Bruce's eyes still stung as he sat in the healer's treatment room, letting the salve fix first the cracked bones in the wrist of his sword hand. He gritted his teeth through the worst of the pain, focusing on the Denkirit constable's questions to keep from concentrating on his wounded arm. He had deeply underestimated Azira, the skirmisher making a near-mockery of him in the field. Bruce hadn't even been able to clear his weapon from his sheath thanks to the goblin's tactical application of punishment to his sword arm pre-draw.
"And you say you've been with this company for only about a month, Mr. Morris," asked the gnome constable, her notepad in hand, jotting down notes. Bruce had given them the name of one of his fellow officers who had perished in the War of Pel Droma. Jacob Morris only had one living relative, a senile uncle living out the remainder of his days in the village of Norret, northwest of the capital. Uncle Barrett had been brought down to visit once, and he'd confused Bruce for his nephew several times during his stay; now, that could provide support for Bruce's falsehood if need be.
"Yeah, it was supposed to be easy money," Bruce said. "I'm no spring chicken anymore, so Ko's people said I could pick up a few easy escort jobs around the Kingdom, especially since I'm from here, know the lay of the land. But now I'm sitting here in a healer's clinic, my first client's been robbed, and I'm being questioned by coppers. Not a shining example of how a first job's supposed to go."
"No, I imagine it isn't," the gnome woman replied, jotting in her notepad. "Well, I hate to put it to you this way, Mr. Morris, but ever since the war, there's been lots of goblins blending in with the citizenry, and a lot of them sort of look alike."
"Well that's just racist," Melissa grumbled, tilting her head back as the healer, a rail-thin lizardman, administered eye drops. He initially offered them to Bruce, but the retired constable had waved them off, his helmet's face shield having given him some minor protection from the goblin's stinging liquid assault. The gnome woman shrugged.
"Be honest, miss, when I first walked in here, you assumed I was a man until I spoke, yeah?" Melissa nodded. "Because of the beard, aye. Us and dwarves, beards grow on men and women both."
"It can be difficult to tell," Melissa admitted. The gnome constable smiled at her gently.
"Easy tell for gnomes," she said, pointing at her bare upper lip. "Us ladies can't grow out the lip." Melissa considered this for a moment, thinking back on the handful of gnomes she had come into contact with on a regular basis back in Bronze Pot. With this bit of cultural information now at her disposal, she realized that about half of them were actually female. “Anyway, you’re probably going to have to inform your employer that the odds of us recovering any of your client’s effects are slim, Mr. Morris. Further, I’d recommend maybe finding a lower-risk job for your retirement years, yes?” The gnome looked over to the healer, who had barely said more than two words since the constables had brought the pair from Bronze Pot into his cottage, and the lizardman nodded slowly. The constables made their way out, and the moment the door shut, the reptilian sage spoke to Bruce.
“There is another reason you should give consideration to what the officer says, Mr. Morris,” said the healer, setting his dropper aside and moving swiftly from Melissa to the retired constable’s side. He waved his hands in matching circles, one before Bruce’s chest, the other an inch over his back. A soft hum filled the space of the cottage’s front room, and a pale yellow light flickered between the healer’s outstretched hands, touching Bruce’s torso up to his neck and halfway down his stomach under the armor he wore. “Your lungs have been damaged, and your heart weakened,” the healer said, his eyes rolling up into his head, the whites tinged with a hint of the yellowish power coming from his hands. “Both in the same incident, about three years back, yes?”
Bruce slumped a little as he sat on the examination table, nodding. “There was a fire, swept through the entire village. I survived, unconscious, in a crater in the middle of a street.”
“But there was enough smoke around you that you breathed some of it in,” said the healer. “Yes, I sense it; the fire began as magic, but as it spread, it became mortal flame. You are fortunate that you must have kept yourself in excellent physical condition up to that point,” said the lizardman, releasing his spell and offering a faint grin to his patients as he took a step away from Bruce. “Were you not a hearty man when it happened, you surely would have perished in the fire, even outside and in a crater as you were.” Bruce gave no clear reply, merely grunting. He slid down off the examination table to his feet and turned this way and that, cracking his back.
“We should start back soon,” he said to Melissa. The healer shuffled aside, putting away his vials and allowing the pair some space to converse privately.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” said Melissa. “There’s a wire service here in town, and they have contacts in a lot of different locations around the realms. If I were to go talk to someone there about what happened to me here,” she said, trailing off purposely. Bruce felt the corner of his mouth tug slightly up, and he felt the urge to go along with her proposal. But before he could, he wanted to ensure she was going to make it back to Bronze Pot in one piece.
“You should probably try to hire a genuine escort back in a couple of days, then, and take the main trade road,” he said softly, eyes darting a look over toward the healer’s direction. The lizardman was no concern, however, as he was heading further back into his cottage momentarily. “It’s no offense, but I don’t think you should try travelling alone just yet. Do you need some coin?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” she replied. Bruce untied one of his few money pouches from his belt and handed it over to her, and patted her on the shoulder. “Are you heading back now, then?”
“Yes. With any luck, by the time you get back, Azira, Steve and myself will have figured out what our next move against the Saviors should be. If news does spread about your experience with Ko’s outfit, then that’ll be a great first step.” Bruce made to leave then, but Melissa hooked him by the elbow for a moment.
“What’s our end goal with this,” she asked. “I mean, I know what I want to get out of this, but what about you guys?” Bruce looked aside for a moment, then gave her another of his disarming grins.
“I’m not sure about Az and the rat, but as for me, I’m just happy to have a purpose,” he said.
**
Azira took another swig on the bottle, then handed it back to the towering jaft ranger who had offered it to him in the first place. The goblin skirmisher hadn’t expected to come across any rangers along the secondary roadway, but after travelling only a couple of hours back toward Bronze Pot, he had spotted a group of four heavily armored troopers engaged in battle with a chimera. It was possible, he considered, that this had been the very same beast that he and Steve had avoided by sleeping up in the tree on their way to Tenkirit. He had been about to charge in and lend a helping hand when the jaft ranger, dressed in the heavy plate typical of his race’s warriors, had caved in the beast’s skull with his massive warhammer. The creature had been distracted, trying to bite at a dwarf who had been nimbly thrusting a pair of daggers into its flank, and the jaft had taken full advantage.
Azira pulled himself up short upon the killing blow, realizing that he wasn’t entirely certain who these warriors were, or what they were about. A brutally powerful jaft, an agile, dual-dagger-wielding dwarf, and two humes, both dressed in chainmail and firing arrows throughout the encounter, did not necessarily equate to friendly forces. It was only after using his farsight to spot the familiar silver badges on their left shoulders, hammered into the shape of a tree in bloom, did he feel safe to approach. The symbol was almost universal across the realms, each kingdom, city-state, and territory, including the Fiefdom of Lemago and the Greenskin Nation, opting to issue these badges or ones similar to it to their rangers.
As he drew close, one of the humes wheeled toward the narrow roadway, arrow notched and drawn on the goblin. As soon as Azira put his hands up over his head, both empty, the archer eased his arrow loose and hooked it back over his shoulder into his quiver. The jaft barked a couple of quick orders, and the archers and dwarf began cutting into the chimera, likely to parse out useful meat and components for alchemical or magical experimentation and use.
With them busied, the jaft had then approached Azira, his frame broad and powerful, but his movements swift, agile. “Hail, traveler,” the jaft ranger said, offering one gauntleted hand to Azira as he approached. The goblin skirmisher accepted and pumped just once, then took half a step back. “Not a lot of folks as use this roadway in the kingdom.”
“Yeah, well, my kind don’t like to be noticed much when we travel alone, not since, you know, the Pel Droma nastiness,” Azira replied. The jaft grunted, slinging the bag on his back around and setting it down on the roadway, rummaging about within it. “People see a goblin around these parts, they tend to assume the worst and get unfriendly in a hurry.”
“I can empathize with that,” replied the blue-fleshed warrior, his hairless head gleaming in the bright sun overhead. His race’s males tended to smell fouler than anything one might whiff coming from a horse’s rear end, but even in close proximity, Azira didn’t detect the natural stench on this one. “I used to be a ranger for the Ja-Wen city-state, ended up put on a few assignments in the southeastern stretches, near the Desperation. Naught but lizardmen that live out that way, and they don’t generally care for my people. Well, mine, or minotaurs.” The jaft finally pulled out a green bottle of ale, and offered the first sip to Azira. He handed it back with a sigh. “Where does your path take you, then?”
“Bronze Pot,” said Azira. “I work the copper mines just outside of town, public works. Just wanted to take a bit of time off, do some travelling. But I’ve had my fill for the time being.”
“Hmm. Well, be careful out there. There aren’t a lot of us left to protect the roads. The vast majority of Graneck’s Ranger Corps got wiped out fighting Droma’s forces during the war, and we haven’t put even a dent in the numbers to refill the ranks.”
“How bad is it,” Azira asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, before the war, we numbered five hundred men and women. Now, we’re about eighty-six in total, including myself and my men here.” The jaft finished off the ale, then tucked the empty bottle into his bag. “I was just a scout rank before the war; now, I’m a lieutenant. Never wanted a command of my own, but there weren’t many folks qualified when the dust settled.”
Azira offered no reply immediately, though he did find himself curious. “Have the wilds been more dangerous to traverse just lately? Since the war, I mean?” The jaft looked away, off to the north at some unseen horizon mark.
“Rashum all across the realms have been behaving erratically, encroaching closer to settlements, attacking even large, armed groups of rangers and soldiers. While some species of monsters prey upon one another, there have almost always been unspoken alliances, of a sort. Many breeds tolerate one another and acknowledge each other’s territorial boundaries. Recently, however, all of that has been thrown into chaos. Something stirs, citizen,” the jaft rumbled. “Whatever it is, I suspect it will make itself known throughout all realms.”
Azira wasn’t entirely comfortable with such musings, and so politely thanked the ranger for his time. Before he left, however, he looked to the blue-fleshed warrior, who had been watching him go. “I mean no insult when I ask this, ranger, but why is it that I don’t detect the stench from you,” the goblin skirmisher asked. The jaft’s previously stony, far-off expression softened, and he reached up for a necklace of simple wooden beads worn around his neck.
“This necklace is enchanted to make me scentless,” he replied. “Quite useful when tracking rashum in the wilds. Many of my fellow jaft rangers use them. I got mine from a fellow in the very town you’re heading to. Have you ever heard of Marty the Mystic?”
**
Melissa watched, fascinated, as the creature on the other side of the broad, U-shaped desk front spun this way and that, its fingers flying over the buttons and levers arranged in the wire service’s central hub. It looked to her like some kind of human-spider hybrid, and despite the fact that it wore the sort of casual tunic and trousers one might see on most everyday citizens, she kept expecting it to wheel about and plunge its gigantic fangs into the neck of the middle-aged human woman who sat just on the other side of the desk from Melissa herself.
It was, she knew, a sidalis, one of the rare ‘mutants’ of the civilized races of the realms. Named Mortimer, the man-spider had followed Sheila’s instruction to take down Melissa’s story and send it along to every receiving office it could contact. Sheila had taken Melissa’s statement out in the front of the wire service offices, bringing her back here to the hub once the former bar server had finished relating her terrible experience with the inept Ko’s Protection Professionals.
“You can see why we keep him out of the front office,” Sheila stage whispered to the wide-eyed Melissa as Mortimer went about his typing and sending.
“I have ears, you know,” the man-spider grumbled in a fair, moderately human-like voice. “And feelings,” he added, pausing in his typing for a moment. He shook his head and returned to his task, and after another minute, spun his chair around toward Sheila and handed her back the pages of notes the woman had taken during Melissa’s report.
“How many picked up during transmission,” Sheila asked. Melissa took note of the trim, cute way the woman had her hair styled, and momentarily fancied that she might be able to pull of the look herself, with a little bit of thinning.
“Six, with another four promising to pull down a full print when the entire story finishes sending through,” said Mortimer. “Biggest one during the transmission was from the office in Tarken, out west. They mostly sell stories to ‘The Desanadronian’, probably two to three-hundred thousand readers daily. This could go big.”
“And what does that mean for Ja-Wen readership,” Melissa asked. Both wire service operators smiled at her knowingly, and Melissa couldn’t help but flinch a little at the predatory little gleam in their eyes.
“It means that if The Desanadronian prints this story you’ve brought us, for sure one of the Ja-Wen imprints is going to want to run it, too.” Melissa considered the potential damage that was going to be done here to Ko’s reputation, and the possible backlash she and her friends might face if she were exposed as the possible source of this story. This thought, however, led to another.
“I have to say, I’m a little surprised you guys would want to run this story in the first place. I mean, won’t bad press for the Saviors of Graneck hurt you guys?”
“Gods, no,” Mortimer said, wheeling back over toward his equipment layout, checking several incoming message strips as they came printing along lengths of paper ribbons rolling off of automated spools. “You have to bear in mind, miss, that we work for the greater general public, not any one specific group or order. Whenever information comes in that we can verify, we offer it out to various publication outlets. Our duty is to the information itself. If the papers don’t want to run a particular story, that’s their business, not ours. Besides,” he added, wheeling back over beside Sheila and looking up at Melissa with his many wet, black eyeballs blinking in unison. “There’s always a buyer for our information somewhere.”
Melissa nodded, uncomfortably aware that she was staring. “Well, I suppose I should get going,” she said. She dropped a swift curtsy and made her way back out to the front office of the wire service, waving politely to the receptionist before heading out into the bright early afternoon sunshine of Tenkirit proper. With her task complete, she supposed it was now just a matter of finding someone who might be willing to offer her an escort back to Bronze Pot.
She headed toward what she assumed, from the noise and smell wafting from it, was a local pub. There were always sellswords looking for easy coin there, in her experience.