Present Day: A Long and Winding Road
It had been several weeks since the Midsummer Feast in Bixtry, and the ride had been long and quite uneventful. They had ridden through many towns and small cities, heading generally northwest, looking for any kind of work along the way and finding nothing of any interest. They could have busied themselves helping farmers harvest their crops, but none of the three was suited to that sort of work.
Wil was perhaps the nearest thing they had to a genuine farm hand, having been born and raised on a farm, but he had never much taken to that kind of labor. He had done his chores grudgingly at best, when he had actually done any at all. Usually, he had been able to convince one of his brothers to do the work instead, or he would simply shirk his duties and take the switching later on.
Durok was a warrior. He had no patience for picking peas or beans, or for carrying baskets, or for threshing wheat, or any of the other countless, dreadfully boring tasks that farmers often hired out to willing workers. He was not much use as a butcher, either; he refused to use a butcher’s cleaver or any of the other knives normally used for such things, always preferring to use his own axes. It was never a problem when he was preparing his own meat, when he could simply hack off a limb and roast it on a spit over an open fire. But when it came to cutting steaks or chops or other finer cuts, most normal, civilized people would have found his culinary arts to be lacking any kind of finesse.
As for Eorian, well, it was just not something he could ever imagine himself doing. Farm work for humans was a far cry from tending elven gardens back home in Edann, and the farmers would get grumpy when Eorian tried to juggle their turnips and beets and potatoes. Also, there was always the temptation of the fabled Farmer’s Daughters; Eorian was something of a ladies’ man, and he was never much good at resisting temptation. It had gotten him into trouble many times, especially since he had taken to traveling with Wil.
When they stopped in the odd town or city, they always left with a few extra coins in their pockets. This was never the result of legitimate employment, however.
Sometimes, they would perform for their suppers. Wil was an ace with his tiny fiddle and a handful of other hob instruments, and he had a sizable repertoire of down-home hob songs. He was also a decent dancer, and he would perform mad, energetic jigs as he played. Eorian had no skill with any instrument, but he had a lovely tenor singing voice which was particularly suited to singing slow, aching ballads that made the ladies swoon. Durok had no musical skill of any kind, but when the three of them set a hat or fiddle case on the ground, Durok’s presence ensured that the make-shift coffer would not wind up missing at the end of the day.
If they judged that the current settlement would not have much appreciation for music, Wil or Eorian would recite one of their many long, dramatic stories at a public house. Wil’s tales tended to be action-packed, bawdy adventures, the kind that appealed to a more rough-and-tumble crowd. Eorian’s tales tended to be more romantic, and he leaned more towards tragedies than comedies. His stories, like pretty much everything else he did, appealed more to the ladies and to a more sophisticated crowd.
If tale-telling failed, they still had money-makers. Both Wil and Eorian could juggle, and they had a well-rehearsed two-man show. Eorian had a trunk full of marionettes and ventriloquist’s dummies and other assorted puppets. Will had four big, leather-bound books full of jokes he had collected during his travels, and he had most of them memorized. The two of them had a number of comedy routines worked out, with costumes and everything. They both shared a love of stage magic and card tricks, with the sleight-of-hand and misdirection and all the theatrics of simple illusion, and they were both quite skilled.
Durok had no kind of performing skill whatsoever. When the other two decided to stage a performance, Durok would set things up and stand off to the side, making sure no one messed with his friends or their equipment. They did not have a lot of equipment — only what they could carry on the backs of two horses — but what they did have, Durok kept well-guarded. Sometimes he quite enjoyed the shows, especially when Wil started telling his dirty jokes at the end of the evening. Mostly, though, he sat sullenly in a corner, drinking and watching.
Sometimes, a town was not receptive to any kind of performance. It would happen that the three travelers blew into town just after another troupe had blown out, and no one was in the mood for more of the same. Sometimes, the people were just grumpy and sullen and didn’t want to be entertained.
The trio still managed to make money in these towns, however, for there was one particular skill at which all three of them excelled: outright theft.
Each man had his own methods and areas of expertise. Wil was a confidence man and a pickpocket. These skills were the exact things that had made him such a consummate stage illusionist; he had an uncanny ability to convince the willing mind and distract the unwary eye, and his fingers seemed lighter than air.
Eorian was a gambler, and he had considerable charm with women. He was not quite as gifted a performer as Wil, but he was an incredible card player and he knew how and when to cheat. Often times, when performance was not an option, Eorian would somehow find an, open card game with juicy stakes, and they could walk away with a tidy stack of gold and silver. If he could not find a card game, he could usually find a well-to-do (and usually very attractive) young lady that was more than happy to share a pleasant evening with such an attractive, charming half-blood elf. When she woke up the next morning, she might find a few choice pieces of jewelry had gone missing, and a perfumed thank-you note had been left on her pillow.
Durok was a surprisingly good thief. His large size and fierce demeanor lent itself naturally to thuggery, but none of the three held such tactics in very high regard. Thuggery was the same as banditry, and even Durok felt that banditry was very low work.
Durok’s specialties were burglary and locks. Despite his size, he was quite light on his feet, and he could move through a dark house without making a sound — if he wanted to, he could slip the pillows out from underneath the homeowner’s head without waking him. And despite his crude heritage, he had a good eye for expensive finery. He always seemed to know just what to take, what items would fetch the best price at a hob fence in the next town, even when the other two did not.
When no amount of entertaining could earn the three of them a meal or a roof over their heads for the night, they could always fall back on good old Plan B. Plan B always paid the bills.
The three of them made an incredible team, despite their strange mix of heritage and temperaments. Where one was weak, another was strong, and they all complemented one another’s talents quite nicely. Wil had always been the “face-man,” the spokesman for the group and their principle performer. He was also the one who dreamed up the various schemes and plans, although his ideas were sometimes terribly impractical and sometimes downright impossible. Eorian was possessed of a cool wit, and it often fell to him to make Wil’s mad plans work. He was inventive and creative, always collected and methodical in his thoughts, and he always seemed to know the odds.
While Wil and Eorian were the collective brains of the operation, Durok was unquestioningly the muscle. When Wil’s schemes and Eorian’s plans called for heavy lifting, Durok lifted.
However ideal their strange union, though, they had now come upon a dry spell and hadn’t been able to find any work. Things had been tight since Bixtry; no one seemed interested in any kind of entertainment, pockets seemed to be lighter than usual, and barely any of the houses in this particular region held anything of value to a band of burglars. This was not one of the wealthy regions like the far-western provinces or the eastern farmer-baron towns.
The closest thing to a big, wealthy city around here was Culmer, the market city. Barely anybody actually lived in Culmer; most of the buildings there were empty storefronts rented out to seasonal or traveling merchants. The few people who lived in the city were the caretakers and the street sweepers and the local militiamen, and none of these people had much in the way of proper wealth.
As for the shops, they were mostly trading stations with little in the way of stock. The traders that worked there swapped contracts for shipments of food, mined ores, crafted goods, clothing, raw materials and that sort of thing. None of this was of any interest to a trio of thieves looking for easily-lifted swag to fence a couple of towns over.
They continued on west, taking their time and following the long, lonesome road. They had been forced to ride well north of Amear-on-the-River, a city they had visited a while back and where the authorities possibly still had standing warrants for their arrest. Rumors reached their ears as they passed wide of the place, stories of unrest and reformation, a great riot and some kind of civil war and tumultuous political restructuring. One farmer said that the law was no longer bothering to pursue old warrants — many such records had been lost during the riots — but Wil and the others agreed that it was probably best to play it safe.
And so they continued to ride. It had been a long journey for all of them so far, a long and winding path full of strange crossroads and lonesome, empty stretches. For all three of them, this journey had started with an unexpected and tragic death. For Wil and Eorian, that death had taken the same person.
Posted by sirgunky 