Logs:Gunpower Treason and Plot
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| RL Date: 5 November, 2007 |
| Who: A'son, N'thei |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr, Crom Hold |
| Type: Log |
| Where: Minehold |
| When: Day 8, Month 2, Turn 14 (Interval 10) |
| Wyaeth> Nikoth senses that Wyaeth shotgun-blasts his a greeting, sort of. « Hey. Come here. » It's late, some two hours after midnight, and he's not even polite enough to nudge Nikoth and see if the other bronze is awake. He just thrusts in with a demand right off the bat, provides a dark-and-slightly-hazy image of a likely unfamiliar sight: It looks like a minehold somewhere. Wyaeth senses that Nikoth jerks awake, his expansive presence reaching out in his usual obtrusive way. « Why? » He questions, suspicion coloring his tone as he examines the image Wyaeth has projected to him. Wyaeth> Nikoth senses that Wyaeth blows a gust of irritation, a puff of it that stings like dust in the eyes. « Because. » He hones the image, traces it with cleaner lines and a better view: The darkness of a mountain shape looms in the background, the foothills spread out below, the whole of it recognizable once it's been refined to one of Crom's multitude mines. « C'mere. A'son'll feel like a sorry fool if he don't. » Wyaeth senses that Nikoth growls, suspicion growing and irritation being added on top. « Don't try and push my buttons. We're coming. » Lines of communication are then snapped shut as the bronze more than likely rouses his rider. With no further effort to intrude on Nikoth's mental state, Wyaeth just waits. Somewhere down near that minehold, perched on one of the craggy rocks a good half-mile hike from the hold itself, nearly invisible in the darkness except where his eyes glimmer like lost jewels, he waits. One can assume N'thei is out there somewhere too. Nikoth appears in the sky, his bronze hide darkened but the sound of his wings rushing air about still carrying through. Perhaps seeing those glittery eyes guides him down to his clutchmate, or maybe it's justs intuition. He lands carefully, making certain to create as little noise as possible while A'son unstraps and dismounts. By the time Nikoth lands, N'thei has made his way back up the hike to where Wyaeth waits, nothing but a low-pitched grumble of grudging greeting to his brother. "I'll admit, I'm shocked you came," the big fellow admits, his voice lower than it needs to be considering there's no one around for miles; what's more, it has that hoarse quality of someone who has been speaking in whispers for a long time now. Mostly visible as a shadow with a couple of glows in one hand to light his path, he hooks his head toward the very faint lights of the sleeping minehold. "I need help." A'son tugs his hat tightly onto his head, giving N'thei the look over. He adjusts his voice appropriately before speaking. "I'm shocked that you woke me up in the middle of the night to fly around Crom." Pause. "Well, maybe not so much. All things considered." Casting his eyes toward the lights of the hold, he frowns in the darkness. "What exactly are you up to out here?" "Heavy lifting, my friend." N'thei must be using the term loosely? He waits long enough to make sure A'son isn't asleep on his feet, then tosses his head to indicate the direction of the distant lights, his palm open so the very faint light will fall upon the game trail leading to the ledge for Wyaeth and Nikoth to occupy. "Can't do it alone-- believe me, I tried. Take it as a compliment that the only person I could think to ask for help was you?" With a rough laugh; "Or take it as an imposition. Whichever." "I'll take it as both. If only for the fact that Wyaeth could have told Nikoth during the day, before I was unconscious." A'son replies simply, rubbing one hand across his face. "How much?" Is his next question, tone growing more serious as he contemplates the game trail and then the larger man. "Ha, you couldn't live it all on your own. I thought you were the beast, here." N'thei says over his shoulder, his steps grown hasty as they proceed closer and closer to the lights, "If I'd known I was going to need help in the light of day, I would have told you in the light of day. Since I didn't..." He just ducks down beneath the horizon of his coat collar in a shrug of helplessness. "It's enough that I need help. Laugh it up, chuckles; you'll see when we get there." A'son snorts, "You could have warned me for the night to come, is what I meant. Not to work in the middle of the day." His riding jacket is pulled closer to him as he follows after N'thei, stretching his legs out as he attempts to keep pace with the hasty one. "Chuckles? Fill me in on what's going on as we do this, at least." N'thei's humor is dark, fitting for the time-of-day. "And spoil the surprise?" They come round a corner before too long, a bend in the road that reveals the minehold for what it is: A mostly dormant mine itself, but a stop-over for more active mines before they join bigger tithe trains bound for Crom Hold. Under an overhang of cliff, concealed on three sides, under tarps, are barely-visible glimpses of a promised prize, stacks of bagged firestone. "There are usually two guards this time of night, but one's out with a cold, and the other's-- preoccupied." His voice is an even lower, harsher whisper though there's no sign of a living soul for miles still. "You're a charmer." A'son replies dryly. His eyebrows lift slightly when they come around that bend and his focus shifts to the bags. "With wine, women or did you give him something to occupy himself with?" Pushing his fingers through his short hair, "Nevermind, I don't want to really know why." His voice low, he shifts closer to N'thei. "How much were you planning on... Charmer?" N'thei would have answered that question before the nevermind came along, so he closes his mouth with the words checked. He hunkers down in the darkness, crouches out of a shaft of moonlight creeping over the craggy horizon of the mountain, a wash of blue over the ironworks and the soot and the neatly stowed tools. "As much as you and I can carry in just under two hours, before the guard changes. It's a half-mile or so back to the dragons. I figure I can carry two bags in a load, probably three or four loads. You, probably one bag." He casts the aspersion so harmlessly, so lacking in malice that he might not even have meant it that way-- then again, this is N'thei talking to A'son, so maybe he meant it after all. "I've never carried sacks of coal around, how are those in comparison to firestone? The same more or less?" A'son asks, dropping into a similar couch. N'thei recieves a curious, searching expression before he throws it aside for now. There are more important things to do, apparently. "If they are? Then two is the best I can do for three or four loads. I didn't do all that lifting while we were in the barracks to end up as a weak as a fiften turn old." He grins halfway and rubs his hand across his jaw, nerves seeping through slowly. "Well not a fifteen-turn-old /girl/, I guess." N'thei stands slowly and beckons A'son to follow, his path picked out gingerly along the edge of the wall, under the shadows, so anyone even glancing up toward the storage would have to really look hard to suss out the two shapes through the darkness. Just at the edge of the shadows, he whirls to face A'son abruptly, a seldom-seen seriousness on his face. "Not a word of this leaves here. Not to Talien, not to Tavrie, no one. Right?" "I always make a point to tell everyone and anyone about whatever theft I commit." A'son answers, voice dry as he gives the other an arched look. "Are you ready to do this or what?" He asks, voice hushed as he readjusts his jacket and hat, waiting for N'thei to give the signal to move on through. He leans into the wall some more, hands pressed against it, "This is your show after all." Mellow, N'thei accepts the sarcasm as response, head nodding as he turns back to face the spread. There's a good hundred-plus bags here, so maybe no one will notice? "You're not all that bright, friend, so I really thought I better make sure." He skirts around to the back of the stack, pulls back the corner, and takes stock of the bags with widening eyes. "You really think you're getting two of these?" This while he grunts, pulling a sack over one shoulder and debating whether or not a second one is getting slung across the other one. A'son eyeballs the bags that are piled up. His expression is almost unreadable, but there's that tightening of the lips as he surveys. "N'thei, you didn't know how heavy these bags were before you called me down here right?" He leans over, putting a sack of coal over his shoulder with a grunt. "I didn't exactly come down here with a scale, no." Exhaling, the second bag tossed over his shoulder, N'thei straightens up from a very careful crouch and looks toward A'son speculatively. "But isn't it--" His voice is a little strained now, quiet from the whisper and quieter from trying to walk with two big bags of heavy rocks over his shoulders. "Isn't it a little flattering that I thought of you? --Less talk, more haul." "Yeah, it's a little flattering. I think. Right more haul, less talk." A'son responds, making another noise as he shifts the sack over his shoulder. He takes the first heavy steps down towards the dragons. "I wonder how long it takes before they notice these bags are missing." The trip back absolutely cannot be any longer than the trip down here, not really, but carrying a big bag of rocks definitely makes it feel longer. "Hopefully a few weeks, maybe months." N'thei labors to talk, walk, and heft all at once-- like walking and chewing gum, if gum weighed as much as coal. There's a long spell of silence that follows, traced out by the crunch of boots in the gravel and the cold. "They don't move this stuff to Crom Hold till spring, so hopefully they don't inventory till then? You hold-craft-bred?" "Weyr-bred, no idea how these guys run things. I know that they have Jolak counting coal on a regular basis." A'son grunts, shifting the bag back and forth over his shoulder. "But I'm thinking that if they are concerned enough about it to get guards to watch it, that they're going to count it every once in awhile. ...What did happen to their guards? I think the count hinges on that." We'll assume the conversation drifts along in between trips? Because those trips are going to take a good twenty minutes uphill, maybe only ten downhill, over a game trail-- not a rock-lined path or anything useful like that. Somewhere in among those trips, N'thei remarks, "I nearly had to beat the living hell out of that kid, that Jolak. Suffice it to say, any counts are going to gloss over a little discrepancy in our favor." His smile gleams whitely in the darkness; "One of them was perfectly legitimate, as far as I can tell. He got sick or one of his kids did, I'm not sure. The other one? Girl with loose morals is all it takes." "You almost beat the crap out of my brother?" A'son asks, eyebrows lifting in genuine surprise. "Seems like you've been putting a lot thought and effort into this." He grunts, following up and down the trail with N'thei. "Was the girl a friend of yours?" He asks, grinning slightly towards the other. That's news; N'thei's eyebrows pull upwards and his mouth pulls downwards, not that there's much of that to see by the dim light and amid the trekking back and forth and the hauling of firestone. "Shells, if I'd known he was your brother, I really would have beat him to death." A voice heavy with regret leads right into a laugh; "Sure she's my friend. Sure. Less talk. More haul." Mantra repeated, he carries on two bags at a time, eight bags total, till just before four in the morning. As the bags are tied to bronzes, as Wyaeth stirs from his nap, the guard makes a belated appearance down below, none the wiser and too late to catch anyone in the act of anything. "I'll show you where to offload them at the Weyr, no one's apt to see us at this hour. Anyone catches a glimpse, just at drunk and they won't think twice. --And thanks." "Well, he's a half brother. You could have beat him in a little. He would have held his own, for awhile anyway." A'son follows along with N'thei, conversation silenced for now as he takes on his one bag at a time until they're finished. "We know how to act drunk, right?" A half hearted grin before he shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, anytime." He responds in a hushed voice while he loads the coal up. "So noted. You'll probably wish you hadn't said that after a couple more rude awakenings." N'thei contemplates the load on Wyaeth, steals a glance at the load on Nikoth, and his thoughts-- nearly visible as a wonder if the bigger dragon might ought to carry more of the load-- earn him a solid shove in the small of the back by his now fully-awake dragon. "I'll see you back at High Reaches, A'son." He's up and out hastily from there, a little rush as dawn creeps nearer and nearer. |
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