23 - The Weaponmaster
“Now we once more stand with weapons drawn, old master, old student, tense for a final skirmish. “You, another among many students come to re-honor this wise sword. “This wise, wise sword. “This wise sword will teach you like those others, my cracked cup of an apprentice. What a broken knight you make. “Totally broken. Totally broken. “Every Kingsday you once dazzled the eyes of my Lord and Lady Fathmail. My Lord Fathmail- Now this wise sword will cut you from the chronicle.”
Your old Weaponmaster’s eyes ratify the lunacy of his polished, cracking voice. Beneath the single, oiled, sharp grey eyebrow, placed too near his ear on the left side of his face, a bloodshot yellow cat’s eye quivers. The right half of his face is expressionless as the face of a Holstein, with a Holstein’s eye, and a short, black sideburn of Holstein hair.
Where your plate mail rusts, his glows. It is silver-gilt and scored; fine and tested. Your Weaponmaster wears it with squared shoulders. In his left arm, he holds a shield. Its crest is the old Fathmail Worm-over-Thunderhead.
His sword is sharp, and drawn.
This is not your master. This is not the knight who taught you the gift of your Steel. The gift of honorable oath. This is a doppelganger. How has this come to be? You yourself should have seen this man’s secret threat. Your Lady saw; now she pays for your blindness. You wanted to believe in this false master. And, you let distraction turn your eye. Those Long Knives, they drew the edge of your Steel-
The narrow stone lane beside the Canal Raydwurst seemed almost peaceful when you led your Blue Lady into it. The windows dotting the brick homes on your right lay curtained, closed, without reflection in the very-early break of day. To your left only five small gondolas bobbed quietly in the still water; two city water trappers alone stood on a gondola, loading nets.
They were assassins.
The two men now lie lifeless in the lane. Your sword has cut them down, and two more besides. You see three caped bravos ahead, blocking the exit. There are more behind.
Your present action should be to press your Lady under the cover of a wooden stair. Both teams have crossbows, so keep that Pinecone Crest Shield raised. You should be able to provide your Lady full cover between yourself and the stairs.
If you try to slay your way to freedom, you will fail. No matter how many killers you lay out on the lane, more follow. You have two ways of escaping.
| Commandeer a Gondola First, tempt the shots from the two crossbows coming up from behind. Quickly usher your Lady into the gondola with red-painted gunnels. This is the smallest and swiftest vessel. Use your sword to cut the line. Have your Lady paddle out to the water, then down the canal. You’ll need to keep your shield raised for incoming bolts. | Climb the Wooden Stair Again, draw shots from the rear group, but this time quickly mount the creaking stairs to the second-floor balcony of the canalside home. You’ll have to break down the door. This path leads to a short battle with a paper ghost (the house is abandoned and labyrinthine). |
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You’re lost. Hornwater’s tall loom-towers hum all around you with their heavy treadles. The canal water ripples with the syncopated rhythm. Workers drag huge skeins of colored cloth onto barges.
Your Lady speaks.
“We seem to have lost them. “I saw the cutting blade one held; a long stiletto made of blue metal. “It’s the guild of Long Knives. “Who has sent the hunters, my knight? Do the knives want your skin, or my own?”
A Familiar Face
One man draws a flick of your eyes.
An armored, armed knight walks alone amidst a drifting stream of commoners and laborers. He wears an odd face, distorted and old. You have never seen it before. Yet the strange face somehow mirrors a different reflection, seen only by the eye in your mind.
The city of Hornwater disintegrates.
You are standing, panting within a walled courtyard. The air is heavy with the tang of oil and lilac. The tiled garden of hanging plants is one you know well; it is the inner court of Clan Fathmail. You are a knight-apprentice, servant for the Lord of the house.
Your teacher stands before you.
His sword shinks into its scabbard. His tight-lipped, imperial, passive expression wrinkles with disapproval.
You are not good enough.
The memory is passing brief. Hornwater, and that stranger’s face which makes a strange reflection, reappear before you.
When you glance at your Lady, you see that she too recognizes the man.
You focus your attention on the sword. This doppelganger weaponmaster holds its point over the neck of your Blue Lady. He has tied her to a corpse on the dewy grass.
You lock eyes with your Lady, and see in hers a pain of the heart. You have not drawn your own sharp Steel. You dare not move.
The body on the ground is one of four. Members of the Long Knives. All dead. Cut throats. Precise.
The false knight’s sword is rimmed with blood. He has slain them. You watch a drop slide down, and fall on your Lady’s pale neck.
You have stood too still for too long in the bustle of the weaving quarter. The man with the strange face notices you. That face writhes with momentary surprise; then, he storms over to where you stand frozen.
“What? What?! Has The Scratcher’s Lash flayed your tongues to silence? “I see. That emblem carved into your breastplate. The vow of little talk. “It matters nothing. Matters nothing. Yes, I am your old master. “Even had I not seen that shining, blue-black hair of this Lady, I would have known you by your longsword, my old apprentice. “Is that blood on your pauldron? Is that sweat on your Lady’s collar? Your looks want decorum…”
This stranger flourishes all the curt speech of your old weaponmaster. You remember that, at least. Once you heard such speech before the rising sun, every morning. You remember the way it echoed, in that windowed eastern wing, in the hallway with the high stone ceilings. It seemed to shake the dust from the rafters. You suffered many a cut and blacked skin, from the blunts of that same sword worn by this stranger.
Your Blue Lady stands on her toes and whispers at the neck of your helmet.
“I ill-like this armored and armed one. “I do not know that we should trust him with our trouble, with The Long Knives. His arrival comes too conveniently on the heels of that late battle. “He has the right memories. He has a like voice. “But, the face is too-much changed. “My knight, I did not mean that. Of course his body may have been stitched - his soul summoned back - more than once.”
You press your Blue Lady on through the moving crowds. The armed man follows you. Soon the heavy hum of the looms fades.
You can choose not tell this familiar stranger about the recent attack. Even if you withhold it, he will guess that The Long Knives are after you. You’ll notice the man’s misconfigured face smoothing as the moments pass. After a few more minutes walking the man will offer you shelter. He will offer it, “from whatever troubles your step,” or, “from the Long Knives.” He gives one condition however; you must help him to recover his own sworn Lady.
She has been kidnapped.
A rogue wind wanders Hornwater. It soughs in the limbs of the redbuds, in the park, where you face the doppelganger.
Petals drop from the branches. One curtain of ten-thousand rolling petals obscures your views of each other.
On the wind is a distant mourning horn. A lugubrious cadenza. It is a funeral song - someone has died, elsewhere, in Hornwater.
The pink petal curtain falls. The weaponmaster’s sword remains poised over your Lady’s throat.
But you yourself have stolen the momentary break of sight, and drawn your Steel.
The man will lead you to three different locations in the search for his mysterious Lady. Keep your Steel ready; there is a chance you will be ambushed by Long Knives.
You’ll have to find the clue hidden in each of the three locations. The order in which the man visits them is always the same.
| The Old Arena Arcade The clue here lies in the riddle, carven into the stone on the flaking mural, where the east sun shines through a crack in the wall. The answer to the riddle is “Crows’ Feet”. | The Skylit Hall with Hanging Vines Listen to the trilling of the birds in the skylights. Their song has a rhythm; bum buuuum, bum bum bumbum. | The Pond House Simply search the rooms for a while. After a few minutes, the man will stare fixedly at his expression in a still pool, before twisting a knowing smile upon you. |
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You are unsure of the significance of each clue, but the man’s face wriggles at each revelation. When you’ve found all three clues he suggests going to The Channelloft.
As you wander through Hornwater your armed guide speaks still more freely, in the voice of your old master. Listen; you may pick up some lore.
“Possibly it is these Long Knives that have taken my sworn Lady. A guild of tyros. They have metal, and the muscles to swing it. But they have no vows. “My Lady. She’ll have been taken for her beautiful spirit. “My Lady. My Lady. “She IS strength-of-purpose. “That strike you took back there, old apprentice; something was wrong. “Listen. Do you hear that singing water? We are near the Channelloft of Hornwater. It’s where the lost go.”
A cube of discolored, mossy bricks, slit windows, and angular terraces and rooflines rises in zigging and zagging architecture, high over the surrounding city. Water trickles from one-hundred-and-seven elevated drains on each of the four sides.
Inside, The Channelloft is a warren of wastewater tunnels and cavity dwellings. Madmen, gutterchild killers, and few honest men live here.
No matter how one watches, companions always seem to vanish in The Channelloft.
Perhaps this is your old weaponmaster’s soul. But if so it’s certainly leaking. You know what struggle there is in the spirit, when one’s body is broken and stitched back together. This man holds his sword over the throat of your sworn Lady. That Lady is she to whom he first gave your service. Could he let the evil blood of an assassin fall on her skin? Can a soul crack thus? This man rages. In rage he has slain these other killers. Will the buds of these trees bloom redder next year, for having drunk the blood of Long Knives? Will the trees’ souls crack, nourished by killers? Why lose focus? Think of an opening. Don’t lay down your Steel as you did for the harridan. Long Knives have died; by your Steel or his, no matter.
Reverberations of pounding, booted footsteps crash on your ears, ricocheting on the gurgling tunnels, surrounding you in an orchestra of din. Your Lady and the weird man are gone, and you are cornered.
You’ll have to cut your way through waves of Long Knives. They’ve followed your trail into The Channelloft.
There are a few things which you should exploit to your advantage. The Long Knives haven’t been able to perfectly coordinate their convergence. They’ll attack in groups of three. Try to kill each group before the next reaches you. The Knives carry thin stilettos and wear painted breastplates over padded coats. Their ‘Long Stilettos’ are best at darting through creases in your armor; if you keep moving and keep your Pinecone Crest Shield up, the worst you’ll experience is a tinny tapping on your rusted plate. For your part, aim your Steel at their limbs. Your blows don’t need to kill, only clear a path.
Above all, keep moving through The Channelloft. You’ll want to riposte, slice, clang and clash your way toward the cry you hear echoed of a local statue seller: “Happy for sale! Scared for sale! Faces in Stone!” His shop is near an exit.
Rounding a sewer-bend, flicking blood from your Steel, you see slate-colored light ahead. Leaning against the rounded wall of long-dried slime is one of the Long Knives. He notices you but doesn’t move. He coughs blood.
“You- you were supposed to have no friends in town. Cough. Cough. “One cracked knight. One pale, skinny woman. Kill her before she finds- The Sisterhood said- easy- easy sheathes for knives. “Cough. Cough. CoughCoughCough. “Where’d you hire the wild man? So- so wrathful. “Such a- a blow he- he- deals…”
Stepping out into the Hornwater daylight, you shield your eyes.
A commotion across the canal. Children, running. An armored figure. With an iron arm, the man drags your Lady through an arch formed by two redbud trees - a park.
You cut through a few more Long Knives, but their numbers are thinner. You find another body as you cross the canal bridge. Another dead Knife, slain with a brutal, cleaving blow to the collarbone.
Even had you not seen him, a red trail follows the mad knight and your captive Lady, follows into the grove.
Your old master raises his sword from your Lady’s neck. He brings it into a forward guard.
“I have worn myself more than I wished. Running across Hornwater. Slaying your black stalkers. They have managed a small cut on my arm, you see. But I am still fair to cross swords. “My Lady, she IS the spirit of Honor. My Honor. I could not find the beautiful place for her. “This garden is a beautiful place for you. I shall please my Lady, laying you here. “This harlot on the ground means nothing. She is no spirit of broken oaths. Broken oaths. Broken oaths. “The reunion is over, my old student. It is time to spar.”
You sweep your arm up and hold your blade horizontal, the flat facing out. Your foe does the same. The duel begins.
This battle will test both your strength and your strategy. Over many resurrections, your master’s body has soaked in necromancy. He hardly bleeds from even the deepest cuts. A severed tendon or a broken arm will slow him not at all. At the same time your old master recognizes that (cracked body or not) you’ve retained your own Steel-skill. He will not underestimate you.
In the first act of the fight the Weaponmaster circles freely around the grove. You can stun and temporarily slow him with ringing blows upon his breastplate. Eventually, he will try to back you against the canal with an onslaught of quick slashes. Use the redbuds to create distance from this barrage.
Once you’ve landed six or seven strikes, your old Weaponmaster’s cracked soul will ignite with wrath. Liquid fire seeps from each misshapen eye, and beads like burning sweat on his skin. The necromancy that has sewn his soul together is collapsing in upon itself. In this state your old master’s arm smites with thrice the prior force. Your shield has no hope against such an arm, but you will realize this only too late.
Your Pinecone Crest Shield splinters apart.
Your only hope is the environment. Retreat from the weaponmaster’s burning soul. Goad the man into swinging at one of the redbuds. Each time he does, his sword will become temporarily lodged in the wood, allowing you to get in a strike or two.
If you can land a cut on his skin at this stage, the disintegrating man’s body will completely split apart. No longer human, this thing is a Shambler; a mass of living tissue-parts and dying spirit-matter.
The Shambler hurls pieces of its broken steel armor at you. The missiles can easily puncture your own rusted suit, so dodge them. Use the roots of the grove to your advantage. Get the creature to chase you over the terrain. When it finally trips, capitalize. Rush in, raise your arm, and end this man’s torment with a clean chop of your Polished Steel Longsword.
As your former master’s head separates from his body, the wounded soul finally gutters out. Head and body disintegrate. All that is left behind is burned clothing, tissue, and armor; and a lump of slag that was his sword.
Your Lady watches you as you untie her from the corpse.
“Oh my Knight- “I wish- I am so very sorry. “I remember the old man who brought you to my service. “But, My Knight, I have learned something. “I have seen him. The one we looked for. “My stepson.”