Deciever, Story But Not Related to TES Options

[Tulustan]

Last few weeks I have had ideas for stories rolling around in my brain muscle, so here is me trying to share one of them. Critiques are welcome!

Chapter 1

It had been roughly five years since I had gone north to the port city of Tanon in search of wealth. I had heard many things about the city, especially how easy it was to find a job on the wharf, which being of the prespant class left me very few choices in work. Slowly I had worked my way up the labor ladder on the wharfs and had become the manager of wharf four. It was still hard work especially getting the newer members to unload cargo quick enough and safe enough as to not hurt themselves or the cargo.

This year however I had begun to take a liking to one of the new dockhands. His name was Marcus and he had been working on the wharfs for only a few months. However, he had the brains to listen to my advice and not get himself seriously hurt or killed yet, and also no complaints had been filed against him (all extremely rare for new dockhands).

All in all life was going pretty good. I looked at the machine in the corner that told me what hour of the day it was… very nice almost time to go home. I decided to go down and arrange some festivities for the night.

As I walked onto the wharf the familiar feel of the treated wood groaned under my feet as the ocean tried to lazily dislodge it from the earth that it had been built into. Not much had changed about wharf four in the five years I had worked on it. A few broken planks here and there and that one time the crane had broken and almost clove the wharf in half, but it was still the same thing with a few scars and the blood of the men who worked it.

As I reached about halfway across the wharf I spied Marcus unloading a medium sized grey crate by himself. “Hey there!” I yelled to him.

“Whoa, if it isn’t the grand ol boss here to the rescue.” He yelled back. “Gonna actually contribute to this little shindig for once instead of sittin on your boat all day watchin us do all the work?”

“Hey! It takes a lot of strength writing those reports for all the crates you’ve dropped!” I replied not having to yell with the distance closed to within a few feet.

“Ah dang, you know I don’t drop any crates. But please feel free to keep sitting there while I do real work!”

I let out a little chuckle at that and began to help him lift a couple of the heavier crates off of the ship. I mean hell it’s a great way to keep in shape and I owed him after the drunken stupor I managed to drink myself into the night before.

Even though I had not totally recovered from that previous night I asked him “After were done off loading this ship wanna go to the Musty Sailor and grab some of the new import from Mumbril. I hear they added some extra zing to their new batch of ale!”

“Are you joking with me? After last night you wanna go drinking again? I mean cmon you just about killed yourself in that pile of puke you conjoured up! But yeah I guess, hopefully this time you’ll be walking me home though… Yeah I just realized the likelihood of that statement, ya drunky.”

“Hardy har har, see ya there. I gotta go take care of a few administrational things first.” under my breath, but loud enough to hear me I muttered “like getting you fired”.

“oh, you bag of dicks” he responded then said “later, don’t get too drunk before I get there to drag your boat home” he finished.

At that I walked back to my office at the end of the wharf and began to get all the reports ready to hand in the next day to the “dock master”. By the time I had finished my paperwork it was dark out and the candle lit room cast shadows of all the odd bobbles I had collected over the time I had lived in Tanon.

As I left my office the familiar smell of saltwater assailed my nostrils. Usually I just ignored it automatically but for some reason it was intensely strong. I kept walking back to my house. The whole way there the pungent aroma of the saltwater assaulted my senses.

I approached the shortcut to my house. It went behind the butchers shop and a few tall apartment buildings. Most of the city was built out of solid stone, one of the few in the kingdom. It was a key hub for commerce and with an abundance of quarries and a limited supply of farmland the city had built vertically.

As I reached my house, an apartment complex grafted onto the side of the southern wall, I noticed that most of the blankets over the windows of each apartment were down. I found this to be very odd because it was still early in the night and still fairly warm outside.

I got into my room and began changing into clothes I did not care overly much about (didn’t want to have to worry about puking on myself and buying a new shirt). I took care to put my dagger back on however, never know when you can use one in a enclosed area full of men whose heads may be a teeny bit infected with alcohol.

I left my house on the same route I had come in and when I got to the back ally I thought that I noticed someone following me. I ignored it, this being one of the safer cities in the kingdom thanks to all of the wealth it had acquired.

About halfway through the ally I heard someone full out sprinting in behind me. Quickly I turned around and began to pull my dagger. However, as the blade almost cleared the phantom behind me tackled me to the ground. He reached for something in his lavender robe, quickly I thrust my leg upward and into his growing getting enough force to somersault him over me.

I looked back to notice that he had somewhat recovered and had drawn a sword. Quickly I rolled to my feet and pulled my dagger. He came swift and fast with a lunge for my chest. I barely got the parry in time to stop the blade from gutting me. Again he tried to inflict damage on my innards using the same thrust. However this time I was more prepared and managed to parry the thrust easily. I noticed that he either must not have been expecting such a strong parry or was very inexperienced at using a sword because the parry had left his middle right open.

I took the advantage. I jumped on him with all of my might and knocked him to the ground. Right when we hit the ground I pummeled him once in the face with the butt of my dagger and kicked his sword away.

“Why are you attacking me!” I yelled into his face. The sound I got back was that of a mad animal trying all it could to break free. The thing was it wasn’t me he was trying to break free of. It was like something inside the man wanted out, or control of the body. I repeated my inquiry.

His face turned savagely red but it looked like something was winning over and he managed to mutter through gritted teeth “Heh help me”.

I had no idea how to help this man or even if he needed helping maybe this was just a ploy to break free from my hold. I began to ask in what way I could assist him when all of a sudden I heard a zinging sort of noise from my left ear, there was a wet smacking sound. The attacker had stopped moving altogether underneath me and a warm fluid had begun to puddle near my left knee where I was holding his arm down. That is when I noticed a small dagger handle jutting out of the side of my attackers’ neck.

This post has been edited by Tulustan: Dec 7 2010, 05:11 AM

[Tulustan]

Before I had any time to process what was going on a contingent of guards had appeared from the northern section of the ally. One of them pointed and shouted something at me. I was barely paying attention to him. The guards were closing in on me and I panicked, grabbed my attackers sword, and ran. There were a few places I knew the law didn’t dare look in Tanon and even though I really didn’t want to go there I doubted that they would believe I had not killed the man.

I had run back towards my house but instead of going straight through the streets I turned sharply at the end of the ally and headed back the main road. Luckily the streets were still somewhat busy from people coming back from work, and kids running through the streets, so losing the guards wasn’t terribly hard.

When I felt I had sufficiently lost them I headed back to my apartment. I stole a glance at the ally that I had gotten attacked in and not trace that the event had even occurred. That was very odd usually a royal inquisitor would try and figured out not only what happened, but who done it. Tonight was becoming more and more odd. I finally entered my apartment, the adrenaline instantly wore off and I felt shaky all over. I nearly collapsed. I went to go sit down on my chair and when I did a dull thunk sounded. I looked down to where the noise had come from and a sword was on the ground. It wasn’t just any sword, it had the Royal seal on the pommel and golden inlays on the hilt.

“Oh balls” I murmured. There were only three people in the Tamultan kingdom that had swords like this. Two of which were the prized princes, and the last was the grand general, their uncle.

I had to think fast. There was no way the general was so unskilled he could have easily gutted me like a fish. So that means the authorities think that I killed one of the princes. The question is could they really identify me? Should I even risk it?

I had decided to go the safe route and get the hell out of town. I quickly grabbed anything I could carry and all of the stored gold I had amassed. I also redressed into something warmer and with a hood so that just in case a guard did get a good look at my face it would be much harder to recognize me.
I had only been in my room for what felt like five minutes when I heard a commotion in the street. Guards began coming at my building from different streets. How could they have found out who I was so quickly? I remembered leaving my dagger which had my name engraved in it. “Balls” I muttered. There was no way that I could talk my way out of this, I destroyed that chance when I fled the scene.

I remembered that one of my neighbors had gone to see to a trade agreement with the dock master that night so I ran out of my room leaving the door open and plunged my way into his rooms which was luckily unlocked. Thinking with the great brain I had I decided that underneath his bed would be the perfect place to hide until the guards had left my room and then the building.

Within a few breaths I heard the pounding of mailed feet advancing up the staircase. “Quickly the door is open, find the murderer there is no way he has left the building!” a guard yelled. A few heavy breaths after that there was a commotion in what I could only guess was my room. From all of the crashing and yelling, my excellent brain deduced that they were ransacking my room looking for anything and everything that revealed my location.

“Start searching the other rooms in the building.” One guard ordered in an oddly high pitched voice. I had begun contemplating the stereotype of deeply voiced guards when the door to the room I was in splintered open. “Quickly check the room! We have to catch this guy or we are the ones on the chopping blocks.”

My heart rushed into my head. I was so stupid, who wouldn’t check underneath bed. The noise that the guards made masked all of my hyperventilating. I slowly moved the where the head of the bed met the wall and made myself as compact as possible.

“He’s not here” one of the other guards said sourly.

The one with the high-pitched voice yelled back at him “If he’s under the bed that you forgot to check, and we still do catch him, you are a dead man!”

There was a shuffle and a head intruded into my shelter. I don’t know if it’s because he took the threat literally and really did not want to find me or if it was just blind luck, but the guard only looked at the bottom half of the bed. He left my sanctuary and reported “nothing down there, no one is stupid enough to think that hiding under a bed will keep them hidden”.

As I waited for the guards to clear out of the building I looked back at how lucky I had just been. Then looked just a bit farther and realized just how unlucky I had been. Why the hell was a prince murdered. This kingdom has a pretty good monarch. Everyone is relatively content for the most part. Then the natural instincts of man began to set in and I began thinking of the smaller picture. Of just me, and how the hell I was supposed to survive when surely the malice of an entire kingdom would be hunting me like common game soon enough.

The only real option I had was to try and get across the Andrine Mts. and into the nomadic wastes to the east. Hopefully I could tack on to some tribe and figure out what to do next. First thing first, I had to get out of Tanon.