Hun­dreds of rib­bons flut­tered in the sum­mer air. Rib­bons, tied to the spikes of a hun­dred sol­diers’ helms. Armored men and women grum­bled, queued under the swel­ter. Rough hands fanned sweat­ed necks, tugged cling­ing met­al col­lars.

“But­ter me up and call me a beef, Suse. This is an oven,” said a freck­ly lass to her shield­mate.

“Don’t have to tell me, Lyd,” said Suse, pulling her breast­plate on its straps to per­mit some air. “Least we’re not march­ing.”

Ahead, the line shift­ed. The dou­ble row of sol­diers moved up a notch, clos­er to a table piled with small bot­tles. The shield sis­ters stepped up. Lyd sniffed, wrin­kled her nose.

“Yeah, but we’ve got­ta deal with that,” she said, ges­tur­ing to the south­west. A rank breeze float­ed from there, heavy with a scent of rot and cur­dled gore.

Lyd gri­maced, con­tin­ued. “Dis­gust­ing. Bloody dogs won’t even bury their dead.”

“Can’t blame ‘em,” said Suse. “Crawl­ing with plague. The Eleven­ty Third Brigade caught their med­ical con­voy.”

“Eh, true enough. Don’t make me pity them.”

The line shift­ed, showed the table laden in lit­tle bot­tles. A bored quar­ter­mas­ter in a ker­chief stood there, scrib­bled on a clip­board. The women stepped for­ward.

“After­noon, Fis­ch­er.”

“After­noon, Lance Cor­po­rals,” said Fis­ch­er, bare­ly look­ing up. He ticked two names on his list, hand­ed each sol­dier a thumb-sized ampoule.

“Thanks,” said Lyd. They turned away, trekked into the bustling camp. Their helm rib­bons snapped in the rot­ting air. Lyd sniffed.

“What d’you say,” said the freck­led sol­dier, turn­ing the vial of grey liq­uid in her hand. “We rus­tle up a bit of gin from Mar­cel and drink ton­ics to the poor, dead ene­my?”

“Sure,” said Suse, grin­ning. She raised her own vial in a mock toast. Lyd mim­ic­ked her, watched the cloudy ampoule gleam in the sun.

“May we nev­er live again!”

How did it hap­pen, again?” said Clovette, frown­ing at the cov­ered well. Vines cracked its black-brick pier, thick and scrag­gy. A scent of watery rot fil­tered neath the locked wood­en lid.

“Ah,” said Louis. He knelt on crunch­ing cher­ry leaves, tried a ring of keys on the lock. “It was a drunk. Tum­bled in. Nobody noticed til the water went bad.”

“Poorsalaud...” said Clovette, look­ing out at the town. Lean­ing hous­es, as crooked and mossy as the chok­ing cher­ry trees, clus­tered round the ancient well. Eyes peered from upper frames of win­dows, watched the cut­ters anx­ious­ly. Clovette, lean­ing on one bole, squint­ed at them.

“No one to notice he had gone.”

There was a thump and a wet gar­gle from the well. The cut­ters lis­tened to echo­ing splash­es, scrap­ing on stone.

“Well, they noticed even­tu­al­ly,” said Louis, try­ing anoth­er key.

“A shame they did not med­icate the well,” said Clovette, fin­ger­ing the axe on her belt.

Anoth­er key failed to turn. “They are too poor for such salt.”

“They can afford us.”

“Bien sûr, we are cheap and hun­gry.”

“True,” said the gaunt Clovette. “Sup­pose they would need to retrieve the corpse, in any case.”

A key ground in the lock. “Here we are,” said Louis. Some­thing bumped beneath the well cov­er, snarled in a wet and man­gled throat. Watch­ing eyes went wide, ducked down behind sills.

Clovette straight­ened, pulled the long hatch­et from her belt. Louis brushed his knees, pro­duced a net and long-neck bot­tle filled with some­thing grainy.

“Ready? he said. Clovette hooked her fin­gers under the well cov­er, nod­ded. “Ready.”

She threw the well cov­er open. It creaked, crashed wide. The cut­ters crouched, lis­tened to a scrap­ing grow near. As soon as a scrape of spongy flesh peeled over the pier, they struck.

Louis’ net went fly­ing. Clovette’s axe thud­ded into a putrid limb. There was a gar­gling screech, a splat­ter of grave water. Glass shat­tered. Gran­ules of grey scat­tered on the beast, smoked where they touched the flesh. It gur­gled, wavered, top­pled back, took the net and hatch­et with it.

There was a splash. “Merde,” grum­bled Louis, tossed the bro­ken bot­tle neck. It shat­tered on the pier. “Well...” said Clovette, peer­ing down the shaft.

“Look at it this way. We did not say we would both salt the grue and remove it from the well, did we?”

Coastal civ­i­liza­tion is for­ev­er besieged. The small, ragged realm which Litorans call their own is beset, pre­dat­ed by ter­rors from beyond frayed bor­ders.

Beasts descend from track­less hills, eager for flesh. Preda­to­ry älves slip from dark­ened woods, itch­ing for wicked­ness and abduc­tion. Inex­orable dis­ease creeps in the very air and per­verts humans bod­ies after death.

Lit­tle exists to favor the Litorans. Only by a few, key tools are the forces of the Oth­er kept mar­gin­al­ly at bay: Fire razes the piti­less wood, dis­suades the beast. Iron breaks the care­less ground, burns the älf. Griso­date salt puri­fies the squalid mass­es, quash­es incip­i­ent life with­in the dead.

It is this last tool which is the most pre­cious. Grey salt: Human­i­ty’s most pre­cious armor. 

Grey Salt

Griso­date is a pre­cious salt dredged from the epony­mous Bay of Grey. It is trea­sured for its antibi­ot­ic prop­er­ties. Griso­date wards off a pletho­ra of mal­adies, ban­ish­es latent plague infec­tion. With­out their salt, human pop­u­la­tions would be rav­aged by dis­ease and mur­der­ous grues.

Griso­date is a med­i­c­i­nal stan­dard. It is wide­ly con­sumed by the Coastal pop­u­lace. Gen­er­al stores keep it in dry safes, sell it dry by the gram or bot­tled as a ton­ic. Phar­ma­cies keep casks of the stuff, add it to any and all serums, potions, or elixirs. 

Peo­ple put it in food. Grey salt in cui­sine is a taste­ful show of wealth. It’s mixed with gin to cre­ate the clas­sic gin and ton­ic, pat­ted onfoie gras before sear­ing, sprin­kled on iced flow­ers with melt­ed caramel.

By neces­si­ty, sol­diers receive grey salt as part of their pay. A med­icat­ed force is essen­tial, lest bat­tle­fields become like the crawl­ing death-plains of old. Risky ser­vice pro­fes­sions, like sol­diery, include salt in their pay. From this prac­tice, we derive the phrase “worth one’s salt.”

Cut­ters car­ry griso­date, if they can afford it. It aids sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the hunt­ing of grues, as it burns and immo­bi­lizes their dis­eased tis­sues. A griso­date paste may be con­coct­ed for such rea­sons. It is smeared on the killing edges of weapons for par­tic­u­lar effect. Sim­i­lar­ly, small bombs or hand­held aspergili­ums may be used to sow salt in the bony flesh of the scut­tling dead.

A wise cut­ter will also car­ry grey salt to dis­suade älves. A cir­cle of piled grains sprin­kled around one’s camp will keep the crea­tures from wreak­ing mis­chief in the night. Schol­ars sup­pose that the pres­ence of such salt weak­ens the influ­ence of the Oth­er­world in a giv­en area. As a result, älves become wary in its pres­ence, stripped as they are of the pro­tec­tions of their misty realm.

Griso­date is polit­i­cal sub­stance. It is mined plen­ti­ful­ly only in the Bay of Grey, a duchy of Fir­lund.*** Coastal pow­ers are forced to main­tain good rela­tions with that north­ern realm, lest the Crown of Firls employ pun­ish­ing salt tax­es or trade embar­goes. Due to its near-monop­oly, Fir­lund holds both immense wealth and titan­ic polit­i­cal might.

Effectiveness & Side Effects

Despite griso­date’s poten­cy, it is an imper­fect pre­ven­ta­tive. Its active dura­tion in the human body is short and unpre­dictable. The salt may ward off infec­tion for no more than a few days, and its effec­tive­ness and dura­tion are only par­tial­ly influ­enced by dose.

To com­pen­sate for patchy effec­tive­ness, Coastal folk con­sume griso­date as often as they can afford it. Aris­to­crats have it with every meal. The work­ing class take it week­ly or as a lux­u­ry. The poor and the peas­antry are large­ly unable to afford their salt. They are most at risk. Wealthy met­ro­pol­i­tan areas are most­ly free of sick­ness, while slums and sor­ry coun­try­sides crawl with afflic­tion and plague.

Grey salt does not ward against all ill­ness. While, syphilis, and con­sump­tion are pre­vent­ed by the stuff, blight, grippe, and pox are not. * Griso­date may help clean a wound, but it will not save a per­son from pox out­break.

Use of griso­date salt car­ries a vari­ety of side effects. Its pres­ence in the body cur­tails cer­tain vari­eties of cell repli­ca­tion. Short term or imme­di­ate use pro­duces no vis­i­ble side effect, is val­ued for pro­mot­ing gen­er­al good health. Reg­u­lar, light con­sump­tion of griso­date induces tem­po­rary steril­i­ty in both men and women after a month. This is val­ued, as it is a com­mon means of Coastal con­tra­cep­tion.

Heavy use over a peri­od of sev­er­al months induces fragili­ty of the nails and hair, caus­es the skin to become del­i­cate and trans­par­ent. Diges­tive and res­pi­ra­to­ry issues also ensue. Some cir­cles of Firl­ish aris­toc­ra­cy find these side effects to be high­ly attrac­tive. They val­ue an air of fragili­ty and wealth.

Some folk abstain from griso­date con­sump­tion. They ague it weak­ens the human race, inhibits the body’s abil­i­ty to fight dis­ease, and low­ers fer­til­i­ty to a rate of non-replace­ment. While these objec­tors may be true, they tend to live short, dis­eased lives.

***