The Campaign Builder's Guild

eretics, they had called us.  The audacity!  I, a priest of Timos and slayer of dark ones, a heretic?  It was they, with their collection hoarding, their labor demands and their political meddling who were heretics.  How can one perform heresy on to gods that do not exist?  Heretics they still called us on that cold and windy day when we pried them from their pathetic thatched barn of a church.

In defiance of our King, they remained in our boarders a full year after the Decree of Expulsion; perverting the minds of our people with their lies and invented gods, corrupting the name of Dorn - Timos - the True One.

Tonight, under Thon's Left Eye, we set them to the torch, in accordance to my King's law.  Aye, they had begged and pleaded for their lives, save one, a living saint now martyred, god rest him.

From their hoard we freed a small fortune, no doubt years of collection from several of the small parishes, much like the one here in the village -- Gyrþorp, the locals called it.  We returned the wealth to the people.

My companions -- five, under arms -- accompanied me as we left that place.  The hacking boils, rampant in other reaches, had not reached this far and we were loathe to risk it.  It was a three day ride to our keep, were we returned our report.
 

That had been well over a year ago, a deed that won me a place in the King's special service.  I was one of sixty-six men answerable only to the King and the god; one of nine that could actually speak for the god.



I had been born somewhere on the outskirts of Heafod, our capital city, to a common whore.  I never knew my father, though it's very likely he was some kind of sailor -- their ilk were rife in the sea-side cunnywarren my mother rutted at.

I spent most of my younger years lending hand as a common laborer -- I was fortunate the Madame in charge doted on me my first nine hears, until a drunken customer, refusing to pay, stabbed her to death.  After that, I had to make my own way, first as a running boy delivering scrips between ships and then as a porter off loading goods.  I had no love for the sea, and spent the rare extra coin on food for camping trips away from the city, deep in the woods.

When I was fifteen, I found work as a fletcherer, picking up some small scale metalwork training when I had to fill in for the head-maker.  I built up a small clientele when my arrows, of superior quality to almost any other, were pro-scribed to a fairly influential nobleman and small game hunter.  Impressed with my work the man, lavishly dressed in an outfit worth more than five years labor, invited me to accompany him on a hunt; a token of gratitude, surely, as from what street talk claims, one of my arrows slew some fel beast he endeavored long to bring down.

Beamish, I accepted.  Not that one denies a noble, less so a noble offering a protected trip away from the city, at no cost, with free meat and wine.

Taking my best arrows (I was permitted to keep one of every ten I manufactured to sell personally in lieu of higher payment for my great skill) and my blanket, I met with the lord, a certain Cern Ferronson, and his retainers.  Immediately self-conscious of my dress and baggage (I had not the means to even afford a simple knife), I kept my gaze astray on our journey away from the city walls.  How novel it must have been for men like that to find themselves accompanied by someone like I was then.  A far cry I am now from my former self.



I drew on my pipe as I reminisced.  The room was chilly, the lone candle casting incomprehensible shadows on my wall.  It rained outside; I could hear it against the wooden shutters of my sole window.  Tears of the god, come to wash the sins away.



They were six men, the lord and his retainers.  Dressed in clothing worth easily a weeks wage, they rode at a comfortable gait.  An old pack horse was my steed -- a loan from the noble.  A bow, old and near the end of its life, was all they furnished me for this hunt; a weapon I had never used before.

Our first day closed with us camping in an obviously well-used clearing some ten miles out.  Throughout the whole day the six regaled the air with boastful tales of savage conflicts, mighty hunts and questionable love affairs.  Our time in camp was no exception, save it was the nobleman's turn to speak.



There came a knock at my chamber door, jarring me from my thoughts.  A novice entered, one of the younger attendants to those of us in the keep.  Rising, I took the scrip he held forth in his hands.

"Beer," I adjured the boy.  "I thirst."  Eyes widened, he retreated from the chamber to fetch my beverage.  I'd been ignoring food and drink all day.  The weather, I supposed.

By the time I closed my door and returned to my low straw mattress, the boy had returned and by the time I returned with the draught to my bed, my pipe had gone out.  Peeved, and having no match or command over flame, I seated myself at my desk -- really a small table of rough hewn wood -- and broke the seal of the message.

To the normal eye, it was a letter between friends, including a recipe for a kind of dish called partan bree.  A quick whispering and gesture solved this, bringing the mystically hidden words to bear.  They were grim words.  To the west, a detachment of the King's army, under the auspices of Lucan Varagen, had met with defeat against a larger force of our renegade countrymen, supported by dark priests and their twisted Bondi warriors.  I had known Lucan; he had been one of the god-touched, like myself.  His mind for military matters had been great, even if his ability with the god-powers had been less than my own.  He was a good friend to anyone fortunate enough to know him well.  The letter did not write his fate, but I know Lucan would have gone down with his men in battle.

The hacking boils had hit that region hard, attracting a few errant priests of darkness hoping to raise supporters, either living or dead.  The King, having eyes and ears even that far out, dispatched men and material to support the outposts in the region.  Several skirmishes between our desperate countrymen and the King's soldiers inevitably broke out, hampering our efforts there.

With Lucan down, the region would likely be reinforced by myself, probably with a 'special levy' - untrained and untested volunteer glory seekers - and some kind of duty detachment, depending.

I drank from my beer, nearly forgotten.  It was warm.  Opening a large cera, I took up the stylus and began to draft my personal detachment.  Quickly, I ran the names of notable members of the Special Service that Remained Undeployed.  There weren't many; the strive had us spread thin.  There was Gythild, a nightly warrior of great experiences; I'd campaigned with him once before.  His esquire would come too.  There was Eald, a wizarding apprentice I'd heard of on a few occasions, and Behrtgar, the spearmaster; he'd seen fair action against the twisted "Bondi" and his experience would be good for the troops.  

I drank again from the beer again, leaning back in the chair.  I added three aide de camps in as well, noting for at least two to be literate.  I made a few short notes on supplies as well, noting down a few low-end luxuries to placate any locals near our expectant campsites -- bribes in war are as powerful as any spear; perhaps more powerful.

Several more hours I spent at the tablet, long forgetting the beer as I attempted to take control of every necesity.  I closed the horn pages shortly after the bell droned the twenty first hour.  Dismissing the enchanted flame glowing atop the un-burnt candle, I climbed into my bed, pulling comforting blankets around me.  Tomorrow, Deaþ, 9 Fif, held nothing but planning and organizing and all manner of tedious things.

===

M.

Fixed a few readability issues.

M.

I'm not really adept at giving criticism on stories, but i'll try.
Is this part of something or stand-alone? It seems to call up a medieval-ish tone quite deftly (which fits your setting if i remember correctly), and the writing is pretty good. The pacing change seems a bit abrupt. Like if you read two stories that had nothing to do with each other. Hmm, you seem to hint at some adventurers at the end. Always good. Is about all the comments i can come up with.

Thanks for the feedback.  It's kind of part of something, as it's set in my campaign world of Ouroboros (Scrael in particular).

The abrupt changes are supposed to be akin to flashbacks; the character himself spends that entire segment in the original post in his chamber, thinking back; part of an introduction to the character.  What would be a good way to ease the transition between a bit better, from a readers perspective?

The end product may be a bit lengthy; this is something I want to keep as a side project when I've nothing else I'd rather be doing.

The setting is quasi-medieval, like all cliche fantasy :p

M.