Bastard jumped up onto the front of the wagon quickly, eager to get away from his tormentors who were now weeping with laughter at his embarrassment. He hid his face under his new cloak. Anuð grinned slyly at him.
"They haven't had much enjoyment since a Wyrm took The Sister. It's good to hear them laugh again, so I hope you'll forgive that it's at your expense."
"A Wyrm took your sister?" Bastard exclaimed, "I'm sorry to hear that, I'll say a Rite for her."
"No, no!" Anuð chuckled, "My mistake, though i appreciate the sentiment. She is not my sister. She is The Sister. She was the mountain we lived in. She'd already been drained of her metals but she still held on to a bit of her smell, it was lovely. Truly, it was. She was one of the younger mountains in the Angebak, so she was high and beautiful, though not quite as high as the Candlestick, long since drained. The goats loved her so." He sighed mournfully, and Bastard thought he looked as if he had really lost a sibling. A home is such an important thing to these people, he thought, a slight pang of longing in his heart.
"Anyway, the goats are no more. A few weeks ago we came back from a journey to her foot to trade with a few men for grain and beer, they overcharged us far too much, we had to give them half of our Rennal wood for it." He spat at the memory as of to get rid of a bad taste in his mouth.
"We were walking back and heard noises from inside The Sister, and the entrance was scratched and chipped. We assumed the men had tricked us and sent a troupe of men in behind when we were bartering, so we sent the men in to fight, expecting poorly trained brigands. We didn't find them. We found a Wyrm." He stopped and shuddered, turning to look at Bastard who saw his face had paled to a muddy grey. "Do you know what a Wyrm is, good Bastard? And I don't mean have a vague idea. I mean really know."
Bastard shook his head.
"A Wyrm is destruction and loss. When a Wyrm comes, there is nothing you can do but run or lay down to die. What they do is swell and shrink to fit their stolen homes, killing its previous inhabitants like cuckoos. What originally was able to wriggle its way through a tunnel that could fit only three Dwarv abreast, when we found it was the length of two hundred horses and the height of a 4 of these wagons. It had filled the space of our cavern inside the Sister. We stood no chance, and many of my friends perished in its teeth and its claws. I barely managed to get out through an exit that the Wyrwoman sent me, in her knowledge. The Wyrm will live inside the Sister, polluting her kindness and wealth, until she crumbles on top of it. We can never go back. The only grace is that we were able to bring down the entrances, so now no unlucky traveller may wander into its grasp. That is a Wyrm, good Bastard." They sat in silence for a while, the giant and the Dwarv, only the trundle of the wagons breaking it. A Wyrm was nothing like the stories Bastard had heard, great wise things that would never deign to live in a cave, they were creatures of the sky and the seas, Unesh's favourite companions. Instead, they seemed like cataclysmic forces of nature, brutal and animalistic, and something he was in no keen mood to meet. He looped his hair as he though, just as his mother had done to him, delighting in his sandy locks.
"I wish my hair was like yours, little Irin." She had told him so many times, and he had always dismissed it as a lie, she was simply trying to make up for all the names the Ardorf boys called him that he would come home crying about. He had always looked out of place up in the north, with their curled dark as pitch hair and pale complexions, like his mother but with none of her beauty or kindness. He'd stood out like a sore thumb the moment he was born, red-brown skin the colour of clay and light brown hair that flopped down and refused to curl, no matter what he tried. Eventually he'd taken to cramming it beneath a black hat and hoping people didn't look at him with pity or disgust. He couldn't stand either. When Brenn had taken him further south he'd been amazed to see a face like his for the first time, a Tenorman at a market stall buying meat pies who'd seen him and waved, elated. He'd been a little shocked when Bastard couldn't understand his Renash and took it upon himself to teach him a little: Shemso, Thindel, Nhet, shit, cunt, feck. Bastard had no shortage of fun putting those to memory before Brenn stole him back to the Green Lady, cursing him not to talk to strangers and telling him that next time he saw him talking to a strange man he'd let him get kidnapped, and shake the mans hand for taking a boy so foolish off of his hands. 'Foolish boys don't make good crooks, and they make dead mages', he'd told him Illum knows how many times.
One day he'd heard Brenn use Nhet when talking to a tall, shapely woman in one of the business meetings he liked to take Bastard on, back when he was known as Hangnail, and Bastard had begged him to teach Renash to him. It had taken a long time until Brenn relented, but Brenn was just as good at teaching language as he was at teaching fighting, so Bastard needed only 2 years of lessons. By then he'd been 12, and had spent 4 years with Brenn.
"Your hair would make for make for good weaving." The Dwarv said, taking notice of Bastards habit of curling it between his fingers.
"Huh?"
"If you grow it out a bit, you could weave in all sorts of helpful things. Like my beard. I hear you mages like to twine your accomplishments in your hair as well. Though often I think your choice of trophies is... unpleasant."
"We do? I've only met one other mage in my life, and he didn't seem the sentimental sort."
"Fishook certainly did, he had gems and corals and whistles. I've met two others, both in the military who came to us for the Connection, and they had bullets and medals in their hair. Poor trophies. They stank of blood-iron."
"Fishook, I've heard you say his name before. Who is he? You seem to have a lot of respect for him."
Anuð smiled again, for the first time since he had thought of the Wyrm. "I met Fishook when I was a boy of 12 years. I'd gone out of the Sister with Fenj to prove I could be helpful as a hunter, I wanted to be a mountain-guard you see, and for that I knew I needed sharp senses, strength, and a knowledge of the Sisters surroundings. Fenj was just there to keep me in check, he was always the more sensible. Anyway, I knew a good way to prove I had all those characteristics was to go out and bring back something for the Town. I wanted it to be big, I was hoping for a mountain tiger, the terror of my friends and I. And I found it. Well, more accurately, it found me. Me and Fenj had been scoping out either sides of the Sister for 8 days by then, we knew that it was near because we had found dead goats and huge pawprints in the snow, each one the size of our heads. I had my bow nocked and ready for anything, or so I thought, until I felt its breath on my neck, hot and stinking. I was sure I was dead, a tiger is as dangerous a creature as you can get without magics or monsters, and this one was a hungry one for sure, I could feel violence in its growl. I sat petrified, waiting for death around my campfire, until the flame started changing and bending until it turned into a huge fire bear that towered over me and the cat. When I was brave enough to look back, it had fled. In its place was a man whose eyes looked old and wise, who told me his name was Fishook. He sat down next to me and let me talk for what must have been hours. He let me talk about anything and everything, and showed me his magics, and when the sun rose the next day he named me Anuð and left quickly. I found Fenj and went back to the town in the Sister, where I had to do a lot of apologising on account of my lack of a mountain tiger pelt, but Fenj had to do more, given he was the Mayor's son. I knew what I wanted to do though. Later that winter, I got an apprenticeship under Grids, and I learnt how to become the towns seamster. I had given up on being a guard, I realised I was much too naive and hard of hearing to possibly be of any help, but I thought as a tailor I could create beauty, and share it with the world, like Fishook. You will have seen my work on the caravan roof and in your clothes, i hope you like them."
"He seems like a great man. Your tailoring is truly impressive, I've never seen moving images like it before."
Anuð smiled again, he was on a roll.