Anatolian Bronze: Session 2
Barely a moon's cycle ago, Holgar had been a happy and productive member of a band of thieves and cutthroats in Troy. It was the place and conditions under which he had grown up. But cut the wrong throat, he reflected, and you end up in the middle of the Anatolian countryside, acting as a stalking horse for a group of bizarre strangers.
Hiding in the undergrowth and watching Holgar stalk around the fake camp site, Gialos in fact had similar thoughts. He felt mollified by the fact he had been brought to this pass by a Phoenician war galley, and that should he die within the next few minutes, he had still survived longer than any of his ship mates.
With an ill-advised roar, the first wave of miscreants attacked.
Three of their number were immediately and literally rooted to the spot by Kerinos's Entanglement spell. Two more were knocked backwards by a peal of thunder conjured by Gialos. The remainder surrounded Holgar, only to realise that this was how he liked it. But behind them, the second wave was even now advancing. This consisted of a single, extremely large Urartu wielding a tree trunk. Behind him, both Osina and Kerinos could see a leader-type raising a bow.
Osina shot at him and Kerinos raised a wall of fog between him and the combat. From her perch in a nearby tree, Alexo sent a fire bolt at the Urartu, which he ignored, delivering Holgar a blow that sent him reeling.
Concentrating their fire, Osina, Kerinos and Alexo began to cull the first wave. Noticing that some of the entangled were escaping, Osina attempted to summon Nebu, who remained sitting on the branch with Alexo (in Nebu's defence, this was so he could jump onto the head on anyone attempting to reach his charge). But her purring cry did attract another, feral animal, who was perfectly willing to get involved.
Holgar succeeded in wounding the Urartu, only to be pierced by an arrow from the leader, who had finally found his way out of the fog. Gialos brought down a miscreant by corrupting the contents of his stomach, but fell. Kerinos healed him and went for the leader with his shillelagh. The man did not last long.
With another mighty blow, Holgar felled his adversary. Confronted with cats, magic, and foes who would not stay dead, the remaining miscreants ran. The sun rose.
Alexo recognised the fallen leader as one of the guards at the temple of Baal in Bithnia. Despite this, the journey to Byzantium was completed without further interruption and a minimal quoting of Yeats.
Byzantium is one of the largest and most important cities in the world, consisting as it does of two distinct towns on either side of the narrow neck of land separating the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. Ships are hauled along a magnificent stone-paved road from one side to the other. No, of course there is no sea channel: that would take some kind of act of the gods and besides, be utterly disastrous!
Alexo reluctantly remained outside this world hub of piety, the arts and the sciences, in the company of Osina and Kerinos. It was decided that she was too recognizable, and it would be too much of a risk. Therefore, it was Holgar and Gialos who entered this world hub of wine, women and exciting games of chance, miraculously returning before nightfall with clothing, food supplies and passage to the town of Bug.
The passage was likewise uneventful. Bug turned out to be a dismal fishing village set on stilts at the edge of an even more dismal swamp. Nonetheless, this was where Mattias, friend and sometime supplier of exotic substances to Thothmes the Wise, was to be found. After walking six hours deeper into the swamp, along a path that the villagers assured the party was safe and well-marked, while declining to accompany them no matter what remuneration was offered. When asked why, the village headman spun unlikely tales of crocodiles, giant toads and the spirits of the restless dead.
At around the five and a half hour mark, as the fog descended without Kerinos's aid, they found the restless dead.
As the ball of sulphurous light approached, Alexo evinced an unwholesome fascination, especially when it began leaching Gialos's life energy. She then remembered these people were here to protect her and unleashed a thunderclap that knocked it backwards, blew the limbs of trees and awoke the giant toad (who presumably took one look and went, uhuh.) While Osina tried to sight it down her arrow, Kerinos and Gialos unleashed everything they had that might affect a spirit. As a last resort, Kerinos invoked his shillelagh once more.
And hit the thing with a thwack that, in another time, another place, would have had commentators leaping to their feet, yelling, "it's a home run!"
As the ball wavered around drunkenly, Osina shot it. It winked out for the final time, leaving her arrow unmarked.
The party hastened to the humble, yet spacious abode of Mattias, who greeted them with the words, "Oh. It's you."