the moonless sky, empty and vast {any!}
Posted by Dracerdis on August 22, 2019, 2:54 am
Edited by board administrator August 22, 2019, 5:22 pm
The moonless sky was empty and vast, the lonely stars distant and cold against inky black, but the figure moving soundlessly through the night hardly noticed. Dracerdis was accustomed to this type of darkness and, more. There was no place quite so lonely or vast as a ship at sea, still waters meeting the horizon so neatly the seam could hardly be seen. He'd given his hoarde the night off, content to make the trade on his own, and now, his rangy form leaned against the barely-visible crates, he was glad he did. There was something brewing, churning in his gut, gnawing at him like a rat in his innards. He wasn't exactly the best father - he knew that well enough - but he was never one to put his children in what he deemed "too much trouble" if he could help it. And now? If too much trouble was a wave, this felt like a ####ing tsunami. Something fluttered at the edges of his vision, but Drace didn't move. He didn't breathe. This was not the silver-eyed deer he usually traded with, the boy who was all bright on the outside and slick and sly on the inside. These were military men, through and through. He'd killed enough to know, after all. "The raid's goin' well, from the sounds of it," said one man in a low whisper. "Aye," said the second. "From the sounds of it. Still don't see why we got the shit job of watching the backend." "You know this tricky lot, they're bound to scatter like fleas first chance they get. A few might even be smart enough to loop 'round, try and get our asses." "Aye," grunted the first, passing right in front of Drace with barely a whisper between them. "But I still don' see why it had t' be us." "Hey!" said another voice. "What the #### is this?" Drace flicked his eyes away from the men before him, finding a third rubbing his shin and glaring two inches to the left of a covered crate. Damn idiot had run into it! And here he was, thinking he might actually get away clean. "Smugglers! Feckin' idiots left 'is shit out where anyone might stumble upon it. We mights'well just claim it for ourselves, eh?" Drace tallied the worth of the items in the crates - not as quickly as Nettie, who did sums like a magician, but quickly enough. It was a month's worth of meals, to be claimed by the crown, or these idiots if they chose not to turn it over. No, no. That just wouldn't do. ---- Bloodied and battered but victorious, Drace met the rising sun with a grim smile and a toast from his hip flask, ignoring the bodies strewn haphazardly between his crates. They'd put up a good fight, for guards. He hadn't really realized how good until he'd hidden away the last of his boxes and slowed his movement, feeling the blood pulse in his ears and noticing for the first time the way his arm hung a little more limply at his side than usual. A noise from nearby gave him pause, his right eye throbbing and his vision going a tad blurry. Who came now? He'd been careful, distorting the sounds of their fighting, so surely it wasn't more guards! He shifted a few steps back, half-hidden in shadow once more, and waited.
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