Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: kring@physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring) Subject: [Welcome] BT: Getting To Know The Generality Part 2 of 2 Message-ID: <1993Sep19.214815.27479@rhrk.uni-kl.de> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1993 21:48:15 GMT ADMIN: I forgot to say that this, or rather Part 1 of this, follows "A Hectic Evening In A Boring Village." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bakr's Tales: Getting To Know The Generality Part 2 of 2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our next station was the healer's house. He told us a few disturbing things about acid. "Acid can fume too..." "But the fields are burnt, so it must have been fire." "Acid can burn too. Sulphuric acid, for example, will..." "SULPHURIC?" "SULPHURIC?" "SULPHURIC?" "SULPHURIC?" "What now?" "That was what the dragon..." "...in the ballad breathed!" "Please calm down. Sir Arni killed one before, he will again." "But he was lucky!" "And all his companions died!" "Please calm down, gentlemen! Can I have a word with the wounded brigand?" We entered the room in which we had put him the day before. He greeted us, and the mayor spoke. "You are not needed. There are enough others to fight the dragon." Tarik protested. "We need every man!" Magrondar nodded. "I stand to my word. I will come with you." "But... the famous dragon fighter Sir Arni will come here, and I don't think he will like to have a bandit in his party." "Why not wait and ask him?" The mayor snorted. "If you say so. But I don't think it will make a good impression." "How are you?" Ormgwen asked the brigand. "I'll still have to rest a few days despite of Master Rytold's skill. You are a dangerous opponent, and I hope we won't have to fight again." "You weren't easy to hit either." Rytold jumped in. "That may be. But the first aid done on Magrondar was not as good. It stopped the blood but it was too tight. He told me you did it, Bakr?" "Yes, but not alone. The brigand who looks like a magic user helped me." "Elpenor," said the patient. "I could instruct you. First aid can be rather useful." "You'd do that? I'd love to learn it." "Fine. I have things to do now - I still need certain herbs - but we can start this evening." "Herbs? I know herbs. Can I go with you?" "Er... no sorry, you still need rest. Those herbs grow on top of rocks that are difficult to climb, especially for someone with your weight. Besides I have done that by myself for years. Thanks." "Do we need rest too? I wanted to practice fighting," Tarik intercepted before I could ask what interesting herbs those were. "Hm. Better wait till tomorrow." "But I don't have any pain!" "Me neither," I said. "Then you can fight if you want. But don't overdo it." The mayor cleared his throat. "I think practicing is a good idea. Even better, why don't you practice together with the three peasants who will accompany you?" ----- "No, no. Dropping your weapon is not the right thing to do when you are about to hit." "Thanks for telling me!" "OWW! Yes, that was very good, but you should keep your force for the dragon!" "Sorry. Why did you drop your shield?" "Hey! You made a dent in my mace!" "Does it hurt?" I watched Tarik, Ziemi, Ormgwen, Fulfur, and the peasants trying not to hurt each other. Compass was somewhere in the woods, and the mayor had returned to his house. Preg was nowhere to be seen. More peasants would sometimes come and watch, but they didn't say anything. So I had leisure time for thinking. We still didn't know what sort of dragon it was. Maybe we should have let the mayor finish what he had to say. Now he had turned a bit taciturn about it, and the only other eyewitness, the hermit, was not too accessible. Probably when Sir Arni arrived we would learn more. Jockel Rytold's behaviour was suspicious - he obviously didn't want me to accompany him. I'd have liked to follow him unobtrusively, but I'm not the right man for that. Not in the woods, at least. He had already gone, and Thelma was looking after the brigand chief now. Ziemi still had a grudge at Compass and Ormgwen for chasing away Mythreides, his unfair opponent of yesterday, but this training seemed to be the right medicine for him. His opponent Kalamatas was an inferior fighter, and the dwarf didn't fall very often. I wondered how he had lost his leg. Probably not long ago, as he didn't use the wooden substitute in a very skillful way. It looked funny sometimes, but I thought laughing about him should be left to cruel Mythreides. Mythreides... who was he? Why had he come here? Where did he live? Where was he now? Did he have business with the brigands? Or the hermit? How had Beuaark got his horns? And why didn't the dragon turn up at the village and eat people? Why did it visit the fields only? Was it a vegetarian dragon? What else could help us against the monster? I went into our room and searched my backpack. Maybe I'd get an inspiration, I thought. The iron headband! It lay in a fold of the pack. I had completely forgotten about it. I had got it from the drow chest in our first adventure, and it had magic runes in it. If I had thought of it in Mythros, my teacher Zondragon would surely have been able to identify it. Damn, I thought. Nobody here will be able to tell me what it is... perhaps Jockel? I put it around my head and continued my search, but the rest was uninteresting as well as uninspiring, so I returned to the fight. ----- Compass and his dog were there. We sat apart from the others, and he told me where he had been. "I followed the healer around for a bit. He used the road to the south." "So you found his behaviour suspicious too?" "'You still need rest!' Silly. He wanted to be alone." "Maybe he has contacts to the brigands?" "Possible. Before he got to the place where we clashed with them yesterday, I met with the hermit, so I couldn't go on." "The hermit! Tell me." "I was hiding behind a rock and watching Jockel Rytold getting out of sight, when I heard cackling behind me. I turn around and see a man playing with Caramon and laughing into my face." "What did you do?" "I bowed and introduced myself. He didn't say anything, so I told him that I am one of the adventurers who are here to fight to dragon. He laughed again and said, 'I know that!' I say, 'And you know where the dragon's lair is,' and he laughs even more and says yes." "Jolly sort, huh?" "I ask how the dragon looks, and he says the worst was not the looks but the smell. And laughs. There is a pause, and he makes the impression on me of a hermit who, after finding a ranger following a healer, waits for an explanation. So I tell him I'm hunting, and he laughs and says..." "Please, drop it. Don't mention the laughing. Tell me only when he does *not* laugh." "Okay. So he asks why I am hunting *healers*. I laugh..." "You too?" "...and I tell him I'm curious about where Jockel goes. He says 'the brigands won't let you through anyway so you can as well stop here.' I ask him if he knows where the healer goes, and he lau... he says, yes but he won't tell me." "Oho." "I say, you seem to know a lot, and he says yes. So I ask him about the strange monster I saw before we found that body. The pug with the human head. He says 'I know it, and it's like you and me.' 'In how far?' 'It's watching people.' I couldn't get more information out of him. I didn't want to ask too much." "So? What did you do?" "I thanked him and said I hoped we met again, and he said we would, and jumped into a bush. I thought it would be futile to try to follow him, so I returned." "This place is full of riddles. The healer, the dragon, the hermit, the pug-beast, the horned brigand, and Mythreides. Everybody is strange and secretive!" "Not everybody." "But quite a lot." "Acknowledged." "Next time you meet that joker, ask him about Mythreides." ----- Then we joined the others and sparred till midday. In the afternoon we sat in the inn, the whole party. The peasants had nothing to do, their fields being out of limits, and we adventurers of course had time too. We agreed that we would practice every morning until the others from the north came. It was a day of many stories. A few of them came from Fulfur, but Ziemi refused to say how he had lost his leg, and his face already made the first steps on the short way to Purple, so we didn't ask any further. We related what had happened to us before - except the part we had taken an oath not to tell anybody on that plane - and we learned a bit about Eraton. There had been brigands at the pass for a long time, before the village was founded. But they overdid it, and the consequence was that the road was not used that much anymore. People would rather use ships for the voyage between Mythros and Ikonium. So most of the bandits looked for better places, but a few insightful ones stayed there and built the inn. They had seen that one should not ruin one's resources. Like hunters who preserved and cherished the wild beasts they wanted to enhance the conditions for travellers. But only few came. So they decided to drop the robbing altogether for a while. They cleared a piece of land and started to do agriculture, but they were not too good in it. Mainly they lived of hunting. Slowly the pass's reputation improved, and travellers were more common again. Real peasants settled there, and a few merchants, like the current mayor's Alban grandfather. The ex-brigands became a minority. When the road was fairly well used, some of them took up their highwayman life again; others stayed honest. Quarrels started between the two parties, and the brigands were driven out of Eraton. They live in the woods again since then. Regularly their lines are filled with human flotsam coming along, and occasionally a good-for-nothing boy from the village would join them. Kalamatas related that the last one had been his uncle, who as a youngster hadn't liked work and hung aroung in the woods a lot. He had joined the brigands and died in a fight when he was twenty-four. Kalamatas shook his head and frowned. Some of the people of Eraton still had the blood of the brigands of old in them; Mnogiatzes's great-grandfather for example had been one, as he said not without pride, astonishingly. It seems that removed villains aren't as bad as close ones... ----- Late in the evening Thelma returned and announced that Jockel Rytold had come back and was ready for me. I spent the rest of the day bandaging various parts of the brigand chief and the healer. It was rather instructive. But he couldn't tell me anything about my headband. -- Bakr ibn Ja'far ibn Musa al Mekneshi, apprentice mage aka Lifilis Kloote, conjurer and artist aka Thomas Kettenring