Quote Originally Posted by LCP View Post
Urgrim

"'Course, sir," said the innkeeper, scooping the schillings into his apron. "Jotunssson, you said it was?" He pronounced the name pretty well for a human. "I'll have the boy make you up a room."
"Don't put him to any trouble tonight – I expect I'll be sleeping up the Rock. But thanks," Urgrim replied with an affable nod. He took a deep breath. "Right. The last of my day's endeavours." He rapped a knuckle on the bar to punctuate the declaration as he straightened up. "Good night t'you."

A fitful westerly wind was blowing over the rooftops as Urgrim headed out into the gathering dusk, making the Iron Company banners over the castle gates flutter and flap. It blew against Urgrim's back as he made the tiring climb up to the gates of the Dwimmulhold, wrapping his travelling cloak around the back of his legs. The long days of summer were over, and there was a chill to the air that felt sharp and new.

Inside the hold, Urgrim was received as a friend of the clan. Skorgrund was apparently already asleep - at his age, the white-bearded loremaster was very particular about his rest - so the Rinn received him alone. She was dressed simply from a day's work overseeing the mine, and the room she received him in was just another side-chamber in the upper level. It would have been easy for him to forget he was in the presence of nobility - though he supposed by the standards of Barak Varr, Elmendrin would be very minor nobility indeed.

"Good to see you, Jotunnsson," she said. "More news for us, I hear? We've seen the princeling is mustering his army in the low town."
Good to see you. The pleasantry, even just as etiquette, echoed in a twitch of muscles in his chest. Did it feel good to be back in a hold where he was made feel welcome at the gates, after all that had happened the past week? Urgrim was almost too tired to assess his emotions to decide. He bowed to Elmendrin – a proper bow, not the awkward appeasement he'd shown Sforza.

"Thank you for receiving me so late, Rinn. Unfortunately, it's news I thought I ought not delay getting to you. Myself and my companions in the princeling's efforts against the zangunaz have suffered a grave setback, a grave defeat."

He descibed for Elmendrin the recent events in detail, beginning with the arrival of the Templars of Morr, and the dashing of his (perhaps unwarranted) hopes that their leaders would take the threat more seriously than Sforza had. He described staking out marsh-lights in the swamp, and visiting decrepit and abandoned Rivermouth. The awful week of tracking across the horrid mere, only made bitterer by the revelation of the fate of Caerfort. That recollection was difficult. He had to pause a little while after recounting it. The chase across the southern hills, and holding camp above the cursed city while waiting for the expedition to arrive, and the battle itself, with its ghosts and sands and hopelessness and confusion.

As an epilogue to their utter defeat, he appended what the other scant survivors had said – that only the intervention of a daemon had permitted them any hope of escape. That the same daemon had subsequently followed them from the ruins, attempted to possess one human and succesfully possessed the commander's horse, and how he'd tracked the beast to the low town, and warned the priests and princeling of its presence.

There's one other thing, Rinn." Urgrim took a breath and steeled himself. "In truth, I'm actually glad I get to say this just for your ears, without Skorgrund here – o'course, you'll do with the knowledge what you decide, which I've no quarrel with, but it just makes saying it for the first time easier. Still, I ... my duty compels me to tell this to you, just as your duty informs what you'll do then.

"Þegn Sieghard ... Þegn Sieghard has the runic spear which slew the Black Hound in the previous war. I've seen it, I've seen the dammaz rune etched onto it. He hurt the zangunaz with it in the ruins. They – the humans, and Ludo Stubbs – they've had it for a while, but didn't trust me enough to tell me before. They found it in the ruins the humans call Kheneb-Ptra-Urush, which I believe were the city named Zaraz Irkul to your clan's ancestors. They had previously told me that they'd spoke to an uzkular there, an ancient priestess of the people the Black Hound enslaved. It was she who first told them of the dangers of the Book of Nagash.

"Þegn Sieghard went to great lengths to impress on me that he's not even told the princeling of the existence of such a weapon. I believe him. He asked me not to tell the Dwimmulsons either, to keep the secret, but ... their ways are not our ways. My duty ... is to tell you." Urgrim's eyes fell as he grappled with his commitments. "But, Rinn, if I may be ... if I may risk understepping – he's the best person, human or dwarf, to hold it, and wield it, until the war is done. What was created in friendship once might find power through friendship again. In fact, I'm not so sure it was just a runelord's creation. There're human touches to it, as well as dawi, and something like human runes ..."

When the Rinn had had time to consider that news, Urgrim continued. "Stubbs and I, since a little after the zangunaz attack on the low town, have been considering going back to the ruins of Kheneb, of Zaraz Irkul. We thought it's probably one of the only places we could learn something about the past war, find something that might help us. And now I know that's where they got the spear, I'm even keener. The fire witch had previously asked the princeling for warriors to take an expedition there – without, I fully expect, telling him the full truth – but he'd no interest. Right or wrong, though, umgi wouldn't be much good exploring the city, not while it's thronged with uzkular. But Stubbs, uh, suggested – well, he said 'each dwarf would be worth ten men down in there'. And he's not wrong. It would cost lives, for sure. But –" Urgrim took another deep breath, his intense discomfort with what he was implying evident. "We're sore lacking in any advantage over the zangunaz, and there's nothing else I can think of with the potential to discover a weakness, risky as it is." That was as much as he could say for the moment. Words failed as he watched how the Rinn reacted.