“I’m booored,” June complained, rocking her head back and sitting comfortably in her saddle. “We should be there by now.”

The road—if anyone was brave enough to call it that—was long, winding, and unpaved. More of a dirt path, snaking its way around the hills, and cutting through fields of green.

All they had to do was follow it east. It would, in its own time, get them to the valley. A little town called Vergandale waited for them, where they’d rest for the night.

If that didn’t sound easy enough, they even had a guide. A quiet kid, a little younger than Pete, only scrawnier, and plainer looking.

“We’re about halfway by now,” called Stewart, from the front of the line, just past Jackie. “Three more hours to go, at most.”

June groaned again. “Can’t we go any faster?”

The trip, according to June, should have been a piece of cake. An even bigger piece of cake than it already was. They could even make it a day trip, she said, if the horses were up for it.

She was not, strictly speaking, incorrect, for all that Argus looked dubiously at her when she suggested it. They could have made it there in only a handful of hours.

There was just one, small, tiny, itty-bitty, six-foot-two problem.

“If we go any faster,” projected Thomas, white as a sheet and stiff as a board. “I might literally die.”

“Well, would it kill you to…” June paused, head tilting to one side. “I guess it would kill you to. Never mind, that’s my bad.”

“No one’s getting killed, and no one's dying,” declared Stewart, in a high and nasal voice. “You’re Heroes, consider acting like it.”

Neil rolled his eyes. He saw the logic of assigning the six of them a babysitter, but the kid couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Worse, he was a boring sixteen-year-old. A horrible combination of scrawny and dull, yet somehow filled to the brim with self-confidence. Neil didn’t like it almost as much as he didn’t understand it.

Stewart certainly wasn’t helping them kill the time. He only occasionally piped up from the lead, barked a quick piece of information, and remained otherwise disengaged from the group.

No one talks about the boring parts of the adventures, Neil reflected. The backache, the rider’s rash, the incessant bugs, and—worst of all—the lasting, drawn-out silences.

He was starting to get the hang of riding, at least. You could only sit in a saddle incorrectly for so long before it started to hurt.

The quiet was the worst of it. Sure, there were the birds, and the wind, and the horses, and all the melodies of nature, but the lack of conversation was maddening.

A little quiet wasn’t such a bad thing, in Neil’s opinion. If he were riding a car, he’d have preferred it, and he would probably take a nap. Horses, unfortunately, don’t tolerate their riders falling asleep on them. Aura didn't, anyway. She barely tolerated him as it was,

And so, to stave off boredom and insanity, small talk was to be made.

…

…

“What,” Neil directed his attention to June, who was riding in front and to the left of him. “Is the collective noun for a group of priests?”

“Dunno,” she said in a dry voice. “A clergy?”

Neil hummed, rubbing his chin with a free hand. “Hadn’t thought of that. I was between a ‘choir,’ and a ‘flock.’”

June shook her head. “Doesn’t work. A flock’s a group of regular-type worshipers, and a choir… wouldn't make sense. It’s already a thing, it’d get confusing.”

Neil hummed again. “What about a pod?”

“What, like a pod of whales?”

Neil smiled slightly. “Maybe a murder?”

“Ravens.”

“A mass?”

June looked thoughtful at this.

“Maybe,” She allowed. “It’d still be confusing, but I like it. ‘A mass of priests.’ Very on-the-nose.”

“In the Pentarchy, a group of priests is called an ‘illuminance.’” Anne’s high and lilting voice called out from behind.

“That’s even more on the nose,” Neil said, glancing back at Anne. “You’ve been talking to a lot of priests?”

“I have.” She smiled.

Neil nodded, pursing his lips.

Anne continued to be something of a mystery to Neil. He couldn’t figure out how to get her to open up about herself— but was fairly sure that grilling her with questions wasn’t the way to go about it.

“Right,” Neil said in a considering voice, turning back to June. “I think I still like ‘choir,’ though. It has a ring to it, right?”

“Like a bell.” She said dryly.

“Do you two ever stop talking?” Thomas called out in a shaky voice from behind Anne.

“I think they’re cute.” Anne added, a smile in her voice.

Neil frowned, squinting back at the unperturbed blonde and the scowling man immediately behind her.

“I think it’s time we took a break,” Pete announced from the front of the pack, next to Jackie. “What do you think, Jackie?”

“Thirty minutes,” she said in a flat voice. “Stewart?”

“Thirty minutes,” he agreed, looking back at her and nodding. “And no more. We’ve already fallen behind schedule.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

How Jackie—or Stewart, for that matter—could keep time to the second, Neil couldn’t figure out. He spent most of their break thinking about it and stretching his legs.

Riding, Neil thought, hurts.

…

…

Argus sat alone in his office, furiously scribbling notes that were destined for destruction.

He did not have a lot of time. The better part of three days, at best, before the Heroes returned.

He had work to do.

Long had Argus spent ruminating on which of the six didn’t belong, but he didn’t dare leave a physical trace of his thoughts. One did not become a steward by being careless around Heroes.

One in ten Heroes was some manner of rogue, or sneak thief, and had certain inclinations even if they hadn’t awakened their blessings yet. It simply would not do to leave evidence of his manipulations where prying eyes and nimble fingers could reach them.

Argus’s office wasn't designed to keep thieves out. Doing so would be futile. Rogues were known to slip past wards like living shadows. Defending against them tended to be useless, suspicious, or prohibitively expensive.

And so, it was Argus’s greatest point of pride that there was nothing written in his office that he wouldn’t be happy to share with any of his Heroes. Thieves were free to rifle through his possessions, for they would find only boredom there.

Until now, at last, when he finally had a moment of freedom.

What lay before Argus was a comprehensive list of notes on the suspected abilities and loyalties of each of the six, as well as a flow chart.

“This,” he said aloud, staring blankly at his notes, and breaking the warm silence of his sanctuary with his dry and strained voice. “Is bloody pathetic.”

Of the six, only two displayed any proclivity for physical combat. Perhaps that was not unusual by itself, but the remaining four…

He dragged a bony finger down the lists, capped by each of their names. They were remarkably short, for being all that he knew of them.

The remaining four, he thought, hadn’t shown a proclivity for anything. Nothing that he had seen or the staff had reported, anyway. Certainly nothing beyond the bounds of regular mortal talents.

He could be staring down the barrel at three rogues, for all he knew. Or three wizards. He shuddered at the thought.

His eyes drifted to two names in particular.

Neil Porter and Thomas Hill. Both proved susceptible to the standard deflections towards magic. Odds were more than decent that at least one of them was blessed with magic or some particular discipline of spellcraft. More-than-possibly both.

The problem was: that as early as warriors tended to awaken their blessings, wizards often took months.

And then there was June Koontz. His eyes drifted to her name, to the qualities he discovered about her.

‘Mistrust of authority; strong reliance on humor.’

That was it. The sum of a ten-day’s efforts, and that was all he knew about her.

She wasn’t likely to be a knight, certainly, but there wasn’t a Hero under the sun that didn’t mistrust their steward at the start.

And humor, well, that was simply the result of a healthy coping mechanism. A little annoying, after you’d met your tenth-or-so Hero, but you could hardly blame them for the occasional joke.

Well, Argus did blame them, at least a little. One could only hear so many variations of the old ‘we’re all in grave danger’ pun before one wanted to rip one’s Heroes’ tongues from their mouths, and no amount of common sense nor empathy would cleanse him of the urge.

It was almost as bad as that winter when the forest was infested with dire wolves. The word ‘dire’ was forever ruined for him, after what Stephen Gimlet did to it.

He sighed, letting the paper fall to his desk, and leaned back in his chair.

What would retirement be like, he wondered? Would there be peace, at last?

It was rare that someone in his position could retire. Most simply died. It was easier that way. Really, at the age most men become stewards, there was little in their lives to look forward to—other than their deaths.

Others lost their minds or succumbed to physical infirmity.

Argus rather assumed the end of his life as a steward would be the end of his life.

He was so sure it would be one of his Heroes that killed him, too. He bet Phineas fifteen silver pieces on it.

Phineas, of course, predicted that he would be the victim of assassination by one of the less-than-young hopefuls who’d attempt to replace him. Possibly even by one of the journeymen stewards.

Their bet was made ten years past, when the end seemed more distant, and a fresh crusade was not yet whispered of.

Neither of them predicted this.

Retirement was very nearly an alien concept, for Argus. He’d certainly never met anyone that made it that far—he was always cooped up in Castle Retmor, and the staff came and went like the tide. He’d heard stories of course—nearly legends by now.

Would he read, he wondered, if he survived this latest group? Would he dance? Would he delve into the mysteries of art and the arcane, as he had done in his youth, and seek out the fires of madness itself?

‘Probably not.’ He thought, tapping his chin and staring into the void hanging over his notes.

Maybe he would finally learn peace. His mother claimed to have learned it before she passed. His father, supposedly, had mastered the art of Sitting Around and Doing Nothing when he was in his prime. Why not Argus?

He could rest on his laurels and relax, after all this time, knowing that his job was done and that the kingdoms were in good hands.

Although, the bet wasn’t technically over until these last few Heroes were out of Retmor’s halls for good.

Argus scowled at the pages of sparse notes and musings clutched in his hands as anger emerged unbidden from the vice of his mind.

He crushed the parchment in his hands, holding it firmly, as though it might seek to escape his ministrations.

“What’s become of me?” He asked himself, in a hollow voice. “Less than a month through, and I’m already…”

His scowl deepened, and he released the wretched papers from his death grip, setting them in a mass on a clear space on his desk.

It was weakness, he thought, staring at it. A desperate attempt to cling to control, when control was never within his reach. He was a manager of chaos incarnate. A wrangler of Heroes.

If he surrendered to the course, the sixth would reveal themselves eventually. He needn’t stress over a certainty; there was nothing he could do about it but waste his own time.

“Burn,” Argus commanded the stack of paper with a dismissing gesture, flexing his willpower like a muscle.

It obliged.

Blue-white fire consumed it with neither heat nor smoke, racing away from him in a flare of arcane light.

His desk was unchanged, the dark wood not so much as stained.

There would be no evidence of his weakness.

Not for the Heroes to find, nor for Phineus to mock him with.

“Stay the course.” He muttered, leaning back into his chair as he blinked the spots from his eyes.

“Stay the course.”