Xnauth’s Cowhide – Part 2

Xnauth’s Cowhide – Part 2 (April 30, 2011)

Pharast 12, 4708 (Starday)

I scratch these notes into cowhide for future generations. If a bit is hard to read, the cow moved too much. These are only Xnauth's impressions. I am no scholar, so I can only write things down as they come to me. If I insult anyone in these writings, I am not sorry, but hey, you are still alive.

I find no work today and return to my shared lodgings in Thief Camp early in the afternoon. I find a card on my club with an invitation. I go. They promise to tell me where Gaedren Lamm is. I still have a club or two to pick with that man.

They will not let me into the city. Those stuck-up Chelaxian guards will not let me in. They say the city is in danger, so the gates are closing early. I have to swim across the river and spend hours looking for a way into the city. I have never seen so many guards on the walls.

The address is in Midland. I go into the house, because the door is not locked. Strange figures wait inside. They cannot understand my obvious reason for being here: killing Gaedren Lamm. A madman with a glowing brand on his forehead talks nonsense. At his feet scampers a purple monstrosity that cannot decide between cat and dragon. A six-and-a-half-foot drunk with a beer stein gets in my (!) way. At his feet scampers a gnome with a blond helmet from the house of moneybag worshipers. A Varisian talks at me and keeps telling me I am too loud. I do not understand any of this and get a little annoyed, especially since they will not let me at the old man.

Even though I do not really care, since it distracts me from my task, I listen to the Varisian with the strange hat. He uses far too many words to tell me this:

• Zellara lives in this house. She is a fortune-teller and his aunt. She sent cards to everyone here. This was their meeting place. One chair stayed empty. It was meant for me. She laid out the cards for each of them and read their fate
• They all have a score to settle with Gaedren, and Zellara tells them where to find him. At the “Old Fishery” on the pier. The figures set out and take him prisoner.
• Gaedren killed and robbed a woman and pinned the blame on Zyraso's mother. A fisherman accused her after being bribed. The Hellknights took the mother prisoner, and she is probably dead already.
• Eran, Zellara's son, went to see Gaedren and is dead too
• When the group returned from the Old Fishery, Zellara's room was wrecked and her severed head was in a box. It is more than a day old.

The room flickers. The fortune-teller appears, and with her everything is back in order. The mighty shaman from the realm of the dead speaks to us from her cards. She gives me a card called “Demon's Lantern” and says everyone's fate here is tied together. With that, fate has completely screwed up my day. Zellara went to see Gaedren shortly after Eran did. She paid for that visit with her life. Now she is a ghost and always with us when we want. She says the task is bigger than old Gaedren. Hard times are coming. She grew up in Korvosa and wants to stand by the city. But what exactly it is, she cannot say. I learn nothing about my mother either. Women. She vanishes.

I want to get wine with Davian and go outside. Parts of the city are burning, and the people are raging in the streets. Are these the hard times? A few drunken bums come toward us. I get even more annoyed and would like to pay them a brief visit to make that clear. The leader survives my blow. I need more nails in my club. Davian is behind me and splits the leader's skull in two with his morningstar. Bone, blood, and brains spray at me. A few knife thrusts hit me, and it all blends into Gorum's battle cry. Tyrion shoots acid, and the madman sends in his kitty. Davian is the only one of them who knows how to fight properly.

Mobs too big for my rage to scatter loot the houses. Riders gallop through the streets. The horizon is red with fire. The Heights are burning. Orderly Korvosa seems to be falling apart. The king is dead, and the people will not accept the new queen. We go back inside. Zyraso and Tyrion question Gaedren, who has woken up. The amulet in his possession belongs to the queen. Gaedren stole it from a servant who was taking it to be repaired. Tyrion wants to know how he smuggled the drug shiver into the palace. Gaedren has contacts and supplies noble families. Gaedren's words are poison seeping slowly into my head. Tyrion wants to bargain with him. I lose patience. The urge to shut his trap becomes too strong. I kill him and leave the house. Tyrion leaves the house too. I think he is pissed off.

We go to Gaedren's hideout. On the way, a Sable Company rider crashes onto the docks in front of us. On an old boat, I break into the cargo bay and spiders attack me. Their poison takes its toll before we beat them to a pulp.

We rest in the Old Fishery. Davian bosses me around, though all I want is sleep. He wants me to keep watch. I rearrange his face.

Pharast 13, 4708 (Sunday)

Tyrion appears the next morning. He is wearing new clothes. He reports:

• Hellknights are cracking down with brutal force
• The king really is dead. The people want other leaders in power, such as the Seneschal of the Sable Company or Cressida Kroft.
• The queen is too young and a Chelaxian. Her name is Ileosa
• The old king died under mysterious circumstances. The priests could not stop him from aging.

We take Zellara's head to the temple of Pharasma. A “prophet” is shouting. Something about the eye of some toad and Asmodeus' time having come. Burying the head costs 10 gold sails. I hand over my new longsword and am glad we only had the head. We could not have afforded to bury the whole body.

We take Gaedren to the guards' citadel. Going to the Korvosan Guard with a corpse in your arms is not a good idea, but Tyrion and Zyraso will not be talked out of it. Rutilus, the guard private, is not much help. I can write better than he can. There is no bounty on Gaedren's stinking head.

A mob attacks Tyrion in the street. We step in, and my club runs wild among them.

Zyraso and the others take Tyrion into the temple. I suppose he gets healed there. I wait outside. I do not go into these fancy buildings. Once I am inside, they suddenly notice something is missing, and it was me. An administrator named Lucanor brings me in. What a fancy place. I bet even the shithouse is made of gold here. I donate my first and only gold coin, which I found last night, to the mighty god Abadar. Tyrion wants the priests to speak with Gaedren in the spirit world. But this art costs 400 gp. Tyrion wants to ask his father for this donation. We set off to see him, and the little priest takes the looted amulet along.

I do not go into Tyrion's house, though later I use the horse shower to get rid of the fish stink. Tyrion says his father, a powerful judge, is getting us an audience with the queen. This is madness. Only yesterday they would not even let me into the city.

The palace stands on an old pyramid. We meet the queen's bodyguard, Sabina Merrin. My kind of woman. She takes us to the queen. On the way to the throne, we pass many tapestries. They show the Shoanti being driven out. I ought to stuff this scum's tapestries down their throats until they choke on their arrogance. I will not bow before this queen. Rage boils inside me.

But Queen Ileosa turns out to be a graceful beauty, and her grief touches my heart. Her words are heavy and full of pain, so I forget my anger. She tells us this:

• The brooch is precious to her. She thought it was lost
• The king's death has shocked the people of the city. Many are taking advantage of the situation and bringing Korvosa to the brink of ruin
• We bring back more than the brooch. We bring hope to a hopeless place
• Champions like us are needed in this dark hour of need
• She asks us to enter the service of the Korvosan Guard and report to Cressida Kroft. The Korvosan Guard is hard-pressed.

I cannot understand why people doubt her. Her words have power. They are convincing. She has just talked me into offering my “services” to the Korvosan Guard. Anyone else would have died unexpectedly while trying. Tyrion receives a small chest of gold. A fine reward. We will see how much reaches me. I turn down an escort to Zellara's house and then to the Korvosan Guard. Maybe we are supposed to sit in a sedan chair like this little twerp too! I feel like kicking him all the way to Zellara's house. He draws too much attention to us in the streets. With all my diplomatic skill, I get him to leave the sedan chair behind.

The marketplace is too busy. Riffraff waits on a corner. I distract them. I crack the first one's head with a stone. The others chase me, but I manage to lose them despite my serious injury.

Cressida Kroft receives us in the citadel. This is the first time in my life a Korvosan guardsman is happy to see me. A strange feeling. We are to rest, then bring down a captain who deserted. He fled to Northpoint with others. He is very charismatic, and there is a risk that more will go over to him. We are to kill as few of them as possible. I do not understand. Traitors must be killed. But then there is less money. Captain Verik Vancaskerkin has his base in an old butcher shop. We get weapons from the armory for our fight. Gorum's weapon is mine. We rest in the barracks. No guardsman mouths off at me. Disappointing. Zyraso attacks the city's buildings with a longbow.

Pharast 14, 4708 (Moonday)

We take a boat along the river to Northpoint. Imps attack us right there at the dock. But with help from pseudodragons, they are soon killed. All of them spawn of those damned wizards. The madman summons an eagle that claws the imps' eyes out. How does he do that? Davian beats an imp to death with his beer stein. The imps' poison makes my limbs numb and sluggish.

We walk along the wall and look over the butcher shop. People come and go. We see no guards. The guards on the wall tell us the captain is in there. Our plan: we go in. I try to climb the wall below the window, but it is unbelievably smooth. Even a spider could not climb this wall.

Zyraso takes the front entrance into the shop. He is offered meat. He tells the man he is under arrest. The “butcher” alerts someone and tries to reach his weapons. It smells like a fight. And I am still outside… Damn