Seyashen- whom I carefully referred to as Ivan until he corrected me with a faded hellfire smile that was miraculously similar to Mi'ishaen's- was pushed away from the Humans who had been marched on to Findar as though they were prisoners. Many of them seemed to wish to tell him goodbye, but the Elves and half-Elves- no less convinced that Mi'ishaen and her cousin were dangerous and wicked than were the Dragonborn who had once dominated the ground upon which they stood- would not allow any sort of conversation or contact. A few surprised and sorrowful looks over the shoulder were given before they marched completely out of sight, and although accompanied by a blood relative who from time to time attempted to comfort him, Seyashen seemed somehow quite lonely.
We sat and waited a day and a night before we were marched along the stream-turned-raging river, waiting for the Human group to get a good distance away, I suppose. The Elven leader marched with us, making sure that we were all separated and accompanied by no less than four guards a piece. Aleksei bore the treatment as though he'd deserved it, and Seyashen was similarly compliant. I didn't mind either, but it was clearly rather difficult for Mi'ishaen to put up with. She shook the guards' hands from her shoulders often, and walked either faster or slower than those assigned to her. By the time twilight looked upon us, the guards had tired of trying to actually hold her, and took Aleksei's word that she would come quietly if allowed to walk with some degree of personal space. As a result, she was separated even farther from us and placed under the direct supervision of the Elven leader himself. I had to smirk to myself- for a rogue, Mi'ishaen had quite the problem with standing out. I wondered how she'd managed to survive so long with such a blatant disreguard for anything that vaguely resembled compliance with authority.
In that evening, the smell from the sea just beyond us drew me to remain awake for some time after the guards had put the fires out and required that we sleep. Being battle weary themselves, they were hardly in fit condition to enforce their mandate, and only a few watchmen were left awake when I decided to get up and leave the sides of my four guardians.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I was not the only restless one among us.
In the distance behind the soldiers' camp, Seyashen sat alone- or at least he did for a few moments. As I crept closer, not wanting to disturb his solitude, I heard him quietly speaking. At first, I thought he was talking to himself, as very talented magic people are wont to do, but then he extended his right hand slightly, palm upward. Slowly, he drew back his last two fingers and bent in the three remaining fingers until they were claw-like. Then he bent his right arm at the elbow to bring the three claw-shaped fingers to where his heart would be. Raking them across, he extended his hand palm upward again, then turned his first and second fingers down to the dirt to draw some sort of sign on the ground. When he finished, he tapped the ground twice, then laid his right hand back on his right leg.
A short distance away, there suddenly appeared the ethereal image of another Tiefling, with horns that branched from his brow straight back like spikes. I remembered with chilling clarity the spike-like horn that I had driven through Mikhail's skull.
The image walked over to Seyashen, whose figure crumpled just slightly, and sat next to him. Biting my lips and curbing my curiosity, I turned back and headed for my place, which was just as well, since one of the guards had stirred and was looking for me.
The morning had been long over us before we moved again, but aside from the stiffness of having to sleep on the ground, all the soldiers were much better rested. While they chatted amongst themselves, sometimes in Common and sometimes in Elven, we the captives all walked in separated silence as the smell of the sea became sharper and sharper. Even Mi'ishaen had calmed down significantly, and barely put up a contest against the grip of the Elven leader. The scenery began to change; the road widened and became just barely cobbled instead of simply being trodden dirt. A few mile markers, in the form of planted stakes, sprung up, but they didn't seem to be very consistent, and had absolutely no sign that would tell a stranger where they were going. I passed the time trying to count them, but wound up losing count somewhere around thirty five- mainly because some markers at that point had been filed to what seemed to be an extremely sharp point, and had been painted red. I suddenly didn't want to pay as much attention to them.
The sun was up and over our backs before a dock appeared before us, big enough to accommodate three or four medium sized vessels at once- it wouldn't do for even one large one, however. The ground we were on was higher than it, and the leader raised his hand to indicate that he wanted everyone to stop for just a moment. In the few moments that it took for the entire company- about thirty or fourty men and women strong- to come to a gradual halt, I did my best to note not just the obvious method by which we'd be dumped onto some other land, but the village that wrapped around it like a comfy, albeit worn and ragged, shawl.
"Dlusk," he proclaimed in a tone that was supposed to be welcoming, but fell flat. The village to which he was introducing us was small, with about ten buildings making up the whole of it. One was clearly the boathouse, seeing as it had the makings of a new boat right next to the remains of one that had been somehow very badly destroyed. The others could be identified as homes, mostly- there seemed to be one inn and one sacred place that had markers in the back. After the one-word welcome, we all proceeded down the one cobbled lane that sliced through the village and down to the sea. It narrowed again, but became better cobbled the closer to the dock that we got, until a wagon or hand cart successfully navigating the thing seemed not only possible, but likely. All eyes, large and small, Elven and Human, were upon us as we passed by, marched like criminals. The soldiers, perhaps noting this, talked a little louder and a little more cheerily, to make it seem less like a capture and more like an honorable escort. Just one child dared to point out how different Aleksei was from all those who surrounded him- head and shoulders above us all, obviously following because he was docile, not because he was actually being forced.
"Sirrah- oi, sir!" the little Human boy cried, escaping the arms of an older woman. "How'd you lose your eye, sir? Ya got scales all over- what happened to that?"
The soldiers surrounding Aleksei stopped, stunned, and perhaps a little embarrassed, as three out of four of them were Human. The fourth was a half-Elf, who snickered. But Aleksei turned a smile to the boy, set up to humor him.
"It is good you are telling me that I am not having one eye," he joked, to the boy's excitement. "I am very busy during battle long ago, and since, I am wondering why the day is not seeming quite as bright."
"Come, Terrence!" the older woman griped, grabbing up the beaming young male with a grip that whitened his bare, ruddy arm.
"Went missing, eh?" the half-Elf soldier joked back to Aleksei as they watched the boy get dragged away. "Just, 'Oops, wonder where that's got to' one day?"
"It is maybe something like that, yes," Aleksei nodded, back to catch up to to Elven leader, who had paused further along the path to look back. The soldiers, not at all concerned, allowed him to take his time. "Maybe with little more pain, but this is being many, many mugs of good brew from now."
"Little foggy, then," stated the half-Elf, still with a distinct trace of humor. "I got a good friend like you. First two fingers gone to the palm, and be damned if he can tell you precisely when he lost 'em. Damned sot."
And all five in the clutch had a chuckle for a short while that brought a more genuine sense of levity to the entire group.
All laughter and conversation died, however, when we were presented with the dark wood cargo ship at the far end of the dock. It seemed the Elf, still with Mi'ishaen in tow, had to do a bit of yelling to get the stout, cross-armed Human captain to allow the plan to proceed, but just a few minutes after both voices rung across the space between the ship and the rest of us, Aleksei, Seyashen and I were being walked onto the ship with one guard per person. Apparently, the guards would sail to Furthinghome, but after the ship departed from there, the four of us would be on our own. Some coin and a few weapons taken from the decimated Dragonborn camp sufficed for fare, and we were taken below deck to sit with the dry goods being shipped to Veltalar.
The soldiers made absolutely no pretense of guarding us, and we were allowed to sit together for the first time since we'd left the Dragonborn camp.
"The sun is too far down for us to start off now," Mi'ishaen commented. "If they cast off, they'd be reaching Furthinghome in the dark."
And then, accompanied by shouts from various parts of the deck, the ship lurched.
"Alright, Furthinghome by dark it is," Mi'ishaen relented with a sigh. "When that Elf said the next boat, he really meant the very next boat. I wonder how much we're worth."
"As much as we're able to haul off the ship in the dark of night while the hands are ashore soaking up piss water ale, is my guess," Seyashen answered offhandedly. "For however serious pirating may be, it seems trafficking is just dandy."
"I've never known barley and rice to be illegal substances," Mi'ishaen retorted, an eyebrow raised.
"Perhaps not, but that's not barley," Seyashen smirked wickedly. "It's cut terinav root. It's more pungent when it's ground, but I can still smell it- lucky for us all, it's a contact poison. Can easily cripple large game- or, perhaps, an escaping person- in just a few moments. If you're going tangle with a gnome infestation, or need to hobble a giant, you want terinav."
"This is dangerous thing," Aleksei commented, looking at the sacks that surrounded us with open distaste.
"Meh, sounds useful, actually. Why is it illegal- and better yet, why are we all sitting with it?" Mi'ishaen asked crisply.
"Its illegality is nearly daily challenged, but so far as I'm aware, it came under fire from not a few governments because some unscrupulous males of various races found some...interesting uses... at social functions... where desirable females were to be found," Seyashen replied, unable to stop his smirk from becoming a full blown hellfire smile. "I became rather familiar with it when my alchemical skills were first put to the test under Mikhail's rule- there had been some rather unpleasant situations."
"So, the root goes into the food or the drink, and a couple of months later, surprise," Mi'ishaen supplied in a leaden tone. "Unpleasant, heh, sure. Good to know we'll be hauling somebody's drug of choice in exchange for the fare necessary to deport us to gods-know-where. I suppose it's in barley bags because they're thick enough to prevent undesired contact."
Seyashen gave a refined, clipped nod, and his cousin snorted loudly enough to draw the soldiers' attention.
"Trouble?" one asked lightly.
"Not yet, but give me time," Mi'ishaen tossed back, receiving a couple of halfhearted laughs in response.
"This is very strange thing they are doing," Aleksei puzzled with a frown. "Dragonborn couples are always being made publicly, with the consent of both families, by having good fight. This drugging is very dishonorable way of making a couple; what kind of children are coming from that?"
"You ought to know," Seyashen replied calmly. "You probably killed a few of them."
"You're equally good at accidentally destroying people and conversations, Seyashen," Mi'ishaen groaned.
"No, no, it is good," Aleksei said quickly, shaking his head. "When one is fighting, it is someone's child, someone's mate, someone's friend that is being killed. Always it is good to remember this. Seyashen is doing good thing, reminding me of this, or eventually, I will simply be a murderer."
"Well, that's just- I'm not a murderer, am I? And I don't brood over every bastard that meets the ouchy end of my daggers. By Baator, how you manage to get anything done while thinking that sort of thing..." Mi'ishaen huffed, allowing herself to trail off mid-thought.
"Training," Aleksei said, shrugging. "I am in the army almost as soon as I am able to lift a blade. In the battle, I am only listening to the singing of the blood. It is after battle is over that it is time to meditate. I am doing this yesternight, but it is good to go back, and think again. Healthy, and wise."
"How can it possibly be healthy to ruminate over your kills?" Mi'ishaen spat. "You cut a notch in your belt or in your weapon, and you move on. If you lived in my home city, you'd not have enough time between meditation periods, or whatever, to get any lunch or supper, for all the work you'd have to do just to get to the bazaar. If it's not a beggar stabbing you for your coppers, it's a noble striking you down to make an example of you- or worse, some absent-minded warlock down the street magic missile-ing you only to test the varying efficiencies of the damned scrolls they just wrote. 'Oh, so writing it in goat's blood-' "
"Then instead of going into the bazaar, I should be going to the city guard, to help them, yes?" Aleksei argued with a shrug. "What? There is no city guard anywhere in Bael Turath, to keep the peace?"
"That isn't bought off by whatever noble or petty tyrant?" Mi'ishaen laughed bitterly. "You got me; that was an excellent joke."
"There must be some tall tale about how you two ever wound up together," Seyashen laughed quietly. "Must have shared some sort of terrible experience- torture, slavery- something. You can't have willingly decided to chat over cheap beer in a tavern somewhere, joining forces at the behest of some old fop who couldn't be bothered to find some lost family trinket."
And Mi'ishaen and Aleksei stared at each other for a few moments.
"Dear gods, did you search for some greybeard's family trinket?" Seyashen suddenly dared, seeing the looks on their faces. "Here, Jyklihaimra, help me, please."
"Oh!" I exclaimed, surprised at being spoken to. "No, you were right, we were held captive for a while. Not all together, but we all got out together, so, I suppose we just kind of- stuck- except for Bahlzair."
"The Drow," Seyashen mused. "Well, that's to be expected. It's not the most common thing in the world to see one of them striding about above ground, and he was a free male. If he hasn't been dragged back to the Underdark by some furious female of his kind, he must be having great fun terrorizing as many people as he can get a hold of."
"Perhaps people are wondering why you are not harming as many people as you can get a hold of?" Aleksei gently reminded.
Silence.
"Perhaps in living with Mikhail so long, I have allowed some of his- views- to settle upon me," Seyashen relented sadly, a grim look settling on his face. "You're quite his opposite, in your broad-mindedness."
"It is because of one like you," Aleksei sighed with quiet wistfulness. "One very different Tiefling male is changing much for me."
"You didn't kill him," Mi'ishaen said flatly. "Don't meditate on that; it wasn't your fault."
"Thus far and no farther," Seyashen said, shaking his head. "I think we've all said quite enough for one evening. Let's get as much rest as we can, hopefully meditating on pleasant matters, before we become a poison runner's mules."
But I thought on Bahlzair, and could not sleep.
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