Pitt walked up the mountain roads toward his cabin. He had walked through some outposts that funneled people through the range toward the cities that dotted the lowlands, and the small towns that sat in the valleys. He hoped no one had raided his stores while he was gone.

It would be a job to fill things back up before winter set in.

And that was before any thinking about having to hare off across the country to deal with something, and then walking back. He needed a spirit horse for these expeditions.

Maybe he could prevail on Montique to help him find one of those he could summon to give him a ride back home after being torn from his spot. He thought that would solve one of his problems with the arrangement they had as former members of the Brotherhood.

He spotted a broken tree off the side of the road. He paused to check the damage. Something had ripped the tree in half with some kind of blunt force. He checked the tracks he could find. It looked like a giant boar had come through and knocked the tree down with its bulk.

Luckily, that wasn't his problem since the boar had torn up some of the trees near the road and moved on. Unless it ran at him, he planned to give it as wide a berth as he could. Someone else could kill it and cook the meat up for the next five, or six months. He still wanted to get home and put his feet up as he thought about what he needed to do around his small farm.

He used to chase down anything that crossed his path when he was younger. At some point, that fire for destroying monsters had cooled down. He would still kill a monster that got in his way, but being retired meant he could wait until the thing came after him specifically before he did anything.

This giant boar was far away from his homestead. As long as it stayed at the lower altitude, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. If it climbed to where it became an active threat to his farm, he would do something to chase it off, or kill it.

Boar meat would tide him through the winter if he had time to cure it in a smokehouse.

He checked the direction of travel one more time before he began following the road up to the edge of where he had settled. There were two small towns that he supplied himself through when he had to, but they weren't close to his place.

When more people moved in, he had decided to pack up and settle somewhere else where the people would take time to fill in. He could keep doing that for years and stay ahead of anyone trying to find a place to live where they could grow things but still be close to other people.

That's how he had settled in the mountains for the last little bit of time. He planned to descend down the other side and see what that part of the country looked like to his old age.

He hoped that he wouldn't have to solve other people's problems the whole time he had left to live in the mountains.

That would be a lot of work for little gain in his opinion.

Pitt saw other marks of destruction as he climbed. Had the boar kept going up the mountain? Had it decided to go through the local farms to get to where it was going?

He had some acquaintances among the locals. Had the thing climbed up far enough to attack their places?

He would know soon enough. He was almost ten days away from his own place. He didn't have to follow the road. He could divert and climb up over the stone faces that the road curved around.

He couldn't fly, but his prodigious strength allowed him to do things a normal man would think twice about exerting the effort to even start.

He decided that he wasn't that desperate to race home. Even though it was a minimal effort for him, it was still an effort. He could follow the road and stay away from any monsters who stayed away from the road.

And if he ran into a monster who didn't want to stay away from the road, then he would make some farming and ranching family a little safer.

It wouldn't be the first time he had done something like that.

He paused at the next curve. The boar had punched a line through to the rock wall. He frowned at the torn down trees. He didn't see if it had turned to follow the rock wall, or had decided to come back to the road and pick another route.

How big was this thing?

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He decided that sticking to the road was the safest thing to do at the moment. He didn't want to get into a fight with a monster unless he had to.

Why was it tearing things up?

Most monsters had something they liked to do. Very few tore things up randomly. They were like regular animals in that respect. Some did like the taste of humans a bit much, but that always led to monster hunters putting a stop to things.

Had anyone ran into this boar? Had they reported if they did? Information traveled only as fast as the next messenger to the next town. The gods sometimes informed their clerics about problems that needed to be fixed.

An armed response was pulled from locals and any traveling Knight.

He doubted any force of traveling Knights could handle what he was seeing unless they were the most extraordinary group of Knights he had ever seen pick up swords and shields.

If he ran into somebody else looking for the animal, he would follow along to help out. Part of his obligation still meant protecting those that needed it.

He wondered when he had stopped carrying weapons that would allow him to deal with big creatures. He thought it was when he broke his first hundredth blade.

He had varying success keeping the next few weapons in one piece whenever he went full out against something. He ran into things and the blade broke on tough skin. When he did break a blade, or a handle, or anything else, he just dropped the pieces where he had broken the weapon.

Pitt paused at a new waterfall heading down the mountain. He examined the channel. The boar had struck the wall and punched through the rock. A shallow trough led from the hole and the water poured from the wall toward the valleys below.

Pitt wondered if someone's well had been emptied by the new tunnel.

He crushed the opening together and sealed the water away again. He watched as the stream died away. That had worked out okay as long as no one came up and reopened the hole.

What would the monster wreck uphill? Had it kept going toward the top of the mountains? He didn't see a print to point back the way he had come. Somewhere above him was something that was massing twenty times what he weighed. Any normal person would be ripped to shreds by such a monster.

He decided to be a little less cautious in his approach. He didn't want to be attacked, but he couldn't let the thing keep climbing. If it went far enough, it would be wrecking his farm while he was still trying to get home.

He had put a lot of work into the place. He had taught the local monsters to stay away. And the neighbors were far enough away that he didn't see them all the time. He planned to move when people started encroaching on his horizon.

It wouldn't be the first time he had moved in such a way. He stayed in a place until enough people got close to see him every day, and then he moved. He negated people realizing that he wasn't aging like they were, and it allowed him to enjoy his retirement without people wanting favors.

As soon as someone realized whom he was, they wanted him to track down and kill everything they didn't like

Being Roland the Cutter was more of a pain now than it had been when he had been fighting every day. Now things were such that hardly anyone ever had to deal with a random monster, or a mage gone bad.

But people still wanted someone to deal with threats that hadn't happened yet, and were only sparks of paranoia.

He came across a destroyed wagon. He looked around. He didn't see any bodies in the wreckage.

That didn't mean much. Pigs were omnivorous. The boar would have eaten anything left behind by the attack.

On the other hand, the driver might have seen the monster in time and been able to flee from the attack.

Pitt didn't know how likely that was. It depended on if the monster was a chaser, or not. It had all the signs of a chaser. Some of the damage he had come across could be from the thing chasing victims into the trees.

He doubted the giant boar had waited around and jumped out at the first things that crossed its path. Stranger things had been known to happen but he didn't want to think about having to be ready for an ambush.

He kept going up the trail. He would know soon enough what he was dealing with in a few hours. What would it do when it saw a lone man coming up the trail? He decided it would attack. Nothing had stopped it so far. One man without a sword wouldn't do the trick.

Pitt hoped the thing hadn't killed anyone while he had been meandering along. If he had been home sooner instead of trekking across the lowlands and then up into the mountains, he would have heard of this beast and already put it down.

He needed Montague to quit ripping him across the continent to deal with other people's problems. He hoped he could talk some sense into his friend. The Brotherhood was done, and normal soldiers and clerics were doing their job now.

The world could do without him with his replacements doing the work.

He doubted his friend would see things the same way since he was mostly mind now.

He wondered how many of the brothers were left. He didn't hear that much about them, and he had killed Neil when he had decided to destroy White Plains with a demon invasion.

He wished that he had been able to bring Neil to justice, but killing him in the underworld would have to do. Hopefully the magician had not been able to escape from what had happened in the throne room.

Pitt paused when he heard a tree creak ahead. He listened for more sounds. He thought he heard a snuffling. Something was ahead and looking for something with its nose.

He walked carefully to where he thought the source of the sounds could be. He found himself staring at a rustling bush. He yanked the concealing limbs out of the way. A bear looked back at him.

“Get out of here!,” he roared.

The bear shambled away from the deranged human as fast as its legs could carry it.

“Stupid bear,” Pitt muttered as he opened his hand. He shook his head as he started walking again.