A/N: Oh good grief. This is a long one. I rewrote it 2 and ½ times but it still comes off kinda ramble-y in parts to me, but that could be because I've been staring at it for about a month. Anyway, I delved into Khelgar's point-of-view for a bit, and tried to make him gruffer and seem more experienced (the game did say he'd been traveling the Sword Coast for a year). The two versions of his speech are intentional. The battle scene was hard to write, I do hope I didn't botch it too badly. I've also realized that I've made Piper an inconsistent character. I'm hoping that becomes part of her charm.
Heavier language in this one. Emotions run high, foul words fly. Yes, I made that up.
Oh, and don't take the thugs too seriously. I didn't. :)
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Hounded
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"Hnh! Coming outside in the middle of a fight..."
He hustled over the inn's threshold, his boots squishing deeper into the bog with each step. This swamp heat had a way of weighting down everything in sight; even his beard, runty though it was, hung lank and heavy from his face. It certainly didn't improve his mood any.
Pure, crisp mountain air was what Khelgar craved, what he missed, and what his lungs would damn well prefer to breathe.
He swiped a hand over his brow and glared blearily up at the three peacocks who had insisted he come outside with them.
"Can't say as I like denying the public some good entertainment, but if you lads were wanting to spare the patrons from boredom and yourselves from broken faces, well then that I can understand. Hold up though..."
Grinning, Khelgar jabbed a thumb towards the inn's ramshackle paddock. "Got some cocks and heifers within eyeshot, so maybe we'd best take this elsewhere. Wounded pride's a bitch, especially when the livestock's laughing at ya."
"Pocket-size wants a dagger in his belly, boys." The sneering head man withdrew a knife from his breast belt, nodding at his chums to do the same. The glint of their blades, oiled and whetted not long ago by the looks of them, shone even under the grey overcast.
"Pretty, ain't they, dwarf?"
This man was smaller. From the way he hovered just an arm's length from the leader, never quite out of the larger human's shadow, Khelgar figured he was the mouthy runt of the litter. And by his clumsy handling of the blade and thick tongue, he was also fresh off the haystack.
"They was gettin' dull from use, see...just you give Nathelian what he asks for."
"If the asking were for a beating, then I'd be glad to answer. Any other questions ya'd just better keep to yourselves." Khelgar cracked his knuckles, huffing through his nostrils. This fight wasn't going to be worth a drop of orc piss, he could feel it.
"Thick from head to toe, is it? Look, we know you took a sight-seeing trip into the eastern caverns and fattened up your pockets from the loot." Nathelian eased forward a step. His wariness made Khelgar's impatience flare.
"The innkeeper made generous eyes at you, and we want every bit of his 'kindness'. Every last copper, and every scrap he thumbed his nose at." He flicked his knife point toward the golden-hafted morningstar at Khelgar's hip, the head wrapped in dampened canvas. "'Specially that little bundle."
Khelgar grunted. "Tell ya what. You lads put away your mothers' sewing needles and have it out with me, fist to fist like. And if you just happen to get lucky and beat the ever-loving shit out of me," he chortled, "then you get rights to all I own. Down to the skivvies."
"Watch 'im, Nath. He's cracked in the head, I tell ya." The previously mute one muttered under his breath and squint an eye at Khelgar.
"Cracked in the head? Not with you three pussyfooting around, I'm not!" Khelgar growled. "Listen ya pantywaists, I didn't tramp all the way into this swamp just for a frolic and a chat. Now one of ya hit me!" He curled his hands into ready fists, hunkering down in the mossy earth to get a sure footing.
Nathelian blinked down at him. "Wait just one moment, you. You mean you actually want us to—"
A caterwauling squeak suddenly rang out from the west. The thugs jerked around on their heels and Khelgar, annoyed by the interruption, crooked his head around their gaits.
There was a girl standing off on one side of the inn's footpath next to the public well. She fiddled with what Khelgar guessed was the bucket, making as much racket as possible while she was at it. After a few moments, she dropped it back in again with a wet clank. She poked a waterskin into her belt—crammed with a load of junk—and meandered on her way to the inn's entrance, humming.
When she noticed the four of them staring at her, the lamebrains mumbling to each other with Khelgar fuming in their shadows, she gave a laugh and a half-wave in their direction.
"Sorry about the noise. Winches are a bit...rusty..." The girl had frozen. Her eyes lingered on Khelgar, her blanched face pinched with...panic? He barely had the time to wonder why in the hell she was gawking at him like he was a stark-naked ogre before she was hotfooting toward the inn.
But Nathelian blocked her path.
"Hold on there, love. I...feel a might guilty for asking, but we're, eh, having a spot of trouble getting this dwarf here to...pay the...toll."
"What in Moradin's chamber pot are ya talking about?" Khelgar roared.
The girl frowned down on him, long and hard, slowly regaining the color in her cheeks.
He frowned right on back. "What?" He wasn't here for a staring match, but at this point, he figured on taking whatever he could get.
She raised her eyebrows and eyed Nathelian, her fingers hovering over a club at her hip. "A toll, hmm?"
"That's right, love. I do hope you'll be more agreeable than the dwa—"
An annoyed growl burst from Khelgar's throat, and he marched in front of the mute one, heaving a punch at his crotch. No reason to strain and aim for something above fist level anyway. "You're fighting me, damn you, not the swamp girl!"
There was a dull thud; she had taken advantage of the distraction and bashed Nathelian with her club. He collapsed unconscious to the ground.
The runt of the group yelled in protest and slashed at her, but yowled in pain when some grey beast vaulted out of the underbrush to sink its teeth into his ankle.
Thud. Thud.
Khelgar blinked. All three hotheads lay no more than an arm's length from each other, their limbs at weird angles. The girl stood in the midst of them, breathing like a winded mare, and flanked by some dog.
It was the worst brawl he'd had in years. He'd only landed one blow. No matter if it was in the bollocks, it was still one blow.
He glared up at her. "Now why the hell did ya go and do that for? You and your mangy dog butchered a ripe opportunity!"
She tucked the club away. Despite the easy grin on her face, she was still keeping a wide berth between the both of them. Khelgar still couldn't for the life of him figure out why.
"A ripe opportunity to die over a few coins?" She crouched, tangling her fingers in the dog's fur and scratching him behind the ears. He caught a glimpse of bloodstains on her leathered knees. "And he's not a dog. He's a coyote. Aren't you, boy?"
The animal cocked its head at Khelgar like he was an idiot.
"Hnh. Well, the spineless toads did drag you into their mess..." Now that the frustration had eased, he was a bit amused. "But you handled yourself well, swamp girl, and even if you did ruin my fight, they really weren't worth my time."
He nudged Nathelian's nearby boot with his own and then offered a hand. "Name's Khelgar by the way, of the Clan Ironfist."
All her wariness vanished in an instant and she stepped forward over one of the fallen torsos, giving his hand a decent shake. "Piper Owens, of the Harbormen. I'm beyond relieved to see that you're not a duergar."
He raised his brows at that odd greeting. But humans were a queer lot no matter which end of the Sword Coast, so he decided not to be insulted.
Now that this 'Piper' was up close, he got a strong whiff of stale dirt and blood. A healthy dose of both were in her ginger up-do. Red lines stood out in the whites of her dark eyes and a purple oblong bruise stretched across her right cheek.
Poor lass was a damned mess.
Khelgar finally hooted out a laugh. "Well now, you look pretty beat up, which means you probably deserve a drink. What do ya say to a pint or three in the inn here, on me, from one traveler to another?"
Her grin turned downright smarmy. "Careening down the path of Master Boozehound, hmm? The hour can't be much past highsun, though, so I'd say you have a fighting chance. But, what about your...admirers?" Nathelian's leg twitched, drawing her bemused gaze.
"Eh, well..." Khelgar fiddled with the mithral band around his beard tip. "Not a prison joint for miles, so the innkeeper will have to put up with 'em until he can cart 'em up to the nearest town. Leilon maybe. Anyway, I've got me a length of rope up in that chicken coop of a room they gave me and..."
He glanced around for a moment, smirking when his eyes landed on the nearby paddock. "How about we bind these turtledoves together and leash 'em where their kind'll be welcome, hnh?"
Without dallying around for an answer, he waved a hand for her to follow, saying, "Tell me something, lass. What do you know about constrictor knots...?"
The dwarf had a spoonful of three-meat stew dangling over his bowl, gaping at Piper like a listless tadpole. His eyes looked crossed. "Wait jus' a mo. Ya mean ta tell me ya jus' let the lizard bastards go? They were chompin' at the bit fer a roughhouse, and you and yer kissin' cousin jus'...jus'..."
Piper chipped away a piece of her cinnamon stick with her teeth, barely keeping a grin in check as she chewed.
"What? You can't blame me and Bev for taking advantage of a convenient illusion. 'A ripe opportunity', as you so eloquently put it, remember? When you were sober?" She reclined deeper into the back of her chair, considering with a lazy grin that When You Were Sober would make for an excellent book title. She downed the last of her third blackcurrant cider; it was tart and sweet all in one.
"Besides. Me? The avatar of a Stone God? Seriously. If the Scaly Kin can't tell the difference between a human girl covered in a ghostly visage spell and their divine being of masonry, then this 'Stone God' must be the butt-end of many a celestial wisecrack up there." She pointed towards the heavens.
The dwarf's spoon drooped; beef, pork and chicken alike smattering back into his bowl. He grumbled and belched simultaneously. "Bah. Shoulda jus' punched 'em."
He pronounced 'punched' like 'poonched'.
Jorik's serving girl and maid, Vesa, came to bustle around their table, tally their bills and gather the dishes that Khelgar had plowed through into her dingy apron.
The young woman kept tossing him curious, yet wary, glances. Piper really couldn't blame her. Dwarves were nonexistent in the Mere, if Daeghun's scant accounts were anything to go by. But this Khelgar Ironfist—the name alone made her mouth twitch—had proven to be the most amusing person she'd ever met and so, despite the drowsy warmth of the cider lulling in her belly, she felt a thrill of excitement at her luck. She had never met one of the Stout Folk before.
Except for the duergar, of course...
Piper frowned, glancing around the Willow's modest common room. The few afternoon customers milled from one worn armchair to the next, the worries of the road clear in their haggard faces. Her eyes caught on the popping fire.
An odd orange light flickered along her bedroom walls. She threw the bedclothes to one side and stumbled to her window, smelling the flames before she saw them. Across the village stream, the Starling barn was ablaze, black plumes of acrid smoke pouring from the loft. And over the lawns, in the darting light, small, hunched figures winked in and out of sight...
She blinked, slow and groggy, and took an annoyingly sharp intake of breath when the innkeeper himself appeared out of nowhere to clink a trio of dusty potion vials on the table.
"Well, young miss, Lady Luck must've winked in your direction." Jorik's voice rumbled. "I had to resort to some digging around in the upstairs cabinets. Only someone desperate for coin sells their healing potions while in the Mere, you see, and I'm no alchemist to brew my own."
"Oh, yes. Yes, thank you." Piper stored the cool vials in a mercifully empty nook next to Brother Merring's cheesecloth full of medicinal herbs and Tarmas' last minute—and therefore inferior—concoctions. They weren't true potions, as she understood it, since the poor wizard never seemed to have enough ingredients or time to properly brew them. He was wasted in a swamp, bless his grouchy heart.
"I'll have Vesa tally the potions with the rest of your account. You just let me know when you're fit to head out. And if you change your mind and decide on a bed for you and your dwarf," Khelgar choked on his ale, "then leave word at the bar."
Piper laughed. "Whoa there, we're not together." She glanced at the dwarf, who was fighting valiantly against coughing up a lung.
"Of course, of course." Jorik wore a crooked little smile that suggested he didn't quite believe her. He thumped Khelgar on the back a few times. "I still think you'd enjoy our rooms, miss. They're cozy—"
"I think the word yer lookin' fer is 'cramped'." The dwarf finally managed to croak.
"They're cozy, and the beds are chock-full of the finest pepperidge leaves—I harvested them from the trees myself—so you needn't worry about a poke in the eye from a rogue straw shaft. Straw is for my animals, not my customers." He grinned.
The exhaustion prickling at Piper's eyelids intensified. A bare three hours of sleep interrupted by screams and the roar of raid-fires, not to mention hightailing it through muck and mire for hours with no one but Rana for company, well...all that sure made a bed sound irresistible.
"Trust me, sir, I would love nothing more than to collapse onto one of your softest leaf-beds, leathers and all," she winked, "but I can't linger around for nightfall. Sir Ironguts here and I were just—"
A pounding thud echoed from the foyer. Piper jumped, twisting around in her seat. Something had thundered hard into the front door of the inn. That was...odd.
"Shitting Hells." There was a bang; Jorik must've slammed his fist—or maybe even his head—onto the table. "Day-long drunks can't even uncross their godsdamned eyes long enough to use a doorknob. That'll be the second door this month!"
Fingers unconsciously digging into the table's grain, Piper stared at the entrance, listening; faint scratches came from outside and the wood bulged from impact.
Back home, Daeghun's handcrafted panels had looked the exact same way right when the duergar had decided to kick them in.
The noise came again, and again, then a fourth time, until a jagged crack ran from the lintel to the sill. The other patrons were retreating toward the back of the inn by now.
Khelgar grunted. "Bah, I think that queen heifer o' yers has jus' gotten loose, Jorik. Damn thing's tryin' ta bust down the door's all."
Then shattering glass could be heard from the floor above, followed by yells and shrieks.
"That's one acrobatic cow, don't you think?" The Addler's worn grip was in Piper's hand before the words left her mouth.
Wooden planks finally splintered in on themselves, some still clinging to the hinges while others tumbled across the floor.
A pair of duergar shook the debris from their shoulders and naked heads. After them, a taller, darker figure emerged into the foyer. Piper stumbled up from her chair, cold fear lacing along the sides of her face.
Gods, not again.
The creature's metallic skin was a bed of spikes, its own overlong bones protruding through the flesh. Every limb ended in barbs. Even its teeth, which were bared in between blackened lips, were two rows of sickly yellow points.
It raised a claw to caress the chain-link torque around its neck, and a fierce tremor passed through the bladeling's body. With a hiss, violet eyes focused on Piper's. Had the collar sensed her fear or the piece of silver in her pack? Probably wasn't wise to ask.
"The Kalach-Cha, there she is, kill her!" Snarling, the bladeling sprung forward.
No hesitation allowed.
Piper muttered a rehearsed lyric under her breath and flared her hand outward, giving a shout. One clear note, like that of a horn, radiated from her throat and splayed fingers. Bladeling and duergar alike keeled over, flailing onto their backs as she began the mental countdown.
6...
Clearly drunk out of his mind, Khelgar had vaulted the table and blundered right into the path of the spell, landing on his stomach.
"Watch yer aim, swamp girl!"
5...
Piper grimaced, running to his side. "Well, sorry, but you should watch where you're going! I'm not exactly practiced at this kind of thing!"
4...
She threw the Addler back towards her pack, knowing that she only had mere seconds, and jerked Khelgar's axe from his hip. "Mind if I borrow this?"
3...
Heart pounding in her ears, she heaved the weapon in a downward thrust. The wedge of metal buried deep in the bladeling's shrieking mouth. There was a wet crack and a mess of dark blood issued onto her face. Foul. Thick.
2...
In the corner of her eye, both duergar twitched as they struggled against the magic. Piper sank the axe into one's neck with such force, that a large chink was carved out of the wooden floor below. She hoped Jorik would understand.
1...
"Time!" She shouted to no one in particular, and turned to block the remaining duergar's jab at her waist. But just like with Webb during the Brawl, and in a horrible moment of déjà vu, she tired easily. The wiry dwarf disarmed her slack grip with ease. She landed painfully on her tailbone when he hurled her to the floor, his grooved knee-guards knocking the breath out of her. His ashen face twisted into a sneer that said he was going to gut her right here, right now. And he was going to relish it.
"Oh no ya don't, cousin."
The duergar's torso ripped apart where Khelgar cleaved him in twain, the retrieved axe in a knuckle-white grasp. He roared in triumph.
At first, Piper was too stunned to even move.
But then she kicked away the dead weight on top of her and rolled over, staining her bare hands crimson as she compulsively wiped the blood and gore from her front. It was everywhere; oozing down the creases of her leathers and creeping along her neck; it was on her face, in her hair, even in her mouth. She knelt forward on all fours and spit a mouthful of it onto the wood below her face, coughing and fighting the gags.
She found that she really didn't care about the condition of Jorik's floor anymore.
A brawny arm hauled her up.
"On yer feet, swamp girl, this ain't over yet! Tavern master's got them other customers down in the cellar, so's jus' you and me!" Piper let him drag her towards the stairs. "Grab yerself a kitchen knife and let's get goin'!"
The overpowering tang of blood was making Piper's stomach churn.
She sat heavily on the lichen-covered tree trunk, which apparently served as a porch bench for the more outdoorsy customer. Funny, since the Willow didn't even have a porch. Just one continuous, sprawling yard.
A yard now littered with broken shutters and...entrails. Behind her, there was a mess of animal and human remains. The duergar had taken pleasure in eviscerating the livestock, along with the incapacitated amateur thieves, hands still lashed to the paddock fencing.
'How about we bind these turtledoves together and leash 'em where their kind'll be welcome...?'
Piper shivered, and rummaged through her pack for the harvest cloak. In truth, the weather was too warm, but her hair was still cool and damp in its knot from the hurried wash in Jorik's little tub, so the hood would be welcome. She winced when her palm nicked on something jagged.
It was the piece of silver. Frowning, she rolled it around in her hands. She'd never looked at the thing properly back in the ruins, what with Bevil grousing in her ear to 'get a move on'. The unusual surface rippled in iridescent colors, like a pearl from Neverwinter that Retta had once shown her. It was unlike any silver that she had ever seen or read about. It was far too vibrant. Too pure. Too fluid. She half expected the metal to liquefy and pool right into her lap.
"What are you still doing here? I told you to be on your way."
Piper hid the silver in her pack again, unsure of the reason for her caution, but feeling a deep-rooted possessiveness nonetheless.
"I thought I should lend a hand with...Vesa's remains. And..." She nodded towards the ruined and bloodied paddock.
Jorik shook his head, mouth terse. "That won't be necessary." And then in a quieter voice, "Look. I calmed the others when they started bombarding you with all those questions, even though I'm itching from some of the same questions myself. Call it a favor for old Daeghun and his ward."
His face darkened. "But I want you away from here. I don't know what those beasts were, or why they were after you. I do know that they killed the best serving girl I've had in years, slaughtered my animals and those poor sods there. And they put the fright in what few customers I had, all just to get their hands on you." He was almost hollering now.
Pouring saltwater into her eyes would've stung less than those words. The importance of Daeghun's warning rang in her ears all over again. 'Any dalliances from now until Neverwinter will put you at risk', he'd said. She never even considered the danger to anyone else. And now an innocent girl was dead.
Khelgar chose that exact moment to bluster through the nonexistent front door. The liquor hadn't quite evaporated from his veins yet. He brushed against Jorik in the lightest of bumps, but apparently that was enough. The innkeeper cracked.
"And by the gods, take your fucking dwarf with you!"
Piper's entire face burned with guilt and anger and a touch of embarrassment. "I told you. We're. Not. Together."
"Bullshit." Jorik made a cutting motion with his arm. "Coming in together? Sharing meals together? Fighting together like that? Now you can leave together. Get off my property, the both of you." He turned on his heel.
Piper opened her mouth to tell him just what an ungrateful bastard he really was, when Khelgar caught the innkeeper roughly by the arm, jerking him down to eye level and growling.
"Last I checked, tavern master, me and the swamp girl were the ones doin' all the fightin' while you ferreted yerself down in the cellar with the rest of the womenfolk. So don't ya be a wise ass, ya hear?" He huffed away, leaving an infuriated Jorik to return inside.
"Burns me up, I tell ya." The dwarf grumbled at her elbow.
Piper began rummaging through her pack again as he fumed next to her, determined to force her angry fingers into doing something productive, and finally withdrew that elusive harvest cloak. She was so upset, that she was almost finished clasping it around her neck before she realized that it was backwards. She corrected that, and yanked the hood over her cool head a bit harder than necessary.
After a moment, she took a few deep breaths, managing a wry grin.
"Well now, I don't know whether to feel pleasurably flattered, or mildly peeved that a drunken dwarf rushed to defend my integrity. But thanks."
He chuckled, stroking the little band around the tip of his beard. "Ah, go on now."
"Yes, I am. Even my insensitive nose won't allow me to linger anymore." Piper smiled.
"Aye." He crinkled his wide nostrils. "Eh...by the way. I overheard ya talkin' to our friend, the tavern master. Bound for Neverwinter, are ya?"
"Mhmm. For a little while anyway."
"Well, I'm headin' that way myself, so I got to thinkin', why don't we travel to the city together? Yer stories could use some dwarven spark to 'em, hnh? What do ya say?"
Piper imagined the road alone. She was less than eager at the idea of only birdsong and nature noises to keep her company. And he did own a fine, duergar-cleaving axe...
"You know what, Sir Ironguts? I do believe your boozehound ways make you a wiser man. Besides, it would be silly of us to travel in the same direction, but on parallel pathways, don't you think?" She held her hand out to the dwarf for the second time that afternoon. "As long as you don't get so blind drunk that you somehow think of me as a large punching bag, then we have a deal."
He gave a hearty laugh, and just about jangled her arm out of its socket. "Well, let's get goin' then. And whaddya know, we'll have time for a tale or two before Fort Locke. I tell ya, lass, I haven't had this much raw excitement since I used that trestle table as a battering ram back in Bogen's Pass..."
They headed out, away from The Weeping Willow, and Piper managed to keep a good pace with the surprisingly quick-footed dwarf. She was glad for his outrageous and entertaining company.
Because whenever there was a pause in Khelgar's boisterous laughter, she was forced to notice the wilderness; in the corners of her paranoid eyes, every harmless shadow in the trees was an alien silhouette; every movement in the gloom was a dark assassin.
And every breath of wind was a hiss through pointed teeth. Whispers, murmurs, of Kalach-Cha.