The Great Glass Mountain - Session Twelve

The Company sailed west out of the Screaming Seer's sanctum. They moved thrice as fast as they did on land and by midday they had circled the shining tower in the center of the inlet. Further west a monumental arch emerged from the beach, green and shining where the patina hadn't covered the silver beneath. They came upon a narrow boat carrying a scribe and his assistant. 

 

The Learned Numerator Alfger ceased his observations of nature and hailed the Knights. He told them to rejoice because the time of order was close at hand. The Apparatus was nearing completion and once it was done the Knights would be liberated from the Seers and their nonsense. The Knights were skeptical that a machine would provide better instructions than the Seers. The Numerator told them they were welcome to visit the spire where the Apparatus was under construction. He knew they were busy burying their friend and didn't want to bounce from quest to quest until they had completed the one.

 

By night they set down the anchor off the coast and dreamed of a war in the shadows, lit only by the clash of weapons against an unseen foe.

 

Off the coast of the wrecked ship the Knights encountered a fishing boat overrun with giant crabs. The lone fisherman climbed the mast to escape the crustaceans. Most were content to eat the fish in his hold but two pursued him up the mast. The Company fired their bows and leaped aboard to deal death to the oversized arthropods. Half the crabs fled into the ocean with fish in their claws, the others fought to the death. They snipped and snapped Autolykos and Shoat the Seal Knight, who stacked his destructive seals on Autolykos' arrows for precision shooting, and the monsters were soon dispatched.

 

 

The fisherman Ganthryn thanked the Company for their assistance. The Wolfcrabs didn't normally climb dragnets to attack sailors but the sea was angry lately. His sons Branthryn, Stanthry and Danthryn had all gone off to Bravecrossing to serve in the King's invasion force, leaving him to fish alone. By way of thanks he prepared a special treat for the Company: Wolfcrab in anchovy butter, his family's secret sauce. Gam thus resolved, the old guy sailed for Cugganscove and the Company sailed for the beach with the wrecked ship.

 

The tide had risen around the wrecked pleasure barge. The statue which had fallen through the decks and broken the ship in half was partially submerged and the arm was severed. The Knights dragged the felucca ashore and removed the Salt Knight's body. They dressed him in his full panoply, keeping only the helm and crossbow which were loaners from Boar. They weren't sure what to do next. The Scaly Steed pushed its muzzle under the corpse of its rider, trying to lift it. The Knights picked up the body and slung it across the horse. The Scaly Steed walked out into the ocean and disappeared beneath the waves without looking back.

 

The weather got bad. The Company dragged the boat to the highest bluff they could find and took shelter in the ruined yacht. The interior decks had collapsed, the loading hatch at the top led down to the benches where the skeletons of the slaves sat chained to their oars. The Knights cleared a spot to wait out the storm. They dreamed they were trapped in a dark space, dying of starvation, and woke to the upset whine of Autolykos' aged hound.

 

An endless row of shades stood between the Company and the hold. The horses stood in ankle deep water at the opposite end of the compartment, as far as possible from the intruders. Lightning flashed and illuminated them: men in chains, staring with empty eyes. The Company tried to negotiate with the ghosts but couldn't get through to them. The spirits had no patience for armed men brandishing weapons over their bones. They raised their arms, rattling their phantom shackles in unison. Unable to fight the spirits, Autolykos and Auckland ran to the bottom of the flooded compartment and escaped through the freezing sump, leaving their gear behind. Not Shoat. He stood his ground and stared the spirits down, refusing to flee or to assault them.

 

  

 

Outside the ship, the waves were enormous. An ever changing mountain range lit by the storm that grew closer with each flash of lightning. Autolykos and the Horn Knight climbed the base of the stone statue, the sturdiest thing they could find. The lightning flashed again and the mountains were gone. The horizon was gone. Only a wall of water that reached up to chase the clouds whirling overhead. There was nowhere to run. Their awareness of it guaranteed that it would swallow them because there was no point in line of sight that would have been safe.

 

Their vision was obscured again. This time by a beast stepping in front of them. The Beast. Scaled then spined then covered with slime then soft fur that deflected the water like the pelt of an otter. It stooped at the water's edge and began to drink. It lapped so daintily that there was no way it would make a difference. Like Achilles catching up to the tortoise, the wave drew closer. Closer. It shrank as it approached. It was the size of a mountain. Then a hill. Then a haycart. Then it splashed at the feet of the Beast. The monster turned and regarded the stunned Company. It huffed, muzzle slick with kelp and sea foam. It leaped into the ocean and disappeared beneath the surface without a sound.

 

Shoat refused the spirits' taunts until the sun came up and chased away the ghosts. The Horn Knight and mountaineer came down to retrieve him, their panoply and horses. Autolykos' hound gnawed the hand off one of the skeletons, pulling it free from the shackles and yelping in fright when the metal clattered to the floor. The Seal Knight went down the line and broke the rusty chains with his halberd. The headache he didn't know he had went away.

 

The Company dragged the felucca back into the ocean, coaxed the horses aboard and set sail for Cugganscove. Shoat hadn't been there since he was a kid, and the others had never been. The domed structure was connected to the pier by a bridge and when the knights tied up the felucca they found a Brawler Knight sitting on the parapet. She told them that yesterday she would have stopped them and demanded a pas d'armes, but today it felt pointless. She had spoken with the Numerator and he told her about the Apparatus. The results of all the combats were predetermined and the age of Seers and myths was coming to an end. Soon the City would rise and, with it, the alternative of order. She had quested for it her whole life (hadn't everyone?) but with it would come centralized nation states and written laws and professional police forces and in that world what was a Knight supposed to do? 

 

The Company told her she was foolish to trust the authority of random strangers who claimed to serve a machine that hadn't been built yet. The Apparatus could say one thing, the Seers another. She didn't know what to do. The Knights suggested she seek the guidance of a Seer, since that was the oath every Knight took. The enormous Brawler Knight nodded and left with her greathelm under her arm, leaking rainwater out the viewslit.

 

Cugganscove was a painted stone dome full of water, with stone platforms and walkways spanning strange gardens. The interior space was decorated with colored beach glass from the sunken city that lay somewhere offshore. The hole in the ceiling let out the smoke from the numerous fires lit to heat the inside. Gurt welcomed her nephew Shoat and his friends, stopping briefly to rescue one of her gardeners from the talon of a strange monster in the containment pools. Lauder's breeding program had been taken over by the Castellan Hinzelman. The monsters would be ready in time for Father's war against the northern realm. The old ghoul put in an appearance and asked if the guests were staying for dinner. The Company asked that whatever they ate, it include a garnish of anchovy butter. The leech warned them that anchovy butter disrupted the humors and Gurt told him to tend the monsters.

Over oysters, wolf crabs and seal in anchovy butter, the Company told Gurt of their exploits. She thanked them for saving the old fisherman from death by crustacean and for calming the storm that almost swallowed the holding. Did they have a plan to deal with the winter that would never end, which was sure to follow the flood? They were working on that. She explained the invasion preparations. Most of the fighting age men had gone north to Bravecrossing but there was still a need for salt fish and transport by water. Her ships were in high demand. The Knights poured the last of the top shelf brandy from Spareknot's orchard. Gurt excused herself before desert was finished, leaving her handkerchief on the table after wiping her mouth. A clear invitation for one of the Knights to pick it up and bring it to the high stone platform where she made her bed. Shoat thought about it for a second and immediately decided against fucking his aunt, even an aunt he wasn't related to by blood. 

 

By night they dreamed of the Goblin, dead on a heap of stolen items in a forest of red and green roses. Kemp the Goblin placed something in his hands. In attendance at the funeral were horned men and women with butterfly wings and masked beings. They looked to an old man in a shabby coat with buttons of gold, who seemed to be an authority figure. He said something and they woke up. 

 

 

By day the Company made for Sparenot's orchard, on the way back to the capitol to inform the Glass Knight that the flood was gone and there was no need to invade the neighboring realm. On the way out they found Charcabol the Brawler Knight encamped outside the dome, banned from the great hall for tossing the servants off the walkways into the pools. They offered her the use of the felucca to reach the Screaming Seer on the other side of the realm.

 

The path from Cugganscove established by Queen Valenta was hardly a road, but at a gallop it took the Company to Spareknot's orchard by nightfall. Her new fieldhand Benjamin welcomed them. Spareknot had survived the delivery thanks to the gift of the obstetrical foreceps. She delegated management of the baby to Ben while she prepared food for the Knights and their henchman. Autolykos' wizened hound briefly menaced the kittens, then lay on the floor and allowed them to climb all over him. Kemp was gone, Spareknot told them, on some work trip with the Goblin. He had been promoted and was now a great lord among the people beneath the earth. The Company told her about their dream and she confirmed that the strange people at the funeral were her son's new friends. Seals and unseals and dada and whoever the fuck else he spent all his time with instead of real people. The good brandy was all gone and there wouldn't be any more for a while. It took time to mature.

 

Kana and Benjamin listened with rapt attention to Shoat's story about the crabs and the beast and the sea and the death of the Salt Knight. They slept without dreaming.

 

With the horses refreshed the Company were confident they could return to the Glass Mountain by nightfall. They made it most of the way there when they spotted the Flying Swords again. The balloon flew high overhead and Auckland prepared the big sign he had prepared to contact them. They flew past without acknowledging his presence below, steered by huge cloth fans they stuck out the sides of the basket. The horseman Paste and the King's Companion Cavalry came thundering after the balloon. The Captain of the Guard shouted, as they passed the Company, that the King was in the basket with the mercenaries. The balloonists had kidnapped him.