#brayherds

During the Age of Myth, Aadalbert Kath was best known as a respected naturalist at Rooten College. He published three increasingly esoteric volumes on the flora & fauna of the Godswallow delta, but disappeared while conducting fieldwork for a fourth. Now he wades about the delta, emerging from the swamp to give lectures in the ineffable language of eternal flesh to audiences of widely varying intelligences. The marsh orruks, he has learned, are only interested in target practice, while the majestic wading gargants who fish the coastal waters plainly cannot hear him properly from their great altitude and tend to mistake him for a fish, or urchin, or some other delicacy.

It is with some surprise that he finds his warmest welcome among the brayherds of the Fengrave, who raise a great clamour whenever he arrives in one of their camps. The bray-folk pour from their hovels to hear his wisdom; wizened shamans mark his passage with gutteral hymns; greater brays of the warrior caste kneel at his feet, drawing blood from their chests with jagged blades to seek some unknown blessing. They pile offerings at his feet: various skulls & other bones, entrails, carved totems, the still-beating hearts of those sacrificed in his honour. Before he is even halfway through his lecture, the herd is lost in ecstatic fervour and drunken violence. He stands at an ancient herdstone, with a pile of religious paraphernalia & raw meat in front of him.

So on the first full moon they took her down to the river, still screaming, and the Captain’s man swaddled her head to toe in this great white shroud o’ fresh linen, and plunged her into the water. And he held her there while she struggled until she couldn’t no more, and there was a great thrashing in the water until she was dead and everything was still and everyone was quiet. The birds didn’t sing and the bees didn’t fly and you couldn’t hear a sound. And then the witchfinder Haeger opened his mouth to sing a hymn - but he didn’t even make it through half of one word before suddenly, there was a great thrashing in the water again! And the man who had been executioner seemed to be sucked down - face first! - down into the river. And Haeger, he stood wide-mouthed and wide-eyed and everyone saw that the executioner was being pulled down by the same shroud he’d laid on fair Wilhelmina! And nobody dared try to help, least not Haeger, for they were too afeared. And he struggled until he couldn’t no more until he disappeared completely into the murk of the waters and all that was left was the shroud, floating free there, with the mark of an eerie face upon it, that seemed to snap & snarl at all the on-lookers as it floated downstream into the fens, never to be seen again!

Some say that Wilhelmina really was in league with a daemon. Some say the river itself is full of terrible spirits. But the truth, my laddie, is that Wilhelmina wove a terrible curse into every one of the sheets she made in this town - including the sheets on your very bed! Ohhh yes. That’s right! And if you don’t make sure to say your prayers every night, those sheets’ll come alive & gobble you up! And they’ll drag you down to the waters from wherever you may be! So you better be sure to say your prayers, laddie. Oh yes.