Somehow, I kept a grip on the sword. It was absurd. I don’t know why or how, even to this day, but with my body slowly dying as it was thrashed and flung down to roll head-over-heels down a churning river, I still found my fingers tight about the handle of a sword.

  It did me as much good as you might expect. The river was moving quickly, there’d been heavy rain at its source a short few hours earlier and so the speed of its flow was intense. Had I hit my head on a rock I imagined the speeds involved would’ve been more than enough to see me dead. That would have been far too just a fate, however, and so God did as he usually did and made sure that, bastard I was, I had just enough luck to survive and continue being everybody else’s problem. I kept floating down the river for what felt like hours.

  Maybe it was, at that. I seem to recall the skies lightening by the time I stopped.

  Rolling out onto a muddy bank, I lay there still and cold as a rock. Consciousness slipped me by.

  Obviously, I didn’t die. When I came to I found myself still there. Luck would keep me alive, but if I wanted a warm bed I’d need to get walking. It was the sort of lesson that’s good for a young man who hasn’t felt enough pain in his life.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, I started walking. It took me a good dozen paces to actually stop and think about where I ought to be walking to, though. That was the trouble with having a silver spoon up your arse from birth, you didn’t get used to doing a lot of thinking. And there was nobody else here with me now to suggest anything smart or argue with anything stupid.

  It’s at times like this, hard times, that a true man finds his spine and learns to toughen up. To match the meanness of his challenge and become better for it. I didn’t do that, just started crying instead and picked a random direction that I hoped would take me back to the hill where I’d run away from Morlo and Vara. Kicking myself all the while.

  Not literally kicking myself of course, I couldn’t afford to waste that valuable energy. I still had the scabbard for my sword bound to one hip, which was convenient because hauling two pounds of bloody steel along with you is tiring business. I was tied up enough with all the water still soaking my clothes.

  Hard to believe how heavy water is until you’re stuck wearing it. If nothing else, the question of how much I was inadvertently carrying gave me something more to think about while I walked. Pounds? A stone, maybe, or even more? I couldn’t know. Enough to slow me down and tire me.

  More than once, I considered dropping it altogether. The idea was very appealing. You’re probably reading this, sneering at how stupid it would be to simply toss away so expensive and useful a weapon when I might still find myself attacked at any time, right? Well I wasn’t in a comfy chair or bed when I thought about it, I was on the road and struggling for every step. You’d be amazed how appealing slightly less weight seems when every muscle of your body was screaming for you to stop.

  I didn’t, though, in the end. The fear of being attacked without a means to defend myself just barely won out over the strain of carrying such a weight. Not that I imagine something as simple as a shiny sword would’ve done me much good as I was—with my fatigue I could barely even swing the damned thing.

  It was almost dark again before I finally laid eyes upon a settlement, maybe a mile or two ahead. I could see the lights shining out from within lanterns strewn about its walls. Big walls, too, bigger than the ones of Sheppleberry, maybe bigger than Whingrham’s. Safety then. I managed to put on a burst of speed, despite my exhaustion.

  My leaden limbs just barely brought me to the town’s gates as they closed, and as night came fully upon the place. I smashed a fist against them, not caring that I might hurt my hands—which were numbed well past the sensations of pain—and screaming at the top of my lungs.

  “Let me in! Please, let me—”

  —The gates didn’t open of course, but a latch did come undone and show me a face protruding from the other side. Old, weather-beaten. The sort of face that looked like it had spent a great many decades practicing its scowls and precious few other expressions.

  “Fuck are you?” the owner of that face asked, speaking with what, at the time, sounded to me a thoroughly different accent from my own. These days I’m not so sure I could differentiate it from the tones of people born in the same town as me. Travel will do that to you, eventually.

  “My…My name is Kyvaine,” I panted, “I’m a merchant—or my father is a merchant. Please, I need shelter from the cold and…the night.” I’d already made more than one mistake. Shouldn’t have told him I was a merchant, who many folks are more likely to spit on than help, and speaking over myself as I did, hesitating and correcting ‘me’ to ‘my father’ will only have made the story seem weaker.

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  Fortunately, it didn’t see the latch slammed in my face. Yet.

  “Merchant eh,” the man sneered, “with which guild?”

  “M—mercers!” I barked, far too scared and cold to care about his tone. “Please, I’ll die out here.”

  I’m still not sure why to this day, but after a brief pause to shut the latch and, I assume, deliberate with someone on the other side, the man ended up opening the gate and allowing me through.

  “Just for the night.” He grumbled. “Mister Kyvaine, you’re bloody lucky we recognised you.”

  I blinked at that, looking around and finding the surroundings sinking back into my memory. Ringle, I was in Ringle. My father had taken me here a year ago, perhaps, on a trading venture. I’d not done anything of note of course, far too busy chasing skirts for any actual work to get done. Small place, not quite a city but run more directly by a Baron who quite desperately wished to make it one. There was no council here thanks to its Lord and his more hands-on approach to things.

  “Where…” The tavern, I needed to sit somewhere warm and drink something alcoholic. Halfway through my own question, I remembered where it was and started stumbling off clumsily in search of the building. You’ll notice I didn’t even thank the doormen. ‘Cause I was a prick.

  Once I finally got to the tavern, I actually found it hard to open the door with how numbed my limbs had gotten. It was a nice, handsome building that was no less than double the size of Sheppleberry’s, and I knew the moment I stumbled in that it was a great deal more occupied too. At least two score of people lounged about within it, most with drinks and all treated to a great warmth as several thick logs crackled and burned upon a fire in one wall.

  Most were human, of course. But this almost-city was nonetheless a great deal more cosmopolitan than Sheppleberry, and it took me only a few seconds to spot the giant sight of an oreling in one corner.

  They don’t like to be called orelings, of course. Their actual name, as far as they decided it for themselves, is ‘Grynkori”, and most of the nicknames for them are somewhat rude and confusing. Dwarf, for example, gets things quite muddled, as some humans are dwarves, and look very much unalike to the folks of the deep caves underfoot. I’ve heard that they find the conflation offensive, too, but I wouldn’t exactly know given that nobody’s told me the truth about anything since my fame first shot into the skies.

  Now at the time I knew less of the Grynkori than I do now, and most of the hearsay is far from nice about them. I gave this one a wide berth as I made for the counter. Somehow, it took me until I was almost there to remember that I had no money. None at all. I froze. Nobody knew me here, not really. I was remembered as a non-violent stranger, enough to get through the gate, but I wouldn’t be taking out any loans from the people of this town on reputation alone. And with no coins of my own, that meant I had nothing to get a drink with.

  The fire. It drew me in like a moth to…Well, fire. I plopped down into the seat closest it and let the warmth wash out over me, sighing out a long, heavy breath. I could practically feel my still-damp clothes drying out, though not nearly fast enough. Without meaning to I glanced over at the barkeep and found him eying me. Wouldn’t be long before he asked what I was ordering, and then I reckoned I’d get lashed out into the streets all over.

  I don’t know how long passed before the conversation came, half an hour maybe. Though I doubt the miserly bastard was patient enough to give me even that long. He stalked over, a large, fat man on large, fat legs, and leaned over to eye me with no excess of friendliness.

  “You gonna buy anything?”

  There it was, my cue to leave. I met the man’s eye, barely, and forced a venere of socieable friendliness into my voice.

  “I’m afraid the road has been hard on me, and I—”

  —”Get out then, you’re taking up space my other customers need and wetting the floor.”

  It was like a slap to the face, but I’d taken enough conversational blows like that of late that it didn’t shock me. The sheer brutality of his denial, the venom in his voice, just made me angry. And anger was a bad mix with the battle-frenzy still lingering in my limbs after the other day’s flight.

  Almost without meaning to, I tossed myself up to stand straight and glare at the man.

  “I just walked miles in the fucking cold, soaked to my skin from a plunge in a river after almost being stabbed to death by shamblers. Try and throw me out, you miserable fat fuck.”

  Stupid, I was being stupid. I saw the error of my ways a moment later as several men all fell into step behind the fat one, looking mean and rather eager as they stared my way. Instantly, all the indignant rage I’d felt bubbling up melted back and I took a step away from them.

  “Hang on, I don’t want any trouble, I’ll go—”

  —”Too late for that, arsehole,” the fat man sneered.

  The toughs closed in, fists balled and lips curled. They’d just come to within arms’ reach when a new voice rang out.

  “OI!”

  We all froze, turning back to see…The oreling. He was standing, now, which did not actually leave him much taller than before. Shorter if anything, because much of his already-scarce height seemed to begin above the waist. His head reached maybe five feet from the ground, at most. But he wasn’t small. Far from it, the sheer breadth of that body compensated for its lack of stature and more.

  I saw bands of thick muscle jumping and twitching along exposed biceps, and my eyes flitted to a great hammer now clutched tight between fingers as thick as sausages.

  “What was that you said about undead, human?” the oreling asked, eyes flitting briefly to the bouncers. “You all fuck off, I have questions for this one.”

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