1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Saf, Salles

Cutting through Saf proves...anticlimatic, almost easy, but Aidan's all too aware that it's a side effect of their traveling party. If each of their three groups had gone individually, the result would've been quite different.

The two montai are blatantly something more than human, especially for anyone who watches for long enough to notice them clearing things out of the way of the oxen and wagon.

The woman still doesn't remember the name of looks soft, an easy target...except for the shrewdness in her eyes as she examines the street. The expression is doubtless recognizable to any who have pissed off his father or one of the other relatives who take after Jarvis, who conquered the city mere decades back.

Yale is similar but discreet enough that she probably looks as oblivious as William to any watchers, and she's more obviously weak. The soft woman is large enough that there could be muscle or magic or something hidden in the padding.

Aidan himself is ambiguously dangerous—possibly civilian, possibly not—and he prefers it that way. All the better to feed others' assumptions.

And, and since they travel through the night, the main light comes from the many fires and the weak moon, they're not recognizable, either. They're odd, and they stand out for that—oxen? in Saf? and calmly moving with a covered cart rather than fleeing with whatever they can carry?—but that itself increases the wariness of observers...

And, no doubt, is also the cause of the ridiculous toll that greets them as they near the southern gate that William identified as the easiest to pass through.

'Ridiculous', Aidan makes himself think of it, because he'd otherwise be infuriated by the demand for the gang to have turns with each of the women—and by the fact that even the speaker's associates are annoyed, not appalled, by that opening to negotiations, as if it's nothing more than a joke in poor taste.

Yale motions to approach the pockmarked speaker for the lot of mostly dwarven gang members, and Brineli grips her shoulder, holding her back, as her son hops over the oxen.

"Or," Dakadza says sharply, "you could let us through, and nobody will invite you to taste your entrails."

William and Aidan exchange a sharp glance at the threat, and there's a frown from the relative he really needs to get the name of.

"Not that anyone will invite you to that anyway," the relative cuts in, voice sour. "No more than you were serious about what the Ground Stones are charging for the gate. You're not going to be able to hold this long."

The squints at her are almost reassuring, saying that Aidan isn't the only one who doesn't know who she is—but they're almost uniformly followed by widened eyes, by pallor, so...

The pair of dwarves manning what looks like a wheeled trebuchet (how is that supposed to be helpful, here?) chatter to each other in what's probably their own language.

"A ren for each head!" one voice prompts, the higher pitch suggesting it's a she-dwarf before Aidan notices the braided ear-hair.

"Half a silver," the relative counteroffers. "Or we can wait for someone to take this gate from you, and you won't get anything at all."

The haggling continues from there, readily enough that Aidan wonders why he didn't think to bring funds with him for this sort of thing.

They reach a price—nine silvers for the lot of them—and the relative pays.

"Back in the cart, boy," she tells Dakadza, climbing onto the bench for guiding the oxen. The she-dwarf who takes her money joins her there, for long enough that they pass through, then runs back to join the gang.

Once through, they have to deal with the myriad refugees who aren't happy about a cart on the precious road south, but...they're a cart. Pedestrians will just have to get out of their way.