Split the Party

by Drew Hayes

  “Then I’ll go.” Eric slipped the belt with his sheath around his waist and put his blade away.

  “You can’t go out there by yourself,” Timuscor said.

  “Better me than anyone else. I’m easily the quietest of us all, as I neither have Grumph’s weight nor your heavy armor. Plus, I made sure to memorize the layout of the town, and noted a few places in this building I could use to slip onto the roof.” Eric realized how crazy that last part made him sound, only to conclude seconds later that it would have only seemed crazy if they weren’t currently in need of exactly such information. Paranoia was only a hindrance where it didn’t pay off.

  “Eric is good at what he does,” Gabrielle said, eyeing her oldest friend carefully. Once, there had been a time when no one could have uttered such words, but Eric was proving to be far more adept as a rogue than he ever was a guard. While she still didn’t like the idea of him heading out into the unknown by himself, Gabrielle also knew Eric well enough to recognize when he was stuck on an idea. If he was beyond dissuading, then better he go out there with encouraging words in his ears rather than doubt in his heart.

  “This is something Eric can do that the rest of us cannot,” Thistle told Timuscor, leaning down and picking up the first pieces of his armor to begin the process of getting equipped. “Just as Grumph can call magic and I can heal, Eric can move with speed and silence. Both of which he will certainly need once he leaves this room.” That last bit was said more to Eric than Timuscor, and the dark-haired human took the hint well. Once he was outside, they’d have to bolt the door behind him and start getting ready, which meant retreating back to the room was out of the question. Anyone who noticed him would have to be lost or . . . handled.

  “I’ll be quick,” Eric promised. “If anyone comes to the door and you don’t hear my voice, assume it’s not me.”

  “That will have to do.” Thistle knew too well how easy it was to duplicate something as simple as a voice, even without magic, but in the absence of options, he saw no other way to let Eric hurry on his way. When things calmed down, he would have to make a point of creating and teaching them all a non-verbal code of knocks and gestures to avoid situations like these.

  Grumph was at the door, and as Eric drew close, the half-orc lifted the moderately sized bar that swung into place to keep them secure. Pulling the worn piece of wood slowly ajar, Eric quietly passed through the opening and eased the door shut behind him.

  With the soft thud of the bar slipping back into place, Eric was officially on his own.

  * * *

  Briarwillow was a town with some means, though it was far from being as resplendent as one of the kingdom capitals. This meant that while it didn’t have magical lighting hewn into the stones—as capitals often did—the town did spring for hanging lanterns positioned every few feet. These were put up carefully, far enough from the buildings so that an accident wouldn’t start a fire, but near enough to cast light on many doorways. This meant that the streets were soaked in shadows as the dim light of the lanterns cascaded through the night, catching various objects in their gentle glow. In a sense, the strange, barely-lit landscape was a blessing to the cautious human creeping along the inn’s rooftop: it made movement almost impossible to miss, as the slightest step would cause a swirling of shadows.

  That was why Eric easily noticed the mouse skitter across the stones from a stack of hay to a hole in the shop where they’d purchased their smoked meats. He also caught sight of a bird flying overhead, perhaps intrigued by the sounds of the moving mouse. These two creatures’ motions, subtle though they were, were worrying to pick up for a very key reason: there was no other sound or movement coming from anywhere else in the town.

  Eric perched for no fewer than ten minutes, waiting to see something, hear a muffled cry or the sounds of battle, gain any sort of clue as to what was going on. Only silence and shadows greeted him. With quick, careful motions, he shimmied down the side of the inn, using the same tricks he’d used to sneak into the mayor’s house when he was showing up late for a guard shift. It took deft hands and sure feet, both of which Eric possessed. He landed with only the slightest of sounds and began moving through the town.

  The soft scuff of his boots against the road’s stones seemed to echo in all directions, causing Eric to freeze each time he made such a noise. When no one came to investigate, Eric would continue forward, determined to be more careful. He was quieter than the others, but that wasn’t the same as being completely silent. Still, as his steps turned into strides and still not a single spot of movement caught his eye, Eric began to wonder if he was going through all this effort for no reason. Briarwillow seemed more or less deserted. If not for the hanging lanterns and the town-wide scream, he would have thought everyone had run off to some after-festival event in the fields.

  The others would be in their armor soon, if not already, and there was only so long anyone would be able to talk Gabrielle out of coming to make sure he was alive. Eric decided it was time to take some real risks in the hopes of finding answers. Walking up to the nearest shop—a pleasant-smelling building that had been full of baking bread all through the day—Eric pressed his hand against the door. All he wanted to do was feel if there was a bar in place on top of the lock, as he couldn’t very well unlock a wooden beam, but to his total surprise the door swung open freely.

  Flickering lantern light from the street and a few errant moonbeams streamed through the window, illuminating a bakery that had been left utterly unattended. Eric stepped in carefully, mostly shutting the door behind him just to be safe. He might need to make a hasty exit, but he didn’t want to lock himself in an unfamiliar location unless it was absolutely necessary. It was certainly strange that the door was unlocked, but this was just a bakery, and in a town that hadn’t seen travelers in weeks. Perhaps they’d not felt the need to lock it. Eric held on to that thought as he quietly made his way through the dimly-lit front of the bakery, maneuvering past the counter and into the back.

  There, he found what he’d expected: a sizable oven next to a kitchen area, with several bowls of dough proofing on a rear counter. There was also a bed, a cupboard, and a table big enough to seat two people at most. Resting on the table was a single cup, chipped and dented from what he estimated to be years of use. Eric dipped a pinky into the brown liquid resting inside the cup’s depths. It was surprisingly warm, almost hot to the touch. Bringing his finger to his mouth, Eric delicately licked off a single drop, tasting the liquid.

  “Tea?” He glanced at the oven and noticed a small teapot resting to the side, probably warmed by the glowing coals inside the iron beast. For the tea to still be warm, it would have had to have been made fairly recently, probably around the time they first heard the screams. A terrible idea wormed its way into Eric’s brain, and he tried to push it away. Jumping to conclusions would color his perspective, and there was still more to see before he could be certain of what was happening.

  All the same, he didn’t put quite as much care into moving silently as he walked back through the bakery and out the front door. Even if Eric’s mind wasn’t yet ready to face the truth, somewhere in his heart he already knew what was waiting for him behind the rest of the town’s doors.

  * * *

  “I’m going after him.” Gabrielle didn’t actually gesture with her axe when she spoke, but it was off her back and gripped forcefully in her hands all the same, adding an unwelcome amount of danger to her declaration.

  “We’re all going after him, and soon,” Thistle told her. “But not quite yet. We need to give him enough time to work, otherwise we risk undoing all his efforts by blundering about and alerting others to our presence. Just a little longer.”

  “You keep saying that, then when I want to go, you say the time isn’t here yet. What exactly are you waiting for?”

  “Enough time that we’re sure he’s in trouble,” Thistle said.

  “And by that point, he might very well be dead.” Gabrielle took a step t
oward the door, her eyes beginning to flash as the fury she kept sealed away for battles scratched at the inside of her brain, begging like a wild dog to be let loose. “We’re done talking about this. I’m going after my friend. Now.”

  “Then I suppose we’re coming along.” Thistle had known enough barbarians in his time to understand there was a point at which diplomacy failed to be a word they could even understand, let alone an effective strategy. Besides, the truth was he was getting worried as well. While the weird, twisting feeling in his stomach had faded a great deal, it was still there, constantly telling him that something was amiss. Much as he trusted Eric to do the reconnaissance quietly, none of them were incapable of failure, and he had no desire to bury any more of his friends. Thistle had gotten a lifetime’s fill of that activity already.

  A crisp, loud knock from the door immediately drew all their attention, as well as some of the weapons from their sheaths. Eric’s voice followed the knocking, putting them at ease while simultaneously filling them with confusion. “You can all come out now. There’s nothing here.”

  Grumph pulled up the bar and yanked open the door, revealing an unharmed Eric. Thistle quickly motioned for him to come in so they could close the door again. Eric obliged, albeit with an almost lazy gait to his steps.

  “While I’m glad to hear there isn’t any danger, perhaps you should still be quiet, lest we call some upon ourselves,” Thistle said.

  “I highly doubt that’s going to happen,” Eric replied. “When I said there was nothing here, that’s what I meant. Not just that there isn’t any danger, but that every single person in the entire town appears to have up and vanished.”

  “Wait.” Timuscor’s forehead scrunched as he tried to wrap his mind around what Eric was saying. “You mean there’s no one in the streets?”

  “Or the shops, or the homes, or any of the other buildings I had time to check. It’s just us.” Eric gestured over his shoulder, pointing back to the town at large.

  “As far as I can tell, Briarwillow has become a complete ghost town.”

  Chapter 6

  As dawn crested the horizon, casting long rays of morning sunlight through the fields and up to the base of the nearby mountain, it found Briarwillow almost entirely evacuated, as the few remaining people had spent most of the night verifying.

  The search had begun carefully, moving in specific teams and keeping watch in all possible directions as they hunted. After the first hour of abandoned shops and homes, however, the party grew somewhat more concerned with speed rather than care, splintering off in all directions, hoping to turn up some clue as to where the people of Briarwillow had gone. With the sun’s rise, they reconvened outside the inn to share their progress, or, rather, the lack thereof.

  “I hope one of you found something, because I came up with jack,” Gabrielle announced. “Just a bunch of empty houses and half-made beds. Not even any blood.”

  “Same here,” Eric told them. “None of the doors were locked and nothing was out of place. Near as I can tell, it seems like everyone just got out of bed and left town.”

  “Aye, that would be my guess as to exactly what occurred.” Thistle moved more slowly than the others thanks to the cruel prank the gods had played on his limbs, so his search had been shorter than theirs. At the same time, it had given him a chance to reflect on the events as he’d experienced them, as well as consider that ceaseless twisting sensation that persisted in his stomach. It had all come together to give him a theory, albeit a flimsy one. “I’d say that the fever we saw them in the grips of yesterday reached its next stage, one that involved some sort of town-wide migration.”

  “That doesn’t make much . . . oh, magic.” Eric answered his own budding question and sighed, trying to bite back the sense of frustration bubbling inside him. That damned unknowable source of power made life so much more complicated than it needed to be. He wondered how he’d ever managed to get through so much of his life without noticing the trouble that magic caused.

  Timuscor set down his shield gently, taking the opportunity to stretch as best he could inside the heavy-plated armor strapped across his body. “What sort of magic could make sick people vanish? We only stayed inside for a few minutes, at most. That’s not much time for the entire town to just walk off.”

  “There are a few spells I know of that could accomplish it, and certainly dozens more I’ve never heard of that could get the job done.” Thistle turned to Grumph, who looked as though he’d been expecting to be consulted sooner or later. “Do you know of any from your studies that seem to be at work?”

  Grumph shook his head, which was hardly surprising to the others. Adept as he was at wielding a wizard’s stolen spell book, it was a far cry from an actual education in the use of magic. Then again, none of them actually knew if a real wizard would have had a clue about what was happening either. It wasn’t as though they’d been through the training themselves.

  “However they did it, someone definitely magicked away the town. Which brings us to the real question we should be asking: what are we supposed to do now?” Gabrielle had sheathed her axe and her anger as the search wore on, but her eyes continued to dart about as if waiting for an attack to materialize from nothing. She’d primed herself for battle and was finding it hard to adjust to the idea that bloodshed wasn’t imminent.

  “I found a few tracks on the road, I think,” Eric said. “It’s possible we could try to follow those and see if we can find where everyone went. Gabby, you’re pretty good at tracking stuff.”

  It was true that her time with the goblins had given Gabrielle many skills, amongst them the ability to follow prey through the foliage and brush. Still, she shook her head slowly at Eric’s suggestion.

  “That’s in a forest, not across stone streets and kingdom roads. Plus, I’m not so sure I want to track everyone down. Call me a coward or a bugbear-headed fool, but it seems to me these people may be well beyond saving. They’ve been sick for weeks, and whatever is happening to them is only getting worse. Sure, maybe we can track them down and see what happened, but then what? None of us even know what’s going on, let alone how to fix it.”

  “There is nothing foolish about honestly assessing our capabilities of success,” Thistle replied. “And you bring up many fair points. We do not yet grasp what is happening around us, and once we do, even if we can determine the solution, there is no guarantee we’ll be able to execute it.”

  “It seems wrong to walk away, though. This could have been our town just as easily.” Eric ran his boot across the stone road of Briarwillow. It was bigger than Maplebark, and certainly had more industry, but the overall feel of the place was the same: homey, cared for, and filled with the love of its citizens. Eric would never see his home again; Grumble’s bargain had made sure of that, even if the king of Solium weren’t hunting them down. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to leave another such place in ruins.

  “Right then, so going after them is unnecessarily dangerous, and abandoning the town feels morally repugnant,” Thistle said. “Since neither of our two options is appealing, there’s only one thing to do.”

  “Take the third.” Grumph tilted his head back toward the part of town where they’d stabled the horses. Their mounts had thankfully been left untouched when last Grumph checked on them, and in a deserted town, he had no reason to believe that had changed. “We get help.”

  “My thoughts precisely.” Thistle turned to the group and pointed down the western road that led out of Briarwillow. “Cadence Hollow is roughly three days’ ride away from here. It backtracks us a bit, but in that sprawling city is a small outpost for the guild of mages. We can head there, tell them what happened, and allow them to find a proper solution. If we cannot save this town ourselves, nor bear to let it be abandoned, then the best path forward is to seek the aid of those who can get the job done. That’s why kingdoms have soldiers and mages in their employ, after all.”

  “Huh.” Timuscor scratched his head absentmindedly
, staring at Thistle with renewed admiration. “That never occurred to me. I just assumed that since we found this problem, it was ours to try and solve.”

  “Don’t feel too bad. Thinking around the way this stuff always seems to happen takes getting used to,” Gabrielle assured him. “Hell, Eric and I didn’t think of that either.”

  “It’s a good idea, but will the town be able to even last that long?” Eric asked. “It’s a long way to ride just on the off chance they can help.”

  Thistle nodded, his small face solemn. “It’s possible that taking this route will mean we’re too late to save the town, but it’s also possible that this town is already beyond saving. As it stands now, we have no solid idea where everyone went, and the only one amongst us that might have a chance of tracking them down is Gabby, who has made her desire not to do exactly that abundantly clear.”

  “Especially now that Thistle has pitched a good counterplan,” Gabrielle added.

  “Right. So there is some risk to the town, I won’t lie to you about that, but that risk exists no matter which path we try to go down. At least in this one, we bring Briarwillow people who are actually qualified to help.”

  Eric pondered the proposal for a few moments, sweeping his eyes about the abandoned landscape as he tried to contemplate what he’d want done if this were Maplebark. In the end, he supposed he’d rather have a chance at being saved than see a group of adventurers throw their lives away for nothing. If helping the town was really their top priority, then their best bet was in talking to the mages at Cadence Hollow.

  “All right,” Eric said at last. “I’m on board. Grumph, Timuscor, what about you two?”

  “It was my idea,” Grumph reminded him, causing Eric to go slightly red at the ears. Timuscor was less glib with his reply, merely bowing his head until his chin rested against the cool metal surface of his armor.