You man, you. Thanks Fentonius. Bookmarked!
(If anyone’s still reading this, how’s this for the plot???)
Plot Beats For This Story:
[ Trigger Warning : Violence and death, unscrupulous characters, cynicism, and abuse.]
Edwin and the Stonemasons cross the river into Westfall. They are soaked, hungry, and thirsty, and have already lost a few men to bandits and wolves. Their last horse (Edwin’s) dies of exhaustion on the riverbank. Edwin hands out the last of the food from the horse’s saddlebags to the three strongest men: Garrick Padfoot, Garn Mathers, and Bazil Thredd. A mutiny almost occurs because of this, led by Jack Howarth, but Bazil Thredd (VanCleef’s right hand) subdues it by punching Howarth in the jaw: breaking his tooth. A foul smell emits from Jack’s mouth from then on, earning him the name ‘Dead-Tooth Jack.’ The party end the beat as they come over the rise of the riverbank, and see a farmhouse emitting smoke from a chimney in the near-distance. VanCleef orders the Stonemasons to follow him, and they move towards it. Some of them (namely Dead-Tooth Jack) have malcontent in their eyes.
On the approach to the farmhouse, VanCleef spots a roving band of armoured Gnolls, and teaches his men how to avoid them without making a sound. Later, when they reach the farmhouse, a farmer comes out carrying an old shotgun, his lovely daughter hiding behind his back. Garrick Padfoot and Garn Mathers immediately step forward to protect VanCleef, and earn VanCleef’s respect. He talks them down from their anger, and pleads the farmer for help. The farmer refuses, stating that he believes them to be deserters, and that he wants no trouble on his farm. VanCleef contests this, and points out they have no weapons or arms, and are only poor labourers who have fallen out of work. He then notes that the farmer’s stone walls (set along the perimeter of his farm) are crumbling and decayed; and offers to fix them, in return for a few days worth of food, board, and rations. He also points out that there are Gnolls in the area, and the farmer may need help defending his farm tonight. VanCleef’s warning strikes a chord, and the farmer admits that he has been raided by Gnolls lately, and would admittedly be glad to receive VanCleef’s aid: as the Westfall Militia have not been to check on his farm in almost three weeks now, despite coming to collect taxes from him a month previous. VanCleef agrees that this is not right, and promises the farmer his men will be good to him and respectful of his daughter. The farmer agrees for them to stay, albeit uncertainly, and welcomes VanCleef into his home to talk some-more. The rest of the men look on, hungry and agitated, and the farmer tells them ‘they can sleep in the barn with the horses, and start work on the wall first thing tomorrow.’ VanCleef agrees to the terms, and then tells his men to rest inside the barn. *** After talking to the farmer, VanCleef enters the barn and casts off his cloak, and summons them all to listen-up. He places a hot stew in front of them, and a lock-box, apparently stolen from the farmer’s house, and advises his men to watch and learn: ‘‘This,’’ he says, ‘‘is how you open things that don’t belong to you, but by all rights should.’’ The men begin to eat, watching Edwin carefully. Once VanCleef is done picking the lock, he takes out a sack of coins from inside (’’… Payment in advance, this time, lads.’’), and then snaps the lock back together. He then offers out the bobby pin. Impressed, Bazil Thredd is the first to volunteer, and the scene ends on all of them eating hungrily, their eyes mystified and highly involved in learning the illegal survival technique.
The night goes by without any attacks. VanCleef dreams fitfully, and wakes up to Dead-Tooth Jack, shaking him awake. His mouth now smells ranker than ever, and he seems to hold resentment for VanCleef. Jack tells VanCleef that the farmer expects them up already, and working on the wall. Cleef gets up and rouses the men, and they spend the rest of the morning re-building the stone wall around the farmer’s land. As there are so many of them, it doesn’t take until past noon. The farmer’s daughter comes out with hot milk, fresh bread, and cheese for them all, and the men take a healthy interest in her, some of them leer. The farmer watches on warily from his porch, nursing his bad back, shotgun up against the wall. When his daughter is done, he shuffles her back inside, and gestures VanCleef to come over. ‘‘What does that old wheat-farmer want? He should be happy, we just did him a week’s worth of work in a single morning, for almost none of the pay.’’ Mathers mutters, reminding the reader of old tensions, and why the masons were forced to come to Westfall in the first place. *** VanCleef approaches the deck, but the farmer never takes his eyes off VanCleef’s men, as he says: ‘‘Funny-thing. Y’said you were labourers. But y’never said y’were masons.’’ He then spits. ‘‘Suppose you didn’t think I’d heard of the riots, way out here. Only I did, word travels across the prairies like y’wouldn’t believe: lots of old, farmer’s wives around here, all married to us old, empty-headed farmers.’’ He then looks at VanCleef suspiciously. He is offended because he believes VanCleef lied to him, and thinks him a fool. ‘‘I told y’ I wanted no trouble. You’re the lot who caused the riots. Same ones the Queen up and died in. I want y’ off my farm come tomorrow. Y’can stay one more night: consider it penance fer the wall, and it is a damn fine wall, even if it were built by a band of traitors t’the King.’’ To this, Edwin’s fury broils over, and for a moment, he goes for the dagger hidden beneath his arm. The farmer’s eyebrow comes up in alarm, and he steps back. But Edwin controls himself and steps away, and the farmer lets out a slow, fearful exhale. Edwin wets his lips and swears to the farmer that he and his men will be gone tomorrow, no trouble. He walks away, his eyes black. *** ‘‘What was that about?’’ Mathers asks Edwin as he comes back. ‘‘All the men, in the barn, to-night: no questions. No fuss until then. If anyone steps out of line between then and now…’’ VanCleef says, and Mathers nods gravely in understanding, and then turns and calls out orders to the masons to finish up and clean up after themselves. VanCleef marches past the freshly built wall, and sees Gnolls silhouetted on the hilltop, calling out to each other. They don’t appear to want to attack yet, but the fact they’re there puts his hair on end.
That night, at sundown, VanCleef rouses the men, who are all for abandoning the farm before it gets too dark. VanCleef shuts this idea down, stating that if they leave now, unarmed and defenceless, the Gnolls will be picking their teeth with them before long. Instead, he asks the men what they’ve seen on the farm that could be used to defend themselves. Dead-Tooth Jack states he saw a tool-shed out back. Thredd notes he saw a couple old crossbows, up in the rafters of the barn. And Mathers points out that there are at least two good wood-cutting axes on the farmer’s front porch. VanCleef thinks on this, and then nods and takes off his shoes. He tells the others to do the same, and recalls the lessons learned the previous night about stealth. They all build slings out of scraps of cloth and leather while they wait for the sun to go down, then leave the barn together and successfully return sometime later with everything they need. The shed, it turns out, was locked; but Dead-Tooth Jack managed to pick-lock it, and brought back plenty of old, beaten armaments: all made by Stormwind blacksmiths. They share the pieces of armour out amongst themselves, and Mathers reflects that they’re from the second war, which he too served in. ‘‘The old farmer must have been a soldier,’’ Thredd notes. Armed and lightly armoured, the men then take up posts outside under VanCleef’s leadership. He places them in ambush spots around the farm, rather than blobbed altogether, and reinforces the idea that after the first volley from the crossbows and the slings, the Gnolls are to be allowed onto the farm and in amongst them before the first blow’s struck. That way, they’ll take the Gnolls by surprise, and surround them. Garrick Padfoot points out that if they let the Gnolls cross the walls, then the farmer and his daughter will be at risk. VanCleef acknowledges this, but then tells them the story the farmer told him, and that they’re all going to be kicked off the farm tomorrow anyway (even though the farmer promised them at least three days of room and board). The men argue, ‘Some of us are still sick!’, disgusted by the farmer’s conduct, and feeling rejected after building the wall, they once again assert they should leave now and leave the farmer to the wolves. VanCleef once again reminds them that they’re safer here, now, than out there. The men begrudgingly fall into place, clearly stung that yet another person has taken advantage of them, and Dead-Tooth can be heard muttering that if they survive this, he’ll ‘take a piece of what he’s owed from that farmer, one way or another.’
The men battle the Gnolls after a tense waiting-period, volley, and ambush. They lose two fighting men, and Bazil Thredd and Dead-Tooth Jack are both badly scarred after the encounter. During the battle, the farmer never attempts to leave his home to aid VanCleef and his men. Dead-Tooth is incensed, and he leaps onto the porch once all the Gnolls are dead and bashes down the farmer’s door. A shotgun blast tears through the wood, and Dead-Tooth is filled full of weak buckshot. The rest of the men storm the porch and drag the farmer out screaming, and lay into him: taking out their frustration, anger, and vengeance on the man. Beaten and bloodied, VanCleef comes and stands over him, dagger in hand. ‘‘Not only were you a Kings-man, a soldier, (he says, as he tears open the farmer’s shirt and drags out his dog-tags), but you’re a damn coward: you left it up to us to defend what’s yours, and come sunrise, you would’ve banished us, like dogs. If it weren’t for us, you’d be dead, and there’d be no stake to your farm, except for the carrion. So, why shouldn’t we take what’s yours for ourselves, now that we’ve more claim to it than you do?’’ The farmer spits on VanCleef’s leg-guards, and tells him that ‘Stormwind will come for all of them, villains.’ Disgusted, VanCleef lifts his dagger, and descends on the man. *** The scene progresses to the masons dragging away the bodies of the Gnolls, and the farmer. It is still night, and they’ve formed a pile in the middle of the wheat fields. Inside the house, there are sounds of a disturbance, and the farmer’s daughter can be heard crying. Dead-Tooth is lying on the porch with two men tending his wounds, and is hollering up a storm. VanCleef sits on the end of the porch with a torn rag he wore during the ambush in his hands, dyed red with the farmer’s blood. Thredd comes over to him and asks, ‘‘What’s to be done?’’ VanCleef doesn’t answer for a moment, but then ties the red mask below his neck, ready to be pulled up over his face. ‘‘Burn the bodies, and the fields, and then the house. Stormwind will have none of this grain from us.’’ Thredd watches VanCleef stand up, ‘‘But the daughter?’’ He argues. VanCleef looks at Thredd, malice in his eyes, and Thredd nods uncertainly and calls out for men to light torches. He then asks, ‘‘Are you sure about this, Edwin?’’ VanCleef wets his lips and looks back at the house, studies it, and then Dead-Tooth lying in severe pain on the ground as his wounds are cauterised. ‘‘Alright Bazil, you’re right, I’ll talk to her,’’ Edwin states and looks away, ‘‘Now: burn it all.’’
The following morning, the farm, the farmhouse and the surrounding area are all burnt out, or still on fire. The only thing that remains of the farm is a perfect stone wall; a testament to the mason’s work; set around the perimeter. The men carry Dead-Tooth, passed out, in a stretcher. Thredd’s face has been bandaged in an ugly way. And VanCleef wears the red mask, stained with the farmer’s dried blood. ‘‘I feel sore about the daughter, she was a fighter, unlike her rat of a father: defiant to the end.’’ Garrick Padfoot utters upon seeing the ruins of the farm. VanCleef hears this, and sombrely nods, showing regret. The daughter is not with them, which suggests VanCleef was unsuccessful in turning her against Stormwind, and that ultimately: him and his band are in the wrong. He then turns to his men and halts them, ‘‘Let’s had it be known. We are no longer masons. We are brigands, bandits, highwaymen(!), forced into a life of crime and destitution by the same men we once served! What we’ve done here, we cannot take back. Stormwind will hear of this, and will come for us. I say: let them. We’ll be defiant to the end. I say… we form a Brotherhood, here and now: The Defiant Brotherhood.’’ Edwin growls through his mask, his words muffled by the brittle red wool. ''Together, we’ll make life a misery for men like [[the farmer]], and the men they pay taxes to, and the King! ‘’ Thredd, Mathers and Padfoot agree with a roar, and others - though daunted - nod along with them. Even Dead-Tooth wakes up, one eye struggling to remain open, and spits: ‘‘Damn the King.’’ He trembles in his stretcher, weak and debilitated, but enraged over VanCleef’s speech. ‘‘The Defias… Brotherhood…’’ Dead-Tooth firmly repeats, having misheard Edwin, and a couple men clasp his open, searching hand; and give him strength. VanCleef eyes the compassion his men give to one another, and does not bother to correct Dead-Tooth. ‘Defias’ sounds right on his scorned, bloodied, dead-toothed tongue. Edwin nods, and the band set-off into the prairie in search of greener pastures, with smoke at their backs.
