A nod which said that he believed in the newest fool to risk his life for paltry gain, a nod which seemed to say that the gods themselves believed and that the fool in question could only succeed, that he was meant to succeed, would be carried to victory by destiny or fate or some other ridiculous notion. Seladrius had been a liar and a cheat—if a pleasant one—but he’d had a fine nod.
After a moment, the top of the young man’s head disappeared beneath the window frame and Dannen started forward only to have Fedder move in front of him. The mage hesitated at the window, glancing back with a look that, on another, slightly-less homicidal person, Dannen might have called “sheepish.”
The mage met his eyes. “Can I be honest, Butcher?”
Dannen glanced at the door—an undeniable bend to it now—and the furniture piled in front of it, then back to the mage. “Wait much longer, and you can be dead.”
The mage winced. “Not a big fan of heights. Never have been.”
Dannen blinked. “Really?”
“Well, sure. They can kill you.”
Dannen could have launched into a long dialogue about how the man was willing to wrestle trolls, fight giants and the gods alone knew what else, but another crash from the other side of the door—this one accompanied by the unmistakable sound of splintering wood—informed him that he simply didn’t have the time. So instead, he met the mage’s stare. “Not a fan of heights.”
“That’s right.”
“And what are your thoughts on being hacked to death by an angry mob?”
Fedder grunted. “Right. See you at the bottom.”
Dannen watched the mage crawl through the window, grunting with the effort of squeezing his bulk through a frame which seemed to Dannen to be shrinking by the moment. Dannen watched, his own breath caught in his throat, his back covered in sweat. Only minutes ago, he’d vindictively hoped that the mage would get stuck, but in that imagining he had been safely on the other side, not somehow volunteered to be the first one to get hacked to pieces when the bandits broke through the barricade.
Indeed, the man was about halfway through when he appeared to get stuck, and Dannen tensed, preparing to show the mage a bit of magic of his own—namely, a kick in the ass. A moment later, though, Fedder worked his way through, and then he was climbing down. Dannen hurried to the window and was just lifting one leg over the sill when he heard a sound behind him, one that eclipsed the angry shouts of the bandits and all the banging up to that point. He spun, one leg draped over the window, to see the door finally come off its hinges, snapped out of frame by the repeated blows of the mob.
It fell, getting stuck halfway at an angle, leaning on the accumulated pile of furniture, and Dannen was treated to a sight of furious, red-faced bandits staring back at him. Their shouts grew louder and, to his dismay, those in front began to crawl over the door, eager to earn their pay. Dannen fought down the panic growing in him and swung his other foot out of the window, searching, his hands tightening around the windowsill in a death grip as he stared below him at the others all looking up, watching.
He was trying to gain purchase on the side of the building with his feet when someone grabbed his arm. He swung his gaze back to the window to see a woman with a demented grin grasping at his arm with one hand. But it was her other hand—more specifically, the knife it held—which drew his attention.
“Got you now, fucker,” the woman said, lifting the knife as more and more of her companions piled into the room behind her.
As a general rule, Dannen didn’t like hitting women. This wasn’t because of anything like chivalry—a made up word if there ever was one—but more because women, in his experience, held grudges far longer than men and were far better at repaying them. This time, though, as she brandished the knife she held, preparing to drive it into…well, he wasn’t really sure where only that, wherever it went, it was likely to cause him a bad day, he decided to make an exception.
He let go of the windowsill with one hand, punching the bandit in her grinning face. She squawked in surprise, as if stunned to find out that a life dedicated to blood and violence might ever lead to blood and violence, and Dannen felt a grim satisfaction as he watched her stagger backward into several of her companions. He continued to feel that sense of satisfaction until he realized, quite abruptly, that he had just relinquished his precarious handhold on the windowsill. He flailed for a minute, trying and failing to find purchase on the outside wall of the inn with his feet.
Mariana had leapt from the window like a cat, Tesler and Fedder following and climbing down like any sensible human, but as he felt his last grip on the window slip, Dannen chose—wholly against his will—the expedient of falling. He let out a cry as his fingers slipped free, and he plummeted to the earth.
The air was driven from his lungs as he struck the hard ground, and he groaned, staring up at the window overhead and the bandits all crowding it, looking down at him furiously as he wheezed in painful breaths.
A moment later, the others were standing over him. “Dannen,” Tesler said, offering him his hand, “are you okay?”
“Perfect,” Dannen rasped, taking the offered hand and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. He shot a quick look up at the window and saw that the bandits were gone. He would have liked to think that they’d decided to give up the chase, to go to the common room, maybe have an ale, but he didn’t think it likely. “Come on,” he said to the others, “we need to get out of here. There are some stables nearby. If we can reach them, maybe we can find some horses and get out of this damned village.”
With that, he began leading the others in the direction of the stables or at least he hoped so. Night had fallen when they were inside the inn, so it was difficult to tell for sure, but he decided that, for the moment, at least, any direction would serve, just so long as it was away.
***
It took them nearly an hour to reach the stables, and they had to backtrack twice as Dannen got confused in the darkness. Luckily, though, they reached them without incident, and Dannen crouched on the edge of a small house, his companions beside him, staring across the dirt path that served as the village’s road to where the stables sat. “Alright,” he said, “here’s the plan—we’re going to sneak inside and see if we can find any mounts. We’ll ride double if we have to, but we’re going to get out of here as quick as we can.”
“And go where?”
This from Tesler, and Dannen and the others turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”
The man shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the attention. “I just mean that we came here hoping to find supplies and a guide, or at least a map, but we’ve done none of those things.”
Dannen grunted. “Well, we’re still breathing, so I guess it can’t be counted as a total loss, can it, lad?”
Tesler winced. “I just meant, you know, we don’t know where we’re going. But the villagers who live here likely would.”
“You mean those villagers who, right now, are imprisoned by a bandit army in the village’s granary?”
The young man nodded. “Yes.”
Dannen shared a glance with Fedder, and the man frowned. “Well, lad, not real sure that we have much of choice.”
“Don’t we?”
Two simple words, but there was a world of meaning in them, one that was clear to Dannen, a damn sight clearer, in fact, than he wished. True, he didn’t feel great about leaving the villagers to their fates, particularly not after Delilah had gone out of her way, had risked herself to warn him. It wasn’t fair, of course, not to her and not to the other villagers who would no doubt suffer and die all because someone had planned a trap for Dannen and the others. It wasn’t fair, either, for him and the others to abandon them to their fates, not when Dannen and his companions were responsible for the bandits being here in the first place.
It wouldn’t feel good, leaving them, and he didn’t doubt he would carry the guilt of it with him for the rest of his life. But then, it wouldn’t be
the first time he’d done something he wasn’t proud of, and the guilt, however terrible and pressing it might be, would at least have company, would have to shout pretty loud to be heard over the chorus of his regrets.
“Look, lad,” he said, meeting Tesler’s gaze, “it isn’t easy, adventuring, being a hero. Sometimes, you have to do things you don’t like, at least if you want to keep on breathing. We’re here for a reason, and if we get killed now—”
“You’re right,” Tesler said, showing none of his shyness now. “We did come here for a reason. We came here to save the north. So let’s save it.”
Dannen had never seen the young man seem so passionate, so confident, and it took him by surprise, even managing to rouse some heroic feelings—feelings he had thought, had hoped were long dead—in him. He turned and glanced at Fedder.
The mage gave him a small smile, shrugging. “Don’t seem right, Butcher, leavin’ those folks here to fend for themselves.”
Dannen thought that the cow walking into the shed to be slaughtered of its own volition didn’t seem particularly right either, but he turned to Mariana, raising an eyebrow in question.
The girl, though, was staring at Tesler as if seeing him for the first time, an expression on her face that was hard to decipher. She seemed to feel Dannen’s gaze on her and turned to regard him. Then she nodded. No mocking joke, no sarcastic comment, simply a nod, nothing more.
Nods, Dannen decided, were deadly. He frowned, considering, for a moment, what argument he might make to sway his companions, how he might point out the uselessness of any attempt to save the villagers. But after a few seconds, he realized that he had no argument to make, mostly because he didn’t want to sway them. He thought of Hank, the man once known as Honor. He, like Dannen, had been famous in his time, famous for being a hero, his name known throughout the land, spoken of in hushed, excited whispers. And yet, he had been an asshole. And not just that—a miserable one. Much like Dannen himself, in fact.
True, they were both alive, at least for the moment, but neither Hank nor Dannen himself was particularly pleased about it. He didn’t wake each morning feeling excited, thrilled to still be breathing, thanking himself for the choices—often hard ones—he’d been forced to make in his past to be here now. Instead, he woke to that chorus of regrets, each clamoring for his attention. When he’d spent the better part of several years drunk in one tavern or another, he had believed that he had been seeking refuge from the sadness, the pain of Val’s death. And while that had been true, he realized now that it had not been the only thing he had sought refuge from. He had hoped, also, that the drink might drown out his regrets. He had gone searching for drunken oblivion for it was the only way to put some distance between himself and the mistakes of his past, mistakes that always trailed behind him like great chains looped around his wrists, his ankles, dragging at him, threatening to pull him down.
He’d always tried making the right choice, the safe choice. Perhaps now it was time to make the wrong one. He looked around at each of them, all of them watching him silently, waiting for what he would say. In the end, he nodded. “Alright. Might be we’ll regret this about the time the bandits start to put their blades to work, but alright. Let’s go save some villagers.”
Tesler beamed at that, as if he were a child given a new puppy instead of a man who likely had just heard his own death sentence. Mariana was also grinning, though he thought he detected a hint of a sharp edge to hers, a thought confirmed by the way she was fingering the handles of her weapons in their sheaths. Fedder, too, grinned, though to be fair, the man always was excited when violence looked likely.
Probably they would all be dead in the next few hours, with him alone to blame, yet Dannen found a smile come to his own face. Now that the decision was done, he felt better. And not just better—lighter. As if, in making the decision, he had somehow shed much of the weight—not all, never that but much of it—that he had carried for so long. “Alright then,” he said, “let’s go.”
“I…need to stay here, for a moment,” Tesler said.
Dannen turned, frowning at the man. “You kidding me? This was your idea, lad.”
“Yes,” Tesler said, “and I mean to come but…there is something I need to do first.”
He looked over Dannen’s shoulder and Dannen followed his gaze to the stables before turning back to the young man. He was going to say something else, but Mariana beat him to it.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, “of course you’re coming with us.”
For once, the young man did not shy away from her gaze like a mongrel afraid of being kicked. Instead, he met her eyes and gave his head a shake. “No, I’m not. You three go—I’ll catch up to you.”
“But—” Mariana began.
“Leave it, lass,” Fedder said.
Dannen glanced at Tesler. “You’re sure?”
The man nodded. “I’m sure. Head to the granary—I’ll catch up with you soon.”
Dannen gave him another minute to change his mind, but when he showed no signs of doing so, he finally sighed. “Alright,” he said to Fedder and Mariana, “let’s go.”
Mariana frowned. “Fine, whatever.”
Dannen started away, the two of them following, but Mariana paused, turning back. “Tesler?”
The young man, who’d been starting toward the stables, turned. “Yes?”
The woman’s mouth worked as if she was preparing to curse or utter some scathing remark. Instead, she only sighed. “Don’t die. Alright?”
He smiled. “I’ll try not to.”
And with that, they set off in the direction of the granary that he and the others had seen in the distance when coming into the village. They darted from building to building and had made it about halfway there when Dannen felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Something was wrong. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something was bothering him, as if there was a trip line in his mind and something had set it off, though what that something was, he didn’t know. Not, at least, until Fedder spoke.
“Where’d they all go?”
Dannen grunted, looking at the man and realizing then what it was that had bothered him. When fleeing the inn, they’d been forced to make a mad scramble through the darkness, using the shouts and curses of the bandits to warn them away from certain areas and still only narrowly avoiding stepping directly in the path of several on multiple occasions. But now, they had traveled halfway across the village and had seen and heard nothing, no one.
“I don’t know,” Dannen said slowly.
“Is it…do you think they gave up?” Mariana asked hopefully.
Dannen turned and glanced at her. “Not likely.”
“Then…where are they?” Mariana asked.
Dannen didn’t know the answer to that, but he wished he did. The bandits, according to Delilah, had been offered a not inconsiderable sum to kill him and his companions. Enough, at least, to make them decide it was worth it to risk invading an entire village, a thing that normally would send the king and his army trampling down on them in quick order—though, of course, Dannen supposed that King Ufrith was far too busy trying to fend off the undead from his capital to worry about some backwater village he likely didn’t even know the name of. Still, it was a bold move from the bandits, one that made it unlikely they’d be willing to give up the chase easily. And yet, by all appearances, they had.
But the absence of the bandits in the village didn’t make him feel better. Instead, it made him feel worse. For while he hadn’t particularly enjoyed scrambling through the village trying to avoid a small army out for his and his companions’ blood, he had at least known where they were. And if those bandits were no longer hunting for him and the others, then where were they? Were they even now spreading out around Yarrow, meaning to cut off any avenue of escape for him and his companions?
That was not a pleasant thought, but then he consoled himself with the fact that if the bandits had spread out around the village, then th
ey would, at least, have been forced to thin out their numbers to do so. Which meant that when he and the others did attempt their escape, they would only be facing impossible odds instead of ridiculously impossible ones.
He continued to lead the way through the village, reminding himself at each corner not to become complacent, for the near moonless night could easily conceal a dozen bandits, and he wouldn’t know it. At least, not until he felt their swords stabbing him in the back…or the front. Neither sounded particularly appealing.
Yet for all his fears and worries, he and the others made it across the village without being accosted by bandits hiding in the shadows of alleyways or lurking on rooftops. They paused behind a building, crouched with their backs pressed against it, as they peered around the corner at where the granary sat in the distance, a vague, shadowed outline in the darkness.
Dannen frowned, studying the building. Two men stood stationed at the door, clearly posted as guards and just as clearly—based on the fact that they weren’t looking around at all but just engaged in a heated conversation the subject of which he couldn’t make out—not thrilled about their jobs. Dannen supposed that bandits, as a general rule, were far better at the stealing of things than they were at the guarding of them, and he thought that those two, at least, should prove easy enough work.
“Hi.”
Dannen barely suppressed a scream as he and the others spun to see Tesler standing behind them. “What the shit?”
“It’s me…” the young man said, blinking. “Tesler.”
“I know it’s you, you fool,” Dannen snapped, “now get down,” he finished, pulling the man into a crouch beside them.
“Done with your outing?” Mariana asked, scowling at him.
Tesler considered that then nodded. “I believe so.”
Dannen sighed, turning back to the granary, and Fedder grunted. “How do you want to do it, Butcher?”
Dannen hesitated, giving his head a shake.
“I don’t like it,” Mariana said, and Dannen was beginning to think it was a mantra she repeated from time to time just for the sake of habit. “Who leaves two men to guard a granary full of a village’s worth of people?”
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