[ OT ] Sunday Free Write : Leave A Story , Leave A Comment - The Dark Gift Edition !

# # # # # # [ ] ( # dropcap ) 
 
 The rains dribbled down from the cold gray skies, lending its gloom to the recently harvested fields and slate tiles of the buildings. The air was filled with the sound of softly crying women, the scent of burning incense covering the stench of vomit and shit. The servants went about their duties in a subdued manner, housemaids carrying baskets of clean sheets and removing soiled ones from the family and guest quarters, the kitchen busy preparing the evening meal. Riders had been dispatched hours earlier, mounted on swift steeds to bear the sorrowful news; a great man was dying. 
 
 -- 
 
 Ansel Ivanovich Platov rode in tiredly, his horse's hair shaggy from the coming winter. He smelled of wet leather and greasy wool, several days ’ worth of growth on his unshaven face. He was well dressed for the cold damp weather with good thick wool trousers and greatcoat, stout leather boots that came up to his knee. A dark green cloak was clasped by a silver chain at his throat, underneath which was a sword belt with sheathed blade and dagger. He held the reins loosely, his mount having taken this route many a time. Instead, he listened to the *clip clop* of the hooves on the wet gravel, tucking his gauntleted hands under his arms for warmth. 
 
 He was young, having turned twenty just last spring with the last of his growth. He was perhaps a hair under average height, long in torso but short in leg and with a face that was also average in features. Indeed, most about him was unremarkable and unmemorable- his hair an unassuming dark brown and tied back out of the way with a piece of string, his eyes a rather bland grey. The only truly distinctive elements about him was a nose that had been broken in the past and a small half-inch long scar running from his temple to the corner of his right eye, a gift from a rather stubborn bandit that had refused to die. 
 
 The village of Bear Lake had grown since that eventful evening on March 17th, 1998. Where once it held less than four hundred at least seven hundred now lived within its walls, help along by the fact that the old U.S. Highway 31 ran through it, making it a natural place for coaching houses on the Novgorod-Manistee route. Much of the additional persons were directly involved in providing for the travelers, from the taverns to the livery stables and everything in between. Right then plumes of smoke rose from the chimneys, families getting supper ready. The *ting-ting* of a blacksmith's hammer could be heard along with the shuttle of looms, the sound of mothers calling home their children filling the air. Set directly on lake's southern shore, the twenty foot walls rose in a horseshoe shape around it, a solid base of stone and concrete with a fighting platform of wood above it. Gates pierced its walls at Russell St and Potter Rd, solid things of thick oak sheathed in iron with portcullis. Square towers covered the highway and the fields in between, their roofs shingled with slate. Hoardings covered with salvaged steel ringed the battlements, providing the village's defenders with protection from enemy missiles while allow them to return fire, dropping stones and boiling water down on the heads of attackers should they try to scale the walls. Heavy flamethrowers and scorpions capable of flinging six foot long javelins or else twelve pound stones or glass globes of napalm were set in each of the towers, their ammunition stacked and ready to repel any invader. 
 
 Ansel guided his mount towards the North-Eastern gate, politely nodding as a wagon train passed by him, the oxen looking well-maintained with bright shining coats. The six wagons were covered with water proof sheets of canvas, their cargoes carefully protected against the rains. At his inquiry the drivers and the mounted guards answered that they carried honey in crocks wrapped with straw as well pocket watches out of Manistee, the largest port town south of Novgorod. They had a blossoming factory there capable of producing a startling six hundred a year. He had one of them in his pocket, the silver cased watch costing more than a suit of armor or team of draft horses. 
 
 `` Who goes there?'' a voice barked from the parapet above him in the misty gloom. 
 
 `` In the name of my father, Ivan Ivanovich Platov, Lord of Bear Lake and the surrounding fields, woods and people, I, Ansel Ivanovich, command you to open these gates and let me through.'' 
 
 `` Lord Ansel? Oh, thank the saints you've arrived. *Open this gates! * Quickly, m'lord. Your noble grandsire waits for you at Death's door.'' 
 
 The entrance into the village was only barred by a single portcullis, the watchmen cranking it up out of the post holes set in the concrete. Ansel did n't wait for it to rise completely, spurning his horse onward and ducking under its steel tipped teeth. 
 
 `` My thanks, Viktor!'' he shouted behind him, turning his mount left onto Virginia and his family's manor. Built out of a former elementary school, it was ringed with a second wall some thirty feet tall with even taller towers, a dry ditch filled with barbed wire and metal stakes below. The drawbridge was down and the gate open, guarded by a pair of his family's druzhina, their chosen sworn-followers whose sole profession was war. He jumped out of his saddle, handing reins and cloak to servants as they rushed out of the manor house. A pair of valets ushered him in, their faces carved with heavy lines of grief. 
 
 `` Tell Lord Ivan that his son has arrived! Come quickly, my lord. Your grandfather is in his room.'' 
 
 The aforementioned was comfortably warm, a fire blazing in the hearth which crackled and spat every so often. The once-school building also had a precious boiler which piped heat to the radiators placed in each room, one of which gurgle gently even now. Long tapestries covered the walls, the threads depicting scenes of hunts and of battles both from myth and history. Bogatyrs rode against fearsome monsters and noble warriors led by the blessed Alexander Nevsky fought the evil servants of the Teutonic Order with their cruel horned helms and black cross on a white surcoat. More recent ones depicted the Wars of Founding, the Great Migration North or the Battle of the Red Cedar, where brave defenders fought against the starving hordes out of Detroit and Grand Rapids. The latter were depicted as ghoulish starving things, arms held out before them and jaws slack like some undead creature. 
 
 His grandfather laid in his bed, a clean shirt covering him, his beard long since turned white. Despite his advanced age, just under seventy-two years, he still had most of his hair as gray as it was. His face was a gnarled thing, full of weary lines and ancient scars. His eyes were milky with cataracts, his hands weathered like oak, the last three digits of his left hand mere stumps.
