Round 2: INDK vs. Dopebeatz [Archive]

dopebeatz

04-25-07, 08:59 PM

RADASANTH, April 25, 2007

Dear Sirs:

I was forwarded your contact information by a group of your colleagues, editors by trade, who informed me that you might be quite interested in the attached manuscript. I was told by these august gentlemen that they would be in contact with you about the nature of this early draft of what I hope will eventually become a required text in any library, public or private. However, I feel that some preface may yet be in order.

First allow me to introduce myself. I am Hiram Washbone, amateur journalist and citizen of the world. However, I feel that my personage is quite incidental to the matter at hand, that being my proffered text. The following are stories of my travels with a certain Saxby Corningham. I am afraid I can offer you little in the way of introduction of the man except for the engrossing tales enclosed herein. I have had the pleasure these many months of acting as his traveling companion secretary, aide-de-camp and general factotum. Together we have shared many adventures. (Some wags, such as my editor and literary agent Dorin Weatherby, might term them "misadventures!") [Generally, I would just term them boring. - Ed.] Again, I believe that the enclosed tales, which begin with a retelling of our time in a tournament of martial skill, will provide all the futher explanation that is needed. I await your thoughts and (dare I hope?) offers for publication. I remain, sirs,

Your servant,

HIRAM WASHBONE

OUR SECOND ROUND.

CHAPTER I.

A PREPARATION FOR TRAVEL.

LEAVING THE TOWNHOUSE - THE CARRIAGE STATION - AN UNEXPECTED RENDEZ-VOUS

As a man of the world and aspiring journalist - such as I am - I often find myself flung far from home, traveling through climes unknown, banging about foreign lands, forging ahead even when my map warns "Here there be dragons." Although I hold a deep affection for my chosen profession and those ink-smeared souls who share it with me - Dorin Weatherby, my editor and literary agent being among the best of these [I choke back bile. - Ed.] - I cannot say that every assignment has been entirely pleasant. I have spent many a day exhaustively tracking that final piece of the story's puzzle - that sheep with the foaming mouth, that burned-down mansion, that pickpocket with the evil eye - to find that the night has come and I am once again in a city where a soft mattress and a clean blanket is a luxury not to be found. Such is the way of many foreign peoples. And such was my lot just before I was plunged headfirst into the story at hand.

I had been sent an assignment via courier pigeon by the newspaper for which I was then freelancing. It had arrived at the flat which I was occupying at the time, a small nook on the top floor of a townhouse in a marginally seedy section of Radasanth. I had rushed down the stairs to the floor below, anxious to present the good news to my friend and the owner of our accommodations, Saxby Corningham. As the gentleman was nowhere to be found, I rang for our housekeeper, Fiona Yves, a wizened old biddy of questionable ancestry. I inquired as to where the master of the house had absconded himself, but old Ms. Yves was as clueless as I. I searched the parlor, a small room facing the street, cluttered with scientific instruments, gazetteers, maps, sheaves of paper and small pieces of worn furniture, but could find no ready clue as to where Corningham had flown. Thankfully, before I gave up all hope, I brushed aside the heel of a loaf of half-eaten bread resting at Saxby's place at the small table at which we regularly supped, and found a short note scribbled on a cocktail napkin.

Hiram -

Sorry, had to fly off to attend to a bit of business. Help yourself to this bread, it is passably edible but I'm sure some cheese will help. I will see you tonight.

-S.

I tossed the stale bread aside - he had eaten all the cheese as it was - and reached for my greatcoat. Although the day was sunny, a hint of winter was still in the air, and as I left the townhouse, hailing one of the dingy cabs that fill the streets in that quarter, I was glad to have snatched it. My assignment was for a far orchard, about a day's ride from the city, where a proliferation of unusual worms seemed to be ruining crops. The editor suspected that the epidemic had been invented by farmers as a reason to raise their prices and fund their gambling habit, as some rascally dwarves had opened a dog racing track in the vicinity. All that aside, I was off. I knew the cab would not travel outside the city limits, so I tossed the cabbie a few coins and told him to make haste for the coach station at the edge of the city, where a stage could be hired.

The sky was the watercolor blue of a winter morning, but the sun colored the city with the pastels of a spring afternoon. I always enjoy traveling through the city and this day was no different. The sights - and even the smells - of Radasanth never cease to entertain and bemuse me, and it seemed far too soon when we arrived at the coach station. I cannot imagine that you, dear reader, have not at some point embarked from the station, the thrill of travel before you, but I shall recount the scene briefly, for the sake of those who may not have shared that singular pleasure. At the station, several of the city's roads and alleyways empty out into what at first appears to be a small piazza or square. Several alehouses open directly onto the square, and one can spend all day walking amongst the throngs of people coming in and out of the city and then as night falls step straight up to a burly bartender who hands you a tankard which you can quaff pretty fairly under the open air. Sawdust and gravel mix on the ground, and the occasional horse dropping must be stepped around.

However, most of the horses and the carriages they haul are not located in the courtyard. No, rather they can be found across the square from the side at which most of the streets end. Rather than remaining completely flat, the square undertakes a shallow incline, separated from the main square by a high wooden fence. The fence is broken by several swinging doors through which passengers depart, walking down the slope on one of several wooden walkways. At the end of this hill, which continues for perhaps thirty or fourty feet and lowers perhaps ten before leveling out again, one passes through another series of gates and finds oneself standing on one of several raised wooden walkways. These walkways stretch out for several blocks, and on either side of each is a series of carriages, harnessed to horses. These carriages and their drivers enter and leave from a large, paved road that extends from the end of the loading docks out into the fields of Corone, which are visible beyond. Atop most of these enclosed carriages is a sign indicating a predetermined destination, and one must wait until all the seats within are filled before one can continue to that location. This can be quite inconvenient if one is traveling to an unpopular location - I have waited for days for that final traveling companion to arrive! - but is an entirely charming system for traveling to the more major cities. The unmarked carriages are for hire, for as many as are in your party, and will travel along any road, to any location. All these are located along the far left loading dock, and is it to this dock that I traveled.

I skittered down the pathways to the long loading bay and leapt for the nearest carriage. Throwing the hatch open, I stood in the door frame and yelled my location up to the driver. He nodded - as well as he could with such little neck and such a large head - and I began to duck into the carriage when I heard an all-too-familiar voice.

"Hold the carriage, I'm headed that way, too!" I turned from the stage, smiling broadly as I saw a little old man tottering toward me. Why, it was Saxby Corningham! I waved genially and waited for his arrival.