The Cabbage Girl
Chapter Two
Emlin made her way back to the old
warehouse and slipped into the sewers.
It had started raining at some point during her walk back, but she had gone numb from the emotional shock of the earlier violence and hadn’t noticed until she was soaked to the skin.
Once back underground, she found a small waterfall from one of the drainage culverts and scrubbed the blood from her knife and body. Her pants and shirt were stained through, though, and no amount of cleaning would get the blood out of them.
She sobbed in the cold, dirty water as it fell on her, mingling with her tears and leaving muddy streaks down her face. After several minutes, she took a deep breath and started trying to figure out what she’d need to do next.
First, she was going to need to get dry before she became ill. That was clear. And she’d need to get rid of these clothes soon. The boots were salvageable, but she’d need a new shirt and trousers.
But she couldn’t go out during the day wearing these blood-stained rags. So, night forays it would be, Emlin decided, until she could get something that would do.
With her pfennigs, she might be able to buy some cast off clothing if she could find nothing else, but that would cut into her money through the winter. Thus only as a last choice would that be acceptable.
She picked up her wet clothes and worked her way back to her bolt hole. After hanging them up to dry (which could take days in the underground), the Cabbage Girl collapsed into the pile of old, tattered clothes and rags that made up her bed.
* * * * *
It was two days before her exhaustion and caution were overwhelmed by her hunger. She waited until it was dark, jammed a small handful of pfennigs into the remaining sleeve-pocket that hadn’t been torn open by her knife, and set out to scavenge what she could.
Her brother had taught her that night was a dangerous time to go out. Less light to see attackers by and more opportunities for an attack without witnesses. On the other hand, there were also more opportunities for a careful thief, too.
She made her way over to the Gurgling Goat and waited until Etzel started throwing out the rowdiest drunkards. Sometime after midnight, she found herself a mark. A fellow who was alone, clearly too drunk to stand, yet seemed to have it in mind that he had somewhere to go. Emlin followed at a distance, observing as he relieved himself against a wall, spying as he stumbled back and forth. Finally, the lout sat down hard, leaning back against a wall and mumbling something to himself about “sittin’ fer a bit.”
The girl waited until his breathing became regular and the snoring began before she made her move.
The drunk didn’t wake up until the combination of the naked chill and his hangover set in.
* * * * *
The Cabbage Girl went back to the Goat, asking Etzel for some of his stew and black bread. He eyed her a little strangely, in her new over-sized shirt and the pants rolled up past her boots, but took her money and brought the food out. The stew was greasy and, as usual, made up of meat of questionable origin. But it was hot. The bread was stale, but she was so hungry and so used to the fare, that she accepted it gratefully.
When Etzel came back to ask about her presence, she made up a lie about the guards destroying her wagon and confiscating her cabbages. It was a common enough thing to happen in the streets of Feiglingstadt, so the Old Goat didn’t seem to find it an unreasonable tale. He just nodded and brought her a little of his watered-down ale and only charged her half of what he usually did.
After the Cabbage Girl had warmed herself with ale and food, she sat at the end of the bar eyeing the late-night/early-morning patrons. Most had filtered out now that it was easily a few bells past midnight. A trio of sailors, well into their cups, sat in one corner -- one of them passed out as his friends continued to dice and drink. A questionable-looking merchant seemed to be hiring some equally questionable-looking mercenaries at another table. A harlot and her john were singing a bawdy song at the other end of the bar while another fellow, her pimp most likely, looked on from a table in the corner.
Etzel came over again after a bit, cleaning out a mug.
“Y’know… weird folk be coming through here, tonight.”
Emlin nodded.
“The fellow sittin’ with those mercenary types, for instance? He’s very strange. Carryin’ a big purse like that and drinking as much as he has. You’d almost think he wanted to be pilfered or somewhat.” Etzel eyed her as he said this.
The Cabbage Girl smiled and nodded again.
“Course, if he’s just passin’ through, what do I care what happens to him, eh?” The sweaty-faced tavern-keep shrugged his shoulders and smiled back affably.
She took a more careful look at the merchant again while she worked on the remainder of her stew and bread. She soon realized that the man she took for a questionable merchant was, in fact, carrying a fat purse that was entirely too full for a regular patron of the Goat. And he seemed more than a little tipsy, talking loudly from time to time only to be hushed by the others at the table and waving his hands about while speaking in a fashion that the Cabbage Girl had long learned to affiliate with men full of too much ale. His small white beard was neatly trimmed and pointed and his white hair was slicked back with oil, much in the fashion that the wealthy merchant lords wore their own hair. His nose was sharp and pronounced and his mouth thin.
She got up under the guise of going to relieve herself in the alleyway to get a better view of the situation.
The table was covered in pages of parchment and what appeared to be a few maps. And as she closed, she paid careful attention to the “merchant” and each of his companions.
Across from the merchant sat a well-armored older man, his skin dark like old walnut, stark against his white and grey-peppered goatee, a tarnished mail coif framing his face. Where the merchant’s beard was well-manicured, this man’s facial hair was a little bit wilder and three-days stubble covered his brown cheeks. She hadn’t seen many Ostenlanders outside of the dock district, especially one accoutered in heavy old mail but she knew the look well enough, having sold cabbages to Ostenlander sailors in the summer.
She didn’t realize until now that the other “man” sitting next to the Ostenlander was really a boy no more than fifteen or sixteen summers – about the same age her brother had been the last time she had seen him. He was sturdy enough, though, to be the match of most of the men twice his age in Feiglingstadt. He had dark hair, sun-tanned skin, and a serious demeanor. Two smaller boys, pages or squires or whatever the mercenary equivalent was, sat nearby on stools, staring sullenly at the proceedings.
Next to the “merchant” sat a smooth-faced man of middling years and grim eyes. He was actually doing the talking at the moment. She heard him speaking as she passed:
“Prophecies don’t mean much to me, old man. I deal in hard numbers like lives lost and blood spilled. I’m only here to help because I know he’s after you, and anything he wants, I want to keep from him. You wanted our help while you were here in Feiglingstadt. This is the help we can offer.”
On the other side of the “merchant”, visible only as Emlin passed, sat a girl about her own age. Her face was clean and unblemished, pale white with red-gold hair peeking out from under her cloak-hood and a golden-circlet set about her forehead. Emlin stopped for a moment, temporarily stunned… even many of the noble women in Feiglingstadt were not as lovely as this girl was, nor as richly attired. She was even prettier than Lora had been. Beautiful Lora who used to cut her thick, dark hair to make Emlin look like a boy.
She shook herself free of the reverie when she realized that the girl was looking back at her – glaring, really. The Cabbage Girl quickly slipped out of the tavern’s back door and headed into the alleyway. She paced there for a bit and planned her angle.
When she came back in, she headed towards the pretty girl and the merchant’s side of the table. The merchant was speaking in a high-pitched, somewhat whining voice as she drew closer:
“I’m not entirely certain we should trust the safety of Ishild and myself from the Dunkelgraf’s forces to this… common hedge knight and his so-called squires. It’s not possible. We shall venture out on our own without your…”
The mention of the Dunkelgraf almost stopped her, there and then. But Emlin forced herself onward with her plan – without money, she’d likely starve through the winter.
As she passed by, she suddenly stretched out her arms and yawned loudly, making sure her fist hit the mug between the merchant and the pretty girl. Ale sloshed over the nearest sheets of parchment and across the table towards the dark-skinned Ostenlander, who quickly stood up to get out of the liquid’s way, knocking his chair backwards. The elder boy and the man with grim eyes also scrambled up in response to the chaos as the two youngest boys started guffawing loudly at the quickly worsening situation.
“Oh… Real sorry ‘bout that! Let me help!” She reached out and grabbed a piece of the old merchant’s robe and began mopping up the spilled drink with her right hand, while her left hand slipped her knife out to cut the leather thongs attaching that fat purse to the merchant’s belt.
“My maps!” shouted the merchant. “You clumsy, idiotic gutter-child!”
He and the pretty girl were doing their best to get the sheets of parchment off the table before the spreading ale soaked them further, shaking the pages off and throwing liquid everywhere. Neither realized that the waif between them was making matters worse by using the merchant’s own heavy sleeve to slosh the ale about further. When he finally did pull his sleeve free of the Emlin’s grip, he only worsened the situation by dripping more ale from the soaked cloth across the table onto more pages and flinging ale into the faces of those around him as his arms flailed about.
The Cabbage Girl had managed to cut through one of the two leather ties before the merchant disentangled his sleeve from her “help”.
Running out of time and options, she grabbed the purse hard and tried to slice through the last leather tie with a quick slash. But years of hard use and inexpert care, and maybe even the stabbing of that oafish boy the other day, had made the edge of her blade dull.
“What are you…” the merchant said, finally noticing that his belt was being pulled at. Staring wide-eyed, it took him several moments to realize what was happening. And the Cabbage Girl, caught under his gaze froze.
It seemed like an age. And then the realization came into the man’s face.
“THIEF! THIEF!!”
Chaos exploded around her.
The grim man in the cloak grabbed the merchant’s shoulder and started yelling at him to shut up while the armor-clad Ostenlander and the dark-haired young man next to him each circled around the table in different directions. The pretty young girl was standing there looking horrified and stunned, holding dripping parchment pages in her hands, trying to decide whether to drop them and help or get out of the way. The two younger boys were now standing on their stools trying to get a better view of the proceedings. The merchant was still screaming “THIEF”, with no hint of stopping.
She tried another slash with her knife, but the leather just wouldn’t part. Emlin released the purse and tried to bolt for the door into the street. Escape was now the only option left to her.
The older boy lunged after her as she attempted to dash past him, grabbing the wrist of her knife hand. Otherwise defenseless and now desperate, Emlin grabbed at his hair with her free hand and started to pull as hard as she could. He cried out in pain, but he would not let go, despite her struggling and pulling. She started kicking at his shin, too. Anything to get away.
Etzel had come out from behind the bar and was trying to calm down or distract the screaming merchant, but it was working as badly as the efforts of the grim fellow in the cloak.
And as the Ostenlander began to get closer, she realized that she had no more time. She released the boy’s hair and jabbed her thumb into his eye -- hard.
He cried out again, but this time he did let go of her wrist.
She turned to run…
And slammed into the solid, mailed midsection of another man, bouncing back and falling onto her backside.
Everything in the room went silent and still.
Her gaze moved slowly up the figure before her: clad in fine leather riding boots and well-oiled chain mail, a heavy broadsword strapped to his side. She saw the symbol on his black tabard, a red scepter. The symbol of the Dunkelgraf, proclaimed ruler of all of Meereslande. Emlin had only ever seen it on the tax collectors that prowled the gates. But this man was obviously no tax collector.
His long black mane and rugged face would have been handsome by any standard – if not for the eyes: entirely coal-black, except for the blood-colored slits that served as pupils.
Behind him stood several members of the city guard.
“And what do we have here?” inquired the evil-eyed man, looking first down at the girl lying prone on the floor in front of him and then up at the frozen chaos behind her.
The Cabbage Girl knew that she was in terrible trouble. But the pit in her stomach clenched even further when she heard the whiny voice of the merchant behind her:
“No. Not you. It can’t be you. It can’t. You’re already dead…”
It had started raining at some point during her walk back, but she had gone numb from the emotional shock of the earlier violence and hadn’t noticed until she was soaked to the skin.
Once back underground, she found a small waterfall from one of the drainage culverts and scrubbed the blood from her knife and body. Her pants and shirt were stained through, though, and no amount of cleaning would get the blood out of them.
She sobbed in the cold, dirty water as it fell on her, mingling with her tears and leaving muddy streaks down her face. After several minutes, she took a deep breath and started trying to figure out what she’d need to do next.
First, she was going to need to get dry before she became ill. That was clear. And she’d need to get rid of these clothes soon. The boots were salvageable, but she’d need a new shirt and trousers.
But she couldn’t go out during the day wearing these blood-stained rags. So, night forays it would be, Emlin decided, until she could get something that would do.
With her pfennigs, she might be able to buy some cast off clothing if she could find nothing else, but that would cut into her money through the winter. Thus only as a last choice would that be acceptable.
She picked up her wet clothes and worked her way back to her bolt hole. After hanging them up to dry (which could take days in the underground), the Cabbage Girl collapsed into the pile of old, tattered clothes and rags that made up her bed.
* * * * *
It was two days before her exhaustion and caution were overwhelmed by her hunger. She waited until it was dark, jammed a small handful of pfennigs into the remaining sleeve-pocket that hadn’t been torn open by her knife, and set out to scavenge what she could.
Her brother had taught her that night was a dangerous time to go out. Less light to see attackers by and more opportunities for an attack without witnesses. On the other hand, there were also more opportunities for a careful thief, too.
She made her way over to the Gurgling Goat and waited until Etzel started throwing out the rowdiest drunkards. Sometime after midnight, she found herself a mark. A fellow who was alone, clearly too drunk to stand, yet seemed to have it in mind that he had somewhere to go. Emlin followed at a distance, observing as he relieved himself against a wall, spying as he stumbled back and forth. Finally, the lout sat down hard, leaning back against a wall and mumbling something to himself about “sittin’ fer a bit.”
The girl waited until his breathing became regular and the snoring began before she made her move.
The drunk didn’t wake up until the combination of the naked chill and his hangover set in.
* * * * *
The Cabbage Girl went back to the Goat, asking Etzel for some of his stew and black bread. He eyed her a little strangely, in her new over-sized shirt and the pants rolled up past her boots, but took her money and brought the food out. The stew was greasy and, as usual, made up of meat of questionable origin. But it was hot. The bread was stale, but she was so hungry and so used to the fare, that she accepted it gratefully.
When Etzel came back to ask about her presence, she made up a lie about the guards destroying her wagon and confiscating her cabbages. It was a common enough thing to happen in the streets of Feiglingstadt, so the Old Goat didn’t seem to find it an unreasonable tale. He just nodded and brought her a little of his watered-down ale and only charged her half of what he usually did.
After the Cabbage Girl had warmed herself with ale and food, she sat at the end of the bar eyeing the late-night/early-morning patrons. Most had filtered out now that it was easily a few bells past midnight. A trio of sailors, well into their cups, sat in one corner -- one of them passed out as his friends continued to dice and drink. A questionable-looking merchant seemed to be hiring some equally questionable-looking mercenaries at another table. A harlot and her john were singing a bawdy song at the other end of the bar while another fellow, her pimp most likely, looked on from a table in the corner.
Etzel came over again after a bit, cleaning out a mug.
“Y’know… weird folk be coming through here, tonight.”
Emlin nodded.
“The fellow sittin’ with those mercenary types, for instance? He’s very strange. Carryin’ a big purse like that and drinking as much as he has. You’d almost think he wanted to be pilfered or somewhat.” Etzel eyed her as he said this.
The Cabbage Girl smiled and nodded again.
“Course, if he’s just passin’ through, what do I care what happens to him, eh?” The sweaty-faced tavern-keep shrugged his shoulders and smiled back affably.
She took a more careful look at the merchant again while she worked on the remainder of her stew and bread. She soon realized that the man she took for a questionable merchant was, in fact, carrying a fat purse that was entirely too full for a regular patron of the Goat. And he seemed more than a little tipsy, talking loudly from time to time only to be hushed by the others at the table and waving his hands about while speaking in a fashion that the Cabbage Girl had long learned to affiliate with men full of too much ale. His small white beard was neatly trimmed and pointed and his white hair was slicked back with oil, much in the fashion that the wealthy merchant lords wore their own hair. His nose was sharp and pronounced and his mouth thin.
She got up under the guise of going to relieve herself in the alleyway to get a better view of the situation.
The table was covered in pages of parchment and what appeared to be a few maps. And as she closed, she paid careful attention to the “merchant” and each of his companions.
Across from the merchant sat a well-armored older man, his skin dark like old walnut, stark against his white and grey-peppered goatee, a tarnished mail coif framing his face. Where the merchant’s beard was well-manicured, this man’s facial hair was a little bit wilder and three-days stubble covered his brown cheeks. She hadn’t seen many Ostenlanders outside of the dock district, especially one accoutered in heavy old mail but she knew the look well enough, having sold cabbages to Ostenlander sailors in the summer.
She didn’t realize until now that the other “man” sitting next to the Ostenlander was really a boy no more than fifteen or sixteen summers – about the same age her brother had been the last time she had seen him. He was sturdy enough, though, to be the match of most of the men twice his age in Feiglingstadt. He had dark hair, sun-tanned skin, and a serious demeanor. Two smaller boys, pages or squires or whatever the mercenary equivalent was, sat nearby on stools, staring sullenly at the proceedings.
Next to the “merchant” sat a smooth-faced man of middling years and grim eyes. He was actually doing the talking at the moment. She heard him speaking as she passed:
“Prophecies don’t mean much to me, old man. I deal in hard numbers like lives lost and blood spilled. I’m only here to help because I know he’s after you, and anything he wants, I want to keep from him. You wanted our help while you were here in Feiglingstadt. This is the help we can offer.”
On the other side of the “merchant”, visible only as Emlin passed, sat a girl about her own age. Her face was clean and unblemished, pale white with red-gold hair peeking out from under her cloak-hood and a golden-circlet set about her forehead. Emlin stopped for a moment, temporarily stunned… even many of the noble women in Feiglingstadt were not as lovely as this girl was, nor as richly attired. She was even prettier than Lora had been. Beautiful Lora who used to cut her thick, dark hair to make Emlin look like a boy.
She shook herself free of the reverie when she realized that the girl was looking back at her – glaring, really. The Cabbage Girl quickly slipped out of the tavern’s back door and headed into the alleyway. She paced there for a bit and planned her angle.
When she came back in, she headed towards the pretty girl and the merchant’s side of the table. The merchant was speaking in a high-pitched, somewhat whining voice as she drew closer:
“I’m not entirely certain we should trust the safety of Ishild and myself from the Dunkelgraf’s forces to this… common hedge knight and his so-called squires. It’s not possible. We shall venture out on our own without your…”
The mention of the Dunkelgraf almost stopped her, there and then. But Emlin forced herself onward with her plan – without money, she’d likely starve through the winter.
As she passed by, she suddenly stretched out her arms and yawned loudly, making sure her fist hit the mug between the merchant and the pretty girl. Ale sloshed over the nearest sheets of parchment and across the table towards the dark-skinned Ostenlander, who quickly stood up to get out of the liquid’s way, knocking his chair backwards. The elder boy and the man with grim eyes also scrambled up in response to the chaos as the two youngest boys started guffawing loudly at the quickly worsening situation.
“Oh… Real sorry ‘bout that! Let me help!” She reached out and grabbed a piece of the old merchant’s robe and began mopping up the spilled drink with her right hand, while her left hand slipped her knife out to cut the leather thongs attaching that fat purse to the merchant’s belt.
“My maps!” shouted the merchant. “You clumsy, idiotic gutter-child!”
He and the pretty girl were doing their best to get the sheets of parchment off the table before the spreading ale soaked them further, shaking the pages off and throwing liquid everywhere. Neither realized that the waif between them was making matters worse by using the merchant’s own heavy sleeve to slosh the ale about further. When he finally did pull his sleeve free of the Emlin’s grip, he only worsened the situation by dripping more ale from the soaked cloth across the table onto more pages and flinging ale into the faces of those around him as his arms flailed about.
The Cabbage Girl had managed to cut through one of the two leather ties before the merchant disentangled his sleeve from her “help”.
Running out of time and options, she grabbed the purse hard and tried to slice through the last leather tie with a quick slash. But years of hard use and inexpert care, and maybe even the stabbing of that oafish boy the other day, had made the edge of her blade dull.
“What are you…” the merchant said, finally noticing that his belt was being pulled at. Staring wide-eyed, it took him several moments to realize what was happening. And the Cabbage Girl, caught under his gaze froze.
It seemed like an age. And then the realization came into the man’s face.
“THIEF! THIEF!!”
Chaos exploded around her.
The grim man in the cloak grabbed the merchant’s shoulder and started yelling at him to shut up while the armor-clad Ostenlander and the dark-haired young man next to him each circled around the table in different directions. The pretty young girl was standing there looking horrified and stunned, holding dripping parchment pages in her hands, trying to decide whether to drop them and help or get out of the way. The two younger boys were now standing on their stools trying to get a better view of the proceedings. The merchant was still screaming “THIEF”, with no hint of stopping.
She tried another slash with her knife, but the leather just wouldn’t part. Emlin released the purse and tried to bolt for the door into the street. Escape was now the only option left to her.
The older boy lunged after her as she attempted to dash past him, grabbing the wrist of her knife hand. Otherwise defenseless and now desperate, Emlin grabbed at his hair with her free hand and started to pull as hard as she could. He cried out in pain, but he would not let go, despite her struggling and pulling. She started kicking at his shin, too. Anything to get away.
Etzel had come out from behind the bar and was trying to calm down or distract the screaming merchant, but it was working as badly as the efforts of the grim fellow in the cloak.
And as the Ostenlander began to get closer, she realized that she had no more time. She released the boy’s hair and jabbed her thumb into his eye -- hard.
He cried out again, but this time he did let go of her wrist.
She turned to run…
And slammed into the solid, mailed midsection of another man, bouncing back and falling onto her backside.
Everything in the room went silent and still.
Her gaze moved slowly up the figure before her: clad in fine leather riding boots and well-oiled chain mail, a heavy broadsword strapped to his side. She saw the symbol on his black tabard, a red scepter. The symbol of the Dunkelgraf, proclaimed ruler of all of Meereslande. Emlin had only ever seen it on the tax collectors that prowled the gates. But this man was obviously no tax collector.
His long black mane and rugged face would have been handsome by any standard – if not for the eyes: entirely coal-black, except for the blood-colored slits that served as pupils.
Behind him stood several members of the city guard.
“And what do we have here?” inquired the evil-eyed man, looking first down at the girl lying prone on the floor in front of him and then up at the frozen chaos behind her.
The Cabbage Girl knew that she was in terrible trouble. But the pit in her stomach clenched even further when she heard the whiny voice of the merchant behind her:
“No. Not you. It can’t be you. It can’t. You’re already dead…”
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