Tiarraluna was still struggling for calm, still not finding it. Despite the guildmaster’s assurances, she could not find it in her heart to forgive Jackson Grenell. He was a murderer, regardless of what the bounty said. She wanted nothing more to do with him. Nor, contradictively, could she stop thinking about him. How could that be?

Button.

“Grandmother?” She sat bolt upright, startling the guildmaster who’d remained at the table rather than leave her alone.

Button, you must come to Mohrdrand’s residence at once. I must speak with you.

“You are here?” She squeaked aloud with her sending. “In Mokkelton?”

Indeed, child, the voice came back. And there are things which we must discuss. Urgent things.

Nodding, Tiarraluna excused herself to the guildmaster. “I must go,” she explained nervously. “Grandmother is here and asks that I meet her.”

Guildmaster Jonkins nodded. “Go, then. I’ll keep the horses for the time being. What do you want done with the rest?”

“Ja—” she stopped herself abruptly. “Do with it as you will, Master Jonkins,” she replied stiffly. “Try to find any of the victims’ people. And please apply any value derived from the rest to ou— against my debt to you. Here,” and she tossed the pouch Jack had given her onto the table.

The pouch hit the wooden tabletop, bounced, and came open, spilling its contents across the surface. Tiarraluna’s eyes went round at the sight of the golden ring laying amidst the coins. Her mouth opened once, and then twice to speak, but no sound came. Instead, she rose and left the guild hall, crook staff in hand, struggling to hide renewed tears.

Jonkins watched her go, not rising from the table for quite some time after she’d disappeared through the door and out into the street. Giving thought to what must be done about this new development.

Eleven rank twelve and aboves was considerably more than the current guild strength could handle readily. What’s more, he had an inkling he knew who they were. A band of such size was all but unheard of in this province, but not completely without precedent.

He feared he might need to involve himself in the hunt, but worried at what such an unprecedented move might mean to the town. The guild hall was one of three bastions within the town’s walls to which people might retreat in dire emergency, and the only viable one remaining. A useless one should it be completely undefended and the town suffer a breaching attack.

After awhile, his musings swung back around to the girl and her missing not-hero. He stared sourly at the small scattering of coins life stones, and the single familiar gold ring before rising and moving back to the counter behind which the guild’s enchanted auto-chronicler —the reader which had created their tokens and set the bounty as theirs— resided.

He brought up the bounty and wondered how long it would be before she remembered that neither she nor the young man had either forfeited the bounty or disbanded the party. The bounty marker remained active. And, since bounties qualified as quests, the chronicler was still ticking off experience earned. He raised an eyebrow. Quite a lot of experience earned. More than killing three low mid ranks would accrue.

He glanced over his shoulder towards the closed door then back to the chronicler. The boy was alone now. Given his sentinel class, he was earning experience about ten percent faster because of it. The girl, of course, was advancing more slowly. The important bit, though, was that she was still advancing, even while having quit the field. An interesting tidbit, that. Quite an extraordinary distance to be separated and still be sharing experience if he was headed to the old ferry station.

He dispelled the field and retrieved his empty mug, refilling it with a heaving sigh. His duty at this point was clear. He was stuck in Mokkelton at least for the time being. Much as he’d like to, he would not —could not— interfere with an active quest. Not without a formal request for aid. For now, the boy was on his own, and Jehsha bless him with thrice extra luck if he came up against a foe double his own rank and he on his own. Particularly if his foe was not.

* * *

One guard, it looked like. Jack couldn’t believe his luck. He’d sort of gotten it into his head that levels here were more grudgingly granted than in the games he played back home, and that level twelve was something meaningful. Some of these clowns weren’t even up to bush war standard. The first three had been pitiful. And this guy?

Of course, he frowned, remembering the two in the grass, some of them weren’t that bad at all. And since he couldn’t tell a rank one from a forty with the girl absent, it might be better to not let himself get too cocky again.

Back to the sentry. The idiot wasn’t even standing in the tree looking around. He was sitting on a thick branch about twenty feet up with his legs dangling over either side and his back leaning against the trunk. Jack couldn’t even tell for sure if he was awake.

He’d gotten the general lay of the camp down over the course of the afternoon, holding well clear and circling slowly. Looked like an old ferry station, right down to the dock. No ferry, though. Couple of shacks, an open stable, and a single more substantial structure with an actual door that was probably left over from when the station had been active.

There was a sort of rough corral where a dozen or so horses and a couple of cows stood listlessly. Several wagons and carts were parked haphazardly behind it. No sign of a dug well anywhere he could see, so unless there was one inside one of the structures, they were probably carrying their water up from the river.

He’d also been watching the camp’s occupants. Didn’t look like eight guys to him. He hoped that this didn’t mean that a couple of them were out doing some light murder to pass the time. With luck, they’d all be passed out drunk in one or more of the shacks. Still, every single one of them was supposed to be higher ranked than him by a considerable margin, so he wasn’t about to just wander in and ask.

Clouds had been sliding in from the northwest for most of the afternoon, hiding the sun more often than not as it heeled over towards evening. Nevertheless, he’d gotten himself worked around to have it at his back, using whatever small help it offered. He was crouched low in the tall grass, peering up into the shade of the branches, wishing for a pair of binoculars.

The guard was wearing a plate cuirass, greaves, and pauldrons. He may have been wearing a gorget, but it was impossible to tell, even as close as Jack was to him, which was closer than he’d have liked given the choice. Ideally, he’d be back about a hundred yards with a scoped and silenced carbine. Instead, he was about forty yards out with a bow and hoping he was close enough.

He was using the bow he’d taken from the swordsman who’d tried to skewer him out in the grass, and he hadn’t played with the thing as much as he’d have liked. It was heavier than the one he’d used the other day by a good fifteen pounds, though, and at least ten heavier than the one Tiarraluna had purchased for him. It may or may not have had any bonuses baked into it. It glowed softly, but he couldn’t tell what that meant beyond some sort of buff. He hoped.

I mean, he thought to himself. Why would the guy be carrying a cursed weapon around, right? He cast a quick, involuntary glance at FoeSmite lying in the grass, hopefully quiescent, beside him. Right?

Worst case scenario, he’d chunk the staff at the guy if he missed with the bow and alerted him. But that was worst case, because it would make a whole lotta freaking noise, and he wasn’t in any screaming hurry to take on a whole camp full of high ranking bad guys at once. His bout with those two out on the grass had cured him of any such goofy notions.

Okay, Sergeant Grenell, he told himself silently. Remember what your dear old sainted Drill Sergeant taught you. Aim small, miss small. Aim small, miss small....

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

He couldn’t really tell if the armor was warded or not. Probably wouldn’t be able to tell if he was holding it in his hands. He was willing to bet it was, though. He certainly couldn’t tell what sort of wards it carried, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that anti-piercing was probably high on the list.

Aim small, miss small.... taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, he drew the arrow back, took his sight, and loosed. He was lying on his back in the grass by the time the arrow took the lookout in the neck, passing through and chunking into the tree behind with a loud CHOK!

No gorget, then. He lay there awhile, waiting to see if anyone in the camp had decided to wonder at the noise. From here, the arrow wasn’t overly obvious. The guy hadn’t even sagged all that much. A casual glance might not catch anything amiss at all. Which meant Jack was probably good until they changed lookouts. And with what he knew of this bunch so far, he was willing to — hell, he was betting nobody was about to take over unless the existing lookout went down and rousted them out.

Grinning coldly, he rolled to hands and knees and took up FoeSmite, crawling slowly further out into the grass, circling around to where he’d left the horses and wondering how to get the next one alone. He was on the clock now, and needed to pare the numbers as much as possible before they realized they were being hunted.

He hadn’t gone twenty yards before he felt the first drop land on the back of his hand. Then another, and another. He cursed under his breath. Well wasn’t that just wonderful. He stopped and rolled onto his side, just managing to unstring the bow and stow the string inside his tunic before the rain started coming down in earnest. It might have been waterproof, but he wasn’t going to bet his life on a wet bowstring.

So much for his plans. He wasn’t about to go floundering around in this mess looking for trouble, and it wasn’t likely any of the bandits would be wandering around loose for him to find, either.

He needed to get to the horses and find some cover to wait out the storm. He needed to rethink things.

* * *

The main door of the guild hall came crashing in, treating the main hall to a shower of wind driven rain. A pair of cloaked figures hurried inside in its wake, laughing and slapping water from their outer garments.

The larger of the two looked up from closing the door to espy the guildmaster seated behind the bar, tankard halfway to his mouth. He was a big man, curly-haired, square faced, and hearty, his normally clean shaven features stubbled by a week’s growth of blue-black beard. “Ho, Master Jonkins,” he called jovially. “One pride of stalker cats successfully eliminated! And two days early! You owe us free drinks.”

“Cable,” the guildmaster called back, his mood picking up. “Tiglund. How was your hunt?”

Cable hesitated at his tone, pausing in the act of hanging his cloak from a peg near the door. He turned full on to the guildmaster, one eyebrow going up. “Something’s amiss, isn’t it?” the rank thirty demanded.

“You know that bandit problem we’ve been hearing about?”

“Of course,” Cable nodded, finishing his task and moving to the bar. “Stalkers were a priority, but we’ll go looking for the bandits first thing in the morning.”

Jonkins slid a freshly poured mug his way, shaking his head. “Already found them,” he said gruffly.

Cable blinked. “What?” he demanded “How? Who else is there even to look? Some ungifted run across them and somehow live to tell the tale?”

Jonkins was giving Tiglund the eye as the youngster regarded him hopefully. Finally, the guildmaster sighed and poured a mug half full of ale. Then, looking up at the grinning youth, topped it off with water. Tiglund’s face fell, but he accepted the mug with thanks.

“Bit of a novice mage from out Heatherton way showed up the other day,” he told the big rank thirty. “Rank ten. The Lady Rosaluna’s great, great granddaughter if you can believe it. Had her a strange character in tow it turns out is a rank nine sentinel.”

“Whew!” Cable laughed then. “You had me going for a moment there, Bor, old friend,” he smiled. “You had me thinking you were serious.”

“Deadly,” Jonkins brow lowered. “The two of them took the bounty and lit out two days ago.”

“A sentinel,” Cable chewed over the word. “What’s that even mean, Bor? How does a sentinel appear now, so many years since the last, and after the fact?”

Jonkins shrugged and took a swallow of his drink. “Been giving it some thought,” he ventured. “Look around, Antel. That goofy new king’s taken the soldiers and nearly all the adventurers off west and not returned. The whole of the land’s been left to its own devices, with little or no protection for more’n two-and-a-half years. Whole continent is going back to the wild.”

“The way it was back when the sentinels first left their castles,” Cable nodded thoughtfully.

“Even so,” Jonkins nodded.

“So who is it?” Cable asked. “Do I know him? I thought every noble with the slightest viable gift had gone a-demon hunting with the king.”

“Not one of the locals,” Jonkins told him. “Not even a royal. Another hero, looks like. And even for one of them, he’s a strange one.”

They went back and forth then, with the guildmaster filling his primary guild members in on this new development. Cable, in particular, took a bit of convincing.

“So, where and how many?” the big man asked finally, smacking his empty ale mug onto the bar. “This whole sentinel business is interesting and all, but these bandits need seeing off. And here, I was hoping to get a night’s sleep in a real bed, too.”

“Sit back down, Antel,” Jonkins waved him down. “There’s more to it than just haring off after them. I told you, the bounty’s been taken.”

Cable sat back down, his brow knitting. “Still?” he asked, perplexed. “Wait. How d’you know where the camp is, then?” his voice was tight. “Those kids come back somehow without getting killed so they could let you know the location, and then went back out after

“I’m familiar with the bounty, Bor,” he said. “If the bandits are too much to handle, you can pay them for bringing the information back, even if they didn’t deal with the bandits themselves. If the bandits are too tough for them, there’s no need to go back out. If they’re not, there was no reason to come in without getting rid of them first. I’m confused.”

Jonkins frowned. “What if I told you that this mob was fourteen strong, all ranks twelve and up, with a rank fourteen mage, and that their leader was a rank eighteen plunderer?”

Cable’s face went deathly still. “The bunch took down Weilei’s Crossing, then?”

“I’m thinkin’.”

“And you let a couple of low ranks go out chasing them? Even after you knew?”

So Jonkins explained the day’s happenings, including the reduction in bandit ranks, and the sentinel’s solo pursuit of those who remained. And of Grim Resolve.

“Well, then,” Cable wondered once the tale’d been told, chin resting on a braced hand. “What are we to do? Wait for the bounty to go dark when they kill him? Doesn’t seem right. Wait!” he sat bolt upright, snapping his fingers. “Why don’t I just go out and get myself invited into his party? That’s allowed, right?”

Jonkins shook his head. “Won’t need to,” he said. “They haven’t dissolved the party nor relinquished the bounty. Girl’s the party leader, and she’s still here in town.”

“What?” Cable demanded. “Where?”

“Over at Mohrdrand’s villa. No doubt getting an earful from her grandmother, who’s also in town.”

“The lady Rosaluna?” Cable’s eyes widened. “That doesn’t happen often.”

Jonkins shrugged.

“I’d better get going, then,” Cable suited action to words, rising from his seat. Before leaving, he dug through his pouch for the bounty token and life stones he was carrying, sliding them across the bar. “See to the split if you don’t mind, guildmaster,” he winked as he turned for the door.

“Tiglund,” he called over his shoulder without turning. “See to the horses, would you? And wait for me here once you’re done. I’ll let you know what’s going on when I return.”

* * *

Mohrdrand’s door swung open even as Tiarraluna approached, revealing the wizard framed in the soft halo of light from within. She greeted him perfunctorily and hurried inside. Rosaluna was seated in one of the chairs before the glowing hearth, looking very pale. Tiarraluna rushed to her side, dropping to her knees to embrace the old woman about the waist.

“Oh, Grandmother,” she implored, voice ragged. “What have I done?”

What indeed, the old woman replied, stroking her hair gently. I think that you do not yet realize. Nor its import.

Tiarraluna drew back and looked up to the old woman’s face, catching the hard glint of her eyes. “Grandmother?”

Rosaluna took her granddaughter’s head in both hands and drew it in, kissing her forehead gently and patting her hair in the way she’d done when the girl was a toddler. Fear not, child, she sent softly. I will help you to guide yourself through this maze.

Tiarraluna was growing more confused by the moment. “Grandmother,” she tried. “The man... the... hero....”

The sentinel, you mean? The old woman’s tone lightened in mirth. Your Jackson chan?

Tiarraluna’s face flushed and she drew back once more. “He is not my Jackson chan. He is not my anything chan. He is a murderer, and I want nothing more to do with him.”

The old woman shook her head slowly, placing a palm against the girl’s cheek. I’m afraid, dear granddaughter, she sent quietly. That it is far too late for you to claim such a thing.

Tiarraluna frowned and drew breath to retort, but the old woman hadn’t finished.

You are bound to him, Button, she sent. And he to you. For good or ill. There is no going back.

Tiarraluna’s denial was vehement. “Bound? Grandmother, by what measure do you say this?”

He is your hero now, Rosaluna might not have heard the protest. And you are his companion. What’s more, you will have to become his conscience.

“Conscience?” Tiarraluna was confused. “Even were I to desire such a thing, he would not listen. He did not listen. He... he murdered a man right in front of me!”

Yes, the old woman nodded. I’m aware. Grim Resolve is a terrible thing, Button. Unchecked, it may well turn him into a monster.

Unbidden, the image of the black thing within the iron cage flared into being at the forefront of Tiarraluna’s mind, its piercing red eyes fixed on her.

“You knew?” Tiarraluna shook the tableau from her thoughts. “But...?”

But?

“He will not heed, Grandmother. He will not listen to me. He does as he will, in spite of my wishes or my pleas.”

Rosaluna cupped the girl’s cheek and leaned closer. Then you must grow stronger, Button, she smiled. For it is in your power, and yours alone to temper that base drive within him, and so your duty. As it was mine to do so for your grandfather.