Eel Marsh Exile, ch.3

Author's Note: Back to Wreath we wander, now once more through the eyes of Tuva Lynxheart, as her journeys bring her to the shokari city of Khxendrol!

[story/combat]

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The sour-skull from last night’s heavy drink is nothing that cannot be worked through with morning exercise. I am awake before my shokari guide, naked on the floor of our shared room, laying sidelong and thrusting my uppermost leg ceilingward, holding it as long as I’m able before letting it descend – then launching it up once more. I repeat the exercise repeatedly on each side, then sit, curling forward, a sticky sweat forming on my skin as my body cooks out the poison of the shokari drink.

“You have strong will,” finally arrives the thickly-accented voice of Miske Ux-Renta, the ranger – or rallchofn, in the giant-folks’ tongue – I encountered in the tunnels of Wreath’s belly. She sits up in bed with a groan, brushing tangled black braids from in front of pale yellow eyes. “You do well down here. I think so.”

“I shall have to hope so,” I grunt back at her, crunching my entire upper body forward, towards my knees, my breathing growing heavy. “I cannot return the way I came… I shall call upon Those that plenty of the horned folk speak my tongue, and I find a way to the surface before long.”

“You will find enough,” Miske nods. “Traders, priests, many know your words better than I.” There’s a glumness to her husky voice, a sorrow that gives me pause. I cease exercising, looking up at her from the floor. In a moment, I recall her predicament – while she had the decency to lead me to this small settlement outside the gate, she cannot return to Khxendrol. Like me, she is exiled from her homeland.

I sit up fully, resting one elbow on the foot of the bed, looking up at her. “Where do you go, now?”

“Find another tunnel to the surface. Yours… too far. I cannot go home but for the Swordgame, and it will be many years before Tatixkol erupts again.” Her voice remains listless, but her words confuse me. Too many concepts in a row I am not familiar with.

“You speak of strange customs,” I guess aloud. “What is the Swordgame?”

She hesitates. As always, she speaks slowly, trying to parse together meaning from words she doesn’t grasp well. “Many days of battle, for all to watch. Victors ask favor of Khxendrol. Land, wealth, freedom from bondage, the right to homeland. The contest lasts eleven days, beginning when Tatixkol grows enraged, ending when it grows calm.”

“This is a… warrior? A monster?”

“A great burst of water,” Miske explains cautiously. “Hot and bitter, from far below Wreath. Every… nine-and-some years.”

I let out a quiet ‘hum,’ considering her words. I’ve heard of water spouts coming from the ground, even tremendously large ones, but never lasting eleven days, nor described in such a queer way. “And when does it come next?”

Now, Miske looks truly miserable, a dark pall hanging over her strange features. “It has, already, and the battles will have already begun. One woman alone, even strong, cannot win Swordgame alone. We fight great beasts from the darkness, groups of many. Cannot do without team.”

A short bark of laughter escapes my lips, one that causes Miske’s eyes to widen with incredulity. That my destiny would lead me to this great trial, and the shokari not even think to beseech me as her champion, is a mightily funny thing. “A team, mm?” I chuckle, “and what of a team of two, then?”

She seems shocked, but catches my meaning, and considers it. “Two is very little,” she says hesitantly, then asks the question burning within her. “You would fight for me, human from the south? With nothing to gain?”

“Alongside the most meager rewards ride the highest honors,” I nod to her, standing. “And you said I might ask Khxendrol its boon, did you not? So it may be that I leave Eel Marsh an exile, and return to it a champion.”

The horned woman seems uncertain, but offers no argument. “Then I fight alongside you.”

I grunt, stepping into leather bottoms, then middle-baring vest, then a belt, streaming from the front and rear of which is a mess of reinforced leather tassets. Leather boots follow, iron greaves over those, and a baldric with an iron heart-plate. Over my left arm go iron shoulder-plates and a gauntlet, while the right gets only a leather vambrace covering from wrist to elbow. Cudgel, trident, golok, javelins, all in place in their respective frogs and thongs. I tighten and arrange the braids of my auburn hair and suck in a deep breath, turning my gaze back to Miske, who looks somewhat taken aback – I was close to bare-skinned when we fought, wielding my bludgeon alone, and she’s not yet seen me fully dressed for battle. “Then lead me to Khxendrol, that I may win you your homeland.”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The entrance to the city itself is quite impressively guarded, with four fighting-shokari standing outside at all times, dressed in armor of steel scales, carrying long-hafted sicas and tall, rectangular shields. Two flank the gate itself while one stands before it, discerning the identity and motives of those who would enter – and seeming to take far more time with those not of clear shokar descent, as evidenced by a small cloister of waist-high zura vagabonds. The small, dark plainsfolk make attempts to coerce, bribe, and even debate, only finding entry once sufficient nickel had found its way into the guard’s coinpurse, which bodes ill for Miske and I. The last of the four guards mans a massive winch that’s used to open the gates, though he looks every bit as battle-ready as the other three.

The two of us approach the gate, brushing past a pair of thick-bellied older shokari guiding a wagon, pulled by one of those rusty brown beetles and filled with some sort of tubers, still caked in fresh, wet earth. I stand beside Miske with no intention of speaking, but the front guard focuses his attention on me quickly. He’s a little taller than the others, and a touch leaner, with a narrow nose and dense brow, horns sweeping backward across his ears. “Not many humans find their way down here,” he says in a boomingly deep voice, his grasp on the common tongue quite reasonable. “Much less southerners. What business do you have in Mef Hennach al Tann?”

“Blazing Sun of the Dark Land,” Miske mutters to me. “Khxendrol.”

I glance at her, then back to the guard. I’ve no desire to talk my way into the city – or, honestly, into or out of much of anything – and was deeply hoping Miske could handle this. With the weight of suspicion clearly on my shoulders though, I inhale, straighten my back, and look up at the horned guard. “I am Tuva Lynxheart of Eel Marsh, sister of the chieftain, an outsider in this cavernous belly of Wreath you giantfolk call your domain.” Miske’s eyes widen with horror, and I continue unfazed. “I come to you under the gaze of Rul and Sast, even in this shadowlit place, to challenge your people in your foreign trials, to prove myself in the Swordgame.”

The guard’s silent for a long moment, looking from me, to Miske, to me again, then letting out an uproarious peal of thundering laughter. “HahaHAH, you have a stout heart for one so small,” he laughs down at me. Were I not in a foreign land, my honor would demand I strike him for such dismissive words – but, for now, I hold back. “I’m sure you’ll make good spectacle. And what of you…?”

His attention turns fully to Miske, who babbles at him in the odd tongue they share, eventually turning her hand over to show the brand on her palm. He grunts back at her, giving instructions I cannot understand, and she finally nods. Looking back to me, the guard clucks his tongue. “Khxendrol is not for you to explore, not while this flat-toothed, white-livered dog’s-daughter stays in your company. Go to the Great Barrow directly, and do not leave until you’ve won, died, or been told to go. Wear this–” he concludes, reaching into his belt-pouch and withdrawing a metal pin, circular and enameled in violet, bearing a shokari symbol in bright yellow, vaguely sickle-shaped. “Other ordinators will know where you do and do not belong. I do not advise that you remove it.”

I grunt at him, taking the pin, but not answering. Would that he or his ilk showed their faces in the Swordgame, and I could translate my distaste to the immediately physical – but that can wait, for now. I turn away from him, grunting once more to Miske to follow, and the lanky rallchofn does so, though she seems more anxious than ever to be following me through the preposterously massive gates of her former home.

“Your guards are distrustful of outsiders,” I grumble as we pass through the enormous iron gates, inscribed all along their front surface with glyphs and images, stories hammered into metal – horned men delving deeper and deeper into the earth, fighting great, many-eyed beasts with swords and axes, and eventually claiming the darkness as their home. These hammered sagas of heroes and monsters suggest once again that the shokari are not so different from the men and women of the south, though stories we would honor with continual retelling, they see fit to chisel into iron only once.

“Ordinators,” Miske gently corrects me. “Like guard, and… judge. They protect, punish, hunt.”

That doesn’t sound very good to me, but I know too little about these people’s customs to give further thoughts. For now, I’m focused on following the (rather unclear) directions to the Great Barrow… and very quickly, I find Khxendrol to be quite a strange place. On the surface, we always have the ground beneath us, an even plane upon which to build, something stable and certain. Buildings and roads rise up uniformly from that ground… but here, they from any level surface. Khxendrol, I now see, is a city of stairs and bridges, and this close to the gates it is quite tightly packed. Wide pathways paved in deep red stone spider out in every direction, including up, down, and across, and the sheer number of the eight-foot knotwood doors I see suggest that everything here has multiple stories and levels. This density, along with the dark, infinite ceiling, non-linearity, and the great size of the streets, doors, and… well, just about everything, sets a pit in my stomach, a feeling of intense nausea burbling up in my throat.

The city is lit poorly, likely a result of the shokari’s greater night-vision, and many of the buildings are uniform in color, the dull gray of the rock they’re cut from – at least, at first glance. As I wander, dazed, deeper into the city toward the Great Barrow, I notice that many structures are painted! Exotic colors and strange, glittering substances bedazzle walls and rooves, though doors and the rare windows seem left unmarred… perhaps an act of courtesy, as if these paintings were not personal efforts but communal ones. Cultural decoration to fade with time and be reapplied by future generations, signs of the people who had lived and worked in this great, bizarre hive of structures.

Khxendrol also seems personalized by its architecture, which I would think unlikely considering the means with which it must be traveled, tunnels and stairways making the place a maddening labyrinth in three dimensions. Rather than blocky cubes of stone, each structure seems unique, carved into different shapes, flat, domed, slanted, and every other curious arrangement that the horned folk can fathom, even borrowing from other cultures to give their stone homes and businesses personality. These endlessly varying shapes and designs, along with the splashes of words and images in vivacious colors and, I must stress, the strange geometry of the entire subterranean metropolis, makes it a place of chaotic wonder – one I am eagerly awaiting my first opportunity to leave. Khxendrol is too foreign, perhaps, to be my first real destination away from Eel Marsh.

Before genuine illness can set in, though, Miske points forward. “Almost there.” My gaze follows her long, gray finger until it sets on what I assume to be the Great Barrow – an enormous dome, set deep into the city’s gut, columns of wide, deep stairs leading down toward it from all around Khxendrol. Its stone ceiling is banded with iron, and like the gates outside, this iron is heavily marked with stories… stories of battle. Great horned warriors facing one another in combat, slaying great beasts, champions taking on entire hordes of competitors, unconquerable heroes of the shokari people. I stare at them in approval as we approach, and at long last, we reach one of the Great Barrow’s many colossal gates, where a shokari woman awaits us.

She’s short for her kind, around my height, and barrel-bellied, her deep lavender fingers thick like sausages. Her nature is of a motherly sort, though far more disciplinary than nurturing, black hair wound up into a thick pouch atop her head, both horns knobby and scarred from decades of abuse. “Games have begun already. You here to watch?” she croaks through thick, wet lips.

“Here to fight,” I grunt.

“It’s been two days already,” she says dismissively. “New teams should have arrived before then, keh?”

“I wasn’t here two days ago,” I say resolutely. “I am now.”

Miske steps in, chattering a few words in her own tongue. Once again, she shows the brand on her palm, though winces as if it causes her physical pain to show it. The woman looks over it, heavy cheeks sagging with a pensive expression, and finally, she looks at me. “Fine… fine. First round’s not ended, yet. If it had, it’d’ve been too late.”

I nod, and we pass through. Miske largely takes the lead from here – she seems at least somewhat knowledgable about the Swordgame and how it functions, despite claiming not to have fought in it before, and her grasp of the shokari’s language expedites things notably. She talks to a few more people, getting us a pair of yellow-tipped white sashes, to be secured wherever on our body we please – I tie mine around my upper arm. These, it would seem, mark us as contenders, getting us access into the cool, roughly-carved stone barracks beneath the arena, away from the gathering crowds of spectators and organizers.

I’m somewhat surprised to learn we can bring whatever weaponry we wish. While fights will be stopped when a contestant has clearly lost, and wounds quickly seen to, the threat of perishing during the Swordgame is very much present. Good. No honor without the possibility of failure.

What ensues is a fair bit of waiting. Miske gets us assigned to a battle somewhere during the day, but there are plenty of other bouts that need to conclude before we’re intended to ascend into the arena itself. During the hours we wait, roars from the crowd can be heard throughout the chamber, coming from above us. Far more difficult to hear are the grunts and cries of the fighters themselves, but we do see warriors dragged back through the barracks toward another location – some seriously injured, some merely exhausted, some victorious. Some dead.

I am tense, as I wait. Too tense to try to converse with Miske. Not, however, too tense to eat – a horned man brings us a meal after a few hours, not lavish, but nourishing enough. By my best guess, it’s some sort of blind, pallid cave fish, salted and smoked, served alongside thick, crusty chunks of deep brown bread and a sweet, deep red gel, the nature of which I cannot possibly begin to assume. It goes together well, though the seasonings are both sparse and unfamiliar, unlike the more robust and spicy fare of my homeland. It will do. After an hour for my gut to rest, I am ready to fight… and the arena is ready to embrace me.

We are finally called, and Miske and I raise our weapons – she hoists that heavy crossbow of hers, loading a nearly spear-sized bolt into the thing and cocking it back, while I grasp one hand tightly around my short, sturdy trident. The other hand clutches tight to a javelin, planning to launch it forth at first sign of a foe before drawing my golok. I know not how many opponents we’re about to face, but if a team is required to participate in the Swordgame, well… there’s no smaller team than a duo. We’ll need to be especially fierce.

“Ready?” I ask Miske, quietly. She returns with an affirmative grunt. Good – she’s focused. Maybe even more focused than I am. She wants this. She’s hungry.

We’re escorted up another twisting stairway, out of the barracks and into the arena, an enormous, circular theater directly beneath the domed roof we’d seen earlier. The fighting pit is at its lowest point, surrounded by a wall, with endless rows of seats radiating out from that, filled with a delighted clamor of shokari citizens eager to get a good show. An announcer – their voice enhanced by some manner of witchcraft, I assume – calls out in the horned folk’s tongue as Miske and I walk out of our respective end of the arena… and from the other end, our opponents.

They number three, and are unexpectedly mixed and… balanced. A great shokari warrior, heavily armored and wielding an axe, stands in front, and he’s flanked by two women. One is human, likely graicean by her small stature and mousy brown hair, clad in light leathers and holding a pair of short, cruelly-curved blades. The other is a tall, slim elf, her blue robes soot-scorched, sun-red hair a wild mess, one pointed ear reduced to a scarred nub. I know not enough about the elves to determine high from low, but there’s a madness in her bright yellow eyes that marks her as a target – she has to go down quickly, if we’ve any hope of surviving the match.

As both teams enter the gravel-floored arena, our opposing strategies become immediately clear. The trio we’re facing moves slowly, keeping tight to formation, the armored shokari staying vigilant to intercept attacks against his more fragile teammates. The woman with the knives stays close to his side, clearly with no intention of venturing out on her own – she’s an opportunist, waiting for someone to engage in close-quarters so she can take a cheap shot. The elf, from a similarly guarded position, immediately begins to murmur quiet, incomprehensible words under her breath, slender, bandaged fingers drawing symbols in the air… symbols that begin to burn a fiery yellow-orange.

“Take out the elf!” I growl, already beginning to rush forward. Miske walks forward at a slower pace, training her crossbow on the woman about to spell-sling, and looses one of her massive bolts, only for it to be deflected by the flick of two bandaged fingers, a wave of magical energy intervening. Those-damned sorcery! I can only hope her stamina has its limits.

As Miske loads another bolt, I throw my javelin toward the smaller human, prompting the shokari to intervene and block – precisely what I was hoping he’d do. He’s managed not to overextend himself, but he was forced to move to intercept the attack, leaving the magic-user without his protection. Vulnerable. My now-free hand draws my golok from my side as I close the distance, thrusting my trident toward the elf in a single smooth, aggressive motion, aiming to skewer her outright before she can let fly whatever fiery demise she has in store for me.

Her eyes widen and her teeth bare. The fiery glyph she’d been forming is aborted before it reaches fruition, its energy instead dispelled in a powerful wave of invisible force that blurs my vision and sends me reeling backward, slipping off of my feet and tumbling into the gravel below. There’s a roar from the crowd as I struggle back up to a standing position. I hear the thunderous phoong of Miske’s arbalest firing once more, a shot that lodges itself in the shokari warrior’s shoulder, stunning but not felling him. My eyes scan quickly around the arena for the elf, knowing I’ve only bought us a moment of time, that I have to find her before she rains witchfire upon us – but before my vision clears, I feel a sharp prick against the back of my thigh, then a dull scratch across my back, the thick leather and iron buckles of my baldric turning a second strike into a grazing blow.

I let out a savage roar, swiping bindly sideways. The trident hits nothing, and the short blade of my golok likewise swishes through empty air, though as I crouch and turn, I catch sight of the little human skittering out of reach, and pursue without hesitation. I utilize the momentum of the trident’s outward swing in a sharp turn, clipping the leather-clad human with the haft, enough to force her to stumble. She hesitates, but I do not, launching forward with an upward knee that catches her belly, sending her collapsing to the grovel, groaning and clutching breathlessly to her core.

I make a move to stomp on her, hoping to remove her from the battle in a more permanent way, but the effort is cut short as an enormous axe swipes my way, forcing me to duck and roll backward. Not far away, I hear another bolt fired, then a ray of flame – it seems Miske and the elf are keeping one another distracted. That’s good, I suppose. Just leaves me with this seven-foot, plate-clad, axe-wielding horned giant, charging toward me in an attempt to bowl me over with his sheer weight and size. Normally, I prefer to use my own strength to gain an advantage in combat… but spending my whole life as the younger and smaller of two sisters has left me more slippery than I seem. Thanks for never going easy on me, Pylla.

The shokari lets out a roar as I set the butt of my trident into the ground, ducking low and using the short polearm’s teeth to snag into the leftmost plates of his tassets, using the weapon as a lever to overpower and redirect his stampede. It works – he’s strong and heavy, but not a clever fighter, and in a moment he’s bowled over by his own momentum… and I’m on his broad, armored back. Dropping the trident completely, I grab tightly to the back of his gorget, lifting his head up and setting the blade of my golok across his throat, shaving off a few strands of thick black beard so he knows his life is in immediate peril. “Submit to me!” I bellow into his ear.

There’s a moment where I think he’ll try to push me off, and my short blade tightens against his throat. He makes fists in the gravel beneath us, letting go of his axe, then tapping his hand three times against the ground. He’s finished. Good.

I look up to see the Miske has closed the distance between herself and the magic-user, having dropped her crossbow and drawn her wickedly-curved rhomphaia. She hacks again and again at the elf, only for each attack to be blocked with another quick wave of magical force, though each use of that magical shielding leaves her looking more and more drained and exhausted, what had been warm pink skin now looking pallid and sickly as she exhausts herself. One more blow from Miske’s two-handed blade shatters the elf’s final magical defense, slashing through to create a deep slash across the elf’s chest – not one that will kill her, I think, but shall most assuredly mean the end of our battle.

The magic-user falls, blood pooling around her as she loses consciousness from exhaustion and pain. With the warrior formally submitting, the girl with the knives staggers to her feet… but makes no move to keep fighting, holding both hands high above her head. She chooses to live. Smart girl.

In that moment, the battle’s over. The crowd roars, drowning out the announcer’s proclamation of our victory. We’ve finished the first battle. What comes next, I do not know.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next few moments are a blur. My wound is cleaned, sewn shut, and bound. Miske seems unhurt but for some minor burns, which are likewise cleaned and wrapped in cloth. Now that we’ve won a match, the cool indifference of our shokari hosts is largely dispelled, replaced with a dutiful attentiveness. We’re no longer simply strays, but potential champions, and we’re treated with the respect that potential calls for.

We’re brought to a small room – not the shabby barracks we rested in before, but a place we are clearly intended to spend the night. It’s neither large nor lavish, but it is comfortable, and we’re provided with hot baths, a pale, weak wine, and food. The meal we’re given consists of sweet tubers, mashed into pulp along with a strong, nutty crumbled cheese, roasted legs of some small meat-bird, grass-like, reddish-purple stalks, which have something of a bitter, oily flavor I don’t care for. The rest of the meal, though, is quite welcome and eaten voraciously by Miske and myself as we relax on our beds, cleaned and stripped of our armor, enjoying the much-needed rest of that hard-fought battle.

“You fight like a cornered beast,” Miske says, biting off a thick chunk of dark meat from beneath well-crisped skin. “Thought this was… foolish, to fight in the Swordgame. Now, not so sure.”

I let out a short bark of a laugh. “You fought bravely yourself. Let us just hope they don’t send any more witches our way, eh? I like an opponent I know I can hit.” I return to eating, washing down the meal with gulps of wine – a bit sour, but refreshing enough – and let my sore muscles relax. Considering the beds here, I can only guess that our next fight will be tomorrow, or even after that. As I muse over tomorrow’s challenges, though, the rooms suddenly shakes, a great crashing sound trembling up the brick walls of our room. “What is that?!” I growl, green eyes going wide, fingers clutching tight to the edges of the bed.

“The scream of Tatixkol,” Miske says, looking not at all as concerned as I am. “Once each day, on all eleven days it rages, Tatixkol roars out its anger – it’s breath, like a great sea, bursts from the ground, and we gather it. It shall scream again tomorrow, and tomorrow after that, until it grows calm again.”

The sound ebbs, then abates entirely, the shaking coming to a halt as well. I grunt, and relax, hoping I did not seem too startled… though I do not look forward to when this great beast screams again. I find myself imagining the enormous monsters of those hammered sagas, rising from the darkness to battle the shokari. I have no desire to fight such a beast, however often it may slumber. Not yet, anyway.

Before I can fully relax, the door to our room swings open, and two ordinators step in, barking out a few short words I don’t understand. Miske stands right away, reaching over to take my hand and guide me up and off of the bed, nodding toward the doorway. “We’re needed for haalpuin, erm, ‘game which comes after.’ I wasn’t sure it was real….”

Real? Game? I bite back my questions and follow side-by-side with Miske behind the two ordinators, leading from the room, down a long hallway, left once, then right once, reaching another large iron door – though the images hammered into the metal, this time, are of a rather less heroic nature. Instead, it celebrates the sensuality of the shokari, depicting scenes ranging between the innocently romantic, to the wildly hedonistic, crude horned figures entangling with one another in an endless myriad of actions, positions, and combinations. From these rather unsubtle clues, I begin to divine the nature of haalpuin, and my suspicions grow in strength when we pass through to the chamber beyond.

This room, too, is an arena, though of a very different sort. Rather than an expanse of featureless, slippery gravel, this place makes an appeal to nature and to beauty, essentially a grotto around which the Great Barrow was perhaps constructed. Golden mosses, shimmering pink bushes, a deep, clear pool of water, and various sorts of flowers decorate the cavern, the latter of which glowing gently in the low light, tendrils and blossoms of green, blue, and white crawling along the ground or reaching upward toward the audience. Yes… the audience.

“The fights are free for everyone to watch,” Miske whispers into my ear, “but certain… important people… can pay to watch haalpuin. The winners are given the losers to… enjoy. Those not too wounded, anyway.”

I cast my gaze among the audience, but the dim light makes it difficult to make out much of their appearances, apart from their somewhat finer style of dress, and that they all wear lightweight metal masks covering their faces. Men and women alike stare down at us, some with drinks in hand… and after a moment, from the grotto’s other side, stumbles the human girl we fought earlier, her leather coverings stripped away, replaced with a flimsy white shift. She’s clearly been thoroughly cleaned, as we have, and her minor injuries likewise bound – beyond those, she appears to be in perfectly good health, unmarred by the fight.

The human licks her lips uneasily, taking a few steps toward us, her dark hair still wet, clinging to the back of her slender neck. She is our ‘prize’ then, our reward for the fight? To force her to participate would seem quite a savage thing, and I assume she agreed to this before fighting. This raises the question, though – what have I agreed to, without knowing it?

...What happens if we lose?