Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.
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Nametag:rook
{Greg is right. There is not enough RED SONJA stories on the
sight. Here is my contribution.}
ROSE AND THORNS
The Rose and Thorns, a squalid little public house in the
most disreputable section of the river city of Tarnish, owned
by one Frank Thorne; propitiator, land lord, bar keep, stable
lad, apparently sole employee, was for the past six months
the abode of the Queen of Swords, the She-Devil herself, Red
Sonja.
She arrived in the city laden with treasure but soon bounced
herself from the city's finer establishments until she landed
at the Rose and Thorns where she ran up a tab of a kingly
sum, and that just on the wine and ale alone.
Tarnish, was an outpost city. Large enough to be mistaken for
an Imperial City of the interior, but it was a pirate city
none the less and far from the reaches of Imperial Law. It
flew the Imperial Flag, and many of its long black ships
carried a letter of Marquee, and those who dwelled there
pledged to provide ships and men in time of war to the
Emperor of the East, but to call a pirate a privateer, is to
call a snake a snake, and is to be bitten twice.
Thus Frank knew his long staying guest, as a wolf knows a
wolf and a thief knows a thief. Just before she knew she
herself was about to skip on her lofty bill; he took her
sword and harness and few belongings she had, off her drunk
snoring body, and when she woke, tied and bound, offered her
the following deal.
"The oasis city of Sha-Nar lies on a desert isle not far from
here. When the springs dried up a plague followed and the
rulers fled with all they could carry. But they could not
carry all."
"Three years the city has lain empty of all life. It belongs,
technically now to the Emigrate, but their few failed
attempts to post a garrison on it has failed in face of the
lack of fresh water."
"Thieves have come and gone. Mostly gone. In that, few have
ever made it back off the island. There is rumored to be a
great hidden vault of treasure there. But there is death
there too. Those, garrison troops all died there, and it was
not due to thirst or plague."
"This was one of the richest ports in the Burning Isles
before it fell.
An independent Principality dripping in jewels and gaudy
wealth. The Emigrate may have hoisted a flag over it's waters
but only death owns it's lands."
"The deal is simple enough. I have partner'd with a fast
ship. It will take you to the island. Where they will put you
a shore. You find the treasure and report back to the ship.
Not only do I wipe out your debts, but you get a more than
fair share of the loot as well. What do you say?"
"Before you answer, know this; I, as you, have my debts as
well. If you refuse my offer, then I have little choice but
to hand you over to the white slavers. Think well upon it
girl. What other prospects did you have, penniless, in a city
of thieves?"
*************************************************************
For the three day passage they kept her shackled and chained
but otherwise in comfort in the ship. Upon the fourth day she
was placed in a boat, still shackled and chained, and rowed
to the island's deserted piers. They tossed out her sword and
harness and some food and water and then her. Last they
tossed out the key to her locks and they rowed back out to
the long black ship moored in the harbor. They would return
in ten days. If she had the treasure... back they would all
go. If not...
*************************************************************
The wooden piers and stone jetties were not entirely empty.
Half sunken ghost ships lay moored now upon her man-made
shoals. Here and there a small skiff or dowel or small row
boat sat weathered and tattered or surprisingly fresh and
new.
She eyed them and her supplies. Obviously not every thief in
the area had given up hopes of finding the lost treasure. She
could re-rig one of the small boats. Piecemeal a stalwart
craft and leave almost at once. They had not given her ten
days rations or water. But they also had not given her credit
to sail away. She had captained a ship or two and knew she
could make her way back to the mainland easy enough.
Her cold steel gray eyes landed upon the huge hulk of a
rotting Emigrate ship leaning on its side in the harbor. The
waters were full of pirates in these parts. She would likely
be taken before she ever reached shore. Still... it was an
option she relished more than waiting ten days for a throat
slitting or being peppered by crossbows or being marooned and
dying of thirst.
Still... she was here. The red haired young woman turned her
head as her long fiery crimson locks fell away from her
beautiful pale face. She looked up past the dead oasis to the
towering stone walls of the lone dead city beyond.
It would be foolish to leave at once and not see if indeed
some spoils remained in the empty city. Returning thus as she
was now; would leave her no different than she was before.
Except without a landlord to sponge upon or a horse to save
her a footsore march inland to the only city in the area;
Tarnish.
It might prove difficult indeed to land a job in a city of
thieves if she came back entirely empty handed from this
undertaking, forced or not, upon her. On the other hand, if
she did manage to return with some loot and under her own
sail, well then, jobs aplenty might be the result.
The girl set down her water skins and food stores bag and
belted on her harness and sword.
She was tall. Standing six two in a world where most men
stood around five feet in height.
She had long supple graceful limbs. With a soft pale layer of
fat upon them that belied their powerful muscles underneath.
Her torso was long and slender with a jaguars grace.
She had a long slender neck. Upon which sat an oval face with
high cheek bones and large wide gray eyes of intense beauty.
Her nose was small and slightly freckled. She had large full
pillowy pouty lips. A small chin with a tiny scar.
Her youthful body was crowned with a cascading curling
waterfall of showering bright red hair that gleamed and
shimmered and fell heavy and luxurious past her proud full
buttocks.
Her youthful almost waifs appearance was offset by a set of
massive breasts. These were firm and jutting and each one was
larger than her head with palm sized puffy areolas and thumb
thick ever hard nipples.
Her long slender well shaped legs ended at a very thick and
heavy patch of corn-silk tasseled reddish hair and full round
firm buttocks.
She had a slim layer of fat under her white to the point of
almost luminescent skin. That softened her overall appearance
and made her seem shapely and not over-muscled as many sword
women were.
She looked like some regal princess who had never known an
hour of work in all her pampered well manicured life. From
shapely dancers ankles to her royal smooth brow. But those
eyes! Those large flashing gray eyes! They were the eyes of a
ravenous wolf and they were filled with lusts. Blood lusts.
When they were not softened by wine. They burned with hungers
of the thrill of battle.
Right now they were a little bloodshot from an almost year
long drunken binge and an ample supply of rum in the ship
hold over the past three days.
But they still narrowed and scanned the dead oasis that
stretched on either side of the stepped road leading up to
the massive walls of the city.
It was a large island. But other than the huge oasis now
dead. It was barren of all life; a rock jutting out of the
always turbulent sea. That it had this life given oasis and a
natural deep port bay were its saving grace. Now that watery
oasis was nothing but brown withered date and palm trees as
far as the eye could see and the port was filled with dead
ships that would sail no further.
The sword at her hip was a simple one. It was of bronze and
heavy. She had sworn to herself that with this last plunder
haul she would buy a decent iron sword that would be lighter
and keep its edge longer and some decent armor and boots
but... she had once again drunk it all away. And in truth had
drunk it away in less than a fortnight!
The sword was short and already chipped and cracked. The
harness was of decent leather and iron rings. Her shield was
gone as well as her spear. Her short composite bow and arrows
had somehow not made the journey with her as well.
Her boots were sea boots; soft and thin soled and not fit for
the desert or even a desert city.
She wore a lose blouse shirt. The only thing the innkeeper
Thorne had found of his that would fit her when the stench of
her leather jerkin became too much for his other customers.
Her full chest stretched it out as they did all the garments
she had ever worn since she was twelve.
Tucked into her soft rolled tops of her slouch boots were a
pair of buckskin leggings. Laced up on the side of the legs
with a laced crotch. She had to leave most of the crotch
unlaced as her backside was fuller and more shapely than a
man's. These too had been given to her by the tavern owner.
In general, she felt no ill will to the pub keeper, but of
course one way or another she would have to return someday
and slit his throat. One had a reputation to keep after all.
Her reputation was currently teetering between that of being
utterly feared for her martial skills and that of being the
butt of almost every drunken joke known to man.
The young teen cinched up her sword belt and slipped a dagger
into her boot top before tossing her water and rations over
her shoulders and heading up the steep roadway into the dead
oasis and the dead city beyond.
*************************************************************
The oasis was dead enough. Only the buzz of insects and the
heavy thick cloying scent of earth hung in the air. Thick
layers of dust clung to the dead stumps of trees. Even the
tough palms and date trees had shrunk down into stunted
hibernation waiting for water to return.
There were storms enough in these parts. But the Burning Sea
was so named as these storms dropped little rain.
She was surprised at how large the oasis was. It stretched
beyond sight on either side of the roadway and she walked
almost an hour to transverse it from dock to the towering
city walls.
The walls were of stone. Hewn of the raw island rock its
self. Cheaper in the use than importing raw lumber from the
mainland. They rose twenty feet and were as wide as they were
tall. Built to withstand any pirate siege.
The gates were of heavy timbers, well tared, and banded in
iron, and were open. They sat in pairs three deep in the
walls. The last pair being of iron strips and circles and
strange wrought designs. But all three pair of formable gates
being now open to the world and elements.
The red headed young teen passed through them no less warily
than she did the dead oasis. Already here were litters of
abandoned carts and scattered crates and broken jugs of all
sizes and kinds.
The gates passageway lead directly into the city its self. No
courtyard or guard's station. Just residences and shop
fronts. All made of stone. The street was wide. And littered
with refuse of all kinds. Piles and piles of it strewn
haphazardly about. And amongst the carnage of possessions
abandoned the still decaying bodies of hundreds if not
thousands lay amongst the junked trappings of civilization
like the fallen animals amongst the smoldering ruins of a
forest fire.
The city was laid out and well planned. A wide road followed
the inside of the great wall. This thus ringed the city as
much as the wall did.
Garrison quarters lain thus along this road way as did most
of the city's official buildings and trading posts and
warehouses. As such, were most cities have their courthouses
and jails and revenue buildings and such in the center of
town. The city of Sha-Nar had placed all of its public and
bulk trade buildings on the outside of its city proper along
the wall roadway.
Most cities of course 'grew' outwards. But this city was
finite from its beginning. A wall had been built and what
could be housed inside it would and everything else would not
be allowed. There was only so much water, so much food, so
much space, even on such a large island as this one.
As such the main streets leading into the city were set up as
a grid pattern. And they lead past small stone houses, many
with store fronts, and large fields of grain and fruit trees
rank with weeds which now were as well long withered and
dead.
Still in the center of the city's heart up on a rise of rock
sat the palace of the fled ruler and his family.
Imposing as the wall had been it had not prepared the young
red headed teen for the utter shambles and chaos inside. The
city its self had obviously been burned and looted and
apparently by its own inhabitants. All the buildings bore
char marks and piles of cremated corpses filled the
occasional small courtyards.
But everywhere was the piles of refuse and junk. Like huge
snowdrifts of ash and broken severed limbs the day to day
trappings of the residents had been hauled out into the
streets and left in piles.
Fire had ravaged everywhere and it was odd to walk through or
often over the semi-charred refuse. It was more a squalid
prison camp than a great city. But here it was. A once
opulent wealthy city that made its money on the taxing of all
trade that passed by and through its lone safe harbor and
fresh stores now dead with its guts ripped out and strewn all
over its face.
A once proud arrogant face reduced to sullen ash and
anonymity.
There was loot enough. Not treasure. No gold. No silver
coins. No great horde of jewels. But just in the streets one
could find the odd small silver chased statue or well worked
bronze cup. The sort of stuff one could fill a boat hull with
and pay off the lodging of your crew and the docking of your
ship for a month or two.
All of it just sitting out in the layers of dust and soot and
bird droppings.
If the date and palm groves had become a graveyard full of
buzzing insects then the city its self had become a rookery
full of crows. The black ominous birds were everywhere. Three
years and the rats and carrion birds were still finding
putrefied feasts aplenty.
The more recent Emigrate solider bodies in their distinctive
turbans and black jackets and baggy pants with their long
curved swords would be the more fresher feasts.
These garrison soldiers were scattered about here and there.
Almost always alone amongst the offal and garbage. Odd.
*************************************************************
The official buildings and garrison houses set along the wall
roadway held reward plenty enough. The locks on the doors and
chests were easy to pick and the young teen firebrand was
puzzled that nothing seemed to have been taken over the
years.
Here were swords and daggers and harnesses and large heavy
bows and iron tipped arrows and armor that alone would have
been profitable enough for several such trips.
There were several kings who would have eagerly funded an
expedition for such a return of much needed wares for their
own troops use.
Except on closer inspection the young girl realized that
after three years of lack of upkeep and use had reduced much
of the weapons and armor to rust pitted crumbling ruin.
Still a few hours of stubborn searching and she had traded
out much of her gear.
The boots she kept as she could find nothing yet to fit her
small feet.
The bronze sword was exchanged for a new iron sword, still
too large for her arm to swing comfortably, and new sheaf to
house it.
She found a new back pack and took that. Shifting her food
stuffs into it as well as a newly found wet stone and small
oil jar and powder for her new swords upkeep.
A set of flints and tinder went into the new back pack as
well. As well as several bee's wax candles and a box of
tapers. A flask of lamp oil went in there as well as a fine
set of lock picks which she was already using.
The bows and crossbows she had all found so far were cracked
from the years of heat and remaining taut and strung. But she
loaded up on not one but two quivers bursting full of iron
tipped arrows.
Iron ore was rare in these parts and most arrow heads were of
bronze or even chipped stone and thus tended to fall in heavy
headed flight. The fletchers art therefore did not prosper on
the Burning Sea coasts.
With two quivers hanging off each round buttock and a new
sword heavy in its new sheaf and a back pack and its straps
over her shoulders and buckled about her narrow waist she was
no longer as agile or lithe as she had been. But she was
better equipped and besides her own huge breasts cantilevered
the weight well enough.
The armor she kept finding was all too big and far too heavy
for her young body. Being mostly of plate and none of it
fluted.
Eventually she did find a shirt of chain-mail. It was too
tight in the chest, of course, and too short in the torso.
Still it was the most likely armor she would find and her own
shirt and trousers had been given to her by the innkeeper
several weeks back and were almost as rank as the silks and
gossamer fabrics she had first arrived in Tarnish wearing.
There was a forage and blacksmith behind one of the garrison
houses and she had little doubt that she would find another
in the city its self for the daily smithy of its occupants
needs.
The coals were long dead and she had no desire to waste too
much time at the task. But in a few hours with snips and
pliers and vise she had cut the mail shirt down into a chain
mail halter top and bottoms.
It was too hot to wear much else in a desert city without
water. But even as she put the garments on and took them off
again and again to make adjustments. She had to note that the
top was now only leather straps and two triangles of chain
mail barely fitting over her large nipples and that the
bottoms had to be snipped in the middle of the crotch leaving
them hanging now as a chain mail loin cloth or more
accurately a triangle of chain-mail in the front and another
in the rear hanging down freely with a thong of leather about
the waist to hold them up.
The top fit a bit snug and dug into her firm jugs. The bottom
pieces were rather smallish and both top and bottom lacked
the leather backing of most chain-mail so her nipples and
forest of red hair of her crotch were plain to see between
the ring mails openings.
Still she had fought in plate armor before and naked as well;
and what she had learned was in plate you took a serious
beating and naked you often cut off the head of your attacker
without them even drawing their blade.
With so many straps on her small shoulders she soon gave up
on the idea of her top having the too tight straps run over
them and again with the snips in hand she cut off the
shoulder straps and just let the top rest with one strap
digging a bit deep into her breast flesh with the triangle
chain-mesh inverted so instead of one sided pyramides with a
wide bottom narrowing to a pointed top she now wore the
garment with the base at the top and the point hanging
downwards.
So the armor she left the garrison post blacksmith wearing
was a strap around the upper half of her breasts crossing
just above her large areolas and then around her slim back
with an upside down chain-mesh triangles hanging down with
the points free. The weight of the chain-mesh was meant to
keep the triangles of ringed steel from flying up and
exposing her nipples entirely.
Her bottom was almost identical to her top both in appearance
and in theory. A thin leather strap ran around the upper half
of her round behind with two upside down triangles of mesh
ringed steel hanging freely down. Again the weight of the
mesh were meant to keep the triangles from flying up and
exposing her sex and haughty rear end.
Considering that it was chain-mesh ring mail that the
'covering' pieces were composed of, all modesty had been
flung out the window, as little to nothing was covered at
all.
It was obvious to the teen girl that there was little if any
serious threat in the city after searching through it's outer
buildings for the better part of an entire day so her choice
of 'armor' was not about keeping her safe from physical harm
as it was designed to increase her chances of a boat landing
in ten days time and taking her back on board the ship.
Nothing was easier to handle than horny men. Pirates, being
even more so in the spectrum of men, being only less so, than
bankers.
*************************************************************
With night falling she found a good jail cell and closing
herself inside it built a small fire upon the flagstone floor
and ate what little meal she dared and drank even less before
laying herself out and sleeping until early morning.
The morning came as it always does in the seas, in sheets of
wind and the winding-up of birds.
The young teen girl decided there was little point in
spending another day traipsing about the outer ring of burnt
out business and official buildings and houses; pealing away
the layers of an onion, and instead decided to cleft the
vegetable in twain as it were, and made her way straight into
the center of the city and the large palace perched there.
As she did so she noticed the city with its well laid out
grid of square streets did not have any well laid out direct
path to the palace at its center. In fact, it was obvious
that the city planers had made it a maze of right angle
approaches that led, eventually to the courtyard and the
steps up to the places lone access.
Along the way, the red headed teen, noticed that there were
numerous fountains and not one but two aqueducts leading
though the city from a large cistern next to the elevated
palace.
Since rain fall was scarce in these parts. The cistern and
the aqueducts which lead out from it must have been filled by
the same water source as the oasis outside the city walls
have been supplied by.
There were also a well. Large and ornate and built of stone.
A large bronze pot and chain and hoist took place of the
normal rope and bucket traditionally associated with a dug
well. The hoist had apparently been powered by oxen or mules
or slaves for it would have been laborious to use.
She suddenly noted that she had not seen a single animal body
or skeleton amongst the mydrid of humane remains laying
everywhere.
Did they all go into the 'stew pot' in the last days. Every
horse, every dog, every cat, every pet bird, into the stomach
of the dying survivors? To stave off hunger and death for an
hour more?
The well was intriguing. What greater treasure was there than
water? Maybe the hidden vault was down in the well? Of course
how does one reach a hidden vault in a public well?
She was appalled at the sure amount of death. She who had
seen battle fields aplenty was sickened at the signs of
hundreds if not thousands apparently left stranded upon an
island of plague to die.
They had apparently not died well in the end. They seem to
have gone insane and attacked and burned everything.
Most of the remains of the dead were locked in piles of
combat against one another. Kitchen knives and small pry bars
and clubs of all makeshift design lay near bashed heads and
fetal prone skeletons from which handles stuck out like the
quills of a porcupine.
They had not all died at once. Or soon. There were signs of
barricaded houses and streets and some paving stones had been
dug up and the soil underneath had been planted though there
was no sign of anything growing in the dry dust.
The air was full of the cawing ear screeching thunder of
murders of crows and the odd chimerical whirl of numerous
wind-chimes.
The palace was small considering its lofty approach of
cascading staircases and large imported costly statues. There
was enough bronze in these statues to fuel a smithy for a
life time of hinges or pins or door handles or nails!
None of it treasure of course. But still, there was a head
start of decades of city building just lying about rusting
under the sun and salt air.
Tarnish could replace half its squabble of ratty second rate
rope hinges and rope door tugs with the simple hardware of
the abandon city of Sha-Nar. She had to wonder why everyone
was just leaving all this to rot?
The individual pirate or scavenger could not seriously make a
big trade off such things. But it was odd that no City State
had not come in with its fleet and stripped the city clean
and thus furnished its own city with daily wonders if not
heaps of gold and gems.
The Emigrate had planted its flag here. Though it was no
where to be physically seen. It did not hang above the gates
nor did it flap above the palace. Other than there dead
soldiers spotting the streets there as no sign of their
occupation despite several attempts to do so.
They had won it by war treaty a year ago. Surely in a year
they would have started a full scale looting of the island
even if they could not keep a garrison there; due to the lack
of water and the logistical supply problem?
The flag was there. She walked across it just outside the
palaces only entrance. It lay upon the ground as did a number
of more freshly decaying Emigrate corpses.
The palace was composed of several exposed outer rooms and a
few open roof-less courtyards. She had toured the entire
building in less than an hour.
The Emigrate had set up shop here and there were various
crates of supplies and the debris of an occupying official
office, but nothing one could call treasure. In fact, it
would appear the order of business for the Emigrate had been
firstly to set up the mechanics of official forms and reports
and then burning everything in the palace to make room for
apparently there own furniture and furnishings future
arrival. An arrival which was still in the offing or
abandoned all together.
The powerful Emigrate was currently bogged down in a civil
war and it was unlikely to be sending any more troops to the
island anytime soon.
In fact, the cistern sitting on the jutting rock outcropping
next to the palace was in fact far larger than the palace but
sadly just as empty.
The night was falling on the second day and so far the young
red headed teen had not found anything to buy her passage way
back to the mainland. And if she did not find water soon she
would have to take one of the small boats and risk her own
crossing back to the mainland and a start once again from
nothing. For what little water she had remaining would not
last out the remaining ten days until the ship returned.
*************************************************************
She passed an uneasy night in the palace. It's hallways and
chambers and walkways seemed haunted by ghosts. She was glad
to leave it in the morning to the hordes of crows who swooped
and threatened her as she left.
She returned to the great well in the heart of the city just
a few blocks from the foot of the palace.
From the winding chain coiled around its bar she could see it
was very deep. An island with its own fresh water table was
not unheard of; these old volcanic islands often had arteans
springs that seeped up to the surface. This one apparently
had a much greater, or did have, a much greater source of
fresh water. Great enough that you could dig a well down to
it and lower a bucket the size of a large bath to pull it up.
Large enough that it once had filled a cistern the size of a
hill fort. Where had all that water gone? Drunk away over the
decades? That seemed odd. To drink dry a river.
She eyed the well and the sky filling with searing sun and
clouds of crows. She began to search for the makings of a
torch.
*************************************************************
There was no way to 'lower' the huge brass caldron. She could
only knock away the brake handle with a large war hammer and
watch the whole thing go hissing down into the dark.
When it came shuddering to a clanging stop. She dropped the
war hammer and started shimming down the chain. The loops of
chain were large enough to lend her finger holes and she had
climbed mountains often enough and trees. It would not be a
difficult climb down. Up might be a bit more 'challenging.'
She would certainly have a sore back and arms come nightfall.
She let the torch dangle from a thong tied to her ankle as
she climbed down. The bronze caldron had slammed against the
sides of the well a few times when it had come to it's
jarring stop. It was not long enough to reach the bottom of
the well proper.
When she reached the caldron she retrieved her torch form her
ankle and surveyed the well. It wasn't a well. It was a
natural shaft in the raw rock and only the top had been set
with stone.
The caldron was dangling by its chain about ten feet from the
floor of what was a natural small cavern. Irregular in shape.
The young teen girl dug around in the caldron for the coil of
rope she had placed there and quickly fashioned it to the
chain and slipped over the lip of the large bronze pot and
climbed down to the uneven cave floor.
The floor was dry and damp and muddy in places. There was a
few pot holes where water was still a finger joint deep. From
the sides of the well she could tell that the water had
normally rose almost half way up it. That would have been an
enormous volume of water. Still there not enough muddy water
even in all the pot holes of the room to keep her alive until
the ship returned. She would have to take the small boat it
seemed and do so tonight before dehydration stole her sea
skills from her.
Still, where had the water gone? Yes it had been drunk up by
the oasis and people but surely there had been more of an
active source than just a lake of it underground?
The young girl wandered around the small cave until she found
a passageway leading out of it. This was a combination of a
natural twisting winding in the raw rock and the hand of man
carving and cutting to create it.
She wondered at this. For far above in the shaft of the well
its self were several large man-made openings which had used
the wells own resurgence pressure to flow to a point where a
large hollow screw turned by slaves or beasts of burden had
pulled it up into the cistern above the city.
The natural flow of gravity had then sent it back out through
the aqueducts to the fountains and buildings throughout the
city its self.
The cistern would have gone dry before the well. She thought
of the barricades and the rings of corpses around the well's
square and shuddered. Many of those that had died had babies
or children in their arms as well as clubs and knives.
The passage way lead a short distance and then half the wall
gave way on one side. Here through the gap she could see
piles of rubble. A cave in of what had been a natural
branching off of the passageway. The cave in had not filled
in the entire side passage and she could thrust her torch
into it and see what her ears had already discerned. A rush
of water was gushing by in a torrent and falling along a
series of waterfalls before proceeding into a pool with a
whirl pool center.
A cave-in! A cave-in had blocked what had been the natural
course of the underground river rising up from the depths of
the earth and had left only its exit channel for it sucking
it back down into the bowels of the earth.
If she could but remove the rock blocking the side passage
the river would once again flow back down that channel and
refill the well?!
Of this she was certain as the river had to rise up and fill
an area of some size to reach the second opening and trip
over the falls into the pool. But if the rock were removed
from the passage way, then being lower again than the water
fall rise it would usher the water back away into the passage
way and thus the well chamber refilling it.
Once the chamber was full the room where the river now flowed
would back up and fill until it tripped back over the falls
as it was doing now and down into the pool to be sucked away
again.
A simple cave-in. Why had no one come down in the well and
figured this out?
It would take several men quiet a while to remove the passage
way of rubble. But there was a few kegs of black powder up in
the palace where the Emigrate had started to set up an
armory.
A few well set charges should clear out the passage way
enough to at least get the water re-flowing back into the
well room.
This was a side passage and after her initial elation of
solving the water shortage she found herself back in the main
passage and walking along it's upward slopping path to its
end. It ended halfway up the wall of an immense cavern. Here
the water must have flowed just as it did to the well room,
once that room was filled, and fell like a great water fall
into the chamber below.
The chamber below was filled with stone structures. An
underground city. Illuminated by phosphors rocks glowing
lichen and great cracks in the ceiling through which razor
thin slats of light shone through.
The young girl quickly climbed down the sheer rock wall and
soon was wandering around the deserted city.
The city its self was puzzling. For much of it was out of her
reach. There were no doors but rather holes in the walls of
the structures but most of these holes were hundreds of feet
out of reach. Those entrances she found showed no sign of
staircases or access points into the upper levels of which
there were many.
There were smoke holes in several of the lower ceilings but
the smoke would have risen into the upper levels and that
seemed odd.
Perhaps there had once been wooden staircases like scaffolds
and wooden ladders long ago. It was obvious that when the
water had flowed as it once did that the whole city would
have been submerged.
Strange though, for the craftsmanship of the stone work on
the buildings themselves were extraordinary. Every inch had
been carved with reliefs and images and odd whirling winding
designs. Strange that so much skill and labor would not have
fashioned a few stone staircases leading up to the higher
floors.
It was also odd that there was no stone bridges leading over
the great dark chasm that split the city in two. This chasm
was beyond her best leap by several and was filled with black
muckish water. Evidently being all that was left from when
the water had stopped filling the room.
Still at one time when this city had been built and lived in
this chasm must have existed for it showed no signs of being
the effect of an earth quake as the buildings were built
right up to its edge in perfect harmony.
Even if it had not been filled with water back then it would
have needed a bridge to cross it. Strange.
As the red haired girl stood puzzled at the edge of the great
kavas she was shocked to see a pair of eyes take the place of
her own eyes reflection and blink up at her.
Mere-folk!
She recoiled back and then recovered her composure. They had
hypnotic abilities but could not leave the water. She would
be safe if she remained upon her guard and a full stride away
from the edge of the inky black river.
The eyes rose up out of the water. Revealing a beautiful
female head and upper naked torso with large heavy breasts
almost rivaling her own.
The creature wore a simple diadem and spoke in the common
tongue old as time its self.
"Come to gawk at us, humane? Come to watch the last of my
proud race die in the filth. In the channel where we once
threw all our waste and where now we struggle to live."
Red Sonja leaned forward a little and looked. Through the
brown water she could just make out a few mere-men leaning
against the wall of the underwater ravine gasping with their
faces pressed up to a lone trickle of fresh water seeping
down the wall she had just climbed down. The sole supply of
fresh water to the cavern. A small rivulet that ran from the
tunnel in dripping puddles.
"Your treachery had killed us off. All our compacts and
treaties destroyed. Your war has destroyed us all but for a
handful. Come you now to gloat over us. As you built your
city over us all these years ago."
Red Sonja frowned. "The city above you is as dead as your
own. Those you had a contract with have fled and those that
remained have died. Their water too has dried up. And plague
has decimated them."
"They deserved their deaths for what they have done to us,"
the leader of the mere-folk hissed.
"Look. I am not sure what was going on here. What your
treaties were about. But it was a cave-in, high above in the
wall, that cut off both cities water supplies." Red Sonja
pointed up the sheer wall of the cliff side she had scrambled
down and realized as she pointed that water ring showing the
natural level of the chamber when full was far below the cave
mouth. The mere-folk would never have been able to reach the
cave or the water source.
"I might be able to remove the rock that collapsed and open
up the water flow again.
It would take several days even if I am successful to re-fill
this chamber to even the point of letting you escape from the
crack."
"Do this and my people will give you thanks! Do this and save
my people and I will give you thanks!" The busty princess
rose up higher in the filthy water her gills on the sides of
her rib cage flapping wildly.
"Ah, thanks is great. But information would be better. There
is rumor that the king of this city had a hidden treasure
trove and with your mentioning of contracts and treaties and
such-"
The busty princess cut Red Sonja off by simply pointing up at
a large stone building near the top of the towering city. "As
per our arrangement we kept his treasure safe and he was
suppose to keep our water supply safe but the water supply
was stopped and our sole egress from the city closed off."
She swooped her long thin arm, still pointing, to another
section of the chamber where a rock slide had covered almost
all of an opening.
Red Sonja looked back at the king's hidden vault and sighed.
She could never reach that. Not in a million years. "How did
he get that treasure down her for you to, er, guard?"
"Open up that passageway to the outer sea and you will see
that there is a small cave there. He would send in a ship on
every full moon at high tide and we would take the items and
place them in his horde. In exchange he kept the fresh water
flowing from above and he forbid any from fishing in our
shoals."
"Okay, I will open up that passageway. I hope. And restore
the fresh water from above. In exchange you will send your
people out into the cave at high tide with some of the king's
horde of treasure where a boat will take it away." Red Sonja
turned away from the beautiful naked mere-woman and quickly
set to work.
First, she had to use some black powder to open up the
passage to the outer sea. This currently did no good for the
mere-people as it was higher up than the trench of water they
were stuck in but it had to be done before she blew the
rubble in the side tunnel and sent that river rushing back
along its original course.
Second she had to blow that tunnel of rubble. It was
dangerous. And she almost drowned. Her ears rang for days
afterwards. But both tasks completed she now had only to sit
by the great well and wait.
The springs in the oasis came back first. In muddy gurgling
floods and by the time the well started to fill up enough to
reach the caldron the palms and dates were already green
again.
It was on the tenth day when the deep pit where the giant
leaning hollow cork screw that lead up to the cistern sat and
aqueducts sat that water began to appear in frothy muddy
seepage.
It was on the tenth day that the long black ship appeared in
the bay and a lone row boat was pulled up to the collapsed
docks. They were amazed by the sudden greenery of the oasis
but more amazed at the nearly naked red headed teen standing
there smug with her booted foot upon a chest of gold and
gems.
Red Sonja returned with the pirates to Tarnish. Saying
nothing of her adventures except that the island was filled
with un-dead that rose every night and devoured the living if
there be any about.
But for several months she would slip out of the Tarnish
harbor in a small rented skiff and make her way back to the
island of Sha-Nar and enter a small cave at the full moon at
high tide and then return to port. With gems and gold. Which
she most wisely kept discretely hidden.
Thieves from Tarnish continued to visit the island of Sha-Nar
until the Emigrate once again placed a garrison there. And
once again it scummed to death despite the return of fresh
water. Some claimed some bewitching naked red headed she
devil killed the men at every full moon. Others, that the
place was simply cursed.
In the end the island was permanently abandoned and all
further attempts to settle it forgotten. 'The waters are full
of monsters and the city it's self with a red headed death.'
So went the lore.
But most simply shrugged and said it held nothing of value
and that was an end to it.
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