Interlude 18. Sharp Presents

Interlude 18. Sharp Presents

Klaus panted from exertion, still clutching the bloodied knife tightly. The person before him had just lost conscience, and that meant that interrogation was over for the day. Or for good, really. If he were to be entirely honest, Klaus received all the information he needed within the first five minutes of it. The next ten were spent cutting the strips of skin off the incompetent idiot. He briefly thought back to the conversation. This was the person who conducted the observation of their patsy making an attempt at White Witch's wife. One who reported back that it was a success. Falsely so.RêAd lateSt chapters at novelhall.com Only

It took a couple days to review the notes his previous instance left behind. Thankfully, unlike the situation before, this iteration had the forethought to leave a detailed log of planned activities, so that Klaus could review what went wrong immediately. The last entry described an intent to try and extort the knowledge on some sort of alchemical substance codenamed as "cookies" from the lady Gillespie, using the antidote to rare poison provided to the hashishin as leverage. He had high confidence his previous instance had successfully departed to converse with the aforementioned lady and... vanished into thin air. His horse was found grazing on the meadow not far from Ashenvale pass entrance, which was indeed cited as the preferred meeting spot. Which very likely meant that White Witch exterminated the previous instance in some way that left no body behind or hid it convincingly.

Why would she? Collating the data he had, Klaus had tentatively presumed that his predecessing instance made a mistake and Alyssa Gillespie did not possess the knowledge of the compound in question and thus had killed in a fit of desperation after his predecessor refused to give the antidote without receiving the knowledge she could not give. But according to his diplomatic contacts, there was no disturbance with the Gillespies. Which was odd, because by all the clues he had so far, lady Gillespie was head over heels in love with all four of her wives and would definitely throw a big funeral, should any of them expire.

Which led to the current situation. Where Klaus clarified the validity of certain reports with the help of poignant questions and a sharp knife. And each answer he received had made him more and more furious with the incompetent buffoon on the other end of the conversation. As it turned out, the man had reported the success of the operation based simply on an observation that the addition to dragonscale amulet was triggered. No legwork to determine the exact outcome of it was even attempted - the report simply went with "everything went to plan" based on step one succeeding. What really galled him the most, however, was the blithe inability to comprehend the problem with not verifying the success of steps two through twenty by the man in question.

He contemplated momentarily the merits of just stabbing the bleeding mess in front of him in the jugular, but in the end, put the knife down on the table instead. This man was inducted into an organization for his knowledge of magical detection methods first and foremost, and no one had expected him to be so devoid of common sense in other matters. A mistake Klaus intended to rectify as soon as possible. The man would be healed up, though only to the point of preserving his life, then he would be confined for life as a live-in teacher of magical detection, which from now on would be conducted by trained agents who'd know better than to assume that success of plan's start meant it went without hitch in its entirety.

Hrm... So. According to the annotation, this particular one was named kusarigama, and it resembled a sickle on one end. Attached to that sickle was a lengthy fine chain with a weight on the end. According to the explanation given, this was a weapon somewhat common in far orient, and the proper usage revolved around using sickle as a sort of hand-axe and hook while using the weighted chain as a flail and as a whip to wrongfoot and disarm the enemy and bring them within the striking distance of the sickle. Or, alternatively, catch them unprepared with a weight to the head. Tricky. Exceptionally tricky. He carefully coiled the chain back into the box. This was an interesting weapon, no doubt, but mastering it would not be easy, quick or painless. Better set this off till summer, maybe find out if there is anyone familiar with the thing at all among his contacts.

The next box, narrow and about a pied-long, yielded something akin to a quarterstaff... if the staff was sawed in three equal parts and conjoined with loose hinges. The annotation claimed it to be triple staff and implied it was also of oriental origin. Setting it aside as well, Alistair opened the bigger box under the two of them. A long club with a metal spike on top. An unusual combination and an unusual name. Goedendag, as it was apparently called, was supposedly in use among the freemen of the northern Kraut and developed as a countermeasure to armored knights. He set this one aside, it did look like he could learn some basics of it quickly enough, drawing on his previous experiences. The slightly wider box next to it contained a sword with an unusual wavy blade. Flamberge, as it was named, was apparently something no one really fielded often due to expense and complexity in producing a wavy blade, but was cited as having a significant cutting ability and, somewhat alarmingly, for causing wounds that were much more likely to fester. Something he would have attributed to poison, but apparently caused by the construction of the blade instead. Mindboggling. He probably could use it off the bat, but on the other hand, the information about causing bad wounds made him resolve to put this one aside for really bad situations.

The thick box underneath yielded something he had tentatively identified as a crossbow. The presence of pulleys and cross-shaped construction of shoulders was more than a little odd for him, as well as the string that formed a complicated loop. Reading the annotation made him swallow and set the thing aside. If what it said was right, and he had little reason to think otherwise, then this crossbow had the size suitable for horseback use, yet shot bolts with the power of siege arbalest. There was a short looking glass bolted to the back end of it above the stock. An interesting solution for aiming. This weekend, he and some of the other youngsters had planned to attend a boar hunt. That would be a good time for him to try this out. At worst, he'd be ribbed on for trying to use a boondoggle. At best, he would be the first to be seen using an impressive crossbow - and in that case, he would be certain to drop the name of Alyssa Gillespie in every ear. It seemed fair to him to send some business her way for such a thoughtful gift collection.

That left two long narrow boxes on the bottom, aside from ones with copper boss. He cracked both of them open. The longer one contained something called bardiche. Which vaguely reminded him of the battleaxes used by batal. Vaguely. The shape of the blade, while obviously intended for chopping, could probably be also used to thrust if needed. The shorter one contained a flail with three balls. He was vaguely familiar with the weapon, but insofar all of the examples he ever handled were with one ball only. Three at once obviously added some complexity.

Finally, he opened the two boxes he was instructed to leave for the last. A pair of flintlocks and a musket with a bayonet. He had already seen and used both, having been summoned to the castle right after the festivities along with some of the trusted knights and squires for demonstrations. He was very impressed. Firearms packed enough punch to make most armors pointless up close while being light and portable enough to make it a viable footsoldier armament. On one hand, it probably meant the end of chivalrous knight charges on the horseback. On the other, it meant that a kingdom with firearms would very likely win any conflict with one without. Maybe not every battle, surprise attacks and overwhelming numbers could possibly overcome musketeers in detail, but unless the command was given to utter morons, the war would still be won. And his highness Abraham did mention that the reason why they're only given some limited exposure to firearms was simply because Alyssa was already busy developing better ones and would have something even more impressive by the time they would train up anyone to be a competent musketeer. Still, having such exclusive weapons as personal gifts did tickle his fancy a lot.