Hammer and Steel

Humphrey the Crow



"Welcome, all of you, to the halls of our people."

Humphrey was two steps down from Lucius on the staircase, but he still looked down on the man. The portly pale Byzantian had a absurdly small head, squeaky voice, and all around attitude that grated on Humphrey's nerves like sandpaper on skin.

Two days they had been in the capital of the nation known as Byzantium, and while it was a nice, cultured place, it did not suit well with Humphrey. The people of the city they named Constantinople were friendly enough, but that was stretching it. Shops did not permit these outsiders from Washington, the people watched them with those pale eyes of theirs, and the officials that talked to the scouts from Amerika had a sharp manner around them, one that many of the scouts felt was racism towards these Amerikans. The trueborn Amerikans of Zach's people were better off; they looked mostly like the Byzantians if only slightly tanner from wandering in the wildlands, but the Vietemese and Chinese people were whispered about behind their backs and the comments were not always nice. Halfway through the first full day, merry Shang, who was the most polite, humorous, and positive of the scouts snapped a Byzantine's neck and cracked the skulls of two others before it took seven people to pull him off of another he was trying to kill by bashing a cobblestone into his face. The Byzantine had cheated at a game of chance, then had responded with several insults about Shang's people before he met his violent end. They almost executed Shang, but pardoned him after a "charitable donation" by Humphrey which included twenty gold coins.

The hall itself was made out of timber and stone, proud and tall, over twenty meters tall. The cavernous Hall of the Masses was the largest part, and the highest arching part of the building, close to thirty meters high, flickering torches adorning the walls and open air windows looking out from the hill that it was set upon onto the stone and mortar housing of Constantinople.

"Nice hall," said the Vietemese man Sparrow. "Hope you do not mind our muddy buts." A wide grin covered his face.

The nostrils of pudgy Lucius flared a bit as he replied. "We don't mind at all, but do not touch anything in the hall. You may sit in some of the chairs around here." Courteous speak, with heavy hints of bitterness and a thinly veiled mask of displeasure. He wasn't about to mouth off to anyone; Handsome Jack was eight feet tall, preferring to use the staff he had carved out of an oak tree with his own hands nearly as round and thick as the original tree.

"No problem." The men took their seats around the hall, touching the walls and the bas-reliefs carved into the stone depicting the great deeds of the Byzantian ancestors. Lucius left the hall wearing a face that had some resemblence of curdled milk. The second the thick oaken doors shut, several of the men roared with laughter about the man. Humphrey himself smiled as well; it was hard to act serious around a toad like that.

All the rest of the day, it seemed like the portly servant was taking his revenge. Other people came and went through the oaken doors with ease, but the Amerikans were left to sit in the Hall of the Peoples for most of the day, the sun cresting up over the village, up to the center of the sky, held aloft for a few hours, and then sent back towards the edge of the horizon. No food or drink was served, and even though the hall had been cool during the morning, it began to swelter with the heat. Even a person who was cold blooded and didn't warm well like Handsome Jack took off their furs and lounged around, slothlike and bored.

A servant woman bustled through the hall on her way to the oaken doors, on her way no doubt to meet the Caesar when Humphrey clamped down on her shoulder with a firm hand. She turned around slowly with a petrified look on her face, looking into Humphrey's sharp teeth and rheumy eyes. "Could you be a dear and take a message for the Caesar?" Humphrey asked in a sweet voice dripping with venom. "Tell. Him. We. Must. Meet. With. Him. Now. And we will just pop down to the city for some sport. Shang and Handsome Jack don't cheat at gambling, but all of you Byzantians do. I'm afraid I can not stop them if they do something. Do you understand?"

The servant nodded slowly. Humphrey smiled at her, "Could you bring some food as well? We are rather... starving right now, and could eat just about anything."

She bolted back the way she came, returning three minutes later with serving wenches in tow, who set out wooden tables and dishes of simple black bread, cooked turkeys, roasted apples, and some cheese, wine and water on the side. Humphrey smiled at them all in that venemous smile of his; it was about time that they got fed. If he had to wait any longer, he would have marched through those oaken doors and twisted that rat Lucius's head off his shoulders and rolled it across the hall.

Finally, about a third of way into the afternoon, the great oaken doors clanked open on creaking hinges, Lucius stepping through. "You may enter Amerikans," he said crisply.

"About damn time." Humphrey stretched his legs and his arms, patted a full stomach and marched up the steps with his men. Their discipline would have shamed an organized army, shown up by grubby scouts.

Humphrey paused for a second as he stood bye Lucius. "I don't know if you know this little pigeon, but I am not a man to toyed with. If I ever see you do what happened here today, your head is coming off your shoulders faster than you can blink. Try to get a shocked expression on your face though as you realize you've been decapitated, I rather like that in my ornaments."

Lucius turned pale but responded steadily. "I hope you enjoyed your time here, Amerikan, but threats do not come to your lips easily."

Chuckling at that, Humphrey whispered. "That was not a threat little pidge, that was truth right there. If I should happen to visit Constantinople again in my lifetime, myself and my men had better be treated with better courtesy. We are a peaceful people, but I do have counsel with Victor."

He got the hint, sidestepping to allow Humphrey to pass, bowing as he did so. Humphrey wasn't the man to be overly joyous on most occasions, but right now he was so ecstatic he probably could have jumped into the air and clapped his feet together.


The next room was long, lined with columns hewn out of wood and logs, polished to perfection, with roosting torches covering them. The skylight was glass, Humphrey noted. Obviously this little city had realized how to make it, while the Amerikans did not. A fine trade resource that could be for the city.

At the end of the massive annex was a raised platform, steps ascending up to it. A throne made of hard stone without a single comfort or pillow held the man that Humphrey had sought to talk to: the Caesar of Byzantium.

A hooked nose, bushy eyebrows, neat black hair and olive skin, a crown of olive leaves, and hardset blue eyes. "Hello travelers of Amerika." It was a rich, fluid voice, one that could talk you off a cliff, make you believe what he wanted you to, or compel you to answer him. "You have seen the sites of our flourishing city. May I ask how you enjoyed it?"

"Everything was good except for the veritable hostility we had." Humphrey's rheumy eyes watched the man carefully. Not a single twitch or movement besides his lips and the inflation and deflation of his stomach as he breathed. "There was some trouble early on. One of your citizens cheated at a game, and proceeded to call my friend a lackwit fool of a boy whose father had courted a goat before he was born. His people don't take things like that lightly."

"No matter, it was Kalin after all. A bad apple, not many will miss the man. A greedy bastard of a noble and a baseborn woman, he was not right in his mind."

"Mmmm."

"But you have found my people here in Byzantium. What brings you hear to Constantinople from your far flung lands and hills of Amerika?"

"Not much, scouting for our leader and his rather deceased father. Orders are orders after all, and I obey what I am told to do."

"Rather deceased you say?"

"Well you don't see him very well walking with us, do you? If so, we need fire and a very large decapitation tool to kill the wight. Although it wouldn't have surprised me to see him alive in truth. Flung off a cliff, stabbed, washed away and drowned in water, and came into our little tribe's village three days later to kill the usurper."

The Caesar stiffened at that. "What did you say again?"

"He survived being flung off a cliff, being stabbed, drowning, and returned to our village. He brought more people to the village after he supposedly talked to the gods." Humphrey laughed at that. "Gods tend to speak to one man after all, so it was mostly a coincidence we found Shang's people."

"I see."

"I have a few questions to ask you Caesar, if you do not mind."

"Of course not."

"Do you mean to cause my people harm?"

"Not while I am alive, and my bloodline thrives. We are a just people, and we would never attack a neighbor that does not harbor covetous eyes upon our land."



"Good, good. Second question, do you know of any other peoples nearby?"

"None that we know of besides your folk right now. A group of fine Byzantine men were sent out to explore the wildlands, but we have been unsucessful in finding any other people."

"Ah. Final question, what is to the west and the south?"

"Forests. Leafy or needled, they stretch far and wide. Or so my grandfather told my father, and he told me." The Caesar stroked his beard. "No one knows what lies to the south now. It has been generations since we moved from this area."

"Thank you for your time Caesar." There had been some information to gain, and that knoweledge would help them out later on their explorations. Humphrey motioned for the men to leave the hall, all of them forming up in single file and waiting for him to lead them out. "We thank you for your time Caesar, and we hope to return one day to this place."

"Wait sir." Humphrey stopped and rotated around to the Caesar one last time. The man's eyebrows had smashed together like bears, and his mouth was turned downwards in a frown. "What was the name of the leader that died but did not?"

"Zach sir."

The Caesar leaned back in his throne and smiled at the Amerikans. "Thank you," he said. "May your journey be safe and the stars guide you well."

Humphrey smirked as he left the hall. "If there was no danger or risk, it would not be an exciting journey now would it?"


"So do they know?"

"About what?"

"Vir quisnam would exsisto Caesar, what else?"

"By the sound of it, yes he is. He's the one who would challenge the Wrath of the East."

The other man tapped his fingers on the table. "We still don't know," he insisted. "How do we not know the the Easterner is the one that the tales speak of."

"Oh he is, but he plays a different part."

"Still though, do you think that they will figure this out on their own? You gave away quite a bit of information to those outsider Amerikans, and I don't like it."

"They asked questions of me, and I had to know if that man Zach was the one that we speak of."

"I don't know at this part Caesar, we have to consult the legends again."

"And what will they till us, hmmm? Not bloody much, I'll tell you."

"Maybe Zach is the Wrath of the East. Circles within circles this is turning out to be."

"Indeed it is. So we need to get rid of most of the circles."

"Consult the legends again?"

"No you fool, burn the tablets."

The man was shocked into silence by that, his drumming fingers silenced. "We can't burn those," he spoke slowly. "Those are the only tablets your grandfather brought back from the Wildlands, and he said explicitly not to destroy them, lest the wrath of the gods descend upon us."

"Crack them open vertically then. You will still be able to keep them, won't you?"

"Of course I will brother, but I can tell you that the priests will not approve of this."

"Bugger the priests," Caesar said to his brother. The sun was dipping down over the horizon to signal nightime. "Those tablets hold the answer. 'Look deep inside of your own knoweledge', that's what they said."

"I hope that it isn't metaphorical, otherwise the priests will be coming after you, as well as most of the devout population of Constantinople."

"Aye they shall, but only if I'm wrong. But we can't tell unless we try do we?"

Sorry about the lack of an update for awhile fellows; it's been a busy, frustrating, stressful week for me but I finally pushed out the newest update. This weekend I will try to post two more updates on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and maybe another one Tuesday if I am not busy.

Additionally, right now there may be some spelling errors in the above article. Yes I know, I will get to it later, but I have to sleep first before I keel over . After I've had my morning coffee and have settled down for a bit, I'll start editing and pushing the new update out. Just wanted to get this part out after I had to change the entire point of it about 5-6 times.

No problem! Great update, and the plot thickens...

I can't spell either

Legends and Tales of America

It arrived like a ghost on foul winds
The beast came to us and it said
"Behold people, I am your salvation
The only one who can save you."

It was not our salvation
It was the dawn of an age of bloodshed
One that stained the ground with blood
The blood of fathers, husbands, and sons.

Many people in the end think that they can kill the beast
But in the end, it shall undo you
For as long as there is humanity
The beast shall continue.

And it shall come again into this world
A world scourged by fire and war
And it shall pick up the sword
To end the world.

-Unknown, circa Age of Settlement

Many of the legends attributed to the Age of Settlement for the Amerikan Empire have since been discredited as fiction and larger than life lies. For example, the tale of Zacharias the Founder, the Rains of Calahar epic, and the Fall of the Highcrest Tower. Others have been proven however to be based at least on reality in a way; the song of the Silver Bird, the tale of Ulysses the Wanderer, and the Marching Drums. There is one legend however that is different from all the others. It is not a song of hope, a tale of honor, or an epic of chivalry, it is a tale of the shadowy truths and half truths.

Here is a portion of the beginning.

Darkness in Deep Roads

Gather close now children for the dark draws near and the moon climbs into the sky, for tonight foul creatures come out of the shadows to do what they do. Gather close around and here the tale of Caparin, the mighty hero of Washington, who journeyed out into the Deep Roads to find what he needed.

You see Caparin was not an ordinary hero. He got by on his wits and talents, but he was not the strongest, the tallest, the most agile, or the quickest. A big laugh and easy charisma and guile, but that was about all that the gods had given Caparin.

He was an easygoing person, and during the times of peace that ruled his lifetime, he was not called to anything more than to drill with the other men in the city and do what needed to be done. But there was one time, during the year of the eclipse, that everything took a turn to the worse for him.

That year, the grandson of Zacharias who was called Joshua fell deathly ill. For weeks he was bedridden, unable to get up and leave, with a hacking cough and bloody eyes. Nothing that the nature priests did could help him, and indeed made him worse off than he had been before. It was clear that Joshua would die unless someone found a way to cure the sickness that struck him so.

One day Joshua called Caparin into his home atop the hill. Caparin came and crouched by the bed while a wheezing Joshua spoke to him. "You Caparin are the truest man I know, and one of my best warriors. While you may not be as gifted athletically as the other men around here, your wits and intelligence have seen you through most of your life. Though now I must ask you an important question." Joshua leaned closer on that, the sweet smell of sickness pouring off of him. "I need you to retrieve the Moonflower talapar, as it has been whispered to me by the gods. To do that however, there is one problem. You must enter the Deep Roads."

Caparin was not a coward or a craven fool, but even so his skin crawled when he heard his leader say that. The Deep Roads were a place of evil and malevolence incarnate. It was said that a great people long ago had created the tunnels that snaked down into the earth as a way to find precious material, but instead released great evils; monstrous creaturs like the hashacalaisot, the haggish sefvar, and evil shadow skinned creatures known only by one name: gaherins.

But Caparin obeyed his leader, packed the necessary provisions, and set out into the wildlands to find an entrance into the Deep Roads. For weeks he traveled, crossing plains and rivers, through grasslands and shadowy forests, over hills and mountains, until he finally came to the Fist of God on the frozen shores of the North Lands. There he found an entrance into the Deep Roads, marked by water descending into a crater miles across.

Deep inside of the Deep Roads, all was quiet. Burning torches illuminated the black rock that made up the tunnel, and scars of rock being ripped aprt and torn out was very clear to all who saw it. Not a single creature moved, though skeletons of men long fallen and creatures long dead and consumed were evident. Some of them had been pinned to the walls in a macabre fashion, torn to pieces, or crumbled to dust, but Caparin refused to let the images disturb him, and even sang the song of Ulysses to himself as he journeyed farther and deeper into the ruins of the tunnels.

As he went farther down, the stone became black as night, and he reached caverns filled with water, pale as milk and colder than steel, and massive arching caves where liquid fire fell from above in long firefalls, bits of it leaping out to kiss the walls in with a red fury. Caparin was not disturbed by that, but rather what he found as he descended pass the firefalls. A coffin marked plainly to all in his native tongue and which read "Here lies the greatest man who ever was. Long may he rest in the halls of the Creator."

Caparin was tempted to open it, even though as custom dictates that it is not wise to wake the dead. But throwing caution to the wind, Caparin drew out his knife and sliced open the seals on the coffin, and peeled off th lid. Expecting to see weathered bones and dust as well as gold and silver, what he saw instead was quite a different site, a queer one that chilled him to the bone. He saw himself, pale as a ghost and marked with long red wounds across his chest.

And as he looked upon his own body, the mouth opened up to reveal that it had been sewn shut, and the corpse of Caparin said to the live one "In the shadow halls you find what you seek, and yet you do not. Be careful what you look for. You may find it and something you did not seek nor would want."


After that point the legend of Caparin and the Deep Roads becomes fractured several times as different versions of the story take hold. Modern scholars, archaeologists, and others agree that the myth is not based on fact, as the Northern secion of the continent does not have a massive crater that descends into the earth as the legend says, nor is their evidence of anything other than some minor ruins of a civilization long destroyed dot the landscape.

Although the lines of the song of Ulysses seem to confirm the existence of something akin to the deep roads.


The Song of Ulysses

And so Ulysses traveled to the corners of the world
Nothing could stop him, and of the cliff he hurled
Himself into the shadows of dark Deep Roads
Filled with creatures more ugly than toads

Ulysses went into the tunnels
Water fell through the river funnels
Ulysses sang to himself as he went
About many things he would have to repent

He journeyed deep into the caves
Fell through the holes, but would be saved
Light would not shine on the graves of damned
For deep in the roads, you can not see your hands
And who's to say you can see your soul
When you fall into the a hole
The Deep Roads all of the condemened
Those who failed in life and failed to win
Honor and glory and gifts of the gods
Fought back against everything till pierced by rods

In the Dark Roads Ulysses went
From the Frozen Shores to the south to repent
For his sins were many and could not be counted
He would not rest until he had finished.

It mentions that the titular Ulysses journeyed into the Deep Roads to repent his sins that he had done in life, and it mentions that the Deep Roads run from the northern tundras to the southern jungles. Another source from one of the darker pieces of poetry from Amerikan folktale and legend almost makes you believe that the Deep Roads exist.

From the Lament from the Fallen:

Deep in the halls dwell the beasts
War and famine, fury and strife would be not be at peace
They would lash out at the world of mortals
Feast on ther cries and toils
As the mortals would die and weep on their soil.

The beasts dwell in the halls of shadow and death
Untouched by the Creator's light, untouched by death
Don't you know you can't kill the beasts?
For as long as humanity exists they shall rise again
And clash with the gods till either side wins.

Deep in the halls of the Deep Roads they dwell
Iron clangs in iron cages clang as the bells
Signal the dawn of a new age of death
Blood and redemption,
Ravage and destruction across all the land's breadth.

Again it mentions the Deep Roads, but as has been mentioned before, we do not know anything about the Roads themselves, only what the legends describe them as. That has not stopped curiosity about them, and conspiracy theorists believing that the govenrment is secretly using the Deep Roads to shuttle military supplies and units and use them as a bunker for themselves in the case of a thermnonuclear engagment.

Fluff update, detailing some legends about Amerika. I hope you enjoy, busy making the next part of the story to drop sometime around the middle of this week after another fluff update.

Tycho said:

To do that however, there is one problem. You must enter the Deep Roads.

Click to expand...

Deep Roads? I wonder if that means there will be darkspawn in this
Anyways, keep it up! I'm definitely still reading this.

I.... WORSHIP YOUR WRITINGS! You could publish those!

Tomorrow's Dawn said:

Deep Roads? I wonder if that means there will be darkspawn in this

Click to expand...

The stuff that is in the Deep Roads would make the darkspawn look like kittens . I am playing Dragon Age: Origins right now though.

Conversation was recorded at approximitely 6:34 Washington Standard Time on June 37'th, 2001.

Alfryn>Hey Torry, how is it going?

Torry>Relatively good man, just haven't been sleeping well.

Alfryn>Why's that?

Torry>Dunno, just been reading a lot of myths lately, can't sleep even though I took half a dozen sleeping pills last night. Doctor says I'm fine, don't have insomnia or anything like that.

Alfryn>Something is obviously wrong

Alfryn>man, you aren't like that. You've always been a heavy sleeper, right?

Torry>Yeah, just not now.

Alfryn>So what else have you been doing as of late Torry?

Torry>Like I said, reading Amerikan legends from the Age of Settlement and whatnot.

Alfryn>Who reads that stuff anymore? I read it only for English class when I was in high school and that was it. Boring as crap in my opinion.

Torry>Uncle gave the books to me and told me to read them.

Alfryn>Your Uncle Benji? Isn't he in the hospital right now?

Torry>Yeah, he fell into a coma. Probably has a petrified liver at this point

Alfryn>Heh, do they know when he will wake up?

Torry>Not at this point no.

Alfryn>Ah, I see. So what are you reading at this point? Don't tell me it's the Love Song of Farosha?

Torry>Nope, nothing so girly. I'm reading about Ulysses, Caparin, Zacharias, and Thane the Mighty.

Alfryn>Those were realitively good. Not like the other ones. >_>

Torry>Yeah, Caparin's is great, but the Deep Roads are the central thing that fascinates me.

Alfryn>Oh hell, not this again.....

Torry>Being serious man, the Deep Roads are fascinating. A giant cavern system underneath the continent.... sounds awesome.

Alfryn>Just because you are one of those urban explorer and parkour types doesn't mean that you want to find that place just so you can run around and do.... parkour stuff I really don't know what the hell a parkour is.

Torry>Heh, but it's awesome man! There's a blog from this guy online, he says that he might have found the Deep Roads, and in the legends that's just the first layer! The Deeper Roads, the Dark Roads, and the Shadow Caverns, and finally the Vault of the Ancients....

Alfryn>Doesn't mean it exists though, it's been disproven countless times by people with PhDs on the matter.

Torry>Doesn't mean that they are not trying to hide it, to cover it up....

Alfryn>Just like 22'nd Bell was an inside job?

Torry>You never know man, it doesn't seem likely that an entire building collapses in a busy city after being hit like and goes down in under a half hour.

Alfryn>Leave off on that subject man, I had a brother in there.

Torry>I'm sorry about that Alfryn, but the structure was stable. Plus that guy's blog mentioned that he was in the building the day that happened, and he said that several of his coworkers were researching the Deep Roads as well.

Alfryn>So the government took out a whole bloody building to silence a half dozen men?

Torry>More than that, he said the number was like five hundred or so out of the entirety of forty thousand people in that skyscraper.

Alfryn>Eight hundred people died man, don't say stuff like that in the community. You know how big the nationalist fervor is right now.

Torry>Yeah, I know man, but listen to me. I'm going North tomorrow to see if I can find the entrance to the Deep Roads.

Alfryn>You won't find it man.

Torry>Sure I will, always in the legends it's marked by a large waterfall that runs with warm water with blue rocks jutting out in a half circle. Tione Falls, that's the place man.

Alfryn>Be my guest and go there man.

Torry>Don't worry I will be.


Men are being watched by agents Epsilon, Theta, Neumann, Cambridge, and Oxford. The one known as Torry will be closely monitored.

TOP SECRET: ORDERS FOLLOW NOW
TORRY IS CLASS ZULU-33 PRIORTIY, PYKEMAN PROTOCOL WILL BE ENACTED UPON HIM. MONITOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY CLOSELY, AND FOLLOW HIM NORTH CAREFULLY. THIS IS A DANGEROUS MAN, WHO WILL BE EVEN MORE DANGEROUS IF HE FINDS WHAT HE IS SEEKING AS IT WILL FUEL IS IDEOLOGY. ALFRYN IS CLASS GAMMA-62 PRIORITY. CONTAINMENT AND QUESTIONING WILL NOT BE USED CURRRENTLY ON EITHER OF THEM.

ORDERS WILL COME DIRECTLY FROM JOINT CHIEF OF CHEKRA AND GOLD RAPTOR HIMSELF, THIS IS HIGH PRIORITY. DELETE MESSAGE AFTER READING.

Update will follow on Thrusday, thank you for waiting patiently fellows.

Really really really good! Continue!

nice, I really am enjoying this

Thank you fellows, although due to several other important things, actual story update will be coming tomorrow instead. Sorry about that.

No problem. Several other important things always take precedence over entertaining us.

I missed two updates! They're both brilliant. Keep it up!

Joshua, Part 1




The Dutch people were a hardy people, that was easy to see from merely observing them. They had improved their little village that they had lived in for most of their lives moreso than both the Chinese and the Vietemese people, and had led productive and happy lives, relatively untouched by the feral free peoples of the wildlands. Joshua had led his father's warriors to the village to confirm reports from wandering patrolmen and women who guarded the borders of the Amerikan land. It had been true that the little village had been right here, and the people here had welcomed Joshua and the tall Amerikan people into their village. Many of them had spoken the common tongue of the Amerikan people, which made it easy for all of them to communicate with each other.

A racking cough scratched at Joshua's lungs and his throat as he bent down where stood, kneeling on the ground. The coughing was covered by his hand, droplets issuing from his mouth as he crouched there. He could feel the eyes of his men watching him, a pitying look for the sick child that his mother had borne before she died of the grey sickness. He'd never been strong, nor would he ever be, and the cough was the worst part about it; he would never be able to run or jog, his throat would never heal, and his head rang with each gasp for air that his lungs wanted but could not get while he was hacking.

Joshua drew his hand away from his mouth and opened the palm before his eyes. It was speckled with blood, but that did not concern him too much. The droplets dripped off of his hand, ran over the lightly tanned skin and plopped into the grass, crimson blades sticking up from where the droplets caressed them. More blood than usual, but it was still beneath his notice. Things like that he had no time for. His father sat in Washington and brooded over many things, but not his son, not his sickly son Joshua. He still grieved for his wife though, and Joshua saw that plainly and that angered him so. Focus on the living, Father, and not on the dead.

Laughter and playful shouting echoed from the village behind Joshua as he dipped his hands into the pool before him. The grasses dipped over the edge, but the water was clear, pure, and cold, soothing his throat for a time befoe he would need to drink again. His men stood off to the side, talking quietly amongst themselves, but the new coughing fit that there "mighty leader" had just had gave them a new topic to think about. That more than anything made Joshua a bitter man. He coulnd't protect himself from a little bird pecking at his head, let alone something like a wild dog or a lion, however unlikely that might be. A permanent guard followed him around everywhere he went, but that only irked him more, made him felt even more useless than he already felt, as if even that was possible.

He drank his fill of the water, the overcast sky reflected in every tiny sphere of water as it seeped into his pores and slid over his lips. The winds stirred a bit, wet and cool, foretelling a rain shower no doubt likely to come before the sun set beyond the horizon. Turning away from the pool, he saw the shadowy sun blocked out by the roiling clouds suspended up above, the way the pool reflected the features of the reeds around it, the golden eyes of Joshua himself, and the men farther back. He had work to do after all.


The Koningoverdebergenhoog, or King over the mountains high as translated by a Dutchman, was a small whiskered man named Adelbart, and he drank so heavily that it was surprising that he had not keeled over and died yet. He feasted and fested with his guests and people of the village at night, and during the day helped them farm from dawn till dusk with backbreaking labor. The man did not mind though, and enjoyed every second of his life it seemed.

Joshua drained the cup of wine, enjoying it immensely, one of the few vices he allowed himself in life. The Dutch had traded with other free men and women of the wildlands, and their sheep herds had been traded for stone tools and delicious drink. The remains of the once mighty sheepherds that had been raised by the Dutch could be smelt in the log hall that was the central part of the tribabl village; salted and smoky tastes wafted from the fires as the legs of mutton were cooked and eaten by both the Amerikan warriors and the Dutch themselves. Adelbard was already on his third cup by the time Joshua finished his, the Dutchman filling himself up another glass of the drink as Joshua accepted a cup of cold water and pressed it to his pounding head. "I've heard tales about your father," the Dutchman said around courses of food. "A great man indeed, and one should hope so as he was the son of this man that they called Zacharias correct?" Adelbard slapped his belly and roared with laughter at a bawdy jest made by one of his fellow tribesmen. Most of the Dutch had been quiet and reserved, but that had quickly dissapeared along with their frowns.

"Yes," said Joshua quietly around the pain in his throat and his head. "My father is indeed a great man. But enough of that, you know why I am here no doubt Adelbard?"

"Your men have lips about as tight as your skins, which says plenty." The wolfskin around Joshua's back flapped and moved slightly as he turned to look at Adelbard as the Dutchman drank his fill of his cup. "They do not really seem to enjoy holding onto your people's secrets. True?"

Joshua gritted his teeth and cursed to himself. The men had been led by old Nick the Bear, and he had not really cared whether their mouths flopped open and vomited out everything they thought of or not, as long as they got the job done. Joshua now wandered if sewing their lips shut would have been better than the fact that they had spilt everything to the people who he was still unsure about.

"So you do know that by orders of my late grandfather, we have to ask you to come back with us to Washington. The city is already rising greater than any other in the known world-"

"Aye, to be certain that is your known world." Already on his fifth cup, Adelbard seemed a little flushed but perfectly stable both mentally and physically. Apparently he had built up quite the tolerance to alcohol in his lifetime.

"Yes, in our known world which extends far and has met with the Byzantine people. There grand city of Constantinople is no more than a flicker of a candle next to the roaring bonfire of Washington."

Adelbard drained his cup again, his eyebrows furrowing together as he turned to look at Joshua. A chill ran down his spine, and not just because of the look that Adelbard gave him, or the mismatched eye colore, one blue, one green. It was the way he looked at Joshua. A suspicousness in those eyes, one that looked him over, judged him, catalogued him, a look that Joshua felt could tell what he thought and knew.

Adelbard broke out into a smile though after a few seconds, laughing as wall, slapping Joshua on his back with a huge hand. Joshua smiled meekly, gave a small cough, and drank the cool water in the cup. In the bag at this point, he thought to himself.


The Dutch did come to back with the Amerikans into their sovreign land, laughing all the way and bringing in goods with them. Not only were they a merry folk, but they were also a hardworking sort as well. The women and men who were able to work went out and did whatever was required of them out in the fields surrounding the city of Washington, doing all the hard work that they could.



Still though, even though Joshua oversaw them, he could not help but feel another gnawing feeling in his chest, one that did not stem from respiratory problems. The Dutch were good, but the meetings with is father were icily cordial. Joshua had brought another group of people back to Washington, yet it did not seem to matter much to his father. He said as much one night when he met with Adelbard in a winehouse located in the newly built and under construction Dutch portion of the city.

"Why should he judge me so," he said to Adelbard in a slurred voice as he drank more and more till the point he lost count of which cup he was on. "Why should he judge me as being insignificant and doing little for the people of Amerika when I did what I was told to do. He hasn't done anything of the sort, it was the warriors led by my grandfather and Humphrey the Crow who brought new people to the city, not him. So why is it that I am less than an ant to him?"

The Dutchman, who had become the closest friend Joshua had, nodded at him as he to drank, but he still had his wits about him. "He does so because he has no wife to share the joy with, and he sees you no doubt as a cause for his suffering and the catalyst for your mother's death. He loves you, but in a way that is hard to tell at times."

"Heh, don't try to lie to me Adelbard. I know what he wanted from my mother; strong sons and maybe a daughter or two to carry on the family name. Instead he got an only child, a sickly one at that who was extremely close to dying when he was young, and then my mother died in a miscarraige. After that he's never been the same. Don't fault me Adelbard, he's a decent father, but not a great one."

"I am sorry about your mother Joshua, but your father has had to deal with other things as well no doubt in his life. Do you not love him for that, the fact that his many priorities got in the way of caring for you as a child?"

"No it's not that. He loved me well enough, but it was not enough. He had plenty of time to do what he needed, but he chose to wallow in the past. And it's not like I had other people to talk to a lot of the time. I had no friends growing up Adelbard, for one simple reason. My grandfather came back seemingly from the dead, and slew Terry, and since then he's become the central point of a slew of legends and tales. Other children didn't want to come near me though, for fear that I might kill them like my grandfather killed Terry, but looking back on it now they must know that it was folly. But my eyes... nobody ever loved them. My father had silver, and my mother had blue, so how do I end up with gold? The crones and the old men of the village who sit in their fine chairs up on the hill and talk to each other about the past say that Terry himself had golden eyes, the sadistic eyes that had people killed."

"Ostracism because of eye color Joshua?"

"Pretty much. Terry was a sadistic psychopath, that's what sums him up really, but nobody else in my family or my entire fellow people have had such an eye colore except for Terry, and look what happened to him. He tried to kill my grandfather, then killed an innocent man for standing up to him before he to was killed. But when I was a child and perpetually sick the others that wouldn't stay away from me came near me and instead teased me about it." Another cup downed, Joshua gave a hacking cough before getting another glass. "'Golden eye', they called me, but it was not a nice name. They said it with sneers, and I heard the whispers behind my back plenty of times. Bastard, demon, trickster, they were crueler than Terry had been it seemed to me sometimes."

Adelbard downed his own glass before he spoke to his friend. "There are great things in your future Joshua." He spoke solemnly and slowly. "You just have to find out what it is."

Well I sincerely hope that you enjoyed the update guys. I might do another one tomorrow while I continue to flesh out Joshua's tale, but thank you for waiting patiently this long.

Very good writing. Looking forward to some action.

Pretty much what Verarde said, and yet another quality update!