The Nameless started the Winter with some conflict as newly freed slaves; men that were until recently spent most of their lives in a drug addled state, now suffering from withdrawal and having a lot of free time decided to slake their thirsts in other ways, with the out numbered female ex-slaves. The Nameless enforced a strong zero policy for all these types of incidents. As the snows quickly piled up the small population of people began to learn to work hard all day and rest as long as they could. The winter was harsh and there was a lot of work to do in the proto-colony.
The fields had to be cleared. The snow deepened everyday and the cold was harsh. Many of the former slaves did not have the proper clothing and while the winter clothing provided was adequate, it was not the best. Luckily the Nameless had an ample supply of arrows and the woodland around, in a near pristine state, had plenty of wild life: a small herd of woodland caribou, moose, rabbits, beaver and many others: the mountains had goats and the streams fish. Berries uneaten by animals were aplenty. The people were not going to starve and the addition of fur to their clothing made the winter bearable.
The larger trees were stripped of branches as they fell and were pulled over the snows to the work areas, makeshift sleds made this chore easier later in the project. The trees were cut in saw pits, built prior to freeze up for just this purpose. The bark and the larger pieces of unusable wood were burnt for heat and the sawdust for other purposes: insulation for buildings yet to be completed. Squared timbers and planks were produced for spring and summer construction projects. A few buildings were built though over the winter due to necessity; a house to store ice and snow for the Summer, covered with a layer of sawdust.
The surroundings were surveyed, such as they could in e winter, and areas of interest were noted for future post melt times. The people were the main concern of the Nameless, however, he spent time individually and in groups reinforcing his views and team building. He tried to teach them about woodcraft for the area, trying to make them self-sufficient. The building of the new and future settlement of Nowhere, seemed to help with this. All the work done in the camp had been completed by them, when they arrived there was nothing. There were a few problems though, mostly due to two factors.
These factors were the gender imbalance and that the two different populations in the camp. The Slaves, for the first part, were mostly ignorant of how to communicate; the segregation of the latifundia in the slave states by informing different language usage, meant that most of the slaves could not talk to each other. There were a few that could speak more languages, but there were only a few of these. The second group was a work crew from The Guild, ten men and one retired caravan master who served as the backbone of the new settlement. They all spoke Riverspeak and Airspeak, the language of the Riverlands where The Guild was based, and the predominant language group of the North, respectively. A few of the slaves knew Riverspeak, but none knew Airspeak. Riverspeak was selected as the language that they would all use in common.
The largest problem was that there were only seven women and there were twenty-four men, the Nameless decided that for there to be a chance for the settlement to be successful, this imbalance had to be solved. So as Spring began to break upon the isolated valley, the Nameless left to seek a cure for this problem, to get more supplies for his people and specialized professionals, like healers.
Walking paths that mortals dared not travel, the Nameless crossed the mountains that served as a backdrop to Nowhere, trackless and passless that they were, and entered the slave state of Dehenna. He quickly ran to the city of Dehenna, where his guild contacts were to gain any information that they had and to seek aid.
Upon arriving he discovered that they had no new information, other than something was up in the state of Serrat, but what was up and the cause were unknown. The sad truth was that the infrastructure of the slave states, the methodology on containing and isolating the slave populations, worked in a secondarily function of sealing the boarders against intrusion and leakage of information. No slave could pass into the Foreign Quarter and no foreigner could move past it and certainly no administrator would pass secrets out for fear of the leak being traced to them and they losing their position because of it. There being too few non-slaves present that such a task would be all too easy. So it was that the Nameless turned out to be their own best source of information from within the Slave States.
It was time, in the Nameless's mind, to get a better source than reading the leavings of the scrolls that the slave administrators passed around to provide limited information of the going ons within the slave states. It was a task that would have taken a concerted effort of a dozen mortals infiltrating the organization for months with established identities of slaves, all doing the work of the slaves and trying to discern the process and rise to a level where they could find the information in a structure that had stagnated due to them being slaves and through rampant drug use. It took him a little more than a day.
After blackmailing a bureaucrat that appeared to be near the top of the information destitution system in Dehenna, he offered terms to appease himself. He wanted to have an updated version of the rumours regularly placed in a drop-off box and he offered to pay with drugs and flavours. The one favour that he requested right away was for more detailed information from around the slave states and the world at large, particularly on any revolts by the group that left the bloody hand calling card, first seen a year previously.
The information that he received was stunning and worrisome. Firstly, because it concerned himself, his activities had been noticed from the previous year in the state of Dehenna. The head of the Immaculate Order had discovered some of his activities through careful examination of the bureaucratic records of the past year, and following up those leads lead to the discovery of a few of the secrets that the Nameless thought were covered nicely, namely the bodies of the Jackals he killed protecting the escaped slave. Additionally there was some concern that the killings were connected in some way to the first incident with the Bloody Hand. The Immaculate priest seemed to be hot on his trail, when she dropped it cold and left Dehenna to answer a more urgent call in Serrat.
In Serrat, there was a separate investigation going on about a missing Dynast and the pursuing Immaculate Monk and her enlisted allies and the latifundia they were investigating disappeared. A runner bring weekly orders and reports discovered the mess and the runner quickly reported the horror and the region was locked down shortly there after, but it was known that an order was sent out to the Realm for aid in the form of the Wyld Hunt.
This information disturbed the Nameless, as he recognized that the absent Dynast could be none other than Ragara Dinyacout and the erased latifundia had to be the jumping off point that Dinyacout used. He was concerned that the Fair Folk that he dealt with the previous year had decided to go back on their word and remove the latifundia completely. But the idea that the region was under scrutiny dissuaded him from sticking his nose further into the issue. Whatever was this Wyld Hunt, he did not want to be near it when it came knocking.
The Guild had quickly dispatched his request to the Guild Hub in Wallport and so when the Nameless came in with this additional information and the desire to spread his slave gathering to additional slave states to lower his personal risk of discovery, he found he was too late, that ship had sailed. But his desire was strong, and he elected to attempt to out pace the ship that had a two day head start on him and he ran cross country to Wallport. He desired that the supply ship might stop along the Coast of Inhajal on the way to Dehenna, so he could load slaves that he thought he might acquire there; so he ran. He ran for a week, while the day lasted and longer with his caste mark providing light.
He did indeed run long and hard and was rewarded by arriving in Wallport just after the courier boat arrived and well before the supplies could be dispatched. Talking to the Guild representative, he was able to arrange for the Guild galley to stop in an auspicious location along the coast of Inhajal. There was some concern that the Realm's Earth Fleet was on alert to smugglers and was stopping more ships this season than in the past, but the appointment was made. At the conclusion to the discussion, the Nameless, exited to the City's edge and began to run back to Inhajal to free the slaves he desired.
He ran about 1500 miles through rough terrain, luckily not mountains, in ten days. He arrived in the latifundia that he scouted out briefly on his journey to Wallport and proceeded to rifle through the slave records to find the most undisciplined slaves in the camp. Upon discovering the ones that he was looking for he systematically assassinated the slave guards in the compound and those that were guarding the perimeter, one shot trough the head and recovering his arrows all the time. He slew the thirty guards this way then headed to the slave barracks and called out the seven slaves he decided to kidnap and with them twenty female slaves. He then proceeded to the administrator's apartments and wrenched his neck and beat his head to a pulp and left the call sign of bloody hand prints all over the scene. Upon leaving the administrators apartments, the freed slaves had taken up the guards weapons and armour and had dismembered the rest of the administrators. The Nameless then force marched his liberated countrymen to the rendezvous location.
As the Guild ship entered the rendezvous region it was clear that there was another ship closing in to wards it, but still a substantial distance away. The Guild ship came to rest on the shore to pick up the Nameless and his gathered slaves. They set off again in short order, however, the ship got closer to them and it began to wave the colours of the Earth Fleet and signal them for boarding. The Nameless, conferences with the ship captain about what they should do. The slaves were not exactly noticeable as slaves except they were Northerners who only spoke Firespeak, the language of the South of Creation. Also, the armour they wore was noticeably that of the Mamulks of the Slave states, so that was another problem. Lastly however was that the Nameless, was out fitted in his armour and power bow made from the Orichalcum. The Nameless scaled the mast and looked out towards the oncoming ship, it was clear that it would catch up, as it was a larger galley with more oars, but luckily the flotilla that it belonged to was dispersed far away from it. There were six galleys and two large tender trimarans in the group and this galley was far away. The seas were getting rougher and that was the wrong sort of weathering for galleys.
Decision made, the captain ordered the oars to be stowed and to prepare for boarding; there was going to be a fight. As the Realm ship closed to boarding distance, the imperials cast their grapples into the galley and began to pull the two ships together. The Nameless then struck without warning or mercy and began to plug the Imperials with arrows. In the first several seconds, the Nameless killed the Captain and the first wave of soldiers, but the Imperials kept hauling the vessels together until there the two ships were close enough that the marines could jump the last few feet; they were getting desperate because the barrage of arrows had killed over half of the twenty-six marines. The fear steeled their hearts but not their fitting and a full five of the remaining soldiers fell into the ocean in their full armour, or we're pushed back into the water by the waiting sailors.
When it was all said in done the battle lasted barely more than a minute and all the troops were dead and no one in the Nameless's ship was injured, except one sailor who tripped and fell into the ocean trying to push the soldiers over, but he was recovered as he wore no armour and could swim. The ship was scuttled in quick order and the ship reached its final destination a week later, after of course, the Nameless liberated the pressed labour that was manning the oars for the imperial vessel.
After a month away, from the time that he left Nowhere until he came back, progress had been made in the encampment: buildings were set up, the semi cleared forests were burned and planted. When he came back he also brought fourteen additional men and twenty-one women making a total of sixty-five mortals plus himself. Amongst the people he brought back were the seven indentured and pressed sailors, they were for the most part originally farmers in the Realm, so they had practice planting and tending crops that the slaves did not have. Also there were the first swords, self bows and buff jackets that the slaves scavenged from the corpses of guards back in the latifundia in Inahjal.
No comments:
Post a Comment