Six Deadly Artefacts

 One

From the Travels of Clareta de Maisfeld, Prioress of the Order of St Rhadegund de Sanglier

... but that was not the only tale that the Dwarf had for me. The next day I returned to the conduit bunker where Graustern stood in a turret overlooking the watering hole, ready to defend the position he had bid for so ardently from the Masters of the Aqueduct. 

He told me of a prince of the unbelievers, the quatremanu, called by his own people Robust Tungsten, who passes for a captain amongst them. This Tungsten carries a blade of great size and length, but that is not its sole gift. It is a bearer of light - it does not flash in the desert sun, nor does it glow with the sorceries some enchant their blades with, but steadily and without dimming. The hilt is enclosed in a working of brass and garnets, and the long blade curves slowly, like the tail of a catamount. 

When I asked Graustern how he came to know this, he said that he had seen Robust Tungsten twice: once in the fourth compartment of the city, routing an attack: the glowing blade of the sword cut through a thick stone wall to make room for him to fall upon his foes from the rear - until bolts and hurlbats from the Aqueduct brought an uneasy peace. 

The second time, he had sold water to a party of the Punthites, who had been the escort of Tungsten. They offered no conversation, but he had seen the great stone-cleaving sabre and the writing upon it. An scholar offered a loose translation of what he took to be the name of this awful blade: Close and Few.

You may be shocked that a Dwarf such as Graustern would sell water to such a butcher, but as The Book of Other Kinds reminds us.....

Two

From The Life of Turbnoth, Envoy of Pharnaces, held in the School of Civic Etiquette at Rabbelisotor.

The Qryth are a people with a law, but not a people of law. I hope that they possess a law could be doubted by none of my readers, but this distinction may be lost on some. I have said already that I had made a friend of the magistrate Wonderful Zinc, or as much of a friend as any Envoy can be to one such as her. 

One day I was summoned to the Ziggurat. I was kept waiting while Zinc retrieved something from an inner room and then rode out into the desert with her and a band of the Qryth. They spoke animatedly amongst themselves. In time we came across a group of the bandits called the Ka-Punth. The cause that keeps them outside the harmonious embrace of settled society in Punth is unclear to me, but this desirable outcome will never be brought about by the conduct of the Qryth. 

Wonderful Zinc carried under her second set of arms a flat box, like a quiver patterned with many small stars. As the Qryth advanced upon the Ka-Punth, I waited behind with thier porters. I saw Zinc draw from the quiver a long rod, with a handle set square to it near one end. This she gripped with one of the upper arms, so that the length of the rod lay along her inner arm. One end appeared to be slightly padded with dark leather so that it could rest in the crook of the arm. The rod was ornamented with polychrome enamels, burgundy and emerald and copper to make it quite as colourful as the buildings of the Qryth.

I wondered as to its purpose when I saw it, for I could fathom no ritual purpose to it, and the Qryth themselves make no use of the arcane. It was revealed to me in good time, for Zinc lifted the rod and the Ka-Punth one by one crumpled.

Once I given an office overlooking the courtyard with the kitchens. There, I saw the palace servants preparing a feast for a visiting prince: a brawny man struck with a cleaver at the carcass of a pig. There was a sound much like that, the repeated echoing slap of force against flesh. A great number of the Ka-Punth fell with great wounds.

When Wonderful Zinc returned to me, making the gestures of contentment that pass for a smile, I saw a few words on the rod-case: Close and Many.

Three

From a letter found in the papers of the Nizam of Rokunna:

...but the fifth section lies deepest of all, behind several broken corridors. The sands moved fitfully above me as I crawled through such spaces as one can find. However, in one chamber deeper than any other I found a device quite unlike those now in Punth.

It was one pace long, and made of a three bands of metal, those on the outside being white as tin, where the inner band was black like jet. Gold patterns, a little like the cramped text of Imperial scribes, covered parts of the black sections. When I touched it, it grew in length out to a length of five paces - while remaining as light as before. A square pattern on the first segment extended from the pole to the thickness of a feather. When I pressed it, there was a constant humming or droning and indigo light covered the tip of the pike, for such it now seemed. This fire left not a scorching on the walls, but the rock was hot to the touch, smooth and filled with purplish streaks like marble. If I pushed the tip against the stone, it entered it smoothly. I made out some words on the shaft: Near and Few.

Excellent Lord, I do not doubt that this was once a weapon of the Sky Princes, nor do I think that they know of this now, or they would have taken it. I could not smuggle it back through the tunnel and past my guides, but there is time enough to return to that lonely place...

Four

A nautical song found in various forms around the Inner Sea and the Traitorous Passage.

Men stood in the fo'c'sle, harness on their backs
Seeing there the shoreline, closing on the crags
Haul! Haul! We're getting very near.
Haul! Haul! Each mariner here. 

A vessel out of Punth nosed into the bay
Painted like a lady, going to a play
Haul! Haul! (&c)

On that other ship, something caused alarm
A great green bastard, with four arms
Haul! Haul! (&c)

Now one against a dozen is hardly ever fair,
Even if of limbs, he's got an ample share
Haul! Haul! (&c)

Yet green-boy didn't waver, or call for all his friends,
But he wasn't looking his life to surely spend
Haul! Haul! (&c)

Hanging on a strap, looking like a keg,
An eldritch thing, thick as your leg
Haul! Haul! (&c)

The snake it winds around the drum, glowing awful red,
A gout of fire it bursts out, send to make men dead
Haul! Haul! (&c)

That many on the fo'c'sle near soon were made as dust,
A pall of smoke hung over it, coloured all like rust.
Haul! Haul! (&c)

Yet all aboard who saw this so, hauled and held tight
Their course was laid such that they would strike upon the right.

Haul! Haul! (&c)

A ram thrust upon the foe, and brought them down to ruin,
Sundered thus, green boy's fate can read'ly be assumed.
Haul! Haul! (&c)

The snake it winds around the drum, but winds now in the deep,

And if it stays sunken there, we all may soundly sleep.
Haul! Haul! This song shall now be ending.
Haul! Haul! Oh, go: to your work be tending.

Five

The Gesta Tancredi, Chapter XXXVII, Section Six

On the fourth night from the City of Aqueducts, camp was made by the low pool of Three and Seven. The pool was called so for the men of Punth had numbered it in their avaricious manner as Pool 3067. But in the Fifth Crusade, a band of squires had taken a hammer to the low plaque so that only the Three and Seven remained: for that crusade was conducted under the blessings of the Third and Seventh Aspects. 

Johannes of Turquine conducted prayers that evening before the knights dined. Now all men slept with their arms to hand, and three patrols of five circled the camp, each patrol bearing two tocsins. 

Now, towards the end of the first watch, there was a noise like thunder, and a single thread of fire that came from the mountains to strike a sleeping Serjeant. There was the sound of the tocsin, and the camp rose. Again there was thunder, and the fire struck. Men, who would have ridden against the cursed champions of wretched Punth cowered at the sound, and desperate prayers began. The bonded mages began to chant, but their charms seemed to find nothing to respond to out in the hills. But one man, Yago Lacceter, a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Seventh Aspect covered himself in the dark blue cloak of the Order and snuck into the night. Six more the fire struck, but then it ceased, and he returned out of the dark carrying a long tube of strange construction, with a crooked flat surface at one end, like the leg of a destrier. The tube was the height of a man.

Lacceter had fallen upon a quatremanu out in the dark, and slain it before it could take another life with this enchanted weapon. Those men who had seen the beam likened it to a sailor approaching a dock, throwing a line from a ship and thus called it the Nautolocrian. Others who saw the tube called in the Cowardly Hoof, for many had been slain at great distance. In time it returned to the Citadel of Garrowain in Kapelleron, where scholar read on the tube that the men of wretched Punth had written Far and Few. 

Six

Story told by a veteran at a Sodality Campfire

Brothers, listen. You'll need to hear this. Strangers, listen if you care to. 

You know that there's the northerners and the strange northerners. The big ones. Our plains and trails meet their stones, and they insist we must walk on those stones. Sometimes we don't care to, and we are pursued. 

One summer I went north with a train of goods. I was an eager young cub like you, Brothers, except better looking. We went north from Donja. I had to carry two water-skins and a bag of meal, along with my weapons and cookpot and ornaments. 

The first stone road you meet north of Donja doesn't lead to their southmost city. They call it Twenty-Three, and don't ask me why. But it doesn't go directly, and the twists it make add at least day to your journey. Why follow this path? We're men of Rawhide. We don't need a road. So off we went to Twenty-Three. We'd rejoin the road half a day's march from the city, to make ourselves look right to their pye-powder officers. 

So we tramped off. And we crossed the sands, and finally crossed the line of markers they scatter like aunts with fripperies at a wedding. So we crossed that. I'd say we didn't even look at them, but I had a look. I'd never seen one before. Everyone else just kept walking. Apart from the one who needed a piss. 

Another day up the trail and there was a shadow on the rise. One of the strange northerners, except he looked even stranger than normal. Well then we saw that he was riding something, much like a horse or one of our onagers. Except strange men get strange horses. More legs, horns where horns shouldn't be. 

He got off his horse and pointed at us. He might have said something, but I didn't hear it and it wouldn't have made any sense if he did. Then there was something in his arms, and there was a bang and something flew at us. It didn't fly like a javelin, and it didn't fly like a hurlbat that the swine from Terracota use and it wasn't a slingstone from the Brazen because he wasn't whirling his arms around like they do, you know. It didn't just fly funny, but it burst. Didn't quite hit us, but fragments did. Hot, cutting fragments. 

The beasts panicked and so did we. More things flew at us, and men fell.
Old Brothers, Lost Brothers. Pt-aah!

I saw one of the things he shot. They looked like knucklebones, things you were playing with not five years ago, but made of metal. He shot from far, and many of us fell with less than a dozen shots.

That time, we took the winding stone path. If you go north, know what to expect. Know what you plan to do.

I'm thirsty. Brothers, give me a moment. Strangers, you can fill my bowl.....

***

I've been rereading Harrison's Virconium. So that's where these tales of futuristic weapons come from. The minimalist 'Close and Few' names seemed to work and to tie it all together.

Links into Punth: A Primer, obviously, but is a little more explicit about the wider Terrae Vertebrae setting - some of the oldest posts on this blog. Contrast with these posts.