Moon Day, Leo 23rd, 576CÆ, Year of the Tiger
Players: Rathar the Brash (Carolingian Frank, Berserker of Krimmr), Iodas (Ixian, Barbarian), Frakki (Viking, Shaman of the Musk Ox totem), Aeltrin (Viking, Assassin), Xararhaan (Hyperborean, Paladin of Apollo), Vertigris (Carthaginian, Necromancer)
The villagers were still on the boats when they staggered out of the cave. By the time the salt had swirled and gone and the last robed figure had sunk back into the dark, people were already rowing in. Someone was crying. Someone else was laughing. Aodh macc Brann was neither—he stood at the waterline and looked at them for a long moment, and then he extended his hand.
What the village gave them fit in a small cloth sack. Pooled coin from the bottoms of forty purses. A good knife that had belonged to someone who no longer needed it. Aodh said it plainly: *"It's everything liquid we have"*. Nobody argued with that. Nobody asked for more.
Ilfmr settled Xonn's debt on the beach. Not in coin—he pulled the blue gem from his coat and held it out without ceremony. Xonn turned it over in his fingers, looked at Ilfmr, looked at the party, said nothing, and put it in his pocket. The arithmetic worked out. That was enough.
The sail west was quiet. Xonn asked no questions about what had happened in the cave. The coast slid past—grey stone, cold water, the same fishing settlements they had passed four days ago under entirely different circumstances.
Port Zangerios came up at dusk. Xonn paid the hundred and fifty in gold on the dock, counted out correctly, no discussion. *"Easy money,"* nobody said.
Somewhere north of them, the sea had received what it was owed. And somewhere in Frakki's memory, a vast eye had opened and found him satisfactory. Rathar remained skeptical. The night was young. The Golden Lamprey was open.
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