As Colossal Newt made his way from the ranks of the Paws, Crazy Raccoon began to grin - he knew what was happening.
He’s rewarding us all. All the Paws who performed well tonight are going to get a taste.
Crazy Raccoon puffed up his own chest in preparation. After all, it was his presence that led to the Mice backing down.
Colossal Newt stepped forward, and after a short introduction, took a quick lick of Preening Owl’s face. By this point, the young Mouse was crying silently, shoulders shaking at the shame of what he was experiencing. To his credit, the boy did not make a sound.
“Hidden Vulture! Hidden Vulture, you have served me well this year. Through the harsh winter, when the chupacabra came to our walls, you stuck by me. Come, come and claim your reward.”
Another Bravador, an older woman with grey feathers painted onto the bandana that covered her head, sauntered out. She took her turn to lick Preening Owl’s face, relishing in how the dragging of her tongue made the young man shudder.
My turn next, Crazy Raccoon thought. Must be me. The constables’ll be here soon.
Galloping Turtle grabbed at Preening Owl’s shirt again, drawing the young man near.
“Did you enjoy that, little Mouse?”
Preening Owl fixed Galloping Turtle with a wild stare, unsure how to answer the question, unsure as to which answer would allow him to return to his friends, to safety.
Galloping Turtle did not let the lad suffer for too long. “Let this be a lesson to you. Remember tonight, when you next seek to insult a Lion’s Paw.” Then Galloping Turtle roughly shoved the Mouse back to his companions.
Crazy Raccoon stood, open mouthed, in shock.
But… what about me? What about my lick?
Aghast, Crazy Raccoon strode forward, making his way to the stable master.
“Galloping Turtle,” he shouted. “What about me?”
Galloping Turtle stared at Crazy Raccoon as he walked forward, then he lowered his eyes, gave a half smile, and addressed the rest of the Paws. “The constables will be here soon. We’ve done what we came to do. Best be off, to commiserate and to celebrate.”
What about me? It was I who made the Mice stand down. I’m the most feared Bravador in all the city.
The Paws, laughing, full of violence and success, turned and made their way through the darkness of the park, to home.
Crazy Raccoon ran with them, but his mind was only half on the task. He was running as if in a daze, as if he had been slapped in the face in front of everyone else.
Galloping Turtle. He didn’t even look at me.
He didn’t give me my lick.
As overheard in the taverns of Espadapan
Some wonder why people leave the safety of the cities, why they seek to live out in the loneliness of the Wilds.
It is true that the Wildlands are dangerous. The Mistress’ creatures roam, and they particularly seek revenge on any of Mouse blood, of the line that took her land and people from her.
But the Wildlands are also rich with life. Most flock to the cities for their high walls and Bravadori steel, but there is a living to be made in providing for those cities, in farming the land to feed hungry mouths.
When the Queen sent her Muridae across the sea over one hundred years ago, they were searching for gold and jewels, and they found these things, but it is often said that the best riches that were found out here come from the land itself, and the good food it can provide.
However, farming this land does not come without dangers, and the greatest danger of all is loneliness. Loneliness, and what lies out there in the Wild that seeks to fill that awful void.
This story is about a farmer, a man like any other. Like any other, this man and his family worked the land hard, and normally they reaped their just rewards. Normally he could use his money to hire sellswords, sometimes even true Bravadori, to protect his family. However, one year things did not go as well. One year, the farmer’s crops were harmed, many failed, the city did not want to pay as much for them - whatever the reason, this year the man had less money, and he gambled with his family’s future. This was the year the farmer did not hire any Bravadori to protect his home.
The first sign of trouble came when he was asleep. He woke, as he often did, in the middle of the night, his wife dozing happily beside him. He paused for a moment to listen to the sounds of his house. There was nothing but the reassuring creaks of the timber that he had helped to assemble himself, but these familiar sounds did nothing to assure him that things were well.
Taking a firm grip of the machete that was always set beside his bed, the man left his wife to look out of his window. The Wilds stared back at him, the wide, flat land rolling out towards the mountains, the full moon illuminating all, showing nothing but endless stretches of corn dancing in the breeze.
The farmer left his room, making his way down the short hallway towards his daughters’ bedrooms. One by one he checked on them, his heart in his throat as he did so, for some reason fearing the worst. Like his wife, they were both sleeping soundly, exhausted from working the fields all day.
His lips pursed. He had checked everyone, and yet his gut still told him something was amiss.
He made his way into the kitchen. Embers burned in the fireplace, but their warm light was dwarfed by the whiteness of the moon as she shone through the window, painting the empty room an uncanny paleness. The farmer stood for a moment, watching the corn outside wave at him mockingly.
Finally, the farmer gave up and returned to his wife. Laying the machete back down by the bed, he lifted the covers, slid under them, and raised his hand to gently stroke his sleeping wife’s face.
Her face fell away at his touch, crumbling to dust as his fingers met with it.
Terror rising, not fully aware of what he was doing, the farmer threw himself out of the bed, clawed hands clasping at the walls, eyes fixed on the statue of ash that used to be his wife. The room’s black curtains flapped gently in the breeze.
It was at that moment the farmer realised the window was locked. There was no breeze inside to make the curtains move.
Rigid, the man’s gaze was drawn to the curtains, their subtle fluttering now a cruel taunt. His eyes followed them upwards, and he realised the dark fabrics extended much higher than the top of the window.
It was at this moment the flowers began to fall.
Small, grey blossoms floated down from the ceiling, crumbling into dust on the farmer’s white sheets, an insufficient funeral wreath for his dead wife.
However, the farmer was not thinking about his wife, not now. His eyes were fixed upon the black of the ceiling, the dark shape that covered the entirety of it, extending down the walls in strands of rippling fabric.
He looked for the source of the falling flowers, and there found the creature’s face. Hooded in black, the moonlight picked out what used to be a woman’s face, but like his wife this face was long dead. The features of the face - lips, nose, eyes - were poorly defined, as if a sculptor had begun the job of carving out their shape, but had not been given the time to complete his work. Where he saw the creature’s ill-formed lips, white-painted lines picked out her teeth, giving her a skull’s grin. Flowers of ash were falling from the dark indents that were the creature’s eyes.
The flowers fell every time the creature sobbed. For - and the farmer had known this as soon as his wife had crumbled to dust - it was the Black Shepherdess who had come to visit him that night.
Crying openly now, the Shepherdess descended from the ceiling, the yawning emptiness of her robes pooling in the centre of the ceiling like a poisoned dewdrop falling from a blade of grass. Hanging upside-down, she turned to him, hands extended.
The farmer ran.
To his credit, despite his terror he had not forgotten about his daughters. Lacking all hope, he ran to the first girl’s room and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her from her bed.
The girl’s arm came away in his hand, but the rest of her grey body remai
ned asleep.
He did not bother to reach out and touch the second daughter - the moonlight on her sleeping form told him that she too had been turned to ash.
In his nightwear, weaponless, the farmer staggered out of his home, eyes wild. His head spun around, looking for someone, something that would save him from this nightmare.
Unbelievably, he spotted movement a short distance away. A person, no, a group a people, making their way towards his land, through the corn fields.
“Help!” he shouted. “Help me! The Shepherdess is abroad!”
Stumbling, the farmer ran to the newcomers, weeping now, unexpected hope alive in his chest.
His sobbing stopped when the moon disclosed the identity of the nearest newcomer, a man in soldier’s uniform. However, the soldier’s expression was rigid, his eyes not fixed on anything, his movements slow and jerky, as if controlled by a distant puppeteer. The farmer did not need the moon’s light to know that the newcomer had been drained of all colour except for ashen grey.
Movement in the dark betrayed the others, and the farmer became aware of a line of ash people, walking slowly towards him, herding him back to his farm house.
Hope dying in his chest, the farmer turned around to look at his home. His family was there, waiting, his faceless wife walking side by side with her daughters, whose eyes were not quite fixed upon him.
Silently the figures walked forward, and from behind them, from the farmer’s own front door, swept a being of pure blackness, born from the Wilds and cursed forever to haunt them.
The Black Shepherdess drew up to her full height before the farmer, ash flowers falling from her eyes as she continued to cry, her shoulders heaving with the pain of each wretched breath. For his own part, the farmer stood helpless before her, waiting for the inevitable.
With one touch, the Shepherdess drained him of life, the colour, pain and joy leaving him. As the last glimmer of his soul faded away, his eyes moved to the dead shapes that used to be his wife and children, and he smiled, knowing that he would always be with them, the newest additions to the Black Shepherdess’ dead army.
Some wonder why people leave the safety of the city, to live in the Wildlands. Many say they are looking for their fortune. Others say they seek adventure, a place to forge their own destinies.
Many say these things, but that does not make them true.
The truth is that these people are all fools, and we should weep not for anyone foolish enough to leave the safety of Espadapan’s walls.
“Are you sure this’ll be okay?” Arturo asked as Gavrilla handed him his dinner.
They had stopped at a street side stall selling turkey cooked in mole sauce, and Arturo opened his purse to pay. Used to food being served on a plate, Arturo regarded the meal with suspicion.
Gavrilla, the Queen’s Bride, raised an eyebrow at him. “You kidding me? Outside of the convent, this is the best food I’ve ever had. Where the hell you from if you’re turning your nose up at this?”
The shadow of his father’s estate, and the serving staff within, crossed Arturo’s mind, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
“My first day in the city,” he explained. “Got a few things to get used to.”
“Alfrond’s balls,” Gavrilla said. “What a first day.”
The painted buildings of the barrio leaned above them, almost touching each other in many places. In Barrio Mercado, tradesmen had been given free reign as to how to construct their shops, and many of the buildings teetered dangerously, designed more to attract attention of pedestrians and their purses than to be structurally sound. The facades of the buildings on Calle Raton, the main thoroughfare between the Plaza and the northern gate, were painted garish colours - red, blue, yellow, green - to pop out at the passersby and drag them in to browse the stalls.
Arturo nodded at Gavrilla’s comments, doing his best to smile as he chewed the overcooked bird.
“Agreed. I came here for the Bravadori, but hadn’t expected to make contact with them so quickly.”
He had been unsure what to do with his mask. He knew keeping it on was a sign to other Bravadori that he was one of them, and as such was open to challenge, so he had been tempted to remove it. However, he had caught Gavrilla looking at him out of the corner of her eye, curious, doing her best to sum him up, and had decided to keep the mask on for her, if nobody else.
As they strolled down the busy streets - daytime traders were packing away their stalls, the evening vendors setting up shop - Arturo’s eyes flickered to any Bravadori that walked close to them. Unlike him, the other Bravadori of the city tended to roam in packs, groups of stable mates identified by the coloured bands they wore on their arms. The Paws were yellow, the Mice grey. Arturo knew that from before - those larger stables were both well known outside of Espadapan. However, now he was noticing different stable colours - orange, white, a large amount of green - and he found himself lost. The nearest pack, a trio wearing green bands, stared at him as they walked in the opposite direction, but otherwise they did nothing.
“It’s me, you know,” Gavrilla said.
“What?”
“They won’t touch you because of me. No violence around the Queen’s Brides. Most of the time, anyway.”
Arturo looked back at the sneering Bravadori, and shuddered. He suddenly wanted Gavrilla to stick around as long as possible. So far, the Bravadori had not lived up to his expectations, and he did not fancy facing a group of them alone.
“So, um, don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asked, hesitantly. “I mean, I haven’t met many Brides before, and the ones I did meet were nothing like you, so I’m no expert-”
“Ha! Let me guess - wrinkled prunes old enough to be your grandmother, and the closest action their tits have ever seen has been their habits brushing up against them when they slip into their bedclothes at night?”
Arturo reddened, and made a noise in the affirmative.
Gavrilla smiled, turkey falling out of her open mouth. “Oh, we have plenty of them, but plenty of us too. The young ones. Suppose there might be more of us in the city, what with all the dangers of city life driving us towards the church.”
“So, you’re a real Bride then?” Arturo asked, slightly surprised. “I mean, you’re dressed like one, but the way you talk and act, I thought maybe you were pretending. I guess I’d expected a Bride to be a bit more…” He struggled to end the sentence without causing offence.
“Timid? Righteous? Pure? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that different from everyone else. Opened my legs to get out of hard times, just like the other Muelle girls, but that’s a resource that falls in value pretty quick. The Brides, the Queen, they’ve given me something nobody else has been able to give me.”
Arturo, face crimson, looked everywhere except at Gavrilla as she continued her story. Around them, the tight barrio streets opened up onto the Queen’s Plaza, which was currently emptying of traders as well.
“What’s that?” he asked her. “What did they give you?”
“A promise. Said they’d look after me if I kept my soul and body pure. So, I’ve stuck to that, since I took my vows, and they seem to have kept their end of the bargain as well. I’ve had food on the table every day since then, I’m never alone, and these robes-” she indicated her grey habit, “-nobody who fears the Queen would dare bother me, or face her wrath.”
They perched against an abandoned stall frame to finish their food. As Gavrilla continued, Arturo glanced up at the cathedral that stood at the head of the plaza, the setting sun illuminating its spires at the same time as they cast deep shadows out towards them, across the flat sandstone of the plaza floor.
“So, I’ll keep my promise as long as the Queen keeps hers. She looks after me, and I’m hers.”
“You’ve met her?” Arturo asked, eyes moving back to his companion.
“Drink your own piss, no,” Gavrilla spat out the last bite of food in a laugh. “Nobody I’ve met ever has. Honestly, I don’t think she
exists anymore, but that don’t matter. What matters is her promise and the threat of her punishment keeps wandering hands and eyes away from me. I can honour that, without having to meet the woman herself.”
Arturo, trying not to imagine the look on his mother’s face at the thought of a Bride who didn’t believe in the Queen, looked out across the emptying plaza. Like the trading barrio, the plaza stalls were empty now, but these stalls were not being refilled with night vendors. Instead, the Bravadori were coming out to play. Small packs of men and women were ambling out of different side streets, each group picking empty stretches of plaza floor and beginning swordplay contests. Some of them glanced in his direction, stiffening at the sight of him, probably considering a challenge. The bile rose in Arturo’s throat at the thought of having to prove himself, but thankfully the Bravadori glanced at Gavrilla, happily munching away beside him, and then went back to their own business.
Arturo noticed the white bands tied around the arms of the nearest Bravadori pack.
“Who’re they?” he asked Gavrilla, not recognising the stable.
She looked at him in surprise. “You don’t know the Prickly Storks? They’re one of the largest stables in the city.”
“I only arrived today, remember?” he said, continuing to marvel at the sight of distant sword fighting Knacks sparring with each other. “I’ve heard of the Mice and Paws before - most people out in the Wilds have - but the rest never really get a mention. The Storks, then. Anyone else I need to know?”
Gavrilla scanned the plaza. “Okay, the Mice are grey, Paws are yellow, and the Prickly Storks are white. You know all that already. The Storks are important because they control the harbour, Barrio Muelle, where I’m from. The group that passed us in the street earlier, the green bands, they’re Loyal Crickets. They control the trading district.”
Arturo squinted, noticing smaller groups of fighters - mostly pairs - with different coloured bands from the ones Gavrilla had just mentioned.
“Those four are the largest. There are smaller stables affiliated with them, or otherwise smart enough or insignificant enough to avoid the attention of the other stables. The only other stable with any kind of control of land is the Honey Badger Family. They own Wild Town, which technically is also Paws territory. But, you know…” Gavrilla shrugged, looking at Arturo.
Those Brave, Foolish Souls from the City of Swords: A standalone Yarnsworld novel Page 4
