City of the Gods - Starybogow

by Rospond, Brandon; Kostka, Jan; Werner, CL

  The first night passed without incident. They camped in a protective circle in a hollow off the road, away from anyone that might wander by. They kept the fires low to avoid detection and the Sapeiha guards took turns keeping watch with the travelers. There were plenty of stars and all was calm except for the horses, but they always seemed nervous.

  They all talked amongst themselves, swapping stories of their travels or asking about foreign lands; all except the Wallachian. Jadwiga had an ear for languages, which had always done them well in the past, but she could not make out what he was saying when he spoke to the boy. The next morning when they set out, she voiced her fears to the others.

  “I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something wrong with that cloth merchant.” Jadwiga turned to look back down the line at the man bringing up the rear. “I could feel it when we stopped. The horses noticed too. Animals can always tell.”

  David lay in the wagon behind the seat, cleaning the dirt under his nails with his dirk, then propped himself up on one elbow. “You know, Jan, I did notice the hobbled horses seemed to move away from the area he was parked. And yet, his own horses seem too lethargic to care.”

  “You know, if you try using water once in a while you would avoid playing with that knife like that.” Jan turned to push his compatriot then stopped suddenly with a shiver, as if a cold blast of air was hitting him.

  Jadwiga touched his arm. “Its okay, we’ll be stopping soon.” She then turned toward David with a look of concern.

  Jan was sensitive to disturbances in this reality, which is the skill he brought to their party. Jadwiga knew that sometimes his experiences had a lasting effect. “He’ll be fine. Just too much exposure to demons.”

  They all went quiet and just kept looking ahead at the rumps of horses.

  *****

  The next morning, the caravan was slow starting as two of the members had not hitched their horses. The group had pitched their camp in an open section of forest. The area they were traveling was marshy and full of scrub pines, and the leader assured them it was the best place they could stop between rest areas. It seemed like they were not covering the distance they would have expected.

  “I think that merchant is pulling us back,” Jan laughed.” We couldn’t be moving any slower.” Normally these type journeys had predisposed rest areas, since camping in the open was not recommended, but this trip felt like it was going slowly nowhere.

  There was a cry as one of the men who went to use privacy came running out of the woods. The wagon master, a big brute named Osok, ran over to the spot. Jan joined him, feeling as if his head would explode with each step. The man who had originally gone to relieve himself, had done so in his britches. He was standing there pointing when Osok and Jan came up. It was the two members of the spice merchants guild gutted from sternum to groin. Almost by rote, each of the remaining members came over to gape, then turn away.

  “Wolves!” the wagon master said it so firmly, everyone in earshot nodded in assent. He acted too calm and matter-of-fact for Jan. “This is why you shouldn’t wander too far away from camp, especially at night. There are most likely wolfen in this area. I have heard it before.”

  Jadwiga, however, turned to Jan.“Didn’t anyone hear anything? I think we would have heard something.” Then she turned to the wagon master, “If there were wolfen in this area why would we stop here or why wouldn’t you tell us?”

  Osok stopped and the smile disappeared from his face. “You are a woman, you don’t understand. Women never understand.” Then he turned away and yelled to his assistants,“Bury those bodies before they attract more unwanted attention.”

  “Yes,” David said firmly in agreement, stepping in from of Osok and then loud enough for the others to hear, “if it was wolves we would have heard this. Did anyone hear anything? What about the guards?” It was then he noticed that the guards were nowhere to be seen.

  Jadwiga chimed in again,“We would have heard wolves, Osok. Where are the guards?”

  “I don’t know. It was the guards then!” He stomped around in a circle and once again the rest of the group nodded. “Yes, the guards.”

  “Where are the guards?”Jan raised his voice to a yell, not believing that anyone would agree with this.

  “I don’t know. They must have killed these two and run off – and we paid them extra!” Osok threw his hands up as if in disgust at guards reneging on a business deal and the whole idea of wolfen seemed to disappear.

  Suddenly one of the other merchants piped up as Osok walked away. “Who gets their goods?”

  Osok, turned on his heel, moving everyone out of the way and got toe to toe with the merchant. The wagon master was a full head taller and looked down on him deadly serious as he jabbed his finger into the chest of the merchant, as if punctuating each syllable. “Unclaimed goods are the property of the wagon master. I will dispose of them as I see fit.”

  At this point Jadwiga piped in.“Aside from the fact that we are now defenseless, shouldn’t we hurry to bury these poor folks?”

  Osok got two adzes, while Jan and the cloth merchant offered to bury the men.

  “Why would the guards murder these two when they could have gotten us all? No robbery, just murder. It makes no sense.” Jan looked at the Wallachian expecting an answer, but only received raised eyebrows and stoic continuation of burying the spice merchants. Every other strike in the ground they seemed to find rocks. Jan stopped after a little while of this and looked around. The clearing was manmade. This was once one of the sacred groves of the Old Gods. There was probably a settlement nearby here. These stones, the foundation of a wall.

  Carefully, Jan took off his ring and laid it on one of the stones in a way that the Wallachian could not see - the silver ring turned red, indicating the dark ones’ trace was present. This was done on purpose to foul the land.

  *****

  Jan and the Wallachian buried the merchants as best they could and placed some stones over the grave to keep the wolves off. Osok stood, watching them, in turns telling them what they were doing wrong, but not really helping. When the group finally got moving again, Jan looked up to try to locate the sun in order to gauge the time of day, but no matter where he looked, he could not find it. It seemed instead like dawn – or even dusk. There was a haze that hung low in the sky. It did not seem like fog, yet it did not let the sun through.

  Osok moved the wagons around. There were originally six, although only five now had their drivers still with them. In addition to Jan, Jadwiga, and David in their ruse as tinkerers, there was the cloth merchant, a tinsmith, the trader who had asked about the deceased spice merchant’s goods, the wagon of the spice merchants, and a doctor with his apprentice.

  They had traveled for a little over an hour and still saw no sign of humans in the desolate track they traveled down. Jan noticed the landscape began to take on a marshy appearance, to the point that the road narrowed and forced the travelers to stay toward the center at the risk of getting bogged down. Finally this reached a river with some ferrymen there, and Jan turned to his compatriots and gave them an uneasy look. While many ferries were set up to accommodate travelers, it seemed as if these ferrymen knew about their approach, as if they were waiting for this caravan. The mist and fog continued to plague their journey with the air remaining grey.

  “Where are we Osok?”

  “I don’t know for sure, this doesn’t look familiar, but I’ve traveled this road hundreds of times.” He crossed himself three times and spit (did the man wince?). He went up to what looked like the leader to negotiate passage.

  The men and women that crewed the two ferries all looked slack eyed with high foreheads; almost as if they were all related. Osok spoke and gestured to the men, at times animated as he tried to get his point across. After a few minutes he came back, huffing and puffing before breaking into a big smile.

  “I’ll use some of the money from the merchants to pay for this. We must have missed a turn off a while back, bu
t crossing with these ferrymen should put us back on course.”

  Jan tried to make eye contact with the Wallachian again, not feeling comfortable with what Osok offered as an explanation, but the dark man would not look him in the eye.

  There was grumbling from the doctor; there was always grumbling from him, yet if you asked him a question directly he would smile and act as if you were best friends. Now, however, he was loud in his complaints. “How did you go off course? This is not a boat at sea. You are supposedly an experienced guide. Bah. You are costing me time and money…”

  The odd ferrymen moved into position to bring the travelers across the river. The ferries had a gate that flopped down which allowed man and beasts to enter from the ground level along with the wagons. The horses didn’t like getting on, making all sorts noises and shying away from entering.

  ”Looks like these guys have been breeding too much amongst their own kind,” David muttered under his breath.

  The ferrymen were slow moving and slower of thought. All the time, they stood there with dull looks on their faces – they did not seem very bright. It looked like they had lived along the river and marshes so long they started to take on the appearance of fish. Before Osok left, David noticed that he looked back at the leader of the ferrymen with a pleading look in his eyes and the ferryman seemed to give him a slight perceptible nod. He stared too long and the ferryman caught him looking. David held the look for a second and noticed the ferryman smile before turning away.

  David approached his compatriots and started to secure the wagons before loading them on the ferry. His compatriots came over as he fussed with some straps. “I think something is very wrong.”

  Jan and Jadwiga exchanged looks, but said nothing as they kept helping David.

  “This was no accidently meeting. This was premeditated.”

  “Is this just paranoia or did you actually see something?” Jadwiga gave a quick sideways glance to see if anyone was watching, but Jan tapped her pinkie, indicating that they were being watched.

  As a group, they adjusted their daggers and their rings. Jan felt nothing, so there was no Eldar Gods in play. The question was how many of the Slavic dark gods had breached the void and what condition where they in?

  *****

  The ferries were finally loaded and the ferrymen, which included some women, started to move across the river. Using poles and pull ropes, the flat bottomed boats made slow but steady going, until the ferries suddenly stopped in the middle of the river. At first, the ferrymen tried to keep moving but then David realized they were stuck. Suddenly, the ferrymen dove overboard into the river and the passengers became frantic, trying to move the boat forward or back. Jan, David, and Jadwiga tried to help them, but the other boat was held firmly in place. Jan and Jadwiga looked at each other along with the Wallachian, then over to the other ferry with the doctor, merchants, and Osok. He could see them pointing, waving, and yelling, while Osok kept shouting to the ferrymen swimming away. Then the ferries both ‘bounced’, as if something ran into them. The passengers kept yelling. Then, the boats started rocking and small hands reached from the water.

  Jan felt as if a pit dropped in his stomach. Something or someone had agitated the mermen, the water spirits; the wodniks. As they made themselves known, surfacing from the depths as they latched to the side of the boat, Jan noticed that there were also females leading them; the wodniks would often be alone, but combined with a rusalka, they were a force to be reckoned with. Someone called out, “I wish we had a bigger boat.”

  Then, the chaos really ensued.

  The men were scrambling while the horses tried to leap out of the boat, but were still connected to their wagons. Osok fell in the water and as he tried to climb back in, scaly green, moist hands pulled him back under. Jan could see there was a look of disbelief on his face as he was pulled under.

  Jan’s focus returned to his own boat and he grabbed an oar. The Wallachian, as if he knew what to do, started sprinkling pepper on the water creatures and they recoiled enough that the boat seemed to be floating again. The passengers in the other boat were not as lucky. One was knocked into the water by a frantic horse, another was too close to the side and was pulled in by one of the wodniks, who leaped out of the water and grabbed one of the merchants with webbed hands, and pulled him back into the water. Jan and Jadwiga slashed at them with their silver daggers to help keep them away as they tried to move the boat closer to shore.

  On the opposite bank, a ferryman, who was in fact a large, powerful woman, tried to pull them across with a guide rope. As soon as the passengers realized they were free, they all joined in to pull the boat across. The Wallachian took off something from around his neck and dunked it in the water – it was amber! The wodniks and rusalka backed off, but it proved to be another oddity about this ‘Wallachian’. Jadwiga could not move quick enough to get off; jumping into the water up to her knees before it hit shore. Immediately, she felt hands pulling at her. She screamed, kicking the water with her back to the shore and almost fell if it were not for David reaching over to pull her along to land.

  She fell to the ground, but almost did a crabwalk to get away from the riverbank. She was breathing heavy, almost hyperventilating when Jan came up to her and started to shake when he held her close. It was at that point she started sobbing and babbling, looking towards the water with fear and shooing the air with her hands as if she could will it to go away. A few minutes ago, the water was a bubbling mess, now, except for the wreckage floating away, everything was calm. At that point, they noticed the men of the Teutonic Knights waiting for them just beyond the clearing. With no place to escape, they tried to get themselves as together as they could.

  *****

  The brothers and the sergeants–at-arms were accompanied by some of the local folk who looked odd, and seemed as if they were inbreed over generations. Nonetheless, no matter how they looked, the spears they poked were just as sharp as the brethren knights who stood by them. The survivors of the water attack were handled roughly by the knights and they were all piled into the Wallachian’s wagon. His apprentice was very nervous, but the three spies tried to remain resolved to keep their heads about them.

  Jadwiga feigned scared and confused, as they should have been if they were normal people, but having survived a dozen or so missions for the Grand Duke they realized that brashness often made bullies back down.

  “You have no right to stop us, we are good Christians of the king. We are simple travelers.” Out of the side of her mouth she asked,“Do you think this will work?”

  “It won’t. Hush.” Jan gave her a daggered look as he narrowed his eyes. After a moment, he sighed.“This is not going according to plan.”

  Jan tried to let David know what they were discussing in low tones. They could not trust the Wallachian or his apprentice any more than the knights. In truth, none of them were safe. If the knights knew the trio were on a mission from the duke, they would torture them for information; the Wallachian was a merchant and a foreigner; no one would miss him. This was a no win situation.

  “We all are in trouble,” piped up the Wallachian. “I have to get my merchandise to Starybogow. Should something happen to me, I need one of you to take something to the gatekeeper.” He leaned in closer to the trio. “There’s a pouch under my seat. It is of the utmost importance, the boy will know about it. He can help you.”

  “Given our present situation, why should we, you dark hearted heathen?” Jan had no love for the man who had been silent until now.

  “Because we both serve the same master; I also serve the duke, but I bring an artifact that can’t fall into the hands of these foul servants of the dark one.”

  Jan narrowed his eyes, unsure of what to say, but taken aback by the man’s words nonetheless. They moved out and Jan looked the man in the eyes, “We will speak more on this in a bit – I hope.” The group was pulled out of the wagon and marched through the village. They remained quiet as the knights jostled them for
ward into the village.

  *****

  The knights and their captives wound their way through the brush for a short time and came to a clearing by a marsh. The village smelled of damp and rot which matched the buildings and the people. As they entered, Jan thought he saw figures in the woods. They appeared to be two or three young women. They could not possibly be from the village – they appeared lithe and ethereal, like mists, and moved at the edges of the trees. Jan was transfixed and hadn’t thought to ask his other companions when the Wallachian spoke, breaking the spell.

  “There are allies here. I’m not sure they can help us, but should the opportunity arise, we must all be prepared.”

  They were taken from the wagon and had their hands tied and separated. David and Jan were locked in a shack; Jan noticed the Wallachian and his apprentice were taken elsewhere. Jadwiga was moved with some women in another place. As they were being led off, the sergeant called ‘Hoff’ called out to them.

  “We will be coming for you when we are ready. We are going to find which one of you is in the in the pay of the duke and where the artifact is. That person may be of use to us. The rest we will probably kill if you are lucky. Be prepared.” Then he let out a cackle that sent shivers down their spine. Jan and David were paraded past a large flat stone mounted near the water. It seemed to have dark stains on it, which did not make them feel any more comfortable.

  As Jan and David sat in their hovel, they could see some armed villagers standing outside the porous walls, eyes fixed on them. “They look more like fish then men.” David just nodded and looked towards their compatriots in the other huts. “I swear they are making clicking noises when they talk to each other. It is very subtle, but I can hear it.” He noticed the village headman was talking to the sergeant. It seemed if the brothers had gone elsewhere, and the villagers did not like what the sergeant was telling them.