They rose with the sun, which is to say they rose in a world of gray.
The three hours of sleep they had managed to steal in the Great Hall had done little more than sand the sharpest edges off their exhaustion. Their bodies were a map of aches and bruises, their spirits frayed thin as old linen.
Jamandi’s coin was cold and heavy in their pouches, and the healing potions she’d given them felt like an admission that more pain was yet to come. Aurelio, ever the gentleman, spent a few moments helping Gassi load supplies into their newly acquired wagon. It was a sturdy, if plain, vehicle, pulled by a stolid horse Gassi had named Brunte the Fourth. This implied the existence of three prior Bruntes, a history no one felt particularly inclined to ask about.
“We should be on our way,” Aurelio said, his voice quiet but firm. “It feels wrong to linger here. We have a charter to fulfill.”
“Why leave in daylight when you can travel in darkness?” Gassi muttered, securing a large barrel of water to the wagon with an intricate series of knots. “But the road is patient. It will wait for us.”
He then proceeded to load twenty-five full waterskins, an act of such profound redundancy that Zogg, who was helping him, simply stared.
“We are following a river, Gassi,” Zogg said, his voice flat.
“And who is to say the river has not forgotten how to be water?” Gassi replied, patting a waterskin fondly.
Zogg merely grunted, sighed—a sound like stones grinding together—and hoisted another crate into the wagon.
They left the wounded manor behind, its stone walls already beginning to heal, and struck out west. The road followed the Shrike River, a meandering path through thinning woods that soon gave way to open plains. Under a sky the color of dishwater, they came to a fork: one path continued west, the other veered south into the deeper wilds.
“The shell will tell us,” Gassi announced. He produced a large, spiraled conch from a pouch and held it to his ear. He listened intently for a long moment, his head cocked. “This way,” he declared, pointing south.
Zogg looked at the pale, watery disc of the sun, barely visible through the clouds. He consulted the map Jamandi had provided, then looked at the road. “West,” he said, pointing down the other path. “Oleg’s is to the west.”
They went west.
The quiet of the road was short-lived. A few miles on, a sound broke the stillness—a rustling from the dense thicket of trees that bordered the path to the south. It was the sound of something large moving with little care for stealth.
“Could be a boar,” Aurelio whispered, his hand resting on the hilt of his flail. He had donned his new suit of looted half-plate, and while it offered protection, it clanked softly as he moved. “Or bandits.”
“Not a good place for an ambush,” Gassi said, his gaze distant. “Too close to the city, too near the water. It lacks poetry.” He seemed convinced. “It is probably just a wounded man. Or a dangerous animal.”
Aurelio crept forward, Zogg flanking him. The orc adjusted his tracking goggles, sweeping the ground. The forest floor was a chaotic tapestry of tracks—deer, fox, rabbit. It was a forest being a forest. There was nothing to single out.
They spread out, picking their way into the trees. The rustling grew louder, closer, but its source remained maddeningly elusive. Gassi heard it to his right; Aurelio to his left. Maven, restless, moved ahead of the group, her hand tight on the grip of her massive axe. Nym, believing it to be a frightened animal, prepared to stand his ground to calm it or let it pass.
He was wrong.
It burst from the trees not like a frightened animal, but like an avalanche of horn and muscle with intentions to maim. It was a bull moose, larger than any of them had ever seen, its rack of antlers a crown of sharpened spears.
It lowered its head and charged.
Nym had no time to react. The impact was a thunderclap of pain that threw him from his feet. He felt a searing agony as a tine gouged deep into his side. Before he could cry out, a heavy hoof slammed into his ribs, and the world dissolved into a universe of white-hot agony.
The forest exploded. A second moose crashed out of the undergrowth, its eyes rolling with fury, and slammed into Gassi, sending him sprawling.
Aurelio, seeing Nym fall, roared and charged, his flail whistling through the air. He brought it down hard on the first moose’s flank. The beast bellowed in pain and fury, turning its attention from the crumpled form of the gnome to the man in shining steel.
Zogg was a conduit of focused violence, his Aldori sword flashing as he unleashed a spellstrike. The blade crackled with electricity, opening a deep, scorched wound on the second moose’s shoulder.
Maven, seeing an opening, moved to attack. She swung her wood-splitter in a massive arc, aiming for the neck. But the moose twisted with unnatural speed, its thick, matted fur turning the blade just enough. The axe struck the beast’s shoulder blade with a dull thud, failing to bite deep, and skidded harmlessly off the bone. Maven cursed, recovering her balance, her eyes narrowing as she re-griped the haft.
Nym, somehow, dragged himself to his feet. Blood soaked his leafy tunic, and every breath was a fresh torment, but his lilac eyes burned with a cold, murderous rage.
“Moose-bastard,” he hissed.
He lunged, his cane’s needle-blade finding its mark in the soft flesh of the beast’s neck.
The fight was a chaotic dance of death beneath the ancient trees. Aurelio was knocked from his feet, the moose’s hooves trampling the ground where his head had been a moment before. He rolled, came up on one knee, and with a guttural roar, swung his flail in a devastating upward arc. There was a sickening crunch as the iron ball met the moose’s skull, and the great beast crumpled.
Minutes later, it was over. Two massive bodies lay steaming in the cool air. Zogg, with a grim finality, drew his shortsword and dispatched the one Gassi had knocked unconscious.
They spent the next two hours in the grim but necessary work of butchery.
Aurelio handled the knife with the precision of an experienced butcher, but to the party’s surprise, it was Gassi who directed the cuts. The eccentric man mumbled about muscle density and spirit lines, pointing precisely where to slice to preserve the hide. He seemed to understand the anatomy of the beast not from practice, but from some unspoken, intuitive dialogue with the carcass itself.
It was late afternoon by the time they finished. Nym sat against a tree, pale and stoic, as Zogg bandaged his side. The gnome accepted the aid without comment, but when Gassi approached with his pouch of green, foul-smelling herbs, he flinched away.
“The last time you touched me, I saw through your eyes,” Nym said, his voice tight. “The time before that, your magic burned like fire. I’ll take my chances with the bleeding.”
Gassi simply nodded and treated his own wounds and Aurelio’s.
The day was waning. They decided to press on, leaving the road as it veered north and striking out across the open country, ever westward. By dusk, they made camp in a small, defensible clearing.
Gassi, assigned the role of cook, decided to “marinate” the fresh moose meat in a concoction of forest roots and beetle shells he insisted contained nutrients not to be found anywhere else. The result was a meal so catastrophically bitter, so profoundly inedible, that the party unanimously opted for their stale, dry rations instead. Knowing where the meat comes from, it turned out, was not the same as knowing what to do with it over a fire. As the others settled in for their watch shifts, Zogg could be seen practicing with his dueling sword by the firelight, the blade a river of silver as he guided the flow of his magic through the steel.
The night passed without incident. The phantom brands did not return. It was as if the horrors of the manor, having failed to kill them, had simply grown bored and moved on. The memory itself was beginning to feel distant, like a story told about someone else.
In the morning, before they set out, Gassi handed each of them a small vial containing a shimmering, pearlescent liquid.
“Elixirs of life,” he announced. “Brewed from fox-herb. Very potent. They give back your health. But they spoil quickly. They will last only until the next sunrise, so drink them first if you find yourself in need.”
Nym took the vial, sniffed it suspiciously, and tucked it into his belt. He had no intention of drinking it until he saw it’s effects on someone else first.
They traveled for another day, the landscape growing wilder around them. Nym sat in the wagon, cross-legged, poring over the scrolls he had purchased, his lips moving silently as he attempted to transcribe the magical scribbles. Aurelio, up front, kept his eyes peeled for any sign of a smoke column on the horizon.
It was Gassi, his eyes on some point beyond the horizon that only he could see, who spotted it first. “There,” he said.
In the distance, nestled in a bend of the river, was a fort. A ten-foot-high palisade of sharpened logs, with watchtowers at each corner.
As they drew near, they could see the main gates being hauled shut for the night. A man with a thick beard and a crossbow hailed them from the walkway.
“State your business!”
“Travelers, seeking shelter!” Aurelio called back. “We come from Jamandi Aldori!”
At the mention of the name, the tension on the wall seemed to break. The gates, which had been closing, were pushed open again. A man and a woman—Oleg and his wife, Svetlana—greeted them with weary relief.
“Jamandi sent you?” Oleg asked, his eyes scanning their battered appearances. “Gods be praised. Come in, come in! The bandits are due any day.”
Over a simple, hearty meal of stew and black bread—vastly superior to Gassi’s beetle-marinade—they learned the full story. For three months, a band of thugs had been bleeding the outpost dry, demanding a “tax” under threat of fire and death.
“The first time, there were a dozen of them,” Oleg explained, his hands clenching his mug. “Led by a cloaked archer and a ferocious woman wielding two axes. She was a devil. She laughed while she smashed my stock.”
Zogg and Aurelio exchanged a look.
“A woman with two axes?” Aurelio asked. “Named Nishkiv?”
Oleg blinked, surprised. “I never properly caught her name, but… yes, that sounds right. How did you know?”
“You don’t have to worry about her,” Zogg said, his voice a low rumble. “We killed her a few nights ago.”
Svetlana let out a gasp, half-shock, half-hope. Oleg looked at them with new respect.
“Then they will be angry,” Oleg said grimly. “They usually come with fewer men now, just to collect. But if they know she is dead…”
“They don’t know,” Gassi remarked, buttering a piece of bread. “Not yet. It implies a convenient window, does it not?”
“Gassi seems to be up to something, you will have our aid,” Maven said, resting her hand on her axe. “Let them come.”
Gassi laid out his plans as the sky outside deepened to indigo.
Gassi, with his strange knack for battlefield engineering, devised a trap. One of the massive siege cauldrons Oleg kept for trade was filled with highly flammable oil and perched precariously on the inner gatehouse walkway, connected to a trip-rope. When the bandits rode into the yard to demand their coin, Gassi would tip the barrel, drenching the entrance, and Nym, hiding in the shadows of the stable, would throw the torch.
Maven chose her perch high on the palisade, hidden in the shadows, ready to drop down behind them once the chaos started. Aurelio took up a position on the walkway behind a crate, javelins ready.
To ensure Aurelio could join the melee instantly, Gassi stood on the battlements and concentrated, conjuring a shimmering, translucent staircase of pure force leading down into the center of the yard. Zogg stood near him, a silent, shadowy sentinel in the darkness.
They waited. The night was cold and quiet.
As dawn broke, painting the eastern sky in shades of rose and gold, they saw them: four figures approaching on foot, leading their horses towards the open gates. The bandits had come to collect.
The party held their breath, motionless as gargoyles. The bandits walked calmly under the arch of the gatehouse and into the main yard, arrogant and unsuspecting, calling out for Oleg.
“Now,” Gassi whispered.
He pulled the rope. The cauldron tipped. Black oil cascaded onto the men and the dry earth of the courtyard below. A moment later, a torch spun through the air from the stable, thrown by Nym.
Two of the bandits were instantly engulfed, their screams swallowed by the roar of the flames. The ambush was sprung. The quiet of the morning was shattered, and the battle for the Stolen Lands had begun.