Unicorn Milk

Part the First

i

    Taisce looked at the collection of thieves, con-men, barbarians, heretics and perverts seated at the table in front of her and thought to herself, "This is not good at all."

    The Twig and Berries was a wharf-side tavern tucked in behind an inauspicious warehouse of no particular usage, and directly below The Cherry Blossom, the second biggest whorehouse in Port Eel. The inn was crowded and warm, the air stinking with the stench of unwashed bodies, stale booze and the filth-caked rushes on the floor.  Thick black smoke from the great fire pit in the middle of the room was tinted with the sweet, red smoke of burning softweed in the patron's pipes.

    Just behind the bar was a long, curing stairway that disappeared into the ceiling. At last call, Hargo, the Troll bartender, would ring the 'cherry bell' and the door at the top of the stair would be flung aside. Scantily clan women with hard eyes would flood the room, hunting for  men desperate and drunk enough to spend their last coin for the privilege of passing out on a stained mattress and to waking penniless, shoeless and clueless on the street outside.

    Directly across from Taisce, at the far end of the table sat a barbarian fresh off the Thunder Plains. His blue black hair was shaved except for a top knot grown long to the middle of his back. Two jagged red scars on his cheek, marked him as a Lighting brave, one of the few who had stalked and killed a thunder lizard alone. Much to her disappointment, he wore a sensible mailed jerkin and a long armoured kilt. She imagined golden red skin, stretched over bulging muscles, ready to burst into action swinging a war axe as he rode a trihorn into battle. Then she imagined herself tending his wounds, her fingers tracing the many battle scars across skin that felt like soft leather.

    Taisce coughed and took a long swig from her tankard before turning her attention to the one sitting one clockwise from the barbarian.

    A moon elf, that looked promising at least. His very presence in the bar had been noted the moment he walked in. It was rare to see them away from their Imperial capital of Cleopolis. At well over seven feet tall, he appeared slim until you got close enough and realized that he carried the solid frame of a man seven feet tall. Long silver hair, but not white, was pulled back from strange, exotic features. The eyes were huge and dark, his nose lunging over a sharp mouth that opened just a little too wide. He wore a dark green ranger's cloak and the leather case cradled in the nook of one arm likely contained his mighty elvish moonbow.

    Beside him, and next to her sat an old Dwar in a weathered, well patched cloak. His hair was cut short, brown mixed with steel grey. His face was well scarred and his nose was large, broken and mapped with many veins. An eye-patch covered his left eye and he had appeared to have fallen asleep with his feet on the table.

    To her left, on a stack of potato stacks borrowed from the kitchen, sat a colourful Nome. He was two feet high and most of that seemed to be nose. Eager, wide eyes were squeezed between the bulbous schnoz and an almost equally impressive bronze-coloured beard.

    Finally, an abidenist in the tan coloured robe of his order. He was of average height, with a wide friendly face and strong brown eyes. Though the lines around his eyes marked him as an older man, his shaved head and bare face marked him as a mere noviate, not yet a monk.

    Taisce took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If this is what she had to work with, then fine. The price on her head did not leave her a lot of options. 

    She stood up and got their attention by tapping her tankard on the crude oak table.

    "Thank you all for coming."