22: Snakes

The temple in Kemperbad was calm and inviting. The whole place seemed to be better run and cleaner than the one in Ubersreik and it certainly didn’t lack for funding. I knew Kemperbad was wealthier than Ubersreik but I didn’t expect wealth to come with generosity. In my experience the poor give more than their share to Shallya, possibly because they are more likely to need her help, possibly because the rich are just greedy. Anyway, the temple had a well-appointed infirmary and there was even an orphanage. If I wanted to found a Shallyan orphanage then I wouldn’t be doing it in Kemperbad.

Another thing I noticed, there was a lot less flagellation going on. I think that perhaps the flagellation at the temple in Ubersreik was more about Gunther’s own predilections than the word of Shallya.

Meanwhile the rest of the Gravin’s guard had time on their hands. This guarding nobility thing was pretty easy. Kurtis went shopping and bought as much armour as he could afford. Otto caught a rat and tried to make a stuffed rat-Kurtis, adding a lute made from an old walnut shell and a twig. I’m sure the rat sounded better than Kurtis himself.

Solvej followed Gustav around. I think she had decided that Gustav would be able to keep her safe and she was trying to ingratiate herself or find out stuff that might give her leverage on him. Hanging out with people caught up with forbidden cults doesn’t sound like the safest pastime, to me.

Erhardt sent some letters back to Altdorf, no doubt telling his spymasters everything we’d been doing. Gulgad got a big tattoo on his back of a load of Dwarven runes, which I think spelled Gudrun. We were all too polite to mention it, though.

It wasn’t long before the day of the judicial duel dawned. Kurtis said the time went quickly, but I suppose it must do when your death is looming. The gravin told us to guard Kurtis on the day and make sure no harm would come to him before the fight. We tried to get information about the Dammenblatz camp but there was not a lot to find. They weren’t from Kemperbad as this was a neutral venue and they hadn’t even arrived in town yet. I think they camped out of town and were going to turn up just before the fight, maybe because they feared the gravin’s dirty tricks.

We went to check out the arena to see if it was safe. There was a large stand for the watching public which made me realise that the fight was a bigger deal than I’d thought, or Kemperbad doesn’t have much in the way of entertainment. There were also smaller pavilions on opposite sides of the arena, one for each party. We checked out both but as we were there so early they were both empty. Kurtis just moped around in the von Liebwitz pavilion, but you couldn’t really blame him. Solvej spoke to one of the workers setting up the arena and he seemed to think that the gravin was a wanton who killed the old baron through witchcraft and that the fight would prove it. He also seemed to think the gravin’s aunt (Emmanuelle von Liebwitz, Countess of Nuln) was similarly dodgy.

Otto headed to the Severed Tail inn to talk to the ratcatchers’ guild. They hadn’t heard of Otto, not surprisingly, and they didn’t seem to know much about the von Dammenblatzs or the fight. So then he went back to our inn and got talking to Genevieve to try to get a free drink out of her. He told her that he had heard the gravin was a witch, which Genevieve was sure was not true and that the gravin was a good and fair employer.

At the arena, we saw Gustav talking to three locals who we decided were probably the three magistrates who were to oversee the fight and while everyone else was a arsing about in the pavilion, Solvej took up a vantage point in the stand. She noticed a couple of scholar-like characters keeping an eye on Gustav, who she decided must be allies of the scholars we dealt with at the Three Feathers. She decided to warn the rest of us by throwing Otto’s rat-Solvej at us. She threw the thing into the pavilion and managed to get it to land perfectly on Kurtis’s head. Erhardt went up to the stand to see what the matter was, and then eavesdropped on the two scholars. He heard them say that the time was not right, but the Ordo would strike soon, whatever that meant, and then they slinked off.

By now the stand was beginning to fill up, and as it did, one of the railings collapsed and a number of the crowd, including some children fell off. Some of them were hurt and Solvej went to help them, even though she suspected this might be a deliberate distraction. Erhardt noticed her being followed and in the confusion, it looked like she was being pickpocketed. But in fact, something was being put into her pockets.

She came back to the pavilion to reveal it was a small leather pouch with a blowpipe in it and three darts, although there was space for four darts. I noticed that the remaining darts were covered in a poison which I decided was deadly. It was clear to us that someone was trying to frame Solvej, and probably the entire von Liebwitz camp for an as yet unknown poisoning. I decided to take the stuff as my expertise in herbiary might help and the vague notion that people might be less likely to search a man of the cloth. I reminded Kurtis of his dooming which mentioned pipes, and needless to say he was even more convinced that he was about to die. He grabbed the pipe from me, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.

Gustav turned up to see what was going on and Kurtis told him to make sure that there were no pipers involved in the von Liebwitz entourage, and Gustav ensured him they only had a drummer. Erhardt told him that the scholar/cultists had been sniffing about and that made him even more pensive.

Meanwhile, Solvej went back to keeping a lookout. As part of the crowd, a bunch of street urchins barged past her, but then decided to attack her, kicking her in the shins. This hurt and made her hobble about, barely able to walk, for the rest of the day. Was that something to do with her framing, too, we wondered or were they just a bunch of random kids? They ran away shouting ‘we got the champion!’ so they were violent and stupid.

Otto had been trying to find the von Dammenblatz entourage, and after much searching, he did finally manage to catch up with them just as they got to the arena. Baron Erhardt von Dammenblatz was there with his widowed mother, who were both clearly eager to see that justice be done. I felt that even if they were wrong about gravin (and who knows, maybe she was a murderer, maybe she was also a witch) they were probably sincere in their beliefs about her. And they arrived with their champion Heinrich Botche who certainly looked the part, and made Kurtis feel even worse about his chances.

Kurtis asked me to fetch Genevieve for him. I think he wanted her there to make him feel better, but who wants to watch their boyfriend being systematically dismembered by an expert fighter? I think he was being a bit selfish, but I agreed to fetch her. I needed to get back for the start of the bout as I thought I would pray to Shallya for Kurtis’ safety. Even though he had killed a few people in the last few weeks, he was more of a hapless victim of circumstance, probably, and not the dedicated killer Botche was, so perhaps Shallya might favour him after all.

When I was gone, while Botche was doing his warm up routine, basically showing off to the crowd, he suddenly fell down dead. Needless to say, the suspicion for the assassination fell on our camp. The baron was livid and immediately demanded to the magistrates that our pavilion be searched. I think we all guessed that Botche had been killed by a poisoned blow dart and our camp was about to be framed.

Just as the city guard moved into the pavilion, Kurtis realised that the incriminating blowpipe was still lying on the floor, and so surrounded by guards Kurtis managed to step on it, and with an impressive sleight of hand managed to palm the blow pipe and tuck it into his boot unnoticed.

I managed to find Genevieve who was making her way to the arena with the rest of the Gravin’s entourage and I told her that Kurtis wanted to see her before the fight. She was not looking very happy, and so I made an effort to console her as much as I could. Although grief counselling is not my most prominent skill as a monk of Shallya, I would like to think I managed to put her mind at rest.

When I got back, I wondered what all the commotion was about. Otto told me the champion was dead. I couldn’t believe it, after spending all my time recently complaining about Kurtis, and to be honest, he is annoying, I was suddenly sorry that I could be so mean and so unsympathetic to his ambitions. It made me very sad for every time I had disparaged his lute playing, or told him no one wanted to hear him, and all the small, petty put-downs I had used against him over the years even though really, he was my best friend. And now he was gone, and I couldn’t apologise or tell him what I really thought about him.

Otto also told us about the witch hunter he had seen in the Gravin’s entourage with the burnt face. We realised this must be Marband who we had briefly allied ourselves with to defeat Orban and his cultists and who had previously sworn undying enmity with Erhardt. Erhardt went out to meet her. They exchanged some guarded comments, and it looked like she was not planning on setting fire to us imminently.

Marband was actually in Kemperbad investigating the gravin as rumours of her witchcraft seemed to be gaining traction. She vowed to bring the gravin down and everyone tainted by her. Marband wondered whether Erhardt was a witch despite his licence, but Erhardt pointed out, that by definition if you have a licence then you are not a witch. Just our luck, I suppose, that as soon as we find a noble patron able to help keep us fed and watered, and relatively safe, she gets accused of witchcraft.

Then suddenly, Gustav sprang up from his seat, next to the gravin, and began frothing at the mouth. He had been poisoned, too, and we could see a large pin sticking out from his seat cushion. I tried to give him some medical attention but didn’t really know how to go about it. It occurred to me that the correct course of action would be to suck the poison out of his backside, but even the followers of Shallya have limits to their good grace. In the end I just prayed blindly to the goddess, and she answered my prayers and Gustav quickly recovered. This was, I think, another sign that I should continue my journey in Shallya’s footsteps.

Inspecting the pin and Gustav’s wound it was clear that this was a case of Black Lotus poisoning, the most popular sort of blade venom. It seemed that this was another reason for Gustav to be grateful to us. The gravin was convinced that this must have been a plot by the Dammenblatzs, but I wondered why they would be interested in Gustav. Perhaps the friends of the scholars from the Three Feathers had something to do with it. It was all a bit confusing.

Going back into the pavilion I saw Kurtis chatting happily with Genevieve. I had thought he was dead, and I’d been upset and all the time he was enjoying himself with his latest girlfriend. What an absolute thoughtless shit Kurtis was. And he had the cheek to wonder why I was upset with him. So, I realised that when Otto had told me the champion was dead, he had meant Botche and not Kurtis. And yet Otto had listened to me and watched me getting upset but hadn’t said anything. Honestly, I try to look at people in the best light, and there had been a number of incidents that made me think that Otto wasn’t the stealthiest ratcatcher in the sewer, but he must be a genuine idiot.

Anyway, Kurtis wasn’t that interested in what I had to say as he then turned to Genevieve and got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Genevieve looked surprised and said she would answer after the fight. Kurtis interpreted this as a ‘no.’

And then we heard a loud trumpet blast that signalled the start of the duel. The Dammenblatzs had managed to find a replacement champion, and so the fight would begin. Kurtis with his heart broken (perhaps) entered the arena to the sound of pipes (if you can call a trumpet a pipe) potentially fulfilling his doom. And the expression on his face made me think he knew it, too.

The Verenan priest began to say a prayer to justice and truth and whatever they go one about (I don’t really like Verenans) but we heard a strange noise, like hissing. We turned to see the corner of the pavilion had been lifted up and in was slithering a snake. We guessed it was poisonous as everything else had been today. Quick as a flash, Otto set Schnitzel onto it, and the dog grabbed it in its mouth and delivered it straight to Otto who dumped it into his pouch. It turns out that the indisciplined, smelly, flea-ridden creature wasn’t as useless as I had thought, after all, and Schnitzel didn’t do bad, either.

And at that moment, the Verenan priest dropped his handkerchief to signal the start of the fight.