Death to the Grand Guild

“Before the Guild, men were just barbarians. They created nothing, surviving by the pillaging of others. We showed them a better way, a kinder way, through trade. We provided them with civilization, and without us, they would perish.”

The Grand Guild by Arland Breeston

Prologue

His eyes were focused on the outer wards of Breeston below as he perched along the city wall. The two moons above waned in opposing crescents that gave the appearance that the night was looking upon him.

Behind him, the fog was rolling in from the harbour and seeping into the city as he waited. His thoughts were frequent dreams of long ago, haunted by those memories, and in those memories were people long forgotten, and many times he wondered if they were real.

“You’re losing your wits,” he mumbles.

He was fatigued, and his journey from the arid lands of the east was weeks ago, enduring passage on river cogs and many merchant wagons along rutted roads.

A poachers skiff took him to the village of Coates, and at that point, he needed help to continue to Breeston, a sordid help from a smuggler who had assured him that the constables had the harbour locked.

The only way in was with a merchant who owned a guild’s pin, and this smuggler, a lowlife of a man possessed one.

The smuggler had a good thing going. He sold tortoise leaf, pelts, and skins from the swamps surrounding Coates to the river city of Ankirk, a village a day east of Breeston along the White River.

He then fished the rivers and along the banks with his nets to fill the wells of his vessel. The smuggler advised him to wear the look of a journeyman and labour for him.

The task was humiliating, aiding the despicable westerner to trade for silver when they arrived at the Breeston harbour. The man never shut up, and he always liked to remind him about his name.

Tolland it was, and he had pestered him for his name the whole time they were on his boat, and no matter how short or rigid he was with the man, he would wait and then pester some more. Fellah this and fellah that, Tolland would say until he gave him a name. Vincent, he decided to answer, and then it was Vincent this and Vincent that.

Vincent was a good name for an easterner. That is what they saw him as in these towns. To westerners like Tolland, he was a Panhead, a derogatory word for a man from the eastern lands of Nuhr. He decided to keep this name Vincent until he could decide on a path when he left Breeston to continue his journey.

A cold wind began to stir, breaking his train of thought as the bank of fog moved deep into the outer wards. It was time to continue, he says to himself, so he carefully descended from the top of the wall to the dirt street below in the outer wards, stepping lightly as he concealed his face within a black linen mask that only revealed his eyes between the cloak over his head.

The fog sank into the pathways between the many daub and wattle dwellings as he took his time scanning the doors. “A white circle on a door means a healer,” he whispers while meandering down each road.

The outer wards were neglected by the city constables he realised while he could hear a couple fighting from within one dwelling, and a baby crying as his mother consoled it in another. He could hear the voices from the crowd from a tavern in the distance. The ward appeared under a curfew, but the citizens seem to follow their own rules.

Vincent’s path approached the wards square, the centre plaza where the merchants peddle their wares. The ward was named Butcher’s Wail, a nod to the tradesman who worked there.

A stench of death came from the wagons parked nearby the few stone buildings that framed the plaza. Inside them were the carcasses of dead animals. The square was littered with slumping bodies of the poor as they slept in the elements, and as he passed by looking at the lot in disgust, he nearly missed the dwelling he was seeking.

The structure was two stories, a tradesman’s house looking over the hovels that lined the many dirt paths here. Vincent noticed a faint glow coming from the gap under the front door.

The lone window was shuttered and fastened from within. He stepped close to the knocker of the door, gently striking the handle against the plate.

“Get out and come back tomorrow!” A man’s voice replied in anger. He knocked again inquiring. “I need the healer?” he inquired.

“You have trouble listening, vagrant? I told you to get lost, or I’m going to cut you,” the voice behind the door yells aloud.

Vincent grinned, knocking again to aggravate the man further, then he could hear the slide lock clicking from within as the man’s voice grumbled in a string of curses. The door slowly opens to reveal an older man, his hair and whiskers full of black and grey hairs with sullen eyes of brown.

The man looked up in annoyance, thinking him a beggar but Vincent removed his hood, lowering his veil to uncover his face.

The healer was stunned at first, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“Eivar?” he muttered, his real name as the older man gave him a wide smile.

“Can you let an old friend in, Lucius?”

“I can’t believe my eyes!” he remarks while pulling him inside, embracing him snug as he directs him to sit down nearby. “How long has it been, Eivar?”

“Nine years.” he remarked, but Lucius looked to have aged twenty, his tan skin had turned wrinkled, he looked haggard and wore garments that were filthy and threadbare.

Lucius scrambled to a nearby cupboard, pointing to a rough-hewn table for him to sit. The older man was pouring a weak ale into a tin cup without a handle. He also produced an apple, frowning upon the meagre hospitality. “Forgive me, most here eat in taverns or pot shops, the city isn’t flourishing as it once did.”

Eivar glanced amongst the many shelves of glass bottles and wooden crafted boxes that contained herbs stacked in no clear order upon them. He had known Lucius since he was in his teen years, very bold then and had a knack for herb lore. A quick study, and he had tutored the man for over a decade.

He bit into the tart apple as Lucius was inquiring about his journey. He hadn’t seen the man since the order placed him here, to send parchments back west. It wasn’t a favoured assignment, some would consider it a punishment to a soldier and healer of Karn, but not too many Breeston men were in the priesthood, so here Lucius was.

The priesthood was considered a cult to most continents, the eastern citadel provided a home, courage, and education to male orphans for a sacrifice. Lucius never had the gifts to invoke the inner light, the discipline of the five pointed trident, only a few in a hundred could survive the trial.

“Has Magnus sent you?” he asked in a probing way.

Eivar nodded but it was a lie. The man need not know his business. “Yes, to find my nephew. The current situation there is needing all swords. I am sure you have been alerted to the perils back home.”

“News from home travels slowly, and what I get is useless to my task here, but in regards to Mero. I haven’t seen him in years. The money isn’t flowing out here anymore, only to the guild’s coffers.”

Eivar wasn’t interested in the city’s affairs. He despised the Guild and thought their heads were better used on the end of a pike than governing a city. He insisted that Lucius have faith, in months Magnus will need him back in Karn. They were preparing for a campaign, and a healer like him would be needed.

Lucius says in a sulking manner. “This Guild has seen fit to ruin this city further, and I hear the commoners grumble that brigands are being recruited to end the Guild. They call themselves “the Yellow Hand.”

Eivar shrugged in ignorance at these brigands, as Lucius spun a tale of thieves robbing wagons and poaching boats on the rivers recently.

“They are even in the city I heard,” he grumbles as he rises from the chair to the window, pushing the shutters outward and looking around as Eivar sips from his cup. “Maybe, they will change things. It takes the spilling of blood to see reason.”

Eivar told him that nothing ever changes with a mob of brigands. They are only loyal to gold, it’s ideas that change minds. “Your place will always be in Karn, no need to wish for changes here.” he reminds his student, sensing he has become cloudy on his purpose here.

“How long are you staying for, Eivar?” Lucius says to change the subject. “I do have an extra cot upstairs if you need it, but you need to stay indoors, and keep out of sight from the tossers. They are looking down on the Nuhrish worse than usual.”

“Maybe a few days.” it was another lie, as he declined the hospitality. “I have a room in a tenement in the Horn ward. Do you happen to have any idea where Mero frequents, which towns are paying?” Eivar asked while Lucius paced about. The man seemed bothered at the moment.

“Lonoke is doing well these days.” he replied then complained. “If I wasn’t put out to pasture here, that is where I would set up shop. I don’t make much here anymore, there is even a healer nearby that has extraordinary talent and he does much work at no cost? How can I compete.”

Eivar had no answer to console him. His mind was on Mero, and it was for other reasons, but Lucius didn’t need to know anything about that.

When he found his nephew, they had to go find a grave. That grave had a body there that Eivar buried long ago, before the priesthood in Karn, before the city of Breeston had a wall built. So long ago that the town it belonged to had been abandoned, and not a man has walked in it in a long time.

Eivar had a secret, and not even his nephew knew it existed, even though he was a big part of it. The secret was what compelled him to come west, telling no one from Karn of his errand.

He was suspicious that the secret had been discovered, so instead of investigating those suspicions, Eivar thought it best to act before. The body had to be moved, the bones and more importantly, the thing that lay with it. If it became known to certain people, what followed would evoke an evil consequence.

“I could book your passage old master, no reason to linger here.” Lucius mentions breaking his thoughts. “There are cogs all the time heading north, be easier than wagons, please let me help you, a man with a guild pin is needed to do such things,” he then suggests with a jape. “Maybe, I can come along.”

Eivar glanced at him, smiling a bit. He declines his help, repeating his lie that he will stay for a few days, but make sure he will say his farewells.

He knew what he needed to do, go back to the Horn and barter with Tolland to take him north, and if he declined he would then kill him, take his shiny guild pin, and book passage himself.

Lucius then grinned wide, and they chatted for a short time about their times when he studied under him. He complimented about how Eivar had looked younger than him now, pointing to the grey hair in his whiskers.

His student was lost in his ruse he had hoped, or this assignment had weighed too heavy on his friend. He was away from the priesthood for so long, forgotten, that Eivar knew he didn’t want to return there.

Selling ointments and tonics for silver, he was living far away from the order’s disciplines and he had lost his faith.

The catching up between them was becoming a discomfort for Eivar as well, he let his old student ramble on for several minutes, then excused himself politely.

They embraced as both spoke in hopes of seeing one another back in Karn that rang hollow from both. Eivar felt compelled to leave shortly. He didn’t want to intrude on Lucius at first, but if by luck Mero was here, it would be foolish for him to not ask.

He had no bitterness to Lucius, he was a reminder of what he was leaving. Not only did Lucius grow cold of Karn, but Eivar did as well. He had run his course with the priests, and it was time for a change.

His thoughts went back to the grave while he bid Lucius farewell. The door closed behind him as he walked away, and he heard the lock slide back into place.

He was planning on how he would approach Tolland, and hoped he had the funds to pay as he departed Lucius’s home, walking briskly through the square and scampering past several vagrants that slumbered.

He had to find Mero and tell him what urgency had befallen him. They lived amongst the mongrels long enough. It was time that they abandon this incantation and create a new one. A new journey can continue, he knew, but he had to find the grave.

“Maybe I am mad?” he whispered as he looked about while the fog began to lift from the streets.

A tune hummed from his lips, and dawn was only hours away as he walked rapidly to get a moment of sleep. At sunrise, he would report to the docks with the lowlife Tolland or his pin and continue his journey north. He even felt a smile creep upon his face.

He glanced back at Lucius’s home, finding something hanging from the shutters of his window, a bright fabric, and seeing that he knew it was a signal, but to whom, then a sound disturbed his moment of optimism.

A singing sound, a chilling sound, and it caught him unawares. Those sounds had many echoes, echoes he knew well as he tried to twist and move in defence.

He walked into an ambush, and the sounds of crossbows sang. He felt a searing pain in his right thigh, and another in the back of his left arm, but his armour hidden underneath his cloak had absorbed a few bolts. He fell fast from the force of them, and his mind flew into a panic.

Eivar heard the sound of boots running toward him. He looked about from the dirt path, and many of the still bodies lying around the squares were still no longer; they stood, shedding their cloaks with blades drawn.

Eivar had to act or he would die, rising fast with a blade in each hand, slashing at the mob of bodies surrounding him. Dread gripped him nearly in despair.

He knew the numbers were too much for him. Eivar cursed aloud at the treachery that befell him, but “why?” was the question entering his mind as he fought for his life.

Eivar clutched his blades tight and slashed. He quickly parried a knife stabbing toward him and threw a knife into a man’s throat as he hacked at another. His stabbing sword then bit deep into another’s neck. “To die like a dog in this place,” he grunts out in a curse.

He could feel tears welling in his eyes while armed men surrounded him with yellow sashes tied around their mouths. He began screaming wildly, fiercely cutting the face behind one, and in a blink of an eye, his dagger stabbed into the neck of another.

“Cowards, the lot of you!” he yells out in anger.

His wounds were mounting as they were climbing over the corpses he made, and they were desperate to make one out of him. He was bleeding out and dying, but still, he fought. “I must live, damn it. I must live.”

Eivar felt white heat in his throat as a bolt from a crossbow struck him, the force dropping him. His limbs were exhausted and his life was sinking away into darkness while he was looking upward at the two moons overhead.

His eyes closed as he heard footsteps and many voices circling above. It was one voice he heard amongst the others, it was Lucius, and he was apologising.

“Sorry old master, but this is the worst timing for you to come visit me. I can’t have you here to decipher my efforts here in this city.”

“By tomorrow you would have noticed my handiwork, and I have invested too much to go back now. I always thought of you as a father, and this betrayal breaks my heart, but the pursuit of vengeance for the priesthood serves nothing for me.”

“They have taken my manhood, but not my passion. I have desires to be wealthy and free. The Yellow Hand has me now.”