Knights of Dol Amroth (knight_npc) wrote in untold_logs, @ 2008-06-10 00:52:00 |
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Current mood: | enraged |
Entry tags: | Aráto, amrothos, erchirion, essam, nandir, norno |
Knights Gone Wild!
Who: Amrothos, Erchirion, Nandir, Norno, Essam, Aráto
Where: Imrahil’s Guest House in Minas Tirith
When: After the lockdown began to lift and Amro’s visit to Zaira.
What: That party Amrothos and Erchirion were having? Here it is! Imrahil’s entourage makes free with the house wine, breaks out the dice and have an…interesting political discussion of events, which leads to discussion of Dol Amroth which turns to a PG-15ish sexual discussion. Then things take a dramatic and fairly serious tone...
Warnings: Um...well.PG-15ish like I said, for content, violence and other stuff...When Imrahil gets in, the shit will really hit the fan...
The lockdown had been lifted enough that all the knights had made it back to the guest house and were all sharing their typical meals together. Imrahil was out for the night, attending business of state, or visiting with friends, but whatever the business had been, he left his ninja bodyguard, which meant he wouldn't be back until morning. Amrothos, who had been dragging after he left the houses of healing, began to pick up speed when he thought about the fact the knights were all back together again. With his own crew broken up and gone, he had begun to think of Imrahil's coterie of knights as a kind of second (or was it third?) family, people he was beginning to know and trust.
Amrothos burst into the large dining hall while it was at its fullest capacity with a shout. "Everyone! Good news! Zaira's safe!"
Erchirion, in the process of removing the back of a locked cabinet made for holding wines, paused in his work long enough to shoot Amrothos a grin. "So," he smirked at his little brother, "Does this mean the two of you are free to celebrate her safety soon? Why'd you come back here then? Rubbing it in?" he joked, before turning back to his self appointed task. "It's good to hear." he said, dropping the jest, though his grin stayed firmly in place. "Give me a few more moments and we'll have something really good to celebrate that with."
Nandir looked up from his plate of what he liked to call 'fancy peasant food' -- it was some kind of soup with ingredients too small to be eaten with a knife (what was the point of that?) and cheered. "Huzzah! Did you get the story? Why'd they lock the city down? What about the other women? What's the news?" Oh, Norno had told him a little bit that the ninja aide-de-camp had learned from the very pissy Imrahil implying some kind of special relationship between Zaira and the prince... but Nandir was a very curious young man, and information was hard to come by.
"Really." Erchirion agreed, "Tell us all you know about the reason I wound up in jail." The real reason Erchirion had wound up there was for antagonizing one of the city guards about the lockdown while drunk, but Amrothos didn't have to know that. It was bad enough that a few other people did really. "I didn't think the guards here were normally that...tetchy." he added with a slight roll of his eyes. "What did happen to them anyway? I've heard kidnapped, Aráto had something about a murder...."
Amrothos jumped up on a bench, and then scrambled onto the end of the table. He spread his arms apart, and gestured magnificently. "Oh, noble knights, let me tell you a tale of kidnap and sorcery!" He intoned dramatically. He cleared his throat, and then got off the table, and down to business. "Four women were kidnapped from the city, two of them on Aragorn's own staff. An aid of Boromir's, and the errand-rider woman, Karigan." He paused, glancing around at the older knights. "You all remember her, I'm sure."
"You might put it that way." Essam agreed, accepting one of the bottles Erchirion passed his way and popping the cork. "As I recall it, rumor had it that your brother..." he smirked in Erchirion's direction. "Knows her far better than most as those things go, though I suspect myself, she would have other things to say and do if there were any substance to it."
"Erchirion only wishes." Aráto agreed, holding out a glass for the knight commander to pour him some of the wine. "I hear she was in love with Denethor." he said dramatically, gulping some of the wine a moment later. "Though of course she'd hit us for saying that one too."
"...right, well, they were kidnapped, along with Zaira, and this healer woman. It turns out they're all relations. By way of Umbarean blood. Who knew? But to make a long story short, though the abductors are yet unknown, they think it's related to a shift of power in Umbar. Zaira and the others fortunately escaped, after many hardships. Now in the citadel they're saying rider Karigan was injured..." Amrothos paused, giving his brother a scrutinizing gaze. "Some of you should visit her and be good friends."
"Mmm you think they'd let me in though?" Erchirion wondered, thinking of the things he'd said. "Half the guards have new cause to hate me on site and unless Turin comes along and sits on them for me..." he shook his head a bit. "Might be difficult getting through."
"There is taking a leaf from your uncle's book and slipping through undetec..." Essam began, then shook his head. "Forget that, I did not remember this was YOU I'm speaking to. Send a messenger of some sort then, Erchirion, that ought to do it." Frowning a little, he looked back to Amrothos. "A shift of power..." the sound of that was hardly new, hardly surprising to him now, and as always, fraught with tension. "How many changes has it been now in the past twenty years? Have any of us kept track?" Whatever the answer, he knew he did not like it.
"...they think those witches are behind it again," Amrothos told Essam. "The sisters. Reports are still under the covers about it, that's all I've been able to get so far. That and they've got a new man as the face of their power seizure. I'm not sure how many ports they took, if it's just the big city or the smaller harbors too."
Nandir shuddered. "Witches." he muttered. He didn't like that. Not at all. Though his time with Imrahil's knights had sophisticated him considerably, at heart, he was still a country boy from the farmland, and magic was still actively seen as a dark threat that could attack at any time. "It can't mean any good. Do you think it was coincidence the women were all relations?"
"Or have they come up with a new way women can impregnate each other?" Aráto drawled, neglecting to consider every single way in which this was impossible. "I mean we all know they go for cross eyed and stunted out there don't we?"
Underneath the table, Essam gave Aráto a sharp kick and then another. "I take this to mean my eyes are crossed then?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Since I seem to be the only Umbarean you have had cause to meet besides on the end of your sword."
"...I think the idea was that a man impregnates the women." Nandir retorted with a serious face, though he was always amused when Aráto got kicked. "Like the stories of men with barren wives going to Gatetown..."
"That's not just a story." Amrothos said, a little bit too loudly. "It really happens. There's court papers to prove it."
"So what do they do with them in that case?" Norno wondered, quite seriously. "It's not like they can claim them without all sorts of messy paperwork is it?" He himself had never understood how that way of going about it worked. "Better to just put the wife away somewhere and try again."
"They abduct the women," Nandir explained, a little too into the story. He had found it one of the most terrifying ideas about Dol Amroth, when he'd gone, that people could just disappear off the street. "And they hide them in the house, and after the babies are born they claim they belong to the real wife."
"And then," Nandir added, "the women stay disappeared. Killed or sold off to Umbar."
"I think I'm sheltered." Norno mused thoughtfully. "The first part I hadn't heard, but then I've been with Imrahil and well...he's not the type to have any of THOSE lying around now is he?"
"All of the bastards in our family are legal." Erchirion agreed brightly, unearthing another bottle of wine and eying the board he'd pried up. "Do you suppose if I shove this against the wall quickly enough, no one will notice its broken? Save us the trouble of doing this again."
"They won't know till we're gone," Amrothos pointed out. "And then we can say it happened during the siege. Why they'd believe that, I don't know, but it's worth a try."
"Why not? After all, there were knights in residence then as well." Essam probably ought to say something about this, or to let Imrahil know, but on the other hand...why bother when he could hold the possibility of telling over everyone's head for at least the next few months. "And if the king or lord Imrahil knew what else had happened here...I think the wine should be the least of their worries. Particularly as the latest news is concerned..."
"I don’t WANT to go to war again." Aráto said in a half hearted whine. "If they do something that causes that, will one of you stab me before we leave and save the time?"
"And I am overjoyed at the idea myself." Erchirion rolled his eyes. "Granted, they'd just better wait until the wedding or we'll have an annoyed king on our hands. What with the way the elves do things, they've never even been to bed."
"...war with Umbar?" Nandir mused. "We've scores to settle with Umbar anyway. After what they did to Amroth, to the coast..." Nandir's face was fierce and dark as he remembered the Coastal Fires and the Battle of the Bay. "Surely there's no harm in burning their fleet again. I mean, it's practically tradition now."
"There's plenty of harm in it," Amrothos muttered, thinking of the bloody days of ship-to-ship combat, and his sunken lady, The Doxy. "But better than the alternatives. There's no sense in wasting blood trying to take every port city and putting soldiers there. It's begging for failure, or, even if we succeed, bloody revolution."
"And who knows how many of us would die anyway?" Norno muttered, hoping to keep his voice low enough so Nandir wouldn't hear him all the way. "Eru knows we were lucky to escape the last war as intact as we are." Intact, actually meaning that there were some veterans left at all. "What's the exact ratio again, Sir?" he asked Essam, "Something that shows our lot's beaten the odds and we're among the few who have, isn’t it?"
"Yees..." Essam said absently, his mind suddenly vaulted somewhere else, as he considered the staggering possibilities of another problem with Umbar. "Of course, we do not KNOW that such a thing will happen." he said, sounding very much as if he did not believe his own words. After all, who knew what they would want to do with him there now if things turned to the worst?
"...let's not talk about that," Amrothos said after a moment of discomfort. He had too many Umbarean friends, too many people who still suffered after the war, who were afraid to show their faces, but more afraid to cover them. "Let's just be glad captain Zaira is safe and the others have returned home and whatever dark plot is brewing in the south has been foiled. That's a victory all its own."
"And now, whenever he returns, Imrahil's going to be in a decent mood." Erchirion put in, shoving aside his own thoughts of what another war might do, as he so often tried to, and nodded to the glass in his hand. "A toast to that victory then and to our prince's impending sense of understanding when he finds us all half dead upon the morrow!" he proclaimed, raising his glass into the air. "Its too good to waste in worrying about the future." Knowing the past was bad enough.
"...a toast!" Nandir agreed, trying to shake off the dark anger that clouded his head when he thought of the Umbareans burning his home. It wasn't that he felt that way about people like Essam, or the people he saw on the street in Dol Amroth. But when he thought about the corsairs in their gaudy silks, and their ships, and the black flag, and the hopeless fight to evacuate coastal towns, he felt as if they'd stolen part of him, and he wanted it back. "...anybody want to play cards? Or dice?"
"It's been forever since we've done dice." Norno half whispered into his ear. "Though I have to warn you...the rest of these people have taught me a thing or two. Maybe now's the time when I can actually beat you at it."
Amrothos didn't hear what Norno said to the undercaptain, but, having consumed more than half of his glass in a single toast, he was feeling rather... well... "Somebody's got a boyfriend," he crowed, while grinning.
"Won't they be just darling filling out the paperwork?" Erchirion cooed, petting his brother's hair, because...it just felt appropriate in his state of mind. "And who would have the heart to tell them no?"
Nandir flushed brightly and tried to look indignant. "He's not." He protested. Though he and Norno had considered for a while telling the others they were brothers, because it was too difficult to explain why they hadn't recognized each other, they'd kept it a secret. It made for a good secret, Nandir thought, he liked to sneak away to spend time with his brother without other people knowing or caring.
"You're just good friends." Aráto put in quickly, because if they Were...well...he wouldn't want to be in that position and that was for damned sure. "I mean they haven't kissed each other yet in all the time we've been riding together. You know how it is with..."
"Those sorts of people." Essam finished the sentence with a nod. "I have known many of THEM." he made a face he hoped would be convincing. "And do trust me when I say that none of them can keep off of the others of that...sort no matter where or when they are."
"That so?" Amrothos asked, grabbing Erchirion's hand and transferring it from his hair to his shoulder, so that he stood with his brother's arm around him. "So they're sneaking off to sheds at all manner of inappropriate moments, and so on, are they?"
"Most definitely." Aráto played along with it because...well hell, what else was there to do? "It's so sad, really isn't it?"
"We know you're a man-fancier, Aráto," Nandir blurted out, rather... abruptly. "All of us have known for a while. Last time you two weren't around we all talked about it. Imrahil doesn't know, or he pretends, or... whatever he does."
"Besides which," Norno rolled his eyes at the knight commander. "It's no secret what your old job was."
"I have my own doubts about some of the rest of you." Aráto said, trying to regain some dignity from the moment, and locked his eyes on Erchirion and Amrothos. "These two would be my biggest guess if they weren't related."
"Only if there were a girl between us." Erchirion said, knocking back yet another glass of wine and smirking at his brother. "What do you think Amro? Would you go for that?"
"Only if we didn't pay her," Amrothos said, "I don't believe in prostitution." It was a comment that had often rendered entire taverns mute with shock, as a sailor who didn't believe in prostitution was something very, very odd indeed.
"You what?" Norno blinked a few times, feeling rather as if the ceiling had fallen in on him. "But you're a SAILOR." he said, dumbstruck.
"You spend an awful lot of time in brothels for someone who doesn't believe in prostitution!" Nandir added.
"And what do you do when Erchirion visits?" Aráto asked, quite seriously. "Do you refuse to speak to him, pretend you don't see each other or something else again?"
"Well it's..." Amrothos paused. "I think it's wrong. The things I've seen in those places... you wouldn't believe it even if you saw it with your own eyes, sometimes I think they're worse than the things I saw during the Battle of the Bay. But at least I can tell him which brothels have women who chose to be there. It's..." Amrothos shrugged a tiny bit. "...I know it's strange. But if you heard the stories..."
"The brothel here is supposed to be one of the good ones." Erchirion put in quickly. "Well the Jun brothel anyway. I'd suggest that we go there before anything else. I hear that it's the sort of place Amrothos would approve of. As to the other sorts...I can't say as I'd risk it no. The sorts of things that someone could pick up in there....and that's not mentioning the girls." he shook his head. "Sometimes they're positively crawling with it. And no one wants that." He refilled his glass and drained it almost instantly by half.
"I've never been inside a brothel," Nandir admitted, a little hesitantly. "Is it... what's it like?"
"...well, there's two kinds," Amrothos said, refilling Erchirion's glass before topping his own. "There's the kind that serve people like us. People with money. They adhere to the guild rules. They have access to the healers. Sex isn't the only thing for sale. Brothels like the Jun. Then... there's the kind you get in Gatetown. Run out of a tavern back room, or the first floor of a house. Dirty. The place reeks. The women are thin, sick-looking, usually bruised. Sometimes..." Amrothos swallowed a little, feeling a little unwell at the memories resurfacing. "Sometimes there's children, in those places."
"And believe it or not, that is a better place for them then on the streets." Essam said, his words matter of fact now, though at the time they had been anything but. "It is amazing what can happen there, when someone refuses to pay a child and decides to simply be rid of them. No one asks questions of course and though the sea is near...some alchemists are closer."
"And there's enough of them that don't ask questions." Aráto agreed, looking slightly ill himself at the idea. "There were always stories around my father's shop of what his peers had seen and heard...people wanting to buy and sell...It's just as well I didn't take up the trade myself. I don't think that I could have managed that without poisoning someone."
Nandir shuddered. "Maybe I don't want to visit a brothel after all, though the knights back in Amroth have always said you're not a proper man till you do." How could people...... ugh.
"Well no you ought to see them," Amrothos protested. "Everyone ought to see them. Everyone ought to know there's two sides to the coin. You don't have to buy. I don't buy. I never buy. But you ought to see them."
"We'll go as a group. A few of us." Norno offered, patting his brother's shoulder. "That way you can get some idea and nothing has to happen there that no one wants. I'm up for an adventure. After dropping our little friend off here, everything's been getting dull."
"But I don't want to go a brothel," Nandir protested. "They sound awful!"
"I'm sure Norno will take care of you," Amrothos said soothingly. His tone changed abruptly to mischief. "And, as they say, make a man out of you. Free of charge."
"Won't hurt a bit." Erchirion poured himself a bit more wine, splashing a little over on the table as he did so. "Aside the parts where it do....dammit." he muttered, noticing the spill and bent to lap it up with his tongue. "That's better."
"Aside the sodomy," Amrothos began, before launching into a surprisingly detailed, and graphic description of what exactly happened when someone sodomizes you.
"Stop it, shut up," Nandir found himself saying about every five or ten seconds, as he covered his ears. "Someone shut him up!"
Erchirion made sure to gasp in the appropriate places and to ooh and ah where it was needed. "Such a lovely touch, they say." he said, attempting to be thoughtful and instead just annoying. "Only a little prick...."
"STOOOOOOOOP!" Nandir shouted, quite loudly, bolting up out of his chair. "I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT YOU ALL DOING IT TO EACH OTHER EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU DO!"
"I'd do some of you." Erchirion said rather thoughtfully, slumping into one of the chairs, some of his wine spilling out over his hand, though he barely noticed it right now. "Are any of you secret girls or did those go somewhere else to have each other? ...How do GIRLS do that anyway?" he asked Essam, presuming he would know.
"...They do it very carefully." Essam answered after a pause.
"....whaaat?" Nandir asked, almost stuttering.
"Ask Norno to tell you," Amrothos cut in smoothly. "I've heard his name dropped at some of the nicer brothels in Dol Amroth. Apparently he's a frequent customer of the same establishment I like to visit when my back gets stiff."
Nandir's face was a difficult to read expression between shock, horror, amazement, pride, and revulsion.
"Probably it's very difficult work," Amrothos remarked, "standing up all day on your feet with your shoulders squared at a menacing angle just waiting around for my father to stop babbling. My back would hurt after half a year of that."
"Eru knows Imrahil ISN'T Helping." Erchirion grinned, and licked his hand. "THAT couldn't be comfortable either. Unless you happen to like it rough."
"Like he could do it rough," Amrothos protested, "with that cough of his coming back as soon as he gets the least bit winded."
"But his hands are all OLD." Erchirion argued back, "And calluses and all." he added, sticking out his tongue. "It could be rough but bumpy."
"I should have gone with Heren and the nice younger knights to the bar," Nandir lamented.
"As should I have." Essam agreed, shaking his head a little. How things had derailed before his very eyes, he had no clue. How he had helped them get that way....again he had no clue. "Though with any luck, none of us shall remember this tomorrow so the horror is fleeting."
"oooh," Amrothos declared, "there are things I want to see if this is all going to be forgotten tomorrow."
"Uhoh," Nandir muttered, squashing over on the bench so that Norno was between him and Amrothos.
"My officers and I used to play a game," Amrothos said, "when we're really smashed. It's a kissing game, and I forget the exact rules because we make them up on the spot every time, but the general idea is to kiss as many people in a minute, or, alternatively, kiss one person as many times in a minute as you can. Lots of fun. Only works if you're platonic or don't give a damn."
"This game is a veery bad idea." Erchirion tried to raise both eyebrows at the same time, failed and engaged in some complicated eye crossing maneuver that doubtlessly made sense somewhere along the way. Or maybe not. At any rate. "Let's go for it."
"You had all best forget what happens here before it has begun." Essam tried to stop the 'game' as best he could. "It will end in places you wish not to go."
"What's the worst thing that can happen in a minute?" Amrothos asked. "It's only sixty seconds."
"But I don't want to kiss my br..." Nandir caught himself in time to keep his silly secret. "...brothers in arms. You people are like my family now."
"If you do it that quickly than Aráto IS better off with a girl." Erchirion supplied, giving Essam a big wink. "Show us what they do in Umbar."
"New rule, play in thirty seconds! One! Two!" Amrothos shouted, and, while continuing to count, he grabbed his brother, and gave him a very large, alcoholic, and generally unsexual kiss on the mouth.
"Ewwww!" Erchirion made a big show of shoving Amrothos away from him. "You have got those....sailor germs... IN YOUR TONGUE! I have to give them away!" he proclaimed, staggering up from his seat and throwing himself at Nandir, kissed him in a slobbery and most unappealing way upon the mouth. "NOW YOU HAVE THEM. HAH"
"AGH," Nandir shouted, trying to batter Erchirion off, but it was too late. He had been Kissed.
Amrothos was making his way around the table, and kissed Essam hard on the mouth. "I'm going to be fired from my position as attaché for that!" he boasted.
"That is not what you wanted?" Essam wondered dryly, before crossing to kiss Norno. Touching Aráto right now, when obviously their judgment was at a low was NOT a good idea. "How do I know you were not using me for that?'
"He uses, he abuses annnd...." Erchirion forgot what he was going to say as he tripped over someone's imaginary feet and crashed against one of the chairs to the delightful sound of splitting wood. "Eru damned piece of a bastard dog's mother in heat!" he managed, as he lay there, trying to catch his breath.
"Oh, Valar!" Nandir shouted as there was a loud crashing, and he took refuge behind Norno. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, and clung to the older man's shirt. "You're so LOUD, Erchirion, you hurt my ears!"
Amrothos tripped over several things to get back to his brother's side. "Alive or dead?" He inquired, staring down at his brother with a grin. He obviously wasn't dead. That made it okay.
"Dead." Erchirion said dismally, peering up at Amrothos through one eye while he clenched the other shut and tried his hardest to remain 'injured'. "When Imrahil asks where the chair went at least." he finished, with the smallest of grins.
"Tell him it was donated." Aráto suggested, helping himself to Essam's nearly full wineglass. After all, it was closer than having to get up himself. "To very deserving and poor..."
"...orphans," Nandir supplied. "Orphans need the chair so much more than us. I got stuck in the poorest district during the lockdown." He shuddered, and then one of his legs did too, and gave way, and he slumped against Norno's back. He forgot to mind. "...it was terrifying."
"Worse than Gatetown?" Norno wondered, then realized Nandir probably wouldn't have gone there. "That is to say...worse than what you'd have heard?"
"It... I never heard about children standing at the streetcorners begging for money in Gatetown," Nandir said. "Or people sleeping in boxes on the street because the housing is too full."
"It'll be the wedding nonsense too." Erchirion pushed himself up, and frowned. "The king deserves his day, or we're meant to pretend he does, but..." he made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat as if he were going to spit at any moment. "Of course he's more important than the people you saw Nandir, of course whatever it's all costing when it could be put to better use is no matter at all. Of course the money I'm going to spend here whoring doesn't either. Because most of us are hypocrites." he said, voice rising just a little. "Amro's got the right of it, and my father, some of you people too, but overall..." he shook his head, reached for whatever wine bottle was nearest and drained what had been left inside. "That's what the nobility does."
"I heard the wedding the king is paying for with his own money," Amrothos offered as he pushed another chair towards his brother with his foot. "But it's not like we have to just all sit around and do nothing as people starve and suffer. It's why I spend most of my money in the refugee camps. But it doesn't even have to be that... dramatic. Wouldn't doing something, even once, be better than doing nothing ever?"
"Fat lot of any good it's going to do once we're home," Erchirion pointed out, "Does anyone have the other bottle?, It's not as if we're going to stick around and do things after you know. You're the only one who'd actualy be willing to give it all up you know. It's what we are. Thiiis..." he drawled the word and swept an arm around, indicating the scene before them. "is what knights are ALL about."
"...drinking and talking about whores?" Nandir asked, as he slid further and further down Norno's back. Eventually he got the impression he was falling in slow motion, and latched his arms around the other man's waist. "Help, please?" He asked, sounding almost... childishly cute.
"I think that can be arranged." Norno agreed, leaning up so that he could steady the younger knight. "There we are." he said, reaching around to make sure Nandir was all right. "And that's exactly what we do."
"It's all there really IS you know." Erchirion continued his tirade. "The whole thing's just a JEST of course, for anyone dumb enough to believe in it all." Pulling himself up, he eyed the wine cabinet, before walking towards it carefully to attempt moving the thing again. "I think we didn't get enough of this out. It's going to be a loong night if we're talking about this."
"I thought the knights were about defending the people of Dol Amroth," Amrothos protested, moving to help his brother, being slightly less intoxicated than the others. "I guess I just got taken in, is that it? I saw how you all reacted to our little friend and his house of horrors. People just looking for a good time wouldn't feel like that."
"That would be because your brother didn't like his hat." Aráto suggested wryly. "Granted I know *I* would love to wear it so I shouldn't talk...."
"You're hurting his feelings, be nice. Some of us are idealists toooo." Nandir protested as he scrambled around onto the other side of the bench and then sat in Norno's lap. "Hi," he added.
"Hi." Norno said agreeably, patting Nandir's hair. "The trouble with these people," he observed, looking around the room at large. "is a distinct lack of DECENT things to drink, you know. Wine's good enough for elves and women, but for men?" he shook his head. "Erchirion, does that thing have the...potato juice thing from the shire?"
"I take it you have to be really drunk before you'll kiss a boy, hmm?" Amrothos asked. "OH here it is. It has some name I can't say," he added cheerfully. "Because I can't read when I'm smashed." He told himself to let go of the serious conversation. So he tried. He didn't want to shout at everybody and tell them they were all wrong and he was the only right person and they'd see someday. Because, well, that was Stupid. With a capital... what was that letter?
"Not this one." Norno protested, grinning as he got up to grab the drink in question. "Too young. It just wouldn't feel right."
"Not unless you paid for it." Erchirion noted, starting on his very own bottle of wine and tossing another at the table, where it shattered, sending up a shower. "...That's going to stain."
"Erchirion, you're dumb," Amrothos told him fervently.
"Did you hear that?" Nandir asked, jumping suddenly. "I just heard something! Somebody sighed!"
"Quite." Essam said crisply at Amrothos's assertion. He wondered sometimes why he bothered with these parties really. "Next time," he told Aráto in a whisper. "You may fend for yourself with this lot....sighing?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Nandir.
"Over there!" Nandir insisted, pointing at the door, where there was quite clearly nobody.
"Can't keep your wine down, Nandy?" Amrothos asked, slurring the words, perhaps for emphasis, and he staggered back to the table and poured himself a glass of wine. "Maybe you were sighing. Foiled again, hm?"
"It wasn't me," Nandir scowled, fully looking his age of 17. "Somebody sighed."
"If you're drunking things, when you aren't as here as we are." Aráto winked at Nandir as he purposefully messed with the wording. "Then that's a sign that other things..." he tapped his forehead just a bit. "Are off. There's this thing they're doing with drills now in less civilized places...."
"Whichever one of you causes me to snap first." Essam held up a forgotten knife and twirled it menacingly. "Will find out just how that works."
Nandir made a loud sound that could have been called 'meep' and hid behind Norno. "Don't let him kill me I've heard stories!"
"You will be allowed to live." Essam told Nandir smiling benevolently at the teenager. "I have no long memory of you as I have of the others."
"I'm okay too," Amrothos declared victoriously. "I kept his secre..." Ahem. Hem hem hem.
"Until the night *I* sneak into your bed with one of the meaner swans and let him loose." Aráto offered sweetly.
"What's the secret?" Nandir asked, bouncing slightly on the bench. "Oh, tell me, tell me, I love secrets I'm very good at keeping them, I have one but you'll never guess it!"
"Awww." Erchirion had no idea what was going on with the two of them really, but he was willing to hazard a guess. "My bet is that our knight fancier there has employed our commander for a bit of....but that's not fit for children is it?"
"We just told our little child how it works," Amrothos pointed out, while remaining entirely mum on what the secret was.
"This?" Aráto leaned forward a bit, stretching out his cramping shoulders, "Is definitely true. I think its since we forgot all about his bedtime."
"I'm not a child," Nandir protested. "I'm just as much a soldier as the rest of you." He scowled, then paused. "...maybe I'm a little sheltered. But I have a question. Is it true that if you're... if you... if you want to leave all your belongings to another man that it's legal to do that in Dol Amroth?"
"In the country you'd never be able to do that," Nandir added in a sort of undertone. "Just hope the caretakers of your goods felt like honoring your last wishes."
"There is provision." Erchirion answered, setting down his bottle of wine. "Of course it involves at least one official type finding out about your little dalliance but if you and your ninja boyfriend want to do that...we could get you started."
"I don't have a boyfriend," Nandir protested, flushing violently.
"No?" Amrothos asked a little too curiously. "No kisses for you, Undercaptain?"
"Just a LITTLE kissy kiss." Erchirion urged, puckering up his lips. "We'll tell you if you get it wrong."
"Stop it," Nandir said, waving his hand in the air in front of his face as if disbursing flies. "I don't WANT to."
"Aww, he's shy." Amrothos offered. "Performance anxiety!"
"Then someone ELSE must show him how its done!" Erchirion ambled back across the room, to slap Essam's shoulder and stumbled against the knight commander’s back instead. "Yoou used to turn tricks. I'm sure you kissed them too."
Essam turned round and stared blankly at Erchirion for what felt like a very long time as he felt blood rush to his face. Prince's son or no, completely drunk or no, he did not just reveal something like that in front of those who wouldn't know. "I think..." he began, trying to sound somehow collected and more in control of his wits than Erchirion obviously was right now.
"Did you like it better when you actually got any regularly?" Erchirion wondered, pressing the subject now. "We'd hate to lose you honestly, but maybe if you took a holiday down to the docks...."
Nandir was gaping open-mouthed at the other side of the table, incapable of speech.
"Erchirion," Amrothos said in a thin tone, sensing a fight about to escalate. "Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air."
"I only want to knoow." Erchirion said, still smiling easily at Essam, seemingly unaware he'd said anything all that wrong. "I'm not one to fancy the lads myself but as there's no one here to offer themselves for a demonstration...unless your little favorite here was to..."
Aráto shot out of his seat, hand moving for his sword, before anything else could happen, but Essam was quicker, shoving his hand out of the way and hissing something in Adunaic, that was probably caution against doing anything stupid. After all, he himself was already at that point. Still speaking in his native tongue, all other language lost to him right now, the former armsmaster advanced upon Imrahil's son, and then without another word, flung him against the dining table.
Nandir leapt to his feet as dishes clattered and several wineglasses topped and broke, trying to get out of the path of the liquid spilling over the table. "Eru's bloody celestial mariners!" He shouted. "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!"
"I haven't seen THAT outside the training yard before." Norno told his little brother, plainly awed. "He wouldn't kill him I don't think, much as all of us want to. There'd be..." he lightly ran a hand across his skin, to get the point across, "...issues."
"What did I SAY?" Erchirion wondered, as Essam continued glaring at him now. "It was an honest quest... "
"You...." Essam felt some westron returning, though right now he had no idea as to how the order of it went. "...We speak about this more..." he searched his mind for what went next and came up short so filled in the gaps with a bit more Adunaic to connect those. "...the morning...when the prince...will hear of it." So saying, he turned as gracefully as he could manage under the circumstances and stalked out of the room, and down the long hall leading to the house's door. There would be problems with an empty inn tonight, the stables would work just as well.
Amrothos got up from his chair, crossing the floor, and hauling his brother off the table. "You're damn lucky," he hissed. "Come on, we're going outside to sober you up."
"This is why we can't have nice things." Aráto said, to fill the silence, finishing off the glass of wine and starting for the hall as well. "Anyone asks, I've gone out whoring." he instructed his undercaptain and the ninjabodyguard, before turning as well. Where he'd find Essam in this was anybody's guess.
"...right." Nandir muttered, realizing with a sudden lurch that meant he was in charge.
"Fun party." Norno commented, and smiled at Nandir, "What are we doing first?"
"...Imrahil's going to come back and they're all going to be gone and it's going to be my fault," Nandir groaned, staring at the table and the glass and the wine and the food. "I don't know WHAT to do."
"I'll...help." There was no way in hell Norno would try to take the BLAME for this or anything, but he felt bad enough to offer his support. "You can do it though."
"Imrahil's going to have me with breakfast," Nandir moaned. "I guess we'd better try to find where the servants sleep and tell them there's been an accident." He paused, and, after making sure there really was no one around, slipped his arm around his brother. "Why do they think I'm your... your... uh..." it was different in the country, was all Nandir could think. People didn't automatically assume everyone was...
"Because they're drunk." Norno answered, shaking his head. "I mean no one's really suggested before that the prince and I..." he made a little face at he idea of THAT. "...I think they're afraid a little too."
"...afraid?" Nandir asked. "You mean that this is as good as things get? That it gets worse again soon?"
"That's why they look for things to make you fight them." Norno suggested. "Maybe at least. Like...if they stopped doing it for too long and things suddenly did get worse...Maybe its better for them to stay there, but I don't see it."
"I don't want another war," Nandir said softly, staring at the table. "We've got enough problems at home without finding ones from outside."
"We absolutely have." Norno agreed, sighing. "And we're only just together again now. A war would...ruin everything." Unless, a small voice in his head suggested, the war started among themselves.