The Unkown

It was dreary as the day progressed. The clouds hung low on the highlands, casting a pale shroud over events of the day. I stood within a few cubits of the wedding procession, biting my nails. Too many bad omens had dogged us this past week. Just yesterday, Havarr had cut her hand against a piece of fog glass, her green tinged blood had insidiously left the mark of the Seventh on it’s cool flawless surface. I wasn’t one to dwell on such superstitions but it had come on the back of several broken wheels and a stray black cat pissing in Gregar’s broth. I unconsciously tightened my hands on the pommel of my military issued sword, there was a feeling of palpable wrongness in the air. One just had to reach out and taste the murk.

The bride and groom passed shortly, their open roofed chariot drawn by a duo of majestic northern stock stallions and flanked by a two column thick procession of city guards. The guard was short staffed, forcing the city garrison to provide extra hands for security. It was why we were here, Havarr stood by my side, towering over my considerable height by a full head. She was a halfie, born of orc and human dalliance. Her features were human for the most part, but the orc in her could never be overlooked. A pair of tusks jutted out just beneath her lower lip and the red-green tint of her hair tightly pulled into a bun spoke volumes of her orkish heritage. Some said without them, she would have been a stunning beauty. I disagreed. She was beautiful as she was, her freckled face sourly lit by the waning light gave off a feeling of security I sorely needed. I loved her, she would never know.

I turned to watch as the procession fettered out. The last dregs of its flowery train walking beyond us to take the final turn in the city square before heading to the west gate and into the higher quarters that marked the beginnings of the imperial palace.

The crowds were in a mood independent of my thoughts. They cheered and brayed, celebrating a union that hopefully marked an end to centurns of strife between us and the Eastlanders. I felt taken aback, could they not feel it? The wrongness of it all? If things could be solved with a simple marriage, then thousands of our folk had died for nothing.

Rumors of the Deadhand cult had resurfaced just as proceedings had led into the new week. Turns out the Seventh wasn’t the only secessionist group to voice their disapproval. We’d cleared several posters of the goatshead demon from the square just this morning. I took a deep breath to steady my errant thoughts. This was no time for wishful thinking, our guard shift was to be rotated within half a bell. I just had to maintain an acceptable level of concentration before our relief arrived.

Havarr stirred to my right, ‘I see some movement to the right, seems like some disturbance’.

I took a moment to enjoy the husky bass rasp of her voice before searching the crowd for the disturbance.

It seemed like drunk and disorderly conduct from where I stood. The Empress had imported a King’s ransom of ale form the Lost Isles for the celebrations. If half the crowd was sober, it’d be a miracle.

A group mostly made up of the rough and tumble kind, appeared to be making their way through the waves of unwashed flesh that thronged on the opposite side of the square. A couple of city guards on the other side quickly melted into the crowd, their batons drawn.

The ruckus quickly died out after several batons momentarily appeared and descended above the horizon of gathered heads.

‘That was quick’, remarked Havarr as she returned her attention to the cobbled pathway ahead of her.

I nodded gruffly and was considering telling a joke I’d heard at the pub when a scream pierced through the noise of the revellers.

‘What th-?’

A section of the crowd on our side exploded outwards, forcing guards on that side to temporarily vanish beneath an avalanche of body parts and shrapnel.