By Carmel Rechnitzer
The following is an excerpt from the writings and records of Rory Fisher, a humble bard and chronicler of the City of Five Sails:
Addendum 5.17 – the Taste of Boar
For once, I will keep my preamble brief. You’ve doubtless wondered, dear reader, how Yevgeni the Boar came to the City of Five Sails, and how his star ascended so quickly? How could a man of so much muscle but so few words become a charismatic force of personality? Why would his standing with the common folk of the city – not just Ussurans, but of all the nationless drifters with no district to call their home – become strong enough to contest the rich and powerful for Solomonia Saboruvya’s hand?
I asked Ekaterina Ilyanava, his close collaborator. In exchange for a few secrets I’d learned (see journals 1 and 4), she agreed to tell me of his first “public” night out on the town. It was some ten years before the central plot of my Chronicles, on the first day of fall…
Ekaterina Illyanava: “It’s not so much that the truth here is secret, Rory dear. It’s more that… Yevgeni is larger than life. Larger than you expect, even when people warn you. He seems tall at seven feet, but you’ll notice his back is often hunched and his shoulders often slope forward. The man works harder than horses and wears himself ragged. Once every three or four days, we banish him from the street so he can find some rest. The morning after, he’s “magically” grown taller. With a straight spine and a cup of coffee, he finally stands his full seven feet and seven inches.
The truth about Yevgeni is like that too, Rory dear. The morning after, it stretches. Everything you write about that man must be vetted by me. Do not ask Ren or Valeri, she’s too terse and he’s too long-winded.
I’m going to explain to you what didn’t happen when Yevgeni came to town.
He did not appear at the Governor’s Garden, naked and screaming at the tax collectors like the wrath of Theus himself. It was a social soirée that just so happened to involve Gustavo de Ladera, in his capacity as a civilian baker. His concurrent posting as the taxman was incidental. Gustavo was baking the cakes and pastries for a private springtime party… and a different man entirely was busy at the loading dock, opening up a shipment of Ussuran spirits. I’d snuck away with some of the other guests, intending to sneak a few early cups.
Yevgeni, bare-chested but definitely wearing trousers and boots, lay unconscious inside a crate. The crate was supposed to house one hundred and twenty glass bottles of vodka packed in hay. Our screaming had to do with the surprise of seeing him there instead. The screaming about money took place because honestly… whom amongst us wouldn’t lose their composure if they found an unconscious man where thirty thousand guilders worth of vodka were meant to be?
Yevgeni did not rampage through the Governor’s Gardens, searching for his mother. You’re an educated enough scholar to understand why an Ussuran man, free of most of his memories and transported half-across the world, would curse the name of Dar Matushki.
Yevgeni did not command a flock of crows to attack the witchwomen of Voddace. When we uncrated him, the massive man had come pre-packaged with a raven called Temnota. Or rather, a raven Yevgeni calls Temnota, who is mysteriously capable of answering to that name. I’ve met parrots capable of rudimentary speach, Rory. This is a town of pirates! But a corvid that understands names? Their cleverness is for tools, not language.
That creature… frightens me, Rory. You’re aware that some Ussurans can take on the shape of beasts, as a gift of our ancestral spellcraft? Temnota emanates the same winter-sharp air, the same minty-frost smell, that all Transformed carry about them. But it never returns to human form. You see, the Mother’s gifts all come with rules – if you misbehave, Dar Matushki will take your gift away. We call this “the Restriction.”
Breaking the Restriction ought to take away the transformation, and leave the sinful man behind. What unbearable acts must a villain commit – What Restriction must that damn’ed Raven break as consistently as it breathes! – that Dar Matushki refuses to allow them a return to their human shape?
That thing is evil, Rory. Vile. Neither Theus nor the Devil Jonah – thrice I bless the first name, and thrice I spit upon the other – have managed to drag Don Constanzo to Hell. How malignantly corrupt must a man or woman be to earn such a punishment? How – “
“The Witchwomen, my dear?” I interrupted. At the time, I mistakenly thought Ekaterina superstitious to a fault. Dismissed her feelings about the bird as some wanton fantasy. My first encounter with Temnota, of course, rid me of that notion. See Journal 11.
She huffed, disappointed that I didn’t share her suspicions yet, but continued.
Ekaterina: “Right. Right. The story. The raven flew from the loading dock, past the kitchen, out towards the guests in the Governor’s Gardens. The young Sibella, barely six years old, had come to the function to watch Vissentia’s debut. The sorcerer’s little brat – no, I shouldn’t malign a child so… She had no chance to grow up a hero, given who her father was. The sorcerous little child caught on to Temnota’s magic. Immediately after, she caught onto Temnota’s feet.
‘I will keep him! I will keep him!’ she screamed, much to her father’s disdain. To Temnota’s disdain, too. The squawking, screeching creature did his best to peck itself free. I bet she still has scars on her arms. But she would not let the bird go.
Yevgeni would have none of it. As lost and confused as he was, free of all notion of who he used to be and how he came to be there, he knew one thing to be true: Temnota was his companion. He charged forward towards the girl, intent on taking back his pet.
Her bodyguard Mourad was already primed for violence. The man was once a champion fighter, banished from the coterie of Mansa Kankan for failing to protect his master’s child. He would not lose his place in the world a second time! So when Yevgeni barreled towards Sibella? He intervened with matching ferocity.
The two of them did not pummel each other one hundred times, each man refusing to back down for nearly an hour. Their exchange of blows took about three minutes, at best. Mourad was – still is – the most accomplished pugilist I’ve ever seen. He’d planted himself in Yevgeni’s way, and managed to dodge under or around every wild swipe of Yevgeni’s fists. He bobbed and weaved, completely untouchable.
All the while, whenever Yevgeni took a step forward, Mourad would launch a devastating blow. He couldn’t comfortably reach Yevgeni’s face, so he sunk his fists deep into the soft parts of the Boar’s belly. To our horror, Yevgeni withstood the punishment. No matter how many times the breath was knocked from his lungs, he’d breathe deep and shout for his feathered friend yet again.
Mourad might have held his own, I genuinely don’t know. I imagine that a single, lucky blow from Yevgeni’s ham-like fists would have flattened him. But their fight was interrupted by the City Guard, slowly advancing on Yevgeni with their spears. A terrible mistake on their part, really. When the first spear dove towards him, Yevgeni snatched it from the air. He swung it by the sharp end – poor guardsman still holding on to the shaft, hanging off it like a rag tied to a flagpole – and knocked the hollering soldier into Mourad. He sent the two men sprawling and roared!
The Guardsmen’s morale broke.One fled, then another, and suddenly the whole squad had dropped their spears and ran. Guests were running by then, too. The entire Scarpa family was already past the Garden Gates and piling into their carriage. Sibella was somehow still holding onto Temnota.
Yevgeni did not strike his fists to the earth, cracking the road asunder. It’s a shame that storytellers make a mess of this part. His actual actions were no less fantastical. Realizing he could not catch up to the carriage in time, Yevgeni tore a marble head free from one of the Governor’s many statues. He launched it at the carriage. Just tossed it, like a father passing a ball to his child. The.marble missile hit the carriage wheel like a cannon-ball! It did, also, crack a few of the road’s paving stones once it landed.
At this point, Scarpa senior lost his patience with his favorite daughter. He forced Sibella to let go of the bird. With the help of his servants and goons, he mounted the carriage horses and cut their reigns free. The Scarpa family fled, and Yevgeni set on their broken carriage like a wild bear tearing apart a pumpkin. He broke it to splinters looking for Temnota.
Yevgeni did not toss the Scarpa’s riches to every passing beggar, welcoming them to share in his plunder. He’s a good man, but he’s no El Gato. The Scarpa family always travels with cold, hard coin in tow. In his rage, he’d shattered their modest coffers, and sent about one hundred guilders loose onto the cobbles. Speaking about Temnota, and not about the gold, he shouted:
“Damn that family of thieves! I will grind their bones to cornmeal!”
To the poor and hungry who gathered by the Gardens, hoping to beg the rich and powerful for alms, it didn’t matter what he meant. All that mattered is that suddenly there was gold on the ground. All that mattered is that he’d openly defied the Scarpa family. In a moment, he was made a Saint. Every District heard his name, heard he was their champion against the Scarpa family.
The other Ussuran guests and I rushed him away. We understood he wasn’t a monster. Wasn’t a political bogeyman, here to wreak revenge on the fattest cats in the City. He was a man in the middle of Dar Matushki’s Lessons. It was our moral duty to assist. We took him in, hid him from the City Guard until he could situate and orient himself in the City.
He did spend the next year in combat with the villains of Five Sails. At Scarpa’s behest, the corrupt City Guard spent ten months trying to hunt him down. Flush him from our dens, like dogs flushing boars out towards their masters. Yevgeni is a lot of things, but he’s no killer. Whenever he was found – and at his size, this happened quite often – he’d concuss and bruise and rattle the teeth out of the guardsmen’s skulls. But he never took a life, and offered every miscreant a chance to walk away.
By the time Yevgeni and Scarpa came to their uneasy ceasefire, our Boar had forced most of the unscrupulous wretches to retire from public service. Cleaning up the City’s garrison was an act of self-defense, but he saw the good it did. Whatever kind of person he was before Dar Matushki magicked him here… He started a new life in Five Sails. Put his massive fists and his unearthly toughness to good use. Championed anyone too lost or weak to defend themselves.
So at first, he was a hero through wild accident and magical circumstance. But I follow him because he’s never stopped. Every following choice was deliberate, and he never chooses selfishly. He’s learned his Lesson, even if the memories of his previous life won’t or can’t come back. Even if that nightmarish raven still rides on his shoulder…
His strength is our strength, Rory. The Ussuran District knows that. Even if none of us seem to know how to keep a story honest. It’s embarrassing how we always stretch his stories. The truth is enough to prove him a hero.
For example, Rory, dear… You want to know the funniest part? His nickname is an accident of storytelling, too. It was never ‘Boar’ to start with. Mourad, and the guardsman Yevgeni struck him flat with, were both rendered crumpled and unconscious. A scholarly fellow stepped in to stabilize them and woke them with smelling salts. When the good doctor asked their patient how he felt… Mourad, lips puffy with pain, tongue swollen, and mouth bleeding, was actually trying to say: “Like I got mauled by a bear.”