Thursday 29 May 2014

Theater 3, chapter 7.3

Shades of Grey - Part Eight
The first 50 -60 foot was not that hard, even free climbing. He’d ditched a lot of kit, rolled his cape around his Bolt Pistol and slung it over his back, the shotgun and the heavy gear he’d hidden, didn’t fancy being blown off the face with his own gun ! The rock was some of the smoothest and featureless he’d attempted, he never had liked such sites, they were more suited to the monument mason than the climber and he hoped he wasn’t scaling his own sleep-stone. If this continued he’d string some cams as he had no intention of screwing this up, there was too much resting on it.

At least there was little in the way of loose material to worry about, the face seemed firm so far and there were some holds, you just had to search for them. From below he had scoped what looked like a vertical fissure above his current position which might make for easier going, for at its top the face became less acute and the surface had appeared rougher through the monocular.

The wind now was more noticeable, warm gusts flicked at every loose edge of kit sending them into flapping cacophony’s of sound like dying flies and above he could still make out from time to time the wheeling bird’s, preying that at least one of them would be a Ydach, the key, if there was one, to his friend’s survival. From what he had seen so far, the creatures the Baron’s took to summoning would prove a very potent and deadly foe. If the merest scratch could lay low someone as strong and fit as Nathan, they would tear through the population of a City like Grey. Carolynn just prayed that that that strength, a constitution borne from years of life in the open, free in the wilds of Zalthar would prove up to fighting the malignancy for long enough. He took a moment to pause and assess his position, patting the top pocket of his tunic to reassure himself the paste was still there. Last dark, after he had made camp, he had foraged for Gum Bushes. 

An evergreen shrub that grew prolifically in most of the wild and forgotten places on Zalthar, the Herder’s used them for a number of purposes, but this dark he had just one in mind, the simplest use, the making of Gum. Back beneath his tarp with the burner on, he added strips of fresh bark peeled from a handful of twigs to a cup holding a bout thee thumbs of water and bought this to the boil. He then let the mixture reduce, slowly boiling off the water until he was left with a sticky paste, the “Gum” he needed to catch himself a Sliver Hawk without damaging the bird. A blob of this gum on the ledge where the Birds alighted to approach their nests was all it should take, if he remembered rightly.

The bark itself was stringy and strong and so often used for binding, in cycles gone it may have been used to attach spear tips, but now it was more likely to be encountered in doubling-up Bolter magazines or as part of improvised field dressings‘. all you needed to remember was to apply some clay or wet mud to the cut from where you took a branch and the shrub would heal and so be there the next time it was needed ! It was not much of a price to pay considering that in so many ways Zalthar itself gave them the tools they needed to fight off all comers. It had given them the toxin to kill the Tyranids, the lay of the land to stem the incursions of Chaos and it had given Carolynn his life that night in the storm when it slayed his assassin ! It also gave them life, through the great herds of Morac, clean water from its many springs and the materials to live at one in its vastness, all things that would be sorely needed to triumph against the darkness that he could feel coming.

Just above him now, Carolynn’s fingers found the fissure. About 1” wide it ran up to where the face eased and looked to make better going if he were to get to the height the 
Ydach preferred for nesting. He followed the fissure, hand over hand and this time deployed cams every 30’ to make the descent a great deal easier once he had bagged his prize, for time was very much still the essence. Another 20 or so feet and the slope did begin to tip back from the vertical and when he was able to find a shallow ledge on which to rest a knee, he pulled out his monocular and scanned the cliff above. He could just make out a few smatterings of weathered guano, a clear indication of a roost or nest, but he needed to spot some fresher deposits if he were to find this cycles preferred location. Higher still and to his right, just where the face pushed back out from itself, where this over-hang began, he could see what looked like two or three parallel ledges. Little more than feint pencil lines from here, they were probably about 2” to 3” wide, just, and there, as he watched a bird flew in to one of them, beak full of insect wings by the look of it, food for a hungry chick ? Making as much haste as circumstances permitted, he strung himself a route across to where he had seen the bird alight, and as luck would have it, encountered two further nests on his way. The first was an untidy mess of twigs, partly collapsed and showing signs of a possible struggle the way the sides appeared pushed out from within. Predated ! The second was a text book nest, a semi-circular cup attached to the ledge with mud and cobwebbs, a tight basket of interwoven twigs, lined with moss and feathers and containing a plump-looking chick that had begun to develop feathers and was beginning to stretch fine wings, though these still retained the juvenile, “claw” at the ‘elbow’, a trait from earlier generations that obviously held sufficient advantages for it to be retained in early life, no-doubt making traversing a nest in such precipitous locations that bit safer. Hurriedly moving on, Carolynn found a second nest where the ‘smudges’ did indeed manifest as ledges. There were several when he climbed along further, but only two held chicks, and so these he gummed, before retreating back, giving the nests as wide a birth as he could to tempt the adults to return.

Lowering himself back down to the knee width ledge, Carolynn strung a crude sling to take his weight and settled back to wait, monocular at hand. To pass the time, he scanned the valley which was surprisingly wide and a good deal more fertile than it appeared from following the river. The frequent floods there from melt water scoured the ground, making the vegetation sparse and straggly, but away from the main channel, the plants grew thickly and were underlain with lush grasses, from a herders point of view an excellent spot and definitely one to keep in mind should they ever need to move Bronze Hearth. Beyond the valley, rose the Eastern spur of the Worldspine’s, and even from here he could make out even by light the orange glow on the base of the ugly smudge of yellow-brown smog that marked Grey, he could even still taste that places rancid air. Air that had been breathed too many times and laced with all the chemical waste the place pumped into the world by the tonne. Small wonder a creature spawned in such a place would be the toxic spawn of the God of Decay. Out there too was Jed and Nate and Martin’s children, had he made a mistake bringing them along ? There was suddenly a commotion above a flapping of wings and the cry of a bird in some distress. Unwinding his support, Carolynn was soon scaling the face along his pre-rigged pathway to the nests a nd stuck luky at the very first. Carefully bagging a female Ydach, he slid along to the second nest just to clear away the gum as it had served its purpose. Un-rigging that end he returned to the first nest where he “milced” the female into a paper topped jar, before cleaning her feet and releasing her. He de-gummed that nest too, and was soon taking out cams in his return to the cleft and the descent to the valley below.

Of that descent and the ride through light and dark, he remembered little after, save the feeling of relief as the destrier’s, hot and panting for having been ridden harder than he would like, crested that final ridge and he could just make out the bluff beneath which nestled the old huts and within, his friends. All his friends he prayed. Although themselves sensing his purpose or merely the end of their journey, the destrier’s themselves seemed to find an additional reserve of energy and kicked hard into the last leg , so he was soon skirting the track towards the huts and the waiting form of Jed, standing taller than he remembered, and looking purposeful, gun in hand and every sign that the place was fully under his command. Then a discreet “thumbs-up“ told him all he needed to know, then he was dismounting even before his horse had stopped and flying under the canvass to find Nathan. His friend looked better than he had hoped, the subborn bastard was yet to bow down to the fever that still clearly ravaged his system.

“Hi Joe, I’ll explain later, now I need you to get some water heating on the fire, let it boil thoroughly OK ?“
“Sure Car, good to have you back.“ and with that he was off.
“Hi.“ giggled Mariah.
“Where’d you go ?”
Came Jed’s somewhat sullen voice from the entrance.
“To get this”, answered Carolynn, holding up the phial of Ydach Milc,”It is the one thing I could get to in time that had any chance of saving him, I will tell you all about it later, it is something you too need to know of, part of a lot of things you now need to know, just as I did when I came to the Lead Lands, but for now, I need to prepare it, you OK to hold watch a bit longer ?”
“Course.” was Jed’s clipped reply, and he was gone.
“Mariah, you OK to go take care of the horses ? They need a good watering and something to eat, then a good rub down. You alright with that ?”
“Sure”, came her giggled reply, and she too was off.
“Soon have you fixed” he said to Nathan, wiping a damp cloth across his brow, “I remembered the Ydach old friend, even made that climb we spoke about !” There was no sign he heard, but that didn’t deter Carolynn from telling his friend all about the valley of the Sliver Hawks.
“It’s ready Car” exclaimed Joseph, returning with a bowl of still bubbling water cupped in his cloth bound hands.
“Thanks Joe, you want to stand it down for me, we need to let it cool some, but I wont need it all, so pour some off for me into this mug, then take some Tea from my pack and fix a brew would you ?”
“Of your Tea !” came the mock reply of disgust.
“Get out of here, and thanks Joe.”

Once the water had cooled, Carolynn took the phial of Milc and emptied 8 drops into the water.
“Come on my friend, no idea what this tastes like, but if you were right, it’ll do you the power of good” said Carolynn as he helped Nathan drink.
That same dark, as they sat around the small fire, banked and hot to keep out the alpine chill, Nathan’s fever broke and a little while after he opened his eyes. Over the rest of that dark, after two more cups of Milc, he again found his voice.
“Hi”, was his first word, as if he knew he’d been away, so to save him forming questions, Carolynn and Jed filled him in on events back to the rain and the dark and the “man who attacked them, for there were still small sensibilities at large. Once Joseph and Mariah had seen Nathan was getting better, it was off too bed for them for Kell willing, the next light would be the start of their return to Bronze Hearth and a long light.

Once they were settled, Carolynn gave Jed and Nathan the full account, the Daemon’s attacking and his ride to Lope-Fang Crags to look for the Ydach. It was chance too, for them to explain to Jed that the Lore was deeper than he knew, but that his time to learn was at hand. They spoke too of the remainder of the journey, for none were certain how Nathan would manage. He certainly felt better, but the fever was strong and had hit him hard, physically he was still quite weak, and as they could not realistically split the party, they would need somewhere to hold up for a few days. And so it was that as the next light broke, the five of them were already well on the way home to Bronze Hearth, with Nathan flat out on a frame of wood, made into a towed stretcher of sorts with one of the canvas’s, behind the strongest of the destrier’s roped to Jed’s horse that he shared with Mariah. Up front as he knew the way via Lope-Fang valley, went Carolynn with Joseph, glad they had a route off the main tracks for a while, for he doubted they’d hold off any sustained attacks whilst down one man.

That dark, having to rely on Bolt Pistols so as not to obliterate their prey, Carolynn and Jed went hunting. They had set camp, still half a light from the valley and Nathan said he was well enough to sit propped up with a shotgun and look scary. Half a dark bagged them three “Vemin”* and Joseph and Mariah, both of whom had instantly taken to fishing, between them landed enough for breakfast and a few spare to dry over that darks fire.

*Vemin - An indigenous Mammal, similar to the Hare of Terra, but larger throughout. A common game animal on Zalthar, often reaching plague numbers after short snows.

By the third dark, the way was clear for Jed to ride on ahead, and by light he was back with help from Bronze Hearth. By that dark they were all back, and for Carolynn and the now walking Nathan, albeit with a stick for now, next light they were in front of the Council of 7. Ben and Alice, ever there for the two of them took in Joseph and Mariah for them, both parties seeming thrilled with the idea.

That left the two of them with time to think, for the meeting with the Council would have repercussions far beyond Bronze Hearth, beyond the Lead Lands.

End of Part Eight

Next…. The Council of 7 ! Who will stand against the Chaos loose on Zalthar once more ?

Mk
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