Valkyrie's Shadow

Before the Storm: Act 4, Chapter 1

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Chapter 1

“Thank you so much, Enxoc!”

“N-No problem. Um…it’s reassuring to have Rolo the Red with the Pa’chan.”

“Just Rolo is fine, Enxoc. Rolo the Red was just a name for the fighting pits.”

“…if that’s what you want. These guys will show you to your new home.”

The massive Nar and her two cubs rose from their prostrations and meekly followed their guides out of the court. Xoc waited for them to disappear down the steps before releasing a tired sigh.

I wanted to beat Rolo the Red, but now she’s working for me.

With most of the capable combatants in the city swept up by the great clans for their war against the Undead in the west, the fighting pit business dried up. Rolo the Red, who had declined the clans’ lucrative offer to join their forces because she was the single mother of two young cubs, ended up looking for work elsewhere and that eventually landed her in front of Xoc. It was an odd turn of events, though hardly the only one in her increasingly complex life.

“Bring in the next petitioner,” Xoc called out.

She shifted uncomfortably on the hard seat of her stone throne. Someone had found the thing somewhere and had the Humans fix it up. Then, she woke up one evening and found it plopped down in front of her family home.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just walk around talking to people instead of making them climb all the way up here?

Strangely, she was the only one who seemed to think that. Everyone else thought it was expected for people to come to her.

The next petitioner came up the stairs – the now-familiar Guildmaster of the Pa’chan’s local Merchant Guild Branch. He still wore the same uniform that she had first seen him wearing in the Draconic Kingdom, which was somehow kept spotless and undamaged.

“Enxoc,” Master Leeds genuflected before her. “We’ve noted the rise of some undesirable behaviour over the past week or so. Unknown individuals have been sweating our coins.”

A vague mental image formed in Xoc’s mind that didn’t make much sense.

“What does that mean?” She asked.

“Oh, erm…basically, you take some coins, stick them in a bag, and violently shake them around. The coins are damaged from hitting one another and the debris is collected from the bottom of the bag.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“The fragments add up,” Master Leeds shrugged. “They’re basically extracting copper from our coins. We’ve gotten a few dozen bags of refined copper bits from our ore suppliers. Apparently, these people are smart enough not to come to us directly with their ill-gotten gains, but not smart enough to realise that we’d figure out what they’re up to. We’ve also noted evidence of clipping – shaving the edges off of coins – and we’ve even received pieces of wholly destroyed coins.

“In hindsight, it was inevitable. Our minting activities have created a market for copper and the alloy mix used by the Merchant Guild is adjusted for more advanced economies. Here, the price of refined copper is worth more than its weight in coinage. The people here are either desperate or clever enough – or both – to turn the debasement of currency into an industry.”

“Uh…that’s bad, isn’t it? How do you fix that?”

“Well, since we’re the largest dealers in currency, we can have our Merchants reject any debased coinage. Also, we can set a scrap price that makes debasing coins not worth the effort. In time, the old prices for everything will adjust to the intrinsic value of the coins.”

“But what if someone got a damaged coin from someone else thinking it was still good? Doesn’t that hurt them?”

“We could set a grace period while everything sorts itself out. That’s a cost the clan would have to shoulder, though.”

“…is it a lot?”

“That depends. We don’t know how widespread the problem is, but it will worsen if we let it drag on. People must learn to respect the rules.”

“Then I guess we don’t have much of a choice. Go ahead and do what you said.”

“By your command, Enxoc.”

The Guildmaster lowered his head and left the court. She still didn’t understand how money worked yet, but it seemed to be as convenient as Saraca and the Humans said it would be. Now that they had established a few trade routes to import ‘copper-bearing ores’, the Humans worked endlessly to mint new coins. They were still far from the point where there was enough for the entire city, but the use of coins had already replaced about a third of all barter in the area around her home.

Her next petitioner was Patli, one of the clan elders. The mystic walked up to the base of her throne with a pair of his assistants.

“Hey, Patli,” Xoc said as she kneaded her claws on her stone seat.

“Enxoc,” Patli said. “Víla’s ire continues unabated.”

“I saw,” Xoc replied, “our river looks more like a lake now. The Deluge has been over for a month, so why are the water levels still rising?”

“We took the time to consult with the other mystics around the city, but the only consensus we could come to was that we aren’t the problem. The upstream water levels of the local rivers are as expected for the season, as is the depth of the lake behind our dam. The cause of the flooding lies elsewhere in the basin. Perhaps Vltava has some idea about what’s going on?”

“He and the others went to explore the area south of the city,” Xoc told him. “They didn’t say when they would be back, but they were only gone for about two weeks last time. Have you tried speaking to visiting Merchants? They could have some information about how the rest of Rol’en’gorek is doing.”

“I hadn’t considered that, Enxoc. I’ll send some people to ask around.”

“Hopefully they can learn something,” Xoc said. “How are our new fungus farms coming along? Will we be able to provide enough food for our people?”

The unexpected flooding brought with it many woes. Not only were people being driven further up and out of the lowlands, but the herds were still grazing in their winter ranges. The hills around Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr – which included her clan’s territory – were left relatively unscathed by the problem, but security became more and more of an issue as the population fleeing the lowlands sought refuge wherever they could.

To add to her worries, the Merchant Guild was recommending that her clan stockpile provisions in anticipation of ‘price fluctuations’ caused by the flooding. Now, she worried that the people of the city would be driven to madness by hunger and would start eating one another.

“We’re working as quickly as we can,” Patli replied. “Expanding the fungus farms is easy enough, but the herds are another issue. The best way to increase production is to allow the Nug population to grow, which means we would have to import most of our food in the interim. Slowing down the growth of the clan will also help.”

“I’ll talk to the Guildmaster about importing more food,” Xoc said, “but I don’t think we can stop taking people in. We have nowhere near enough strength to defend our holdings if the city goes crazy. The hope that they might be able to join us is making people behave, too.”

“Then it is what it is,” Patli said. “We will do what we can.”

Xoc nodded in agreement and the Elder went on his way.

“Is there anyone else?” Xoc asked.

At the top of the stairs, one of her guards looked over his shoulder and held up a paw.

Five petitioners. Why did I even ask?

She had been stuck at five for most of the morning. Whenever she finished dealing with one, another would join the back of the line. Admittedly, it was a small victory that she could have people form lines at all. She fully expected the Nar and Urmah petitioners to walk over everyone else, but it looked like her security was substantial enough to keep things in order.

Xoc reached for the jug of water by her throne and took a long draught before calling the next petitioner in. A Lup’s head appeared at the top of the steps, but then she was bowled over by an officious-looking Urmah with a well-groomed coat.

So much for keeping things in order…

Xoc grew nervous as the newcomer sauntered towards her with a prideful air.

“Hear the words of the Confederation Council!” She roared.

“D-Do you have to shout?” Xoc cringed, “I’m sitting right here, you know?”

“Every tribe of Rol’en’gorek is to provide ten able warriors or hunters,” the messenger’s voice continued to boom away. “Every clan, one hundred. They are to assemble at the city docks–”

“The city docks are underwater,” Xoc noted.

“–in a day hence! There will be no exceptions!”

Xoc followed the messenger with a confounded stare as she refused to elaborate any further and left.

“But the city doesn’t have any clans or tribes,” she flicked an ear in annoyance. “And what’s a ‘hence’?”

Had her people been singled out because they had sort of reformed their clan? What was she going to do? She had a token security force with next to no training and she doubted that the Council would deem them acceptable warriors.

I never asked for any of this. Why can’t people just leave us in peace?

Did lords just have problems dumped on them as a matter of course? Whenever she solved one, three more would pop up.

“Stop bringing in new petitioners,” she said. “I’m going to take a walk around the clanhold. Oh, I’ll still finish the ones that have been waiting.”

The last few petitioners fortunately didn’t add any further complications. After fighting off the temptation of a midday nap, she descended the stairs to the second-highest terrace of her clanhold where the Humans imported from the Draconic Kingdom lived. It hadn’t been long, but they had already transformed the place into something almost unrecognisable from the ruin it once was.

Was this is really how things used to be?

The Humans offered to restore her clanhold to its original appearance, but she couldn’t figure out how they could know what that looked like. Still, she had to admit it was better than before. The crumbling stone buildings were slowly being replaced by new ones and the old roads were dug up and remade. They fixed the drainage systems and even the ball courts whenever their progress brought them across one.

“Enxoc.”

“Enxoc.”

“Enxoc.”

Xoc bobbed her head in response to an endless stream of greetings as she made her way to the clanhold’s market. She wished that everyone would just address her as they used to. Her greatest fear was that people would start calling her il-Enxoc one day and her workload would magically increase tenfold. She wasn’t even officially recognised as a lord yet.

“Enxoc, how may I help you?”

Master Leeds greeted her at the entrance of the Merchant Guild, which had gone from a small tent to a two-storey structure built out of blocks of basalt. The ground level had enough room for a reception area and even a private office.

“I, um…did you hear that Urmah shouting just now?”

“I don’t think so,” Master Leeds replied. “It’s pretty noisy in the market these days. What did they say?”

“She was a messenger from the Confederation Council. They want us to supply them with warriors or hunters.”

The Guildmaster frowned. Xoc was fairly sure it was the same as a Beastman’s frown, but it was hard to tell how strong the reaction was since he didn’t have a tail.

“For what? Didn’t they just assemble a huge army during the Deluge?” He said, “What do they want people for now?”

“She didn’t say,” Xoc replied. “She announced that we were to deliver them to the docks, which are underwater at the moment.”

Master Leeds made a sort of half-chuff.

“They’d have much better luck bothering the other ninety-nine per cent of the city,” he said. “They’ll fill their quota a thousand times over with how many people are being forced out of their homes by the flooding.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Xoc told him. “The quota demands warriors and hunters of at least a certain quality. Every adult member of each race needs about the same amount of food and space, so recruiting warriors is about getting the most power per person. Very few people in the city qualify as warriors and hunters in the eyes of the warrior clans, especially with them taking away so many recently.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Master Leeds said. “You people eat an absurd amount. Especially the Nar and the Urmah. So…we can’t afford their demands – what’s going to happen to us?”

“I don’t know,” Xoc admitted. “I don’t even know why that herald came to us. She walked right over the petitioners and left just as quickly, so the Council might have just sent people everywhere saying the same thing.”

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Now that she thought about it, the way that the announcement was structured sounded like it was meant for the territories, not the cities. The warrior clans thought little of the cities in the first place, so they may not have even prepared a separate message for them. Did that mean it was safe to ignore the Council? It sounded like they were already short of people with everything that was going on, so she couldn’t imagine they had the people to enforce their demands. Even if they came, she could argue that they weren’t yet an officially recognised clan.

“A-Anyway,” Xoc continued, “they’re going to try and collect people tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens. What else did I come here for…oh, yeah: Patli advised us to begin importing food to let our herds grow in line with our fungus farms. Are we able to do that?”

“I’m tempted to say yes,” Master Leeds said. “This new announcement might change things, though. If they’re putting another big army together for something…I recommend that we import as much as we can as quickly as possible to get in ahead of the impact this might have on the market.”

“Please do,” Xoc said. “Let Patli know how much food you can provide through trade so he can tell the ranchers how to proceed.”

“One last thing,” the Guildmaster said. “Will you still be letting people into the clan? This plan is only possible because our population is relatively small. As long as this flooding keeps up, I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to import any food at all as the weeks go on.”

“I know,” Xoc’s tail went limp. “I don’t like it, but we may have to shut out all but the most promising warrior candidates.”

Not liking it was putting it lightly. The very idea made her feel like an absolute villain. She took on the responsibilities of a lord because she wanted to help her people, not pick and choose who would starve and how to ensure that they did.

“Are you sure Rol’en’gorek doesn’t have any other avenues for trade?” Master Leeds asked.

“I’m pretty sure there aren’t,” Xoc answered. “Everyone to the north wants to kill us and eat us. Everyone to the east wants to kill us and eat us and take our land. The west…well, they’re fighting to drive back the Undead. The southern tribes have some trade with the Great Lut, but there’s no food going in either direction there.”

After returning from the Draconic Kingdom, she learned many bits and pieces of information about Rol’en’gorek in her efforts to establish her clan. Most of it was simple, but there was a whole lot of it. Combined with her visit to the Draconic Kingdom with Saraca’s entourage and what she had learned from them, the world she had once known felt like it had grown very small.

“This is going to be rough,” Master Leeds scratched his cheek, “but we’ll do what we can. If we had just one more season to build out our trade network, this would have been ten times easier.”

“Will you need more security for our Merchants?”

“That will depend on what they report on their return. The good thing about the river trade is that it’s big and fast, so we won’t have to wait long to find out. It may be prudent to conceal the fact that we’re stockpiling supplies, however.”

“Our stuff should be safe short of a major attack,” Xoc said, “but let our warriors know what you need.”

If the flooding kept getting worse, it would be impossible to steal those supplies without storming the clanhold. Not long after the Humans started working, they converted the Cuorocos Cliffs into a warehouse complex, making their inventories inaccessible without a ship or access to the terraces above.

Her next stop was the cliffs in question, which had the top five metres of stone stripped away by her clan’s combination of quarrying and reconstruction efforts. The stoneworking industry had become the largest single employer in the area, with over four hundred Beastmen from her tribe working under the direction of the Humans. They had carved the hill much as an artisan might carve a piece of wood, leaving buildings and infrastructure in their wake.

Along the way, she stopped at several of the renovated ball courts, which were now training fields for the clan’s warriors. Nine out of ten were Ocelo, though that ratio was changing by the day as she brought in more muscle. At one of the courts, she found Rolo watching the warriors train from the sidelines.

“How do you like your new home?” Xoc asked.

“It’s amazing, Enxoc!” Rolo answered, her tail swishing back and forth in a pleased manner, “Our last den was a few Nug hides stretched between the roots of a tree. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would get to live in a cave.”

“It’s a house,” Xoc said. “At least it’s what the Humans call a house.”

“Is that so? I’ve never seen a Human before today, but they seem handy. How do the fighting pits here work?”

Xoc looked at the ball court below them. She supposed it did resemble a fighting pit for those who didn’t know any better.

“This isn’t a fighting pit,” Xoc said. “It’s a ball court, but it’s currently being used as a training ground for warriors.”

“But didn’t you say that you needed warriors for security?”

“I do, but poorly-trained warriors aren’t much better than any other citizen. Our warriors alternate in their duties: one day is training, and the other is maintaining order and security in the clan’s holdings. This is your job from now on.”

“So I’ll be working every day? I won’t have to find odd jobs to make ends meet?”

“You’re a professional warrior, now,” Xoc told her. “You’ll earn enough to meet the needs of your family just from that.”

“…I see. It’s as if I joined a warrior clan. In that case, I should get to work.”

Rolo turned and went to join the other warriors in training. Not long ago, Xoc would have feared she might break someone in half, but she seemed like a much more reasonable person outside of the fighting pits.

Once Xoc reached the cliffs overlooking the river, which now had a sturdy walkway installed, walking down the ramp to the water. The submerged planks of the wharf showed clearly in the sunlight and a marked pole fastened to one of the pilings showed that the water level had risen another centimetre since she had checked that same morning.

On the opposite shore, things were much worse. The river had crept far into the trees, leaving a landscape of half-submerged dwellings and trunks sticking out of the water. She imagined that the other valleys of the city wouldn’t be faring much better and the slums along the docks were probably underwater as well. As the city had no formal, unified leadership, its displaced citizens simply moved wherever they could. Rumour had it that new ‘tribes’ were forming for security and influence, though she hadn’t caught wind of anything on the scale of her clan.

A pair of paddle boats with her clan’s ‘markings’ – they were improvised – rounded the bend downriver. The captain of the lead vessel, a black-furred Gao named Loros, wagged his tail as his ship closed with its berth.

“Enxoc!” The Gao called out, “I thought you came down to welcome us home, but maybe not. It looks like the troubles from upriver have come to us.”

“How troubling are these troubles?” Xoc asked.

“Very troubling indeed,” the Gao answered gravely. “The crews I’ve spoken with claim that the river only continues to swell.”

“I’ll hear what everyone has to say once the cargo is offloaded,” Xoc said. “An afternoon meal will be waiting for you up in the court once you’re done here.”

She went back up the ramp, squeezing past the dockworkers making their way down to the waterfront. The crews from the Merchant ships arrived at the court thirty minutes later, letting out sighs of relief and expressions of hunger as they sat around mats where platters of fish were being served.

“No need to hold back,” Xoc gestured with a paw. “We have many questions that need answering.”

After the clan elders, Master Leeds, and the Merchant Guild office staff appeared and sat down at a set of long stone tables below her throne, Xoc stepped down from her throne on the stairs so she could speak more closely to the returnees.

“Things in Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr are steadily getting worse,” she told them. “Is there any news from upriver about the cause of this flooding?”

“Everyone says it’s Víla’s wrath,” Loros said to the nods of many others, “but they do not say which clan it is that has brought it upon Rol’en’gorek.”

“Is it still raining up there or something?”

“Not that any of us could see,” Loros replied, “but we only went as far as Hi’reeloa, a hundred kilometres upriver. The lowlands were flooded everywhere we looked and most of the villages and towns along the river have been abandoned. Hi’reeloa itself is half underwater.”

“What about public order?” Xoc asked, “Is it still safe for our Merchants? How are the clans up there reacting to this?”

Loros’ lips pulled back, revealing his fangs as he let out a low growl.

“It is the same as always,” he said with a snap of his teeth. “We of the cities are beneath them. If they have any information, they are unwilling to share.”

“That’s insane,” Master Leeds said. “Everyone is obviously in trouble – what’s the point of keeping secrets?”

“It is the way of things,” one of the elders said. “There are two types of trouble in Rol’en’gorek: the sort one can fight, and the sort no one can do anything about. The people of the cities can do nothing about either in the eyes of the warrior clans. Thus, we are not worth consulting.”

“At least until they’re desperate for bodies,” Xoc muttered. “Speaking of which, did you come across any heralds or criers calling for more warriors?”

“Yes, we did,” Lobos replied. “It wasn’t the usual message, either.”

“Did they say where the warriors were being sent?”

“No, just that they were to assemble for transport.”

Xoc turned away with a flick of her ear, not quite able to suppress her annoyance. The warrior clans’ behaviour was considered customary in Rol’en’gorek, but now that she had a clan to take care of, what was once normal had become a source of perpetual frustration. This was doubly so since the clanlords that she had the opportunity to speak to back when they were recruiting forces to fight the Undead didn’t put on any of the same airs as their heralds.

“Maybe we can puzzle things out another way,” Master Leeds said. “How are the markets looking? Any commodities pricing strangely?”

“Yeah,” a Human Merchant sitting near Lobos reached into a bag beside him to produce some paper. “Jute is going up. So is salt. Certain ores are rising – likely because of us. Animal products – meat, bone, ivory, hides – are going down. Everything else is within range of our expectations.”

“Meat is going down?” The Guildmaster furrowed his brow, “Any idea what that’s about?”

“No clue. We had a sample brought back to the ships and the cooks said there wasn’t anything wrong with it, so we loaded up on as much of the stuff as we could.”

“Not the same meat,” the man beside him said, “the smoked goods.”

“Oh yeah, a lot of what they were selling was raw. Couldn’t take that, obviously.”

Master Leeds rubbed his jaw, penning something out with his free hand.

“Salt prices have gone up, so a shortage of salt? How much raw meat was there in the market?”

“A lot. The Merchants at the market even told our agents that there was even more on the way. Of course, the locals were ecstatic.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Master Leeds crossed his arms. “Even if salt gets a bit expensive, it’s a waste not to cure all of that meat.”

“Could be that there’s too much raw meat for the local industries to handle. Also, more than a few probably lost their work areas to the flooding.”

Xoc turned her attention to the elders, who had been quietly discussing the information between themselves.

“Have you figured out something?” She asked them.

“In our recollection,” Patli answered, “the cause can only be a few things. Disease; starvation; war – all of these lead to livestock being prematurely culled by ranchers to make the herds more manageable and easier to defend.”

“Oh no,” Xoc’s tail curled between her legs. “Their winter ranges are overgrazed and the summer ranges are flooded.”

“That’s the logical conclusion,” Patli said. “They are trying to save their herds from perishing entirely. This unprecedented feast will be short-lived.”

An unsettled silence fell upon the courtyard at the elder’s statement. Xoc looked back and forth between the elders and Master Leeds before releasing a long sigh.

“Then we should proceed with what we talked about,” Xoc said. “We need to bring in as much preserved meat as possible. Meat and hides.”

“Meat should be simple enough,” Master Leeds said. “Local consumers will favour the cheap raw meat being liquidated, so the preserved meat should be ours for the taking…but why hides?”

“Because Rol’en’gorek is going to starve,” Xoc replied. “And our warriors are going to need armour.”

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