image [https://i.imgur.com/7ZQbE80.png]
I won’t bore you with the minutiae of our journey south, but suffice to say that the subsequent days were all much the same. Watery porridge at dawn, burning daylight spent trudging in a great mob of people, horses, and wagons that boiled over the bridges of the Nibben Valley’s many tributaries. We passed a verdant horizon of great estates that became lost among rolling hills of manicured crops and animal pens managed by countless farmsteads. The folk there (humans mostly) proudly hung the imperial dragon banner over every door, signpost, and overhang they could find to clear up any doubts over their status as the imperial heartland. A caravan merchant informed me the area was known for its superb sheep and cheeses which Sorvild and I procured (with his money) from a passing farmer who had been pressed onto the shoulder of the highway as he marched against our dusty horde.
Sweat and horse shit—that was my life. I deeply regretted sharing my port with the mercs as I now had no alcohol in reserve to speak of, unfortunately a medical necessity for me to have a sound sleep. I should have told you earlier perhaps, but I am plagued by a certain breed of night terrors of a sort when enduring prolonged sobriety. This treatment has costs and I had nary a denarii to my name, and dared not sell any travel supplies with so much road ahead.
One night after we'd broken camp, I approached Benezia in our tent as she unrolled her bedding.
"What do you mean," she snapped, "by 'need' a drink?"
"Just a dram of liquor," I assured her, "purely medicinal. The merchant next door has a nose redder than a dragon's pimple and surely has some in reserve."
"It's not the ‘how’ I was confused by, Berry, but your gall to even ask me such a thing." She glowered at me a moment until, seeing I had not yet begun groveling, continued: "By all accounts you should be rotting in an imperial dungeon and you have the cheek to ask me for money — money I need for our mission! Do the words 'conditional release' mean nothing to you?"
"I am working! But I have to see to my own condition as well."
She massaged her forehead. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail, trailing wisps framing her face in a manner I rather fancied. "Because you're still a suspect Berry, even if you are assisting us. What are you not getting? Not a drop more of drink for you. I know how it makes men and I don't want you getting any ideas or putting up a fuss for your evening lockdown."
"That's ridiculous."
"I don't care how ridiculous it seems to you, those are the rules."
"Did Caius say that?"
"Did Caius…” her lips pursed. “No. I said it, and that's enough. This is my mission and I'll not let some entitled guild brat to run roughshod over me. You can either obey the rules of your release or I’ll have the next passing patrol drag you back to the capital in chains."
The word ‘obey’ is what did me in. I looked around in that way you do when your hands are in want of something to throw, but having naught but my satchel to my name I chose to kick it, cursing as fiery agony ran up my toes. She watched me with crossed arms, cool as you please.
I turned on her. “That’s the second time you’ve called me something like that, but I’ll have you know I was an exceptionally diligent student. Whatever I did to earn such animosity—”
“You didn’t do anything. You just are who you are,” she took a steadying breath. “And I am who I am. But it's important that we work together, for both of us. But that also means you need to follow my orders, Berry.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Fine. And for what it’s worth I’m sorry for the outburst… I suppose I’ll be fine without the drink.”
“Oh cut the sad sack act, will you?” She fished in her pocket and then threw two denarii that thudded emperor-face up on the sleep roll beside me. “Enough to last you a few days, surely? But you’d better not give me trouble at lockdown tonight or it’s the last you’ll see from me.”
Sure enough, I was able to secure a bottle of whiskey later that night that lasted me quite some time.
I suppose I owe you an explanation of my nightly ‘lockdown’, although it pains me to do so. It was a cockamamie idea of Benezia’s that I would flee or betray her somehow while she slept, so she started chaining me up before bed using the anti-magic cuffs I still wore. It all started on our first night shortly after my toast. We’d retired to our tent and as I made ready for slumber I heard a rattling, and turned to see the slip of a girl had produced a long coil of chain. It aroused a funny sort of panic in my chest to be honest, and yet another bout of déjà vu from our first night together. I’d tried to play it off coolly, asking if she wanted to make a second go at it, but she rather grimly demanded that I let her run the links through my cuff rings. I had no choice but to assent.
It all fell into a rather hellish routine. Up at dawn, horseshit and sweating in the sun, another miserable campfire dinner spent listening to Sorvild and Abbard dream up some impossibly profitable arrangements working for the Mane, then chained up to sleep in that stuffy tent. Perhaps there are people with a more working class disposition who can tolerate such habituation, however no man by the name of Longfellow was meant to be shaped by such a mold.
My lone escape was reading the Treatise on Lunar Causality by Eophicles. Sometimes after slurping down my morning gruel I would get a few minutes to thumb through it on a lonely tree stump, or Benezia would allow me to stay out by the campfire with it before summoning me to bed. Boring reading in all honesty, as the early chapters just detailed his life at the monastery before being dispatched to Elsweyr. It was during one such evening as I read by the dim glow of our last log that I heard an unfamiliar voice calling my name behind Sorvild’s tent.
Without rising I peered down the dark alley between some merchant tents and ours. “Excuse me?”
A beaked head peeked out from our tents. It was one of the lizard-fol, an Argonian, that emerged and strode towards me on awkwardly long legs. He stopped, taloned feet uncomfortably close as he loomed over me, a cruelly serrated saber swinging off his hip. I had not seen him among the caravan before and assumed he must have just come to camp.
“Hi,” I said.
He blinked at me, amiable in that lizardy sort of way. “Hail stranger—sisp! Oh, you have the look of a mercenary, are you by any chance also looking for Berry Longfellow?"
I shook my head.
"Oh, well that's very well. But have you seen a wizard traveling this road by any chance? A strange man by the name of Berry Longfellow, he sometimes calls himself Fate Binder?”
I struggled to keep my face at ease. “Not ringing any bells my dear reptile, who is he?”
“Oh, a despicable man! A midget with a malformed face, but dastardly, brilliant, and charming enough to—sisp! To dance the panties off the empress, if you’ll pardon my—sisp! Bluntness.”
“Well I can’t say I’ve seen anyone matching that description… what business do you have with this rascal anyway?”
“Oh, I’ll be killing him, thank the gods. There’s a bounty of a hundred—sisp! Gold talents for his freakish head. Enough to make princelings of my entire brood.”
I swallowed. “You’re a bounty hunter?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And who’s paying out this bounty… in case I come across this denatured individual myself?”
He blinked, undersized head idly swiveling on that craning neck to survey the surrounding tents. “Oh, don’t — sisp! Do that. They say Longfellow is a sorcerer of incredible power. He’ll burn your brain into a cinder or flip your flesh inside out with a whisper, oh yes, that’s what they say. But send for me and I’ll come and chop that hideous head off his little shoulders. Oh, but you asked about the contract, well it’s from the Mane of Elsweyr himself. The eastern one of course, not the pretender in the western desert. Very legitimate. Did I mention that I’m licensed with the Fighter’s Guild?”
Right where I was headed, of course. I thanked the beastman and he gave me some instructions on where he could be reached by messenger should I come across any clues as to Berry Longfellow’s location. He strutted off, leaving me with a pounding heart beside the campfire. As soon as he was out of earshot (earholeshot?) I sprinted into Benezia and my tent to tell her what had transpired.