“Don’t stop,” Morlo spat, barely able to stand, apparently struggling more still to talk, but seeming to have all the energy in the world as he glared up at the Demon. “We need to move while we can. I don’t know why it didn’t chase us down in the night, that fall won’t have delayed it so much. It’s toying with us. Well let it. Let’s leave. Now. Hurry!”

  Morlo’s fear was a greater motivator than my own. I’d seen a thousand terrible things from the old bastard, but not fear. Not until we met that Demon. I still hadn’t gotten used to it, and didn’t know what I could do save turn and run like a frightened rat. In my defence, nobody else had a better idea either. By the time we finally stopped, partly thanks to desperation and partly to Morlo’s Thaumaturgical aid nudging us along with conjured winds, we’d cleared twenty miles or more.

  That wasn’t enough for me, not with that thing after us. Not nearly enough.

  Fortunately, we weren’t left to just scramble away in terror forever. We couldn’t have done that. Morlo had collapsed early into our flight, and he lost consciousness again as soon as we stopped. That wasn’t such a great concern, because we only slowed when our eyes were already falling upon a structure closing on the horizon.

  A town. I didn’t recognise it, which told me right away that we weren’t anywhere near Sheppleberry. I felt an odd twist of longing at that. I hadn’t known until then how much I wished to return home, how I ached for it.

  But that was also not even in the top five most aching parts of me right then.

  There wasn’t any discussion about whether we ought to head over to the town. It had walls, and living things that didn’t want to eat us. That made it no choice at all and we hurried over. Those among us with more level heads, namely the one who pathologically didn’t feel fear or panic, probably realised ahead of time what sort of reception we’d get.

  “What the fuck do you want?” the people gathered at the wall—far more people than was warranted by our presence, I noted—snapped. The leader among them was a big man who, to my surprise, was holding a sort of fat, short musket with a mouth like the flared base of a bell. A blunderbuss, they’re called. Nasty fucking things. Their effective range is about the same whether you choose to shoot or throw them, but a man shot by one up close will stop resembling a man by the time he’s hit the ground.

  That mental image is most people’s immediate reactions. I’d seen blunderbusses used before, funnily enough. It was the proper heavy arquebuses that had escaped my experience, but blunderbusses are not such an uncommon sight in the rural areas. Where bears make arseholes of themselves. And word gets around. Lots of young men see a blunderbuss, then think of the things they’ve seen them shoot. For me, it was a rabid dog. Some farmer’s animal, bitten by a racoon and gone mad. One shot and the blunderbuss had destroyed it. Lead balls smaller than a pinkie tip tearing into it, ripping holes twice as wide in the back as they left in the front. Obliteration.

  Except, young man though I was, I was also a young man who’d had a lot of people try to kill him by that point. So I just started doing estimates instead.

  Two sets of plate armour stacked onto one another might stop a heavy arquebus. Would it stop those tiny pellets? Yes.

  But there were a lot fired with each trigger pull, and they fanned out into a broad area of coverage. One or two might get lucky. Might get really lucky. Falling fifty feet without injury had told me I was far tougher than any normal man, now, and even I didn’t know what my limits were.

  Somehow, I got the feeling those limits were shy of a lead ball hitting my naked eye at six hundred miles per hour.

  “We need shelter,” Vara called out, “please, wretchlings, they chased us through the mountains, we barely made it here ahead of them. You need to help us!”

  I saw what she was doing instantly of course. Vara knew that our odds of being thrown to the wolves were high if these townsfolk were surprised by the bastards on our heels, so she was getting ahead of it.

  Even so, she ended up shooting us in the feet.

  “Then you can fuck off and lead them away,” the man called down, “we don’t want that sort of trouble here.”

  “They’ll kill us!” I called out next, trying to bury my anger and failing. The last few days had been…let’s say stressful. I was close to taking it out on someone.

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  But, again, gun. That was always a good reason not to lose your shit.

  “We can pay you,” I called out to him. I didn’t know that actually, but I was fairly sure Morlo had money on him and turned to the trainees as I awaited the man’s response. “Search the Thaumaturge, quickly!” Cedwin was already doing it before any of them had registered the order, though. I wasn’t complaining.

  “How much?” the man called back, right on cue as Cedwin subtly gestured my eyes over to gaze upon the nice handful of grains he’d retrieved from the old man’s robes. Sometimes I forgot how much wealth Morlo seemed to have. I made myself promise to try and find out its source later on, focusing for the time being on not being left outside the town to get killed.

  A deliberation followed among both us and, as far as I could see from such a distance, the townsfolk. Apparently both us and them were concerned about getting the most out of our deal. While none of us wanted to die, we also didn’t want to lose all our coins in buying some life. If only because Morlo was the sort to make us work that off after he woke up.

  In the end, our negotiations with the town devolved into offers and rejections screamed at length across a great span of distance. We didn’t back down too much, but there wasn’t much we could have hoped to do to keep our hands on the coin we did have. Our new hosts’ only concession was in letting us retain a final fraction of it.

  Enough to live off for all of us, even over a half-decade, that was. But still, not as much as I would’ve preferred. Particularly after Cedwin pocketed some when he thought no-one was watching. Couldn’t do anything about that, either. The way I saw it I needed to give everyone as much incentive not to cut and run as was possible. At least until Morlo or Gruin came to and restored a bit of order.

  The town was a shit hole. No surprise there, you don’t live that close to the Foggy Peaks if you’ve got a lot of options. The land was bad and little grew on it. That seemed almost to have infected the rest of the place, for I got the distinct impression of misery everywhere I looked.

  If you’re wondering whether it was some supernatural conspiracy I was taking notice of, I’ll save you the speculation. There’s a hundred Anglysh towns just like this for no reason at all other than their economies. King Hengrys’ victory had brought an end to the fighting, but not much else.

  Our guide was the same man who’d aimed a blunderbuss at us when we first approached the town. A big, grumpy cunt by the name of George. He had the bearing of someone who liked to think of himself as brooking no shit, but was really just a petty tyrant looking for excuses to find conflict.

  Fortunately, petty tyrants like money as much as or more than most people. Any irritating or problematic tendencies he had wouldn’t rear their head for a while, leaving us free to focus on all the other causes for misery we’d already been given. He led us to the next one right then in fact.

  Our accommodations would, apparently, be a barn. This was something that pleased none of us and pissed off most, save for Vara, the Arvharest trainees, Cedwin and Il’vanja.

  Me, it pissed off me. Maybe I hadn’t fully shaken my unfortunate upbringing of silver spoon insertions just yet by that point.

  We remained in the barn for a while, discussing our next move. There was a tension in the air that warned me ahead of time what was about to happen. Then it did.

  “I’m going to head off,” Cedwin told the group abruptly.

  I for one did not like that idea, having seen him shoot and not wanting to do without such an ability if we were to be attacked again.

  “You think you can make it on your own?” I asked, putting aside my concerns as irrelevant, because they were very much irrelevant to the person I was trying to convince, and instead framing things purely within the context of his own best interest. It seemed to work, Cedwin paused for a moment.

  “I think I have better odds than I do staying here,” he told me.

  “That’s bullshit,” I replied, enjoying the novelty of actually saying something I believed for once. Of course I believed it, I’d have already fucked off myself if I thought my chances outside were better than in. “I’ll bet the wretchlings are watching this town waiting for some idiot to break off from the rest of us. They’re probably drooling at the thought of fighting the one who took so many of them down with his shooting, when he doesn’t have allies to keep them from swarming him.”

  Cedwin was thinking, and Vara chose then to open her fat mouth and chip in.

  “Besides, you don’t know when Morlo will wake up.”

  That only hastened him of course, as he started to weigh his time limit before the Thaumaturge came to and made fleeing all the more dangerous against everything I’d said. I do wish she’d learn when to shut up, even now. Vara is among the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.

  But she just doesn’t understand cowards like I do.

  “I’m leaving,” Cedwin said with a touch of finality, “you can’t convince me otherwise.”

  “...Alright,” I nodded, “I understand.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I know we haven’t known each other for long, but good luck out there.”

  He seemed suddenly awkward. “Uh, thank you?” His awkwardness only grew when I put my other hand on his other shoulder. By the time his awkwardness turned into suspicion, at the sight of me setting my feet and squaring my back, the headbutt was already smashing right into his nose.

  I did hold back. Maybe too much, because Cedwin was still conscious and stumbling instead of falling, but I was genuinely worried about cracking his skull open even with my helmet already taken off. Before he could gather his balance and mount a defence, I twatted him again. A fist this time, right across his jaw. I put a bit more strength into it. Cedwin fell hard, and by the time he woke up I was already moving him. By the time he’d shaken the dizziness off and gotten himself into a position to move, he was tied up.

  Not gagged, and so he swore and spat like the grumpiest soldiers I’d ever seen. But he wouldn’t be causing any problems.

  At least for the time being.

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