For Gold and Revenge

by Noah Layton

  And with the fires that I was going to start, there would be a lot more smoke in the air soon enough.

  3 – Covering Tracks

  I was out for blood, that much I knew, but rage alone wouldn’t satisfy the desires that I had. If anything, acting too quickly and without planning ahead would result in my ass getting swiftly handed to me.

  As the number of travellers and merchants on the road increased with my approach, I realised just how screwed I was.

  The Poison Stag had connections scattered across the city, and they were coming and going on a constant basis. The down-and-out of the city survived on what they could and one of the many ways they did so was to provide information to anybody who needed it.

  You see, bounty hunting has more than one dimension. There’s the killing part, but prior to that you have to actually find them in the first place. The latter of those two often tends to be the most difficult, as while there are plenty of stupid criminals in the city, there are also plenty of slippery ones who know how to stay out of sight.

  I didn’t have a bounty on my head because I hadn’t committed a crime, and it was the High Council – the government in Spire City – who put out the bounties on wanted criminals.

  I wasn’t a criminal, but that didn’t mean that my guild wasn’t willing to pay top-coin for the merchants and the street-urchins to keep an eye out for me.

  As the perpetually open city gates towered before me, I pulled up my hood and knotted the ends tightly around my neck, shrouding my face in shadow.

  I couldn’t afford to be seen for any reason.

  Spire City housed millions of citizens spread out across its many districts, many of which were a law unto themselves. The prisons were overcrowded in half of them, and in the other half the criminals roamed the streets of their own free will.

  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad place to live depending on how you looked at it. The city was always alive with all kinds of people and all kinds of madness, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  But with a city this big and with councillors that had practically given up trying to keep things under control, most of the city was now a wild-west.

  And what’s more, with a city this big, there were plenty of bad apples just waiting for the opportunity to do something stupid, and plenty of local law enforcement too lazy to get up and do it themselves, and more than willing to pay off a guy like me to do their dirty work.

  It was only a year ago that I had moved to Spire City in search of bigger opportunities and wound up joining The Poison Stag, the guild that was run by Killian.

  I had thought that we would be going after real criminals, but in actuality we spent most of our time going after small-timers with a little gold on their heads.

  Now I was the one being hunted.

  First thing was first; I had to get back to my quarters and acquire my belongings. There was no way I could stay there, though. My home was just a few hundred yards from the guild headquarters, and considering the fact that Rolo and Tomas should have been back hours ago, the guild would be on high-alert.

  My apartment would probably be the first place that they would check once they realised that something was wrong, but there was too much of value there for me to just leave it.

  Blister would be just as recognisable as I was in the Bronze District. I elected to drop him off at a local stable for a few days at the price of a little coin, then made my way through the city towards my apartment.

  A series of back alleys and side streets were my course of choice. The only folks that I was seen by back there were the drunks half-passed out in the gutter, and the few other drunks yet to collapse entirely.

  At the end of the alley across from my apartment I pulled to a halt and looked out from the shadows to the street. It was a bustling channel of traders pulling carts, farmers guiding animals to market and men and women traversing the city just trying to get by.

  No sign of the guild. I could easily make it, dip in, grab my stuff and get out of there.

  ‘Well in the merry month of May, a sailor came and said to me-e-e!!!’

  I almost jumped out of my skin at the sudden outbreak of singing behind me. I snatched up my dagger from my belt and spun around, ready to cut up whoever had snuck up on me.

  What I didn’t realise is that my guest had been there the entire time, hiding under a pile of old newspapers and garbage.

  He sat up, covered in dirt stains and stinking something fierce. Despite all of that, I recognised him immediately.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, Rudy?’ I growled, lowering my dagger. ‘I could have fucking killed you, do you know that?’

  ‘Ahh…!’ He laughed drunkenly, wincing and pointing a finger at me. ‘You wouldn’t kill me. We’ve been best buds for years!’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d call the drunk that sleeps in the alley across the street from my home my best bud, but right now you’re probably pretty high up on that list.’

  ‘Having a crisis of friendship, are you?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘There is a solution to such a problem, the same solution to all of life’s problems; a good, hard drink.’

  ‘I’m so glad you said drink at the end of that sentence. And I don’t know if that would solve the problem I’m having right now.’

  ‘Maybe not, but it would solve mine.’ Rudy the Drunk straightened himself up, coughed and spat into the gutter, and put on his most prim and proper voice. ‘Would ye throw a little gold my way in return for this wisdom I have bequeathed upon ye?’

  I dug out a gold piece from my satchel and flicked it his way. He didn’t react in the slightest. The gold piece spun through the air and smacked him square on the forehead, and he didn’t even react to that.

  There was a long pause, and then he smiled at me passively, his grin wide and his eyes still wincing.

  ‘Go nuts,’ I practically commanded.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Rudy saluted me, then collapsed straight back into the gutter beneath the pile of trash.

  Tens of thousands of folks on the streets in this district alone, and Rudy was probably one of the only ones that I trusted, but not out of virtue; he just didn’t have an agenda. He was a drunk, and that was all.

  I returned to the street, gave both ways a final check, and set off at a casual but focused walk with my head lowered.

  After heading up the creaky wooden stairs of the building to the second-floor, I fished for the keychain in my pocket with the multitude of keys hanging from it.

  They belonged to an array of locks on my front door. It was one of the requirements of working a job where you killed people for a living.

  But I didn’t need them, because the moment I laid eyes on my front door, I saw that it had been broken open.

  The wood was splintered and the locks had all been pried off.

  I reached for my dagger and listened carefully. Nothing. No sign of any movement inside, and all of my old guildmates were loud, lumbering bastards, even a little guy like Bartram. There was no way they would be able to keep themselves quiet.

  I pulled out my dagger anyway as I approached the door, placing my palm on the wood and pushing it slowly open.

  Every creak made me cringe. I pushed it just as far as I needed to duck through.

  After poking my head around the corner, my quarters came into view.

  The whole place had been trashed. My bedframe smashed to pieces and my mattress ripped open, the drawers at my desk ripped out and strewn about and the papers within thrown everywhere; everything that I owned was either upturned or destroyed.

  ‘You pieces of shit,’ I muttered, lowering my dagger and shaking my head. ‘Good thing they’re all too stupid to be persistent.’

  I headed into the kitchen which was in a similar state of disarray, and found my assumption to be correct. Despite the state of the place, the one pocket of real value in my apartment hadn’t been touched.

  Moving pas
t the pile of upturned trash from my overturned garbage bin, I crouched by the bottom of one my kitchen cabinets and slid my fingers into a small gap in the wood. A small latch gave and the panel clicked out of place.

  I pulled it away and reached into the hidden space. My hand settled on a wooden lockbox which I promptly retrieved.

  Using a key on my chain, I carefully unlocked it and lifted the lid to expose the innards. Against the inside of the lid was a large vial of acid in a delicate glass vial. I had rigged the locking mechanism to shatter the vial in the event that the box was pried open.

  It would destroy the hands of whichever thief tried to break inside, as well as the contents.

  In the main section of the box was my journal. It contained every valuable piece of information that I had acquired in my years as a bounty hunter; every address, every secret, every pseudonym, records of valuable bounties that had never been collected, and an abundance of other useful details.

  The thing was a mess of scrawls and notes and scraps of paper glued on others. Didn’t look like much, but it would have been worth a lot in the wrong hands.

  My gold stash was also pocketed in the corner; 700 pieces stashed away for a rainy day.

  Rainy day in this case being synonymous with that time your entire guild turns against you and tries to have you assassinated.

  And then, crouching in the ruins of my trashed apartment, I realised exactly why they had done it; pure mediocrity. My old guild members did nothing but follow the status quo, and it was all perpetuated by Killian. Hunt small-time criminals and collect cheap bounties, then get drunk and do it all again.

  An endless cycle of mediocrity, and nothing more. I had gotten wrapped up in the whole deal for a year, thinking that we would eventually start going after real criminals, but that had never happened.

  I sat back against my kitchen wall, my journal in one hand and the satchel of gold in the other.

  I was pissed off at my literal attempted murder and I was out for blood. But in that moment, another realisation hit me.

  I had no obligations anymore, just two things in my hands that I needed to start going after the real bad guys; gold and information.

  My only problem was Rolo and Tomas. I needed to convince the guild that they had skipped town.

  Once that was done, I was dead.

  In their eyes at least.

  I had relaxed for a brief moment as I looked between the journal and the gold, the two things that I could now rely on to keep me afloat.

  But in my game the moment you let your guard down was the moment somebody stabbed you in the back.

  A sudden rustling sounded from the pile of garbage next to me. I sprang back, dropping my belongings and taking up my dagger once more.

  I was ready for a close-quarters fight, even if it was probably just a mouse.

  I hated mice. Okay, I was terrified of them, but the two went hand in hand.

  The pile started to move too much to be a mouse, though.

  ‘Come on out!’ I commanded strongly. ‘Show yourself!’

  ‘All right, all right, just don’t cut me up, Drake…’

  How did this thing know my name? And how could it speak?

  A head slowly emerged from the pile of garbage, then two raised hands.

  ‘Bungooli?’ I said, lowering my dagger slightly.

  ‘Long time no see, Drake! How are you?’

  ‘I’m… Okay, all things considered. What the hell are you doing in my apartment?’

  Bungooli was a gnome who worked as a bard in taverns all across Spire City. He was a lazy, fun-loving idiot who had a supreme talent for getting drunk and wooing a crowd. I ran into him from time to time, and every time resulted in us getting far too drunk and ending up in a gutter. Or worse.

  He also happened to have contacts and eyes all over the city – ‘I know everyone, but I’m friends with no one’ is how he had once described himself to me.

  ‘Your front door was open, then I found the place like this, then I heard some commotion outside and I thought that whoever did this to your place might be coming back, so I hid.’

  ‘Brave of you.’

  ‘Hey, man, I’m a gnome, what do you want from me? I can sing and play a mean lute. That’s about it’

  ‘You can play a mean lute in fairness,’ I admitted. ‘What do you mean you heard commotion outside?’

  ‘Just footsteps and voices. Then moving away. Probably one of your neighbours. I hid anyway.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Which begs the question; what the hell happened here, Drake? Somebody who knew one of your old hits come back to seek revenge?’

  ‘Not exactly. More like my own guys.’

  ‘Your own gu-? Ahh, that’s funny.’ Bungooli climbed out of the trash and laughed heartily before stopping abruptly. ‘Wait, you’re serious?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Tell me everything. No, wait, don’t tell me everything, not yet anyway. I’ve got a gig over at a tavern. Come watch me play and you can get a drink with me after.’

  ‘No can do,’ I said, sheathing my dagger and pocketing my journal and my gold. ‘My old guild members tried to have me killed, and it’s only a matter of time before they realise that I’m still alive, unless I do something about it.’

  ‘Which way you headed?’

  ‘A building in the Pale District.’

  ‘The tavern I’m playing it as over in the Pale District!’

  ‘So they’re right next door to each other,’ I nodded. ‘Only problem is I’m not going to do what I need to do while drunk.’

  ‘Then one drink before my set. Come on, this is a story that I want to hear.’

  ‘You’re really okay hanging out with a guy who’s being hunted by blade-wielding bounty hunters?’

  ‘I’ll risk life and limb to hear a tale that could inspire a song.’

  ‘I’m not getting rid of you that easily, am I?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Fine, but keep your head up. You don’t want to be seen with me right now, believe me.’

  ***

  ‘And now I have no idea who I can trust. Apart from you.’

  At the bar of The Loose Mare, a tavern in the Pale District, I finished off telling my story to my gnome companion. He was scrawling on a piece of parchment the entire time.

  ‘You can completely trust me, Dra-’ Bungooli belched loudly, then snapped his fingers at the bartender. ‘Another, kind sir. Yes, Drake, you can completely trust me.’

  That was true. Much like Rudy, what you saw was what you got with Bungooli.

  Where we were located was an out-of-the-way area of the city, but I didn’t trust taking my hood down – not yet, anyway.

  ‘All the same,’ he continued, ‘that is the most incredible story I’ve ever heard. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘First I’m going to head to the apartment of the goons that they hired to kill me, take everything valuable and trash the place. I need to make it look like they skipped town.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Slay the bastards that tried to have me killed and start my own bounty hunting guild.’

  ‘Yes!’ Bungooli said loudly, to which I hushed him and he looked at me guiltily. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t yes-ing at you. Feels like I’ve been waiting an age for this drink.’

  ‘You’ve been waiting about thirty seconds,’ I replied as the mug of ale was set down on the counter. ‘I’m actually amazed it got here this fast.’

  ‘That’s why I like playing this place. The drinks are served fast and the food served hot.’ He took a long swig from the mug and sighed with pleasure. ‘So, you’re going it alone, huh? With a skill set like yours, I don’t blame you.’

  ‘I need a place to stay in the meantime. Somewhere on the other side of the city, far away from these parts. It’s one thing with people thinking I’m dead, but it’s another if I get seen. I need to set up base somewhere that their reach doesn’t extend.’

  ‘I thought you sa
id that your guild was small?’

  ‘They are, but they’ve got contacts scattered in a few districts. I need to start up somewhere else in the city. You know anywhere?’

  Bungooli tapped his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘I know a place. It’s in the Adler District, way out of the way from here. There’s a tavern called the Queen’s Steed. Bit of a rough place, but exactly the kind of spot where you can keep yourself hidden for a little while. The landlady is called Mavis. Lovely woman. Just tell her I sent you and she’ll give you a room.’

  ‘Does your reputation really carry you that far?’

  ‘Are you joking? Mavis loves me. She’s got a few rooms. I’m sure she’d be happy to take you. And, if you tell her I sent you, I’m sure that she will give you a discount.’

  ‘I’ll take your word on it,’ I nodded, finishing off my first and last beer of the night. ‘Come pay me a visit there if you want a new job.’

  ‘A new job? Doing what?’

  ‘I’m sure a guy like you has plenty of skills, and if I’m going to start my own guild I can’t do it on my own.’

  ‘I’m playing a set at a tavern in the Adler District in a few days. The Broken Bell. Come see me. I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

  I paid the tab at the bar and left. With my hood still tied tightly over my head and my cloak wrapped around my body, I moved through the streets to the apartment where Rolo and Tomas had been staying.

  The day had pushed on faster than I expected, and the sun was setting by the time I arrived outside of the building they were staying in.

  In other words, a much easier spot to access than my own apartment.

  Arriving at their first-floor quarters, I found the door to be locked. Not surprising; they weren’t stupid, but who didn’t lock their door?

  Fortunately it was nothing too strong or sophisticated, and I could get through it quickly.

  I took a quick look over my shoulder, made sure that there was nobody around, then took out my lockpicking kit and got to work.

  I wasn’t concerned about my old guild members coming to get me right now, but if a neighbour happened to stumble on me fidgeting to open it up, I could find myself in a really unpleasant situation.