by Wilf Jones
‘Rillia must have fallen for this songster and she made every opportunity to speak to him, and in all their talking he managed to let slip, gradual like, that the Halfi were a rich folk of strange powers, and that, though they’d never think of sellin’ em, they had in their keepin’ such wonders as you could not imagine their like. A’course Rillia then demands to see these treasures. She says that if they’re so wonderful she’d have ‘em at any price.
‘And so we come to the cheatin’. Rillia must have been coming on into her fifties, and a lot of what she spent old Porlick’s money on was unctions, and pastes, and washes, all to make her look younger. She knew Porlick couldn’t love her if she became ugly, and he might leave her. She was vain, and rightly proud of her looks for her age, but she knew all about the wrinkles that were set to cover her face in just a few years, and that made her a soft touch.
‘The next time this bard turns up he tells her he’s brought with him the greatest treasure in the world. He spins her a yarn claiming that some of the Halfi, and the King included, had found the secret of eternal life! There was a drug, a potion, a precious water given only to a few, that if you had but one sip of it you’d never die. He said that their king was the very same man as set them to wandering a thousand years before; that he was almost a god to ‘em. And all that came of this water of life. Now, Rillia’s not as stupid as all that, and neither is Porlick, who’d come along to see what these wondrous treasures might be. Porlick calls the man a liar and the man acts all offended. Rillia agrees with her husband, this once, but she can’t help thinking how wonderful it would be if it were true. The minstrel pushes it a bit further now: taking a flask from out of his purse and placing it on the table before them, he lets ‘em look at it in silence for tense moment or two. “There it stands before you,” he says at last, “The true elixir of life, drawn of the eternal font, lifeblood of the gods. Whatever is in you that grows old can become new, whatever is broken will be healed, whatever is weak will become strong. How would it be if you both could regain your youth and keep it forever? This is the great treasure of the Halfi.”
‘Well you can imagine what Rillia thought of that. And maybe you can imagine what Porlick thought too. So when this minstrel offers to demonstrate the true powers of the drug they decide to let him try. He calls forward one of the Halfi as’d come along with him, an old biddy he explains is his old Grandma or some such, and all together up they go into Rillia’s private chamber.
‘I don’t know exactly how they did it but when the old girl took the drug, before their eyes apparently, the wrinkles disappeared from her face, and her hair grew long and new. It’s up to you to decide what was goin’ on – disguise and sleight of hand, illusion or whatever – but the point is that Porlick and his wife were taken in. It was all too excitin’ a prospect for them to go thinking of trickery and deceit. The promise was too much for them and it made ‘em stupid. A’course the wife wants to take the drug straight’way she lays hands on it and even Porlick, with visions of himself and his wife as young as they were when they’d first made love, well, he was more than ready and willing to do the deal. The Halfi minstrel drove a hard bargain, and Porlick ended up paying out a great portion of his stock for just one small bottle o’ the stuff.
‘Had it been me, I think I’d have taken the drug before I gave up my pigs to ‘em, but somehow this Halfi managed to persuade him different. Porlick agreed it’d be common sense to tell people before he took it, just in case they didn’t recognize him after, and so he decided to wait until the morning. But, after the Halfi had gone, both the merchant and his wife thought it’d be a fine entertainment if she took her dose before they went off to bed. And so that’s what she did.’
Bibron paused for a moment to let the situation sink in. He looked around at those listening and smiled.
‘Well then,’ he continued, ‘Here’s old Porlick sitting on his bed waiting for his beautiful young wife to come along and share it with him, and there’s Rillia looking at her face in the mirror waiting for the lines around her eyes to drop away and leave her pretty as a sixteen year old. Well, the drug changed her alright. But she never lost any of those wrinkles and she never lost any years. All her life she had hair black as a raven’s feathers and never a grey: it was her pride and joy. But now, even as she watched, first one strand and then another, and then a handful, and then all of it, every last hair on her head fell away and there was nothing to do to save it. And it didn’t stop there, oh no: away came her eyebrows, away came the hair on her arms, and under her arms, away came the hair on her legs. None of it was spared, not even right down to her… Well, as there’s ladies present, let’s just say there was one part as looked just that little bit younger after all.’
Some of his audience sniggered on cue though not all. Captain Farber was unconcerned. He always enjoyed his story telling whatever the reaction. But his primary target rolled his eyes. Angren could admit that the story was slightly more entertaining than crushing ants but, given the circumstances, he was growing impatient and had no time for jokes.
‘Look Bibron, is this getting us anywhere? From what I’ve heard so far these Halfi seem alright. So, they cheated people, it doesn’t make them crazy.’
‘No it don’t. But I’ve only told you about the cheatin’ so far and nothing much more, so hold your horses. You’ll see how mad they can be.
‘Where was I? The hair! Well, Rillia flew into a rage about her lovely locks, but Porlick was more concerned with being cheated out of his stock. He cursed her as a stupid woman, cursed her for making him look such a fool. Did he have a thought for his wife and how she must feel? He did not. Porlick was in such a rage he took it into his head that Rillia was just as much party to the crime as the Halfi. “Get you gone to them, hag!” he cried, and he threw her out onto the streets in the cold of the night, “Go find your minstrel and see if he’s a song for you now.” And he slammed the door in her face and vowed there and then he never would take her back.
‘Well, you might think that the end of the tale, and a cruel end too, but, sad to say, that was just the beginning. Porlick wanted his pigs and he wanted his vengeance.
‘On the very next day, our trader went out and he hired himself some swords. Their job to chase after these thieves and, however they chose to do it, with as much blood spilled as they liked, return his stock to Riverport. Now who knows the ins and outs of it, but to cut it short, Porlicks’s men were not the brightest nor were they the kindest. They bashed about the Part searching here and there, mistreating any of the Halfi they came across, and yet not one pig did they find. Looking like fools themselves they took a different tack. Against the law of the land, and against decency, they laid hands on a Halfi girl, a young woman and an important one too: almost a princess to them, her father being head man about those parts. Well, they took her in Coldharbour market and carried the girl, her screaming curses at them the while, all the way back to Riverport, looking to use her as hostage for fair payment, and a little more on top for their trouble. It was a mistake. The Halfi didn’t like that at all and they came howling after them with never a thought of paying up, only murder in their hearts.
‘Picture it: all the Halfi standing outside the gates of Riverport demanding their girl is given up, and Porlick up on the walls calling for the militia to pour oil on them if they came too close. Well, there’s plenty of words spoken with both parties feeling aggrieved, and the hired swords stirring it up to their own advantage. I can’t say whose idea it was but Porlick’s men drag this girl up onto the battlements for all the Halfi to see; and then Porlick brings out, to show to the militia, the so-called wonder that started it all, that small bottle of elixir that’d cheated him of his stock. With the girl struggling but held fast, and the mercenaries all jeering, and the Halfi below screaming out threats, one of those bad men snatches the elixir out of Porlick’s shaking hand, brandishes it high for all the Halfi to se
e, and then sets to forcing the whole lot down the poor girl’s throat.
‘Well, that was it. That’s where the madness came in. You might think a young girl losing her hair is a shame, but it’s not anything to go to war over. These Halfi didn’t see it like that. They went wild: acted as though he had downright killed her by giving her the drug – not that they’d seemed so bothered about the effect on Rillia. Anyway, parley was now out of the question; paying up never a thought. As I said before, they were just about sane when they were winning but losing, they lost any shred of sense or decency they might have had. First of all they tried to fight their way into Riverport to get at Porlick and his men, and they’d have ripped ‘em to pieces if they’d caught up with ‘em, but the town militia was having none of it. They defended the walls and defended Porlick, though not through any liking for the man. They had a duty to keep Riverport safe and the way those Halfi were… well no one would’ve been safe if they’d a got in. But in the eyes of those mad devils it was like the city was taking sides against them. Luckily for Riverport there weren’t enough o’ these Halfi there and then to break-in through the gates. A few of them ended up dead and any number were injured from arrow fire and so after sunfall they gave it up and disappeared into the night. Everyone waited, for that day and for the next, expecting every hour that the Halfi would come back. Nothing happened. Not for a day, not for three. After a week had passed everyone began to breathe just that bit more easy and things in the city got back to normal. The people of Riverport had no allegiance to this ‘Gardean trader and they thought nothin’ of this mess was anything at all to do with them, that the Halfi’s argument was only with Porlick and the sell-swords. And with the days going by without a murmur or hint that the Halfi were still around, they mostly began to think the problem had just up and gone away.
‘Fools to think that way. The Halfi weren’t forgetting any of it. It started with reports of people disappearing. Women disappearing, youngish girls – daughters of traders, of officers, of craftsmen. And not just a few. They couldn’t credit it but within the month they realised that more than forty girls had gone and no one could find out where to. Even the most stupid must have worked out it was the Halfi and the parents of the missing girls feared the worst, thinking they’d never see their loved ones again.’ Bibron shook his head. ‘Do you know, I reckon it would’ve been better if they never had.
‘Here’s how it was: one morning as the Gate-watch were setting out to open up the town for the day – a good bit before dawn as they do still today – they found a sheet of parchment fixed to the inside of the Kingsgate. It read something like: ‘Two for every year – the price you pay.’ That’s all there was but I guess they must’ve known what it was about, the Halfi girl being about twenty-one years, and they must have known it was gonna be bad, but they opened up the gates anyway.
‘Naked, hairless and mutilated the poor girls were laid there on the road for anyone to see, anyone as had the heart and stomach for it that is. And there, standing just beyond, massed in the road and in the fields to left and right, hundreds of the Halfi. Stood there silent, watching as by lantern light the bodies were discovered, silent as the cries rang through the streets of the town, silent as more people came carrying torches, some to gawp in horror, some to weep, some to search desperate and hopeless. How could they find their lovely girls in amongst all that tortured flesh? The sun came up. The Halfi broke silence. They began to jeer, to curse, to scream, to shout; and they didn’t let up until the militia and many of the townsmen, aye and quite a few of the townswomen too, took up their weapons and came out to meet them.
‘There was a mighty battle. Porlick, finally realizing where his rage and his desire for revenge had led ‘em, felt nothing but ashamed to have caused the death of all those young women. Taking up whatever courage he had left to him, out he went himself to try and stop it all. He took the Halfi girl with him; disgusted at what he had done to her, wantin’ to make amends. But it was too late for that, it had all gone too far and they both got caught up in the fighting and both were killed. To cut it short, the militia won the day at last and very few of the Halfi escaped the field. They buried their girls together in a great mound which you can still see today outside the Kingsgate, but the Halfi dead, Porlick and that poor girl included, they burned on a great pyre that blazed for a week and cursed the streets of Riverport with a foul reek that lingered for months on end – a daily reminder of the tragedy that comes of revenge.
‘And there once again, you’d have thought it’d ended but, as a fact, well the very worst was yet to come. I think I said that the Halfi didn’t get together much as a tribe but spread themselves far and wide. So those who were killed in Riverport were only a portion of the full number. One of those who escaped went to their ‘King’, and it was him that made all the rest happen. They’d had enough, I reckon, done with running, done with all the casual persecution, done with being treated as freaks.
‘I won’t go into the hows, the wheres and the whens, but what they did is an abomination to stand forever. Halfi from all places took out into the night and whenever they could they’d steal a child. They took hundreds of ‘em. And they didn’t kill ‘em straight. Oh no! By all accounts they took to cannibalism. The story ripped through all of Pars that the Halfi were stealing children and cooking ‘em alive. Whether that was true or not the children were gone and that was a certainty. It was madness, cruel and wicked madness.
‘Well, that was the final crime. The King of Pars, Rúhandar by name, sent out his armies. The Halfi were hunted through every last corner of the country and mostly killed. A few hundred survived, whenever the generals could hold back their men from their anger, and these few were held to trial and they were found guilty. Now, there’d been so much killing by then that people were sick of it; over the border the Masachee were making such a noise about this so-called ‘massacre of their people’ – not that they’d ever owned the Halfi before then; and so the King knew he couldn’t have done with it and just execute ‘em all. Eventually he decided, with his advisors and with the justices, that it would be best all round to exile the Halfi, to set ‘em apart from normal folk. And so they put ‘em on Tumboll. It was the Partian wizards as arranged it. Don’t ask me how, but they set up spells to keep the exiles bound to the island, spells that would set a fire in ‘em if ever they tried to escape. And so it was done and that at last was the end.
‘Every few years the army would go over to Tumboll to make sure everything was secure, that the Halfi were prisoners still; but as the years went by they noticed the Halfi were becoming more and more savage, and madder than ever. Eventually it ‘came too dangerous to visit and from then on, through all the generations, they’ve been on their own. And Tumboll has become a place of horror, a place to avoid for any as’d like to stay alive and whole. Worse than a land of demons! And Tumboll, Angren my lad, is just exactly where we are right now.’
And that was the tale as Bibron gave it. Without a doubt more could have been said but what he had heard was easily enough for the swordsman.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ he said calmly, ‘What you’re saying is we’re on an island seething with maniacs who’d like nothing better than to torture us all to death, just for the fun of it.’
‘That’s about the sum. The story is probably exaggerated but it’s more or less right. Fact we’re alive now shouldn’t encourage you too much neither: even in Pars they were accused of sacrificing people to their gods, so they’re likely keeping us for some festival or other. They were said to have kept to cannibalism too, which is a bit odd if you think about it.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, this island may not have everything but it’s not short of pigs. Place is supposed to be ridden with ‘em. Apparently, and you’ll like this, it was Rillia as brought ‘em here. Too ashamed to live with good folk, they say, but still she had a right to Porlick’s estate. So
she gathered up all she had left, stock included, and asked for to be exiled to Tumboll along with the Halfi. Strange woman. The story don’t say what happened when she arrived but, ‘part from the pigs, I shouldn’t think the Halfi were all that pleased to see her.’
PASSAGE
Tumboll 3057.7.24
‘Well, whatever the story, we still need to know what’s on the other side of that wall. Any offers?’
Angren looked around with a grin on his face: he wasn’t being serious. He had been reasonably shocked by the cruelties of Bibron’s tale but he decided nothing was altered. From the start it was clear they were held captive by brutal savages. That they were the descendants of maniacs was relatively unimportant. But while Angren found it easy to dismiss the tale as ancient history it was clear that many others could not. Childhood nightmares were not supposed to become real. He wasn’t expecting any response.
‘Easy job: spy out the land, find out what these lads have got planned for us. Someone with a good bit of strength and a steady nerve. No? Well then, we’d better see what old Angren can do.’
There was snort of laughter behind him. ‘Praise to the Many for sending us a hero! Tortured by his injuries but ready and eager to risk his life for us. It makes me feel quite faint.’
She was just over five-and-a-half feet, slim enough and curvy enough. Her long black hair was plaited in a pigtail. She was dressed in a shirt and tight trousers, both black, and she carried a leather jacket over one shoulder. Angren, against all the evidence, inevitably expected women to be dependent creatures, physically weak and emotional. That description did not apply. Her poise hinted at an impressive strength, the mockery was confident and the look of amusement she wore, whenever she caught his eye, carried with it a warning. This one looked like trouble. He glanced past her. The other two women from the Cottle were backing her up: the big arm wrestler, huge and scary as a bear, and the woman with golden hair who seemed able to control the men around her with nothing more than a smile and a soft word. The blonde woman, Isolde, had been more or less silent since the wreck and the hunt but ‘Berta had been swapping gruesome stories with the rest of them. She gave the impression that she was just about ready to start breaking some heads. It was all very unsettling. The little minx continued: