The Adventurers Guild

by Zack Loran Clark

  While Brock hesitated, Zed stepped forward, hurrying right up to the narrow bed and throwing his arms around the dwarf.

  “Careful!” Brock warned.

  Jett scoffed. “What harm’s he gonna do? He weighs less than the blankets.”

  Zed made an odd, strangled sound, as much a sob as a laugh.

  “Aw, now,” Jett said, clearly a little embarrassed. He patted Zed’s back stiffly.

  “We were so worried, Jett,” Zed said, sitting back on the edge of the bed. He wiped at the corners of his eyes. “It’s gloomy in here. Brock, would you open the curtains?”

  “Sure,” Brock said, and he moved from the threshold at last, grateful to have a task. As sunlight filled the small chamber, Brock felt a sudden rush of affection for his best friend. Here Brock was, trying so hard to figure out what he should appear to be feeling…while Zed had the courage to simply be himself.

  “My mom always said sunlight can cure most ills,” Zed said, and though Brock couldn’t see his face from where he stood, he could hear his friend smiling. “But I’m pretty sure she’s never even heard of a naga.”

  “Lucky her,” Brock said. He meant it to be funny, but his voice sounded husky.

  Jett’s eyes found him, and they were somber.

  “Jett, what you did out there—I owe you—I don’t know how I’ll ever repay—”

  Jett made a rude sound. “You still sound like a merchant, Brock. They told me you killed the thing?”

  Brock swallowed. Nodded.

  “Then we’re square. One adventurer to another.”

  Brock nodded again, slow and solemn.

  “Wow!” Zed said excitedly, pointing at Jett’s face. “Brock, look! In the sunlight you can really see Jett’s facial hair coming in. That is gonna be some beard!”

  Zed’s laugh tinkled, and as Brock leaned close to peer at the fuzz above the young dwarf’s lip, he thought he’d never seen such a smile as the one that lit up Jett’s face.

  The guildhall was slow to rouse itself after the festivities of the night before. It was past noon before Brock and Zed began to hear the sounds of movement and voices from outside the bedroom, and when Hank the physician appeared with lunch for Jett and chased the boys off, they found the common area crowded with slow-moving, unwashed men and women all pitching in to clear away the worst of the mess.

  Syd, the dark-skinned boy with the tri-horned helmet, approached them from across the room, taking long, languid steps. “Your friend is in the training yard,” he said placidly. “She’s beating up my friend. It’s pretty funny.”

  The lack of emotion in his voice didn’t make him seem especially amused, but he led them out the side door to the training yard.

  Liza was there, hefting the shield she’d claimed from the wall downstairs along with a wooden training sword. She was battering away at Fife, whose own training sword lay at his feet as he clutched his shield with both hands.

  “All right, Fife?” Syd called from the sidelines.

  Fife peeked around the edge of his shield while Liza hammered away. “This is strategy! It’s called the turtle maneuver. You’ll—ow!” he cried, as Liza swiped at his exposed ear.

  Syd rolled his hooded eyes at Brock and Zed. “I guess sometimes the best offense is a good defense. And sometimes the best defense isn’t very good.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Fife cried.

  “Hers,” they all answered in unison.

  Fife finally yielded, and only then did Liza show any sign of fatigue. She dropped the shield and rolled her shoulders, smiling at the new arrivals. “Who wants a go?”

  “I should warn you,” Fife said, wincing as he unwrapped his aching fingers from his shield’s handle. “She’s got a good arm.”

  “Not just for a girl?” she teased, apparently alluding to some earlier argument.

  “Yeah,” Fife said. “A girl minotaur.”

  “There’s no such thing as a girl minotaur,” Syd said flatly. He pointed to his helmet. “Horns.”

  While Fife puzzled that one out, the confusion written plainly across his face, Lotte appeared with a shield nearly identical to the one Liza had been using, but it shone with newness, its edges unmarred and unblemished.

  “Try this,” she said.

  Liza lifted it, and she grinned.

  “Better?” Lotte ask.

  “It’s perfect. The balance is much better.”

  “We didn’t have anything quite in your size,” Lotte said. “So I made one.”

  “You made this?” Liza said, smiling widely now. “For me? Just now?”

  Lotte returned the smile. “Well, I had to keep occupied this morning while you all made nice with the king.”

  “I thought you were the quartermaster,” Brock said.

  “Quartermaster. Blacksmith. Sometimes I cook.” Lotte took Liza’s old shield from the ground. “We all have several roles here. We have to, since Frond insists we’re to remain self-sufficient.” She kicked Fife’s forgotten training sword Brock’s way. “Now pick up that sword and let me show you what your role is as an apprentice. Mostly, it’s a lot of crying while I’m thrashing you.”

  Brock didn’t cry, but only because he couldn’t spare the water. Within minutes of starting to spar, he was covered in sweat. There were training swords of various sizes, and Brock found he had an inclination for the shortest daggerlike variety. It meant he had to be quick on his feet, but his arms gave out too quickly when he wielded anything larger.

  They each went three rounds, with Zed making the poorest showing and Brock not terribly better. His muscles burned, and he was exhausted and certain they were nearing the end of the workout when Lotte said, “All right, I’ve got them warmed up for you.”

  And Brock turned to see Alabasel Frond entering the yard.

  “Liza,” Frond began. “You’ve trained with a shield before?”

  “A, uh, a little,” Liza answered, suddenly shy beneath Frond’s scrutiny. “My elder brother, Fernando, and I are close. He taught me a little bit of everything. But it’s been hard to find sparring partners since he moved out, so I’ve been practicing with blades more than shields.”

  “Show me,” Frond said, and she drew her own impressive blade from the sheath at her back—no training sword, but actual steel. She pointed the curved sword at Liza and went through a series of slashes and jabs, but all at a fraction of normal speed, gauging Liza’s blocks, making suggestions where she saw the girl’s guard slip.

  Zed went through a series of jerky motions beside Brock, like a marionette at the mercy of a hyperactive child.

  “What are you doing exactly?” Brock asked.

  “Stretching!” said Zed, who was apparently frantic at the prospect of going up against Frond. He pointed his elbows skyward and grimaced. “It’s supposed to help.”

  “So is running away,” Brock said.

  And then Frond barked Brock’s name, summoning him. He went over to her much more slowly than Liza had.

  She considered the small training swords in his hands.

  “Have you practiced much with daggers?”

  Brock scoffed.

  Frond waited.

  Finally Brock said, “You’re serious? Lady, I had a pretty average childhood, I think. Under what circumstances would I practice stabbing things?”

  “Then punch me,” she dared him, sheathing her sword.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You had an average childhood,” she echoed. “Boys get into scraps, don’t they? Show me how you fight.”

  Brock was at a complete loss. The truth was, now that he’d stabbed a naga, he had more experience stabbing than punching.

  “You get one hit,” Frond said. “So that I can evaluate your technique. Go on, now. Hit me.”

  “I…” Brock faltered, but he lifted his fists. “I guess my birthday wish came—”

  Frond backhanded him across the face so swiftly he never saw it coming. All he knew was that one moment he was looking at her, the next he
was on his back, and the moment after that, his cheek stung.

  “You use your words as a shield in social situations,” Frond told him. “But that shield will not serve you outside the wall.”

  Brock clambered slowly to his feet and dusted himself off. Frond took his wrists and lifted them, positioning his fists in front of his face. “This is a good defensive position when facing an upright terrestrial opponent.”

  “I’d hardly call you upri—”

  She slammed him to the ground again.

  “Dangers will not pause to respect your comic timing!”

  Brock grumbled under his breath.

  “And as for your average childhood,” she said venomously, looming above him. “Every day you went not having to stab something was a day someone else took up a knife or a sword or a shield so that you wouldn’t have to.”

  Brock’s cheeks burned, and not just from being struck.

  “Listen up,” she said, turning to include Zed and Liza. “We leave at first light for the shrine, on the king’s orders.” She held up her hand to forestall any arguments, but Brock’s head was spinning too much to produce one. “We’ll be gone only a single day, and we will stay to a route I know well, so danger will be at a minimum. But keep your wits about you. And bring weapons.” She looked over her shoulder at Brock. “You still get your free hit if you ever catch me with my guard down.” Her mouth twisted into a fearsome grin. “But you won’t.”

  She stormed off then, leaving Brock in the dirt and Liza and Zed staring at each other with huge eyes.

  “Does this mean I don’t have to spar with her?” Zed asked hopefully.

  Liza shrugged. “I guess you get to live another day.”

  “Right,” said Brock from the ground. “Because tomorrow, we’re all dead meat.”

  Brock, tired and sore, slept through dinner. He shuffled down from his bare room in time to claim the dregs of a lukewarm stew. Noticing that those adventurers still seated in the main hall were in the midst of a belching contest, he took his bowl of food downstairs.

  The trophy wall in the basement made for unsettling company, but at least the room was quiet and didn’t reek of burps. Too sore to sit, Brock paced as he ate, considering the gruesome menagerie before him. Someone had actually replaced Ser Feeler, now grass-stained and battered and bearing an unmistakable stab wound. Every one of the trophies represented a different species of creature that the guild had encountered. And Brock, whose education had been above average, couldn’t identify more than a handful.

  He’d heard of dragons, and basilisks, and a smattering of other monsters. But he didn’t know anything much about them. Liza had recognized the kobolds but had clearly been unfamiliar with the naga.

  He thought back to Hexam’s book, the illustrated manuscript filled with such…disquieting detail about the snakelike creature. Did the Adventurers Guild possess the only real knowledge of these Dangers? Was that information somehow of use to Quilby?

  Brock still wasn’t sure what the merchant lord expected of him, but he resolved to get another look at Hexam’s book at his first opportunity.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Zed enter the room. Brock smiled, warm and genuine, and then was instantly annoyed when Liza followed on Zed’s heels. He worried that it had looked like he was smiling at her.

  But Liza smiled back, and Brock let it slide.

  “Hey, Brock!” Zed said happily. “Liza’s going to help me choose a weapon for tomorrow.”

  “Something easy to use,” Liza said.

  “And very, very light,” Zed added. He rubbed his paltry bicep and winced under his own touch.

  Brock remembered watching as his best friend had been repeatedly trounced by Lotte earlier that day. His own muscles ached from his exertions, and his tailbone was sore. “I don’t think we should go,” he said.

  “I don’t think we really have a choice,” Liza said, scanning the wall of weapons.

  “But what’s the point?” Brock complained.

  “The focus, remember?” Liza prompted. “The shrine? Please tell me you were paying attention this morning, oh paragon of Freestone.”

  Brock stuck his tongue out at her back. “I mean why does she want us to go? Wouldn’t you take anyone but the new kids on a mission of vital importance?”

  “I’m sure she has her reasons,” Liza said. She took a hunting knife from the wall and handed it hilt first to Zed. “Try this.”

  “Reasons, hmm.” Brock counted off on his fingers. “She wants to kill us? Or she…Nope, that’s all I can come up with.”

  “She wants to kill you, maybe,” Liza said under her breath, and she watched as the knife slipped from Zed’s hands, almost taking his thumb with it as he fumbled. She sighed. “Something with a sheath, perhaps?”

  “I’m serious,” Brock continued. “Didn’t the king just tell her not to put us in harm’s way?”

  Liza shrugged. She took another knife from the wall, this one enclosed in a leather sleeve. “She said she knew the path. It’s probably the best way to train us, so that we won’t be in as much danger next time.” She handed Zed the knife, then turned to face Brock. “Honestly I’m beginning to think it’ll be safer out there with Frond than anywhere else without her. That woman is fierce.”

  Zed waved the knife around, keeping the sheath securely in place. “I sure wouldn’t want to get on her bad side,” he said.

  “Well, if you see her good side,” Brock grumbled, “be sure to point it out to me.”

  Brock willed himself to remain outwardly calm as they walked the long hallway beneath the guildhall and the metal door at its end came into view. The door that led outside the city. His heart was racing, and his sweaty palms stung within their gloves, and all he could think about was how wrong things had gone the last time he’d stepped through that door.

  The key difference, of course, was that Frond was crossing the threshold with them this time. Frond and Hexam, and Syd and Fife, all of whom acted as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  “The shrine is a half day’s march to the southeast,” Frond told them as soon as they’d stepped out into the early-morning air. “We could get there and back before the sun sets…if not for the fact that we need time to find Grima’s magical jewelry.”

  Zed gasped a little at Frond’s lack of respect.

  “Which means every moment we’re at the shrine is a moment we’ll be walking home in the dark,” Hexam clarified.

  They walked right into the tree line, Frond at the lead, and Brock found himself literally dragging his feet, as if his body were preparing to stop and turn around on its own. But then Brock thought of the noise he was making with his long, shuffling footfalls, and he thought of the things that might hear them, and he focused on stepping lightly.

  “You’re walking funny,” Zed whispered to him.

  “Really? Maybe I should turn back and get that looked at,” he replied.

  “Why aren’t we riding there?” Liza asked Frond. “We’d save hours.”

  Frond shook her head. “Horses spook too easily around Dangers.”

  “How silly of them,” Brock mumbled, scanning the trees, flinching at the sound of the wind.

  “In the Adventurers Guild we have a saying,” Fife said. “Horses is for eating, not riding.”

  Zed and Liza shared a horrified look.

  “We don’t have that saying,” Syd assured them, his three-horned helmet gleaming in the first rays of dawn. “That is something we neither say nor believe.”

  “Enough chatter,” Frond said from the front of their line. “I want you two flanking them while Hexam brings up the rear.”

  The young men split apart and repositioned themselves, and Brock had to admit he breathed easier with armed and experienced warriors situated between him and the woods. Even Syd and Fife, who seemed unimpressive on the whole.

  Only minutes into the hike, a soft rustling sound came from the undergrowth to one side of the path. Frond walked on a
s if unconcerned, but the apprentices all came up short.

  Brock turned to the archivist at their backs. “Hexam,” he hissed. “What was—”

  That was when Zed screamed, a high-pitched, piercing shriek of undisguised terror. He leaped backward, crashing into Brock, who landed with a muted thud in a pile of wet and filthy leaves.

  “Danger!” Zed cried, and he pointed into the tree line.

  Liza raised her shield, and Brock groped about for his daggers while he scanned the area. It took several long moments before his eyes saw movement. There in the undergrowth was a small furry creature with a bushy tail. It was propped up on its hind legs, worrying at an acorn it held clutched in its tiny paws.

  Syd and Fife burst into raucous laughter, and even Hexam chuckled. “It’s just a squirrel,” the archivist said.

  Zed cowered theatrically. “Is it safe?” he said.

  “Safe as can be,” the man answered, clasping Brock’s hand to haul him off the ground. “Perfectly natural. Honestly, what do they teach you children?”

  The squirrel looked at them with bright eyes, pausing for a moment as if deciding whether to retreat. In the end, it stayed put, and resumed gnawing on its prize happily.

  “It’s…kind of cute,” Liza said.

  It was then that a throwing star flashed before them, taking the squirrel’s head off in the blink of an eye.

  Zed screamed again, and this time Brock and Liza joined him. Syd’s and Fife’s laughter came to an abrupt stop.

  “Even natural animals can be corrupted,” Frond said gruffly. Brock turned to her, his jaw hanging open, but her eyes were on the archivist. “We don’t take any chances out here, Hexam. Not today.”

  Hexam nodded mutely, all the mirth gone from him. “Of course, Guildmistress,” he said.

  Zed and Liza frowned at each other while Brock wiped rotting leaves from his sodden breeches. He had a feeling it was going to be a long and distressing day.

  They walked for hours without rest, many times the distance any of the apprentices had walked before at a single time. Freestone was a near-perfect circle, and though Brock had always thought of the city as a large place, it could be crossed from one end to the other and back again in a single afternoon.