In Which Our Hero’s Origin is Revealed

The Tale of Resh Craig

June 4th, 1876

Somewhere on the Morbihan Plains

The evening had reached that fine time, the only time between mid-morning to the setting of the harsh sun where the Morbihan became livable. The fire crackled and popped and some chuckslag was slowly simmering in a cast iron pot. The men gathered around the fire were, on the whole, unwashed, unshaven, and nonhuman. The faint sound of conversation could be heard from quite a distance, interspersed with laughs, boasts, brags and the occasional shove.

“Read ‘em and weep, Resh,” Don Throgg said, grinning as he laid out a set of five cards on the ground. By the distant fire, Resh could see them: An Ace and King of spades, a Queen of diamonds, a Jack and Ten of hearts.

Resh grinned toothily right back, sprawling against his rolled up backpack, which itself was stuffed with the clothes that no longer fit him. Resh had hit his third growth spurt of the year, but he stayed in the awkward gangly stage of any male going from youth to adulthood. Don was in a similar state, though he held himself with considerably more grace. Resh, though, had the more nimble hands. He laid down his cards, then swept his finger out, spreading his cards along the ground between them.

“Ah shit,” Don muttered.

“A royal straight flush,” Resh said, gesturing to the five glittering diamonds before him.

Don reached into his belt for some shillings.

The whole gang was relaxing after the latest robbery. It had gone down as easy as fresh bacon: They had ridden up to the side of the train as it had slowed while reaching a switching station. Two guards had gone with throwing up their hands and dropping their pieces, rather than going down with bullets in their briskets, and the gang had split the job as they always did. Resh and Don robbed the passengers, while Turuk and Greek found any safe and ripped it free, and Telly Telly Longthews filched anything that smelled magical to his big, gnomish nose.

Resh had been the one to spot the package carried by the fellow with the graying mustaches and the thick, Arlander accent. That package, even now, was sitting quietly in his hiding hole, ticking happily. He and Don had checked it on the train, to make sure it wasn’t any kind of bomb. It wasn’t. It was instead something obviously Technological in nature, obvious enough that if they could find a seller, they’d all be rich as ... well, as thieves.

“So, I guess I-” Don started, then stopped. He and Resh both tensed. Had that been a snapping twig or-

Turuk stood up at the fire, calling out. “Chuck’s ready-”

The half-ogre’s head snapped back, cracking nearly as loudly as the gunshot. The back of his skull exploded into a haze of red and he started to topple. The entire gang sprang to their feet, reaching for weapons – save for Longthews, who started to incant. The flare of red magic around his palms might have been why four bullets caught him in the chest and sent him sprawling into the fire, knocking the pail of chuckslag onto the embers. The entire camp went dark and Resh and Don both booked it, running as fast and as hard as they could.

In the pale light of the stars, the forms of the horses around them were dark shadows, even with orcish night vision. They circled around them and then a brilliant light flared into their eyes. Magick, a cantrip floating above the head of human with a thick handlebar mustache and flint gray eyes. He wore the uniform of a marshal, and he had the great big glittering gold star on his breast to prove it. He held a revolver casually at his hip, while his fellow marshals paced their horses about the two half-orcs.

“Well, well, well,” the marshal said. “If it isn’t the Morbihan boys...”

Resh did as Resh always did: He grinned an unassuming smile up at the marshal and tried for casual. “Evening, Marshal Earp. How are the gods treating you this fine evening?”

“You never did know when to quit, Craig,” Marshal Earp said. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” Resh asked, frowning.

“The package, boy!” Marshal Earp said, his face set in a frown.

“We don’t know anything about no package,” Don said, holding his hands up above his head. “And if you’re gonna hang us, hang us.”

“Oh, there’ll be a hanging, all right,” Earp said, his voice growing quiet. “But not until my employers get their property back.”

Resh licked his lips. “Listen, Mr. Marshal, you ain’t exactly giving us a great offer here. We tell you where we put the ticking box, which is what I’m guessing you want, and we’re gonna just git hung, right? Right?” He nodded, his throat growing dry. “So, I figure, you let us maybe just go to prison for a spell, we’ll come out proper, and you don’t have to riddle us with lead. We all win, eh? Eh?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Earp.

Earp frowned. “Boy, your tongue got you out from under my sights once. It’s not happening again.”

“Resh, maybe we should just tell him...” Don said, quietly.

“Don, I got this,” Resh hissed back. Then, looking at Earp, he grinned insolently. “I know you don’t like killing unless you gotta, Mr. Marshal, and-”

The sudden bark of a pistol jerked Resh to the side. He felt something hot and wet splash against him and jerked around – his eyes wide. Don sprawled on the ground, blood puddling underneath him, a hole on his back, clear as day. Another horse was cantering up – a bright white mare, and on it sat a fellow who looked as fancy as any Resh had ever seen. And familiar. The gaying mustache. The sneer. And the thick Arlander accent that he used sealed the deal.

“We do not negotiate with greenskin barbarians,” the Arlander said, his smoking pistol flashing in the dark again. Resh flinched as another bullet struck his friend. He cried out despite himself. “Where. Is. The package.”

Resh whimpered.

When dawn broke, Resh’s fingers were aching and his body trembled with exertion. But he had finally dragged out the package from where he had buried it. It still ticked beneath the wrapping of canvas that he had thrown around it, and the man on the white mare slid off his saddle and crunched over, his silver spurs glinting in the gathering sunlight. Kneeling down, he swung the package open, and then nodded. “It’s functioning,” he said, standing up. “Your assistance has been quite appreciated, Marshal Earp.”

Earp grunted monosyllabically. If Resh had been in a different frame of mind, he might have seen how Earp had been glaring at the man on the white mare for the entire evening – his lips pursed into a tight line. That glare saved Resh’s life – for when the man aimed his revolver at Resh’s head, Earp coughed, then spat a thin line of tobacco out onto the desert sands.

“Do they kill all criminals in cold blood in Arland?” he asked.

Resh clenched his eyes shut, ready for the sharp crack and his trip into whatever waited beyond. Instead, he heard the faint click of a hammer being set back to rest, and the shifting of stance that meant the gun was no longer being aimed at his green forehead. When he opened his eye, he saw that the man on the white mare was regarding him with a sneer.

“True,” he said. “I suppose that he’ll do in the Blackpits...” He looked at the Marshals. “String him up.”

Resh did not even struggle as he was tied, bound, blind folded and thrown over the ass of a horse. The weeks that followed was a progression of discomfort and humiliation – the ride to Tarant had him being treated the whole way like a sack of meat, put on horse after horse, never given more than a sip to drink or a bit of cooled chuckslag to eat. His belly gnawed at him, but his mind continued to see the image of his friend, Don, shot in the back like a dog. Once in the bustling city of Tarant, he barely had a moment to view the buildings ... rather, he was thrust into a stagecoach, and that coach started for the Stonewall Mountains – to head through one of the passes open at this time of year and into the Kingdom of Arland itself.

The stagecoach was no improvement. He was forced to sit with his spine back, stiffening in discomfort, his wrists shackled in iron and his face covered with a burlap sack, the faint click of metal on metal on cloth reminding him that a guard sat across from him the entire time, a loaded scattergun on his lap. At any moment, at his whim, that guard could blow Resh’s brains out and there was not a thing that he could do.

On the fifth day of this mute, muffled hell ... salvation struck.

And it nearly killed Resh.

The first thing that Resh knew something was wrong was the fact the stagecoach was slowing. The horses’ hooves clattered less loudly, and the crunching, crinkling noise that reached his ears. Snow? Lots of snow. Then the cursing from the coachman. Then a whinny from a horse, a crash, and the entire wagon shifted hard to the left, then a twist, and then Resh was flung forward onto the ground. He caught up against a bench and he heard a loud cry from the guard – and then a sickening crack. And then the entire world seemed to spin, end over end over end, until at last, all was still and Resh felt as if he had been beaten about his head and shoulders with stick.

It took the better part of an hour to worry off the burlap sack. Once it was off, he could see the darkness of the night sky through the back of the stagecoach, which had cracked open. It looked as if the coach had crashed down into some trees – and the road was a good distance up a hill, a very distant prospect from his position. He saw the guard, his head twisted at a near ninety degree angle, sprawled next to him ... and the scattergun...

And his keys.

Five minutes later, Resh was scrambling up the side of the hill, his bare feet sinking into the snow, his body shuddering with cold. His bruises ached and he felt a twinge in his neck that went deep, to the bone. He ignored it – looking around wildly. But the whirling white snow that was filling the mountain pass concealed everything. Soon, even the road that he stood upon was coated in snow and he could see nothing but the fog of his breath. He started to stomp forward – his skinny, gangly body shaking with hypothermia.

“S-Should have ... s-stolen ... his ... fucking coat...” he muttered, stomping forward.

Resh fell to a knee.

And then a light flared before him.

A voice came from the fog.

“Ho! I heard that crash from ten miles off! Come to the lantern!”

Resh forced himself up – and soon, he was standing before a heavily bundled man. The human -for human he was – was dressed in a thick jacket, thick scarf, thick hat, thick coverings, and thick goggles that looked nearly midnight black. His gloves clutched an oil lamp, which provided nearly no warmth. His other hand clutched a curious looking cane – he was not leaning on it, though. He simply held it. Resh grinned, and then said: “You have a house nearby, old man?”

“Oh, I expect I do. Stay close to me, and holler out if you start to lose your way,” the man said, nodding. He started to tap at the ground – and Resh realized something then.

This old coot ... was blind.

Resh followed after him, shuddering. “So, uh, what’s your name, sir?” he asked, trying to sound as human as he could. The man laughed.

“Ray!” he said. “Rayburn Cog!”

The two came upon the cottage well before Resh got frostbite – though it felt like a close run thing to Resh at the time. The snow continued to flurry as Resh took in the view of the cottage: Cluttered with what seemed to be an entire train’s engine worth of gears and cogs, gizmos and gadgets, several of which ticked, clicked and popped and hissed and steamed and bubbled. One of the gadgets that bubbled turned out to have water, water that then was poured into a cup with tea leaves. The man held it out to Resh, who took it sipped.

“So, what’s your name, young gentleman?” Cog asked. Resh grinned.

“Richard,” he said, still using the most human sounding voice he could manage. “Richard Corker.”

Cog smiled.

The blizzard lasted for three days and in those days, Resh learned why Rayburn Cog had decided to seclude himself in the woods. He was fascinated by technological gadgetry, but in the Kingdom of Arland, magick and science both were being put to use by the King for the King’s interest. Rayburn had no interest in making new firearms, or new suits of armor. He had less interest in being directed by the Royal Academy. And so, he had taken himself into the wilderness between the Kingdom of Arland and the burgeoning power of the United Kingdom and wiled away his time, learning as he saw fit.

Upon learning that “Richard” couldn’t read, Rayburn Cog had exclaimed in disgust.

“A bright young lad like you, not knowing how to read? Not under my roof!”

Resh, who had been planning to cut and run once his bruises had healed and the blizzard had faded, found himself given what books weren’t made legible to the blind – half of them were covered in small bumps and indentations that Rayburn Cog proclaimed was the newest invention from Tarant, created by Sir Lanchard Britell, another blind inventor. Using his “britell’ books as a guide, Rayburn taught Resh first how to read, and then how to write. And Resh, to his shock, found something more fascinating than riding a horse, or shooting a gun.

He learned how his gun worked. The chemical properties of gunpowder could be found in one book. Then the history of Tarant in another. While Resh helped Cog put meat on the table more sizable then rabbits caught in snares, Cog showed Resh how to do complex mathematics and then physics problems. The new vistas of learning opened to Resh were as marvelous as they were embarrassing ... embarrassing to think of how much he had simply let coast by. How little he had sought to learn while riding about with the Moribhan gang.

Before Resh knew it, a month had become a year. Then one year became several as he learned, and read, and hunted ... but time, as was its fashion, passed on and one day, while Rayburn and Resh were stomping through the woods and discussing the natural philosophy of decent with modification, Resh had said: “Well, has this Dr. Crenshaw considered the ramifications of magickal forces upon the decent of natural creatures?”

And there had been no response.

Turning, Resh had seen Rayburn, sprawled in the snow, clutching at his chest – and, in a panic, he had cast aside his trusty scattergun and collected up Rayburn Cog. Bringing him back to the cabin, Resh used what little he had learned of the medical arts from reading ... but reading alone was not enough to save a man whose heart had reached the end of its span. Rayburn did not even have a final word to say. He died, without a word, with a faintly surprised expression on his face.

The next day, Resh had buried Ray and stood in awkward silence, not sure which gods to pray to. In the end, he had simply stood in silence as the forest remained as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. It had not even seen fit to rain.

After that moment of silence, Resh had gone within the cabin and considered what to do next. It was while considering this that he had found the old man’s journal. Still a youthful, brash soul, Resh had hesitated not a moment to read, thumbing through the dots and bumps, remembering what he had been taught by the old inventor. And to his shock, Resh learned that, from the start ... Ray had known that Resh had been no “Richard.”

He had always known that Resh was a half-orc.

But he had taught him anyway. Shown him kindness and mercy.

Resh had wept for some time. And when the storms of grief had faded, he had looked about himself, at this simple cabin, at the books collected within, the books he had read a dozen times each. He knew that there was more to the world than this. The vastness of the Morhiban Plains – his homeland – echoed in his mind. He wasn’t tied here ... but Resh Craig was a wanted bandit. And so, Resh had let his beard grow, then shaved it with Rayburn’s straight razor down to an elegant mustache. He had found what coin Rayburn had left for him, an old revolver and several bullets, and an old suit that fit him fairly well.

Thus attired and armed, he stepped up to the wash basin in the cabin and looked at himself in the mirror.

“Hello, sir,” he said to himself. “I’m ... Rayburn Cog.”

A week later, he emerged – ratty and somewhat scruffy – from the woods and into the small town Roseborough. There, he found that his skills at poker had not deserted him, and had quickly won himself a ticket aboard what he had thought was merely some newfangled train or steamship, the Zephyr. Only once he had arrived in Caladon City itself did he see how wrong he had been: With awe, he had stepped aboard the first lighter-than-air flying machine ever constructed. He had watched the ground descend away from himself...

And remembered his mentor by taking a seat at the bar...

And doing some mathematics.

“Bloody hell,” Maggie whispered as I finished my tale. “You’re a bandit.”

“I mean, I was a bandit,” I said, pursing my lips slightly.

“And you’re telling me?” she asked.

“Well, I...” I coughed, somewhat embarrassed. “You already knew, thanks to that bugger Arronax.”

“I just...” Maggie coughed in the darkness, then rested her face against my chest. “I durther thought you’d tell that to Virginia afore me.”