Decisions decisions...


[hider=Marguerite Von Vissenbach - Defrocked Sister of Shyalla]
“Sister Marguerite, this really is the last straw!” Abbess Hildegarde roared, her impressive jowls quivering in rage. The portly abbess punctuated the point by slamming her ham sized fist down on the dark oak table. Inkpots jounced at the blow, dispersing a fine mist of black droplets across the mornings correspondence. 

Marguerite Von Vissenbach, Novice of the order of Shyalla, fixed her eyes determinedly on a spot just over Abbess Hildegarde’s shoulder. She was a trim girl with pale blonde hair and sharp blue eyes,  though she tried to appear appropriately contrite and submissive the slight upturn of her chin and gleam in her eye conspired to ruin the illusion.

“How could you! You spoiled hateful brat. Graf Von Hammerstein is a patron of our order and his son was an honored guest of our house!” Gertrude Harker, an older novice with a pinched looking face and slightly buck teeth snarled, her dark eyes glittering with malice.

“That will be quite enough Sister Gertrude,” Hildegarde interjected, though  the admonition was pro forma rather than any expression of disagreement with the sentiment. All three women were in the Abbess’ study. A luxuriously appointed room, by the rather severe standards of a Shyallan House, with hanging tapestries depicting the various mercies of the Goddess and woven rugs to cover the cold stone floor. A large polished desk piled high with, now, slightly ink dusted scrolls dominated the south side,  and an illuminated window of stained glass casting a rainbow aura around the porcine Mother of the House. A brazier burned in a corner, though its heat was scarcely necessary with Hildegarde’s temper to warm the room. Marguerite crossed her arms beneath her breasts.

“Graf Von Hammerstein pays us so that we will send someone to treat his pox and his gout when he eats too much, which, judging by his twenty one stone and growing, is way too often. His son is a malingering coward who only visits us to ogle the sisters, drink our wine and keep himself as far from the battlefield as he can manage,” Marguerite snapped intemperately. Hildegardes jowls quivered with fury, she did after all have a particular insight into the portlier side of Imperial society, but it was Gretrude who spoke first, her cheeks flaming red with rage.

“You dare impune the honor of such a man as…” Gertrude spluttered. Marguerite waved her to silence with a dismissive gesture.

“Oh do shut up, the only reason you even care is because you’re too busy spreading your legs for the good gentlemen to bother with your…”

“HOW DARE YOU!” Gertrude flamed, her face turning beat red and her eyes widening with maniacal fury at the completely justified accusation. 

“You dare to accuse me of…”

“Sister Marguerite, that will be...” Hildegarde tried to interject her words tumbling over Gertrudes but the Novice continued, raising her voice to be heard over the shouting.

“I don’t mean to imply that Gertrude has been keeping company with the young lord, not only with him anyway, she shares her bounty with all mankind I have heard, she is like Shyalla in that regard.” Gertrude let out a strangled cry and leaped across the intervening space, driving her fist into Marguerite’s stomach. Both novices went down in a tangle of white robes, clawing at each other with fingernails and spitting curses like wild cats. Gertrude was moved by fury and had the element of surprise, but Marguerite who had grown up with three brothers recovered quickly, driving a knee into her fellow Novice and rolling atop her, driving a fist down into her jaw with strength borne of frustration of a year and a half of abuse from the older girl. Her fist connected with the tip of Gertrude’s chin and bounced the other woman’s head against the woven carpet, the smiling face of Shyalla all that stopped her from cracking her skull against the flag stone. Triumphantly lifted her fist for another blow.

“ENOUGH!” Hildegarde roared, loud enough that a jar of some kind of dried herb jumped from a shelf and shattered against the stone floor filling the air with a pungent, vaguely astringent scent. Both Novice’s froze, Marguerite with her fist raised and Gertrude with her hands lifted in a pathetic attempt to ward off the younger Novice’s blows.  The scowl on the Abbess’s face was so severe that it appeared to be sucking her pudgy cheeks up under how brow line.

“Sister Gertrude,” the Abbess hissed through grated teeth.

“Get out of here at once, I shall deal with you later.” Gertrude began to struggle beneath Marguerite’s pinning thighs, recovering faster than her attacker. Belatedly Marguerite lowered her small fist and let the other girl free. White robes, now smudged with the dust that the coal fire deposited on the rug, whispered as Gertrude scrambled to her feet and half ran from the room. She had lost one of her slippers in the scuffle, but if she had noticed she wasn’t inclined to try to retrieve it. The large wooden doors opened and closed behind Marguerite leaving the Novice alone with Abbess Hildegarde. The portly woman’s face had grown noticeably stoney.

“Novice Marguerite,” Hildegarde rasped, the throbbing vein in her right temple bespeaking the herculean effort she was making to control her temple.

“In the year and a half since you have come to us, I have summoned you to this office twenty seven times to deal with your insolence, insubordination and troublemaking.” Marguerite began to object but Hildegarde held up a pudgy finger in barr.

“I disapproved of taking you in at all, but given that you had already sullied your reputation with that dueling business I felt it was a chance to demonstrate Shyalla’s Mercy. That was a mistake.”

Marguerite began to object. It hadn’t been her idea to enter the convent and people really were overreacting to that whole duel thing. Not to mention her father had paid them a handsome some to take her in.

“I really dont think…”

“YOU. WILL. BE. SILENT!” Hildegarde roared, literal foam was appearing at the corners of the Abbess’ mouth now and her face was the color of cherry brandy, her eyeballs produced frog like from her rage contorted visage. The bit of each word like the snap of a drum. The Abbess reached into a draw in her desk and, for a moment, Marguerite had the absurd notion that Hildegarde was about to pull a pistol on her, instead the Abbess drew forth a leather bag that jingled with the clink of golden marks. She tossed the pouch to the ground at Marguerite's feet with a metallic jangle.

“That is your endowment less the cost of a years room and board,” the fat Abbess sneered. Marguerite had the momentary and worrying sensation that the older woman could read her mind, though if that were the case she would have been here more than twenty seven times.

“Take it and get out of here,” she commanded, gesturing to the door imperiously. 

“You can’t just…” Marguerite began to object. Hildegarde’s face contorted with rage to the point it was scarcely recognisable from vissages of demons Marguerite had seen on the walls of the Temple of Sigmar in Nuln.

“I am the Abbess of this House, you insolent pup! You are dismissed from Shyalla’s service,  now take the coin and get out of here. If you are still in the building when the gong strikes for noon, I will have Sister Gertrude and her friends whip you out of town with rose bushes, I swear it by Shyalla Tear!”

Murguite gulped visibly then scooped up the pouch and scrambled for the door. There was no doubt in her mind that Hildegarde would make good on the threat, and probably take a great deal of pleasure in doing so.

“Ranald’s bloody balls,” she muttered to herself as she dashed towards the main gate. What was she supposed to do now?
[/hider]


[hider=Reinholt Harker - Mercenary Pisotlier]
“There go the horses,” Heinreick groaned, slapping the leaden glass cover of the window closed. A round of groans went up from the taverns occupants at the unwelcome news. The pistoliers were the only customers of the Hound and Badger this night, save for the terrified innkeeper who huddled behind the bar in a food stained apron. The dozen Imperials, armed and armored, filled the taproom, lounging on the tables of coarse oak and drinking from heavy wooden flagons. They were a dirty an unkempt lot that would have given a Riekland drill sergeant nightmares. A pair of men stood to either side of the two small windows and another at the top of the short flight of stone stairs that led to the upper story. Candles of cheap tallow guttered and smoked in the damp wind that blew through the ancient stone walls, filling the room with a miasma of black smoke that gathered against the timbered ceiling. 

“Monsieur!” came a shout from the rain-swept night beyond the inn.

“Monsieur, are you still in there?” the Brettonian accent was artificially bright, especially for a man who must be soaked to the very expensive armor.

“Yes Gaston, I’m still here,” Reinholt replied casting any eye up to his man at the top of the stairs. Reinholt Harker was to all appearances a middling man. Somewhere in his mid twenties, of middling height, neither handsome or ugly, he looked for all the world like a clerk, albeit it a rather athletic one. His battered curriass and well cared for weapons combined and the deep tan burned into his skin by years in the saddle in all weathers told a different story.

“Have you given any more thought to my offer monsieur, I am afraid we cannot wait all night, and it is Henri, as I told you earlier,” the voice called back.

“Oh I don’t know Gaston,” Reinholt called back, keeping his hand on his flintlock as he took a drink from his tankard. There wasn’t any long term benefit in irritating Sir Henri Du Benoir but then there really wasn’t a lot of long term benefits in anything he might do.

“I’m still mulling it over,” he admitted, gaining a grim chuckle from the assembled pistoliers. There was a long silence interrupted only by the drum of rain upon the slate roof.

“I have someone who wishes to speak to you!” Henri’s voice called after a long minute. The pistoliers began to rumble uncertainty to one another, unsure of what this meant. Reinholt arched an eyebrow and gestured his men to quiet.

“Harker,” came another strained voice, this one with an upper class Reikland accent.

“Harker, I want you and your men to accept Sir Henri’s offer,” the voice called. Reinholt’s lip curled in contempt. Gustav Hoffman had always been a fool, but Reinholt had never considered him a coward. The mercenary captain had made his name fighting hill brigands and endlessly reminding people he had once been a captain in an Imperial Regiment.

“What do you think lads,” Reinholt asked his men in a quiet voice. They were hard bitten men, bastards and cutthroats, murderers and thieves all but everyone of them had bled with him on the brutal rides and desperate retreats of the last months. Their growls of anger and defiance were all he needed right now. He leaned his head close to the door once more.

“No, no I don’t think we will,” he called back. This whole mess was Hoffman's fault. If the pompous ass had the brains that the Gods gave a goose he would never have let himself be drawn out onto the plains the way he had. Any fool could see that was a recipe for disaster. Well, not any fool apparently.

“That is an order Harker I am your superior officer and I com…”

With a sudden jerk Reinholt threw open the heavy wooden door to reveal the rain soaked mud street beyond. Two men stood in the shadowed doorway of a leather shop across the way. Both were big men, though in Henri’s case it was more to do with the elaborate plate armor he wore rather than the bulk flesh that heavy eating and drinking had gifted Hoffman. Reinholt leveled his flintlock and fired, the flash of the pistol lit the night like a bolt of lightning, the familiar prickles of burning powder stinging his bare hands as the frisson lit off the charge. The fatter of the two men, Hoffman, pitched forward into the street, thrashing like a poleaxed ox, his heels drumming in the muddy roadway as he gurgled and died. Reinholt jerked the door closed a moment before it resounded to the blows of a half dozen arrows slamming into its heavy oak timbers. Two of the shafts penetrated far enough to reveal their bodkin heads.

“That was very foolish monsieur,” came Henri’s voice after a moment, his voice tight with the effort of sounding calm, despite knowing full well that the pistol ball would have punched through his breastplate as easily as it did Hoffman’s flesh. Reinholt tore the top of a waxed cartridge with his teeth and poured the charge into the barrel of his empty pistol, before adding the wadding and spitting the ball into the barrel. Reinholt wasn't sorry the incompetent ass was dead, though he would just have soon have left Henri dead in the street. Still there was some justice, they wouldn't be in this situation at all if Hoffman had any spine at all.

“I’m sorry Gaston,” Reinholt voice dripping with faux sincerity. He worked the rod into the barrel and tamped down ball and charge, securing it in place with the cartridge paper. All the pistoliers were on their feet now, draining their cups and readying pistols and short swords. This was going to be a tough one, but at least the rain and the slate roof meant the Brettonian's couldn't just burn them out.

“But I’m afraid you are just going to have to come in and get us.”
[/hider]