Chapter 1

“Open the gate!”

The order echoed through the bailey during the civil dawn, bouncing off the flagstones and the flint and mortar walls. To the left of the vestibule, a young half-orc went into action, guiding the first of two oxen towards the gate hoist connected by chains to the iron gears of a portcullis that separated the town of Farholde from the wilderness beyond. Jheren stood beside his mount, a coffee colored steed he called Draven, fussing over the saddlebags and tack for the fourth time this morning. He checked again that his enchanted blade, Mystara, was secured against Draven’s flank and could be easily accessed from atop the mount.

Argus, who had shouted the order, was tired and lean, wrapped in the battered remnants of a guardsman’s coat, eyes red from many sleepless shifts. He watched the mechanism with a vigilance that implied some prior horror with stuck gates. Above him, the portcullis shuddered, caked with decades of rust and mud, before the oxen forced it up with a shriek. The gears knocked as they spun, then locked with a hollow clunk that was somehow more unsettling than the screaming metal.

Jheren swung into Draven’s saddle. The movement was easy, smooth, military, but something about it still betrayed a practiced unease. His mind sifted through the likely scenarios that would play out once they left the town’s perimeter—ambush, sabotage, even a simple but deadly misfortune like a rodent hole found by one of Draven’s legs was a threat worth considering. He had spent the last ten years training himself to expect only trouble, and there had been little to disprove the utility of this worldview.

As Argus looked up the flagstone road that led from the gate to the central keep of Farholde, he saw reason to let out a groan.

“Looks like the mayor wants you to hold up, Jheren,” he grumbled while returning the wave of the plump aristocrat who was quickstepping towards them from a hundred yards out.

Oswin Brightwell was a plump man with rosy cheeks, his portly figure wrapped in fine silk robes adorned with golden trim. He carried himself with a confident gait, but his quick-stepping approach betrayed a sense of urgency. He kept his steps high and careful, as he noted the road slick with morning dew. A self-proclaimed brilliant and ambitious man, he would not allow himself to be so lazy as to lose the opportunity to show that it was he who sent the hero out to solve their current problem.

Jheren slid from the saddle with the fluid economy of a man who’d drawn steel a thousand times, his boots meeting the flagstones in a stance that betrayed readiness. A flush crept up his neck as he recalled the tangle of sheets he’d left behind—his wife’s knowing smile as he’d fumbled with his baldric in the dark. She would have known precisely how to deflect Oswin with a gracious word, whereas Jheren could only clench his jaw against memories of their arguments. The mayor’s tolerance for the brothels and gambling dens that lined the eastern quarter made him, in Jheren’s estimation, an adversary of inconvenient political standing and a fat lecher. His wife, Clara’s voice cut through his judgment: “Oswin’s quill has saved more lives than your blade ever will.” The memory stung, but he couldn’t deny its truth.

Jheren inclined his head just enough to acknowledge rank without suggesting deference. “Lord Mayor,” he said, pitching his voice to carry across the remaining distance between them. He made sure to rise before accepting Oswin’s extended hand.

“We have a treaty with Chief Gunnar, as you know. He won’t admit that the force holding the ruins is his, even if they are,” Oswin said. His distrust of the war chief was evident enough that Jheren couldn’t understand why the mayor bargained with the orc so often. “The treaty doesn’t protect them if they aren’t Gunnar’s, so slaughter them all, Jheren! If Gunnar wanted them spared, he should have removed them himself.” He was loud enough to make sure every soldier on the gate could hear him.

It was the same thing Jheren had heard the day before, when he agreed to set out to get rid of them. The mayor was leaving out the urgency regarding tonight’s new moon and the fear that they would complete some foul ritual if they waited for the wizard Aurelia to arrive. She had been contacted and was on route, because if Jheren failed to stop them, there was no telling what they might unleash, and she would be desperately needed. Aurelia could call down a chain of lightning on the ancient circle to end their plot with a single blow—if she were here. Jheren’s previous successes were working against him; he knew a few combat spells, but he would have to get in close and take them out in smaller groups, blade in hand.

Jheren and Aurelia were close comrades, and would be closer if she were interested in men and he weren’t married. They made a good team, but she often traveled for reagents, lore, and to study ruins. Jheren didn’t have the luxury to leave Farholde unattended for so long. Right now, he was thinking that these goblins had been smart enough to wait until she was away, while some strange star probably aligned with an old rock so that they could call out to something wicked. Some goblin had actually been lucky enough to have seen an opportunity that she had missed. He imagined Aurelia furious that some bone-rattling shaman had outmaneuvered her, and in her own way, having just as bad a day as he was about to.

The mayor drew in a lungful of chill air, eyes darting past Jheren to the soldiers and volunteers in the yard. “We are relying on your efficiency, Jheren,” he said, pitching his words lower now, as if intimacy could manufacture trust. “You won’t have much backup, other than. We can’t risk Gunnar hearing we’re dispatching a force into the western crags, not with his dispatch to the market arriving so soon. The timing of all of this is unsettling, to say the least.”

“The rangers at The Broken Tusk should assist,” Jheren responded. “I’ll gather them there. If there are no further delays, we’ll end this by dusk.”

Oswin’s gaze lingered on Jheren, taking in the smoked mithril plates affixed to well-worn leather armor that had seen real combat, not parade grounds. The hero’s copper colored beard diddn’t quite hide the scar that pulled at his upper lip, and those green eyes, sharp as a falcon’s, made the mayor shift his weight from one foot to the other. This was a man whose shoulders had carried Farholde’s safety for years, and they showed no sign of buckling now. The sun broke over the horizon as if framed by the city gates.

Jheren turned from him and once again mounted Draven, his wedding band catching the dawn light as his hand gripped the reins. The stallion shifted beneath him, nostrils flaring at some unseen disturbance in the air. The few early risers who were present watched the hero’s silhouette against the rising sun, his shadow stretching long behind him as if reluctant to follow out the gates.

Hours later, Jheren approached The Broken Tusk at a hard trot, the sun little more than a cold smear behind the scrim of clouds. The inn sat black and sprawling on the shoulder of the road, its thatch roof patched with tar where the spring storms tore at it. The yard outside was churned to a paste from the frequent rains and the boots of travelers. Jheren dismounted, his thighs aching from the ride. He passed Draven’s reins to a stable hand, Greg or Gary, he couldn’t remember, the boy’s face stayed hidden under a mop of straw hair, and pressed a silver coin into the damp palm.

“Water him, but not too much. Grain and mash, he’s earned it.” The stable hand grinned, all teeth, and led Draven away.

Inside, the scent of ale and old onions mingled with the harsher tang of pipe smoke and unwashed bodies, creating a thick and pungent aroma that clung to the air like a heavy cloak. The taproom was crowded, with a scattering of empty chairs, and the sound of merriment and conversation filled the space. The clinking of tankards and the occasional burst of laughter joined with the gentle hum of voices. Jheren’s hand instinctively rested on Mystara’s hilt as he scanned the room, knowing that trouble could easily rear its head in a place like this, but confident in his own ability to handle it. This was a familiar place to him, a place where he had spent many nights in search of a warm meal, cold ale, and a comfortable bed. It was also a place where he often found a need to deal with those who enjoyed the innkeeper’s blind eye for the everyday criminal activity that took place here.

Jheren saw a tavern girl, or rather he heard her first: a high keening gasp that rose above the low drone of the inn. Not quite the sound of pain, not quite pleasure, but possessing the desperate edge of both. She straddled a patron’s thighs in the darkest corner, where the lamplight failed and shadows went soft and blue. The girl’s hair—blue-black with a single ice-white streak—was drawn up into a high knot, exposing a nape delicate as a porcelain wineglass stem. She wore a collar, of course, the thick brass visible even in the dim light. The Tusk’s signature was that girls claimed by the tribes worked here. At this hour, the help was supposed to be stacking tankards or fetching stew, but this one had her back pressed to a man’s chest, both his hands up beneath her apron front, fingers spread and kneading as if her breasts were bread dough. Her head was thrown back, lips parted, and the sounds she made had a musical quality, helpless and high, punctuated by ragged inhalations, then a low laugh, as if she couldn’t make herself stop. The scene was as clear an advertisement as the painted sign over a brothel door. She moved her hips in a slow circling grind while making eyes with Jheren.