Things had not gone well for
Valter Kerring. For all of his cruelty,
he hated to be in the midst of a fight, especially one he had no direct control
over, and so, as his beloved circus - his retirement plan, his retreat -
transformed itself into a partly mechanised fighting unit before his very eyes,
he grew increasingly panicky and, though he would never have admitted it
openly, he was really quite scared.
When the fighting erupted he
had been taking shelter with Grimblegaw amidst the reorganising circle of
wagons as they, now weaponised, formed ranks and began blasting the border, the
half-feral cat bolted into the distance and he found that he had nowhere to
go. He fled, clumsy, sweating, into the
crowd of porters and was alarmed to be surrounded by their clubs and
knives. Explosions seemed to fill the
air like a gunpowder storm and the rifles of the Shadedstreamsmen picked men
and women off around him, seemingly at random.
He grew increasingly aware that every second could be his last and, at
one point, he lost control of his bladder.
The battle lines began to
disintegrate and, as they did so, Kerring felt more and more exposed. He kept having to run, but would be forced
to stop and heave in deep breaths of air.
Trembling, huffing, stinking,
stumbling, he eventually made his way clear of the worst of the battle and
found himself in the in the alleys of Shadedstreams. He found a crumbling wall and, despite the fact it looked like it
could fall down at any moment, leaned all his weight into it and slid to
ground, wrapping his arms around his chest and just staring blankly at the
patch of muddy ground beyond his feet.
His mind was reeling. He had no idea how it had all come to
this. The plan was just to escape the
ever-watching eyes of the Noble Society and to start a new life, filled with
the wealth and power that came from draining the treasuries of palaces all over
the city with his Circus of Delights and it would have been fine, just perfect,
if it had not been for that boy – that bloody Ellis! He seethed at the thought of him.
Things had been going well for
him at the shop in Shalereef as well before Ellis and Franck came along and
complicated things. That’s what the
Former Baron Von Spektr did, of course, ever since he could remember. The old man had always made things more
complicated.
So Kerring sat there for what
seemed a very long time, lost in shock and his own, blame-seeking misery. But it wasn’t a long time at all, and it was
interrupted by a shout from down the street, a gruff, ‘Oi!’, followed by the
pounding of feet.
Kerring looked up, saw the
Shadedstreams guardsman and immediately found the energy to move again. He struggled to his feet and then dashed off
down the alley, looking for a better place to hide, constantly aware of the
slightly more athletic guardsmen behind him.
Viewed objectively the chase
could have been a comic affair as Kerring was heavily overweight and the
guardsmen, who happened to be the very same chap who Ellis and the Former Baron
had been speaking to, was not really that much slimmer. There was a lot of struggling to overcome
the forces of gravity, of getting half-stuck over fences, of undulating waves
of furious jowl and other unsightly ripples of body fat. To any who might have glanced out of their
window at the flustered merchant and his angrily shouting pursuer, a flutter of
giggles might have begun to rise up the throat.
For Kerring, however, it was a
nightmare. He did not have the energy,
he did not have the strength and he did not have the moral resolve to be able
to deal with a situation like this. All
he knew was that he could not get captured, for capture would surely mean imprisonment and he couldn’t cope with
any more time in a dungeon. He was not
suited to that lifestyle. He needed
lots of food and lots of drink and access to wealth and comfort. The other thought underlying all of this, of
course, was that – more terrifying still – if the Khalif was in league with a
member of the Noble Society, then he might end up in even more trouble.
The chase, such as it was,
lasted for several minutes, stretching the limits of Kerring’s doughy
physique until he felt that he could do
nothing but fall to the ground and die, however, as luck would have it, this is
almost exactly what happened to his assailant instead. There was a cry from behind and Kerring
glanced over his shoulder to see the overweight guardsmen stumbling over a
loose cobblestone and falling flat on his face in the dirt. He was almost certainly still alive, but it
looked like it would take him some time to regain his feet and so Kerring,
suddenly seeing an opportunity in his favour, found a burst of speed and
agility, leapt another fence (or rather hauled himself over, breaking several
planks in the process), ran through someone’s drying laundry in such a fashion
that he trailed underwear for the next twenty feet and staggered out into a
wide thoroughfare where, to his relief, he saw an opportunity to hide.
A carriage was making its way
down the street, led by one tired-looking horse and belching greenish smoke
from a stack behind the driver, it was clearly a partially hypostatick
conveyance, but it had a large trailed attached to the back of it, deep enough
and wide enough that even Kerring would be able to fit within without leaving
any incriminating extremities sticking into the air. It was clearly filled with some cargo, but it looked fine enough
that he would be able to bury himself within, so he ran after it, grabbed the
railing and threw himself over.
In all the panic, with all the
adrenaline and his own, far-from-savoury stench, he didn’t notice the smell
until it was already too late.
And thus Valter Kerring escaped
the guards that night by lying half-buried in a trailer of night soil, heading
for the slum gardens of Shadedstreams.
Wonderful! A slow-speed chase ending in poop. Wheee!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed it! I certainly know that Kerring deserved it.
ReplyDelete