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Doric and Dorin are both exact twins. So exact are they the only person who can tell them apart with any consistency is their mother. Their father and younger sister fail miserably to tell them apart and are always the brunt of their jokes and lighthearted mischievousness. Thankfully, they did not dress alike. When they were children, their mother used to dress them exactly alike and they abhorred it. Therefore, when they got older they began to dress in their tastes. Tonight sitting in the Oldcastle Inn and Gambling Emporium, they were both wearing royal court long sleeve doublets Doric in blue and Dorin in dark brown both made of heavy brocade fabric with gold buttons. Their pants were matching black trews tucked into rich black leather knee-high boots. Their idea of dressing differently is wearing different color doublets. Leather gold ring belts held there rapiers at their sides.
Since all of the gambling tables are on the outer edges of the room, they sat at a table roughly in the center of the room with those not gambling. The raucous din from loud laughter and talking, interspersed with shouts of patrons either winning or losing at dicing and cards, a wheel spinning incessantly, coalesced into a cacophony of noise near deafening to anyone walking into the establishment. The sweet smell of tabac smoke wafting about the room mingling with the smells of unwashed human flesh and cooked meat added to the rustic appeal to the place. A comely serving girl sat on Doran’s lap with her large bosom in his face giggling every time he nuzzled her breasts. Doric shook his head in disgust. In one-way Doric is not like his brother. Dorin liked merrymaking every chance he got but Doric is much more reserved. Sure, he went with his brother to places like this mainly because they were inseparable, their father instilling in them from a young age to watch out for each other that made it very natural for him to guard his brother.
Scanning the room while Dorin entertained himself Doric kept a wary eye out for trouble. About every nationality and race is here tonight mostly traders and warehouse owners drinking and gambling their hard-earned gold. Dockworkers lived and stayed down by the docks where the inns and brothels were more at their level of income where here a lot of gold changed hands. In each corner of the room and by the front door, a burly tuff with massive arms and short swords belted at their waists stood guard making sure the crowd stayed jovial. At times a loud disgruntled patron felt cheated, and in all likelihood he had been, the tuffs would escort the patron bodily out of the establishment. Doric refused to gamble and partake in the pleasures of the serving maids but that did not stop his brother Dorin.
The long bar at the back of the main room is packed with patrons yelling for service while the stairs on both sides leading up to the second and third floors held a steady stream of couples going up and down them laughing and smiling adding to the din and security nightmare for Doric. A group of dwarfs in one corner of the room jumped up arguing back and forth about a game of chance they were playing on the verge of bringing out their axes and short swords when they noticed the tuffs heading their way quickly deciding for the better to sit back down and start a new game. Doric laughed imagining the place cleared out as a group of dwarfs waged battle with the tuffs. If he were a betting man, he would put his money on the dwarfs.
Suddenly, Doric thought he heard the alarm bell ringing outside. Straining to hear over the din inside the inn he listened closely and sure enough, he could hear it. Quickly the inn grew eerily quiet as the patrons began to hear the incessant bell ringing. In seconds, the sound in the room changed from a raucous din, to a sudden scraping of chairs across the floor and the murmur of the crowd as it headed out the double doors and into the street. Dorin eased the serving girl off his lap; reluctantly rising from his chair, he followed his brother as the crowd flowed out of the inn.
They could clearly hear it now and the incessant ringing beginning to make them wonder what the emergency was that had whoever is ringing it do it so frantically and with such fever. They did not smell smoke from a fire so the crowd was more curious then annoyed by this disturbance. Rounding the corner, they began heading to the stables making them wonder even more, what had caused of such commotion.
Torches in wall sconces along the front of the stables were casting a flickering bright light across the large crowd blocking the main entrances. Pushing their way through the crowd to the front, the twins received many angry looks directed their way until they were recognized and those looks turned to smiles and acquiescence. When they peered in the double doors, they were not expecting to see the carnage they saw turning away trying not to retch. They reluctantly walked inside to see pieces of horseflesh and human body parts strewn about the stables. In the middle of all of this, a hideous creature lay dead on the floor with one of its eyes slashed out of its head and a ghastly wound on its side.
“What kind of creature could do such as this,” Doric said in amazement staring at the creature on the floor.
“Whatever it is it beset and killed many horses and people in a short time. It must have great speed and strength at its disposal,” Dorin theorized.
“Look at its eye.”
“Somebody with great power killed this thing Doric.”
Do you suppose our stallions are dead?” Dorin asked sadly and Doric nodded his head sadly.
“By the light what is that creature?” Both turned toward the sound of the voice coming from a short corpulent man that looked as if he recently awakened wearing large wool robe wrapped around his large frame and a pair of leather shoes already ruined by the blood on the floor.
“Good evening Constable Alvin it is a gruesome sight we have before us,” Dorin said stating the obvious. Constable Alvin nodded his balled head his normally red cheeks had turned slightly green jostling back and forth with the motion.
“Alvin, get this thing on a wagon and bring it to the castle. The duke will want to see it and I am certain Bilgrammus will too,” Doric said taking command.
“Aye m’lord I will hasten to do as you wish,” Alvin replied respectfully still trying not to spew his late-night supper all over the floor adding to the already revolting stench of death. He quickly hastened from the stable closely followed by the twins.
“Come Dorin we have a long walk back to the castle. Father is going to want to know about this now more than later and with evil afoot father will expect Bilgrammus to know far more about it than any of us.”
“That may be Doric but what matters is this attack bodes ill for all of us and a dreadful change to come,” Dorin warned.
“I fear you are right Dorin.” Doric could only agree with his sometimes-astute brother both walking quickly south toward the castle.
Finally reaching barge road, they turned right onto Old Bofin Bridge. The bridge is a massive affair designed and built long before the castle foundation. Bofin was a renowned dwarf mason who decided that a massive granite bridge is the perfect thing to span the river right before the island. The massive bridge and its huge arches span the river for two furlongs. Halfway across the main bridge, a fixed bridge constructed of granite faced the island and right after it, a massive barbican with a drawbridge. At the time of the construction of the bridge, labors cleared the island of trees and built a wooden fortress with a drawbridge leading from the main gate to a wooden gatehouse attached to the barbican. Three towers each 50-foot high at the center of the bridge one on the north side directly in the center and two more on the south side at the apex between the bridge and the wall leading to the barbican guarding the bridge. As many years past, the wooden fortress turned in to the massive castle that has become a small city in itself. The river creating a natural moat flows around the island forming a large marsh and swampland south of the castle.
The twins walked along the bridge deep in thought ignoring the majestic view before them. The castle with its forty foot tall outer wall is more than two and one-half furlongs long and perfectly square with four towers sixty foot tall on the front, sides and back walls lit with countless torches in wall sconces and lanterns hanging from the battlements li
ghting the night sky. Someone who has never seen the sight before, its grandeur would awe them but for the twins this is nothing more than their home.
The outer walls were built to withstand the most inexorable of attacks on them at twenty feet thick filled with crushed granite and mortar separated in the inside by an outer bailey and an inner wall ten feet thick and eighty feet high. Protruding from the center of the front wall is a massive gatehouse with ninety-foot walls and two outer towers one hundred feet tall with a similar gatehouse at the center of the inner rear wall facing the south outer wall. The square keep is directly in the center of the inner wall with four towers one-hundred and twenty feet tall on each corner with its main walls one hundred ten feet tall.
Passing the towers the twins turned left heading for the drawbridge leading to the barbican. Recognizing them very quickly the guards came to complete attention, an old grizzled guard that knew them as children called out to them when they passed. Hurrying through the barbican lit with torches, underneath a second portcullis leading to another drawbridge, they entered the main castle gatehouse. A mix of torches and lanterns lighted the inside clearly showing the massive gears and counterweights that raise and lower the great drawbridge. Murder holes were spaced evenly along the walls with wooden stairs leading to the battlements above.
The captain of the guard seeing them returning without their horses quickly stood from behind his desk with a concerned expression on his face. A heavyset grizzled soldier dressed in heavy mail with a great sword at his side, his gray hair long in the back and short in the front keeping it from around his face exposed the scars crisscrossing his features, looked the part of a no-nonsense veteran soldier. Seeing the expression on the captain's face the twins explained in detail what had happened in town. When they were finished captain promptly dispatched orders to double the guard in town and around the castle. Signaling to one of his runners over, he sent him off to let the duke’s aide know what had happened advising the duke that his sons were on the way. Thanking the captain, they left the gatehouse, turned right walking past the soldier’s quarters where they could here men groaning sleepily in complaint from the early wake-up call to go on sentry duty. Continuing past the soldier's quarters, they turned left following the walls to the south gatehouse. On the right, more barracks and staff quarters housed soldiers and support staff to the castle and grounds bustled with activity with servants and soldiers moving about calling out to each other in greeting or issuing orders.
Finally, reaching the end of the inner wall they turned left toward the inner gatehouse. Along the entire outer back wall are the famed stables of Castle Qenildor where the finest horses in the land are stabled, at least according to what the hostler calls them, for each knight, squire, courtesan for their carriages and the duke’s favorites. The twins did not wish to tell him that two of his horses were slaughtered by a monster direct from the old stories told to them as kids to make them behave or for telling scary stories around campfires. It would not sit well with the duke. Even though he had given the horses to his sons, they were still part of his group of favorites. The only thing he loved more than his horses is his family and that says a lot. Duke Gawain Lucian Sutherland would come out each morning and night to groom his cherished animals. These animals were for pleasure riding nothing more. An unfortunate and unavoidable fact that horses were trained for war and used cruelly in battle still did not lesson his revulsion for do it. His warhorses are fed the best feed and well cared for if any of them are harmed in battle.
When they reached the gatehouse, they were surprised to see four horses saddled and tethered ready for riding, their father and old Bilgrammus waiting beside them. The duke is dressed similar to his sons except he is wearing black hose and a pair of black riding boots. At his side, he wore a Delzarin of Riannon made sword rare and beautiful the King of Riannon gave him for valor under arms in support of the king. Bilgrammus on the other hand, wore his long flowing robes and carried his staff. When the twins were children they would always laugh and joke wondering if he wore anything underneath them but now when they do they shudder to think of it. Even now, they still cannot figure out how he could ride a horse dressed like that and be comfortable in the saddle.
“Since you are walking I presume the worse for the horses?” Duke Gawain asked already knowing the answer to his question. The duke looked younger than his forty years, tall and still strong and quick on his feet. He black hair streaked with gray made him more mature looking than his sons but with the same disarming smile that made women desire him.
“Tell us boys what you saw and be quick about it. We must ride straightaway to see this creature,” Bilgrammus said urgently. Bilgrammus is your stereotypical scholar and power welder of the imagination with his robes, staff, long stringy white hair and beard. Why do they always look like that Dorin laughed quietly not paying attention to what his brother was saying. Meanwhile, his brother was detailing everything they saw flawlessly as usual. His brother had a knack for that where he would flounder and get himself flummoxed trying to relate a story to get out of trouble or usually get into more trouble. He caught on young to let his brother do the talking.
As one, they mounted riding quickly to the main gatehouse their horse's shoes clattering across the drawbridge through the barbican and onto the fixed bridge were they slowed to a walk. Turning right toward barge road, they saw a wagon coming out of the gloom toward them with Constable Alvin himself driving the two-horse team. The duke and his party rode up dismounting next to the wagon. Alvin handed the duke a lantern so they could view the creature in the wagon. Holding the lantern over the back of the wagon, they were not prepared for the exclamation of surprise coming from Bilgrammus.
“Unhitch the horses now and burn the wagon and the creature right where it is,” Bilgrammus shouted. No one moved shocked by his words. “We must do it now it has been in our realm far too long!”
Those gathered jumped at his words even the duke was helping unhitch the horses quickly moving them away from the wagon. Hurriedly taking a lighted torch from Alvin, Bilgrammus began lighting the wagon on fire touching the burning torch along the dry wood quickly turning it in to a conflagration. Standing back watching it burn, Doric thought he saw an apparition withering in agony from inside the flames. Many people including guards came running up concerned about the fire but once they saw the duke himself was present and he masterfully deflected their questions assuring them that everything is fine to about their business. He hated not telling them the truth but now is not the time to create a panic there would be time enough for that later. A good many people saw the creature in the stable so the rumors would be rampant, but he still had hopes of convincing as many as he could that this creature is some strange animal from a distant land.
Bilgrammus would not leave until the fire burned to embers and not until he ordered some labors to sift through the ashes with their shovels making sure no sign of the creature remained. By that time, the sun started to show it first rays of light starting a new day. Tired from lack of sleep the duke and his sons followed Bilgrammus walking their horses southeast toward the forest when he stopped making sure they are far enough away from prying eyes and ears. Alvin had returned to town with the horses used to pull the wagon.
“Your excellency if I may I will get right to the point. Evil has come to our land and we must be mindful of the danger that faces us m’lord. I am most uncomfortable ordering you around like you are a liegeman my duke but this one time I must,” he ended with a bow toward Gawain.
“Bilgrammus you have been a faithful friend and confidant for as long as I can remember. If the danger that threatens us is this grave, tell me what you wish and I will do what is needed.”
“M’lord I am truly fearful at what is to come but even I cannot predict all there is to know only what the guardians of the light tell me. From this time forward we will need to prepare your lands for war. M’lord it is far easier for me to tell you to gird for war than what I mu
st tell you now. You must give your sword made by Delzarin to your son Dorin for you have been the caretaker of the sword until he comes of age. He will weld the sword in battle for the glory of the light. Your son Doric has a different path to glory and it is equally important." "Gawain,” Bilgrammus paused a moment a tired look crossing his features quickly disappearing as fast as it appeared. "Gawain you path has been set since before you were born. You will meet an old friend that you thought lost forever and the two of you will be together in the glory of the light."
Too stunned to move, they gaped in amazement at his words. Unbuckling his sword the duke handed it to Dorin who at seeing his father unbuckling his sword unbuckled his. The single act of passing the swords to each other changed each of their lives, the father giving up his gift from a king and a son taking on a burden he feels in his heart he is not worthy enough to bear, will now face futures that neither had dreamed.
“Father…” Dorin tried to say something to the duke and could not find the words.
“Listen to me son you have great courage so use it well. You will bring glory to yourself and our family. Weld the sword well and it will not fail you in battle,” the duke concluded placing his hand on his sons shoulder squeezing it in assurance. Turning to his son Doric, he placed his other hand on his shoulder and the look that passed between them was enough.
“You boys must make haste to the north toward Brookmoor Village for it is where you will find the one who killed the spawn of darkness for he welds a sword much like yours but different,” Bilgrammus concluded enigmatically the tried countenance seen earlier etching his face.
Games of the Powerful Page 29
