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Shale Whithers
Posted: 27 Aug 2005 12:23 PM |
[OOC: Hope I don't take too many liberties with geography and history--I just like the idea of a quarry for this character's background--I can edit if necessary to resemble in-game history that I'm not aware of.]
One Month Ago
Shale could hear soft tapping as he approached the quarry. The sound heartened him like a song, carried from hammers, chisels and wedges, blows muffled by rock reduced to flour beneath these tools of men.
In centuries past a hundred men walked this road from Port Royal every morning to cut stone blocks that built the palace, that built the sewers, that built the curtain walls and barbican. Even the unglamorous rubble from this operation was carted back and used as fill stone. The stonecutters had the company of a half-dozen blacksmiths and their assistants who manufactured hardened cutting tools as quickly as they were worn out, welding steel bits onto the leading edge of chisels, re-forging smashed wedges, cutting files and rasps, and facing hammers.
These days the quarry, nearly exhausted, drank the sweat of five men who maintained their own tools.
One of those men noticed Shale as he approached the edge of the quarry. Shale nodded to him, smiling beneath his bushy walrus moustache. “Is m’da in?” he called to the man.
The stonecutter nodded tiredly. He was an older man with a fat middle. The skin sagged from underneath arms blotched with faded tattoos, and his sun-bleached hair was matted with dust. After gathering his breath the stonecutter shouted, “Whithers! Yer son is ‘ere!”
Shale clambered down into the quarry, still smiling. The tattooed man watched him with distant fondness and perhaps pity. The elder Whithers pushed his son hard.
Shale walked past an enormous, cyclopean column emerging unfinished from the quarry floor, abandoned from an architect’s dream a lifetime ago. Another man stood still under a canvas shelter drinking water from a ladle, with one eye on Shale as he approached. The other eye was missing from underneath a hollow, drooping lid, the socket plugged by a wad of soft linen.
“Why’ve ye come then?” the one-eyed man asked.
Smiling, Shale announced, “I’ve got a job, da.”
The one-eyed man, Shale’s father, turned his head away and took a long slow drink from the ladle, and then dropped it back into a pail of water mixed with oat mush.
“Ah’m here to pay ye back,” Shale said, and his father cast his eye on him, measuring him. Shale dipped his hand under the heavy purse that rested low against his thigh.
“Cain’t be honest,” his father said.
“Ah’m working for a knight, da.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Ketchin’ rats! An’ whatever else he needs.”
Shales’s father turned his eye on the purse as his son dipped into it, showing a handful of gold coins. The eye remained on that handful of coins as Shale let them spill back onto his purse. “Fer ketchin’ rats?” He snorted and shook his head. “Crooked. That much money, cain’t be honest.”
“What’s it matter?!!” Shale said this, even though it did matter, and matter terribly, to him.
“Cain’t be honest,” his father only repeated.
“Will ye take it?” Shale asked.
His father swirled that murky water in the pail with his hand. “If ye’ve got it, Ah s’pose I had better tek’it. ‘Fore ye…” He shook his head without finishing. “Leave it there,” he said, nodding to the stone slab under the shade of the canvas. Then he turned and walked slowly back in the direction of his work.
Shale pulled a leather thong and the purse slid free of his belt. He dropped it onto the stone next to the pail of drinking water. Then after a pause he turned and left the shade.
The gold sat there throughout the day, untouched, until the men stopped working in the head of the afternoon. Then the elder Whithers collected the purse and took it home. None commented.
Two Days Later
Sir Lothar’s rat problem went away no more than a day after Shale had been retained. He was in the shop when a messenger entered and held a strange conversation with the knight. The messenger itself… Shale had never seen anything like it. An orb, floating at head height and bearing many eyes surrounding a single, great eye. From its toothy maw came fluent common speech, florid from Shale’s point of view. It spoke of Sir Lothar’s rat problem, and of a meeting that might render a solution by agreement.
Water under the bridge. You could still smell the rats, but they plagued the Happy Harpy no more.
I can’t pay back the thousand gold, Shale worried. A month’s wages…shouldn’na taken that much money…
He could sell some things. The good mail shirt that Connavar made for him. The knives from his collection. The treasured stiletto that he dared not even use would bring enough gold to take his old man out of that quarry for good, set him up in a house with servants and animals. But then, who would believe he owned those articles rightly? The stiletto—a gift from a virtual stranger—had a value without measure. Gigglesnort would turn him over to the Port Royal authorities for having it in his possession.
Of course, there was another way. He knew what that water tasted like, mixed with oats to make a thin nutritious slurry and left out for all the quarry workers, to bolster their strength and extend the working day.
Now
The tattooed man swings a heavy hammer overhead, striking an iron splitter that is flattened and mushroomed at its end. Shale holds the bar with both hands and winces slightly at the jarring impact. He repositions the bar, putting its chisel tip back into the seam for the next blow.
Shale is number six at the quarry these days. The men seldom talk about anything other than the work. Its skilled work, teamed with another man for just about everything, not porter work like he did when he was a boy: running tools, gathering water from the reservoir, piling rock, fetching bandages or sometimes fetching fingers, hands, limbs. There are so few stonecutters that all of the men must know how to do every job required, including the smithy work. Everybody carries rock, and everybody cooks to feed the men under the canvas shade sooner or later. All the same, Shale is always the one holding the wedges and the cutters while the tattooed man, or his father for that matter, swing the hammer. They work the quarry from sun up until the afternoon heat becomes unbearable.
At least it puts a little money into his pockets. It’s a good place to think, a clean zone where it is easy to see what really matters. It’s a place that’s hard to walk away from. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Shale Whithers
Posted: 29 Nov 2006 11:10 AM |
Shale lingered on the Port Royale waterfront, leaning against an overturned and rotted skiff, profoundly drunk before noon. As it started to rain he rocked the skiff over to one side and attempted to slide under it, but the vessel leaked so badly that rainwater soon passed through it. A film of scum rose on the stone pavers around him, a mixture of seagull spatter, blood, fish pulp, and some thirsty slimy life resembling algae. As the rain came down harder he cursed, flipped over the creaking skiff and dashed clumsily for the Crossed Cutlasses.
He threw open the plank door on its leather hinges and stepped onto a carpet of soggy straw. He drew glances. Reaching the bar, Shale heard Redbeard bellowing at him to close the damned door, and he realized that Redbeard had been shouting the same thing over and over and he was just now hearing it.
Now, Redbeard knew Shale’s father, the elder Whithers. Unlike him, the younger Whithers was a souse, and a vagabond, and he was a mean drunk where his father was just plain mean. Redbeard raised a balled-up fist to cuff Shale on the ear, but he hesitated. “You stink Whithers! And yah know bettar than tar come in here wit’ da weather outside and leave them doors a-open!”
Nobody in the tavern – especially not the regulars – moved from their seats. The barmaid stood stock still. Shale was a cutter and a drunken fighter, and he was clearly very drunk.
Two thick fingers fired from Redbeard’s fist to point firmly at the door. “Close it,” he said with finality. With his accent it came out sounding like the word “closet”.
Shale hung his head, moustache drooping, and he slowly obliged. Then he sat himself at a long table close to the door, where several other men were seated. Redbeard drew a pint of cheap lager for Shale and it was brought to the table. The barmaid kicked a spittoon over to his side as well.
“Damnedest thang…” Shale said after a time. “Damnedest thang ah ever sees.”
Shale told his story not like a drunken boor, but like a conspirator.
“Damnedest thang…” shaking his head, “C’ain’t know what ter make of it. Ah tell yer ah know whut a knife is foor, an’ ah know whan ah look at a feller, if he’s gonna bleed out in ten steps or in twanty. Ah knows how ter bleed a’ fellar.”
The other men at the table studied their pints. One pulled a knitted wool cap down to cover his ears.
“Seil,” Shale said softly through his droopy moustache, “thet was the lil’ garl’s name. T’was Seil. Ah’ll never furget it. Damnedest thang!”
Shale leaned in as though his drinking companions wanted to hear the details, but he was careful to keep his voice low.
“Ah fall in wit’ these harfling types, right-sized, yer know? Lil’ ladies whut ah met raight here in the Port. An they has got an elf travelin’ wit’em, real serious type, an a dead shot with an arrah. Ah mean dead shot. Know how ter make it hart. Ah don’ mind sayin’, ah was wortchin’ an’ ah saw she know where ter hit a fellar.
“An thare was ‘nuther lady, name Alis. An we go on a baar hunt, daown south, whare the baars is white. An ah ain’ nuver seen baars what is white, so ah goes along. An arfter the hunt, we take them skains ter this lodge inna wood daown south, Mirghul is whut they’s callin’ it. An these right-sized is workin’ they hides and tannin’ these skains, when this lil’ white-skained right-sized ‘pears outta nowhare.
“Ah ain’ nuver seen this’un afore, an’ ah see she’s coughin’ up blood. An ya know oncte inner while yer on the road an’ ya come ‘crosst sum’un what’s hurt, ar sick. An hair’s this hain’ jus’ a-coughin’ up blood. An ah says, ‘You sick girl?’ And she wipes the blood off her mouth, and she’s smilin’. An’ she says, ‘Mah name’s Seil, an’ thayut’s for real!’
“An ah says, ‘Hey sah now we gots a real harfling circus! Let’s throw all them raight-sized into a sack tergethar and see what come out!’
“An that elf, th’one what knows whare ter put an arrah, she asks Seil what in tha hells is wrong with’er?! An Seil says she was attacked. Says onna them other harflings, name a’ Nero, put a blade in her back. Naow, we’re talkin’ ter this hain what’s coughin’ up blood, and she’s lookin’ roun’ at us, an ah can hear when she turn her head, the bones is grindin’ an’ rubbin’ in her neck. Like her neckbones got broke!
“Then all a’ the sudden, this Seil, she starts ter starin’. An her eyes, they fills up with blood. It was like tears, runny like, comin’ outta th’corners, but it was blood and it was bathin’ her eyeballs in red.
“An ah foller her eye an’ ah see that she’s lookin’ at this lady, name Alis.
“An she starts talkin’. An whan she talks, she’s garglin’ on the blood. An’ she says garglin’, ‘Alis…’
“People start clearin’ a path, ‘tween this Seil, an Alis. Don’ nobody wan’ ter be standin’ a’tween em. An this Seil, she look all aroun’ at us, neckbones a poppin’ and rubbin’, and she say, ‘We love her we do!’. Jus’ like that!
“An Seil looks at me, an she say, ‘Ya want ter see haow much?’ An ah says, ‘Ah don’ want nuthin’ from nobody!’ An she says ‘Do ya? Do ya? Do ya? Sure ya do!’ An she says ‘We love you too, we do!’
“An ah says, ‘What’s wrong with you?!’ an she gargles and laughs an’ ah look, an Alis is gone. Jus’ vanish bah magic. Or maybe she runned out inter that wood. But anyhow, a’fore long, we’re all circle-up ‘roun’ that Seil. Me, an the two hain-folk, an’ this fellar who come along for th’ baar-hunt. An’ that Nero, she says she gonna make a move. Say she gon’ toss Seil off a cliff, or sumthin’. An’ that elf is sayin’ she had ‘nuff a’ hain folks altogether.”
Shale takes a long pull from his pint. It’s the first drink he’s taken since the words started spilling out of him. He stares into the tankard, pausing and remembering. The man with the wool cap gets up and moves to another table.
“Sah that Nero, she say she gon’ make a move. An’ Seil is callin’ for Alis, an she smile sah wide that the skain is tearin’ in the carners of her mouth, an’ there’s more blood an’ she’s wipin’ it ‘way.
“An then, that Nero, she tosses a spell at Seil. An’ Seil is like, held thares. Nero say run! But nobody runs. We all jus’ stan’ thare, thankin’ the same thang.”
Another drink from the tankard. Shale sucks the foam out of his moustache looking stricken.
His drinking companion sitting cattycorner at the long table says, “You murdered that girl.”
Shale shakes his head lazily. He winces and smoothes down his moustache. “She say, ‘We got rooms for all of ya. Nice an’ dark.’”
Shale shakes his head again.
“Ah eased a knife inta’ mah hand before Nero even cast the spell. We was all thankin’ the same thang. Ah thank Nero cut her firs’. She stuck this blade raight in her, bury it almos’ up ter the hailt.
“An that Seil, she fall ta her knees, an’ she don’ look too sorry ‘bout havin’ a foot-length a steel rammed through her. Sah Nero yanks it out, and shoves it in ‘gain. An that Seil, she starts ta gargle an’ drool blood down her chin, an’ she laughs. An she say ‘More! More! More!’
“That other harfling, fraind a’ Nero, lil’ girl name a’ Bid, she is starin’ at what we was doin’.
“An ah step in behin’ that Seil, an she’s sayin’ ‘More!’ and ‘Yes!’ an ah run mah knife ‘round her neck like its hog-slaughterin’ time.”
Shale becomes engrossed in the details. “Ya know how you don’ jus’ slash a hog an’ let it bleed out from tha neck? Ya find tha win’pipe an saw it through. Whall that’s jus’ what ah did. ‘Cept it was more like slaughterin’ a lamb, ar a lil’ goat.
“Ah cut that girl clear down ta the bone.
“An Nero is shovin’ her blade in ‘er front, an’ ah steps back, an’ ya know what she does? That Seil, she stan’ up. An then, she slap Nero right ‘crossed tha face. An’ she was garglin’ an gigglin’ when she did it. An we all stan’ back away, jus’ watchin’ this lil’ girl Seil who won’ fall down an’ die.
“Ah was sah scared, when she gets up ah fell raight o’er backwards. An she’s standin’ thare, an she say sumthin’ like ‘We can do this forever.’ An ah thank she meant it!
“Ah left. Ah wen’ back out inter that wood, the Mirghul wood, an’ a walk all the way ter the Plain down that way.
“Man alive, ah hope…” Shale concluded, finally giving in to shock, “…ah hope…ah hope ah never see thet lil’ garl again.” |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Shale Whithers
Posted: 16 Feb 2008 02:22 PM |
Shale rides an oxcart back to Port Royale. The cart carries him along the Northern Highway, a safe distance and several geographical barriers away from the evil forest infested with acolytes to a dead god who stirs.
The cart moves more slowly than he can walk over the round paving stones, so he hops off as soon as he reaches the city and walks around it, lazily making his way across the waterfront. On a whim he continues down the ragpicker's alley, away from the Girdled Gut where he bakes bread all morning and towards the alley's blind pocket where the only way to go is down.
The Black Pearl. Some old acquaintances are here. A blind-drunk halfling who has become a power among mercenaries and bodyguards in the last year or so. Rumor has it the always-armored fellow had in secret acquired a sword that was the source of his renewed renown. Others said he had simply paid his dues and earned a deserved reputation as a proficient warrior. More and more the plate-armored halfling was stinking before the sun had started to set. He was falling into habits and it perhaps foretold a greater fall.
Another halfling crosses Shale's mind. He hasn't checked in with Fennigan in quite a few days. There is nothing to report, no talk. The best he could bring him would be a loaf of fresh crusty bread. Maybe that would be fine.
The knife-fighter is served at the bar - always curiously without wenches, the Black Pearl - and he takes a leather tankard full of sour sudsy ale with a whiskey on the side in a thick-walled glass the size of his fist. He needs the whiskey badly. Raising it to his lips he can detect the tremor in his hand. The odor of mash and charred oak clings to his mustache when he's finished.
Traveling with the witch the night before, he had allowed himself to be surrounded by the dead things that come out of the Nebwood at night. Five of them closed in around him and... Agnes? Astrid. Astrid was her name. Astrid with the bat in her hat... Astrid who breathed a cloud of acid by magic and melted the dead flesh from one of the things, leaving its mess on the seaside sod. The two of them were caught out after dark. He had to cut away their cold white arms as they tried to pull him down, while she swung a spiked flail and left shattered skulls behind them. The danger hadn't been tremendous, but it affected him. He drank now to settle his nerves, hours after the danger had passed.
Shale looks at his hand. He can only steady it by making a fist around his mug. The beer is cool and it leaves a line of froth on his lip. He stretches out his hand, marked with burns and white scars where he has too frequently cut himself on his own blades. Another memory jumps into his mind, a memory from years back when he was a young man, day in and day out loafing around the Lower Port, looking for action.
It was one of the first times he had ever seen Jessup the Younger. His name went out over the port in a wave of whispers. With him was a great bald-headed man. Shale knew he was a pit-fighter, named Jake the Bone-Breaker or something similar. He had seen the pit, where secret wagers were put down on a blood-stained canvas. The bald-head carried a mallet for driving tent-pegs, its head mushroomed at either end. He and Jessup were leading a third. In some sort of public exhibition, this blonde-haired man allowed Jessup's pit-fighter to flatten his outstretched hand with the mallet. It probably crippled him. But, Shale later learned, it got him out of the Black Hand and settled his accounts with Jessup.
"Durned fool," Shale says every time he thinks about that man. He flexes his fist and picks up the leather tankard, finishes his ale and plunks the thing down on the bar. His hand still ain't steady, so he has another whiskey, and then takes two more over to where Timik is sitting with a table all to his self. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Shale Whithers
Posted: 20 Sep 2009 10:26 AM |
"You lie!!!"
One of Shale's drinking partners shouted the challenge across the table in the Girdled Gut.
Shale was waiting for bread to rise. He wore a leather apron down his chest and his wiry arms were covered in flour up to the elbows. In the time it took him to drink three tankards of ale, the dough would be ready and he'd go back into the kitchen and punch it down, and form it into loaves. Now he was finishing his second ale and the tale of a recent adventure... an accidental adventure at that.
"T'ain't lyin', an' that's thah truth!" Shale responded. "Ah'll say it 'gain. Sumthin' strange is happenin' in th' Hellgate, true 'nuff. Ah tells ya ah was whisked 'way ter the volcano whut belongs ter NARUTH!!"
"Yer crazy," replied another man seated at the table. "Always with th' stories..."
"Its true!" protested Shale. His mustache bristled as he looked around the table. Everyone thought he was lying!
"If yer da was here, he'd slap yer mudder!" said one.
"Har! Nobody knows who his fadder is!" joked another.
Shale's fist slid across the table with a stiff-arm shot and squashed the nose of the joker, who flipped off the bench and showered those behind him with ale. Shale knew who his father was, and he was damned proud of his name.
"Jus' drunk talk Shale..." one of the drinkers offered in response to the blow, "Jus' yankin' yer chain..."
Things got quiet then and Shale retold his rather tall tale. "Ah says, it was like dis... "
"One minnit ah'm in th' Hellgate. An' ah see dis ladder, an' ah says ah'm gonna sit on it fur a spell ter fix mah shoe what come untied, an so's ah sits."
"Nex' thank ah knows, ah kin feel some shakin' on the ladder, like sum'uns climbin' down on ter me. Ah looks up, don' see nuthin', but ah feels the ladder is moovin. An ah steps on ter the ladder, an don' ya know it, when ah steps off 'gain, ah'm in some kinder volcano!"
"Now ah had a cleaver from da kitchen hangin' on mah belt. Lucky thang too! 'cause ah sees this critter comin' for me, lookin' like a flamin' snake wit arms an' two swards, and th' swards is made o' flame too!"
"T'was a salamander! An he come at me a slatherin' an' swangin' them swards, but ah start swangin' this big cleaver an' a buries it a'tween his flamin' eyes!"
"So ah'm in these tubes er tunnels, what been cut thrah the stone bah th' flows a' lava, an' ah gots ter find mah way aoutta theres! So ah'm movin' down dem tunnels, real cahrfull like, an' they is full o' these critters! But they's only comin' et me in ones an' twos, so ah'm cuttin' em daown as fas' as ah kin... an' ahm purdy fas', y'all know thet."
"Must cut daown ten er twenny o' them thangs, an' these tunnels is fulla dead ainds, but ah finds mah way aout. An whare wuz ah? On the side o' Naruth's Fury, the volcano whut lay all the way south o' Icy Vale! Now ah been ter them mountains a'fores, fightin' wit dem orcs, so ah know if ah gits ter someplace whare ah kin see orcs, ah'm headin' inter the raight direction!"
"So ah start climbing doawn the saeid o' that volcano, an ah'm walkin' next ter the rivers a lava, an' the air is hotter'n... hotter'n..."
Shale tried to think of a metaphor from the Girdled Gut's kitchens, and as he did so, he remembered his bread rising and all of the rest of the work ahead of him that morning. He slapped the rough wooden tabletop and pronounced the end of his tale: "An they was giants thrawin' rocks, an they was a whole fortress fulla orcs, but ah faound mah way ter Icy Vale, and ah jus' now got back ter the Port!"
The man lying on his back in the straw with his nose squashed flat with his face raised a defiant fist into the air.
"Lies!!!" |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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