Varsi
The shallow barge moved sluggishly up the Grey River towards Varsi, pushed on by the actions of twelve bare-chested slaves working in concert to drag their long oars through the water. A fifteen year old boy, Salvar Blackhand, sat on several bolts of silk, wrapped in broad leaves, piled in the prow; he tilted his neck back to look at the city walls towering above him while the long, braided queue of his chestnut hair trailed down his back. The city wall rose up two hundred feet or more above his head, and stretched right down to the water; it seemed almost made from a single, smooth block of slate.
Salvar turned away from Varsi, towards an older, dark man lounging in the back of the barge, his head covered by a large rice hat with only the bowl of a long-stemmed pipe poking out from beneath. The boy said, "Some walls..."
The man, the grey-skinned Scavenger Lord called Fear's Umbra, didn't lift the edge of his hat, or even speak. He only puffed on his pipe, flaring the spark of hash in the bowl.
As the barge got nearer to the city, the slaves strained to pull it through the one hole of any size - a great stone arch that lead into Varsi's cavernous and well-protected docks. Great copper bowls floated inside the cavern, filled with smokeless, slow-burning wood and bolted to the bay's floor with chains; such was their number that they gave the stone hall a healthy glow. Respectful of these potential hazards, dozens of barges jostled for a place at the docks, but soon Salvar's barge had settled in to unload.
Only then did Fear's Umbra remove his rice hat and stand, stepping onto the wharf with an easy step of his sandaled feet. Salvar was a little less sure of his legs, but he managed the transition from water to land without getting wet, and the pair left the porters to unload as they made their way past the brace of armed guards and towards the half-dozen twisting flights of stone stairs that lead to the city's surface.
"It seems a lot of effort," the boy said as he huffed up the stairs, "to defend such an out of the way place. What do they think's going to happen here? It's not like it's Nexus."
Fear's Umbra blew a thick cloud of smoke out of the side of his mouth and shook his head. "Have you never bothered to look at a map? Ma-Ha-Suchi sits on a throne of skulls almost straight upriver and your brother's foe, the Mask of Winters, lurks directly west. And that's not even mentioning the hordes the hill tribes make when they get it in their heads that this side of the river will make easier pickings than theirs."
"But Rivers' circle turned back Shouting With Iron's horde." Salvar puffed as he followed his sifu up the stairs. "And they'll deal with the Mask soon enough. What does Varsi have to fear?"
"And you've never read a book of history, either, I'll wager. Were your brother and his friends here ten years past, when Thorns marched over this area? Or two hundred years before that, when the Archzech horde flooded the river with cannibal corpses?"
"No, but -"
"Shadow and ash, boy!" The Scavenger Lord threw his rice hat back onto his head as the pair reached the top of the stairs and stepped back into the sunlight. "Let's get you beaten by your competition, before I lose my patience and do it for them."
