Chapter 30: Entering the Fray

As I gazed out at Port A'maine through the port-hole of the wooden ship, I couldn't help noticing the pall of smoke that hung over the town. The slight off-shore breeze suddenly wafted a sample of the miasma, created by bad hygene practices, past my nose.

I shuddered in disgust as the reality of a primitive city was brought home to me. I coukd hear S'alor's sardonic comments about humans who 'messed where they lived' as a subliminal refrain in the back of my head.

If it hadn't been for the bad smell, I would have thought the sight of the sprawling harbour town to be quite beautiful. The buildings shone in the late afternoon sunlight. It was the first time on War World that I had seen any evidence of buildings not created by the 'Elves', and if I had been watching a documentary, I would have thought that it was a recreation of a small European port from a millenium in the past.

The warehouses on the waterfront were prosaic enough, and the houses and other buildings that sprawled up the gentle slope of the hills surrounding the harbour were pretty much as I had imagined they might be. The one glaring ommission, however, was any form of church or temple. There didn't seem to be any evidence of religious buildings, and I decided that I would try to find out about religious practices as soon as I could.

Brooding over the town, at the summit of one hill, was a large building that I tagged in my mind as 'feudal castle'. From a distance, I could already see that there were a number of differences from the many castle remains I had seen in Europe, the most glaring of which was the glacis and ramparts which had been designed to resist attacks from cannons. Their lack told me that projectile weapons were definitely not a part of this world.

While I had been wool-gathering, the ship had been moored to the dock and the sailors now extended a gang-plank.

"In your Fingers and Hands, disembark," came the call. My first thought was to keep my Finger together, and S'Alor was part of the finger in my opinion, so I called everyone else in the finger together and we made our way up the ladders to the main deck.

Once there, I looked around for S'Alor and spotted him on the starboard gunwale, near the gangway. We moved over to join him, pushing cross-stream through the rest of the Fingers.

I felt a sense of relief to be back in physical contact with S'Alor, a feeling that he mirrored, as there had been a low-lieing anxiety that the sailor's fear of him might transform into an attempt to harm him where I wouldn't be able to jump in to assist in his defence.

We waited about ten minutes before our turn to disembark arrived, and I used the time to discuss what I had observed so far of the harbour town with the rest of my Finger. All of them agreed that the less time spent in a town, the better, if the terrible stench was any indication of the normal state of affairs.

As we walked down the gangway, I was momentarily worried that it would break under S'Alor's weight, but he sent me a quiet reassurance, which set my mind at ease.

We disembarked onto a pier that extended about four hundred meters out into the harbour, and I was very interested to see the different ships moored there as we walked past. It seemed to me that they were primarily cargo vessels, although it was difficult to make out what they might have carried. My nose was no help in this situation, having gone on strike for better working conditions, and my mental map was a bit confused with the large number of people in this new place.

As we left the pier, Hand Evans was waiting with directions for each Finger Leader. When I looked at the piece of paper he handed me, I saw that our accomodation was fairly nearby.

I followed the directions, noticing as we walked that the streets were practically deserted. I only saw three people the crossed our path in the whole time.

I finally spotted the sign of the Inn, a stylised wing, which matched the name I had been given: 'The Dragon's Wing'. A little apprehensively, as I had no idea what to expect, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

 

Chapter 5: Arrival

For a few seconds I couldn’t quite get my eyes to focus, and I felt slightly nauseous. Once it cleared, I looked around with great interest, but felt slightly disappointed at the sight of a plain white room. The floor looked like concrete but felt slightly flexible, the way a well constructed wooden floor does. There was one door to the room and Roger ushered us towards it and out into a corridor.

He led us down the corridor, past a number of closed doors and then stopped in front of one that was indistinguishable, to me, from any of the others we had passed. I thought that all the unrelieved white could get depressingly old very fast.

After a pause of a couple of seconds, the door opened and Roger entered. I was directly behind him and followed him docilely into the room.

This room was identical to the one that we had arrived in except for ten ranks of institutional looking chairs all facing one blank wall. Roger instructed us all to sit, moved to the front of the room and waited patiently until John, Steven, Desrae and I had taken seats. With a glance at Roger, Ben, Gill and Rob turned and left the room.

"OK," Roger started, "You have arrived. Very briefly, what is going to happen now is that you are going to start you in-processing immediately. I just wanted to say a brief goodbye and wish you well. I hope to see at least some of you when you graduate from here." He then sketched a vague salute and exited the room.

I felt this was a little abrupt, but for some reason it didn’t worry me too much. The four of us sat and waited passively for a while. I had no idea how much time passed, as I had no watch and there was nothing in the room to indicate the passage of time.

We were all startled by the sound of the door opening. I had almost drowsed off in my chair. I watched as two people entered the room. They were both extremely tall, at least a foot taller than me, and they moved with an unnatural seeming grace. Almost as if they were dancing or ice-skating instead of walking. They moved to the front of the room, stopped there and looked at us. The man checked something in his hand, which looked as if it could be an oversize PDA of some sort, then looked up at us again. The woman next to him kept her head down with her eyes on whatever it was that she held in her hand, and didn’t look at us at all.

"Good Morning." It was the man. "Welcome to War World. I am known as Marek and this is Shiyla."

His voice was fluid and melodious. The closest I could come to describing the accent was that of someone who was a native Mandarin speaker, but not quite. As he spoke, I noticed that his ears had a slight peak to them.

"I am not of your race. We are known as the Sidhe. We are the facilitators and managers of War World."

That clicked for me. Elves.

"We know that there are a lot of legends and myths about us on the world you come from. There is probably the odd kernal of truth in what you have heard, but I suggest that you forget that and pay attention to the facts as they are revealed to you here, as this is the only reality that you have to concern yourselves with.

"We have done a preliminary scan of each of you while you waited and we need to explain a few things before we begin your processing. You have been subject to a mild form of magic since you first made contact with your sponsors. This magic has suppressed your curiousity and fear so that all that you had to consider was the basic decision to come to War World and nothing else. Some of you might have realised that you were exceptionally drowsy. This is a side effect of the magic, and an indication of your resistance to its effects. It is the first indicator of whether you will have some talent of your own here and of your potential for an aptitude to become a War Brother.

"Are there any questions?"

Suddenly, it felt as if a veil had been removed from my mind. I realised that the magic must have been lifted as a plethora of questions crashed into my head. All the questions that I should have asked Roger and all the things that he had evaded answering returned full force to clamour for attention.

While I was reeling from this onslaught, Steven started freaking out next to me, screaming and shouting at Marek. Somehow hearing him go off like that made me calm down somewhat.

Marek just waited for Steven to run down, then asked "Was there a question in that somewhere that I missed?"

Steven seemed nonplussed at the lack of reaction to his tirade and look around at the rest of us; looking for support I suppose. After a few seconds, he slumped back into his chair and mumbled "I s’pose not. Was just a shock."

"Any one else?" Marek asked, giving each of us a long look.

I sat quietly turning over everything that had lead to this point, and eventually decided that it probably made sense just to go with the flow for now and see where it lead. I did ask "Can we ask questions later?"

"Yes. The best answers to questions though are the ones that you experience for yourselves. We have a lot of experience with newcomers, and we find this to be a universal truth. Now, if we can proceed. All our initial scans of you are positive, there are no problems that we can see..."

"Umm Excuse me?" John put up his hand.

"Yes?"

"I, umm, Gill knew that I was umm.- ill and uh - that I have..." John seemed unable to complete his question.

"Yes. We know. That isn’t a problem." Marek answered and proceeded to explain, "The next step in the process is for you to get treated. Please follow me."

Marek turned and walked out of the door with Shiyla close behind him. We all rushed to follow.

Blog: Writing Method

mmm Well. the comments have slowed down. One comment I have received though from various people is that the chapters are too short. I figured I should explain:
1. I think the chapters are more like long paragraphs in that they hold a partcular "scene" or series of related paragraphs and that the length fits this rather than some arbitraily imposed size
2. I trend to write in chunks of this size as time and opportunity allows, and I prefer to post once I have written a chunk.
3. I am writing primarily on my cell phone. I have a Samsung i850 with Windows Mobile on it, and I use pocket word to write when I am taking a smoke break. When I am sitting behind my office computer or with my laptop, I feel compelled to actually "work", whereas when I am sitting out side with my phone, I don't feel nearly as guilty. I also make use of the small gaps of opportunity that crop up during the day such as waiting for my daughters when I pick them up from school, waiting for others to arrive for a business meeting, when I am on the toilet or lying in bed before going to sleep or in an airplane etc. Little bits at a time, inbetween other things.

This is also why my first posts of chapters can be a little hairy. I am trying to ensure that first posts are a little better though as I realise that if I get it wrong and that is the first exposure that someone has to my story, they could stop reading right there.

On another topic, I have had one comment pointing out an inconsistency in that no metal is allowed through the gateway, so Cy and co have to remove watches etc.. but "What about the metal eyelets in their shoes,
zippers in their pants, snaps on their pants, belt
buckles. what if any of them had any metal plates
or screws in them etc."
Has this bugged anyone else?
Also, did anyone pick up on the "Iron" phobia/Sidhe thing before Cy got to War World?
Hope you are still enjoying the story...