Behind the Mask

[Reaver]

His grin simply wouldn\'t go away. If there was one thing he loved more than telling a joke, it was telling a true story. "My parents never tried to marry me off. It was the fathers of the gals I met on my adventures they demanded I marry their daughters for the sake of moral and tradition." He hadn\'t stolen too many daughters from their fathers, but he had been caught at it often enough.

The girl had asked where he was from, but he still couldn\'t figure out where she hailed from. Asking was easy enough, so he set aside his drink and posed the curious question. "Bards travel fairly often, but where are you from?"

[Harlequin]

Pheobe\'s grin widened as she listened, and she cocked a brow, "Saving princesses, eh?" she teased. Her tone flirted with lewdness, suggesting quite a bit more than the words themselves implied. She herself had never had the misfortune of having to turn down a marriage offer – much less had one thrust upon her. Her nomadic lifestyle kept her from sticking in any one place long enough to make deep attachments.

AS to the question of her origins, she shrugged, and leaned back, "Nowhere," she told him honestly, "I spent all m\'life on the road. Parents sold me to a group of rovin\' thespians when  I was little more than a babe in arms, and you were in the prime o\' your life." She winked at him over the rim of her tankard, before taking a drink.

[Reaver]

"Princesses got me into enough trouble without the marriage." Looking back, he wouldn\'t have minded settling down with a few of them, but times had changed since then.

His prime? Magnus chuckled. "Now you\'re just going and calling me old darlin\'." Well, he was old. It was all in good humor though. He was glad to have someone new to talk to, particularly someone with a sense of humor. If only she were older. Or he younger. "A good way for a bard to start their life. You yourself might be worth giving a tale of someday."

[Harlequin]

"A shifty lot, princesses. Best kept under lock and key, where they can\'t hurt anybody," The bard agreed, nodding gravely, "Luckily, I\'ve never had to deal with them."

She set her tankard down with a satisfying \'thud\', and grinned broadly at him, showing all of her uncommonly straight teeth, "Aye, and I\'m young and naive and inexperienced in the ways o\'the wicked world. Ain\'t it beautiful?" She chuckled, "At least ye still got all your teeth, eh? Not many in your trade can make that boast."

She waved the mention of her own life away, "The only things I done in my life ain\'t worth singin\' about. And the only things that come close make me look a fair bit sluttier than I\'m willin\' to recount." She winked again, and shrugged; it was embarrassing, but it was funny, and it was true. "So long as the priest remembers m\'name at my funeral, I\'ll be happy."

[Reaver]

"If there\'s a priest at my funeral, then something\'s gone wrong. A God or Goddess I reckon might as well exist. I\'ll live or die by the actions of men. I\'ll rot and turn to dust by the actions of dirt and worms. What I won\'t do is have priests help with any of that, or put on a show to look divine \'an empowered when that\'s best left to them." Magnus jerked a finger upwards, and then shrugged. "Men are beasts. Leave the will of the gods, to the gods."

A grin, "and have faith darlin\'. Your young. In the very least you\'ll go down as the gal that sung about that mercenary fellow." He winked, basking in his fake conceit. "Stories sometimes make the storyteller. It\'s how we tell many of our stories in Norway. The speaker does not matter, the story creates a narrator of its own. Sometimes, we\'ll even go around in a circle, each man telling a piece of the story. We know many of them by heart."

He smiled, fond memories washing over him. "I might take a short trip home before my days end, after all. Just to tell them some new stories. Just wish I knew enough of this language to tell you some of the stories. The books have been translated, so that should help."

[Harlequin]

Pheobe was slightly taken aback by this sudden outpouring of feeling on the subject of religion, and it caused her to tip her head to one side, "Well, that\'s an interestin\' point of view," she opined mildly, "So ye think worship is pointless, than?" Then, she added, "Not meaning t\'put words in y\'mouth, o\'course. It\'s just that there\'s some who might take issue with what you\'re sayin\', for any number o\'reasons."
 
"I\'ve heard that, about the north," she said, suddenly intense, "I like th\'idea. A whole culture knowin\' their tales so well they can recite \'em word for word, without ever seein\' \'em written. I think we could stand t\'take a few lessons from ye. It pays t\'know yer hist\'ry, makes sure things ain\'t repeated, \'specially things that shouldn\'t\'ve happened in the first place." This was obviously something she felt passionately about, for she\'d left her tankard untouched for the entire monologue.
 
"If I had th\'mind for languages I\'d ask ye t\'teach me," she told him, tipping her mug in his direction. She frowned upon finding her tankard much less heavy than she\'d anticipated herself, and motioned the barmaid over. Once her mug was brimming again, she continued, "I wouldn\'t trade the space in me head for anythin\', though, ye can be sure o\'that."

[Reaver]

"I do not believe in worship, no." Magnus shrugged, and drank some more. "Sigvald always talks about how you should spend your time helping people to their feet, not pushing them to their knees." He certainly didn\'t help many people, not unless their was coin and blood involved, but the idea made sense to him. Perhaps he\'d devote some of his late years to helping people. Perhaps he wouldn\'t. Time would tell.

He kept speaking, tone lowering and voice slowing. "My sister, Irene is back in Norway. Quite a few diseases have hit my homeland in the past years. She tends to the sick, has made my estate a sort of refuge. With Sigvald\'s farm close by, they kept fed and clothed. I suppose that\'s what Sigvald means. To help people live, rather than tell them why they should live and how to die." Maybe it took a farmer to be a truely decent person.

He was curious about why Pheobe felt so strongly about the tradition. Then he caught the last part. It was true that some stories were of moral worth, about fools doing terrible things, or making idiots of themselves. People would laugh, and never do the things themselves. Not all of those stories were of historical value, but there were historical stories that did the same thing. He wondered what things had happened in Pheobe\'s life that she never wanted to have happened in the first place.

"I\'m limited on languages. I seem to do well with this one, but I still have to make stretches sometimes. I study every night." Magnus paused, the idea of a greying, bloody mercenary pouring over a little book and reciting words shaking him with laughter. "I\'ve never been a fine student, but the learning part I enjoy."

[Harlequin]

Pheobe listened intently to his words, with her eyes on his face, watching the expressions carefully. For once, her drink was forgotten, and she nodded thoughtfully when he\'d finished, and smiled, "I like that," she said, "Never looked at it that way, but it makes more sense than a lot of the dogma they been tryin\' to shove down humanity\'s throats for years, no doubt." She looked over her shoulder furtively, to see if there were any spying eyes on them, but nobody appeared to be listening. She wasn\'t sure about the policies in Oberon, but she\'d been in places recently where their conversation could have them accused of heresy and hanged before they could blink.
 
"I\'d never know, if ye hadn\'t told me," she said, on the subject of the language, "I can barely even hear an accent. Takes quite a bit of practice, that." The teasing smile, however, was right back on her face, "Though, I suppose you\'ve had plenty of time to study."
 
Driving right on, however, the smile faded – only slightly taunting, now, but more mellow, as she leaned back in her rough-hewn chair, "You\'re family sounds like an interesting lot," she commented.

[Reaver]

"Bah, I\'m an old man, that much is for sure." Magnus thumped his fist on his chest, emptying another tankard. "Body doesn\'t realize it yet. Feels fine." He grinned, watching the froth slide down the side of the tankard. He was getting old. He wasn\'t sure if he really wanted to settle down in Oberon, though. He still hadn\'t been back to Macedonia, to see where his parents were born, and the rest of his friends and family were back in Norway. He could run a few more years with this body, right? Why hurry up and settle? Except, he liked it here.

Scratching his chin, he rested it on his other hand and fought back a yawn. Didn\'t he just wake up awhile ago? Or had they killed that much time already? This was a good way to spend his time. Drinking with pretty ladies while talking about who knew what. Was there really more to life?

His family was an interesting lot. Just the three of them left alive now, but their family had absorbed the Haraldurs, adopted Valdis, and raised Lea from the rags she was left in on their doorstop. The Haraldurs alone added eight to their immediant family, and then there were the more distant Haraldurs and Bladesungs...

Shaking his head slowly, he lifted his chin up and leaned back to regard Pheobe again. "Make a lot of friends in your years?" Bards always seemed an interesting lot, but he had never actually sat down and spoken to one. Were they all like Phoebe? It\'s easy to make conversation with someone, and get to know about them, but to know them, personally? As friends? As a mercenary, the only friends he had made were other warriors. You simply don\'t want to get connected to someone you might never see again.

[Harlequin]

Pheobe grinned hugely, "Aye. I reckon it\'ll be a few years yet, \'fore the reaper catches up to ye," she said, with the air of someone swearing an oath.

Sometimes Pheobe wished she\'d known her family, but the little she remembered of them was enough to stop her from doing anything more than wishing. Her father had been a large, rough man, with watery eyes and heavy fists. Her mother had been barely a shadow; nothing but a small voice, rarely heard. There had been no laughter in her childhood home. She pushed the memories away, though her face gave no evidence that they had been there in the first place.

Friends.

This was always something of a tricky question. She shrugged, "I know more people than could fit in a township such as lovely Oberon, here," she gestured with one hand, indicating the kingdom in which they resided, "Without bumpin\' elbows. Friends, though...I don\'t usually stay in one place long enough t\'get t\'know folk well enough t\'call \'em friends." This in itself was more than she\'d revealed to anyone in quite some time – mostly because nobody had cared quite enough to ask. The bard smiled wryly, "But th\'ones I do make, I can count on t\'walk through hell and back, just as I\'d do for them."

[Reaver]

Magnus smiled, "I\'ve claimed more lives than friends, but I\'ve never turned a back or blade on a friend. Never left one behind or lost on, either." Very true. He had made friends, not many, but some. A few had fallen in battle, but he had always claimed the body. Never once did he lose one. Even when it put his own life at risk, just to bring them home to their families.

Valdis and Sigvald would do anything for him. Considering the fact that Sigvald, the gentle man, who abhored all forms of killing, had stayed with Magnus through years of mercenary work. Friends like that were rare, and he truely hoped Pheobe had some like that.

As far as knowing a lot of people went, he could understand that. From employers alone he could fill the tavern to the brim and ten times again. Then the men that had served him, their families, the merchants he met when traveling with his father, the trappers and hunters from his homeland... the list could go on for sometime. It was his business to know people. He also knew the cost of knowing so many people.

He recalled that a number of nights before, he had spent sometime conversing with a doctor. Seeing things from the other side, saving life instead of taking it. Like with Galen, these Pheobe seemed to have many things in common with him, while at the same time, a completely different purpose and stance.

He sipped from his ale, hot, spiced ale he had slipped coins to the serving gal to get for him. He didn\'t spend coin on the more expensive drinks often, but this occasion seemed to merit it. He didn\'t want to drown his thirst, he wanted to relax and keep talking to this bard. An interesting girl.

When he spoke again, it was with a shrug and a low, cautious tone. "I wouldn\'t go as far as claiming to be someone\'s friend, not without their say, but I\'d like to be."

[Harlequin]

Pheobe had never had a comrade fall in battle, but she\'d sung the dirges at her mentor\'s funeral. She had many roads to travel, however, and many years before she slept. Brooding on this, she simply nodded somberly.

She did notice, however, that she\'d been neglecting her own tankard – which had been empty for some time. She stuck with the house ale, however – the bard simply didn\'t have the coin to spare, for anything fancier. It didn\'t bother her, though, she drank as heartily as she ever had, raising a brow at Magnus over the rim of her mug as he spoke.

"Y\'can\'t truly call yourself someone\'s friend \'til ye\'ve seen \'em at their lowest, though, can ye?" she asked, setting her mug down. The tone was conversational, "Seen \'em there, and helped \'em up, knowin\' they\'d do the same f\'you." She smiled benignly, as buddha-like as ever.

The bard was unsure as to whether or not he was offering his friendship, and didn\'t want to just blunder ahead and accept it, in case he hadn\'t. That would have been mortifying, to say the least, and the last thing she wanted to do was scare him away.

[Reaver]

Magnus held up his tankard in toast, "you found me a drunk who thought night was morning. Not my lowest, but I hope for both our sakes we never find out how long I can stagger." He chuckled, not waiting for the customary clinking of glasses before downing a drought of his ale. "If ever you need a friend. If you ever want one, you\'ve found one."

He wasn\'t sure whether or not she did want to be friends, but he wasn\'t about to let that pass. He was still upset with himself for insulting Galen and driving the kind doctor away. He wasn\'t about to lose out on another chance of friendship.

Besides, she made a good drinking companion. Sigvald only drank on rare occasions and Valdis prefered to drink with ladies and joke about men. Pheobe was simply an interesting person who could drink and talk at the same time. All the necessary requirements. Plus, she was too young to take interest in such a weathered fool such as himself, so he didn\'t have to worry about any misunderstandings.

At least he might keep himself out of trouble for awhile. Who knew.

[Harlequin]

Pheobe laughed, at that, and raised her tankard as well, "\'Tis true!" she crowed, after she\'d taken a healthy draught, herself. By now she was beginning to feel a bit light headed, and her smile was a bit more dreamy than it had been when they\'d met – but she still found it quite funny that it had barely seemed odd to her, when he came stumbling downstairs, thinking it was morning.

"Good to know who to turn to, if a town decides it can no longer stand my presence – and I\'ve not caught a whiff of that ill wind beforehand." she smiled lopsidedly, and shrugged. It didn\'t happen very often, but when it did... suffice it to say, Pheobe considered herself blessed, in that her face was still intact.

and she grinned at him, "And you can bend my ear any time you feel the need,  day or night – even, " he grin broadened, "If you need a bit of reminding in that respect, every now again." she tipped her head to one side, hands wrapped around her mug as she regarded him thoughtfully, "And if that ain\'t somethin\' a friend would offer, than I don\'t know what is."

[Reaver]

Magnus wasn\'t sure what to say. So he smiled and drank more. He knew tomarrow would be another day just the same as this... waking at night for what he would hope was breakfast. Hopefully, he could find another decent conversation like this one. He wasn\'t sure his body could survive drinking like this for too many days.

Perhaps if he went for a walk, and got his system working again. He\'d have to see if Lord Liari or any of the other nobles and merchants would be interested in sparring sessions to keep in shape.

"Oberon is a peaceful place. Even the drunks seem to be more interested in pick-pocketing coins then killing for purses. Occasional trouble from what I\'ve heard, but you\'re right in one aspect. You know who to go to if there is trouble." He grinned, flashing his teeth behind his tankard. "Mercenaries never retire. We just find new work to pass the time between hirings and favors."