Sigurd stared at the Cursed Forest as he stood a mere dozen paces from entering the treeline. The intensity of his gaze was not interrupted even when Sir Rothlain waved a hand slowly back and forth in front of his face. Only when the knight started prodding him in the side with the butt of his spear did Sigurd finally whip his head around to glare at the older man.

  “Did you need something, Sir Knight?” the boy asked irritably.

  For his part, Sir Rothlain pursed his lips to one side and squinted at Sigurd for a couple of moments before responding. “I need you to stop trying to burn down the woods with your eyes to start with. You were the one who insisted on joining the patrol, but you’ve been standing in the same spot for a fair turn of the sun.”

  Sigurd blinked owlishly at the knight. Had it really been that long? He could have sworn that he’d only been looking into the treeline for a couple of minutes at most.

  “There’s… something in there,” the boy said with reservation. Even now, he could feel his eyes being drawn back towards the trees. There was a magnetic pull that he found difficult to resist. “Something that calls to me.”

  That information seemed to worry the knight more than anything. He reached out and placed a firm hand on Sigurd’s shoulder, drawing him away further from the treeline. The knight gave the woods a suspicious glance, but was unable to spot anything that would enthrall his Squire.

  “Given your… gifts, young man, anything that ‘calls’ to you is something to be avoided,” Sir Rothlain said in a low tone, so as to not be overheard by the soldiers lingering nearby. “We’re here to protect the village from anything that might come out. Haring off into the trees in search of ‘something’ is an excellent way to meet the Reaper early.”

  Despite the wisdom of Sir Rothlain’s words, Sigurd couldn’t help but want to turn back towards the Cursed Forest. Beyond the immediate draw of whatever had caught his attention, he could sense a kind of peace between those trees that he was lacking in his current life. While he did his best to commit himself to the training Sir Rothlain had put him through the last couple of months, he often found his mind wandering.

  Ever since he’d died and been ‘reborn’ out of a funeral pyre, Sigurd had felt incredibly restless. There was a deep nagging sensation that he was supposed to be doing something, but whatever that was never presented itself. He’d thrown himself even harder into training to try and ignore it, but that only seemed to make things worse.

  Now the trees whispered to him, that he’d find what he was looking for if he only stepped inside the woodline.

  “Look, I wasn’t going to suggest this at first…,” Sir Rothlain said as he continued to pull the boy away from the Forest. “But they’re holding the next Tourney at the Summer Solstice. The Barony will be competing against a couple of other demesnes in a number of bouts. You haven’t technically completed enough of your training to participate… but I don’t think anyone would be able to turn down a genuine ‘Dragonslayer’.”

  “So I can compete?” Sigurd asked curiously. He knew vaguely that a Tourney was a kind of mock battle between different knights to see who was the better warrior. When he’d been a child on a farm, there had once been a Barony-wide celebration for a Knight whose name he couldn’t remember placing favorably in one such event. It was supposed to bring glory and wealth to those who won.

  “Wellll- ,” Sir Rothlain said while wobbling his spear a bit in his other hand. “Not on your own. There are Squires’ brackets in several of the competitions, but I don’t think we can convince the Judges to let you in with only a few months’ training under your belt… especially when the other Squires are two to three years younger than you. No, what I have in mind is for you to join me in the Grand Melee.”

  “That’s…” Sigurd tried to search his memories for anything Sir Rothlain might have said about the event in the past. “A big fight where everyone is fighting everyone else?”

  “Got it in one lad.” The Knight had managed to thoroughly distract Sigurd for the moment. He led the boy on a meandering path back towards the Village of Greenreimse, while waving at the soldiers to continue their patrol. They were looking at the kid suspiciously. More likely than not, Sir Rothlain would have to spend the evening squashing rumors that the young man had been bewitched.

  “Knights fight in teams in the Grand Melee,” he continued. “Knights from the same Demense can fight together on a team, but most choose to go their own way and hire teams of Retainers to fight alongside them. Lets them keep more of the gold and the glory to themselves, I suppose. Point being, you don’t need to be a Knight to be on a team.”

  “So I’d fight on your team?” Sigurd’s question received a quick nod from the Knight.

  “That’s what I was thinking, yes. BUT-” Sir Rothlain stopped and turned Sigurd to face him, so that they were looking each other in the eye. “-Only if you swear to not go wandering off into the Cursed Forest on your own. If you can’t follow my orders now, then you’ll get yourself seriously hurt or even killed when you’re fighting alongside me in the Melee. Swear on it, Sigurd.”

  There was an extended moment of silence between the Squire and his Knight. Sigurd was obviously conflicted. The Tourney and the notion of fighting for ‘gold and glory’ had clearly caught his interest, but whatever was in the Cursed Forest had a strong grip on his heart. Sir Rothlain could see the boy’s expression contort as he warred with the impulses in his mind.

  After a full minute of strained silence, Sigurd finally spoke. “Yes, I swear it, Sir Rothlain. I won’t go into the Cursed Forest… and I’ll help you win the Tourney this Solstice.”

  “Good lad!” Sir Rothlain exclaimed as he clapped his Squire on the shoulder. “Now, we’ve got a couple of months before we need to travel to get to the Tourney on time. We don’t have the time that would be needed to teach you to fight ‘pretty’. You’re doing your best, but you still look like you’re swinging a woodaxe rather than a sword.”

  “... That’ll lose us some points from the Judges, but there’s no sense in worrying about it. Instead, I’ll steal a page or two from Raban’s book and teach you how to win.”

  “Raban?” Sigurd asked curiously. “I feel like I’ve heard that name before…”

  “Hmm? Oh, right,” Sir Rothlain said with a shake of his head. “You’ve never met him. He was…” The knight stared off into the wide open sky for a moment. “He was eaten by the Dragon, we think. The only thing we found of him and one other knight was bits of their horse’s barding. He was a proper bastard, but he had a certain honor to him… and he was one of the most ruthless fighters I’ve ever seen.”

  Sir Rothlain chuckled to himself at memories that Sigurd wasn’t privy to. “Now I won’t teach you how to… ah… bite someone’s ear off, let's say. But I will teach you some of the things I learned from Raban via the ‘school of hard knocks’. You’ll be fighting a bunch of folks who were taught to fight ‘pretty’ to impress the Judges. The best thing you can do is to throw them off balance and make them eat mud.”

  “So you’re teaching me how to ‘fight dirty’?” Sigurd was… a little amused by that idea. While Sir Rothlain was many things, the notion that he knew how to fight dirty didn’t quite seem to fit. The Knight just had too much ‘golden retriever energy’ to him. “I’ve seen what some of the old drunks do to each other in the taverns when they pick a fight after too much beer.”

  “Hah! No, not exactly,” Sir Rothlain said as he patted his Squire on the back. Their stroll had brought them up to the Knight’s house. He made extra sure to put away their weapons before entering, however. His wife was still angry about the hole in their front wall. It had long been repaired, but she said she could see exactly where the patch was. Therefore: ‘No Weapons Allowed Indoors, or Around The House.’

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Let’s have lunch,” he continued. “ -and I’ll tell you a story or two about some of the… less unscrupulous ways Sir Raban humiliated me in the sparring ring. At least the one’s my missus won’t tan my hide for repeating.”

  Second stared at the contents of the battered looking satchel. Almost all of the vials inside of it had been smashed, their precious contents spilling to soak into the leather. By some mockery of magic, strange cancerous growths had started to form on the surface of the leather, as the healing potions sought to try and ‘heal’ something that was dead, skinned, and buried years ago.

  One singular potion remained. Her claws extracted it from the satchel with extreme delicacy.

  It might have been reasonable to assume that Second would be furious with her brother, Sanguine. After all, his rampage through Osteriath had put the entire city on high alert. Many of her criminal minions had either perished in the chaos or been captured when the inquisitorial eye of the Empire turned on the city’s dark corners. Anyone who was even plausibly malcontent was torn out at the root.

  Case in point, Second’s hidden lair had been discovered. If she’d not been ahead of the game, both she and her hoard would have been caught in the Empire’s rabid jaws. Fortunately for her, she was much more in tune with the tendencies of humanity than her ‘dear’ brother. She’d known the hunters were coming long before they started to surround her Den.

  Sacrificing most of her ‘less useful’ pawns had been a small price to pay to throw the hunters off of her trail. If anything, that was an unintended ‘benefit’ of the mess her brother had made. She’d consolidated most of Osteriath’s disparate gangs and criminal groups under her control. By extension, that meant a lot of the people working for her were either incompetent or fractious by nature. The enraged authorities had done most of the work of clearing out the chaff for her.

  Anyone with actual worth, she had quietly slipped out of the city before the manhunt started in earnest. It was easy to slip a few dozen individuals out of a city that people were fleeing from en masse.

  If anything, the chaos was the kick in the tail that she’d needed to expand her influence to other cities. As she looked back in retrospect, she could admit that Osteriath was a Trap. The lure of its bountiful magic was like a siren song for any creature that desired power. All too often, the city devoured and spat out those who sought to exploit the city for its treasures.

  Second herself had grown ‘comfortable’ manipulating the small minded humans of Osteriath. More and more, she’d been spending her time focused on solving petty gang politics and enticing tight fisted Wizards to give up their secrets. That had served a purpose, but she’d let it go on far too long. She should have extracted the maximum benefit possible and left before things went sour, like the Dragon Dream had instructed.

  Sanguine smashing the city and her position in it had been a favor… almost. It wasn’t one that she’d thank him for. Technically he had fulfilled the wording of their agreement… but magic was a fickle thing. She might be able to pull on that Oath for further benefit, if she played her cards right.

  The most important card in her hand was the healing potion in her claws. Sanguine might think that such a creation was interesting, but not terribly important. The hints of magic radiating off of his body when they met suggested that his powers could heal those around him. Healing a mortal wound might not seem like a big deal when you could just breathe on someone and bring them back to peak physical condition.

  In reality, for anyone that wasn’t Sanguine, magical healing was an incredibly rare and highly prized resource. While Wizards had occasionally developed their own individual methods to heal wounds, curses, and so on, they were covetous creatures by nature. Very little ‘true’ discoveries had been made for centuries. Most of those that had made any progress were Alchemists, who kept a tight lid on their secrets so that Wizards wouldn’t come and steal them.

  The only people who regularly wielded the power to heal anything more serious than a flesh wound were Clerics… and no one in their right mind would bother a Cleric. That was a great way to get you and your entire household targeted by Divine Disfavor. People had been locked in their homes and the building burnt to the ground by their neighbors, if there was even a hint that the Gods were displeased.

  So what could you do, what could you trade for, if you had a potion that was guaranteed to heal any illness or wound?

  Second could think of several answers to that question. All the people who would be on the other side of that negotiating table were rich and influential beyond measure. It would be an extremely dangerous game… but Second had been ‘comfortable’ for too long. She needed to hone her skills if she was going to stand a chance against Sanguine when he eventually returned.

  It wasn’t a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’ he showed up to cause her trouble again.

  “So is it going to cause trouble for you… that the rest of your comrades will not be coming back with us?” Sir Kenneth asked as he sat by a campfire. Across from him, Veda was stirring a small pot with a ladle. The elf had found another cloak and mask, disguising their features.

  Around them, the camp was filled with the dull sound of soldiers conversing. The prisoner caravan was well guarded. The various malcontents which had been swept up in the manhunts and raids following the chaos in Osteriath were being transported to a city named Torel. Those who were guilty of simple crimes like looting or common murder had been left for the Castellan to deal with back in the Wizard City. Only those who were magically gifted or whose crimes required greater authority were a part of the caravan.

  Veda had elected to travel with the group to help ensure that Howard Avery didn’t escape. It was slower going, but they had a much higher chance of success this way. The last thing they or Sir Kenneth needed was for the criminal to escape because they were in too much of a hurry. As such, they’d only just left Osteriath more than a month after they parted ways with Sanguine.

  “There will be questions, many of which will have unpleasant answers,” Veda replied grimly. “My leadership will be called into question. I will be…” The elf paused, stirring the pot in silence as they considered their words. “... tested, to ensure that my judgement and abilities are not compromised.”

  “That seems a bit unfair, don’t you think?” The knight was occupied with caring for his war-axe. He’d decided to keep it after the battle in the Tower of Baedain. It wasn’t exactly the most ‘honorable’ weapon, but he’d rather his enemies die as quickly as possible. ‘Honor don’t matter when y’er spillin’ y’er guts out,’ as Sir Raban would say.

  “What is fair does not matter to my Order,” Veda replied with a sigh. Sir Kenneth was sure he could see their ears twitch downwards inside of their hood. “Only whether I accomplished my mission and did not create a larger problem by the choices I made.”

  “You mean like with… ‘the Boss’?” Sir Kenneth asked carefully. The two of them had agreed to never mention Sanguine by name or his draconic nature out loud. Too many people were listening at all times. “He seemed to think your Order knew something about him.”

  “...” Veda did not answer Sir Kenneth’s question. Instead, they used the ladle to portion out two helpings of stew from the pot into a pair of wooden bowls. They offered both to Sir Kenneth. “Please, if you would Sir Knight, feed our prisoner. Wretch though he is, even villains must eat.”

  The Knight frowned, but put away his axe and stood up to take the bowls. He squinted at Veda, but they were hiding their thoughts behind their cloak and mask. Kenneth shook his head and turned towards the prison wagons.

  Howard Avery was by himself, shackled in a cart that had iron hoops built into his structure. The bars formed a cage that allowed someone trapped inside to sit or crouch, but not fully stand up or lay down. Prisoners were allowed out of their cages one at a time under heavy guard, with manacles on their limbs, so that they could stretch their legs and answer nature’s call.

  Even knowing what the man had done and what he was responsible for, Sir Kenneth could not but pity the man. His servitude under the Wizard Mortimer had inflicted a great deal of physical and mental trauma upon his body. Only tattered remnants of colorful silks still adorned his body. The rest was covered by a variety of fresh scars, many of which were burns. Almost all the hair on his body had been burnt off, leaving him looking like a shriveled hairless rat in the shape of a man.

  Howard did not speak when Sir Kenneth came close, he only cowered against the iron bars as if he feared a beating. He only moved once the Knight had placed the bowl of stew into the cage and backed away several paces. When he did, the former ‘Bard’ attacked the bowl like it was the only meal he’d had in weeks. He didn’t use the provided pewter spoon, he just slurped and gnashed the contents down into his gullet.

  Sir Kenneth was disturbed by the feral sight of the man in front of him and turned away to return to his weapon’s maintenance. In doing so, he forgot to retrieve the pewter spoon that he’d given Howard to eat with.

  The spoon vanished into Howard’s rags when no one was looking.