Treachery of Men RPG

[Anguirel]

Caranthir's ambassador watched the Easterling leader with an impassive face, but in his mind he could not help feeling contemptuous towards the human ruler. Perhaps, as he had suspected moments before, the old Adan was in his dotage; but even so, it did not do to reveal such an indignified rage with a subordinate to an envoy of one's overlord. Lachrandir kept his features immobile as Ulfang raved at the hapless guard, the Elf's eyes fixed, staring without deviation at the empty stone chair. He saw, with a hint of amusement, that young Tathren had adopted the same tactic.

When the choleric old barbarian appeared to have settled down, muttering his apologies, Lachrandir inclined his head slightly.

"Very well, friend. May we proceed to business? You were right to remember the accord you signed as a vassal of the Lord Caranthir. The time has come to fulfil your vows."

Ulfang's greying brows brindled slightly. It was unlikely, perhaps, Lachrandir reflected, that he enjoyed being referred to as a vassal in front of his nobles. He decided to make a more deliberate effort towards courtesy.

"You must be aware that our armies have been strained for some time by the onslaught of the Enemy," he continued. "My master has determined that the security of all our lands, the lands of Men and Elves, must be defended, likewise, by Men and Elves. I come with a summons, my lord Ulfang, a summons to muster your forces directly you can prepare suitable numbers."

Lachrandir produced Caranthir's missive, a roll of silvery vellum bound with a loop of grey Elven-twine; he had previously transferred it from his other possessions and slipped it inside his cloak. The eyes of Ulfang as he saw the letter seemed to encapsulate contradictory emotions; a little excitement, even lust in its sharpest form; but weariness also, the Elf thought. If mortals curdle in age, then this one is surely nigh on rotten and beyond use.

A pause hung for half a minute or so, before Lachrandir pressed a little further. "Shall I read it to your lordship?"

"I can read it for myself," the old man answered, half muttering, half growling.

"Of course," Lachrandir said carefully, "but it is the custom for the herald of a lord to read it to the lord's vassal first." Vassal. Again he had dropped a dangerous word, but in his irritation he had felt the Man could profit from such a reminder.

"I know the custom," Ulfang said quietly, "but in any case, we ought to wait."

Lachrandir was puzzled now, and nigh on exasperation. Was this some absurd superstition among the Easterlings, that a letter could not be read before twilight, or something similar? Tathren glanced at him, and to his annoyance it seemed to him that the younger Elf was attempting to calm him.

"You see, this empty chair," Ulfang explained, faltering somewhat, "and these two full ones. You can see that my third son, that my son, my third son, is not yet here."

Silence settled again, before the chieftain continued to elucidate.

"Uldor. My son Uldor. I will not have Lord Caranthir's letter read until he is here,"

"I see," Lachrandir replied. "Well, could it not be arranged that..."

But the chieftain was unexpectedly rearing himself up off his leaden throne. His head was still scarcely on a level with Lachrandir's, but in his moment of uncharacteristic decision he seemed altogether taller and firmer.

"Ulwarth!" he barked, and the corpulent occupant of the left-hand throne got up. Ulfang nodded with a grim smile.

"That's more like it. Go and find Uldor, lad. We can't keep Master...Lachrandir here waiting, can we?"

"Ay," Ulwarth muttered, and retired, his mail clanging, from the hall, swiftly loping out with bitterness on his unsightly face. The Elves refrained from watching him go.

"You have been standing for too long," the chieftain remarked, his tone now measured, even merry. "Guards! Stop idling and bring Caranthir's messengers some seats, now!"

[Celuien]

The guards, not wishing to fall under Ulfang's capricious wrath, hurried to obey their lord's command. Two chairs, shabbily cushioned in fading red velvet, were brought forward from behind a screen and gently placed behind the Elves. Very carefully, for the aged chieftain was watching for carelessness as a cat stalks its prey, and the jarring sound of too quickly dropped chairs against the elm covered floor would surely disturb Ulfang's thin veneer of good humor again.

Such concerns mattered little to Ulfast. His eyes followed Ulwarth in his passage from the hall, and he glowered from his stone chair. The court waited yet again upon Uldor's ease. The lazing fool. Ulfast held him in contempt, and that distaste now spread to his father for his dependence on his eldest son. Why must we wait? Does Uldor rule here, or do you? Ulfast longed to give voice to the thought.

"Aye. You have been kept waiting on your feet too long. Please, be seated. I am sure my brother will join us shortly, if he does not sleep the morning away." Ulfast laughed, and the sound echoed merrily in the timbers as though the jest had been genuine, but there was no mirth in his eyes. Ulfang glared, and the threat of another outburst brought a palpable tension to the room. Cursing himself for his weakness, Ulfast turned from his father's gaze, and calm returned.

"Well. Since we cannot yet speak of serious matters, perhaps we can talk of other things. Tell me, Master Lachrandir, how did you find your journey?"

[Anguirel]

Though the discourse between the Elvish delegation and Ulfang was one thwart with awkward silences, the restive Ulfing court was not over concerned with precedence, and a gradual hum of talking, drinking, and quarrelling reasserted itself throughout the hall. Guards and petty nobles alike came and went, both through the main gates and through entries at the side, without any fuss. None of the lordlings bothered bringing weapons, and by the same token none of the guards bothered searching them, though occasionally one of the hopeful circleted incomers, out of favour, would be roughly turned away without an explanation.

Among the new arrivals was a group of young bloods, seventeen years old at most. Their regalia was bright with polish, their voices were loud, brash, and confident, and their developing beards waxed into as coherent a form as possible. The young men were the very acme and exaggeration of the insecurity that characterised the cowed nobility as a whole.

Among this band was Drenda, son of Drenduld, and last hope, all-absorbing love, of his mother Gausen. Of the gang he stood tallest - indeed he was among the tallest men in the hall - but his features betrayed definite unease, and he seemed made self-conscious by his height. He spoke but rarely, leaving it to more comfortable, more powerful, companions to prattle and waste words.

The truth was, Drenda was a nobody, and standing in this assembly of ragged chiefs was a potentially vast risk. He possessed no land. He ruled no tribe. He was a chieftain's son, but not a full chieftain, by order of Ulfang's decree; but so were all manner of base-born men, if they could buy the title.

Yet he was his father's heir by right! A right robbed, he thought with hatred, by Ulfast, son of Ulfang, who sat yonder; the slayer of his father...

That was why he was here. That was why he paid not a whit of attention to his companions, and kept his gaze fixed on the lofty Elves, the scowling Chieftain, the tentative politics. Drenda was mortal, he well knew; but he meant to build his fortunes if war came; to win distinction, reclaim his lands and settle a long over-due score, on behalf of a father he had never known.

Ulfang was a dotard, Ulwarth a frowning fool. Ulfast was his foe. That left Uldor only, even if Drenda distrusted him, and disapproved of the attentions Ulfang's heir occasionally paid to his mother. He would enter Uldor's service, and set himself upon a path that would make the name of Drenda great.

[Folwren]

The company in the throne room did not have to wait long. Five minutes passed perhaps, but to those that endured it, it well might have seemed like twenty. All the same, in little time, the door opened again and Ulwarth entered, stooped slightly and frowning. A taller man came behind him – Uldor. He stopped a few paces in the room as the two elves and his third brother rose to their feet. Ulfang told him the elven ambassador’s name and Uldor bowed, as was due.

“I apologize to have kept you waiting,” Uldor said as he straightened again. “But I’m sure my father and brother made ample company and amusement for you.” He cast a sharp eye on Ulfast. Their eyes met momentarily before both looked away. Something was rankling Ulfast, that much was certain. Uldor thought that he really shouldn’t care. Something was always rankling Ulfast. “Please, don’t stand any longer. Sit down, and let us hear what has brought you so far and across so many hard lands.”

He turned as he finished and walked to his place by his father’s chair and sat down. Ulwarth returned to his chair and slumped into the wooden depth of it. A look of complete boredom filled his face and his eyes half closed in lethargy. But beneath the pale eyelids, his dark eyes glinted as they turned towards the elf.

Lachrandir did not sit again as Uldor had bidden him. He took a step forward and in his hand he held a scroll.

“Wait a moment,” Uldor interrupted before the elf had even begun. “You will excuse my asking, but I know nothing about what is going on and would like to have an explanation before we plunge into things like this.” He looked first at his father, then at Ulfast, and lastly upon Lachrandir.

[piosenniel]

Grimr looked quickly at Káta and then away as Erling spoke. He tapped the fingers of his right hand in an uneasy rhythm against the side of his mug. There had been any number of hushed conversations in the long winter nights as he and Káta lay in their bed. Most about their Elvish hosts; some about Lord Ulfang himself.

It was Káta who had first brought up her fears concerning those strange folk from west of west as she termed the Elves. They made her uneasy with their looks, their manners. Their words were fair spoken she would say to him, but behind the fair planes of their countenances seemed a coldness that cared not for the concerns of men. ‘Ours is a piddling welfare in their wintry grey eyes,’ she had told him once. ‘Of little concern to them save for the fact that the bodies of our men and sons will be offered as fodder for the battles they plan against their foe.’

She had raised herself up on her elbow, pinning him with her dark eyes. ‘And what is that foe to us, heart of mine? That one has not done any wrongs to us.’ She put her finger to his lips as he started to speak. ‘I thought we were to be given good sized parcels of land to be our own. Places to run our stock, grow food, raise many children and them to raise many of their own. We are crowded in this land as much as in our homeland.’ She’d narrowed her eyes as she shook her head. ‘And what do we hear but promises of how we will be rewarded when their foe is defeated.’

‘I don’t want to go back,’ she went on, ‘but we must do something for ourselves somehow, even if the old Lord thinks otherwise. Not just sit about waiting for those.....Elves.....to give us a handout.....’

~*~

‘Strange folk indeed.....’ Grimr said in only a slightly louder voice than that which Erling had used. He motioned for Fálki to make fast the thick woolen door of their dwelling as he and his twin entered. ‘We should be careful how we speak about our.....hosts. It is said they are keen-eared. And I’ve heard it also that these magics you speak of may be all too true.’ He frowned as he looked about at his family and then back to Erling. ‘I have heard they can look into a person’s thoughts.’

He hunched closer to Erling, lowering his voice so that it could barely be heard above the crackle of the little cookfire. ‘Some of us men have been talking about the Elves and such.....’bout the old Lord, too. Talking bout what might be best for us plain folk.’ He motioned for Káta to pass round with the ale jug, and took a deep draught of it when she’d passed beyond him to Erling, then on to Granny.

‘If you wish,’ he went on. ‘If you’re of a like mind I’ll bring you to our next meeting.’ He took another long swig and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

[Noinkling]

‘Long-eared!’ Dulaan cackled thinking about those few Elves she’d seen from a distance. ‘Well that they are from what these poor old eyes have seen.’ She dipped a small chunk of bread in her cup of warmed wine, softening it enough for her nearly toothless gums to handle. A small dribble of the dark red liquid dripped down her chin as she chewed the soggy morsel. She wiped it away with the hem of her sleeve.

Granny’s eyes followed the small stream of smoke as it trailed up to the smokehole at the top of the room. ‘We could use more pasture land,’ she continued. ‘Add a few more rams among the nannies and we could enlarge our flock. Be more meat and milk to trade . . . and goats’ wool for your weaving,’ she said nodding thoughtfully to Káta. Dulaan took a bit of cheese on a stick one of the children had toasted for her over the coals to soften it. As she blew on it to cool it just a bit she began to speak about Ulfang.

‘The old wolf’s near as toothless as m’self, you know. Thinking’s none too sharp either, so I hear tell from some of the women as go up to the lord’s house to help with cleaning and such. Seems his sons are circling round about him, waiting for him to draw his last breath.’ She snorted. ‘Shameful thought, but I wouldn’t put it past one o’them to hurry him along to his Last Ride.’ Granny wriggled about on her cushion trying to find a more comfortable position. ‘Well, maybe not that youngest boy – though from what I’ve seen of him, he could be pushed to do it by one of his brothers. And the middle one, now there’s a sly fox. But he’d find some way to do in his older brother, too. He’d have to, don’t you think? Otherwise the power’d be slipping through his fingers for good when the old man dies and Uldor takes the lordship. Land’s sake! Now that one’d do in his two younger brothers just to make sure they’d never make a try for him.’

Granny popped the soft cheese in her mouth and mashed it about with her tongue, savoring the sweet taste and creamy texture of it. ‘Old Rinna’s milk does make the best cheese just doesn’t it now,’ she commented once the morsel was swallowed. She took the stick and poked at the coals along the perimeter of the little fire. ‘If I was a fellow looking to put myself in a good position,’ she went on, shoving the coals against the hotter embers. ‘And of course I’m not. Just a toothless old woman who spends too much time with her goats. I wouldn’t waste time currying favor with those outlandish Elves. Be of no use to us in the long run, so I’m thinking.’ She raised up the stick and blew out the small blaze that had blossomed at the end of it.

'Anyways, I think I might be sending a gift along to the Lord’s family.....making sure, of course, that it was Uldor as got the best of the lot. Be making sure he understood my family’s bows and blade were backing him. He’s the one as will be, as is already, really, the power among men in this place. And who knows.....he might be inclined then to see to us once the dust settles.’

[Child of the 7th Age]

Khandr could vaguely hear the women squabbling down the hall just outside the back door. He had told them both to prepare for this evening. Embla was probably finding ways to step on Briga's toes and to avoid doing the work that his first wife had set for her. He could also make out the voice of one of the locals who had come over to hawk foodstuffs in preparation for the feast. For one moment, Khandr considered rising to his feet and marching over to tell the three of them to lower their voices so he could have a moment of peace and quiet. But he did not want to embarrass Briga by intruding on her sphere, making it look as if he had no confidence in her.

Khandr plugged his ears and turned his attention back to the letter he was composing. After a few moments of earnest writing, he set the pen down on the table and picked up the parchment to read it:

To the liegemen of good King Bor,

As I am sure you have heard, Elvish messengers have arrived in the city and are negotiating with the Ulfing leaders even as I write this. I regret that neither King Ulfang or any of his sons had the courtesy to send me a message to join them in these discussions. As usual in recent weeks, the Borrim have been set aside and all my attempts at honest negotiations on the matter of the wedding have come to naught.

I am no longer content to sit at the side and do nothing to defend our interests. Increasingly, I feel that there are strange doings at the court and that it is our responsibility as liegemen of King Bor to try and find out what is going on. As much as I would like to pack my bags and leave this miserable place, I can not do that in good faith. I owe a responsibility to my King. Indeed, I would remind you that this is true for all of us.

I therefore request your presence at my household this evening. I will provide a great feast and tankards of good ale that we may come together and talk. Perhaps, with all your good wits and renewed efforts, we will be able to learn a bit more about what is going on and how all these developments reflect on the honor of our liege lord.

Please convey a message back to me either in writing or a few words spoken to my servant Hugo as to whether you will be able to attend.

I am, as always, your faithful envoy Khandr.

It had taken Khandr some time to make three copies of this missive. He had not wanted to leave something so important to one of the servants, and most of them were not able to write. Fortunately, all his guests were of good station and would be able to read his message to them. He flagged down Hugo out in the stables and instructed him to deliver each of the small scrolls to the other Borrim presently in the city.