The Quay

On the face of it, the diverse events unfolding in the various parts of Xandria had absolutely nothing to do with a scruffy looking man who now sat in a clearing near the edge of a wood below an escarpment on the Plains of Breen. Yet random events have a habit of linking themselves in a complexity that is often greater than the sum of all the parts. However, the man was utterly oblivious to this issue. He seemed, rather, to be considering two birds about the size of chickens that he had laid out beside him on the dry earth.


He had no thought to the rural idyll in which he was a part nor did he give much consideration to how a town might dispose of the copious amounts of waste that it produced each day. He was a simple creature and his needs were basic for the most part. If hungry, then eat. If eat, then take a dump. There was more but too much was running about in his mind. He had never even met a royal concubine.


His name was Leon and he was a self-styled chef who was travelling to Florencetown with his partner. He had received a summons from the Mayor of that place to provide his culinary services at a banquet that was to be held in a few days’ time. He had to admit that he was a little fuzzy on the exact dates and although it was actually a distinct possibility, he didn’t consider that such fuzziness might result in him missing the chance of serious employment.


Right now, however, he had a different problem. Leon often said that he could cook anything, anywhere and for anyone. It was of course a boast but it was one that he could usually go quite a way to fulfilling. Besides, amongst his folk, bragging was considered one of those “manly virtues". A bit like spitting or kicking a sheep’s bladder about in an empty field or fighting with axe and quarter staff and, naturally enough, drinking. He wasn’t exactly into all those things but he was a man and he had received a reasonable amount of cultural indoctrination.


This of course brought him back to the problem in hand. How exactly to cook two rather scrawny birds that were part way between chicken and jungle fowl, looked enormous (for a chicken) and yet were all leg and no breast. In his pack he had an old onion that offered a patina of light green mould and a couple of wild carrots. He had two shrivelled wild garlic bulbs and a mixture of dried herbs as well as his spice bag. This last item, his secret stash of culinary wealth, was to him more valuable than gold. He carried it strapped to his belt in a large leather purse.


Although he was fighting off the mother of a hangover on account of at least one “manly virtue", he knew that he needed to get the birds butchered before rigor set in. At least he hadn’t had to catch them as they had conveniently stumbled into the rabbit traps set over night and had only required a few moments to dispatch.


Eventually, when the flies were really beginning to get to him with their incessant and frantic buzzing, Leon got up and went over to check on the fire. It was barely smouldering but as everything was so dry and the air so hot, it would only be a matter of moments before the thing would leap back to life. He hung his cooking pot over the tripod and dropped in a large glug of rancid white wine. It was the stuff that they had resorted to the night before and in the stone-cold sober light of day it was apparent that it really was piss.

It hissed away as any vestiges of alcohol burned off on the bottom of the pan. At least it was safer than using the stream water nearby that had a strange metallic flavour and an unhealthy reddish colour to it. Moving with speed that might not have been associated with the screaming hurt in his head, he had soon sliced up the onion and the garlics and the carrots. He had used the palm of his left hand as a makeshift chopping board in his usual fashion and was indeed surprised today that he hadn’t managed to extract some blood in the process.


The vegetables went into the pot and were soon followed by the flesh that he had prepared. A few more glugs of white wine on top and a quick swig just to make sure.


“Urg! Rancid,” he gagged although he managed to make sure that he swallowed it all.


Quick stir, lid on the pot, step back a safe distance and the job was good as done. He collapsed in a heap on the floor, there to remain until the sun was a little higher in the sky, not too much mind. He didn’t sleep, or so he thought. If he really had been awake, he would have seen the troll stir from its standing place and step out into the clear light of day.


Thanatos bent down to view the cooking pot and the fire, more out of curiosity than anything else. He lifted the hot lid without any concern and dropped it into the heart of the fire. He then sniffed and stuck one of his three large digits into the cooking liquor. A second sniff and a doubtful look and then he stuck the digit into his mouth.


In truth he couldn’t actually taste much over and above the accumulated flavours already coating his fingers. Encouraged however, he picked up the hot pot and drank the liquid contents down in a short gulp. He left the solids behind because he hated cooked meat on principle. This was a solid view even for a troll. After all in this case the meat had only just started to cook and so was technically raw.


“Urgh!” he gasped, spitting and spluttering indignantly with the foul taste that eventually assaulted his near comatose taste buds.


He managed to put the pot down pretty much as it had been but only after stamping about in annoyance on the fire.


“That’s horse piss and no getting over it,” he muttered looking down at the sleeping cook.


He looked at the larder that was swinging from his belt and tutted. This could have been disappointment because he hadn’t got room for another corpse. On the other hand, it could have been simply his disapproval at the humans who could ruin good meat and who drank such filthy liquids. That was anybody’s guess.


He reached down and picked up a troll hand full of feathery offal that the human had left on the ground.


“Waste not, want not,” he muttered as he stuffed the small snack into his oversized mouth.


“Orange juice would be good with that,” Thanatos muttered as he headed off across the grass taking his hoard of flies with him.


The cook, although he didn’t know it, remained a cook and did not become a corpse.


Leon only slept for a relatively short while, partly because the ground was so hard and partly because he was disturbed by unpleasant dreams of flies and a monstrous creature that carried the heads of its victims around hanging from its belt. It wasn’t a good dream at all, one of those that hang about for a while after waking up. He thought that he could even smell the creature.


That was when he remembered the meal.


“Bugger,” he shouted leaping to his feet and rushing over to the pot that was cooling on the now cold fire.
The gods of cooking must have been smiling on him today for he noticed that he had forgotten to put the lid on the pot and pretty much all the cooking liquor had boiled off. If the fire hadn’t gone out, the stew would have burned.


“Bugger,” he said again, this time picking up the lid of the pot.


“Ouch, ow, ow-wow!” he yelled as he dropped the hot thing and the relatively heat proof skin of his fingers hissed a little.


“How’s that then?” he queried, presumably to those same cooking gods who had now taken on the role of capricious sprites as he looked at his blistering hands.


It took him a while to restart the fire this time and to get the stew going again. He didn’t mind the additional work, after all it had been his fault that he obviously fell asleep. As with most things in his life, Leon liked to adopt what he called a philosophical view. In other words, he was a pretty laid-back sort of person most of the time. Had the stew been burned however, that would have been a completely different matter.


The additional time focused on cooking allowed him to think about things in general. Odd things popped up here and there in his thoughts. One of them was a slight concern about the possible employment with the Mayor of Florencetown. It wasn’t the job itself but he had heard odd things about the place. Social Contract or no, he did wonder for instance how he and Noel would be received.


He wondered about where they would find lodgings. It was customary for the chef to sleep in the kitchen in most of the places he had worked in but this was a little up market on the average tavern or hostelry. Then there were things like finding work for Noel. He was a big lad and he got bored easily. When he got bored he tended to get a little destructive. At their last place he had taken apart a small wooden windmill that had until the time of Noel’s boredom had been used to mill flour for the bakery in which they were working. He took it apart carefully and methodically to give him his due. They didn’t get around to putting it back together though because they were both too busy packing their meagre belongings and fleeing the village.


Leon hadn’t always been a chef. His previous roles had been fairly high powered for those times. He had taken Holy Orders and had worked for a while as a priest. He then worked as an architect for a number of years and was currently seeking employment in this capacity with one of the greater of the City States. He had also been a negotiator for the Lebowan Government for a number of years and had notched up some pretty significant deals and peace brokerages. He had even been involved in the peace negotiations between the City States and the Ruadean nations. Although to be fair, it had been a fairly minor role.


Notwithstanding this, he was a recognised speaker and had a name as someone who could talk his way out of a hangman’s noose, as the saying went. All that had stopped rather abruptly when Noel had come along. It was rather a pity because even though he chose to believe it himself, Leon had a flair for negotiation and he could have gone far.


“Ah me,” he sighed to himself, “that’s the way of it I guess.”


He looked over to where the large bundle that was Noel was sleeping in their makeshift shelter. He had his back to the camp and the rough blanket that he had dragged about him the night before had slipped off exposing his legs and buttocks and back. Noel always chose to sleep naked after his nocturnal wanderings. It was in part the behaviour of his kind but it also had roots in his own particular culture and upbringing. Sometimes it was a damned nuisance but at other times it was simply convenient.


Leon padded over to the sleeping figure and gently pulled the cloth over the naked form.


“Gnominy,” mumbled Noel incoherently from some unfathomable dream as he grabbed the blanket automatically and wrapped it tighter around him.


“You’re welcome,” smiled Leon affectionately as he wandered back to stand guard over the meal.


By the time that Noel was starting to wake in the shelter, Leon had the meat almost cooked over the slow fire. Mostly, after working the magic of preparation, it was a matter of passing the time. This was a thing that, he had come to realise over the years, came easier with age. Now that he was himself no longer a spring chicken but resembled more closely perhaps an aging rooster, he found that it was a matter of utter simplicity to pass away countless periods of time as though it was a currency in endless supply. Which, of course, it was not.