Arc 1 Post 4: A Wary Welcome
A Wary Welcome
18 April 867 A.D.
The familiar ritual of coaxing horses off the ship centers the mind the way that pouring over a hundred maps could never do. For his part Sea Foam is as happy as you are to get out of the dark hold and into the fresh air. A proper Hyarnustar stallion he might have been bred to be more tolerant sea journeys, but that storm had been as hard on the beasts as it had on men. So in mail garbed and helm upon your brow you step onto this strange land, calling to order the men who had come with you, veterans all not a one of them under sixty they are used to setting up a guard unloading on an unfamiliar shore leaving you to look over the low coastline the wide river-bank winding away to the east under the shadow of pine and spruce. Good ship timbers these. Somehow the Daring Wanderer hadn't lost a mast in the storm, but if you had you would trust one of these with the task.
"Right, everyone found their seat and stopped dancing with the sea?" you call out, eliciting a few laughs from people still shifting in their seats, as though to compensate for the swaying of the deck. "Remember we don't know water from blood with these folk, keep your tongue behind your teeth and your hands off your swords lest they start anything." And if they start it end it, the corollary isn't one you have to give these days.
The trees are large and sparse enough that you can ride two abreast with Ular at your side. Though you make no attempt to hide your coming no warriors meet you outside the village and there is not even a log wall to block your sight. A peaceful land then, or more likely a poor one.
From the edge of the woods you see a village of about thirty long low houses, built almost in the shape of upturned boats with peaty soil set atop them, a shaggy carpet of grass growing from it and peat from the looks of things they burn in their fire pits with no windows or chimney to vent them as when the folk of the village come out of their houses it is with a gust of smoke as though though they had worked in the forges of Ironward.
The people themselves seem much as those you had known from western Ennor on the shores of the great sea, fair haired and dark mixed together of the stock it is said the Edain of old had come from, though a quick count of them reveals more women, children and old folk than men of fighting years. A part of your begins to suspect an ambush, but you throttle the instinct. If they can't build a window they'll have a poor time of it indeed trying to cut through proper chainmail.
"Hail and well met. We know not your name nor your customs, but we come in peace from a far off land," you say in your own tongue, though without much expectation of being understood. In the lands where your people often journey there are always those who speak Adunaic within reach of the sea and in some villages along Andun the Great for instance it has even become a trade tongue far inland, but this is a place far out of knowing.
A grey-bearded man steps forward, his tunic the same plain earthy brown as most everyone else though the belt he holds it with is of finer make the clasp in the shape of a dragon's head with a well worn scabbard hanging upon it. He calls out something in a tongue that sounds just enough like the speech Breeland trader to be oddly familiar without catching a single word, then another halting and harsh on the tongue yet which bears the mark of.... quenya, first of all tongues, like threads of silk woven into coarse flax.
Feeling foolish for ever trying it you make the attempt to speak the Noldorin tongue which you had only truly learned so you could read their tomes and scrolls. Astonishingly you manage to get a few words understood by modeling your speech after his and more guesswork than a man trying to find a forest trail at midnight. 'Far-travelers', sailors' is the first thing you manage, then 'peace-talk, song-time' much to the relief of the old man an his folk.
You offer your name, by means of pointing and pantomime and he offers his, Fálki and then, as you get off your horse, the man calls out to one of the young women, a kinswoman from the looks of her to bring something from the house. It turns out to be a clay jar and a pair of drinking horns. You dutifully take one and watch as she pours some of the cloudy liquid in each before handing one to Fálki and one to you.
"At least you know it isn't poison," Ular jests, scant comfort indeed.
Resisting the urge to glare at him over the thing you take a drink. It's... not as bad as you had expected, bitter and with a strong tang of juniper to it, but you've drank far worse for less cause in your youth.
The old man smacks his lips and gestures with his horn in satisfaction. "Sahti."
As you nod and thank him the rest of the villagers start to come forward, even some of the children gasping an oohing over either you or the horses. You recognize an offer of hospitality when you see one even before Fálki speaks.
"I'd rather sleep in a pigsty," someone murmurs at the back of your guard.
"I'm not asking you to swear a blood bond or wed them," you call back over your shoulder. "Though if I hear of you pestering their women I'll take that to mean you want to do the latter after all."
There's no laughter, but a few smiles, including one from Ular that seems to say. 'Do you mean to take your own advice?' and not without cause. You have always found a warm bed and fair company in it better for forgetting your woes than drink or even dreamweed, but that does not mean you are going to follow the first likely smile you see when you cannot even speak the language.
What do you do next?
[] Stay at the village for a few weeks trying to learn the language
[] Try to get directions to a larger settlement where you might trade some of your silver for supplies at a decent rate
[] Write in
OOC: You did not have to roll diplomacy not to get attacked or anything because the villagers would have to have been mad to try to fight this many heavily armed men on horseback, just a language roll to see if you caught anything of the language and could work with it.
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