Not so Tough Cookie

As Banaal gently pulls Cookie to her unsteady feet, she looks at him in wide-eyed shock.

“I should be dead! I felt that Psycho Halfling slice my forearms as I tried to defend myself, and then shove his dagger through the back of my bare neck as I hopped off my wagon, trying to get away! I felt my life-blood gush out!”

Retaining a reassuring hold on Cookie’s rein roughened hands, Banaal watches as the young wagoneer tentatively touches her healed neck and looks upon the blood splatter on the woodwork where she fell. Her blood. He watches as she slowly registers what must’ve just happened.

“You saved me. I saw my life flash before my eyes, but you… You must have pulled me back from the very brink!”

Hugging her Dwarven benefactor in raw and honest gratitude, the seemingly tough Cookie crumbles into his strong arms and sobs onto his broad shoulders. She’s actually a few inches taller than him but barely half his weight.

“Thank you Banaal. Thank you and all your Dwarven gods. Thank you for saving my life. I won’t ever forget it.”

Finally disentangling herself from her stocky saviour, Cookie  heaves herself back up, past her own blood stained footplate and onto the wagon’s bench-seat. Banaal though, can’t help himself from overhearing her, as she mutters angrily to herself.

“That’s it! No more of this thankless wagooneer shit! Time to start that little food shack you’ve been saving up for and dreaming about these last few years!” 

Trip-Let in be

It’s been a few days since the three brothers had managed to be alone together, but now, while guarding the wagon and the snoring Cookie, they take the chance to discuss the adventurers.

Despite being apparently identical, each of the triplets can easily identify their brothers and it’s Locket who speaks first.

“They’re not exactly what I was expecting.”

Chape nods in agreement.

“Yeah, I was expecting four shining Knights on gleaming white stallions.”

Ringo though, expands on that thought.

“The Bard and the Dwarf appear sane but the strange Halfling seems to have his own ‘world-view’ agenda and the dark-armoured Gladiator gives the impression of, almost, being on the wrong side! And what happened to the tall Elven Archer who was supposed to be with them?”

Chape nods again.

“I’m actually a little bit frightened of Fortu.”

Ringo agrees.

“I’m more than ‘a little bit frightened’ of him. Have you noticed how he tosses and turns hin his sleep? That man might genuinely be unhinged!  

It’s Locket who hushes his brothers down.

“They may not be what we were expecting, but Captain DeLeón gave us a direct order; Escort the adventurers all the way back to Cottis and get them to Lord Urdurel in one piece.”

This time it’s Ringo who nods his identical, mop-topped, head.

“And by the gods, despite finding ourselves in these times of trouble, we will not fail in our sworn duty.”

I Dream of Demon

Ethereal eyes blink open, but Fortu can’t immediately comprehend where or when he is, or even what he’s looking at. He seems to be floating high up in a bleak void, looking down on two distant but familiar figures. The first is heavily armoured and male, the other bent-backed and wizened but female and they’re facing something… huge and monstrous.

It takes him a moment, from his elevated vantage point, but he eventually recognises the two figures as the loathsome, pony-tailed; Sir Briefadel and, what can only be the undisguised form of the aristocrat’s supernatural Hag Mother; Hetzabah!

Just a nightmare or another one of his hyper-real visions? They’re coming more frequently now though and it’s hard, sometimes, to differentiate between the dreams and his actual memories. Some seem like glimpses of the future or past, but they’re never accurate. The places, times and people, are always confusing and muddled up.

Everything below is black as pitch or burning red. Looming shadows and boiling lava pits fill his entire line of sight and at its centre, in a huge, deep and smooth sided pit, is chained a colossal, crimson skinned and bull horned Demon!

Bigger than any creature he’s ever seen.

Bigger than the massive hooked horrors that had almost killed him in the Givrad Void.

Bigger than the towering Frost giant; Droofin, who had saved them in the frozen-world of Kik-Ri.

Bigger even than the gigantic burrowing ice monster that had tried, nearly successfully, to swallow his friends whole.

However, regardless of its apparent power, the Demonic creature is securely bound, with multiple iron chains linked to thick iron bands around its neck, wrists and ankles shackling it to the solid rock beneath its cloven hooves.

Something is wrong with it though. Despite being impossibly large, it seems emaciated. Sucked dry. Its thin, stick-like forearms are covered with translucent tubes, connected to weird, cold-iron needles piercing its immortal flesh and veins. Black/Red ichor still slowly dripping down and through them to somewhere beyond Fortu’s ghostly sight.

Suddenly, the creature’s huge head snaps upwards, away from the dream versions of Briefadel and Hetzabah, and the demonic beast locks eyes with the invisible, hovering dreamer.

“I SEE YOU THERE, SPAWN OF MY SPAWN!”

His real eyelids snapping open, Fortu jerkily sits up, takes in the cool darkness of the real world and feels his bedroll under him, slightly softening the reassuringly solid ground beneath. It’s only been a day since they’d escaped the barn fire at Eisen-Heart and they’re still a day’s ride away from Thorn-Flek. Controlling his breath, he sees the recently joined but stalwart Dwarf; Banaal standing guard in the mid-distance and allows himself to slump back down in the warm glow of Cookie’s campfire. 

Slowly shaping the sulphurous word in his mouth, Fortu quietly spits out the strange name echoing around his head.

“Zartak.”

A name that, he innately understands, carries immense power and fiendish importance, yet simultaneously means nothing at all to him.

Fantasy Forensics

Raking through the burnt-out, but still hot, debris with his steel-capped toe, Captain Wimsey tries to piece together all the evidence he’d uncovered of the night before. Six, or possibly more, agents of a Witches coven had prepared a murderous arson attack against Lord Urdurel’s group of adventurers, while they slept inside.

Probably disguised as stable-hands or by stealthily climbing in through the upper hayloft window, one or more of the Assassins had entered the barn in the early evening, while only the wagoneer; Cookie and one or two of the triplet soldiers were present. They had then, somehow unnoticed, managed to drain the open-topped barrel of water and stealthily pull up the hinged loft ladder.

While that had been happening, a note found in the pocket of the dead ostler, indicated that he’d been lured out of the barn and back to his nearby cottage, under false pretences. Once there, he’d been murdered by the Assassins and his paddock padlock keys stolen.

Then the Assassins had simply waited until the middle of the night, once they were sure the majority of their targets were asleep, before actioning their plan.

Two of Captain Wimsey’s men had been killed while patrolling the surrounding area during the night shift but, judging by the location of their wounds, neither man had even seen their attackers coming. They were both stealthily stabbed from behind, before they could even shout a warning to each other, or to alert the adventurers inside.

After that, two of the Assassins rescaled the back of the barn and climbed in through the open upper level hayloft door, with flaming torches clenched between their teeth. Simultaneously, two more of them were silently chaining up the two doors from the outside and soaking them, and the outer walls in oil, before setting them alight.

The remaining two Assassins had stationed themselves behind the cover of the outer water-trough, with crossbows and poisoned bolts ready to catch anyone managing to break out of either the small or large front doors.

Next, the sleeping adventurers awoke. Probably alerted by one of them staying awake on watch duty and/or the smell of burning oil and smoke. Two of them had previously noticed the stored-away ladder and manhandled it back into position to sleep upstairs in the hayloft, while the others slept below on their bedrolls, around their large wagon.

Then things become even more bizarre. A large section of the lower wooden wall, inexplicably failed to burn down completely and, weirdly, both the two front doors as well, despite the oily residue still present. They still stand; two pointless doorways to the burnt down barn. Distant witnesses also reported seeing flashes of lightning, despite there being nary a cloud in the night sky. Sorcery? The garrison clerk did report that there were two divine spell-casters in the group. Whatever did occur though, it went very badly for the six Assassins. All dead, either sliced open by bladed weapon or fried crisp by that very lightning.

Walking out through the back of the blackened and skeletal remains of the big barn, Captain Wimsey turns a slow circle. Three men fell here but only one survived the twenty-foot drop. By the look of the two remaining, twisted corpses, they’d been killed before they fell.

Considering how fast the fire had spread, he’s surprised the adventurers managed to escape the flames and amazed that they’d all delayed long enough to free the horses too.

Apparently, the adventurers also refused the rewards offered by the owners of the other stabled horses they’d rescued and instead donated that, and the gold they’d found on the dead Assassins to help rebuild the barn. Only fifty gold pieces; not enough to pay for a whole new build but still generous. A hard to believe gesture, considering the reputation that had proceeded them.

Spare the Horses

In the blazing light of the burning building, while Cookie fusses over her two massive, but trembling, shire-horses and the Dwarf Banaal heals the burns of the injured ones, Locket looks over to his brothers.
“One dead ostler, two dead town guards, six dead assassins, and a, soon to be, razed to the ground barn.”
Chape responds with a shrug.
“It could’ve been worse. The adventurers helped us save all the horses, Cookie’s wagon’s hardly singed and all six of the gourd/barrels are safe and sound.”

It’s Ringo who considers the opposite viewpoint.
“But why are those assassins being so persistent? Why are the adventurers so important?!”
When the three Brothers volunteered for this mission, not one of them had considered it to be a dangerous task. Captain DeLeón had literally described it as just a ‘Simple babysitting job’.
Now though, with the obvious escalation of the Witches coven and still three days and one town to get through before completing their duty, each of the triplets feel the sinking dread of what may yet come…

The Brutalist

Fingers frozen mid-chord, Rifkin watches in horror as one of the men facing Fortu, flops to the floor in bloody, bisected pieces. A knife in each of his, now entirely separated, hands.

He’d obviously been a villain; his words and actions had clearly demonstrated that, but still…

Fortu simply hadn’t liked the way they were dressed or how they were sitting and confronted them on a mere suspicion. The, potentially paranoid, suspicion that these two men were working against him. A reasonable man might have tried to subtly question them. A logical man might have restrained himself from trying to punch them with a mailed fist in a public bar. A sane man wouldn’t have drawn his enormous Bastard sword and cleaved the first of them in two!

The second of the men surrendered immediately. Rifkin couldn’t blame him. Fortu had cut through his partner as if he’d been made of butter!

Then, ignoring all the screaming locals and a hissing cat, Fortu had then grabbed the remaining man by his throat and marched him to the town stables, where several soldiers of the FarHaven garrison were currently guarding Cookie’s wagon and Estrid’s barrels.

The Dwarf; Banaal had tried to pacify the barkeep with a generous (but not ostentatious) bribe, while the pragmatic Liga Bur had hurried out after Fortu to help calm/explain the situation to the hamlet guards.

Blinking, Rifkin attempts to regain control of his rapid breathing. 

Since joining this ragtag group over half-a-year ago, he’d seen many terrible, terrifying things. Brutal violence and graphic injury, but this?

Did it matter that Fortu’s confrontational instincts had been absolutely correct? Is it justifiable to use extreme and deadly force against evil people or is it somehow, equally evil?

Despite himself, Rifkin feels the beginnings of a song composing itself in his head and he whispers the title out loud…

“The Butcher of FarHaven.”

From Scrapper to Mapper

Turning over the smoothed down but formally crumpled sheet of parchment, Captain DeLeón traces his elegantly manicured fingertip over the crudely hand-drawn map.

“Bitboh wood… Scarp Burrow… The Tannery.”

The spelling is shaky and the penmanship appalling, but the map is still interesting, if not entirely accurate. Rather than miles, the distances seem to be measured in something called ‘horse-ride-days’. A few of the scribbled annotations like; ‘Rattman’ are less fun though, as beside ‘Scarp Burrow’, the mapper’s scrawled; ‘Captain De Liar!’ and ‘Posho De-Dick-face’.

Pushing aside his annoyance at the unsubtle slurs, he’s curious why the amateur cartographer had written ‘Scarp Burrow’ rather than the commonly accepted ‘Scarborough’ though, as no one’s referred to this village by its original name for almost thirty years.

The map is freshly drawn, so what does it mean?

Unfortunately, Captain DeLeón‘s men had confirmed that, whoever made the map, left with the adventurer group. It certainly wasn’t any of his men or Cookie the wagoneer and it was highly unlikely that the educated Dwarf; Banaal or the urbane ‘Slightly-Elf’; Rifkin had anything to do with it. That left the earthy smelling, cauliflower-eared Halfling and the scar-faced, heavily-armoured Human Gladiator. Considering the last conversation he’d had with them, his money was on Fortu.

Glancing down at the map again, Captain DeLeón finds himself suddenly sniggering, despite his earlier annoyance, as he notices the arrow pointing East towards…

‘FART-Haven!’