The Troubles

The Troubles. That's what they called it. Or that's what the Fiochmahr clan called it, anyhow, and it seemed a decent enough name for the last few years. Of course, things hadn't been altogether untroubled before that. Not since two hundred years previous, when the Fiochmahr clan had seen its very last Dusk Sage. They'd called him the Ash-Faced One. Cheeky bastard, he was; walked right off out of the clanhold with nary a ceremony of the parting but just a distant sort of look and a walking down the mountain. He'd faded into the dusk, and neither song nor legend had spoken of the passage of him or any other Dusk Sage since.

But tonight wasn't a night for brooding on the past, or feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight was a night for celebration! Tonight, the famous mead of the Fiochmahr clan was open for one and all. Four days previous, the Fiochmahr clan had destroyed the Cheldrun logging expedition sent out from some steel city or another. Pepsid Five, or something like that. Surely that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So old Grim Fiochmahr, Head of the Fiochmahr clan, had declared a celebration, and they'd been partying nonstop ever since. After all, it wasn't every day you put an end to the Cheldrun logging operations in your area, and if the guards had seemed only half hearted at best, well, they just weren't real fighters like the Gogajin were.

Old Grim hadn't always been the head, of course, but the tale he'd told of his escape from the mines of a dark Cheldrun city, and his rescue of a whole group of their women had gone a long way towards boosting his popularity in the clan, even if none other of his companions in the mines had made it out of Geneva Prime with him. Diarmaid, Adar, Rogan, Donald, Baldur, these were the new heroes of the clan. And as for old Grim, well, he had ne always been Old Grim. The mines, and what had happened after, they'd changed him. Aged him before his time, maybe. Or maybe it was that age didn't cling so tightly to his shoulders as he felt it, but he felt it. At least, that was the story everyone told, though it likely found its source in younger minds than his. Two children on the brink of their teenaged exile were particular suspects, but no one could prove their involvement in the starting of the rumour, and the name had caught on regardless. Old Grim it was.

The mead-hall was full of Gogajin, male and female alike, each of them eager to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. They were seated at a series of long wooden benches that filled most of the room, and already the mead was flowing freely. Boisterous does not begin to describe a room full of partying Gogajin: a few good natured fights broke out, and a few couples decided that their time would be better spent in a dark corner with each other than at the table with the others, and all that was before the boasting competition began. The Fiochmahr clan had a tradition, you see: two Gogajin would tell increasingly wild and unbelievable boasts, and whoever it was that told the wildest, most unbelievable one, well, he or she would have to go out and try to accomplish it. Usually it ended in hangovers and a Gogajin sleeping with someone they wouldn't ordinarily have been inclined to, but a few weeks back, it had brought about the raid on the logging camp, and tonight, well, tonight it was a good bet it was going to...

The partying came to a sudden halt (though the couples in the dark corners didn't bother to stop) when a pair of Gogajin slammed open the doors to the mead-hall, with a group of Cheldrun in tow. They were badly emaciated, half starved, and looked more than halfway dead. About a dozen of them came in - a middle-aged man at their head, wearing the tattered remains of what had probably once been a fine silk kimono - and many more of them were crowded around the entrance.

Silence hung heavily in the air for a long moment before a young Gogajin - only just returned from his adolescent exile - rose to his feet and shouted, "What kind of fucked up shite is this!?"

"You shut your mouth, Hagan!" a middle-aged female Gogajin bellowed back.

A number of other Gogajin joined in then, until finally Grim rose to his feet and banged the table in front of him with an enormous fist. "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!" he bellowed.

Silence.

"Right. You two," he looked to the two Gogajin leading the Cheldrun. "What kind of fucked up shite is this?"

One of the two Gogajin spoke up. "They showed theirselves at the gate a bare few moments ago, askin' fer food and water, uh, Grim."

Grim looked to the Cheldrun. "I wist they ne be speaken Gogajin?" he asked, his regional accent coming to the fore as he spoke.

The middle-aged male Cheldrun in the tattered kimono stepped forward. "Your pardon, sir, but I do."

Grim looked at the man. "... Well, what do ye want, then? Ye must be either very brave or very stupid to come here. Qwich is it?"

"I am Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan," the Cheldrun said. "My companions and I are... exiles. Refugees. There is no place for us in Katashi Blade's new regime, and we thought it better to try our luck in the wilderness than to die at the hands of a Goshi Assassin, or a bounty hunter... please, sir, we have nowhere else to go. We are hungry, we are tired, and many of us are sick." He swallowed, and what he said next had the feel of an old tree toppling over: "Will you help us?"

Grim took a long moment to think about that, weighing it out in his mind. Of course, in the end, looking at the Cheldrun all helpless and starving-like, there was only one conclusion he could have reached: "... Aye. Ye clepen for me help, and I hear ye." He rose up to his full, massively muscled height. "All right, listen here! Listen here! These wights be safe with kith and kin tonight. None harm nor hounde them here on pain of a beatin' the likes o which you none never seen!"

The other Gogajin shrugged. One of them thought about shouting, "Ah, fuck you Grim!" but thought better of it at the last moment. The Cheldrun did look pretty desperate, after all.

Grim gestured, and a pair of Gogajin, a wer and wyf (a male and a female, that is), came forward and led the Cheldrun away to the Clanhold's guest quarters so as they could stow their things before they came to join the feast.

The feast went on.

------------------------

Later, when the shadows had had faded into gloom, the moon had set, and the only sounds were the frantic scrabblings and brayings of donkeysex in the hall, and the peace of the predawn hours hung heavily over the land, there came a stranger to the Fiochmahr clanhold. Stranger than even the Cheldrun refugees. A mechified. He came creeping through the corridors, almost his entire body made of metal save his face and his middle, the sounds in the hall masking the clunk-clunk-clunk of his footsteps. His eyes had been replaced with gleaming red lenses, and they allowed his vision access to the infrared: it was with this that he tracked his prey.

Gently, ever so gently, he pushed open the large wooden door that led into the room where his target slept. A bounty hunter he was, and a good one. He always got his man, or so they said. This man, well, they'd specified dead or alive, and he figured that dead would be easier than dragging him back through the wilderness, so once he was sure that the middle-aged Cheldrun sleeping on the bed in the tattered Kimono was in fact Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan, Winston reached out with his right hand and placed it almost gently over the sleeping man's heart.

Then he reached over with his left hand and flipped the switch to activate the pneumatic spike. Or would have, if a grip as strong as steel itself hadn't caught his hand mid-flight.

Winston looked up in alarm. The occupants of the beds around Ishikawa Tetsuro's were not asleep at all, but awake and very very angry.

An angry looking Gogajin stepped forward and glared poor Winston in the face. "I given these wights safety here with kith and kin," he cracked his knuckles, "And unfortunate fer you, I meant it."

An hour later, three Gogajin tossed the bruised and battered body of Winston the Mechified over the walls of the clanhold, and down he tumbled into the brush with the long, loud, trailing clatter of metal sliding down two hundred yards of loose rock.

Grim dusted off his hands, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went back to bed, satisfied that that was the end of it.

But the troubles were only just beginning.