Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  It was while he stared at them that Joshua noticed something. One of the goblin mothers, a woman with her hair styled into pig tails and with a black tattoo on her face, was holding a basket.

  That can’t be right.

  He recognized the basket, since he’d spent miles and miles on the road looking into it.

  He raced over to them. The goblin male stepped forward.

  “Is that Gobber?” said Joshua.

  The goblin arched an eyebrow. “Gobber?”

  “The baby, he’s called Gobber. I mean, we called him that after we found him. He…”

  The pigtailed mother stepped forward with her basket. Without warning, she put her free arm around Joshua and pulled him into a hug, and she kissed his cheek.

  Joshua felt himself blush. He didn’t know what to say.

  Luckily, the goblin woman spoke first. “She said that you’d given him a name! You’re one of the lads who found Huklak on the road, aren’t you?”

  “This is him?” said the goblin man.

  “It must be; the orc woman said that a crowsie had brought Gobber to town, and that two lads had found him on the road. This is one of them!”

  The goblin man, who was well-muscled for one of his kind, offered a hand. Joshua took it, and the goblin gave him a squeeze that hurt his hand.

  “I’m Razlag,” he said. Despite his muscled body, his voice still had the trademark high pitch of a goblin. “These are my wives, Fheth and Fonxee. If you’re the one who found Huklak, then I don’t even have the words to thank you.”

  Fheth tossed one of her ponytails over her shoulder. “I know how this must look. That we left Huklak in the road. But it wasn’t like that…”

  “We were attacked,” said Razlag. His green skin was lined with wrinkles, and his deep red beard reminded Joshua of Benjen’s facial hair. It made him look stern, but there was something warm about his eyes. “We were camped for the night, and a bunch of brigands caught us by surprise. I fought two of them off, but they stuck me with a poisoned blade. See?”

  He lifted his shirt and showed a nasty-looking wound on his skin. The wound had healed, but the patch of skin was colored brown. “It was brownshade. Must have had it on their blades. I almost died.”

  “They chased us away from our camp,” said Fheth. “In all the mayhem, I thought I’d picked up the basket, but when we were ten miles away, I released I’d picked up a crate of dried beef. Gods, what kind of a mother am I?”

  “We went back to look for him after I was healed up,” said Razlag, “but he was gone. We thought that the wolves had gotten him. Then, we were in Dyrewood and we met a dwarf called Janda, and he told us about how his crowsie friend had come to Ardglass to look for a couple of lads who’d found a goblin baby and were opening a hero shop, or something like that. When we got here we went to the town hall, and they told us that Huklak was being fostered by an orc.”

  “Beula, she’s called,” said Fonxee, Razlag’s second wife. “A lovely lady. But that little annoying little demon she keeps in her house…”

  “Such a bad attitude,” said Fheth.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you looking after him. I owe you everything, stranger,” said Razlag.

  “I’m Joshua. I think we’re beyond being strangers.”

  Fheth kissed his cheek again, and Joshua felt his face blush even more. “Razlag is right. We owe you everything,” Fheth said.

  Joshua felt a little uncomfortable now. Was this the kind of treatment that heroes got? Compliments and kisses? Benjen would have loved the attention, but it made Joshua a little uncomfortable. He liked that they were grateful, but he’d only done what any half decent person would.

  Razlag reached to his side, where a coin purse was tied to his belt. As he opened it and grabbed a handful of coins, Joshua shook his head.

  “You don’t need to pay me. I’m just glad Gobber, I mean Huklak, is back with his family.”

  “You won’t accept gold?”

  “I’m the guildmaster of the heroes’ guild; I don’t need gold for doing the right thing.”

  Razlag smiled. “All heroes accept gold for their quests.”

  “Maybe, but this wasn’t a quest, and I’m not a hero. I was just doing the right thing. This one’s on the house.”

  “I won’t hear of it. If you won’t accept gold, then take something else. Here, this might be useful.”

  Razlag pulled a dagger from a sheath on his belt, and he handed it to Joshua. “Take it. I’m not leaving until you do.”

  Knowing that the goblins weren’t going to accept no for an answer, Joshua took the blade from Razlag. When he held it, text formed in front of him.

  Eclipse Dagger

  [A steel dagger that has a chance of temporarily blinding your enemies. Chance of blindness increases according to level of user’s dagger-related class skills.

  Wow – it was an enchanted weapon. Given how much gold mages charged to imbue weapons with magical effects, he knew that this blade must have been worth quite a bit. He’d never really thought about earning a fighting class, but for this…maybe a weapon like this was worth getting class for. With his breastplate of Absorbed Damage and his Eclipse dagger, he could almost pass for a fighter.

  “Don’t you need this?” he said. “What if you see more brigands?”

  “We’re staying in the east for a while,” said Razlag. “The people of Ardglass have been kind, so we might settle here for a bit. After all, attitudes around here are a lot better. Take the dagger; if you’re going to be a hero, then you’ll need it.”

  “I’m opening the heroes’ guild…but I’m not a hero.”

  “No? Well I must not know what a hero is then, because it sounds to me like you meet the definition of it.”

  Joshua felt his cheeks redden again, but this time it wasn’t because a goblin woman had kissed him.

  “We better go,” said Fheth, looking at Razlag. “The officials said there’s a house for rent, and I want to get there before somebody else snaps it up.”

  Razlag nodded. “Aye. Listen, Joshua. You’re a friend to our family now, and once we get a house, our door is always open to you.”

  “You’ll have to come around for dinner sometime. I cook a mean frog heart pie.”

  Joshua smiled. He’d never tasted goblin cuisine before, but where food was concerned, he was willing to try anything. Even if it involved an amphibian’s cardiovascular system cooked in pastry. “I’ll definitely do that,” he said.

  He and the goblin family parted ways, and Joshua fixed his sights on the alley that led out of Ardglass, where he had grimmer business to attend to.

  Joshua collected Roebuck from the stables and left Ardglass. As he checked his map and followed the path to the Iron Whip tavern, he was dimly aware of the deities up above, and how they’d taken an interest in him. He wondered what they’d think about him leaving Ardglass to seek vengeance, and he had an idea that another condemnation was waiting for him.

  He didn’t care. If the town guards couldn’t do anything about the murder, then he would. He owed it to his friend.

  The tavern was only a few miles away, and the road leading to it was quiet. On the way there, the only person he passed was a merchant who rode a mule, with a wooden cart rolling behind it. The mule wasn’t pulling the cart; instead, the cart itself was magically enchanted, and it rolled along the stony road on its own.

  The merchant tipped his hat and offered to trade some of his wares, but Joshua politely declined, and he went on his way.

  The journey was short, but even so he increased his control skill of his horserider class from 8/10 to 9/10. Now, his animal bond and control were both just 1 away from leveling, which meant he was close to getting horserider level 2. He’d never expected that, and it made him happy that he was close to levelling a class that, at the start of his journey away from the village, had made him uncomfortable.

  The Iron Whip tavern was made from red bricks and it had a thatched roof. On the
front of it there was a sign that showed a muscly goblin holding a whip in his hands. Looking around, Joshua noticed something else. Leaning against the side of the tavern, on the ground, was another sign. This one was older, and the picture painted on it was weathered.

  It showed a man wearing leather armor. He held a long whip in his hand, with a handle made from iron. In front of him were a dozen cowering goblins.

  It must have been a sign that used to hang in front of the tavern in the past, before the decree of the three kings outlawed goblin slavery. Judging by how new the current sign was, it had only recently been replaced.

  He took Roebuck around the tavern to a stable, where a stable girl was brushing the long, blond hair of a pony. The only other animal there was a small brown horse that was only as tall as Joshua’s chest, which meant that it was a hoye-horse, the kind that were bred to be small. They were usually bought to be pets, and some people even kept them in their houses.

  This meant that if Carlisle and his friend were here, then they hadn’t travelled on horseback. Given that Sergeant Nickall had told him Carlisle was planning to leave town for good, Joshua doubted he’d have travelled away from Ardglass without a horse.

  Did that mean he’d missed him? Had Carlisle and his friend already moved on? Maybe, but he’d have to check.

  He left the stables after paying the stable girl two bronze coins to take care of Roebuck, and then he went back to the tavern entrance. There, he paused. He took a second to gather himself and plan what he was going to do.

  Even with his breastplate and his new dagger, he was no match for the two men. That meant that fighting them head-on was out, and besides, it wouldn’t look good for the guildmaster of the heroes’ guild to be starting fights in a tavern.

  No, if Carlisle was in the tavern then Joshua would keep a low profile, he’d watch him, and work out what to do from there.

  As he reached for the door it flew open, and two men stepped out. They were wearing grey coats with heavy hoods, and they both had suspicious-looking faces. Joshua’s level 2 perception processed what he was seeing and fed the sights back to him with a new understanding; the two men’s coats were almost conspicuously drab, as if their clothing was designed to go unnoticed. Coupled with their slightly-shady expressions, he guessed that they were thieves.

  Joshua stepped to the side and left a wide berth for them to get by him, knowing that even the slightest of proximity to a thief would be enough for their deft fingers to loosen his coin pouch from his belt.

  The thieves headed toward the traveler road and took the direction that led toward Ardglass. When they were thirty feet away from him he listened to them, and his eavesdropping skill carried their conversation to his ears.

  “Get anything?” one thief said.

  “A couple of silvers and a broach. You?”

  “Naw. Started to get a funny feelin’, though. You feel that?”

  “Nope. Must be the booze.”

  “Come off it. You know I get that itch when there’s gonna be trouble.”

  Soon, they were too far away for his lowly eavesdropping skill to work. When they were gone, he headed into the Iron Whip tavern.

  Chapter Thirty

  A roaring fire sent wafts of heat across the tavern, washing over the customers who were hunkered around their tables, and glowing against Joshua’s skin as he stood in the doorway.

  A bard with a lute on his lap was sitting on a chair next to the hearth, his face looking equal parts sorry and frustrated, and Joshua soon saw why; when the bard picked up his lute and thumbed a string, he caught a glare from three people opposite him, who were sitting around a runto board.

  “We’re having a tournament! Keep the racket down, will you?”

  “Yeah, at least until you learn how to play properly.”

  The three runto players were a satyr woman wearing a dress made from cloth and ivy leaves, a wickerman who was the furthest away from the hearth - for obvious reasons - and a middle-aged human with scars on his face. Joshua could see their runto tiles; the satyr had a sprig leaf that indicated she’d chosen to play as healer, the wickerman was an arcane mage, and the scarred man was a rogue, judging by the poisoned blade on his tiles.

  Of the eleven other tables in the Iron Whip only two were empty. The rest were occupied by a range of patrons, from a man who was drinking alone, couples who leaned close to each other and whispered, and groups of three or four travelers who were there to rest from their journeys and have a few ales and get merry.

  A man was sitting alone in the farthest corner of the tavern. His wrinkled face made him look old, but his arms were thick and muscly in the kind of conditioned way you saw on people who made a career from either fighting or manual labor. On the floor next to him was a metal breastplate and a sword with a handle that had a bronze lion head on the end of the hilt.

  With the bard’s music banned while the runto players were locked in battle, the prevailing sounds were the crackle of the fire as it engulfed the logs in the hearth, interspaced every so often by the clatter of a runto tile being put on the table. Conversation hummed in the air, lots of different voices saying different things in different ways; whispers among lovers, tense words between people there for business, and jokes and stories shared among friends there to get drunk.

  Joshua tried out his eavesdropping skill again, but nothing happened. At its low level, he was too close to the other customers to pierce the general din of chatter and focus on individual conversations.

  “Get you a drink?”

  It was the tavern owner; a bear of a man wearing a stained cloth shirt. Joshua’s perception fed to him details he otherwise might have missed, like a half-star tattoo on his right forearm that marked him as a warlock. Or an ex-warlock, given that he was standing behind the bar right now. Over his shoulder, and in the kitchen, a young serving girl with bright orange hair was sweeping the floor.

  The tavern owner coughed to get Joshua’s attention. He rested his hands on the beer taps in front of him. “Which ale be you wantin’?”

  “I’m okay, thanks,” said Joshua.

  “Well you cannae just stand there enjoying the view.”

  “I’m not staying long.””

  “You’re not staying at all if you don’t put a few coins in my purse. What you be havin’?”

  He didn’t want a drink, but the man was right; he could hardly expect to just stand around in the tavern without buying anything. Not only that, it made him look too conspicuous.

  Joshua shrugged. “Whatever ale is best, please. Something local.” Then, he thought about the ale concoctions that Benjen used to brew. “The weirdest ale you’ve got.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  The tavern owner pushed a glass filled with frothy ale across the bar. Joshua took it and paid him a bronze coin, and then he took a seat at a table adjacent to the door. Sitting there gave him full view of the tavern, and it would let him see who came in without them noticing him first.

  He just needed to stay a while and see if Carlisle was around. Maybe he’d gone to the latrine, or perhaps he was on his way here but hadn’t arrived yet. Either way, Joshua had to stay until he was sure.

  The problem there was that he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he did see Carlisle. Carlisle and his rapier-wielding friend weren’t warriors, but they had more fighting experience than him. Not only that, but two against one didn’t work unless the ‘one’ had something special. He had his new eclipse dagger and Benjen’s breastplate, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  For now, he just needed to see if Carlisle was already here, or if he came here. It might be his last chance to track him before he left Ardglass for good, and Joshua wasn’t going to travel Fortuna looking for him.

  A few glances came his way as he sat in the shadowy part of the tavern and sipped on his ale. The older man with the sword and breastplate, an old mercenary warrior or soldier by the looks of him, paid him the most attention by staring at Joshua until he acknowledged him, and t
hen giving a polite nod of the head. Joshua didn’t read anything suspicious in his stare, so he wasn’t worried.

  From outside the tavern, the early afternoon light shone into the windows. Autumn was fading and winter was setting in, and the world outside the tavern looked shadowy and cold, and he was glad to be somewhere warm.

  He made his beer last for an hour, during which the tavern door only opened once, and that was when a merchant came in for a nip of something strong to ward the chill from his bones. Joshua got a second beer and again made that last for a while, but aside from an orc couple finishing their drinks and leaving, nothing happened.

  It had been two and a quarter hours now, and it was getting dark. He’d have to go pay the stable girl another bronze if he stayed much longer, and he’d have to buy more drinks. Every bronze was going to be important in buying guild supplies, so he didn’t want to stay at the Iron Whip getting drunk all night.

  He’d made the decision to leave, when he heard a bunch of tiles dropping on the table at the far side of the tavern. One of the runto players, the satyr woman with the ivy leaf dress, held her hands in the air and cheered. The wickerman pushed his own tiles away from him in disgust, while the middle-aged scarred man turned and nodded to the bard, who was dozing by the fire.

  “Okay, song strumpet, show us what you can play. Nothing dirty; I get enough of that from my friends here.”

  Delighted to finally get his chance to play a few songs and get some coins thrown into his lute case, the bard picked up his instrument, chewed his bottom lip as he re-tuned it, and then began to strum.

  Within the first four notes, Joshua felt cold stirring in his chest. When the bard opened his mouth and sang just a single line of his song, the cold turned to ice.

  “When the forest falls quiet, and the white wolves roam…”