Thaland of the Walk

Thaland of the Walk

The dark, noisome, refuse-flecked waters of Kingston Bay slapped listlessly against the stone jetties and the wooden hulls of the ships anchored nearby. Sails and banners hung heavily in the still, humid, night air. Tendrils of mist, born of the lowering clouds, snaked through the air and across the water's surface, appearing and vanishing at ghostlike whim.

The fat, yellow-orange glow of oil lanterns and the bright, piercing whiter light of Mage-Lights illuminated the waterfront, turning the dark of midnight into the twilight of a thousand miniature suns. The dark water and rapidly-lowering clouds reflected the light, painting every surface and person with an unhealthy yellowish pallor.

Even at this late Turn (of the glass), the docks were a swirling confusion of activity. Hundreds of bodies passed to and fro, each intent on their own personal mission. Their voices clamored for attention in every tongue and dialect of man, as well as those of the other intelligent races. Sailors cursed and swore as they manhandled cargos about. Merchants, ship owners and prostitutes argued over the prices of goods and services with prospective clients. Longshoremen carried boxes, bundles, barrels and bales from boats to warehouses and back again.

A knot of drunken sailors, each clutching an earthenware bottle of cheap liquor, lurched out of a seedy tavern. They staggered past an unlit, debris-strewn alley, weaving an unsteady course to the brothel two doors away. If they saw the darkly-clad and hooded figure coalesce into existence some feet back from the entrance, none made any comment or reaction.

It was just as well, the figure thought to itself. It wanted no attention from those who were none of its affair. The figure pulled the edge of its hood farther forwarded with a dark-gloved hand; the fewer who saw its features, the better. Then, affecting the stoop and palsied gait of an oldster, the figure stepped into the swirling mix of people. He was surprised to note that the people shoved and ran over each other in their seemingly mindless haste, but never failed to make way for him, who didn't really need it anymore.

A mere ten Turns of the Glass ago, at Highsun he'd been adept at making hasty passage through these crowds. Then, he'd been known as Captain Thaland, commander of the city watch, harbor district. He'd carried the responsibility of keeping the lid of law on a boiling pot of exuberance, recklessness and lawlessness that characterized The Walk, as the area was called by the people. He had been good at his job; too good to suit the thieves' guild. The thieves' masters had used their pet councilmen to cut his patrol strength, their gold to corrupt his soldiers and their judges to free his prisoners.

Perhaps he had been too stiff-necked and proud, too idealistic, or both. At any rate, Thaland had continued to campaign against those who preyed on the honest merchants and sailors and their gold. He'd become ruthless in his mission, he saw that now. He known then that the cutpurses, pilferers and housebreakers had merely been the puppets dancing at the ends of the strings wielded by the Guild's Masters who lived in palatial mansions well away from the filth and degeneration their appetites created. Nevertheless, he'd killed when he needn't have because he knew that his prisoners were often back at their trade before he'd finished drying the ink on his arrest statements.

He'd made a difference. He'd shattered shanghaiing operations, human slaver rings, arrested uncounted numbers of all manner of thieves and smugglers. He and his squad had made The Walk a place of relative calm and safety for the first time in living memory.
Then came the end. He'd pursued the female operator of a child-prostitution ring into the basement of a small warehouse filled with crates and barrels. Thaland caught up to the operator just as long arm shot out from a stack of crates and lifted her from the floor by her neck. The arm jerked the woman behind the crates. There was a gurgling, meaty, tearing sound and a spray of blood on the far wall.

Thaland swallowed heavily and drew his plain, un-adorned standard-issue sword as the woman's body, her dress darkly spattered with her life's blood, was tossed contemptuously to the floor. At the same time, the trapdoor he'd entered through slammed shut and heavy, dragging sounds announced that that exit was closed to him.

"Enjoy your time with Grandfather Bones!" a voice shouted down through the floorboards. "Aye, Thaland," another voice added raucously. "Clap yer bracelets on him, if ya can!" Several other voices shouted encouragement to Grandfather Bones, urging him to make a messy, lingering end to 'The Docks Warden', as Thaland had come to be known.

"You forget, gutter-spawn," a disembodied, sepulchral voice pronounced from everywhere and nowhere. "Floorboards hold the living prisoner, not one such as I. I feed and kill as I will. Your commands try my patience."

Thaland's heart sank to his knees and the sword nearly slipped from his fingers. This wasn't something mortal he'd been trapped with. Grandfather Bones was legend. A vampire that had an 'arrangement' with the Thief's Guild, Grandfather Bones was supplied with a steady stream of food. That the food had been troublesome persons in the eyes of the Guild's leaders was said to be a minor detail, if it mattered at all, to the undead executioner. Bloody items of clothing and minor personal possessions were the only remnants ever found.

The raucous yells from above increased, but Thaland's mind had no room for them. His thoughts focused only upon how to survive this encounter with the legendary vampire. Failing that, he hoped to retain some vestige of himself in whatever awaited him on the far side of death's door. His thoughts ran in panicked circles, sifting through his mind for any fragment of folklore or legend related to vampires, or how to kill them.

A sudden, blood-chilling howl shattered Thaland's thoughts. A stream of dark vapor shot up from behind the crates and through the gaps between the floorboards above. The mocking shouts from above suddenly became panic-stricken and more than one cut off in mid-scream.

Thaland forgot his immediate concern in the horrible fascination of watching what appeared to be a mild-mannered man in the robes of an ancient Imperial Academic, devastating a gang of street toughs that would have given a squad of his best patrolmen a hard time. The toughs that could still move soon fled. As their footsteps faded, a harsh, Power-Laced syllable crackled through the gaps in the floorboards from the direction of the main doors. A flash of other-worldly energy blasted through the warehouse and was gone.
Thaland felt himself falling, falling into a great darkness punctuated at irregular intervals by colored points of light. He approached a warm, brown light that eventually resolved itself into a door-shaped portal through which he could hear sounds of singing and the raucous clash of swords in mock combat. He yearned to pass through the portal to the revelry beyond, despite the knowledge that to do so would mean that the Thieves' Guild had beaten him. His hands reached for the rim of the portal, then stopped. His regret at losing his low-level war with The Guild hardened into an ardent desire to take any avenue to extract justice, or at least vengeance from his enemies.

Suddenly, an ornately engraved, silvery-gray metal ring appeared on in the air before him. "Do you thirst for justice to be done more than you thirst for the drink of the righteous dead?" asked a powerful voice in the back of Thaland's mind. "Would you make yourself a tool in the hand of He Who Bears the Scales?"

Thaland's mind staggered. The Aspect of White devoted to Justice was a reclusive god, preferring to weigh the souls of the deceased and send them to their eternal reward according to their life's deeds. Legends told Justicars, plucked from the midst of the peoples and given vast powers to bring malefactors to account according to their own time-table. Some said the Justicars were living immortals, immune to all manners of death. Others said they were undead, and filled with the dark powers of the night-dwellers.
Thaland's sense of duty and purpose needed only an instant to seize the initiative. Here was his chance! He would no longer need to rely on weak people in the constabulary or on the bench to carry out justice! He was being offered license to become an instrument in the hand of the God of Justice! He grasped the ring with his left hand. Thaland sensed the overwhelming Power in the overlapping runes concealed in the ring's engravings. He trembled slightly as he slid the band onto the middle finger of his right hand.
The ring surged with released Divine Power, pushing the portal away from his grasp. Thaland traveled backward and an ever-increasing pace and the portal shrank rapidly in the distance. The ring was dragging his spirit back to the realm of the living!
His next awareness was of lying face-down on the slightly damp fitted-stone floor of the warehouse basement. His entire body burned with pain. Thaland groaned softly and moved his arms experimentally. His limbs refused to obey at first, then slowly, reluctantly, responded to the commands his mind was sending. He slowly dragged his right hand to his face and turned his eyes toward it. A ring with subtle, complex engravings was on his middle finger.

So it was real. The guard captain slowly forced the rest of his body to obey his commands. He rose to his hands and knees and crawled to the stack of crates Grandfather Bones had been hiding behind. After a brief rest, Thaland's screaming muscles eased their complaints, allowing him to use the crates' external framing as a ladder to climb to a standing position.

"I am surprised to see you moving, guardsman," came Grandfather Bones' voice from the direction of the trapdoor. "Every person, cat, rat and roach in this building is deceased, yet you still move. You shall have to tell how you have accomplished this before I replenish myself on your blood."

Thaland stiffened at the vampire's words. His mind was curiously both paralyzed with fright and contemptuous of the undead's promises. He drew a deep, steadying breath and was startled to feel no air moving through his windpipe. He exhaled forcefully with his left hand in front of his mouth and detected only a wisp of air caress his fingertips. He put his hand to his neck to check his pulse; nothing. Nothing? Was he then truly an undead? Thaland was just about to pull his finger away when the slightest thump of blood passed through his artery.

His mind reeled as it tried to accommodate itself to this, and he found himself chuckling. How he could make the sound without truly breathing, he didn't know, but it was there. The chuckling grew into raucous laughter that threatened to dissolve in hysterics. Thaland clung to the boxes for support as his body threatened to collapse.

"What is this?" Grandfather Bones asked in a surprised tone. He was used to inducing terror and begging in his intended victims, not mirth. "Why are you laughing?" the undead being demanded when Thaland's hysterics continued.

Thaland waved his left hand in acknowledgement of the vampire's words and struggled to restore reason's control of his mind. "I am laughing Grandfather, because you can no longer threaten me. You may damage my body, but you cannot kill me...I have already died."

"What do you mean?" Grandfather Bones demanded incredulously.

"The spell, whatever it was, killed me. My spirit went to the next world," Thaland replied as he steadied himself and turned. "At the gates of eternity, I was offered the chance to come back and work justice on the world." Thaland raised his right hand, exposing the ring, "I took it."

"A Justicar," Grandfather Bones breathed in horrified awe.

"Aye," Thaland replied, suddenly sure of himself and his duty. "You have much to answer for, Grandfather Bones. Your existence is a blight in White's eyes and your role as a hand-fed executioner is an insult to the powers Blood gave you upon your transformation."
The vampire recoiled from Thaland's vehemence, then bristled in rage. "You dare to judge me? You, who were quaking before my presence this very night?" Grandfather Bones quivered in rage. "I have been killing and feeding on you blood-sacks for nearly a millennia!"

Sudden knowledge sprang unbidden into Thaland's mind. "Just as you, after you wandered down the wrong passage in a forgotten crypt, I am no longer who or what I was." Thaland countered advancing a step toward the vampire. "The difference is, The Scale-Bearer is particular who he bestows his powers upon, Blood's depravity is splashed about like paint from a shattered pot."

Thaland retrieved his sword from the straw-flecked floor, noting the changes worked upon his sword with interest. The skull-shaped pommel was new, as were the cross-guards' resemblance to a balance and the charcoal-toned flamberge-style blade. He advanced another stride, drawing great satisfaction from watching the vampire shrink away. "You are a shameful thing, Grandfather Bones. The evil you have done since your conversion to the undead blots out your former honest pursuit of knowledge."

"Grant me your benevolent mercy, Justicar," the vampire pleaded in a slightly quavering voice. "I destroyed any semblance of symbiosis with the Guild when I killed their servants just now."

"That does nothing to atone for those honorable people you've killed as the Guild's pet assassin," Thaland replied brusquely as he advanced another stride. Faint traces of blue and white sparks traced the cutting edges of the blade.

"Wait, wait!" Grandfather Bones wailed in terror. "I have several centuries' worth of treasure and valuable artifacts stored in my dwelling! I shall give it to you to distribute to those who need it!"

"You trust a lowly Captain of the Watch with your fortune?" Thaland relaxed his stance from 'attack' to 'guard'. He was taken aback by this apparent show of trust (or was it desperation?) but refused to trust the vampire now any more than he would have as a mortal.
"I trust a Justicar." Grandfather Bones insisted. "It was written in the Scrolls of Klamath IV that Justicars cannot lie, they also see the souls of the living and thus know each person's character. I charge you to use my treasures to benefit the innocent and the victimized. That is something a person with my...condition... and its attendant...appetites...cannot."

"Take my offer, Justicar. All I ask is that you not terminate my existence." Grandfather Bones offered with a trace of hope.
"I could terminate you and use your treasures anyway," Thaland stated flatly. He sensed that Grandfather Bones was concealing something of great importance. Despite the vampire's great power, a few more threats should pull it out.

The vampire form softened into smoke and rapidly rose toward the slatted floor above.

Thaland lunged with inhuman speed, grabbed the bottom of the form with his free hand and willed the vampire back into solid form. Grandfather Bones let out a cry of mingled surprise and fear as he suddenly dropped to the floor.

"I shall agree to nothing until you reveal what you are hiding from me," Thaland stated as he pressed his sword tip against the vampire's neck. "I shall not trust you until you trust me."

"Very well, Justicar," Grandfather Bones said in a resigned tone as he raised his arms in a gesture of surrender. "I shall tell you my secret. The reason no bodies of many of my assassination targets were ever found is that there were no dead bodies to find. I magically concealed and spirited them out of the city through the ancient tunnels. The only true kills I made for the Thieves' Guild' were targets who I believed truly deserving of death. I swear to you upon my word as a scholar that I will feed only on those who prey on their fellow people and that I will not pass my disease on to anyone."

"Oh?" Thaland said questioningly.

"To pass on the curse, a vampire must bite their victim three times in a single dark cycle of White without killing them. If those conditions are not met, the bitten person suffers only from loss of blood."

Thaland carefully examined the vampire's statements and offer for deceptive words or intent, and found none. "Agreed," he declared with finality. "You will be held to your word, Grandfather Bones. You may wish to move your treasury at this time. The Guild may decide those you killed had a value that needs to be redeemed out of your gold. I shall make my calls upon your treasury at my own discretion."

"You trust me to keep our bargain?" the vampire asked, genuinely taken aback by the show of trust.

"Why not?" the Justicar replied, sheathing his sword. "You're being honest, at the moment. Should you try to break this deal, I shall know it. You cannot escape me or my retribution, and you know it."

Thaland smiled thinly. "Besides, you may want to reclaim the honor Kingston believes the Guild purchased so cheaply. I believe that we can work together to regain that."

A faint trace of life lit Grandfather Bones' pale features as a thin, vicious smile.

It was nearly midnight before the Justicar and the vampire parted company. Androndicus (Grandfather Bones' living name) had an extensive knowledge of the buried ruins, and the catacombs beneath, that the present Kingston rested upon. There was no tunnel or chamber used by the Guild, as well as leagues they did not, that the undead scholar didn't know about. Now Thaland shared that knowledge and intended to use it well.