Campaigns
PargAddi

The PargAddi Annals - XII

"Ouch"

4/23-7/52 (Crescent-Come, Week 232, 1623)
I told my boys to forget about moving their gear. "We're leaving, now, for Urnandel." And so we were sitting in the mud waiting for Reledus' precious moonboat when it arrived.

Somehow I expected something different.

Something bigger.

Something that I couldn't see through.

Reledus' moonboat was 40 feet long and could hold about 20 people, as long as we didn't like to breathe. It had a crew of 3 Darjiini, no roof, and holes in the bottom. I snarled at the perverts as I swung over the bulwark and watched them cringe - they got me back when the boat lurched into the sky.

It was a rough ride. And it rained. For two days.

We set down somewhere in Darjiin on Empty ½ for the night and lurched into the sky again in the morning. We slowed at the glowline until the Goddess turned her Full face to us and then plunged off into brunner-land.

I spoke with one of the drubbers - a foreign shit named Marakus. He had some fancy ideas about his talents but had been cursed by Yelm - his eyes hurt in sunlight. Of course he didn't believe that, he had a "gift" and could see in the dark. This boy was big, nearly as big as Upstanding, and carried two big swords on his back. I'd yet to see him fight but he looked like he could hold his own.

Full/23
We got off that Tholm-cursed reed contraption just north of Urnandel, in a small copse of trees.

Reledus gave us his inspirational pep talk - "The pilgrims should be leaving soon. Remember, failure is not an option." - and then jumped back on the boat and flew away.

We looked at each other and came to the conclusion that Reledus didn't know what the Cold-Eyed Messiah had done or why we were after him. Oh well, the Emperor says kill him, so we'll kill him.

We scouted about a bit and saw some shepherds in the nearby fields and the main road right next to the trees. We discussed our options and decided on a plan.

"Hagrid, Verakus. You're pilgrims," I barked. "Get your stories straight. The rest of us are your bodyguards. Let's move out."

With that we heeled and toed our way towards town. On the way we met up with another group of 30 pilgrims. They were locals and some of them were quite well dressed. Most of them were peasants, most of them were complete families. Speaking with these travelers we learned that this was an annual event organized by Voskarl New Moon, once a wealthy Lakreni land-owner, now a priest of the Seven Mothers. This fool gave his money to the Provincial Church and now leads 300 or 400 piligrms to Jillaro every year.

They were all very nice people. I hated them.

It didn't take us long to hoof it right up to Urnandel. The city had 20-foot walls and some sprawl before the gates. The pilgrims camped on a hill just outside of town called - you guessed it - Pilgrim's Hill. Voskarl had been doing this long enough that the locals had set the hill aside for him.

There were lots of tents on the hill with people milling around having some sort of love-in. It reminded me of Pelanda and the Wendarians. Disgusting. Our companions all raced ahead to greet long lost friends and people that they had spent previous years with.

We were met by Voskarl and interrogated. My boys spun a rather unconvincing yarn about traveling the Empire and deciding that they wanted to join this pilgrimage. Verakus added that he was doing a thesis on peasant religion and Voskarl nodded sagely.

We wandered about and mingled with the other pilgrims to see what we could learn.

Most of the people here were on an outing they had done before, or that friends had done and they had brought their families. They treated everybody else as brothers and sisters under Sedenya's loving gaze.

There were a couple of groups that didn't quite fit in. They had set their camps up away from the rest and they didn't mix.

Abby and I did a walk-about evaluating threats. Three of the anti-social groups were heavily armed. With our soul vision we could see that two of those groups had very powerful magics. All totaled, probably about 20 men.

I told the boys to mix with the others and learn what they could.

I talked up a young local lass and while she seemed to find my dark looks interesting, her father was less impressed with my brands and heavy armour. I slept alone that night.

We didn't learn much.

Several people had heard of the Messiah but none knew who he was. We learned that he was probably a Talastari, an illuminant but one that preached a different way of advancing - not the Rashoranic way of the Goddess.

About the two magical groups we learned that one was Talastari that came most years and the other was Bilini. The third armed group was a band of retired Imperial veterans from Rist. I sat and drank with them trading tales of the Brunners and the various officers we all knew. They had settled in Rist as a unit a few years ago and they had stayed together.

Upstanding tried to get a rise out of the Messiah by letting anybody who would listen that he thought the Messiah was a pussy and heretic. Many people agreed that the Messiah's anti-lunar preaching was evil.

Full-½/23
In the morning the pilgrims packed up and set out on the road.

Voskarl asked us to form a vanguard for the column as there were bandits and clansmen in the hills that were unfriendly to the Lunars. I agreed but told Hagrid and Verakus to continue working the column as we moved. The rest of the Eleventh was deployed to screen our progress.

Around mid-afternoon we walked up to a heavily armed brunner standing in the road leaning on his iron-bladed axe. My scouts reported a large warband in the trees on either side of the road.

The champion greeted us in Sylilan. I grabbed Abby and told him to translate - he seemed to understand him better than the rest of us. The man turned out to be Ulstang Iron-Wielder. 'I've been waiting for you," he growled. "I've been waiting for a reckoning".

I asked Ulstang what kind of reckoning he had in mind. "Your faith and mine. And it will be bloody," was his reply. "I challenge you".

Knowing a little about the brunners I asked him if he was offering a Champion's Battle like the barbars conducted among themselves the victor gained rightof way and the defeated was never to bother the other again. He appeared thoughtful at that and agreed so I told him I would need to consult the leader of the pilgrimage.

"You have an hour," he grated. "Then I come looking for you."

I grabbed Hagrid and gave him the low-down. Hagrid and I found Voskarl and briefed him. Voskarl was unsuprised. "Oh, Ulstang again?" Our blank looks prodded him into elaboration. "Ulstang is a local chieftan who stubbornly cleaves to his ancient faith."

"Well," Hagrid said. "Ulstang has agreed to fight a Champions Battle for right of passage. If he is defeated he will leave the pilgrimage alone now and in the future."

I gestured Upstanding forward. "My man here has offered to champion the Lunar Way in this matter."

Voskarl looked him over. "What are your qualifications for this?"

Upstanding smiled at him. "I survived 10 years in the fighting pits of Glamour and have killed more men than you have seen years."

Voskarl leaned forward and stared deep into his eyes. "Do you believe in the Goddess?"

"Yes," replied Upstanding.

"Will you win?"

"Of course I will."

"I believe you; you have the Goddess' blessings and those of this pilgrimage."

We all trooped back to Ulstang where he was idly honing his axe. "Ah, you're back. Well?"

"This is Upstanding," I said. "He will champion our faith."

Ulstang peered up at Upstanding and appraised his oiled muscles. "Good. Of course Chaos requires a special talent to defeat it," and waved forward a hulking Skanthi warrior with the markings of their bull god - Urox the berserk. "He will fight with my axe."

The Skanthi did a short dance where he beat himself across the face with the flat of his axe while screaming something unintelligible and then launched himself at Upstanding with a shout.

Upstanding dove at the Skanthi, sliced quickly, twice and rolled away. The Uroxi didn't even pause as his left hand came off and bloody froth appeared from a slash on his chest. He back-handed his axe and caught Upstanding a stunning blow on the back of the skull.

Upstanding stepped in again, ducked under an axe-blow and disembowelled the Skanthi. He plucked the axe from a dead hand before the body could hit the ground and then walked away.

Ulstang nodded at me. "That was a good fight. You have right of passage through my lands." With that, he mounted his horse and rode back over the hills with his band.

Voskarl was quite pleased. He called for an immediate stop to the march and for a celebration in our honour for protecting the pilgrimage. "Nothing is too good for you, our champions. Ask and we shall provide it."

The celebration lasted long into the night.

Upstanding, draped in eager women, passed out from blood-loss after a half tankard of local beer.

Abby drank most of a keg down and then romped in the furs with a smith's well weathered and gap-toothed wife.

The rest of us went light on the drink to keep our wits about us; though we did welcome the very personal attention of several of the more attractive women in the pilgrimage. Only Maloven abstained.

C-Go/23
Some time later that night we all groggily awoke in Voskarl's tent, trussed like temple sacrifices, bound with slave manacles and staked to the floor. Maloven had a nasty bruise on the side of his face and a lump the size of a goose's egg behind his ear.

There were two guards at the entrance and Voskarl sitting at a desk.

Voskarl looked up at us. "Good evening. I am sorry that it has come to this. Who are you and who do you work for? I ask because you appear to be looking for me."

Abby replied easily, "We work for any'un that'll pay and we're not look'n fer any'un."

Voskarl sighed and left the tent. We all tried our bonds but nothing was going to happen there, we were well and truly screwed. Voskarl returned shortly and began again. "Who are you? What unit do you belong to?"

"Why would we be looking for you?" We asked.

"Because I am the Cold Eyed Messiah."

We bantered back and forth for a while. He leaving and returning and asking the same questions and us denying and ridiculing him. Besides, what could he do to us that the Parg Adarch hadn't already. We were all much more interested in what Sengeresh would do to us for being captured - again.

Finally he stopped up close to Abby and grabbed his wrists. "You have been recently crucified."

Abby sneered. "So what. Hasn't everybody?"

Voskarl jabbed Abby's side. "It looks like somebody cut you open and extracted your intestine."

"Nyah," drawled Abby. "I cut myself shaving."

Voskarl leaned in closer and sniffed Abby. Then he did the same to us all. "I recognise your smell. Something familiar…." He sniffed again and tapped a finger against his pursed lips in thought. "Something I should know. OH!" he shouted. "I have it! You're PargAddi! I can't believe that I didn't recognise your stench immediately."

Voskarl stepped back with a mixed look of pleasure and hate. "You may know me better as Koriat the Thunder." He rubbed his hands in glee. "PargAddi, I love you people."

"We love you to," Abby replied.

"And we loved your wife," said Hagrid.

"We enjoyed the trip into Tork, thanks," Maloven said.

"You're annoyed because we buggered your wife. It's been 150 years boy-o. Get over it," I replied.

Well, Voskarl didn't seem impressed with our disinterest and so he pulled a knife and started cutting on us.

"You're a mighty warrior," he said to Upstanding as he cut off his right hand. I lost a foot. Maloven lost his nose. Abby lost his penis. Verakus lost his lower jaw. Voskarl scalped Hagrid and he cut off Marakus' left hand.

All of this didn't really bother us. Hell, we've all been crucified, impaled, burned and hung before. What's a little blood loss? Voskarl didn't seem overly impressed as we explained this to him.

With a mutter curse the sharp crash of combat drifted across the camp. Voskarl looked up sharply, glared at us and darted through the doorway with his guards following him.

We knew what was happening. PargAdarch Sengeresh was here with the PargAddi. We all got that sinking feeling in our stomachs at the thought of being rescued - again - by the regiment. "Okay people, let's find a way out of this."

We all strained at our chains and the stakes to no effect. Upstanding managed to get his hand-less arm out of the chains but nothing more. With a great effort he stretched his stump over and managed to snag the keys to his manacles from Voskarl's desk. With the manacles off he summoned strength from his god Grevlar and tore the rest of his chains off.

Working quickly, with the clangour of battle raging on all sides now, Upstanding freed the rest of us just before Voskarl darted back into the tent.

"Ah, you're free. Oh well. Next time then?" he asked. Then he vanished, and Sengeresh came barging in behind him.

"What are you doing?!" He shouted. "Where is he?" We told Sengeresh that he'd vanished and he looked us over with an unhappy glance. "Get outside, there's work to do."

We piled out of the tent, ignoring the blood dripping from our missing bits, and charged into the fighting.

Outside we saw that the entire regiment was attacking the pilgrims and a group of axmen that we hadn't noticed before.

It took a while to finish the fighting - those axmen were tough - and collect 8 prisoners. Then we marched 8 miles and made camp. The PargAdarch told us to interrogate the prisoners who I now recognised as having been among the Rist veterans.

I left the interrogations to Abby as he's skilled at that. It didn't take any effort at all to get them talking - Abby walked up and asked who they were.

"Hunter Corp, Notched Axes, sent with orders to protect the Pilgrims. There were several imperial informants among them that were working for the Unspoken Word. Who the hell are you?"

That was interesting; yet another example of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. "Hunter Corp," I replied. "PargAddi Regiment; sent by the Spoken Word to kill the pilgrims."

Later that night I stepped into Sengeresh's tent to be debriefed.

"You FUCKED up your mission Adarch!" He went on for some time in the same vein.

When I got tired of listening to it I spoke up. "Yeah? Well shit happens. The Spoken Word sent us to take out Koriat and fight the Notched Axes." He sat up straight at that. "What did you expect to happen to us with Koriat around?"

"You have a good point Gresh," he replied grudgingly. "Koriat being the Cold Eyed Messiah is disturbing news." He turned and pondered for a bit and then looked back at me. "In light of this information I have decided that your punishment for failure will be less drastic and more abnormal. I received a petition from the Eyzaali Chapter in Jillaro for several volunteers for medical experiments." He looked down at the stump that I was standing on and continued. "As you eleventh is no longer combat capable, you are to report to their chapterhouse in Jillaro."

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