The Great Glass Mountain - Session Fourteen

Friedrich

 

Outside the Great Glass Mountain, the Glass Knight asked his wife Valenta how many of Alexander's men she let into the castle with him. Two bands of mountaineers, all of whom were allowed to keep their weapons. The King nodded. He could work with this. He told the others to follow his lead, except for Valenta who wouldn't be part of the deception. The important thing, if things got violent (and it wasn't guaranteed that they would), was to never present Alexander with more than two opponents at once. That would keep his War Knight powers from kicking in. The War Knight knew that, and would try to fight his way out and engage the whole group. That was why Shoat was in charge of the entrance. In his Siege Plate nothing could move a door if he braced it. 

 

With the plan figured out, he entered the Great Hall with his entourage, stopping only to give instructions to Charcabol's men at arms.

 

The stained glass windows and furniture were all packed up, including the in-progress illustrations Valenta commissioned of her Knights' new adventures. Alexander stood as the Glass Knight entered. The whole group had their weapons sheathed, which would normally be a violation of hospitality rules but the Chain Knight allowed so they wouldn't think they were about to be ambushed. The War Knight wore only his arming doublet and side sword. He looked happy to see the King, just for a moment. He also feared treachery. He told the Glass Knight that the myth of the winter that never ended was just that. A Myth. Knights quested to solve myths and if he didn't feel like doing it himself he should send one of the new guys to do it. Or they could go together, just like old times! Anything but this bullshit about the fate of the realm and a war that was just going to get anyone killed.

 

The Glass Knight nodded sadly. He wasn't happy with the situation either. He was even less thrilled about what he had just done. When the War Knight drew off his best men to accompany him to the castle, the King sent his top Knights to Castleview and kidnapped Alexander's family. Valenta knew nothing of this, she hadn't abused anyone's hospitality, it was the Glass Knight who did it. Alexander's wife and sons would be safe as long as he swore to support the invasion.

 

The Horn and Seal Knights said, out loud, that they had done no such thing. They hadn't kidnapped anyone. The Brawler Knight Charcabol knew she was supposed to back up the Glass Knight's story, so she gave a description of the alleged kidnapping that made it clear she had never been to Castleview.  The King wasn't deterred. He told the Brawler Knight and Valenta to accompany him outside for a moment. 

 

McBride

Alexander told Auckland and Shoat that the King was about to attack. Auckland suggested an escape through the kitchen. Autolykos and his hound rejoined his old friends in the two groups of mountaineers, who stood ready to cover the Knights' escape. The door was barred from the other side and Shoat tore it down, using his halberd like a Halligan tool. Inside, Charcabol's men at arms blocked their egress. They were caught in the middle of pillaging the kitchen and told the Knights that the King himself had told them not to allow anyone through the door. Shoat told them they had captured the War Knight and needed to get him out before his warriors attacked. The levy troops believed him and went back to eating all the food they didn't have at home.

 

By this point, fighting had already broken out in the Great Hall. Over Valenta's objections, the Glass Knight told Charcabol and his Companions that the other Knights had turned traitor. They had refused to support his schemes enough times that they were obviously working for the rebels. He sent in the Companions one at a time, who used the enchanted seals affixed to their weapons by the Seal Knight to strike the warbands. The mountain men of Castleview retaliated and battle was joined.

 

Shoat had spent half his life working and playing in the castle. He knew how to get to the stables without being spotted and led the group right under Ada's nose as she leaned on the balcony above and drank. Poach the stablehand was happy to see him and his cool panoply that he got from the Drunken Seer. Shoat told him they needed their horses ready and the groom sprang into action. By the time the alarm was raised the Company was galloping for the gate, hoping Valenta would find the message they left for her in the sabretache slung across her steed.

 

 

Disgusted by her husband's actions and ashamed she couldn't stop him, Valenta went up to the balcony to talk with Ada. Her sister was drunk, she sipped the dregs from a wooden goblet and cast it off the edge into the yard. Ada had broken every glass goblet in the holding doing this. They got her metal goblets but she liked breaking things. It was one of the only things that made her feel better.  

 

Valenta told Ada the crown had made the King insane. Ada said she knew the Glass Knight a lot longer than Valenta. She had noticed the behavior change too. Valenta explained the whole situation with all the myths, how the problems could be fixed without invading another realm. Ada told her there was more to life than chasing myths around. Back and forth they went. Valenta decided to just say what she was thinking. There was no way to stop the King without taking his Crown, and the only way to do that was to kill him, like Ada had killed her. Ada stabbed her.

 

Valenta didn't recognize the blade, at first. It was long and thin and curved. She recalled where she had seen it as it blossomed from the back of her hand, pinning it to the railing. The mausoleum on the Funeral Plain. The mourner had pointed out the display of Wyvern bones, how the stinger was missing. Ada drunkenly tried to climb over the balcony and kill herself with a fatal fall. Valenta yanked the poisoned blade out of her hand and plucked her sister off the ledge. She set Ada down, who cried and said she didn't mean it. Not really. She just couldn't see him like that again. Valenta shuddered in pain, which was not actually the burning of the poison (not yet) but rather the fear that came from the knowledge of what was about to happen. This feeling too she mastered.

 

The King came up the stairs to the balcony. Ah, there you are honey. We're leaving. We've wasted enough time as it is and the passes will soon close with snow. I won't pursue those Knights, since I know they're your friends and I don't want to spend more time and troops on something that won't matter anyway.

 

Of course, said Valenta. Let's leave. She stepped to kiss him and slid the poisoned blade up into his armpit, narrowly missing his heart.

 

The King sat down on the balcony. The Crown fell off his head and broke into a thousand pieces. Before it hit the ground he was babbling. Begging and apologizing to his wife and his sister in law. He was trying to save them. He had tried his best but it was wrong and there was no apology that could make it right, and nothing he could do to make up for it because it was all over. Valenta picked him up and he begged her to kill him, because he was afraid and didn't want to beg and plead before he died. Then he apologized to her for that, because it wasn't fair to ask his wife to kill him. Paste would do it. She could watch, or look away. He loved her. 

He didn't know she'd been fatally poisoned.

Paste and Charcabol came up the stairs. The business in the great hall was concluded. The Glass Knight straightened up. Paste knew something was wrong. Saw the King bleed from under his arm. Charcabol had only known him for a day or two. To her, the royal proclamation he gave did not hint that he was soon to die. He ordered her to prepare for departure by ship. He'd accompany her south to the island where together they would destroy the enemies of the realm.

Paste, Captain of the Guard, had to have known that Valenta stabbed the King. The Companions were fiercely loyal to the Monarch. Had walked, one at a time like animals down the chute of a slaughterhouse, into the great hall to deal chip damage to his enemies and be chopped to pieces in return.

But Valenta was the Queen, and he loved her too.

Repin

 

The Company rode north. The note they left Valenta said to meet them at the spot where they found the Crown, which only they and she knew about. They went upriver and caught a ride aboard a riverboat from Cugganscove, piloted by none other than the fisherman Ganthryn. He was happy to see them and to help them on their secret mission. Everything was all packed up, this was it. They were headed north. The boat traveled up the river to the lake, then west toward Bravecrossing. The Knights debarked the ship by night and went north to make camp out of sight of the river.

 

In their search for a suitable campsite the Company came upon a battle scene. Had the war already started? Did the northerners send a raiding party on a spoiling attack against their neighbors? Some of the corpses were Boar's men. Spiked armor, heavy weapons, dead horses. Their foes were clad in the same grim, grimy metal as the severed head the Salt Knight retrieved from the Goblin pile. The Legion? Their barbed swords likewise resembled the one the Salt Knight had taken from the treasure stash. It seemed the mounted fighters had been drawn into a patch of muddy ground pursuing the Legionaries and become mired, breaking up their charge and allowing the footsoldiers to mutually annihilate them.

 

The only living thing amid the muck and desolation was an underfed horse, trying to pull its rider out of the mud. Concerned, based on the old man's tales, that the bodies might spring to life, shoat rolled the corpse over with his halberd. The face and everything inside the torso were pulverized. He cut the horse's reins free with his seax and hauled himself out of the sucking mud. They took the beast with them when they left to find a less muddy, less reeking campsite. They feasted on the dried mutton from the shepherd's hut before going to bed.

 

Then there was the tower. Again. The one with the rotating rings of bronze around the spire. This time they saw it from the other side and they got a look at the thing in the middle. A mass of pistons and valves, spherical, that pulsed like a heart. Steam billowed out from vents at the bottom, engulfing the enormous armored figure of the Brawler Knight who stood before it. One of the mechanical arms went clack. It was a loom and it printed a tapestry. The words were unreadable, either because it was a dream or because they were viewing the dream from the perspective of someone illiterate. The sigil was unmistakable: Charcabol's own seal, a rose clasped in the merciless fist of a mitten gauntlet. She stared at the page, frozen.

 

Seeing that his liege was struck insensate, one of the Brawler Knight's warriors rushed past her to attack the machine. One of the pistons lashed out and caught him in the draw, driving the bone back into the throat and killing him. The spell was broken. Charcabol lurched toward the Apparatus, mitten gauntlets flexing, ready to tear it to pieces.

 

(This was the first prophetic dream Alexander the War Knight could remember having in years. It was just like old times and he had forgotten how it felt to dream of the present or future instead of the past).

Dawn found the Company traveling north and day found them in the clearing where the Crown once sat. The webs of the tiger spiders were covered with early frost. In the center of the clearing, sat against the huge stump, was a dead body. A man in a cloak and breastplate, war flail discarded next to his open hand. His outfit had attachment points for attaching heraldic devices but these had been looted. Alexander cut the dead man with his blade. The silk skin tore open to reveal woven saplings inside. A dummy? The stump was covered with a strange red dust, distinct from blood. Alexander swept it into a pouch with his hand for later analysis. The dust exploded.

 

 

Alexander reeled. The decoy sprang to life and he struck it with his polearm. Two Knights in strange garb emerged from the treeline. A fourth galloped into the clearing from the tunnel of frozen webs. The Fox Knight, Hood Knight, Mule Knight and Mock Knight laid into the Company with strange techniques, smiting without smiting. The Company caught the blows on their armor and shields and struck back. The Mock Knight died with a second stroke of the War Knight's halberd, a sad smile on his silken face. The Hooded Knight (who the Company recognized as one of the peasants aboard the boat from the day before) was unhorsed and dispatched by Auckland and Shoat at Alexander's direction. The Mule Knight was wounded and fell to the frozen forest floor, where he tried to whistle through the blood spilling out of his mouth. The Fox Knight held his ground, defending his wounded comrade and taunting the Company while the Mule Knight's tall steed galloped into the clearing. He loaded the Mule Knight onto the steed and accepted a killing blow from the three Knights focusing him down.

 

The Fox Knight's body fell to earth as an inert dummy stuffed with straw. The real Fox Knight laughed from somewhere on the other side of the trees encircling the clearing.

 

The Tall Steed galloped away with its incapacitated rider slumped over the pommel. The Company pursued it. It took them the rest of the day but they tracked the beast down. It could run from its foes but the finer points of escape and evasion eluded the poor creature. They cornered it in a ravine, Shoat calmed it down and the Company extracted the rider just before he bled out. They disarmed him and took him back to the clearing with his horse, where they policed up the weapons and armor of the two dead Knights. There was no sign of the escaped Fox Knight. They woke the stabilized Mule Knight to ask him who the hell he was and why he ambushed them.

 

 

 

The Mule Knight couldn't tell if he was in hell, or that hideous southern realm. Really, the two were synonymous. He gave up a lot more information than they expected, though most of it was obvious. Their realms were at war now and his team was sent to pick off high value targets. The Hood Knight had observed them on the boat and thought they were weak. If they were expecting a ransom for taking him home, they'd be disappointed. But not because he was a deniable black ops assassin, like the Knights assumed. It seemed to be a cultural difference between the northern and southern realms, regarding the social role of the Knightly class.

 

Whatever. Valenta would arrive soon, then they'd decide what to do with their captive. They realized that telling him the Queen was on her way was probably a bad idea.