Chapter 19: Ch. 019 – (Now) Paying His Respects

The graveyard was much as Jon had left it. With a quick look around he could see that compared to the number of people who died the week he’d left, blessedly few had died in the years that followed. Time had been kind to this one small part of Dalmarin at least. It had hidden all those awful wounds and made them blend into the background. Now the graves of the massacre were just another scar that looked no different than the graves that were as old as he was. It was a small relief, but he was grateful for it just the same. Here he could find the solace he’d sought in all the years he’d been away. At least that was what he thought until he got to his father’s grave and found the headstone knocked over and defaced. It shouldn’t have surprised him, he realized, but it did. The anger of the massacre was probably still too fresh to expect anything but this sort of contempt from his former subjects, even after all these years. 

Jon was about to kneel down and right the marker when a voice behind him said, “What’s a stranger got to do with our own wicked warden?” The sound made Jon whirl and he reached down to his side for a weapon before he suppressed the reflex when he saw the speaker was just a broken down drunk lounging in the shade of a nearby tree. 

“Why should a drunk care why I’m here?” Jon asked, taking in all the details at once from the man he hadn’t seen when he’d first walked in. It was definitely still the same Gravedigger that had been here for Jon’s whole life, and every part of the man looked worse for the wear than when he’d last laid eyes on him. He was soused and there was salt and pepper sprinkled amongst the stubble on his unshaven face, but it was definitely him. Jon hadn’t remembered him as the talkative sort. Some people got like that with a few drinks though, and from his ruddy cheeks and the size of the jug in his lap it looked like he might have had more than a few. 

“Me? Normally I wouldn’t care at all who you visit.” he gestured broadly, to graves around the yard. “Lay flowers for a sinner or light a candle for a saint. Don’t trouble me at all. That’s the whole point of visiting a place like this - to pay your respects. That grave though. That’s the Shaw plot, and it deserves piss more than it deserves respect if you ask anyone around here.” He was half right - in truth it was one of two places where his family was buried. His mother was laid to rest outside the far off capital city of Lloren but his brother and his father were buried on this spot. After a long and fruitful life Jon hoped to join them one day.  

“What’s so bad about the ‘Shaw Plot,’ then?” Jon asked, doing his best to mock the gravedigger's dramatic tone, who was apparently just sober enough to recognize the slight, but not sober enough to care. 

“Maybe you tell me why a stranger like you wants to know and I’ll tell you a story that would raise hairs on the back of your neck.” The gravedigger responded sullenly, reclining back against his tree.

“Me? You don’t need to know why I care,” Jon said, fishing into his pocket before bringing up a few coins. “Me and a few other paupers are looking for a good story. That’s all.” Jon walked over and sat down next to the man that stank of sweat and rot gut before dropping three tarnished coppers in the drunk’s dirty palm. 

The gravedigger smiled as he took the coins. Why wouldn't he? It was more than he got paid to dig a grave and he wouldn’t even have to pick up a shovel. 

“Well you see - they call him the wicked warden on account of the massacre, but in truth he was wicked since the day he arrived - it just took innocent bodies to get most people to open their eyes is all.” The filthy man started saying as he pocketed the coins. “He was both cause and casualty - a bit of irony there. Let no one say the gods don’t know how to tell themselves a good joke now and again.”

“Massacre, huh?” Jon chimed in, “If he was your Lord then why would he slaughter his own subjects?”

“Well it didn’t start out that way. No one thinks he was looking to get people killed you understand - but no one thinks he would have lost any sleep over it neither. He was just a small lord from a big city that got too greedy is all. But every day he watches these dwarven trains go by, and well - a man gets ideas.” The gravedigger paused just long enough to take a swig from his jug, and then offered it to Jon who held up a hand to refuse it. “You ever seen a dwarven train? How big they are and how much treasure they carry?”

“I thought they mostly came up to the surface with coal and metal and went down full of wheat and such.” Jon said, playing with the old man. The common knowledge was that all dwarves used those trains to haul gold and jewels deep beneath the surface never to be seen again. 

“They do a little of that, it’s true, but no train ever leaves a station without a chest or two of riches. Often as not they’ve got whole cars of the stuff,” the drunk continued nonplussed by his comment. “ Well our old Warden - he sees them come and go from his high house windows and talks to his youngest boy who he put to work spying on the little bastards, and one day when they discover a real treasure train will be coming through town, well they round up all the hard luck boys they can find and try to arrange a robbery.” 

“Is that so,” Jon asked, just managing to suppress a laugh at how wrong this man got all the details of that day. “So the robbery didn’t go off as planned then?”

“The gods saw to it that it didn’t - but I’m getting ahead of myself. Before a single drop of blood was shed, the divine tried to intervene. The way I hear tell of it, the Lord’s eldest son tried to get his father to see reason - to convince him there were other ways to pay for their lavish lifestyle, but the Lord Shaw…” The gravedigger spit as soon as he said the name, and had a sour look on his face even after he continued speaking. “He wanted his house’s star to climb. He wanted enough riches to return to civilization instead of living out here in the sticks with us, so he insisted and they ambushed the train when it was leaving town with two dozen men if there was one. 

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“Two dozen - that must have been a ferocious fight, but how did they manage to stop the train?”

“Now I’m glad you asked that,” the drunk said, flashing Jon a wretched smile full of dark stains and missing teeth. “The Lord stopped the train with his earth magic, and anchored it right to the ground. The dwarves put up a terrible fight of course. They always do when gold is on the line, and in the end between their greed and their terrible wands, they routed the Warden’s men, and executed every last one, even his eldest son who wanted no part of the whole thing to begin with.”

“That sounds awful,” Jon said noncommittally as he was lost in thought. It didn’t really matter that none of this was true. What mattered was what the people of the village believed, and if this was the most common version of events after so long, he’d have a hell of a time getting people on his side for what came next.

“No sir, that ain’t the awful part,” the gravedigger said, dragging out the moment for all it was worth. “That wasn’t the massacre. That was just the reason for the masacre. The dwarves went back to the king's men with treaties in hand and made them arrest every member of their family before executing them if you can believe it. Said it was their right to arrest whole families that had never done anything wrong in their whole lives just because some dwarvish law said so.”

“I can’t,” Jon answered. He still couldn’t even after all these years. The idea was monstrous, and living among the dwarves for a few years hadn’t made it make any more sense to him, but he’d seen the same threads of tyrannical justice instead of trying to do what was right play out over and over again in their world. It’s just who they were. 

“Believe it or not, I sh-wear that’s what happened,” the gravedigger said, slurring his words slightly in his rush to drive the point home. “They executed anyone that they thought might even be a little related to the men that tried to take their gold. Women. Children. Half sisters and third cousins. Everyone. I dug almost a hundred graves that week, I did. That’s why I don’t allow that stone you were looking on to stand you see - because he did all that. Our wicked Warden as good as killed a hundred people just because he was tired he couldn’t go to his fine dinner parties with all the other fancy Lords and Ladies.“

Jon smiled grimly and stood up. “That’s certainly an interesting story, sadly for you it’s wrong as wrong gets.”

“I’m telling you—” the gravedigger tried to explain, but before he could say more Jon had the brand out and pointed at the guts of the tale teller. 

“No - I’m telling you, that I lived through all the events you tried to explain, and that you got every last one wrong.” Jon laughed, cocking the weapon just to make the gravedigger sweat. “You even managed to make my brother into the hero of the story - which is more offensive than all the rest put together after what he did.”

“Wait, you’re the little Lord Shaw?” the drunk asked, finally putting two and two together. 

“Not so little now. I could kill you where you stand, I think,” Jon responded. 

“No, no no of-of course not.” the gravedigger tried to back peddle. “I just meant I-we never thought you’d be… well - they killed you didn’t they?”

“Apparently not, but that doesn’t mean they don’t keep trying.” Jon said coldly. “But since you’ve been so patient with me I’ll give you at least one more day to enjoy breathing. I’m coming back tomorrow around the same time to have the visit with my Father that I meant to have today. When I get back, if my Father’s grave isn’t the most beautiful monument to his life I’ve ever seen, they’ll be digging a grave for you next, and I’ll pay them extra to make it nice and shallow so the carrion feast on your bones. You understand?”

“Y-yes sir.” The Gravedigger said, trying and failing to salute as the fear mixed with the alcohol to make him piss himself. “Best spot in the whole yard by tomorrow. You’ll see.” Jon didn’t bother to respond to that. Instead he walked to his horse and rode to his next errand. As much fun as it was to put the fear into a mangy cur like that, it probably would have just been better to leave it alone - but that was a lot harder for Jon when talking about his father’s reputation rather than his own. He looked forward to finding out just how much this jolt of fear would motivate the poor man when he came back tomorrow.

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