[game-notes version here]

III.

Frostmere 15, Goldday, Year 731.

On the surface, Maelen was thoroughly annoyed. She was adamantly not going to die on the bloody Greenwood Rise, off trail, where no one would know or find her body to bury it. She sure as bastards wasn’t going to die because of a lamed pup of a scribe who didn’t know the pointy end of a sword from the holding one. None of this was worth the promised hundred silver thorns she and Vessa were getting paid (though, to be fair, it was a lot of coin), and she was not going to die in debt to the gods-cursed, bloody Latchkey Circle.

Below the annoyance, though: Maelen was excited. Violence was her purpose in life, her profession. She’d never known her Tideborn father, and her mother was a knife-for-hire who ran numbers for no less than three gangs. From age nine, Maelen performed “errands” for rough men and mean women. By thirteen, she was knocking out the teeth of men twice her age. By sixteen, she was running a gang of canal-cutters who’d dubbed her Marr the Merciless. Truly, Maelen Marrosen was a fighter to the core, and it had been too long since she’d wet her blade.

The lad’s eyes were bulging out of his head, but he was doing a fair job of keeping quiet. Damned if she hadn’t been impressed by his lack of complaining and dogged perseverance up the hill all day. The pace was slow as sap, sure, but the lad couldn’t help that. Maelen had pegged him as a soft book-boy, but he’d shown a spine again and again and again, and she’d reassessed her first impressions. There was iron in his heart, and iron was the only thing that Maelen respected.

Tatter, probably sensing her mood, scampered out of her belt pouch and onto her arm. The mouse sniffed the afternoon air. Maelen paused for a moment amidst her thoughts and grinned down at the mouse.

“You take her,” Maelen whispered, extending a hand towards the scribe. Tatter knew the gesture well and ran along the length of her forearm, across her hand, and onto the boy’s shoulder. He startled, looking dubiously at his new companion, and then nodded silently at her. Good lad, able to roll with the situation. Maelen liked him far more than she expected to.

“Keep her safe or I’ll gut you,” she hissed. His face paled, and she felt certain he’d gotten the message. That done, Maelen gripped her sword with both hands and stepped cautiously forward to the tree with the black circle.

Quiet as a shadow, Vessa appeared out of the brush. The scribe squeaked in surprise but slapped a hand over his mouth to keep quiet. She stepped close to Maelen and the unwashed smell of urine, vomit, and sweat rolled over her. If they survived, she’d drag the girl to a stream and wash her herself if she had to.

“There’s four of them,” Vessa whispered close, lips near Maelen’s ear. “Look like outcasts. Criminals, maybe. Three look like they could fight, one old woman, but no armor and only one obvious weapon. They’re sitting around and drinking, but it’s not a permanent camp. They have black smudges on their cheeks, like a cult or something.”

Maelen frowned, absorbing this new information. “You think we can get around them?” she breathed close to Vessa’s ear.

The lass shot a meaningful, disapproving look at the lad and shook her head once. She leaned forward and said in a whisper, “They’re scouts, Mae. Talking about a leader they’re scared of: Sarin. If they find us, they’ll loot us and worse. And there was something weird…” Maelen raised an eyebrow and waited. “They seemed scared to make a fire. Said Sarin would be mad.”

Maelen pressed her lips together and nodded. “Not so weird. They’re hiding. Good work, Vess.”

“What’s going on?” The scribe whispered, urgently and too loud, like he’d never once played at sneaking through an alley in his life. Maelen shot him a quick hand gesture to shut him up.

“You stay put with Tatter,” she whispered, pointing at his nose and scowling. Maelen cocked her head and listened to decide whether they’d been heard. Comfortable to continue, she said quietly, “I’m going to talk to these people. Vessa’s got my back. You hear me yell, you hide. Clear?”

Sweat on his face, the lad nodded, already crouching low behind a tree. Good. He wouldn’t be underfoot, then. Maelen jerked a chin to Vessa, who nodded and disappeared back into the brush as quietly as she’d come. She was touched by The Claw himself, Vess was, able to blend into shadows better than anyone she’d ever met. It was one of three truly useful things about her.

Maelen cracked her neck and strode, quietly and purposefully, up the wooded hill, her long blade held out in front of her. She wasn’t nearly as stealthy as Vessa, but she knew how to plant her foot in pine needles and twigs to keep quiet.

So, of course, she tripped. Like a bloody amateur. A root just below a cover of fallen leaves snagged the toe of one boot, and Maelen went down hard onto one knee. Worse, she yelled in surprise and pain. There was a series of frantic shouts from up the hill as the four outcasts that Vessa had spied realized her presence.

“There’s someone here!” a woman yelped, her voice cracking. Others cried out as well.

“Get your weapons!”

“Gut ‘em!”

“For Sarin! For the Lanternless!” There was more fear in their voices than faith, but it was no doubt they were coming to fight.

Gritting her teeth, Maelen surged up, rage flaring hotter than the ache in her knee. No more mistakes. Not today. She charged up the hillside, her sword held in two hands. As the first of the outcasts stumbled down the hill towards her, she raised the blade high. Maelen briefly registered a wiry, pockmarked woman with greasy, dark hair tied back in tattered clothes. Her cheeks were smudged by tar or soot to look like black tears running down her face, and her eyes were wide and scared. She carried a rusty knife that looked more like a kitchen tool than a weapon, and Maelen realized with grim confidence that this ragtag group wouldn’t last long against her and Vessa. With a shout meant to attract the other outcasts and distract them from Vessa and the lad, she slashed her bastard sword down, cutting the woman from shoulder to hip in a single, practiced stroke. The outcast shrieked and rolled down the hill past Maelen’s boots, dead.

A man with sunken cheeks and a long, tangled beard, the same black streaks on his cheeks, appeared behind a tree and roared with outrage. For the second time, Maelen’s footing betrayed her and she stumbled. A heavy cudgel wrapped with iron nails slammed into her ribs. Her leather vest caught the worst of it, but the blow still stole her breath and pride. Maelen decided then and there that she’d spent too much time on the flat streets of Oakton and had gotten too soft for these overland jobs. She was going to get them all killed if she didn’t get her bloody feet straight.

The bearded outcast’s next swing with the spiked cudgel was a competent one and would have caved in one side of her head if she hadn’t brought her sword up to block it. Maelen thrust low, the tip of her blade slicing clean through his thigh muscle. The man shuffled backwards, trying to get out of her sword’s reach, and Maelen saw in his eyes that he knew he was going to die here. That leg wound would kill him if he didn’t tend to it, and Maelen was the better fighter, with the better weapon. She knew it, and so did he. With a malicious grin, she caught her breath, straightened, and leveled her longsword at him.

The last thing she expected was the soft-footed scribe suddenly looming behind the man, walking stick clutched tightly in both hands, Tatter riding along on his shoulder. The lad gave a wordless yell and swung hard, his stick slamming into the outcast’s ribs with a crack. It wasn’t elegant, but it did the job. The bearded man went down, curled in a ball and bleeding out from his leg.

The lad, Alric, panted like he’d run from a troll, staring wide-eyed and crazed down at the fallen outcast between them. If possible, Maelen found even more admiration for the scrappy lad for joining the fight. It was a pathetic swing, but at least he’d swung.

“Are you mad, idiot?” she barked. “I said hide.”

“But…” he said, confused.

“Come on,” she huffed, stepping past him to continue up the hill. As she passed the boy, she extended a finger and Tatter scampered onto her arm. “Let’s go find Vess.”

“By the Herald…” she heard him whisper in horror as he stepped past the dead woman and dying man.

“Heh,” she chuckled darkly. Doing so hurt her side. Damn her fool footing and getting herself clobbered by an idiot outcast. “The gods don’t come to the wilds, lad. The Herald isn’t watching. Now keep up and stay sharp.”

They strode up the incline of the wooded hill, slipping around trees and bushes with weapons raised. In no more than ten paces, the hill leveled briefly. In a small glade, dirty, ragged packs were strewn about. A smudged green bottle lay on its side between two rocks, a few drops of whatever was inside soaking into the dirt.

Standing at the edge of the clearing were two women. One was an elderly, bent-backed woman with wild white hair, the same black streaks on her face as the others. She wore a stained, simple shift and a blocky necklace of some kind. At her feet lay a small paring knife. Clutching the old woman from behind, one arm wrapped around her shoulders and another pressing a short, chipped sword—more oversized dagger than proper blade—beneath the old woman’s chin, was Vessa.

“Look what I found,” the young woman grinned at her, looking smug.

“Good,” Maelen nodded, and sheathed the bastard sword onto her back. She cracked her neck and stepped closer, studying the old woman’s wide, unblinking eyes. “Let’s hope she knows how to talk.”

Next: Old Yara [with game notes]