“I intend to,” said Jynn. “It starts by leaving it behind.”
“But ye can’t—!”
“It’s already done, Gorm,” interrupted Kaitha. She gave him a final, curt nod and spurred her horse north.
“Come, Patches,” said Jynn, turning his own mount west.
“You headed by Andarun?” Burt scrambled after them and climbed up to ride the dog. “You can drop me off in the city.”
“Very well,” said the wizard, snapping his reins.
Gorm stared after them. “You, too, Burt? Eh?”
The Kobold turned back to wave to the Dwarf. “It was a good try. But these things don’t always work out for guys like us. In fact, they usually don’t.”
“But—”
“Take care, Gorm.”
Burt kicked at Patches’ sides, an unnecessary gesture as the dog was happily bounding after his master’s horse. One by one, the remaining heroes followed suit, their eyes downcast as they rode away. Gorm stood alone in the street long after they were gone, flaming wreckage smoldering all around him.
Chapter 19
Panic is like a fire. It starts with a spark, and if it’s not snuffed out, it spreads quickly. Fear is driven by winds of gossip wherever nervous minds and an uncertain future provide fuel. Terror is as swift and damaging as any blaze.
And all of these things, as real and present as they are, exist only within the confines of peoples’ minds. Just like markets. And value. And security.
The panic started in Andarun’s financial sector, lit up by the fall of Highwatch. Thousands of bankers, brokers, and financial clerks simultaneously realized that their balance sheets were anything but balanced. Stocks plunged. Bonds flew up, and then dropped precipitously as investors took a closer look at the kingdom’s coffers. The entirety of the Freedlands banking system seemed to be going mad.
The market had its tumble when Andarun was deep in mourning for its heroes and its king, and for a time the city’s dampened spirits were inoculated against the turmoil on the Wall. But the economic fallout was bad enough to call the financial world out of the back corners of the public consciousness and onto the lips of every newsboy and town crier within a week of Handor’s fall. One by one, every citizen of the Freedlands felt that precipitous drop in the stomach that heralds a new status quo worse than anything anyone could have imagined.
Commerce ground to a halt. Credit dried up, and without funds to pay employees, companies began to shed jobs. Temples and government offices were overrun by the people who had been just barely clinging to financial solvency before the crash; the sudden drop in the markets had given them a firm shove over the edge and into poverty.
People were frightened. Many were panicked. Many more were starting to become angry. And while some blamed the bankers, and others the government, and others still the Heroes’ Guild, there was one point that virtually everyone could agree on.
The future looked a lot darker.
“It only gets worse from here!” said Gorm Ingerson, hoisting a tankard of grog into the air. His dire proclamation was incongruent with the wobbly grin he wore on his face, but he had long passed the point of drunkenness where his circumstances and his emotions had completely separated from one another.
Grunts and slurred sentiments of agreement rose up from the figures hunkered around the bar at The Black Swan, Aberreth’s premier tavern for professional heroes. The bar sat just inside the city’s northern gates, the last night in civilization for many a party headed for adventure in the Pinefells.
“Here’s what happens. Firs’,” Gorm slurred to the blurry woman next to him. “Firs’ step is to drink all your money away. Then… then ye have to get some money, so ye take it from some poncy heroes. But they won’t let ye drink where ye been lootin’, so ye gotta move on. Drink, fight, loot, move… fight, loot, drink, move, drink, fight, drink… drink… and then… then ye start again.”
“What… point?” rumbled a voice above his companion.
Through his inebriated haze, it occurred to Gorm that the woman next to him was not, in fact, a woman, but instead a tattoo of a comely young Ogress inked on the side of a massive arm. He looked slowly up the appendage to see an Ogre staring vacantly across the bar. He seemed familiar.
The Dwarf shook his head. “Ah, there ain’t a point beyond the drinking,” he said. “What else is there?”
He took another pull of his grog, and the Ogre drank from a keg with the top torn off.
Something still tugged at the back of Gorm’s mind, a niggling sense of loss that refused to let go and be washed away on a tide of alcohol.
“Thing is…” he started, and lost the thought in a belch. “Thing is, I thought there might be somethin’… ye know, a reason to… do things.”
The Ogre drank from his keg. Gorm drank from his tankard. For a time he sat and let his brain pickle pleasantly, but unpleasant ideas and memories kept bubbling up in the sloshing haze at the edge of his eyes. He saw heroes from his old career, from the days when he’d been Pyrebeard. He still missed Ataya Trueheart, and he still felt a sting deep within when the image of Garriel swam past his mind’s eye. And Iheen the Red, of course…
Iheen’s countenance and Gaist’s were one and the same. That reminded Gorm of Kaitha, who reminded him of Thane, and that brought the mages to mind. He even missed the bard, a little. And beneath those new wounds, old ones still festered… He saw Tib’rin and Niln in the foam atop his mug, staring up from the suds with apparent disappointment.
“It was the priest… priest and the Goblin…” Gorm said. “They had me fightin’ and… believin’. Thinking I could do some good, like a fool.”
“Good…” said the Ogre.
“Aye, be a hero. Save the world. Fight for truth and justice,” said Gorm. “Tha’s… Tha’s what they wanted. But ye can’t…. Ye can’t…” Gorm fell into silence. Fighting for loot and gold had its downsides, he’d learned, but at end of the day you could hold loot and gold in your purse, and maybe swap them for a cold ale. High concepts like truth and justice couldn’t fatten your coin purse or fill your tankard.
Or save a friend…
He took a swig from his drink.
The Ogre, oddly enough, abstained. “Fight… for justice…” The huge patron sounded reflective, or at least shiny.
“I tried,” Gorm said. “I tried to be a… a hero. Save the thing. The world. Be better…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t work. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I always wind up back here.”
“Be… better…” The Ogre slowly, deliberately set his keg down behind the bar.
“I just said I can’t!” snapped Gorm, looking irritably up at the Ogre. There was something familiar about that empty stare.
“Justice!” the Ogre erupted, independent of any external stimulus.
Gorm’s face screwed up. “Are we havin’ the same—?”
“Justice… Brunt style!” Mr. Brunt finished, standing.
“Mr. Brunt! That’s how I knew ye!” Gorm slapped his knee and knocked over his tankard in the process. “You’re that weasel Flinn’s old lackey! I thought I did ye in back in Bloodroot? How ye been?”
Mr. Brunt, however, was clearly participating in a different conversation. He raised a massive fist in the air. “Be hero!” he said. “Be good!”
Some of the closer patrons scooted their barstools farther away.
“Ye ain’t… ye didn’t listen!” barked Gorm. “There’s no point! Remember?”
But Mr. Brunt was, in so many ways, a blunt instrument, and he didn’t need a point to be destructive. With a final roar of “Justice!” bellowed to the entire room and yet nobody in particular, the Ogre rushed out through the front door, sending cracking shudders through the tavern’s old timbers.
“Could have at least said he remembered me,” Gorm grumbled.
“Could have at least opened the door,” said the barkeep, staring at the trampled wood and mangled hinges.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Gorm stood in his stool and refilled his grog from Mr. Brunt’s abandoned keg while the barkeep was preoccupied. “Nothing matters,” he added, surreptitiously spiking his drink with a flask of Dwarven rum from his belt pouch. He took another long drink and let the burning liquor pull him closer to the edge of nothingness.
“Sweet oblivion!” Queen Marja gasped, dabbing tears from her eyes. “The end of my lonely suffering. A time when I can join my true love… in death.”
One of the newest ladies-in-waiting moved as if to step forward, perhaps to comfort the queen, but the royal baker stopped her with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head.
Preya Havenbrook had been the royal baker since she was twenty—still a girl by Halfling standards—and now she was well into middle age. She’d been baking treats for Queen Marja for more years than many of the ladies-in-waiting had been walking, and none could read the queen’s moods and thoughts better than she.
You didn’t need Preya’s decades in service to the crown, however, to see that the queen’s latest emotional outburst had nothing to do with grief for her late husband. Firstly, because Handor and Marja had never held more than a mild disdain for one another, and secondly, because the queen was clearly caught up in one of her books again.
The queen gripped a copy of Trotbury Tales by Tayelle Adamentine. Preya was familiar with the author; all of Adamentine’s books featured swarthy men, swooning damsels, notoriously predictable plotlines, and a few scenes that made the royal baker blush to think about. Given that Marja was near the end of the book, she had likely reached the point wherein some young and gorgeous person was at the point of lovelorn suicide, either the victim of a tragic misunderstanding or about to create one.
“So beautiful,” gasped Marja, dabbing at her eyes. “I’ll take my tea, now.”
The queen’s appearance reminded the baker of a great Daellish house cat, with tiny features in the middle of too much face, and bright eyes that were at once vibrant and clueless. She was perched with the grace of a fat tabby on an intricately carved chair that strained and warped under the weight of her royal bulk. Linen-lined tables were set in front and on either side of her, covered with platters of tiny, brightly frosted tea cakes.
“Majesty, the court is waiting,” said the most senior of the ladies-in-waiting. As the eldest in that position, it was her duty to remind the queen of her duties, an unfortunate fact that meant everyone knew she would sooner or later fall into disfavor and be sent to work in the kitchens. Then the next girl would step up to take the burden on for a season. It was said that what the ladies-in-waiting were waiting for was a different job.
Judging by the flash in Queen Marja’s eyes, the current girl wasn’t long for the position. “I know, Clarista. But I’m busy.”
“Yes, Majesty,” said the lady-in-waiting, who was not named Clarista but who knew better than to correct the queen.
“I don’t see why I should go anyway.” The queen’s painted face set into a petulant pout. “It’s going to be a gaggle of stiff-necked geese in suits, gabbling and squawking for hours about petty matters.”
“The city is in peril, Majesty,” said not-Clarista. “The undead are on our doorstep, and the markets continue their free fall. Courtiers whisper about riots brewing, or even rebellion—”
“Yes, yes, all of that. That’s what I was talking about.” Marja waved away the lady-in-waiting’s concern and pointed a meaty finger at a tray of round cakes with sunburst yellow frosting. “What are these?”
“Lemon with raspberry mint filling,” said Preya.
The queen daintily lifted a cake from the platter and popped it into her mouth. After a prolonged session of thoughtful mastication, she began plucking the cakes off the tray with both hands and shoveling them into her mouth in a sort of delicate frenzy. In a few seconds the entire platter was gone.
Marja dabbed at her face with a linen napkin, then clapped her hands together. “Wonderful!”
The royal baker brushed some errant crumbs from her face and apron. “Thank you, Majesty.”
“And what are these?” asked the queen, pointing at another tray.
“Those are chocolate crumble with—”
“News!” shouted a lady-in-waiting, bursting through the door of Marja’s private quarters.
“What is it?” asked the queen, scowling as she popped a chocolate crumble tea cake with strawberry jam into her mouth.
“A thousand pardons, Majesty,” panted the lady-in-waiting. “It’s just that you told us to come immediately if Johan—”
“Johah!” chirped the queen through a mouthful of cake. She clapped her hands quickly. “Ish ‘e ‘ere?”
The young maid nodded. “He says he needs an audience with—”
“He’s here! Ooh, he’s here! Hurry hurry hurry! Help me! Ooh, I need to get ready!” Marja bounced up with such sudden force that she nearly upended her table.
The ladies-in-waiting rushed to assist the queen, adding powder, neatening the lipstick, wiping frosting and stray tea cake crumbs from the royal gown. After a few moments of hurried preparations, Marja had arranged herself to her satisfaction on another couch, a velvet pillow beneath her voluminous arm and holding her book in one hand. “Come in!” she sang.
“Ha-haa!” laughed a voice like a trumpet, and an armored foot kicked the door open. Johan the Mighty strode into the room, a vision in shining armor, his red cape and golden hair streaming behind him. The royal baker felt her heart flutter at the sight of him.
“Oh, Johan,” said the queen with what could only be described as desperate casualness. “I was just doing some light reading, as I often do.”
“Majesty, I am sorry to visit you in your time of grief.” Johan’s flashed a conciliatory smile, his teeth sparkling.
“What?”
“I know it is hard still, for it has not yet been three weeks since good King Handor’s fall,” Johan gently prompted.
“Right,” said the queen. “Him.”
“But the kingdom needs you,” said the champion. “In dire times such as this, our land needs a strong leader to guide us against encroaching threats.”
“I know.” Marja seemed to deflate a little as she looked away.
“Perhaps…” Johan strode further into the room, prompting the royal baker to press herself back against the wall. “Perhaps grief has sapped your strength.”
Marja shrugged and nodded half-heartedly.
“Perhaps you need a shoulder to lean on, to support you,” suggested the paladin.
Marja nodded again and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Perhaps something beautiful can come from tragedy,” said Johan.
Marja’s eyes lit up and her jaw went slack as she turned back to the champion standing at her feet.
“Something that we’ve held back for an eternity.” Johan was leaning over the couch now, his voice low and breathy as he stared into Marja’s eyes.
The queen’s lip quivered as if to speak, but all she could manage in her excitement was to rapidly clap her hands.
“Oh, my queen,” rasped Johan. He wrapped a gauntleted hand around her and, with a grunt of exertion, lifted her to his lips. Marja threw her arms around him.
It took a few moments for the queen to remember herself enough to dismiss the servants with a wave of her hand, though by then it was an entirely unnecessary gesture. The royal baker and the ladies-in-waiting were already making for the door as fast as decorum would allow.
“Have they no shame?” Asherzu muttered to Jorruk. “Nobody should have to see this.”
“Patience, Asherzu,” said the ancient wise-one. “They are trying.”
“They should have known better,” she retorted, watching the pair of Orcs setting up a crude easel and charts. “This should have been complete when we entered the room. The key to a successful presentation is preparation.”
“And an audience with an open mind,” said Jorruk.
Asherzu was about to reply when the portly Orc givi
ng the presentation cleared his throat. His topknot was peppered with gray, as was the finger-length chinstrap beard he wore. “Thank you for coming, great lady. I’m sure our presentation will bring you great joy.”
“It had better, to warrant calling on me at this hour,” said Asherzu, bundling her furs around her. The meeting was in a tiny hut on the outskirts of the Red Horde’s encampment, far from any bonfires or braziers, and the damp chill of a late spring night still hung in the air.
Jorruk’s elbow gently pressed into her side. He managed to give her a stern look and a sidelong smile in the same expression.
Asherzu sighed and slumped back in her seat. “But I will hear you, Oggor daz’Nabbug,” she said. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you, honored one,” said the Orc. “Now, imagine this: You are going about your life, trying to feed your whelps, keep your hut clean, and perform feats of might and excellence for the glory of your people. Valra, the visual aid!”
The only other occupant of the hut, a young Orcess in a simple red shawl, placed a frame with stretched lambskin on the easel. A happy-looking Orcess was painted in thick, fast strokes on the canvas.
“When all of a sudden, you are told your great tribe is no more!” Oggor continued, gesturing at the painting. “And you must fight for a new tribe, one that does not honor your ways or see your great deeds. One that will lead your people to ruin! Valra!”
Valra replaced the lambskin canvas with another painting, this one depicting an unhappy looking Orcess dressed in crimson robes. “Oh no,” she intoned, as stiff and well-rehearsed as a military drill.
“It is so enraging, is it not? Has this ever happened to yo-ah!” Oggor’s question ended in a small cry as he finally turned back to his audience.
“Get. To. Your. Point.” Asherzu pushed each word through gritted fangs.
“Aha, yes, it will be so. A thousand pardons, great lady.” The Orc dabbed sweat from his brow with a small handkerchief. “Valra! Put up the fourth image. No, the one with the chart. The other chart! Here!”
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