Of Knights and Steel

Chapter One

Harlan waited. He had grown used to waiting. Yet the sense of impatience never left him. He could be patient when circumstances called for it, but he remained ever alert for the faint opportunity to shorten his wait. 

And when no such opportunity appeared he was never short of a myriad of things that needed to be done  in his notes or worked in his mind. He had so much to do and so much to learn that wasting any moment of freedom indulging in nothingness was a luxury he scarcely remembered.

A wandering life with no title or great wealth along with all the dangers that kind of life presented would do that to a man. Forced to make use of every resource and having your primal instincts sharpened due to an instinctive knowledge that their readiness could be the difference between life and death at any moment.

He and the pouncing fox in the south or the stalking Tiger in the north were not so different. He was just as animal.

A priest of the Hof cult and hoarder of lost scriptures and scrolls, a small part of which contained knowledge of offensive energy harnessing in addition to lost magerial  histories was the reason for his wait today. Harlan had sought this skill for many years now and this was the closest he had come to getting it. 

He lifted the mug of ale in front of him and downed a hearty sip before setting it down on the stained table. The noise of wood and steel against wood was drowned out by the singing and loud conversations that filled the tarvern.

Normally he would have gone to a drinking hole more accommodating of peace and quiet at this time of the day but the closest of that nature was further inside the city and the priest had been explicitly clear in his message that he did not intend to stay for long.

He was apparently needed somewhere else and Harlan assumed he was on his way to one of the many new Hof temples sprouting up in eastern cities and towns where processional ceremonies for people accepting Hof as their deity was just beginning to take hold.

Harlan had only surface knowlege of the Hof faith but he considered it to be as weak as the other dominant faiths of the world, each with its mythological beginnings and claims of being the divine starting point for magerial powers and all other abilities in man. He could see the ultimate goal of seizing power very clearly written in their doctrines. They were just as hungry as he was for the same thing. The only difference was he never lied and had no need to justify himself for it.

But when there was business to be done, a gain to be had, almost all personal beliefs were kept at the wayside and he followed where or who his needs of the moment led him to.

A book propped open on the table before him was illuminated by the stub half of a candle that stood on a worn candle holder with wax running down its sides. It was not a book of magerial techniques and applications. He had gone through plenty of those but this was not one of them.

It was a title on the mythologies of the sea, an obscure experience that held an interesting theory on the source of the inborn powers that wielders possessed. He read the handwritten words as the buzz of the drink drowned out the noise in his ears somewhat.

The 'crescent hills' appeared to us following two hundred and twenty five days of steady sailing in our large frigate of forty five sailors and oarsmen set off from Aeolia. In the far distance they appeared, the dual high points of the hills curved at the base thereby earning the name the Aeolians gave it.

The sailors of the Aeolian islands had charted the course from their ports with abnormally precise details but not without a warning to avoid the land's shores. If we dared otherwise, they warned, we would be sacrificed beneath the waves to the gods that lay claim to the island. Really fantastical ideas that veered on humorous at the time. Among their warnings were tales of men from the known world to their east who had attempted this uncertain journey in large numbers only to never return decades and even centuries ago.