3: The River Monster

We woke up in the Ubersreik watch barracks facing our second day in the watch. Only another 1199 days to go. My sentence seemed particularly bad because I had to serve it in the company of some especially incompetent characters.

Solvej seemed to be quite at home. She was already chatting to all the seasoned watchmen and tucking into the lard on toast that was all they seemed to eat. I suppose if you’ve spent weeks on the road surviving only on what you can hunt and kill (personally I don’t think she can hunt and kill very much at all) some easy prey like lard on toast has to be nice. And she filled her pockets with lard for later.

I found the beds at the barracks to be not much more uncomfortable than the one in my cell at the temple, and the lard on toast was not much worse than the food we get there. Over my time at the temple tending to the needy I have learned to survive on very little, and Shallyans generally make a point of demonstrating moderation in eating and drinking.

I have to wonder about a proper gent, like Erhardt, if he is a proper gent. He was used to the pampering at his college in Altdorf and has come down to little Ubersreik and suddenly found himself in the watch as a punishment. I was half expecting a letter to come from Altdorf any moment explaining that it was all a terrible mistake, and he should be freed immediately. Perhaps the Grey Wizards don’t stick up for each other like you might expect them to. Perhaps they do, normally, but they just don’t like him.

Kurtis was talking about earning some extra money by busking at an inn somewhere. I thought as an official watchman he might be able to convince a landlord to allow him to gig somewhere, I doubted he could convince them with his singing. Gulgad didn’t seem to mind what was going on either. I imagined he was already making plans to be the watch fight champion if watch fighting was a thing.

A few words were said about Rudi’s leadership. He showed a distinct lack of regard for the letter of law going about his business, which seemed fair. It made sense that playing things by ear would work for an experienced watch sergeant. And augmenting your wages with the unclaimed proceeds of criminal activity might be seen to be fair, too. But his lack of regard for his fellow Ubersreiker during the fire felt a bit like dereliction of duty.

In any case, Rudi had decided that we were now experienced enough to patrol on our own. So we set out on our beat wondering whether we were going to get paid for our work. It seemed like it would be a long three years if all we did was work and eat lard on toast. But on the other hand, if this was our punishment why would they pay us? We thought that perhaps we were expected to rob and accept bribes to survive, and that Rudi had introduced us to the practice to be helpful.

Making our way along our waterfront beat it wasn’t long before we came across a young lad, by the name of Eugen Pechvogel, who was clearly upset. Solvej talked to him, although I’m not sure how he understood her accent, and found out that his father had gone missing. This seemed like the sort of thing that might happen every day on the dockside. A docker drinks too much and sleeps it off under a jetty or he gets a job on a boat and is out of town for a few days, but the boy was quite insistent that this was out of character. So, we decided to take him at his word and try to find Reikert, his father.

In the course of our investigation, Solvej inspected some of the barrels on the dockside. I’m not sure what she was looking for, but she managed to find some pickled herring, which is what they eat in Nordland, so she was very happy with that and loaded herself up with the delicacy, to go with her lard. It was mystifying to me how could someone so food-motivated could be so bad at hunting, but this is why Solvej spent the next month smelling of fish.

We made our way into the Sigmar-awful Dunkelfeucht slum, where Eugen lived, rather tentatively, as they don’t tend to like watchmen in places like that, but no one gave us any hassle. We managed to find the lad’s home, which was more of a makeshift shack than a house and spoke to his mother. She, too, seemed convinced that it was out of character for Reikert to go missing, and she expressed surprise that the watch would be interested in the likes of her family. Reikert worked for the Dockers’ Guild so we decided to ask around there.

Asking around the waterfront, also, a lot of people were reluctant to even talk to us, for fear that we might be investigating them, but we got the impression that a number of people had gone missing recently, and the disappearances were being put down to a monster who lived in the river.

As Erhardt was the only respectable-looking member of our patrol he went off to the Dockers’ Guild, and Gulgad went with him, as we thought that if they didn’t respect Erhardt’s thoughtful reasoning they might respect Gulgad’s mindless brutality. However, no one at the guild wanted to talk to them. Perhaps they were so inundated with illegal activity they had no idea what we might be investigating and assumed it could only be bad for them.

With no luck looking for Reikert we ended our morning patrol, ready to meet up again at the Raspy Raven in the evening. I went back down to the dockside to have a look for Reikert but still had no luck. I was beginning to think that the locals might be right about the monster. Kurtis went around some of the dives looking for someone stupid enough to let him sing, and no doubt drive the customers away. Solvej went back to the barracks for some lard sandwiches, and Erhardt probably wandered around being all mysterious. No idea what Gulgad was doing, flexing his muscles in front of a mirror, perhaps.

So that evening it was pretty quiet along the waterfront. We were greeted by the odd local who had heard of our heroics, especially Gulgad’s, and were keen to show their support. Although some of the locals seemed to think it was Rudi who had done the rescuing. We knew he had done nothing to help us, but perhaps they were a bit confused by the fact that we were in Rudi’s team. Perhaps us being new to the job and under the command of the sergeant meant that he actually deserved the credit.

Along the waterfront, near the bridge, we noticed a bit of the wharf had been damaged. Some of the wood was missing and the metal looked like it had been melted, or something. The remains were covered in some sort of liquid. It seemed to be viscous and sticky and it smelled awful, it felt a bit familiar, but none of us could place it. We did think that this would have been roughly where Reikert Pechvogel went missing.

Something moved beneath the surface of the water, and as we peered into the filthy river, it seemed to take shape and develop eyes. Then a monstrous creature broke the surface. It could have been a great, ugly fish but it had arms and long teeth, and it hauled itself onto the quayside.

Gulgad, quickly sprang into action, facing off against the creature. This surprised me. I thought he was all very brave promoting his pit fights or taunting his opponents (pit fights, I have it on good authority, are all just fixed, anyway - It’s acting more than fighting!) I expected, when it came down to it, he would be no braver than the rest of us., but there he was, in the monster’s face, swinging his axe.

Spurred by his example I followed him, with my stick. It’s a contentious theological issue, in the cult of Shallya, just what constitutes self-defence, what constitutes an enemy of Shallya, and what constitutes a person. So, when one reads the stricture that you must never harm another person except in self-defence or against the enemies of Shallya, every cultist seems to have their own interpretation. It became convenient for me, at that moment, to interpret Shallya’s will in a way that best prevented me from getting my head bitten off by a river troll.

While Gulgad was smacking the creature’s head with his axe, I was doing my best to hit it with my pitiful walking stick. It came as a surprise, therefore, that the idiot monster should ignore the Dwarf and take a chunk out of me. It really hurt. After getting bitten by the beast I had little choice but to withdraw from the fight and leave it all to Gulgad.

Meanwhile, the other three officers of the watch were more circumspect. Kurtis was remarkably reticent in the face of danger. Had it been a female troll perhaps he would have struck up a conversation with it. But he was opening some nearby barrels to see if they contained anything flammable. His great plan was to set fire to one and roll it towards the creature. Setting fire to something in a river seemed like the sort of plan Kurtis would come up with.

Solvej was loading up her sling and attempting to stone the monster to death. But she had already demonstrated she didn’t understand how a sling worked and when that failed, she began opening barrels too, but discovered another cache of pickled herring, and began to throw that at the creature. She didn’t manage to hit the massive figure from about ten yards, and yet, as a hunter, she supposedly survives by hitting rabbits from fifty yards. And Erhardt, it was difficult for me to see, as I was getting mauled by a river-monster, seemed to be throwing some sort of stones at it, too.

After Gulgad’s epic struggle, Kurtis, with help from Erhardt, managed to get his flaming barrel going. It rolled slowly across the quay, and squarely into the troll. The creature, confused by the fire, already wounded by Gulgad’s axe, looked around confused for a moment, then slipped back into the water.

On our way back to the barracks full of ourselves and singing songs about Gulgad’s victory, we were waylaid by a grizzled figure. The road warden sergeant Ilse Fassenwuetend introduced herself to us. She said that she had heard good things about us, which I doubted, and that she needed some reliable officers to do an important job.

We explained that we weren’t roadwardens, but Ilse said that her roadwardens had already attempted the job and failed and now she needed outsiders. Fassenwuetend explained that a convicted murderer, Holger Maurer, was due to be executed in a few days. They had tried to execute him a couple of times previously but through a series of unfortunate events, both executions had failed, and under the law, if he were to survive three attempts then he would be released as innocent. Fassenwuetend was determined not to let this happen. It was a dangerous job that no one else was prepared to do, but, she said, if we did pull it off, she would see what she could do about getting our sentence commuted, and freeing us from our obligation to the watch, which was, we all agreed, exactly what we wanted.