Arcaea/Dining Hall Late 08-09/Euran's Nasal Problems
A dry whisper echoed through the dusty corridors of Castle Lantze. It stirred the heavy tapestries, scuttled past the servant attempting to clean them, until it finally scurried to an uncoordinated halt before the steward, who was pacing up and down outside the master bed chamber.
"Sir," the messenger boy panted, "M'lord must be dead! Everybody's saying it. He's been in there more than a week now, no sight nor sound of him. The healer come down from the House says that he was mighty wounded when he arrived. Why, if Lord Lantzas wasn't as big as he was, they wouldn't have recognised him for all the bandages!"
Breathing deeply through his nose, the steward wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and turned to face the messenger. "And what would you say has been eating the food then, pray?" He had felt somewhat foolish to insist that food continue to be winched up the dumbwaiter, but fear of the baron's rage if it stopped compelled him. Similarly, he didn't dare open the door, despite the cessation of noise. His orders to leave Euran alone had been very specific, and they had almost been delivered with enough ferocity to permanently damage his eardrums.
"Must have been birds," replied the servant confidently, "that's what everyone's been saying."
"Very polite birds, to use the cloth to wipe their beaks."
The lad only shrugged. "I once heard Master Ethelred talk about birds, an' the like. Called it," his brow wrinkled, "Orn-thol-gee? Anyway, he said them carrion crows were mighty clever birds."
Shaking his head, the steward shooed the boy away. He did not believe it, but he knew that most of the servants in the castle, and much of the population of Lantzas, thought that Euran had died of his wounds. If he did not act soon there would be trouble. He gritted his teeth and stepped towards the the door. With a crash, the steward was sent flying backwards by it until he turned the movement into a voluntary one as he caught sight of the thing exiting the room.
Euran's nose was... well, more to the point, it wasn't. A gaping hole sat in the center of his face like a third eye. The baron had never been a handsome man, and previous battles had seen him scarred before (he had been missing half an ear for some time), but this was something else. A myriad of other cuts appeared to have festered, turning his face into an intricate combination of lumps and gaping wounds.
"What times is it, man? Stop looking so damn stunned. Have I overslept? Sometimes battle wounds can make a warrior tired. Must get moving, can't have people thinking I'm dead now, can we?" The baron's uncannily loud and jovial voice sent the steward running. Euran turned to watch him leave, one eye half closed by the fleshy pulp surrounding it. He grunted, and turned around to move back into his room.
His gaze slid carefully off the mirror mounted on the wall, as he suppressed a tremor of horror.
Sir Euran Yetisbane Kandurell (Lord)
"That's not Baron Euran!" cried one peasant. "He had more face!"
"So you want to know how I lost my nose?" shouted Euran above the roar of the crowd. "I'll tell you the tale."
"There was this enormous battle in Lenamaziel - Cathayans pouring down on us from all sides. We were all but trapped, we were massively outnumbered, and those Cathayan devils were coming at us screaming like devils. My men and I held against the onslaught - took a good many of them down to hell, but as time passed it became obvious that we Arcaeans just didn't have enough /men/. We were losing one man to their three, but that wasn't good enough odds. So, give this epic battle a few hours - imagine the stench, will you - and I'm standing on top of a pile of dead men about a dozen metres high!"
Nobody in the crowd thought to challenge the improbable statement - their raucousness had settled down into a .
"All my men were dead by now, y'see, and I'm surrounded by the Cathayan horde. Let me tell you about the smell! I've got the bodies of a hundred men decaying below me, I've been sweating and bleeding on the battlefield for half a day, and then there are the /Cathayans/..." He shook his head in disgust, eliciting a few chuckles. "Anyway, after a while it gets so bad that I just rips my own nose off."
There was a brief stunned silence before the laughter began, in typical Lantzian fashion. Morale seemed to be a little higher, the bastards.
Sir Euran Yetisbane Kandurell (Lord)
