The boys hurried their pace, knowing they could get to the town to wash and rest comfortably before nightfall. As they walked, they took in the well-ordered fields to one side and the horse farm to the other. Farmhands working the vegetable field to the right noticed them and might wave before returning to their weeding or whatever they were doing.
As the town approached, Wali could see thick walls some ten meters high. The crenelations were strange; each was rounded on top and almost perfectly spherical. He sharpened his senses and saw the whole wall strengthened with runes. Each circular top piece was a separate piece of stone, and he could see that they carried different enchantments than the walls. He would need to be closer to decipher what the enchantments were for, but Trickster helpfully informed him. “The round stones are Barrier Stones. Each can be activated to project a hemisphere of power that will block incoming attacks. The balls will be set on rollers to aim the magic like a warrior’s shield. Raised to protect against aerial attacks or swiveled to take the brunt of a siege weapon and turn it aside. An old and reliable artifact, though they cannot be empowered for very long.”
They approached the gatehouse, and the guard asked them, “What happened to you two?” She was short, dressed in a similar brigantine as the guards in Bramble. Her halberd leaned up against her shoulder. Bright blue eyes and a broad smile greeted them under the pot helm. Another guard stood behind her in the shade of the gate, its silhouette undefined.
“We ran into some Feral Gnolls in the forest,” Wali said. She blanched and looked back at the guard in the gate tunnel. That one nodded and jogged off.
“Feral Gnolls? Can you two wait a moment? My partner is going to get the guard captain. This is serious.” She said, going from bubbly to business.
Yacob and Wali shared a look, then looked back out into the setting sun. “We can, but we’d like to get to an inn before it’s too late.”
“He’ll come quick, and I’m sure he’ll even buy dinner if you’re willing to share your tale.” She replied.
“Umm, I guess,” Wali said after looking at Yacob. Yacob looked apprehensive, but the past few days had seen a qualitative change in the young man’s confidence. Wali was not all that concerned, and a free dinner was a good thing. Their coin was getting low, and they would need to find some work soon to proceed on their journey. They could readily live without the cash, but it would make it slow going and be far more tedious.
Soon enough, the sound of hobnailed boots on cobbles announced the arrival of the guard captain. The man was tall and broad, muscled like a smith. He wore chainmail woven with thin strips of cloth. His salt and pepper hair was cut close to the scalp, and his face was old leather, dark as soot. His eyes were a pale brown and had a piercing suspicious look. He spoke with a raspy toneless voice, “What’s this about Gnolls?” He looked the boys up and down, taking in all of the blood.
“Yessir, seven of them. Feral gnolls in the forest at the top of the valley.” Wali reached into a pouch, pulled out a twist of waxed cloth, and opened it. A thick pinch of gray-brown fur from the gnolls sat within. He passed it to the guard captain. The man took it and rubbed the fur between his finger and thumb. He smelled it, and his face twisted. He waved forward the second guard and told him to gather a squad and investigate. Wali and Yacob said the captain of their encounter, and he looked at the two with some respect. He walked them into the town and toward the city center. They approached an inn, the sign painted with a colorful little barking dog hung above the road.
“This is the Angry Mutt, the best inn in town,” The captain said. Wali’s mouth watered as he could smell something spicy cooking from the kitchens, reminding him of a Mexican taco truck. They went inside to a bustling taproom. A thick haze of pipe smoke hung just above their heads. Larger than any inn they had been in before, some twenty tables spread out around a large central fire pit. Only a small fire burned in the grate today as it was still only late summer. Thirty patrons sat around the room drinking, eating, and amusing themselves. No one turned to look as they came in. A boy not much younger than Wali and Yacob came over, a stained white apron tied around his waist.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Captain Hollis. Early tonight, your usual, sir?” he asked.
“No, Barnaby, dinner for these two is on me,” Hollis said to the boy.
“I’ll put it on your tab,” Barnaby said.
Hollis turned to leave the boys after saying, “Don’t go too far tonight. We’ll talk in the morning.” Both boys nodded and turned to Barnaby.
“We need two beds and a bath also,” Wali said to Barnaby.
“Right, okay. That will be five silver, and the bath is at the end of the hall. Start there. The lady of the house doesn’t like blood on the floors.”
Yacob and Wali looked at each other before Wali paid the young man. They headed to the bath.
An hour later, they sat and ate. As they ate, Captain Hollis returned and sat with them. He informed them that a fast scout had confirmed their kills, and he dropped a pouch of coin on the table. Monster hunting paid well. A hundred forty silver or one gold and forty silver sat in the bag—fifteen silver for each gnoll and a bonus for giving the information to the guards first thing. Hollis then informed them they should get a Hunter’s Stone if they wanted to get paid for monster hunting. Neither of them knew what that was. It was a small black runed stone that served two purposes. First, it served as a form of identification within the Harvest Kingdom, which is doubly important if your corpse was found. The second was that it recorded kills, which could be cashed at the guard station or Hunter’s Society House. If they wanted to earn coin as bounty hunters, it was the safest way to do so.
The boys agreed and thanked Captain Hollis for the help, knowing he could have not paid them for the kills. They headed up to their shared room for the night not long after.
In the morning, they talked over breakfast and made plans to stop by the guard station to get a pair of Hunter Stones, then restock their consumables. They stopped by the central guard building first. Inside they were greeted by a dwarven woman behind a desk. She introduced herself as Corporal Bing. Shorter than a human, squatly built and bearing a copper beard, she walked the boys into a side room where she sat them down and pulled a stone plaque from a shelf with a small wooden box. She set the box to the side and laid the thick piece of black marble in front of them. The plaque was about three centimeters thick and thirty centimeters square. Inlaid on the surface was an intricate magical circle using runework that Wali did not recognize. There were a pair of divots set on opposite sides of the circle. Corporal Bing opened the box and put a small black marble into one divot, and had Yacob touch a finger into the other divot.
Yacob yelped and snatched his hand back, a pinprick of blood welling on his fingertip. A matching blood spot lay in the divot he had placed his finger in. Bing chuckled, saying, “You big baby. Nothing but a tiny pinch.”
“You could have warned me,” Yacob said as he wiped the blood on his pants.
“Aye, I could have. But there’s no fun in that.” Bing smiled wide and waited as the runed circle began to glow slowly. The glow brightened, and the black marble turned silvery, taking on the sheen of hematite. She took a smaller stone plaque from the wood box and placed the marble on a divot in the corner. Writing spread across the small plaque. “Yacob Markson, 17, Harvest Kingdom. No recorded kills.” She read off. She handed the marble to Yacob. “You gotta get that set into a ring, necklace, bracer, or something for it to work. It won't record any kills if it’s in your pocket or pouch. A jeweler a few blocks away can whip you up something cheap that I’d recommend.” She turned to Wali, “Your turn. There’s a tiny pinch.” She said with a malicious smile.
After wiping away Yacob’s blood with a rag, she replaced the black marble with another one. Wali put his finger on the divot and did not yelp when the stone’s magic bit into his finger. Bing repeated the process and read, “Wali of the Colri, 16, Colri Plains.” Wali nodded and took the stone. She said, “That’ll be fifty silver a piece or one gold for both. Wincing at the cost of the investment, Wali took the coin they had earned the day before and placed it in front of the woman. She slid it across the table and packed away the instruments.
The two took their marbles down the street to the recommended jeweler. He informed them that rings were possible but having a large stone attached to your hand was a problem for most warriors, especially those who fought with their hands. Yacob selected a bracer and Wali a necklace. For the other forty silver they had earned, Yacob picked a brass bracer that the stone fit into the center of. Wali’s selection was a simple silver chain with a wire enclosure for the stone.
They spent the rest of the day exploring the town as they had paid a tailor to repair Yacob’s clothes. Wali noted that they should find Yacob some leathers or something like Wali had. Self-mending and cleaning were common enchantments, but it wasn’t cheap. The magic alone added two gold to the base cost alone. They had over twenty silver between them at that point, so it was just a wish list item. They had restocked on their traveling rations and generally just wandered the town. That evening they sat around the inn and chatted with Barnaby and some of the old regulars about the area.