NOVEL NEXT EPISODE 1: BOUND
The following narrative is based upon the account of Kharla Ironback, as recorded and abridged by Draloth Incando. It is provided free of charge in the hope that it will receive a wide readership and thus aid in the dispelling of the spurious and embellished accounts circulated by both the Empire and Nords alike.
I have tried to tell the story from Kharla’s point of view (after all, she was present for all the significant events) but I could not help but insert some small additions, notes, and witty asides that I am sure the reader will find useful—these I have italicized for the reader’s convenience and also because Kharla threatened me if I did not.
Here then is the true story of the Dragonbore. Warts ‘n’ all.
— Draloth Incando.
PROLOGUE
The land of Skewrim has been plunged into an Uncivil War between the Empire and the rebel faction known as the Torncloaks. Badmouthing, barbed sarcasm, indecent taunts, hurtful slurs, unbridled slander, unrestrained libel (for those who can write), crushing defamation, excessive use of puns, and general affronts to civil discourse have pushed the people to the very brink of something very unpleasant happening.
And with High King Toerag recently dropping dead after a particularly humiliating insult by the rebel leader, Oldthred Torncloak, things look set to escalate into a full-blown argument.
EPISODE 1: BOUND
Sodas, the 17th of Lost Speed, 4E 201
The darkness became a green blur and the blur turned into the canopies of trees. Tall trees, moving gently overhead. No, it wasn’t the trees that were moving. It was her.
“Hey, you.” It was a Nord. She’d know that slow, hollow accent anywhere.
Kharla pushed herself up only to discover that her hands had been bound and that she was seated in a carriage. A man sat opposite. Well-built, dark blond hair with a single braid, a beard of the same color, and ice-blue eyes. Yes, definitely a Nord.
“You’re finally awake, Orc. I guess you were caught in that ambush by the Impeccable Legion, same as us, right? Same as those misfits in the carriage behind and this thief here?”
Kharla glanced at the man in worn rags sitting next to the Nord.
“A curse on you Torncloaks,” the thief said, glaring at the Nord’s blue-gray uniform. “Skewrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and contained. If they hadn’t been looking for you, I could’ve stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerhell.”
The dark-haired thief turned to Kharla. “You there, you and me—we shouldn’t be here. It’s these Torncloaks the Empire wants.”
“We’re all brothers and sisters in bonds now, thief,” said the Nord.
“Lookir. My name’s Lookir.”
“That’s confusing.” The Nord turned back to Kharla. “I’m Rolof, by the way.”
“Shut up back there!” yelled the Impeccable soldier driving the carriage.
Another soldier, on a bay horse, rode behind and, behind him, two more carriages trundled along the stony road filled with the ‘misfits’, as Rolof had called them. Four clowns sat at the front of the first carriage, their faces unreadable beneath the turned-down painted mouths and drawn-on tears. Kharla’s memory returned like a slap in the face with a Slaughterfish.
She’d been working for Master and Madame Jambaree’s Carnival of Wonders near Dankwater Crossing, hired to protect the takings. She’d been bashed on the head with something hard. Probably the pommel of an Impeccable sword. She felt her head. There was a bump beneath her jet-black hair.
“And what’s wrong with him, huh? Is he like that because he bad-mouthed the guards or something?” Lookir was looking at a large man wrapped in a fur cloak sitting at the back of the carriage. His hands were also bound but, unlike the others, this Nord had also been tightly gagged.
Rolof took a sharp intake of breath. “Watch your tongue, thief. You’re speaking to Oldthred Torncloak, the true High King.”
The thief frowned. “Oldthred? The Jarl of Windfarm? You’re the leader of the rebellion.” He paused, a concerned look spreading across his dirty face. “But if they’ve captured you…Oh gods, where are they taking us?”
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Rolof said, his voice calm, “but Songunbard awaits.”
The thief looked about as if trying to find some way to escape. “No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.” After a while he quietened down to a whimper.
“So what village are you from, Lookir the horse thief?” Rolof asked.
Probably one with few horses, thought Kharla. She hated thieves. They were almost as bad as werewolves. At least you could get a good pelt from a werewolf.
Lookir fixed his eyes menacingly on the Nord. “And why do you care?”
Rolof looked at the trees and mountains. “A Nord’s last thoughts should be of home.”
“I’m a Breton.”
“Ah, well. That’s plain bad luck then, my friend.”
Lookir’s face grew red. “Why you son of a—”
“Nord? Yes, I’m the son of a Nord and that’s why I’m thinking of home.”
The thief folded his arms. “Oh, be quiet!”
Kharla rotated her neck and flexed her hands. The bindings had been secured well and neatly. No surprise there. It was the Impeccable Legion, after all. Kharla hated the Empire and their need for perfect order. But they weren’t perfect warriors. Kharla could take any Impeccable soldier down any day of the week—except on the first Cicadas of every month when she had her bath and a well-deserved rest. Which, as luck would have it, was the very day of the ambush. She was only glad that, as was her custom, she’d been bathing dressed in her armor. Cleaning your body and armor separately was just a plain waste of time, after all. But, yes, any other time and she would have given those irksome Impeccables a right beating.
“General Dullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!” shouted the Impeccable soldier on the walkway above the gate as they approached.
Kharla stared past the carriage full of Torncloaks up ahead to see that it was indeed General Dullius at the head of the procession. It was always hard to identify an Impeccable officer because the Legion had all their soldiers so immaculately and finely dressed. The metal always shined so much that it could blind you on a sunny day, especially the officer’s helmets. Though the General wore no helmet, unlike the soldiers who traveled on the carriages and walked or rode with them. There was no chance of escape. Kharla hoped one of them would fall over and get their uniform dirty.
“Good. Let’s get this over with! I have a dinner to organize this evening and I need to ensure that the table has been laid correctly,” the general shouted back to the guard. “It’s just not something you can trust the servants to get right.”
Kharla hadn’t heard him speak before. He had a dull voice that somehow sounded both impatient and indifferent at the same time. His voice reminded her of an old Orc Chief she’d known.
Kharla wouldn’t tell me much about him, well not until she’d binged on several tankards of Molten Pear ale one evening. Turns out his name was Yushud gro-Yorown, a keen gardener she said. I also discovered he was slain by none other than Kharla’s father in order to become clan chief. It seems Yushud didn’t put up much of a fight, being worn down over the years by endless jokes about being ‘green fingered’. Kharla seems to have quite liked the old Orc. She spoke about him affectionately before she belched loudly and fell asleep.
“Shorn, Maria, Rubella, Kindeath, Mackintosh. Divas, please help me,” the thief muttered as they passed through the gate.
Rolof looked at Dullius as the general broke off from the procession to talk to a richly dressed High Elf—so-called because of their height—seated on a large horse and surrounded by her High Elf guards in their golden gilded armor, no doubt trying to outdo the smartly dressed legionnaires of the Impeccable Legion. “Look at him, General Dullius the Military Governor of the Mead Empire in Skewrim. And it looks like the Tallmor are with him. Wretched Elves. I bet they had something to do with this.”
The carriages continued to wind their way through the town, past wooden homes with thatched roofs, a stone tower, and far too many banners displaying the emblem of the Impeccable Legion of the Mead Empire—a dinner plate surrounded by correctly positioned eating utensils, symbolizing perfect order and manners.
The Mead Empire was founded by Emperor Titmouse Mead, a Cloven Winelord. He is said to have established the Impeccable Etiquette after a terribly disorderly dinner party celebrating his coronation, in which supposedly mannered guests of high birth from across the Empire had consistently used the wrong utensils in both the main course and dessert. According to some accounts, Titmouse, his patience finally worn thin, had the Failingwood delegation thrown out after a Wood Elf used his soup spoon to tuck into a rather fine Snowberry crostata. The dinner plate emblem was adopted soon thereafter as was the requirement that all cadets attend finishing school in order to graduate and join the Impeccable Legion.
Rolof looked around at the village nestled within the Legion outpost. “This is Helga. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Her name was Helga too. That’s one of the reasons the relationship never worked out. Too confusing.” The Nord sighed. “Wonder if the innkeeper Vilot is still making that mead with jungle berries mixed in?” He sighed again, this time longer. “Funny, when I was a boy, the Impeccable Legion’s walls and towers used to make me feel so safe.”
“Who are they, Daddy? Where are they going?” asked a boy sitting cross-legged on the porch of a home as the carriages went by. “Is it that game again when the man with the big axe rolls the heads into the box—”
“You need to go inside, little cub,” his father interrupted.
“Why? I want to watch the game.”
“You’ve seen enough of these…er…games this year,” his father chided.
“Shan’t!” the boy countered.
“Get inside the house now! Or it’s off to your grandfather’s mountain-side shack again, with no one to talk to and that precipitous drop that gave you nightmares the last time you visited.”
“Yes, papa.” The boy reluctantly obeyed but his father and mother stayed on the porch watching the carriages.
The procession passed an inn, its worn sign hard to read, and then another tower before Kharla’s carriage slowed. They’d reached the square.
“Whoa!” the driver said to the horses as they neared the wall.
A Rudeguard woman in the Impeccable Legion’s finely polished heavy armor stood waiting near an archway. Fortunately, a cloud had moved across the sun. Next to her a priestess with a blank look on her face watched the carriages approach.
“Get those prisoners out of the carts. Move it!” the Rudeguard ordered. She sounded as if she had a Thunderbug in her helmet.
A man in a black hood and ringmail armor, carrying a huge headsman’s axe on his shoulder, made his way over to a blood-stained executioner’s block in the middle of the square.
“Why are we stopping?” the thief asked.
Rolof looked at the thief. “You ain’t so bright, are you? Why do you think? End of the line.”
The carriages lined up next to the wall and the prisoners were ordered down. Kharla stood as those on her carriage piled off. Half the prisoners were from the circus. The owners, Master and Madame Jambaree, had indignant looks on their faces as they stood there amidst the clowns, mime artists, dwarfs, and several bearded women.
Karla recognized some of the others too, though not all. There was the circus strongman, a huge Nord with a torso larger and more muscled than any Orc she’d ever seen, though of course he had the disadvantage of not being green. Then there was the small Breton girl who performed some kind of light magic in the big top every night. A Dark Elf Kharla had seen selling his wares since they’d set up near Dankwater Crossing a few days ago studied everyone around him warily. She knew none of their names. Kharla had looked after the takings and paid little attention to the performers. There was a short, hooded figure among them too. She didn’t recognize him.
“Let’s go. Shouldn’t keep the gods waiting for us,” Rolof said.
“No! Wait!” the thief said to the soldiers. “We’re not rebels!”
Rolof stepped down from the carriage behind the thief. “Face your death with some courage, thief.”
The Rudeguard woman regarded them with disdain. Next to her now stood a Nord soldier with a ledger and quill in his hands.
As Kharla got down from the carriage the thief turned to Rolof. “You’ve got to tell them! We weren’t with you! This is a mistake!”
“Look, thief. When we planned the meeting we didn’t know a circus would be there. And you were the one who chose to steal a horse from the circus grounds and got caught.”
“Step towards the block when we call your name,” the Rudeguard barked. “One at a time, as my colleague here ain’t so good at multitasking.”
The Nord ‘colleague’ frowned at the Rudeguard, but the expression soon left his face as he turned back to his ledger.
Rolof sighed. He sighed a lot. “Empire loves their infernal lists.”
“Oldthred Torncloak. Jarl of Windfarm,” the soldier with the ledger announced in a husky voice.
Rolof turned to Oldthred. “It has been an honor, Jarl Oldthred!”
Oldthred dipped his head toward Rolof, grunting something similar back in response through the gag, and then walked toward the block.
“Rolof of Riverweed.”
Rolof moved forward. “Hasvar. Still an Impeccable lackey I see.”
The man with the ledger didn’t respond and Rolof moved off to join Oldthred.
“Lookir of Roderickshead,” said Hasvar.
“No!” the thief shouted. “I’m not a rebel. You can’t do this!”
Then Lookir was off, bounding past the captain and up the cobbled road they’d just come down.
“Halt!” shouted the Rudeguard officer, but the Breton paid her no more heed than the unattended horse he ran past, apparently entirely forgetting in the stress of it all that he was a horse thief.
“You’re not going to kill me!” Lookir shouted. But he was wrong.
“Archers!” the Rudeguard commanded. Several archers sent arrows flying, some reloading, and one eventually struck the thief, killing him.
The Rudeguard woman turned back to the prisoners gathered by the carriages. “Anyone else feel like running?”
One of the dwarfs went to make a dash for it, not realizing it was a threat and not an invitation, but was quickly grabbed by two of his more context-aware if vertically challenged fellows.
The rest of the prisoners were processed until at last one remained.
“Wait. You there. Step forward,” said Hasvar.
Kharla stepped forward.
Hasvar examined his ledger, a frown on his face. “Who are you?”
“Kharla Ironback.”
“You from one of the strongholds, Orc? How did you end up here?”
Kharla didn’t answer. It wouldn’t make any difference.
Hasvar turned to the Rudeguard. “Captain. What should we do? She’s not on the list.”
“Forget the list. She goes to the block.”
Kharla sighed inwardly. The lists were obviously only important when they served the Empire’s purpose.
“By your orders, Captain.” Hasvar turned back to Kharla. “I’m sorry. We’ll make sure your remains are returned to Orcinammon. Follow us, prisoner.”
Kharla glanced from side to side as she turned. Legionnaires surrounded the area, on the ground and on the walls and towers, many with bows in hand. She followed Hasvar and the captain to where all the others had gathered, near the execution block, catching a small part of their conversation on the way.
“I don’t understand, why are we executing the circus troupe?” Hasvar asked.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” the Rudeguard captain replied. “Besides, Dullius hates circuses. Some childhood trauma I hear. Told me he wants the lot of them to go to the block—and to execute the clowns first.” The two Impeccables stopped as they neared the block.
The General stood in front of the Jarl, hands on his hips. “Olthred Torncloak. Some here in Helga call you a hero. But a hero doesn’t use a power like the Voice to insult his king to death and usurp his throne.”
Oldthred muttered some indistinct words through the gag but everyone got the gist of his reply.
Dullius raised an eyebrow. “You started this war of words, plunged Skewrim into this chaotic tiff, and now the Empire is going to put you down and restore the peace. Make everything polite again. Good-mannered.”
A roar sounded from the mountains to the south and everyone looked toward the peaks. A strange cry. Kharla had not heard its like before, not even as a child when she’d accidentally dropped a warhammer on her father’s foot.
“What was that?” said Hasvar, scanning the mountains.
“It’s nothing. Carry on,” Dullius said.
The Rudeguard captain nodded. “Yes, General Dullius.” She turned to the Priestess of Okay. “Give them their last rites.”
It is worth mentioning here that Okay, sometimes written OK, and also known as So-so in his feminine aspect, is one of the Eight Divas, and God of the Average, Bringer of the Mediocre, Lord of the Run-of-the-Mill, and Light at the Middle-of-the-Road. That the Empire tasked a priestess of Okay to officiate in the last rites of the prisoners says a great deal about what the Empire thought of us.
The priestess began reciting the words. “As we commend your souls to Nefarious, blessings of the Eight Divas upon you…”
A red-haired Torncloak pressed forward. “For the love of Toeless, shut up and let’s get this over with.”
The Not-So-Great War, fought between the Mead Empire and the Old Merry Delirium, ended in the signing of the Weight-in-Gold Concordance, more an esoteric and quite voluminous reference work than a treaty, but one of the stipulations buried in its many pages was that Toeless Worship would be outlawed. Some believe this to be—if I may use an author’s term—the inciting incident that started the Uncivil War. For centuries the people of Skewrim had worshipped the hero Toeless, said to have been the first to have sported the toeless sock. His followers took to wearing this item of footwear as a sign of their devotion to Toeless. But the Tallmor (the not-at-all-merry ruling faction of the Old Merry Delirium) had been rigorously enforcing the ban on Toeless Worship, even going so far as to set up a rather stylish chain of stores selling branded full-length socks.
The priestess seemed taken aback. Perhaps she thought this was going to just be another average day for her. “As you wish.”
The Torncloak stepped up to the block. “Come on, I haven’t got all morning.”
The captain pushed him to his knees and bent him down to the wooden block with her foot.
“My ancestors are smiling at me, Impeccables. Can you say the same?”
Actually, they may have been laughing or, at least, had their faces in their palms. I learned from Rolof that this man had always been, in addition to fearless, impatient (I have heard this about those with red hair among the race of Men). It is a great pity, as it is certain that had he allowed a little more of the ‘morning’ for the last rites to be completed the dragon attack would have come before his execution. Of course, the dragon may have killed him anyway, as it did many of the Torncloak prisoners, but a better death for a Nord than the block. Well, you live and you learn—unless, that is, you die.
The headsmen chopped off his head, the body went limp, and the captain casually shoved the body over with her foot to clear the block for the next prisoner.
“You Impeccable scum!” shouted a female Torncloak from among the prisoners.
“Justice!” countered a man dressed in hide armor standing in front of the inn.
I discovered later whilst doing some research that this man was none other than Vilot, yes him of jungle-berry fame, and that when the execution took place he was querying a soldier’s order as to what he was having with his drink. The soldier had refused the jungle berries, much to Viold’s disgust, and just wanted ice.
“Death to the Torncloaks!” came another voice. Female again this time.
“As fearless in death as he was in life,” Rolof lamented, looking at the dead Torncloak soldier.
“Next, the Orc!” shouted the captain.
The screeching roar came from the skies again, this time louder.
“There it is again. Did you hear that?” said Hasvar.
“I said, next prisoner!” the captain repeated.
“To the block, prisoner. Nice and easy,” Hasvar said to Kharla.
Kharla had no intention of going to the block ‘nice and easy’. It was not a good death. A good death would be to die fighting these Impeccable rats. But Kharla was weaponless. So she stood there defiant until two guards dragged her forward. Her blood was beginning to boil now. They struggled with her, so the captain joined them in pinning Kharla down. The Rudeguard seemed to enjoy her work. Kharla swore under her breath that she’d kill this woman if she ever had the chance. Her head was on the block now, facing the tower next to the inn, but one of the guards wasn’t holding her down well enough, she could easily break free. She’d probably die in short order but maybe she could grab the soldier’s short sword and split the Rudeguard’s belly open before she died. That would be a good death.
Just then Kharla saw something large in the clouds just beyond the tower. It was heading toward them. A heartbeat later the shape had come into the view of everyone else.
“What in Oblivious is that?” shouted General Dullius.
For the uninformed reader, Oblivious, or the Nether Regions, is the realm of the Deirdra, a race of unobservant gods who wanted no part in the creation of the world (and most of whom remain quite unaware that this world now exists). Oblivious itself consists of several planes, each ruled by one of the Deirdra, all of whom are largely ignorant of each other and their respective planes. The Deirdra are known for their cruel tricks, bad interior design, and bizarre hairstyles.
Kharla forgotten, the captain called to the soldiers atop the tower. “Sentries! What do you see?”
A sentry shouted out, his voice filled with fear. “It’s in the clouds! Wait, it’s getting closer. By all the gods, look at the size of—” his words were cut off with a scream as the shape landed on the tower, shaking the ground, and the sentry fell to his death. The guards released Kharla and the executioner swayed before her and fell to his knees.
“Dragon!” a soldier shouted.
And it was indeed a dragon. A huge black dragon. The beast gave a great yawn and then the sky turned red and flaming meteorites struck the ground all around Kharla. She heard the headsman grunt and Dullius shout something about battlemages, killing the thing, getting the people to safety, and assigning a team to clear up afterwards, but then the ground exploded and everything went black.