4: Weissbruck

Hi mum, me again. One thing I forgot to say in the last letter was that the man who was watching us so intently from the doorway of the Black Gold inn in Weissbruck had a crossbow slung over his back. That is not evidence enough to condemn him for killing those two people in Altdorf, but as you might conclude before the end of this letter, it may have been more than a coincidence. We don’t know his name, of course, but we began to call him crossbowman, for obvious reasons.

So, when Willow left her look out post on the bow of the Berebeli to tell us about crossbowman, I decided it would be best not to stop in Weissbruck and asked Josef if we could just keep going and spend the night somewhere else. He explained, however, that he was due to pick up more cargo in Weissbruck, and in any case, had to meet his old crew, here, who would be joining us on the leg to Boegenhafen.

After we had docked and tied the Berebeli up, Josef gave us six shillings each for our three days’ work. He was going to give some to Blume, as well, but as trusted first mate I felt it was my duty to report that she had not done any of the work, and therefore did not deserve payment. Josef is a nice man, and it didn’t seem right that we should take advantage of his generous nature. Needless to say, Big Bloomer disagreed. I should have said something about her father’s boat and how would he like it if he had crew who were taking wages from him but not doing any work. But I didn’t think of it at the time.

Brandy told us how he was looking forward to going to the Half-Measure tavern and having garlic mushrooms as he was related to someone who worked there, Foxy Shortbottom, but that was in Boegenhafen, so we had to make do with the Black Gold inn. I was a bit apprehensive about going into the Black Gold as that was where we had seen crossbowman, but everyone was getting very hungry. We all agreed that Halflings sometimes get a bit short when we are hungry, and we needed to eat as soon as possible. Willow told Blume to bring her gun, just in case, and told her to load it. But Blume said that the best thing about having a gun is that no one knows whether it’s loaded or not, and I was beginning to suspect she didn’t know how to load the thing. We had never seen her fire it, that was for sure.

Blume then got a bit angry with Willow for telling her what to do with her gun, so it seems that it is not just Halflings who get bad tempered when they’re hungry. So, to cheer her up, Willow told her a joke. It was, ‘What did the optimistic flower say?’ And the answer is, ‘Seeds the day.’ Not her best one.

To go to the Black Gold, Willow put on her blue hat. We wondered again what was up with the hat as we all remembered it was red. Willow explained that it must have been one of Lady Isolde’s hats, but she then checked the lining, and could see that it had her name written on it as plain as day. So she didn’t know what to make of it. (Hello, Mrs. Chard, this is Willow. Harry is right about the hat, I don’t really know what to make of it. But he’s not right about the ‘Seeds the day’ joke. It was funny.)

Fortunately, there was no sign of the crossbowman in the Black Gold and so we relaxed and ordered some beer and some stew. But the food wasn’t very good, again. Willow smoked a bowl of her Fuggleweed, again, and Blume got mad, again. She told Willow that she smoked too much, but Willow explained that she smoked just the right amount to broaden her outlook and enhance her creativity, which sounded like a good answer, even though I didn’t really understand it. But then I only smoke Greenleaf Gold mixed with Babyleaf Salad which is quite mild, and I only do that to be polite, really.

Then we had a joke about Brandy growing mushrooms on his feet, and to prove his feet were so clean and his feet hair so luscious he got up on the table to show everyone, and that made Blume retch and she had to go off for some fresh air.

When Bloomer came back Brandy told her all about the time he had sold a painting that was borrowed from a temple of Sigmar. It had been a painting of a big battle or something. Bloomer takes Sigmar quite seriously, so she got very angry, again, at Brandy. He insisted that it was only borrowed and not stolen but that sort of thing doesn’t really convince the bigs. She was so upset about it she had to go and get some air, again. And when she was gone brandy revealed that he had made the whole story up, just to annoy Bloomer.

But, despite the joke, Brandy really does buy and sell borrowed stuff for a living, and so he went off to the bar to see if he could do any business. He found a couple of likely looking bigs and offered to take a silver ring and a silver locket off their hands. I’m not sure how these items were borrowed, but one of them still had a bit of blood on it. I imagined that the two bigs would have been happy to get rid of the items as soon as possible, and so Brandy handed over all the silver he had and threw in a pair of boots he had been trying to sell for some time, and a couple of writing quills, which would have come in handy for these letters. And I think he planned to sell the ring and the locket in Boegenhafen where it was less borrowed.

We had a word with Josef about our places on the boat. He said he had promised to pay us to crew to Boegenhafen and he intended to do that. I told him he should only pay us for the work we did, though, because as he had two old crew back, then there would be less for us to do. But he told us that we would still have to work as his crew. Gilda and Wolmar, had just had a baby, Elsa, so they would be busy. Willow was excited to hear about the baby and wanted to go straight back to the barge and see her. I’m not sure what it is with Halfling women and babies, they seem to like them a lot, but they have so many, and by the time they get old, like grandma, you would think they would have had enough of them, but they still seem to never get enough of them. I think I would prefer a gun.

I was wondering what would happen once we reached Boegenhafen. Once Schaffenfest was over we might be left in there with no means of getting back to Altdorf. But then, I thought, something would probably turn up. Lots of things seemed to be turning up, recently. And if Bloomer got her inheritance, we wouldn’t need to worry about any of that, because we would all be rich.

So we went back to the boat, and after Willow had made Elsa cry and the baby had puked over her, we were ready for a good night’s sleep. Brandy stayed behind with Josef for a couple more drinks, and Josef became Brandy’s new best mate. We knew that, because on his way back, he fell into the hold, and then told us all about how great Josef was, before falling asleep on top of us. And it’s not unfair to say, that even for a Halfling, Brandy is extremely round, and when he falls on you from a height, you can feel it.

In the middle of the night Willow woke me up. For a moment I thought she had been having a good pipe, because the hold was full of thick, oily smoke. You could barely see from one side of the hold to the other. Willow said the stove had been full of rags, forcing the smoke back into the hold, and then she ran off to wake Willow.

I went straight up to the deck, for some fresh air, but when I opened the hatch, there was a big standing in front of me. He threw something into the hold, and I felt it erupt behind me into flames. Without looking back, I dodged past him and up onto deck, but shouted a warning to make sure everyone knew we were being attacked by bigs.

The thing that the big had thrown was full of burning oil which threatened to set fire to the wood of the hold. But Willow grabbed the hammocks we had been using as bedding and used them to put the flames out. This added to the smoke, though.

Dreamy managed to see through the smoke enough to aim an arrow and hit the man in the shoulder. Brandy panicked a bit, amid all the smoke, and clambered up onto the deck and collapsed, gasping for breath. I could see that there were two more men up on deck, and one of them kicked Brandy in the ribs while he was just lying there. The other threw a flask of oil at Dreamy down in the hold and that one burst into flame, too.

The remaining thug hit me with his club, and I have to say, it hurt a lot, but I struck back with my sword and I like to think that hurt him more than his club hurt me. This was a proper fight. But then I felt a pain in my leg. I had been hit by a crossbow bolt, coming from some unseen enemy. I felt like I might keel over at any moment, or pass out from the pain, but I kept going. I don’t think those bigs would have expected it from a little Halfling but we are tougher than they think.

Meanwhile, Willow found a bit of sailcloth and used that to put out the second fire. Brandy was lying on the deck pleading with one of the thugs not to kick him again but when he had kicked him the first time, his ring and locket had fallen onto the deck and the thug decided he wanted them for himself and kicked him again.

My opponent must have thought I was too far gone to worry about, and he was almost right. So he turned away and threw his oil down into the hold causing a third fire. By now Blume had managed to load her blunderbuss and she fired through the hatchway hitting two of the thugs at once. That was a proper shot from a proper gun, and the first time Blume had fired it. I was too injured at the time to appreciate it but looking back it was amazing and I want to get some blackpowder weapons as soon as possible. One of the thugs was so frightened of the gun he simply legged it.

Willow managed to find a crate of bunting, that was ready for Schaffenfest, and used that to put out the final fire. She had been down in the smoky hold for a long time, whereas everyone else had come on deck as soon as they could. It was nice to see that Willow’s heavy smoking habit had stood her in good stead for something.

Dreamy shot the final thug with an arrow, but he still stayed on his feet. Then he was hit by a crossbow bolt, and we looked around to see where it came from. And none of us were that surprised to see, on the other side of the boat, the mysterious crossbowman who had crossed our path several time before, probably. Dreamy took a couple of shots at him, but the arrows just seemed to bounce off his armour. But he did move towards the gangplank, ready to make his escape, which was heartening.

Brandy got angry with the thug for trying to steal his ring and locket and slinged him, and with another lucky hit, apparently, he managed to hit him hard. He insisted he didn’t mean that one, as well.

The last thug swung at Dreamy but he made a hash of it and ended up falling to the deck. I managed to stab him and kill him. It could be the case that I stabbed him in the back after he had already fallen to the deck, helpless. I’m not entirely sure, but however it happened, as far as I’m concerned, it was a fair fight.

Now that all the fires were out Willow came up on deck to look for Elsa and her parents. Blume poked her head out of the hatchway looking for a shot at the crossbowman and yelled at us all to get out of the firing line. Dreamy and I ganged up on the final thug and drove him off, while the crossbowman took a last shot at Blume before fleeing, too. Blume got off a final shot at the crossbowman, and hit him, before he disappeared into the alleyways that lined the Weissbruck waterfront.

Worried about getting hit by the blunderbuss, Brandy had jumped overboard, and we’d heard a surprisingly loud splash as he hit the water. I looked over the gunwale and wondered whether he was able to swim or whether I needed to jump in and save him. I knew he was badly wounded, but I was badly wounded as well. In the end I dived in, after all, that is exactly the sort of thing you might expect a river warden to do.

I’m still not sure whether Brandy needed rescuing or not, but I struggled to get a good grip of him (he’s a very stout fellow) and pull him to safety. He was trying to fight me off which is what a lot of drowning people do when they panic. In the end, I was so exhausted Brandy ended up pulling me to safety. So I’d like to think I did save his life, but he probably saved mine, too.

Willow found Gilda, Wolmar, and Elsa in their cabin. The baby was safe. They had been fighting a fire there, and Josef had been doing the same in his cabin. There was certainly a bit of damage to the Berebeli but I think most of it was superficial. Willow had checked the thug’s body and confirmed that he was dead and she managed to borrow three shillings from him, at the same time.

So that’s what happened in Weissbruck, mum. I know it sounds dangerous, but you don’t need to worry about me, or any of us. I have a feeling that we will all come through this quite safely.