33: A Good Night’s Sleep

On our way back to bed, we had to go through the courtyard which, as it was so late, was now emptying. Solvej took me to one side and offered to give me the crossbow she had bought in Nuln. I guess she wasn’t getting on very well with learning to shoot it and thought I might be able to make use of it. I was not sure how to take this. I wondered whether this was a sincere gift. Why would she think I might want to own that killing machine? Solvej is not the brightest, although compared to Kurtis and Otto she is like a genius, so perhaps she didn’t know about the Shallya strictures against doing harm and killing. Perhaps she had not noticed during the past few months we had been together that while our merry band had fought and murdered its way across the Reikland that I was doing my best to keep the peace, and keep, at least some of, our victims alive.

Or perhaps she knew all this, and the gesture was some sort of clever satire. Or perhaps she was well aware that I had put a lot of faith and devotion into getting Kurtis to renounce violence in return for his unsightly disease to be cured by the grace of Shallya, only to have him throw it all back in my face a few hours later with the murder of the gangster, with for good measure, bonus amputation. Perhaps it was some sort of gift to say that I was now irrefutably complicit in all this mayhem, and as I couldn’t beat them, I must now join them.

Or perhaps, and this has just occurred to me, perhaps Solvej’s mind has been turned by the trauma and corruption of the last few months. I have seen it in hers eyes on a number of occasions, before now. Perhaps she has fallen to the dark gods, and this action was at their instigation. Perhaps she is a vessel of a dark god, here to tempt me to turn away from Shallya. To be fair, now I have written it down, this sounds a bit extreme, and perhaps not the case. Although, I will be keeping a closer eye on her from now on.

Anyway, thanks to Solvej’s touching gift, I wasn’t in the best of moods when I stormed off to bed. I did manage to get to sleep but I swore to Shallya, as I drifted off, that if Kurtis came in late and woke me up with tales of his latest crush, I would recant all my vows to her and punch him in the face.

The rest of the account of the evening I have pieced together from conversations with everyone after the fact. For as although this was a very busy night that went on into the small hours and left everyone else fatigued with lack of sleep, I slept like a log throughout. The sleep of the just.

Everyone else was hanging around the courtyard, and they saw a young man stumbling around as if drunk. Otto knew this old trick well and he determined that the fellow was faking it and so they got involved. Otto asked him if he needed help, and he said that he was just having trouble finding his room and that he would be alright. They noticed that he was wearing unnecessarily bulky clothes, too.

Erhardt wandered off to talk to some birds, or something similarly mysterious, while Kurtis and Solvej followed the ‘drunk’ guy. Solvej using her hunting talents cleverly let the bloke realise she was following him, so Kurtis could use that as a distraction and try to pickpocket him. Although he could find nothing to pocket, he noticed the man seemed to be wearing two sets of clothing, one on top of the other.

Then suddenly, everyone heard a crash coming from the castle kitchens and they all rushed there. On entering the kitchen, they saw a wild, dirty, naked man crouched over a bleeding servant. Solvej spoke to him, trying not to make him frightened, but he ran towards her, elbowing her out the way and knocking her over as he tried to get past. Seeing this Otto grabbed a nearby rolling pin and hit the man across the head with it, stunning him. And then jumped on him and tied him up he thrashed about manically. Gulgad went to see to the servant (one of von Saponatheim’s) but quickly realised he was dead.

Solvej tried to talk to the crazy man and asked him if he was from the castle. He said he was and begged her to keep Otto away from him. He admitted that he had killed the servant and said that he was ‘one of daddy’s,’ which we took to mean that this was the son of the Graf von Saponatheim. I was sound asleep, of course, throughout this, and so I got this information second hand and cannot to attest to any of it. But it seemed that the man was trying to eat the servant that he had just killed, and he professed a wish that he might also eat the graf himself, the poor fellow’s father. This seemed like one of the worst examples of dysfunctional nobility that we have come across, and in the last few months we had certainly come across quite a few. Not that I’m suggesting all nobles are bad, and it’s certainly true that the Gravin von Liebwitz von Ambosstein is a good noble and a keen and generous supporter of the poor and dispossessed of Nuln.

There was a long conversation about what to do with the bestial noble. There was a plan to clean him up and take him to his father, but in the end, I think, the view was that we had been messed about by nobles on so many occasions, and it had not always ended well for us, and the best thing to do was simply lock the man in a cupboard in the kitchen and leave it to someone else to deal with. I would like to think that had I been awake, I would have led everyone to a more humane solution than this. In any case, once they left the kitchen, it wasn’t long before they heard a loud bang and some grunting and running, and it was clear that the young , mad von Saponatheim had escaped.

Meanwhile Kurtis and Erhardt were in the courtyard. I think Erhardt was still looking out for mysterious bird messages. Kurtis was still following the double-clothed man. He saw Natassia von Saponatheim, the bride-to-be, emerge from her apartments and embrace him. And Kurtis watched as he took off his top layer of clothing and gave it to Natassia, who quickly put it on, and soon she was looking just like her companion, non-descript gentry. They put their hoods up and headed towards the castle gate.

Kurtis followed them and called Erhardt over. He had a quick listen and determined that they were lovers who were eloping, and happy for themselves and their future together. And so, the pair of them took the decision to let the lovers go on their lovely way. And who am I to criticise such a benevolent act? Well, we were here to make sure that the wedding gifts were handed over safely at a wedding. I’m not sure what part of that job gets to be completed satisfactorily if the bride is halfway to Altdorf with the wrong man. When I spoke to Kurtis about it later, he blamed Erhardt, but it’s also clear he does not have a decent track record when it comes to getting weddings done.

After a bit more snooping around in the dead of night, Erhardt spotted a man dragging a body by its feet. The body seemed to be dressed like you would expect of a minor noble at a wedding. He was dragging it towards the tower where the Ambossteins were staying. Erhardt asked the man what he was doing, and he pointedly told him it was none of his business and he should go away, and that he was merely helping a drunken friend get back to his bed. So Erhardt made to leave but kept an eye on the man from the shadows. The man dragged the body into the gravin’s room and Erhardt watched as he stood over her with a bloody knife. And so Erhardt attacked with his magical powers. With a few blasts of magic stuff, the man was dead, although he still managed to wound Erhardt with his dagger.

And so Erhardt had to explain himself to the gravin who was not happy at being woken up with two dead bodies in her room. I think Erhardt quickly realised that the plan had been to frame the gravin for murder by placing the bloody dagger by her side as she slept and leaving the body in her room. The gravin decided it was probably another Dammenblatz plot. Erhardt searched the man and found a bottle of strange liquid, which Erhardt guessed might be to keep the gravin sleeping, and a pamphlet entitled Prints of Pleasure, of which I will leave the contents to your imagination, but needless to say it is not the sort of publication one might expect to find on the person of a respectable noble lady. The Gravin decided no one needed to know of this and told Erhardt to get rid of the bodies.

So Erhardt went to fetch Gulgad who is by now well practiced at throwing bodies out of windows. When they got back, they noticed the gravin leafing through Prints of Pleasure, but she was quick to hide the pamphlet under her pillow. The pair of them grabbed a body each and managed to find a window that overlooked the steep cliff on which the castle is built, and they threw them out. Erhardt did find a ring on the murderer’s body and kept that. And Gulgad managed to heal Erhardt’s knife wound. I was not there, of course, but I doubt he did as good a job as I would have done.

On their way to bed, Erhardt and Gulgad saw the dancers who I had noticed earlier were keeping a careful eye on the dowager duchess’ ruby. And later we were all awakened by loud noises of footsteps on the roof. I simply rolled over and went back to sleep, but I understand the others all got up to see what the fuss was about.

They went outside to see the dancers making their way across the roof with Glimbrin in their wake. Otto tried to sling at Glimbrin (the gnome still possessed his precious tusk dagger) but missed and the group made their escape. And everyone went back to bed and tried to get some sleep. We were all woken up at the crack of dawn by Stefan and summoned to see the gravin. Stefan was keen to show how much more important he was than us, as usual, but Solvej brought him down to earth by pointing out that all he was doing was delivering a message. Everyone was looking very tired, but I had slept like a log. After a few verses of ‘Shallya’s saving me for a sunbeam’ Otto was looking refreshed, too, and I resolved to enroll him at the Temple of Shallya once we got back to Nuln. I think he will make a good monk provided he is not asked to do any complex tasks.

The gravin told us there was a delicate situation and that Natassia had absconded overnight with her lover and it was vital to the house of Ambosstein that the wedding should go ahead. The gravin told us that she would keep delaying things as long as possible, but we must get Natassia back before the end of the day. She also explained that we must also get her lover back, too, and that it was important not to hurt him, which sounded a bit generous on her part.

On our way down towards the boats we were interrupted by the dowager duchess screaming that her ruby had been stolen. She had been robbed overnight, and it was obvious that had been done by Glimbrin and the dancers. Kurtis and Otto both told the dowager duchess that they would get her ruby back for her but I didn’t see how he could as it was clearly much more important that we find Natassia. And a bit further along, we heard another scream, coming from the kitchens. We knew what that was about, and decided not to respond.

Down on the docks we found a captain who had obviously been keeping an eye on things and had noticed all the activity that morning. He said that the couple had headed north, earlier, on a small unnamed vessel, and that the exotic dance troupe had gone south. He also told us that Glimbrin had disappeared into some nearby bushes, the ones that Gulgad had hidden the cursed sword in earlier.

We decided we needed to head north and Kurtis tried to intimidate the captain into getting us a fast boat to go that way, but the captain wasn’t impressed by him, but he did get the boat despite Kurtis’ efforts, but demanded a fair price.

Otto sent Schnitzel into the bushes to root Glimbrin out and then slinged the gnome. Otto is usually quite a mild-mannered fellow but the thieving gnome seems to bring out the worst in him. Glimbrin could see that he was outgunned and confessed that he and the dancers had stolen the ruby, but they had made off with it, and double-crossed him. He told us how the ruby contained a spell that would save his people, and that if he didn’t get it back then the gnomes of the world would diminish and become extinct. Erhardt, who might know about this sort of thing decided that the gnome was full of shit. Glimbrin also confessed to having found a large sword in the bushes, but we didn’t feel the need to break it to him that it was cursed.

Otto went through Glimbrin’s pockets and got his tusk dagger back, at last. We told Glimbrin to follow the dancers south if he wanted the ruby, but he said he didn’t like water, which was odd as he had spent the last few months, just like us, sailing up and down the Reik. In the end we put up the money for a boat to take the gnome south and get the gem. As he was leaving us, though, he brushed past Otto who felt the gnome trying to lift his tusk dagger once more. He’d missed, but cheekily winked at Otto as he left.