Ragh brushed by them and planted himself on the porch, keeping in the shade of an overhang and studying the passersby. Though most of them glanced his way, not a single one balked or stared. “All right, it’s bothering me now,” he murmured to Dhamon. “Without prejudice is one thing. Without curiosity…”
“Stay on guard,” Dhamon warned quietly, as he followed Fiona inside the small shop. “We won’t be staying much longer,” he said loudly to the lord mayor. “We need to leave for Southern Ergoth as soon as possible. Perhaps with the evening tide.”
The Lord Mayor frowned. “I hope we can change your mind. It’s refreshing, us getting visitors like you.”
The shop was larger than it appeared, but most of it was taken up with shelves. There were racks in the center, all of them holding either finished garments or folded pieces of material, and cloaks hung from hooks in the ceiling. The aisles were small, and the place felt cramped. There was a musty smell and a tinge of oil coming from a small jug next to a row of scissors. A few spiderwebs clung to the corners, dotted with the husks of dead insects. The shop was orderly but dingy.
Fiona almost smiled as the seamstress held up dresses and tunics that might fit her.
“You are…?” the woman prompted.
“Fiona. I am a Solamnic Knight.”
The woman proceeded to fuss over Fiona, helping her into a long, umber skirt and sand-colored shirt. Though plain, the garments were well-made and a welcome change from the sweat-stained and ripped clothing the Knight had been wearing. The woman wrapped a serviceable tunic and leggings in a sheet of canvas and handed these to Fiona, too.
“We really can’t stay,” Dhamon repeated to the lord mayor. “You’ve got a very nice town, though, and one I’m certain under other circumstances we’d be happy to call home for a time. But there are pressing matters….”
“At least stay the night. We’ll escort you to the docks and put you on a ship in the morning, if you haven’t changed your mind.” The lord mayor held up a tunic next to Dhamon, finding it far too short. “You can tell us all about the storm and where you came from. Your families and friends. What’s going on elsewhere in the world. We haven’t had news in some time. As I said, few strangers visit.”
“And as I said, we’re in a hurry”
The seamstress fussed over Dhamon now, supplying him with a pair of gray trousers that were a little worn at the knees and a white tunic that hung on his lean frame and also evidenced some wear. She paid no heed to the scales on his leg as she turned up the trouser legs into cuffs so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. Satisfied with his appearance, she draped a thin, wool cloak over his arm “for evenings when the fall wind sets in.” Then she fitted him with a finely tooled leather belt, into which Dhamon was quick to slide his knife. She handed him a second tunic, then stepped away and resumed her ministering to Fiona.
“Nasty sore on your pretty head, Fiona.” She handed the Knight a ribbon for her hair.
“How much for all of these clothes?” Dhamon cut in.
“How much? Why ever would I charge you for them?”
“We can’t accept charity,” Dhamon said tersely, as he eyed a shelf with winter cloaks. “How much for the heavy cloaks?” Free food. Free clothes. No, something was wrong here; something that made his skin itch. “I must insist on paying for…”
The seamstress ignored him. “We’ll make sure the lord mayor gets that sore tended to… Fiona.” The woman brushed the curls away from the Solamnic Knight’s forehead. “Nasty scar on your cheek, too. Hair a mess. All this from being washed ashore in that terrible storm?”
“It’s from a spawn,” Fiona said. “They breathe acid.”
Dhamon cleared his throat. “I’ve got coins.”
The seamstress turned back to Dhamon, bumping into a rack. She was quick to steady it. “No one pays me for these clothes!” Then she was waving for the lord mayor and—as if she was in charge—directing him to take Fiona to the town’s healer at once. “Don’t need to be losing anyone else,” she muttered, as she nudged them out the door.
Dhamon turned to squarely face her. “Losing people?” he began. “What do you mean? We came through the cemetery. There were no names on…”
She gave him a surprised look, then made her clucking sound, and with a smile shut the door in his face.
* * *
The healer looked scarcely older than a boy to Dhamon, yet he seemed to know what he was doing. He selected dried herbs and roots, many of which Dhamon was familiar with, ground them together, and created a paste that he liberally smeared on Fiona’s forehead. As he worked, he pawed the hair away from his own face, revealing the slightly pointed ears of a half-elf, Qualinesti from the looks of him. Dhamon immediately thought of Riki and his child again. He decided there would be no more unsettling stops in this peculiar town. They would hop aboard a ship leaving with the evening tide, or even sooner if possible.
Dhamon watched as the half-elf created a different mixture to treat the acid scars on Fiona’s cheek, though he told her sadly they’d never completely disappear. Then he insisted on trimming her hair.
Dhamon cleared his throat to get the half-elf’s attention. “I suppose you don’t want to be paid.”
“Oh, I’ll gladly take your coins, sir.”
Finally, Dhamon thought. Someone in this town who acts normal. Dhamon quickly passed him two steel pieces, considerably more than his services were worth, then glanced out the shop window at an elderly couple strolling by arm in arm. He shook his head as two goblins scurried into view. A second later a human boy and girl and another goblin came gleefully chasing after them.
“What’s wrong with these people?” he whispered to Ragh. “Is there some madness infecting them? Goblins playing with human children. Some of the merchants won’t accept money. Hobgoblins walk around freely here, apparently hold public office, and—”
“Dhamon.” Fiona stepped to his side. “You were partnered with a blue dragon when you were a Dark Knight. If I recall, you recently counted a kobold named Fetch as a trusted companion. Your best friend Maldred is a lying, scheming, blue-skinned ogre mage, and now you associate with a sivak.” She nodded to the draconian standing in the doorway “You’re looking through far too many windows,” she continued. “You should be looking in mirrors instead.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
The healer gave Fiona a small clay jar and instructed her to rub more of the mixture on her wound in the morning. She thanked him and stepped out of the shop into the bright afternoon sunshine.
“Yes, thank you for your help,” Dhamon added. He searched the half-elf’s eyes for some answer to the riddle of the town.
The half-elf looked puzzled at Dhamon’s expression.
“Your name?” Dhamon asked innocently. “How long have you lived here?”
The half-elf drew his features together in consternation, his face looking painfully pinched. “Name? I don’t know. I guess I don’t have one. No. Come to think of it, I’ve never had a name. Do you have a name?”
Now that was definitely strange. Dhamon thought about the graveyard and decided to risk a question, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. “Do the other people in town have names?”
The youth gave him a pensive look, as the silence between them grew thick. “Now that you mention it,” he said after a few moments, “no.”
Fiona and Ragh had moved on and were standing in the center of the street talking to the lord mayor’s assistant. Dhamon gestured to the draconian and started toward the docks. Come! Now! he mouthed.
The draconian grabbed Fiona’s wrist, and the two hurried to catch up.
The hobgoblin kept pace with the trio, arguing with them. “You cannot leave,” he insisted. “The lord mayor will convince you to stay. Give him a chance to talk you into it.”
“We’re in a hurry,” Dhamon said to the hobgoblin. “We’re leaving—now.” This last comment was directed as much to Ragh and Fiona.
The hobgoblin muttered a curse and trundled away in the opposite direction.
* * *
“I don’t see any ships.” Ragh was standing at the end of the largest dock, which groaned in protest under his weight. “I don’t even see a rowboat.”
But there were fishermen. Three sat at the end of a long, narrow pier, poles in the water and eyes on painted cork bobbers.
Dhamon paced along the bank, keeping Ragh in sight. Fiona lagged behind, gathering small shells and putting them in the pocket of her skirt. Her task was difficult, as she refused to set down her bundle of new clothes.
“Not a single ship,” Dhamon spat.
There wasn’t even the outline of a ship out in the crystal blue harbor. Dhamon supposed all the fishing boats might still be out for the day, too far away for him to see, not due in until sundown. Perhaps the town, being so small, didn’t attract sailing ships. But… He stomped off down the bank and up the narrow pier toward the three fishermen, who looked up in unison as he approached. He didn’t want to waste time searching for another coastal town on Nostar. That could take days. Perhaps these fishermen knew someone with a boat.
They were young, human, perhaps not yet twenty, clothes worn but clean, faces clean-shaven, hair tied back.
Perhaps all three were brothers. They had a similarity in their faces, their eyes all golden brown, their builds roughly the same.
“Excuse me,” Dhamon began. “My friends and I need to find passage on a ship. A fishing boat would do.” He jiggled the coin pouch so they could hear the steel clinking.
Two of the young men shrugged, but the one in the middle sat his pole down and rose to his feet. He brushed his hands on his breeches and looked to the shore. “All the ships are gone. Broken up and made into houses,” he explained.
Dhamon instantly remembered the buildings made out of ship hulls. “All of them?”
“’Bout soon as they come in, the townsfolk come out and break ’em up.”
“And the sailors just let them?”
The young man paused in thought. “The sailors don’t have no choice in the matter, I’d say. ’Course, the sailors don’t object for long. They stay in town. Got nowhere else to go, I’d say. Some of ’em even live in their old ships.”
Dhamon felt his face grow warm, anger, frustration and fear building and a dozen questions forming. He didn’t know what to ask first, but the young man helped him out.
“See, folks who come to Bev’s Oar… they don’t ever leave.”
“Well, we’re leaving,” Dhamon told him. “Ragh and Fiona and I are leaving now.”
“I don’t think so, sir. Word is all over town about you three. You have names, and that makes you real important. Glad to have you join us. I understand you’re gonna teach all of us about the world.”
“We’re not joining you.” Dhamon swung around and raced toward the bank, feet slapping loudly on the planks. “Ragh!” he shouted. “Fiona!”
The draconian and female Knight looked up, then both turned in the other direction, facing the town, their attention was caught by the throng of people suddenly materializing, the lord mayor and his assistant in the lead.
“By the memory of the Dark Queen!” Dhamon cursed.
He vaulted from the dock and onto the sand just as the press of townsfolk swarmed around his two companions. The Knight was tall, towering over some of the townspeople, but in a few moments Dhamon couldn’t see her head. They’d managed to overwhelm her by their sheer numbers.
The draconian resisted, pulling away from people and roughly tossing them to the ground. Dhamon reached the crowd. He was loath to draw a knife, as he’d seen not a single weapon since he’d arrived. “Damn me for bringing us here!” he swore, as he forced his way into the mass and found Fiona unconscious and in the arms of the lord mayor’s assistant. She’d obviously put up a fight, as the two nearest townsfolk were sporting broken lips and noses, but even she couldn’t stand up to their numbers. They’d hurt her. Blood ran from a high cut on her arm, soaking the sleeve of her new shirt. The once-friendly townsfolk had become a mob, and he felt the hammering of their fists on his back.
“You must stay!” someone called to him. “You must teach us.”
He shrugged off the blows and grabbed Fiona from the hobgoblin, who started to claw at him in protest. Cradling her to his chest with one arm, he dropped his free hand and tugged loose his knife.
“Get back!” Dhamon shouted, swinging the knife. “All of you mad people, get…”
The mob swelled in number and pressed closer, and the hobgoblin dropped to a crouch and sank its teeth into Dhamon’s side. Dhamon shifted his grip on the handle and drove the blade down but only managed to nick the hobgoblin’s shoulder. He raised the weapon again but found no room to maneuver now. The air was hot from the crush of bodies, filled with sweat and blood and the buzzing of voices. From somewhere, Dhamon heard the draconian calling to him.
There seemed at least fifty or sixty people. Perhaps the entire town had turned out. Dhamon noticed the portly inn owner who’d fed them so pleasantly just this morning, the seamstress who had clothed them, the healer who had nursed Fiona’s wounds. This was the only one who seemed to be holding back. He finally spotted Ragh, feverishly clawing at people. Dhamon didn’t want to kill any of these unarmed people, but he wasn’t about to let them capture and imprison him either. He certainly wasn’t about to stay in this damnable town of nameless faces.
Fists pounding against his back, booted feet kicking at his legs, he wormed an arm free and thrust the knife forward and down, into the stomach of the lord mayor’s assistant. “I said everyone get back!” The hobgoblin fell to his knees. Dhamon tugged the knife free and stabbed now at a man with tired, sunken eyes. Hands fumbled against his, fingers pulling his fingers open. Someone grabbed his knife.
“Don’t kill him! He can’t teach us if you kill him!”
“Is the girl all right? Someone tell me if the girl’s all right!”
“Don’t use the knife! Don’t hurt them!”
“Let us go!” Dhamon shouted. He fell forward, struck across the back of his knees with a board. Before he could regain his footing, he was pushed across Fiona. He felt the weight of bodies piling on him, and though his strength was formidable, it somehow wasn’t enough to fight all these people.
He heard Ragh snarl, heard the harsh breathing of those closest to him, heard a familiar voice.
“Dhamon Grimwulf!” the lord mayor shouted. “Stop fighting us! We don’t want to hurt you! We just want you to stay!”
Dhamon tried to reply, but his face was shoved against the sand, his chest crushing into Fiona. The smell of her blood and the other scents—sweat, perfume, fear—was overwhelming. He thought of Riki and his child, reached down deep inside him to summon all his strength for the child he desperately needed to see.
For a moment he felt hope, felt his arms pushing off, giving Fiona space and lifting the people on top of him. But even his muscles couldn’t sustain such tremendous weight. He collapsed on top of Fiona, the air rushing from his lungs.
* * *
When he woke it was night and his head was pounding terribly. Starlight spilled through a narrow, high window. He was alone in a cell. Fiona and Ragh were in a cell across from him. Fiona’s arm was bandaged, and there was more of the paste on her face and along her neck. She sat on her bundle of clothes, unmoving, but her eyes were dully open.
“How is he?” Dhamon asked her, indicating Ragh.
“Alive. Sleeping.”
Dhamon could see that Ragh’s chest was laced with cuts, his leg bandaged in two places. The draconian’s breath was ragged.
At first Dhamon was surprised that he’d been out so many hours. Checking his injuries, his fingers felt fresh scales beneath his clothes. His left leg was almost entirely covered now. Some had formed on his arms. He was slightly feverish and suspected he’d suffered another minor bout with the scale—the real reason he’d been out so long.
“A ja
il,” Dhamon said bitterly. “They threw us in the town jail.”
“Only to convince you to stay,” came a familiar and unwelcome voice. The sound of the lord mayor’s voice was followed by the scrape of flint and steel, as a torch was lit. The mayor carried the torch down the stunted hallway and stood between the two cells. “We want you to stay. You have to teach us things.”
Dhamon gripped the bars and tugged, testing them. With time, he thought he might be able pull them loose.
“You have names, Dhamon Grimwulf,” the lord mayor said. “We have none. No families. Few memories. We forget how to do things. We forget our friends. We need you to teach us.”
“Chaos wights,” Dhamon spat. “Damnable Chaos wights. It’s like an epidemic.”
The mayor cocked his head. “I would like to read, I think. I have several books. I expect you know how to read and can teach me. Maybe we’ll make you my new assistant.” He paused. “You killed the old one,” he said ruefully.
Dhamon rattled the bars angrily. He wanted the lord mayor to leave so he could begin to break the bars and slip out. “You can’t make us stay in this accursed town. None of you should stay, either. There’s undead here, remnants from the war in the Abyss. They’re called Chaos wights, and they’re robbing your memories.”
“You must be speaking of the shadow men,” the lord mayor said in a hushed voice.
“Yes, the shadow men. They’re Chaos wights.”
“Glowing eyes.”
“Yes,” Dhamon said. “Let us out of here and—”
“The shadow men will be coming here soon. They always come at night with the cold.” The Lord Mayor placed himself directly in front of Dhamon and held the torch close. “I will see about getting you some good dinner, Dhamon Grimwulf. Maybe while I’m gone the shadow men will come and visit. They’ll convince you to stay in Bev’s Oar. They convince everyone, you know.”
[Dhamon 03] - Redemption Page 11