Plain of the Fourteen Pillars - Book 1

Below the merchant’s house, where in the small unmeasured moments of the dark morning was heard by no one the faint click of a door and the hardly delicate footsteps on loose dirt, a quiet town stood.

  It wasn’t a cold night, but still a regiment of chimneys exhaled pillars of smoke as the final embers began to die down in the fire places beneath them, casting an orange glow out through windows and onto the streets.

  On one side street three Humps remained standing around a metal box radiating flame and heat. Each held a long metal fork into the fire and their conversation went something like this:

  “Dajawinkmarsosarjisdum?”

  “Ardarntnoolwhappitutnwilavealuke.”

  Which loosely translated would sound something like:

  “Do you think my sausage is done?”

  “I don’t know. Whip it out and we’ll have a look.”

  To which ensued a trio of laughter that if witnessed by an outsider may have been mistaken for an angry altercation.

  Afterwards, their lumps no longer heaving with the effort of laughter, they took to their barbecued meat portions, biting into them with simple, disgusting pleasure and spurting fat from between their thin lips. Grease dribbled from the corners of their mouths and ran down their chins, to which each one in turn pulled from a fold in their body a cloth that was quickly used to wipe themselves clean. Humps were not commonly regarded as the best mannered of creatures on the plain, but they were amongst the cleanest.

  From the lower end of the street there came a sound of short, quick footsteps on loose stones. Humps 1, 2 and 3 finished dabbing their chins and hurriedly returned the handkerchiefs to the folds in their skin.

  They welcomed the shadow which approached them and spoke to it in length.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN