War Brothers
Copyright (c) 2008-2009 by BoonDock
Chapter 30: Entering the Fray
As I gazed out at Port A'maine through the porthole of the wooden ship, I couldn't help noticing the pall of smoke that hung over the town. The slight offshore breeze suddenly wafted a sample of the miasma, created by bad hygiene practices, past my nose.
I shuddered in disgust as the reality of a primitive city was brought home to me. I could hear S'alor's sardonic comments about humans who 'messed where they lived' as a subliminal refrain in the back of my head.
If it hadn't been for the bad smell, I would have thought the sight of the sprawling harbour town to be quite beautiful. The buildings shone in the late afternoon sunlight. It was the first time on War World that I had seen any evidence of buildings not created by the 'Elves', and if I had been watching a documentary, I would have thought that it was a recreation of a small European port from a millennium in the past.
The warehouses on the waterfront were prosaic enough, and the houses and other buildings that sprawled up the gentle slope of the hills surrounding the harbour were pretty much as I had imagined they might be. The one glaring omission, however, was any form of church or temple. There didn't seem to be any evidence of religious buildings, and I decided that I would try to find out about religious practices as soon as I could.
Brooding over the town, at the summit of one hill, was a large building that I tagged in my mind as 'feudal castle'. From a distance, I could already see that there were a number of differences from the many castle remains I had seen in Europe, the most glaring of which was the glacis and ramparts which had been designed to resist attacks from cannons. Their lack told me that projectile weapons were definitely not a part of this world.
While I had been woolgathering, the ship had been moored to the dock and the sailors now extended a gangplank.
"In your Fingers and Hands, disembark," came the call. My first thought was to keep my Finger together, and S'Alor was part of the finger in my opinion, so I called everyone else in the finger together and we made our way up the ladders to the main deck.
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