duskin’. Assistance, not alliance—thy words, Frieda. An’ if thou an’ thine ’old true to ’em, an’ ask not a mite more from us, then fine by me: the swords of the Cutcrowns shall sing with thine.”
“Oh, Dennis!” cried Frieda, jumping from her seat and taking Dennis’ hand excitedly into her own. “A thousand thanks to ya! A thousand!”
And thus was made on that day, in a dusty room of a mercenaries’ guildhall, what might well be a decision to forever bend the arc of history.
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