Those Dark Days - Part 2.

The Sun began to come up over the buildings and walls of the old city as Alagg padded his way through it.  The sting of the cold morning air sent a shudder through his old bones as he walked.  Pipe scurried around his ankles ever watchful for his old master.

Alagg knew that the city guards would be looking for him.  Even in a lawless god forsaken place such as this the slaying of one of its citizens would not go unnoticed or unpunished.  He did not fear these men.  He did not fear any man.  But being locked up in a cell or dungeon for what was left of his life is not what he wanted.  So on he walked.  He thought he might find the road out of the city and walk on towards the sea.  The sea, where he once met his greatest friend.  At first they argued and fought.  But that had turned to companionship and they fought side by side many times in battle.  His mind often drifted back to the old times. 

‘That is because I am an old fool,’ he thought to himself.

His eyes scanned the crowd as he hit stride in to the market square.  He still held on to a little of the glint that had appeared along with his short lived rage.  It fired into his heart and warmed him.  His muscles didn’t ache quite so much.  His mood almost lightened.  Almost.  He had missed those feelings.  The horrors of his recent life had robbed him of his mirth and joy.  Even the glory of one small death sparked at his mind.  Cheering him.

But he must not lose clarity.  If he is caught it would mean his death.  Either straightaway or over long months in a hole in the dungeons of the palace.  He never feared death but just wanted to live and soon die in the open air.  As happy as he can be with a warm fire and the sky full or lights.  As a young man he craved death in battle.  In an arena of blood and guts.  But no man or beast had lived up to his skill or strength.  Krom would take him soon.  He knew this.

This market place was busy in the early light.  Full of traders and farmers setting up stalls.  The air smelt of horse crap and fish from the ocean.  The noises of bellowing cattle and salesmen bargaining and complaining.  This place was the most alive place in this shit hole of a city.  These were mostly the hard working traders.  Those that sold fruit that they had grown or fish they had caught.  Later in the afternoon and winter’s dusk would come the conmen and fey artists.  Selling their brightly coloured gowns and artfully crafted candles and scents.

‘And those fucking minstrels’ Alagg said to himself.

It was the minstrels and poets that Alagg had always hated.  Even back in those younger, brighter days.  They feigned mournful and melancholic feelings.  Acting as if they are weak and womanly.  They believed themselves to be men.  But they were not men.  Where were their axes or swords.  They sang of the regrets of love and loss but never felt the blow of a hammer in a muddy battlefield.  They treasured the well turned sentence rather than the sharp point of a spear.  Bah! He had no time for their shallow melodramatics.

‘If I see one I may slay him just for the fun of it.’  Thought the barbarian.

Now that gnome.  He could sure tell a story.  Mostly Alagg knew that his old friend’s stories were mostly bollocks.  Tales of sexual prowess or gambling triumphs.  How he could imagine that Alagg ever swallowed these tall tales he did not know but he told them nevertheless.  They would get drunk and the stories would get taller.  They would laugh and occasionally fight but they were always friends.  He missed that little bastard.

Alagg paused in a doorway that was out of general sight of the crowd.  He would watch.  Haste never saved any man.  He would bide his time.  Let the fuss die down before he attempted to escape.

The marketplace got busy as he watched.  Fat business men and their whore wives came and went.  Haggling like they didn’t have a gold coin to their names.  Their wives had that look on their faces.  That look that Alagg would rush to take advantage of as a young man.  That look that he knew meant that they were unsatisfied in their silken sheets with their overfed debauched husbands.  He allowed himself a laugh at one buxom wench.  He knew where her thighs would soon wonder to.  Maybe a servant or a guard but mark Alagg’s words it would soon happen.  He knows because he had been that guard, that stable hand and that selfish lover.

Alagg then saw a group of palace guards enter the square at the far corner.  They had cut him off from his intended escape route out of town and away from his crime.  There were many of them and all of them armed.  Maybe ten or fifteen.  Too many even for him.  He would need to find another way out of this fix he was in.

He looked about the ragged market place for some solution and his eyes rested on a lone female unloading crates from an old cart.  She was a brunette and shapely at that.  Her clothes spoke of a poor background and she had a withheld beauty that spoke of hard times.  As he watched her he saw that she was alone.  Her body language told his old eyes that straightaway.  She was trying to heft huge crates of apples to a makeshift stall.  Alagg knew that this was the opportunity he needed.  He walked the short distance over the cobbles towards her with a purpose but was careful not to act or step too quickly.  Careful not to give himself away.

As he reached her Pipe sat at her feet looking up at her.  It was almost as if Pipe was in on the game.  She was trying to lift a large wooden crate from the back of the cart but was struggling with its weight and bulk.

Alagg leaned over her.  Close enough to smell her sweat.  She jerked back.  Aware of the closeness of the barbarian.  She had been in fights he could tell.  He placed his huge hands next to hers on the handles of the crate and lifted.

‘I’ve got it.’ She said with some authority and a flare of anger.

‘No.  I will help.  Let me.’ Alagg told her.

‘I can’t pay.  I have no gold.’  The girl looked at him sideways.  She felt that she should suspect this beast of a man.  But knew that if he wanted her apples he would have just taken them anyway.

‘I don’t want gold.’  Alagg said without even looking at her.

Alagg simply did.  He never took no for an answer in normal circumstances and had no intention of doing so now.  So he just started.  The girl stood back and let him.  She had little choice.

As he unloaded the cart and she sold the fruit.  Alagg caught out of the corner of his eye the Palace Guard run past and then run past again.  Then as the hours passed he began to relax. 

‘Maybe this old fool had chanced upon a plan that worked finally.’ He thought to himself.  Smiling just a little.

He was a fool.  The girl caught his expression and moved close to him and spoke to him more softly.

‘Are you OK old man?’

‘Aye,’ he said.  His face returning to its preset frown.

‘She was clever this girl.’ He thought. He liked this girl. 

TO BE CONTINUED.

Those Dark Days - Part 1.

His boots of ragged leather and his clothes of ill matched skins and furs pulled around him.  Alagg sits near a warming fire in a back street of the city.  A city he once visited in the company of a gnome, a wizard and a princess.

This city that once was an open book to a barbarian such as Alagg.  Stories have been told about his battles with creatures in the sewers and an evil sorcerer.  The road brought him back here.  A road that he wanders these dark days. 

Life in his village after the wars is now many years behind him.  After the death of his best friend.  The slaughter of his wife and son.  Life held no direction or meaning for this gigantic warrior.  He set out to live on the road.  His life as a noble hobo spread out on maps ahead of him.

But that was many years ago.  A lifetime.  More than a lifetime ago.  He is older.  Old.  He is wiser but then again that wasn’t difficult in comparison to those past times.

He travels with nobody on this journey except his dog Pipe.  He rarely even speaks except to ask for work.  But who would employ a man whose only skill is the art of death in these times.  These times of joy, these times of gold, these times of fakery.

Alagg seldom looks up at those who pass him in this side street.  Why would he.  What could he say to the people of this once proud city?

To him these are the dark times.  These are the times of shallow debauchery.  These are the times of false emotions and plastic grins.  When did the world fall so far?

Jingles have replaced ballads.

Catchphrases have surpassed Poetry.

Quiz shows defeated the joy of battle.

These children.  They dance through life with their shallow moronic smiles.  This totem pole of pleasure presents Gods that Alagg neither recognises or cares about.

So here he sits.  In this a side street in a city where he once could have been King.  A missed opportunity.  A feeling that Alagg felt often.  The nip at his mind of what could have been and what should have been.

The cold bites at his muscles.  The air feels cold on his teeth.  His hair is grey now and a thick grey beard adorns his barbarian features.  His eyes now hold a sadness in them.  He has a tragedy about him that separates him from those around him.  This sadness makes him a stranger to those who pass.

This disconnect from the new world is a warm and welcoming blanket on cold nights such as this.  Why would Alagg feel kinship?  Alagg the strong!  Alagg the blood drenched! Alagg who defeated all in his wake!  Why would he want to be part of a world so lost within itself?  A world so caught up in it’s own desires and needs.

So here he sits.  Alagg sits and stares at Pipe.  His only friend who is curled up warm at his feet.  The cobbles are wet and dirty.  The mud is caked on to his boots and trousers.  He looks down at them but does not care.

It is then that his melancholy is broken by another pair of feet.  A younger pair.  A pair of feet in a pair of boots.  These boots that likely cost more than Alagg’s farmhouse back in the village.  He wonders why they have stopped in front of him?

Alagg knows that only violence will follow if he looks up.  He knows the signs.  He feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up and the muscles in his forearms tighten in preparation.  The hilt of his axe already in the palm of his hand.  This warriors automatic reaction.

It is then that the world turns.  It is then that he feels that moment of clarity often lost to him these days.

And so he raises his eyes.  The warrior nature in Alagg allows him to assess this person instantly.

He sees a manboy standing over him.  Lean. Dressed in bright colours. Gold and silver jewellery adorns his wrists and ears.  He has a tribal pict tattoo on his right shoulder.  A tattoo that Alagg has seen only in battle.  He knows that this cannot belong to a manboy such as this.  It is merely there as part of this world’s decorative fashions.  Fashions of the foolish.  Fashions without history or knowledge of their glory.

This manboy then dared speak.  ‘Get up you stinking beggar.  Move out of my way!’

As he spoke he faked anger.  He faked aggression.  Nothing real.  Nothing felt.

Alagg allowed the moment to sink in.  He gave in to the lull before the eruption.  Then slowly those tragic eyes felt the glint.  His teeth began to bare a snarl.  His forehead furrowed and like a beast from the Seven Seas he rose to his feet.

His towering strength evident in every move and breath.  Alagg in one swift movement swung his axe.  He swung it so swiftly in an arc of pure strength and aggression that it would be a blur to anyone watching.

With that the bright blood hit the pavement.  It dropped like it had been thrown from a high window and splashed Alagg’s boots.  Pipe made a low yelp as he jumped out of this crimson wake.  Then the manboy fell.  He fell with a smack to the floor.  He fell dead.  His life taken in a moment.  In a blur.  In a second’s lightning bolt of violence.

Alagg then picked up his belongings.  He rolled them up in the blanket.  He swung his rolled up belongings over his shoulder and he walked away.

He walked further in to this city that he once knew. 

This city now home to these dark days.

(To Be Continued.)