CHAPTER 1.49 – FAREWELL TO HIGHBARROW: II
As Atheran approaches, Hugo feels a sense of doom. Their interactions with the villagers, with Nina and Viv, Bertak and even the hunters had him on a roll. With her boys all scattering, leaving only Bertak dangling uncomfortably, the elder’s expression is too hooded for him to read. He’s surprised, impressed by how fluidly she’s managing her new prosthesis. Shouldn’t that lighten her mood, her opinion of them?
The green-haired woman halts a pace away from their table. As she speaks, her eyes bore into the centre of the table. Thae looks quizzical, but Hugo has no answer. Rian’s attentive, uncaring that Atheran isn’t making eye contact. Anuk is playing with her mug, one he suspects might be empty.
“Oi don’t trust adventurers. An’ it seems some of our troubles arrived at yer backs.” Hugo bites back the urge to respond, channels Rian, impassivity in the face of the woman’s words. He can’t look at Anuk, hopes that her response isn’t ‘bang’.
“Ye’ve done some good, an’ all. If yez’re true about calmin’ the forest troubles we owe yez gratitude. But…” Atheran’s gaze is steel, unshifting from the centre of the table. He’s amazed the wood doesn’t smoulder from the intensity. “Yez’re on a dangerous path. What oi saw wasn’t an interrogation, it was a cat playin’ with a fookin mouse.” As Atheran sighs, Hugo reads a change of gear. He hears Anuk’s mug scrape as the pale girl looks up, fury etching her face.
The elder continues unabashed. “But we couldn’t have trusted that fookin bandit, and Gods know we couldn’t feed ‘im. And we didn’t need another cont leavin’ here wit’ ‘Highbarrow’ on his lips.” Hugo looks up at Anuk, frozen confusion replacing her venom. Atheran seems oblivious. “Between yer deal wit’ the goblins and maybe a farm inside the hill, we moight survive the winter…” She seems to be flagging.
Thae is staring through the table now, perhaps contemplating the torture, the murder. Hugo’s surprised when Rian breaks the silence. “We’ve talked, Atheran. We’re going to settle things with the Iron Rams.” Shockingly, the big guy has more to say. “If we can, we’ll send some merchants here from Thornwood.” That wasn’t discussed, but Hugo isn’t going to argue the toss. The old woman looks up, stares each of them in the eye. “Thanks, Rian…all of yez.” She barks over her shoulder to Bertak, who jumps. “An’ I’m sure they had nothin to do wit’ moi little surprise, eh Bert?”
She laughs as the smith’s broad face becomes cherry-red, seems to take some pity as her tone relents. “Get these thirsty people some glasses, man. And a pair for us, too.” Atheran produces a green, thick glassed bottle, label unrecognisable to Hugo, places it at the centre of the table. Everyone seems dazed, spun by Atheran’s vacillation. Silently, Anuk turns the bottle. The label isn’t in Common, rather a crabby script Hugo doesn’t recognise. The girl frowns, looks like she’s racking her brains.
Atheran offers her a smile as she reaches for the bottle, Bertak hurrying back with some very small glasses dwarfed in his hands. Anuk appears puzzled in face of the label and the friendly gesture from her detractor, nods and returns the bottle to the hunter. Atheran pulls the cork and pours six snifters. The liquid is dark brown, viscous, smells like bitter herbs. Potently alcoholic, Hugo imagines he can see a distortion over the shots like the air above a grill.
Anuk can’t contain herself, bursts out “That can’t be…?” Atheran’s gaze locks on hers, not unkindly, but flat. “…is that Orcish Grog? Isn’t that ill…” Atheran now looks amused, derisive. “Aye, some fookin kingdom turds pronounced it illegal.” Her face softens marginally, tossing Anuk a bone. “It’s pronounced ‘Grahk’. Give it a try, girl.” As if to prove that the stuff’s safe, the older woman knocks back her shot. She notices Hugo’s scrutiny, turns her eyes to him. They don’t, he consoles himself, appear to be watering.
The group, each mustering some courage, take their shots. Thae imbibes the slightest nip, rolling the liquid around, identifying flavours. The half-elf doesn’t seem sickened. Rian and Anuk seem determined to down the alcohol in one. Again, he feels heartened that they react to a strong spirit, maybe a whiskey. Hugo tries to ignore the pungency, the medicinal smell. Tries not to inhale at all as he empties the shot into his throat, hoping to miss his tongue entirely.
This is a massive mistake as the herbs’ pungency fills his nostrils. He snorts, the liquid scorching his throat propelled straight into his windpipe. Coughs, almost spattering Bertak’s glass. The smith shields his drink as Atheran gives Hugo an amused look. “That good, your highness?” He tries to catch his breath, feels wreathed in high-proofed fumes. He’s shocked when the woman slaps his back, her hand like solid oak. Thankfully, the startling impact allows him to gasp breath.
It hits him that he isn’t ashamed to be sitting there with tears in his eyes. His friends – he realises that he does think of them that way – are viewing him without distaste, without contempt. Anuk, as he watches, appears to be suppressing a look of concern. Even Atheran seems to have thawed, sadly demonstrated by refilling his glass.
The Grahk isn’t so bad, really, once he recovers from the shock. He has learned to associate the tingle growing in his cheekbones with approaching inebriation. It’s something of a habit, closely monitoring himself in situations where he’d like the other person to feel they have an advantage. But this isn’t that. Now, he only foresees a delicate morning tomorrow. Hell with it, he thinks.
They go through a few rounds in near silence; each lost in their own thoughts. Hugo, however, finds himself lost in Atheran’s. The woman’s back to staring through the table. Not absent – she replenishes their glasses as soon as they’re emptied – but…wrestling, he guesses. Bertak, for his part, is declining every other round. Atheran declines to comment or mock. Hugo suspects the pair have done this before.
As the glow suffuses him, he’s shocked that the bottle is half-empty, worries about confronting bandits with a raging hangover. His contemplation’s forgotten as Atheran raises her eyes, steel in the forest green of her irises. She begins, haltingly, to speak.
“I know yer feelin’ invincible about now.” She begins, looks ready to abandon the thought in favour of the bottle. Hugo senses the temptation, watches the woman redouble her focus. Decades drop away as she speaks of times long passed.
-x-
Atheran’s pissed off, a relative novelty at this time of her life. They – that is, the Rough Diamonds – are half a day out from town. Yet another town, another in an endless list of little places that think they’re special. The shitty little settlement merges with a dozen whose names she already forgot. Or discarded, she thinks, fuming as she does. As ever, she doesn’t have to say a word for Rosita to catch her mood. The woman’s nearly 10’ tall, all leathery grey hide, but possesses more emotional intelligence than anyone she’s met.
“Not fret, Atran.” Rosita boasts a deeper voice than most men, yet somehow the broken Common radiates compassion. “Oi just get so fekkin’ angry, Rosie.” She sighs, folds into herself as her disquiet dawns on the rest of the group. Ash, a tall half-elf with hair the colour of a sapphire in sunshine, swings in to help Rosita. “Aww Atheran, who cares how a bunch of imbeciles view us?” Normally, the woman’s words hold weight – after all, she had invested a shocking value of gold into permanent, perfect hair colour before Atheran chose a tone for herself. But she isn’t swayed now.
Harlan, an actual gnome, and the party’s sneak thief, twists their face into a sneer. “Fuck ‘em, we did our work, we earned their money, we won. Fuck them.” As ever, D’rok, their spellslinger, adopts a measured approach. He’s tall, lightly muscled for a human, emaciated for a half-orc. Handsome despite the green of his skin, the oversized lower canines projecting towards his nose. “It’s just a word, Atheran.” Always so formal with her.
“It’s a contemptuous word, D’rok, they was happy for us t’risk wer lives, but then we’re ‘The Mongrels’ to ‘em?” She knows she’s too angry, that the sorcerer doesn’t deserve her bile, but the hurt’s too raw. Still, he looks at her without judgement – at least without negative judgment – shrugs, offers her a smile. Full of warmth and understanding. “Then I’ll defer to my esteemed colleague, ‘Ran. We got their bastard money.” Her name doesn’t contract well at all, and D’rok is the only one for whom it works. Maybe it’s the tusks…
…and then the forest suddenly feels WRONG. Her senses flood as the birds scatter, throwing themselves into the air from the canopy above them. She’s too distracted. She’s supposed to be on point and they’re all standing in a knot... D’rok’s smile twists into incomprehension as he sees her shift. His mouth begins to move as something huge, moving too fast, cannonballs through the leaves and branches obscuring the sky.
Trained by many battles together, they begin to react. But too slowly without her ears, without any warning of danger. Ash blurs, her indistinct aura seeming to melt and expand like honeycomb in a hot pot. Harlan’s eyes are darting towards cover when a nightmare head, jaws crammed with daggers, engulfs the gnome. A blur as something huge lands among them, scattering the group.
Her instincts at least served to propel her away from the thing’s monstrous bulk. She hears roars as Rosita and Ash, the half-elf now in the form of a huge bear, are pinned under a huge lizard’s haunches. Her instincts scream ‘dragon’ but the shape is all wrong. As she tries desperately to right herself and bring her bow to bear, Atheran is relieved to see that D’rok managed to evade the monster’s crashing weight. The half-orc weaves complex patterns into the air as sparks emit from his fingertips.
Then his face slackens into incomprehension as a blur whips towards him. His leather armour suddenly tents at the solar plexus. He is spun slightly by the unseen impact, the momentum turning him to face her. There’s a wound through his chest, grievous enough without the gouts of black liquid mixing with his life’s blood. As she screams his name, she watches the veins in his neck darken, the look on his face heartbreaking. His lips form the word ‘sorry’ as his eyes begin to dull.
The giant, bipedal lizard flares its wings as Rosita shoulders it away. Ash skitters out from under, back in her natural form, already invoking healing magic for D’rok. Their escape saves Atheran’s life as the wyvern’s prehensile neck propels the nightmare of its mouth towards her. Could she reason in the instant, she would have cursed her friends. Instead, her body shudders with shock and her blood runs cold. Teeth, long as daggers, snack shut on her thigh and she falls like a puppet.
As she sinks through frozen horror, D’rok’s slackening mouth poorly describes ‘I’ then embarks on an ‘L’ before he drops into absentia. Even the whites of his eyes are black in the flood of toxins. Ash’s expression whips through confusion, panic, then grim determination as her magic finds no purchase on the sorcerer. She turns the green wave of power onto Atheran instead. A line around her upper thigh flies from frozen numbness to fiery agony as she feels flesh knit, every nerve ending in her groin and upper thigh screaming. The rest of her leg feels light, absent any pain at all.
The wet pumping sensation slows, stops as her befuddled brain watches the tip of the monster’s tail, wickedly barbed, plunge repeatedly through Ash’s ribs and lungs. The shocked silence splits into screams. She realises that her own and the druid’s voices are raised in agony, the latter’s quickly descending into a wheezing, gurgling mockery. Atheran tries to pull herself to her feet, but gravity and perspective don’t make sense. The foot she can’t feel has no purchase, while the other skids, kicks spastically.
The thing that has killed her, killed her friends, turns on her with victory and callous joy in its yellow eyes. Seems to savour for a moment before opening a mouth like the gates of hell. And suddenly she’s grabbed under the arms, bodily thrown backwards as Rosita screams fury into the nightmare’s face. The Goliath’s skin is already streaked with blood, battle axe swinging towards the monster. Rosita’s no threat to the wyvern, and it knows that. Still, the half giant’s shouting.
“RUN, ATRAN! D’ROK WANT YOU LIVE, ATRAN! ROSITA WANT SOMEONE REMEMBER DIAMOND! REMEMBER DIAMOND, NOT MONGREL!” Atheran wants to fight, to object, to defy her friend, but she knows she isn’t strong enough. The monster is lacerating Rosita, pouring poison into her blood. Her friend is climbing into the thing’s craw, screaming for her to go. Atheran goes, arms dragging her rebellious body across the forest floor.
