A shabby assortment of heaped stones masquerading as a townsprawled across the forest path. A substantial settlement had apparently been razed to the ground and then rebuilt by people big on enthusiasm but small on engineering skills. There were hundreds of shabby tents and lean-tos in the shelter of the older ruins. The sign outside the village had been painted upon an old, scarred shield. It read: SOUR PATCH. GOOD FOOD AND LICKER.
The village had been cobbled together out of rotten canvas and old scrap. Bark huts half tumbled into open sewers, and hundreds of dispirited peasants shuffled down the dirty streets. More and more people were arriving, all of them ashen, dressed in rags, and carrying everything they owned upon their backs. Long lines formed at wagons that were dispensing bread and gruel. Children were crying, and the air stank of human misery.
The streets seemed overcrowded with the hungry and the poor. A gibbet hung empty at the center of the village, attended by two guards with rusted armor and faces redolent of brutal stupidity.
As the Justicar stood looking at the squalid, crowded camp, a figure bowed down with wood trudged close nearby. Dropping his load, the newcomer looked from Jus to the village and back again.
“Don’t go, friend!”
Jus looked at him and asked, “Where?”
“Sour Patch.” The woodcutter had a donkey, and the donkeycarried a hundredweight in fresh cut wood. “Bad luck. Don’t stop. Turn back.”
“And go into the woods?”
“No. Turn back to Keoland!” The woodcutter gave Jus a sharplook of panic. “You mean you came through the woods?”
“From the coast.”
“Friend, you’re mad.” The man worked solidly to make a pileof timbers. “I’m here because the baron paid me. He paid me because the kingpaid him. We’re running supplies here to the refugees. If they’re fool enough tosettle here, then they have to have a chance.”
Standing and carefully looking over the crowded shantytown, Jus fingered his sword. “Refugees from what?”
“Raids. Something’s been clearing out all the villages in theriver valley, sweeping them clean. No one left. No warning. No trail. It’s likethe gods just up and took ’em.” The woodcutter finished his work and wrenchedhis donkey around. “Everyone’s fled the valleys. Some merchants offered freeland to refugees, but no one thought to ask em where the land might be. But the Dreadwood…!” The man looked at the forest and shook his head. “Even thevalley’s better than that! Only a fool goes near the Dreadwood.”
He made to leave. Jus extended one big hand and held the donkey’s bridle. “What’s wrong with the Dreadwood?”
“Cursed. Bad luck. Was never meant for mortal man. It’s ahaunted wood. People see things in there. People disappear.” Agitated, thewoodcutter looked in fear at the trees. “Five, six years ago, giants wiped outall the villages, killed everything that moved! Now it’s happening again, youmark my words! Bad luck in the Dreadwood.” The man wrenched his donkey free fromthe ranger’s grasp. “Bad luck!”
The woodcutter left, fleeing down the road at the best speed his little donkey could manage. Emerging from her hiding place in Polk’s cart,Escalla rubbed thoughtfully at her little freckled nose as she watched the woodcutter depart.
“What was he drinking?”
“I don’t know.” Jus hitched his belt. “Someone’s running thiscamp as a scam, maybe trying to repopulate some junk land. Keep a lookout for trouble.”
Half-orcs and slovenly humans kept watch over the refugees. The guards ate meat and drank wine while refugees lined up for stale bread. Jus took one look at the village and seemed to swell with predatory energy.
“Cinders?”
Magic. Cinders’ fur lay low, and his fangs shone evilly.Old food. Raw hides. Smelly stuff. Hot iron. Half-orcs. Bugbears. Ogre-stink. And elfie-pixie.
“Elves?” The Justicar used his thumb to loosen his sword inits sheath. “Keep your eyes open. There’s work to do.”
Choosing invisibility as her best option for sneakiness, Escalla hovered in the air nearby. “Keoland looks like a good place to be wellaway from. What’s that awful smell?”
Jus shrugged. “Half-orcs, ogres, bugbears, raw hides, hotiron, an open sewer, and some elves or pixies.”
“Elves?”
“That’s what Cinders says.”
The Justicar felt the faerie giving a happy shrug.
“Hoopy! Well, he should know.” The girl’s wings buzzed. “Anyidea where we look to find our shapeshifting spies from this morning?”
“If they’re here, we can find them.” Huge and brooding, Jusscanned the streets. “Stay invisible. You can rest in the backpack if you needto.” Jus settled the hell hound into place upon his helm. “Are you all right,Cinders?”
Burn! Burn!
“Later. Don’t annoy the locals until we have to.”
Jus turned around, but Polk’s wagon already stood abandonedat the edge of the road. Moving at an astonishing rate, Polk had already mounted the steps of a rubble pile that masqueraded as the local tavern. Ignoring the sounds of a fight from inside, Polk tightened his belt, slapped his hands together, and rubbed his palms in glee.
Jus gave a heavy ursine growl. “Polk!”
The teamster turned, incredulous that the others were not following him to the tavern. “Son, it’s a tavern!”
“Polk, we are not here to drink!”
“But it’s a den of iniquity, boy!” Appalled, Polk waved hishands in the air like a maddened bird. “We can’t just pass it by! Dens ofiniquity are part of being a hero! Here’s where you defend a maid, find a clue,buy a treasure map, start a brawl…! Think of the possibilities!”
“Polk, the only adventures that ever start in taverns areusually ones that involve puking or collecting genital lice.” Jus tied the wagonin place and took a long, hard look at passersby, making sure they knew that he would remember their faces. Glowered at by a six foot tall man wearing a hell hound skin, most pedestrians elected to walk hurriedly away. “We are going infor one drink while we skim for information.” Jus sniffed the scent of roastingmeat and gave a prim lift of his chin. “And perhaps a bite of something savory.”
“And then a fight?”
“One fight per day is enough.”
Jus shouldered his way in through a door made from an old blanket. As he passed, Polk gave an unhappy sigh. “That boy has no idea of howto be a hero. It just ain’t in him.”
Escalla’s voice laughed from empty air. “He gets the jobdone.”
“I tell him again and again! It ain’t what you do,it’s how.” Polk swept the blanket aside to allow Escalla to pass. “Youknow, it’s high time that boy took a grip on his responsibilities!”
The Sour Patch tavern sold only two types of food: raw andburned. The beer smelled like old laundry, but Polk drank it nonetheless. Escalla contented herself with lounging inside the Justicar’s backpack as it satbeneath the table. The ranger’s wineskin had yielded a last few drops of decentbeer, and there were still sweets aplenty. The girl reclined with her little feet crossed and her arms behind her head, thinking sly, warm little thoughts as she watched the Justicar.
Jus loomed at the bar, shaking down the locals for information. This was where the guards lived and drank. Teamsters bringing food to the shantytown and sharks keen to fleece refugees of their cash all came here to spend their coin. The crowd was loud, the room smoky, and the jokes were rich with filth.
A half-orc seemed to be giving Jus trouble-probably not thebest choice the half-orc had made in his career. The Justicar’s patience wasremarkable but would eventually wear thin. Enjoying the interval between the disappearance of rational, talkative Jus and the appearance of wrath-of-the-gods Jus, Escalla smiled.
The ranger had an endearing habit of tugging his grim persona about himself like a cloak. He enjoyed it like an actor living for a good role in a play, but from time to time, Jus could be persuaded to drop the facade, and then a rather interesting man began to emerge. Escalla had rolled onto her belly amidst the warm depths of the backpack, when quite suddenly a hand began groping at her rear.
Escalla jerked away, whirled about, and scowled.
A hand had snuck into the backpack. The hand was attached to an arm, and the arm had somehow ended up affixed to a pimple-smothered thief with protruding teeth. The thief groped about in the backpack, looking for anything valuable, and kept himself hidden under the table.
Escalla gave an amused little smile. She watched the groping hand, cracked her knuckles loudly, and then went to work.
Working carefully and with his eyes peering under the table toward the Justicar, the thief frowned as something touched his wrist and then jerked tight. He scowled, looked down at the backpack, then almost expired as he saw that the bag now had evil eyes and horribly sharp teeth.
With a noise like a whip crack, a long, rough, rope-like tongue wrapped around his arm, holding it in place. Talking with its mouth full, the bag gave an evil little roar. “Me magic bag of gnawing! Now me feed! Feedgood!”
Serrated fangs gleamed, the thief screamed, and quite suddenly a flash of magic sparkled in the air. With a bang, a weasel appeared beside the terrified thief. The weasel wrung its paws and pranced in concern.
“Don’t move! One wrong twitch and pow! It’ll rip yourarm off!” The weasel moved to hastily survey the thief’s arm. “It’s all right.I’m the magic wishing weasel. I’ve got the bag held in a spell. Don’t make anysudden moves, and you might get out of this alive.”
Pale with fright, the thief held his arm rigid, the bag’stongue holding him trapped. He stared at the backpack’s fangs in fright.“M-magic wishing weasel?”
“Well, you wished for a way out of this, right?” The weaselopened up its front paws. “So what are you complaining about? I happened to bepassing, so I’m on the job… unless you want me to go?” The weasel snapped itsfingers, and instantly the backpack roared and yanked the thief’s arm deeperinto its maw.
The thief gave a pathetic bleat of fright. “No! Stay! Justget it off me! Get it off!”
“Sure! Fine!” The weasel clicked its fingers again, and thesnarling backpack subsided. The magic wishing weasel leaped onto the thief’sfrozen arm and inspected the backpacks hairy tongue.
“Hmm. All right. Simple to fix. You’ve got one hand free,right?”
“You want me to cut the bag?” The thief groped hastily for aknife. “Fine!”
“No!”The weasel hurriedly waved its paws. “You’ll enrage it!No, in a case like this, you have to make use of natural strategy.”
“Natural strategy?”
“Trust me, kid. I’m a weasel.”
Traveling in a sinuous round-about route, the weasel ended up upon the thief’s shoulder. It tapped its paws together and gave a brief flip ofits tail.
“All right, kid. We have to make nature work for you,not against you.”
The bag shifted its grip, trembling as if about to break its restraining spell, and the thief swallowed in fright. “Magic weasel, help me!”
“All right, kid, now listen.” The weasel looked down at thethief’s bulging purse then stood aside. “I’ve got it held for a while. To escapethe bag, you have to trigger its gag reflex, but not by putting a hand or a tool in there! Oh no. That thing senses anything big in there, and it’ll rip your armright outta its socket!” Drawing a brief sketch in the dust, the weaselchattered on. “There’s one patch at the back of its throat that can trigger thegag reflex. You have to hit it with something heavy-something small, dense, andsolid-to make it spit out your arm.”
The thief immediately threw an empty beer stein into the backpack. The magic weasel gave a tired sigh. “No. Something small and heavy. Very small,very dense.” The weasel rapped on the thief’s head. “You understand dense,yeah?”
“What?”
“Nothing. You want brains, don’t come to the Flanaess.”Sketching out a diagram in midair, the weasel tried to educate the thief. “Look.There’s a little tiny slot at the bottom of the bag. All you do is drop littleheavy things in there in the hope they’ll go through the slot. Little flat heavythings-small, flat, round, heavy things.”
The thief blinked cluelessly, and the weasel gave a snarl. “Look! Just drop coins into the bag, or it’ll nibble your knuckles off!”
Fumbling in haste, the thief grabbed for his purse, undid the drawstrings with his teeth, and sent a tumble of gold coins spilling down into the backpack’s toothy mouth. The carnivorous backpack scowled, mumbled, thensuddenly gave a great cough. Feeling his arm held in a briefly loosened grip, the thief jerked his hand free. He immediately threw himself as far away from the backpack as possible.
Frustrated, the backpack gnashed its fangs and grumbled. Meanwhile, the wishing weasel slapped the panting thief on the back in congratulations.
“There you are! Free as a bird!” Grinning, the weasel beganto prod the thief out from under the table. “Now go on. Scram! Off you go.Borrow some money, have a drink to celebrate, and maybe consider a change in career.”
Pale with fright, the thief still had eyes only for the gnashing backpack.
“Th-thank you, magic wishing weasel!” The man withdrew intothe tavern light. “How can I repay you?”
“All in a day’s work, kid! No need to thank me. Just naffoff!” The weasel suddenly bit its lip and scuttled closer. “But if anyone was toask-say, just for arguments sake, if a really big shaven headed guy in blackarmor wearing a hell hound skin-if a guy like that asked what happened toyour money, you’d say that you chose to put it in the backpack, right?”
The thief rubbed his bruised wrist in fright and said, “Right!”
“Great, kid. Now scram!” The weasel crept onto the tablebeside an incredulous Polk. “Nice kid, but a brain the size of a peppercorn.”
Polk looked at Escalla the weasel in confusion and asked, “Was that boy a thief?”
“Nah. He came to make a donation. I think we must have madeabout fifty gold pieces outta him.” Escalla dropped her illusion spell from thebackpack, which returned to being a plain old leather pack. The “tongue” of thebeast-a disreputable length of chord-was stuffed back into the darkness of thepack. Escalla shifted back into her usual form and rummaged about inside the backpack to find her discarded clothes.
She was tugging her leggings into place when a heavy presence made itself known outside her sanctuary.
“Escalla?”
“It was an unsolicited gift!” Escalla jammed her head out ofthe bag to face the Justicar. “Ask him! He gave it to us on his own initiative!”
Jus squatted on his heels beside the backpack and scowled. “What?”
“Oh. Nothing.” The faerie saw Jus’ look of confusion andgave a nervous twiddle of her wings. “Nothing at all! Did you get anyinformation?”
“Enough to know we don’t want to eat whatever that is cookingover the fire.” Jus slowly cracked the knuckles of his left fist. “This townneeds justice.”
“Well, I’ve been redressing the balance and doing my bit.”Escalla finished tugging her long leggings onto her feet and wriggled her elegant bare toes. “So, are we staying or going?”
“Going.” Jus tried not to breathe the tavern stink. “Theseare lower level predators. The disaster in the valley’s giving them the chanceto prey on these refugees.” The man’s face was a shadow beneath the jet blackhell hound skin. “Kill the head, and the body has to die.”
The Justicar swung the pack onto his back, and Escalla stayed inside for the ride. Above her, Cinders’ tall ears stood proud. With her handsfolded behind her head, Escalla wriggled on her bed of misappropriated gold and sighed.
“That’s the man!”
Walking heavily through the tavern, Jus heard the excited yell from the door ahead. He stopped and saw a skinny, pimple-smothered man backed up by four huge half-orcs dressed in rusted armor. The leader of the armored brutes seemed strangely hunched and bestial. Part bugbear or part ogre, he had a skin covered in scabs.
The smaller man swelled in righteous fury and roared, “Thatman there! He has a carnivorous backpack! He uses it to extort people!” Thethief waved his hand. “He’s in league with the Takers! He’s here to scoutfor the pale lady!”
The four half-orcs instantly started forward. Polk immediately took a big step to one side, carrying himself away from the Justicar as he opened up his chronicles and dug out a fresh pen. Behind him, the whole tavern crowd arose. At least twenty thugs, mercenaries, brigands, and rogues surged to their feet.
Jus walked toward the huge, misshapen figure of the senior guard. The big ranger scratched his stubbled chin and scowled. “Who’s the palelady?”
“She runs the Takers! She clears the valleys.” The half-orchissed and flexed its claws. Yelling to his men, the guard began to draw a scimitar. “They’re Takers! Hang ’em!”
Jus felled the beast with a lightning fast left jab. The half-orc flew backward into his men, sending weapons flying and armor clattering.
Another soldier grabbed his comrades by the shoulder and hurled them to the floor.
“Down!”
The half-orcs threw themselves flat. Behind them stood two more bestial soldiers, each leveling a crossbow straight toward the Justicar. Fangs spread into grins as the men swung their weapons onto target.
Cinders’ huge teeth gleamed.
Hello!
Flame blasted through the doorway, slamming the crossbowmen back into the street. Cinders’ flames sheeted across the half-orcs on thefloor. The hell hound screeched in happy bloodlust as screams filled the air.
Burn! Burn!
A sword hissed toward Jus’ head. The big man ducked andlanded a massive kick into the swordsman’s guts, folding him in two.
Inside the tavern, men scattered aside in terror as Cinders’nostrils trailed little flames. One man hammered a spell at the Justicar, a charm spell that twisted aside from the shielding influence of the ranger’smagic ring. Jus strode forward with a roar, and tavern goers scattered and fled out the back door.
Escalla popped her head out of Jus’ backpack, looking towardthe open street. She paused for one thoughtful moment, then opened up her hands and molded an arc of sizzling electricity between her palms. She sped the spell through the door. A lightning bolt flashed into being just outside the doorway, sizzling perpendicularly left and right. Unseen voices screamed and wailed. Escalla dusted off her hands, having eliminated an ambush party waiting just outside the doors.
Flattened against one tavern wall was the thief. The man quaked in terror as he stared at Escalla and the Justicar. He took one long look at Escalla, shook his head in absolute terror, and slid to the ground with his eyes rolling upward in a faint.
Unused to her beauty being so sadly reviled, Escalla dusted off the smoking palms of her hands and said, “Next time, just listen to yourfriendly neighborhood weasel!”
The tavern seemed deserted. Escalla flew out of the backpack and went to search her victims for loose change.
“Are we done yet? I hate taverns like this!”
Jus shook his stinging left hand. The half-orc’s jaw had feltlike it had been drop-forged out of steel.
“Let’s go.”
“Sure. Just a bit!” Escalla surfaced from amidst a pile ofsmoking half-orcs. “Hey! A gold tooth! You got any pliers?”
“Escalla…”
“Your dagger will do in a pinch.”
“Escalla!”
“Just kidding!” The faerie waved her hands in innocence.“Lighten up! We came, we saw, he toasted butt-just another typical day.”
Jus snared her by the wings and dragged the girl outside.
“Let’s get moving before their pale lady takes an interest.”The ranger shot a look at Polk, who was taking a hasty body count. “Polk,move.”
Jus strode onto a street that now seemed deserted. A last few people were fleeing into their homes. Jus threw Polk into the wagon and wrenched the mule into motion, whacking the creature into a trot and running heavily alongside.
Still busy with his books, Polk totted up numbers and beamed in delight. “Not bad, son! Not bad!” Polk tried to make a note in his ledger. “Imake it sixteen at least!”
Jus clung onto the mule’s mane as he lumbered down the road.“Shut up and drive the cart.”
Polk closed his book with a loud bang. “One punched, onekicked, six burned, and eight fried.”
Escalla clung onto the sides of the cart, her hair streaming in the breeze. “And one just kinda fainted!”
“So that’s seventeen!”
Jus looked back over his shoulder and said, “Polk, what areyou doing now?”
“Keeping score! Every group of heroes has to have a score!”