[Rimetrolls] The Endless Winter

[Xarkly 12614]

RIMETROLL EVENTLINE

THE ENDLESS WINTER

Spoiler

 

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Spring had come, but the winter took no note.

 

Where the spruce and pine forests of Haense should have been sprouting budding leaves, instead their branches were just spindly, bare limbs. Where farmers should have been well into planting season and tubers and stalks pushing through fertile soil, most farms had been reduced to an abandoned span of weeds and churned mud at best, and a graveyard at worst. And where the cutting chill of the wind should have been easing, it instead grew even more bitter.

 

"This does not bode well," Farald remarked as he stood atop the crimson walls of Karosgrad as his black cloak stirred in the wind. He nervously fingered the sword sheathed at his waist, and the pale, lifeless light glimmered on the gold-striped gambeson that proclaimed him a member of the Haeseni Royal Army.

 

"They've already been told there's nothing for them here," came Lyssa's exasperated grunt beside him. She was his watch partner for the day, and she kept one hand glued to her beret to keep it from blowing away in the chilling gusts. 

 

Both of them stared below the walls with concern where a mass of refugees thronged. They were all clad in drab, travel-stained woolens with cloaks and hoods pulled tight not only to ward off the oppressive cold, but to hide their despair. They had all come from the hinterlands, as far as Farald could tell, and they all told the same tale: whether they were a farmhand or woodsmen, the Rimetrolls had forced them to seek the safety of the Haeseni capital. There were no farms left to feed them out in the midlands, and the Rimetrolls were enough of a physical danger to make any man or woman flee. Despite the crowd, they made eerily little noise besides the crying of hungry children and a depressed tide of murmurs. As Farald looked up towards the road winding towards Monstadt and Vasiland, he could see a steady trickle of more peasants making their way to the city.

 

"If this keeps up," Farald said through grit teeth, "We're all going to starve. The Rimetrolls have already taken harvests from here ... there's just not enough for any more."

 

"The King needs to shoo them." Lyssa's words were firm, but her gaunt face was stark with the same fear that rattled Farald. It was not the kind of fear that made a man run in battle, but the kind of growing fear that accompanied knowing a disaster was surely afoot. "We should chase them off with bows!" 

 

"We can't just send them away," Farald growled back. His teeth had begun to chatter from the cold as the gulp of hot whiskey he had downed before his watch wore off. "The Trolls will just end up killing them all."

 

"What are we supposed to do, then?" Lyssa shot back, blue eyes narrowed into a glare. "We can't feed them all, we don't have the resources! What are we supposed to do, Farald?!"

 

As he watched the crowd of refugees grow, Farald said nothing. 

 

____________

 

Shog emptied two barrels out onto the frosted ground, adding a few stunted cabbages to the pile of vegetables that already lay there.

 

"Last of 'em," Shog proclaimed matter-of-factly, and the white-furred Rimetroll stepped away from their remaining rations and back into the crowd of eleven to thirteen-foot tall Rimetrolls that stood gathered in the middle of the ruins of Krusev. 

 

Little Runk - though he was not little anymore - watched the pile with a hard stare, and then glanced around him. The palisades of Krusev had been glazed in frost and gleamed a pale grey as they reflected the morning's dreary light, and the farms that had once cloaked the valley had long been turned to frosted mud under the heavy steps of dozens of Rimetrolls. Little Runk stifled a sigh when he looked back to the food pile -- they had feasted on the harvests of Krusev for a long time now, but that pile was all that was left, and it was not very much at all. The gathered Rimetrolls stood in awkward silence as they all stared at the dwindling food with concerned, beady eyes, but the unspoken fear hung loudly in the air: what now? 

 

None of the Rimetrolls wanted to go back raiding - it was against their nature - but if they delayed any longer, the starvation that had already killed so many of their kind would set in once again. Even now as he looked around the crowd, he saw the faces of his fellow Trolls painted with stark fear at the notion that they would have to kill and be killed again, but no one had another answer. No one had any kind of solution except to take food the people that had taken their food and started this whole war.

 

"No choice!" Little Runk surprised himself by speaking suddenly, but the fiery words came unbidden. All eyes turned to him as he shuffled forward. "We has no choice but to smash warmies again!" He paused, his breath quickening into misty plumes as he breathed, but he did not stop. "So many of us dead! Troll Village gone, destroyed by warmies, Farm gone, destroyed by warmies, and our Trollwives n' cubs smushed and burnied by the warmies! We has to, or we all dies! We has to, or we goes ... uh .." he trailed off, his vigour fading as he failed to make this tongue produce the intended word. "Ex ... extiiii ..."

 

"Extinct?" offered another Troll helpfully.

 

"Ya, extii ... that thing, ya!" Little Runk finished.

 

Slowly, the Trolls around him nodded. They had all been thinking the same thing, and they now they accepted what had to be done with grim resolve. Little Runk was one of few who did not pity the warmies and the onslaught that was about to befall them; turning, he stared off in the direction of the nearby warmie castle with hard eyes. He had heard the tale of how his father - Big Runk - had tried to make friends with the warmies. He had come in peace, seeking only a little bit of food to feed his family. He had heard how the warmies had said they would accept Big Runk's friendship, that they would give him the food he so desperately needed ... and then they had burnt him alive.

 

Little Runk clenched a fist. 

 

____________

 

"I'm telling you - we should strike while we still have the strength!"

 

Valja eyed the group around her impassively. The six of them were gathered inside a makeshift tent made from old bedsheets and hides just outside Karosgrad with the rest of the refugees. Valja had said nothing as the other men and women spoke in urgent, hushed voices, and quietly ran an oiled cloth along her skinning knife while she tried to ignore the hungry pangs in her stomach. She had been hungry for weeks now, though, and had long since gotten used to the sensation to the point where it no longer really bothered her. At least she did not have to worry about her feeding her children any more. The Rimetrolls had already made sure her children would never need to be fed again.

 

"What are we supposed to do?" hissed Borm - a stocky charcoal-burner who still made an effort to shave, albeit not a good effort - at the man who had spoken first. "Storm the city, take on the HRA?! You're mad, Yugen!" 

 

"Mad?!" Yugen, a farmer whose face had been gaunt long before the famine, glared at Borm beneath his hood. "You're mad if you think anything is going to be solved by just sitting out here and waiting! We'll all be starved to husks before long, and that's if the rotting Trolls don't kill us first!" 

 

"We shouldn't be so quick to jump to violence," added Tiesa, the youngest of the group. Though the red-haired woman was just shy of twenty-six, she had taught most of the other refugees how to fight a Troll using hoes and axes. It was a far cry than HRA cannons, but it was better than being defenseless. Valja admired the girl for her leadership, and for her sense. 

 

"We should wait to see what happens next," agreed Borm. "For all we know, there might be enough food to keep us all alive until the King retakes Krusev, and that could be happening any day now!"

 

"You're all fools," hissed Yorrik, the tanner who kept his entire face hidden by his hood. "You've seen the way the city folk are looking at us, how they don't want us anywhere near the gate. They're scared! They're worried we're going to put too much of a strain on their food supplies, because they don't have enough food to feed us either!" 

 

"Finally, some sense!" Yugen rumbled. "Before we're all too weak to stand, we should storm the granaries! The city folk and nobles plan to just grow fat off them while we die!" Yugen spat on the ground. "We'll be sacrifices while they sit nice and safe behind the walls!" 

 

The group broke off into heated hisses as they argued about whether they ought to bide their time or whether they act to strike now for their own sakes, about whether the HRA and the Aulic Council had already condemned the refugees as not worth saving. Valja sighed softly as she eyed her grey-haired reflection in the polished knife. 

 

"Enough." She spoke softly, but the others ceased their arguing and looked to her expectantly. Valja had no desire to be any kind of leader - especially of a mob of hungry peasants - but it had not exactly been her choice. She had taken it upon herself to lead the evacuation of several villages near Krusev right as the Rimetrolls were bearing down on them, and she had even managed to kill one of the Iblees-spawn beasts herself. Ever since, the rest of the refugees had looked to her for guidance. She did not want the burden by any means, but if she could keep some of them from being killed like her children, then she would do what she could.

 

"Well, Valja? What's it going to be?" demanded Yorrik. 

 

Casually, Valja slid the knife back into its sheath at her waist. "It is simple," she began wearily. "We will see how far the city will go to protect us first."

 

____________

 

The rats squeaked weakly in the sewers beneath Karosgrad.

 

The Ratiki known as Don - self-appointed King of the Rats - whisked his tail, and fidgeted nervously with his fingers as he eyed the pile of Troll bones in front of him. The body was the latest delivery from the HRA as promised per their treaty, but it was still not enough. Don's people - the rats - were still too hungry. 

 

A fat rat in a tinfoil helmet approached Don as he sat on his cauldron, and tilted his head before he squeaked apprehensively. 

 

"I know, Sir Fuzzleton," Don whickered softly. "I know. Not enough, not enough, not enough ..." Absent-mindedly, he reached out to give Fuzzleton a gentle scratch beneath his tinfoil helmet. "Perhaps ... yes, perhaps, perhaps ..." his eyes drifted upwards to the ceiling of his chamber, and his whiskers twitched nervously. "Perhaps it is time to renegotiate. Yes, renegotiate." 

 

____________

 

Karosgrad seemed to hold its breath as a cold wind rolled over it, echoing like a soft wail in the streets. As the rats, Rimetrolls, and peasants were forced to make their moves, it seemed like this winter would have no end.

 

And if it did, nobody might be left alive to see it.