The Culling (Vith)

[Fenris Hood]

50th of Summer 510 AV


The dew hung deep against his skin with the persistence of clothes dowsed in perspiration. Practicing all morning on a fifteen string lute with three digits had left a raw taste in his mouth that desired to be peeled off like paint. Hood carried a headache like you would an outlandish hat, with stylish balance. Pressing under the flap of a market door, the man blinked to maintain his level of focus then adjusted his gaze to the fragrant mist of the humidity. They say his face held the smash of character, like a split board of driftwood soaked gray while coiled around the knots of saddle bags hung beneath the eyes and a fixed nose. It took some people time to register where their protocol stood in line with his demeanor, while others walked up barely distracted by his full beard and offered to sell the man a saddle. Patient irises sifted through their words as he playfully whistled as a glassbeak would to make a sitting child jump up to squeeze their parent’s hand.

It seemed amusing though, because beneath the glow and smile lay the pendulum of a musician, keeping time with each body surrounding him and every candid step. Fenris ran his lean fingers over a seam in the tent, following a skirt out the other door and into a welcome friend.

“Well if it ain’t ol’ Fenris back from the dead. What you say then old man, tired of eating mushrooms and sh'ttin the dark?”

A middle aged figure with a flattened nose and brushed hair wound tightly over the skull leered at him with the sheen of dry emotion. Hood licked the left edge of his lips like a lucky gypsy looter, his own tempo even and imbued with a mocking civility.

“Pardon me master Finnegan. Just came back up for wiping paper but your braids ‘ll do deadly.. with all your experience kneel’n on down and kissing erse then.”

The severe grind of the facing man’s teeth clattered like spurs on stone.
“Should have killed you when we trapped you in that ravine and pressed the arrow straight through, stead of leaving your etched bones below the underpasses.”

Hood stepped forward, locking eye to eye with the lean and sagging warrior.
“And I should have murdered you passionately by pullin out of yar grand-mother early, or the countless other times you slept beneath my generosity, suckling on me treasure like a f'ck’n udder before that fated day. Savin your life’s not enough..”

“You can’t exchange my life for Paeter, or Damede or the hundred others your indulgence burned.”

“Some weepy Drykas boy loses his dignity over a bet and blames me for every killing claw that sweeps through t’ese plains. What did your Ankal say about dat day, ah yes. F'ck all. His webbing saw nothing."

“A master of the webs could shade their trails, don’t take me for a fool.” The man seemed to step back slightly hurt but angry.

“I got only three fingers left on the levt hand and a great dul'a patience but all I’d need now is one to count that high.”

Finnegan shoved the old rider into a torch pole, spilling ashes over his cloak with the hollow knocking sound of wood against metal. The bard's right knee soaked into dry mud as he arose slowly, brushing off the spilled grass while staring politely into the younger Drykas’s eyes.

“You about done then boy.”

The man with hazel hair neatly braided and woven into a mass behind his head seethed, with white knuckles wrapped around the hilt of a sword but said nothing while watching three yellow shirts stride towards them through the mix of weather and emotion. The air was suddenly so frigidly brittle it could have been snapped like a twig.

“Now f'ck off back to being a foot rest for better men and a pawn for worse.”

Finnegan and two others turned and suddenly left into the anonymity of the crowd before the violence could be seen. Beneath their call, Hood's voice spoke low like a lighthouse keeper watching the shoals clear below.

“Ah lad.. If only you could a heard your mates being torn wrist from fucking ankle. Sweet justice that.. But this cup never seems to empty. Bitter as a bit in the mouth.” Someone nearby brushed off the back of Fenris’s leg but he didn’t notice, saying an appreciation from habit while slipping into the backdrop of an adjoining pathway. “Now that’s what the poets would call… Irony. I was just com’n to see your naughty little uncle.. See what he thinks of m’ new number.” The discordant pluck of an untuned string carried forth the immediacy of his pursuits. The day was brewing slow, bubbling with the razor of years that crawled like aged whiskey down his throat.