Arc 1: Chapter 12: The Hungry Dead
We faced each other in silence, me and those three killers, as the night grew older and the nearly lambent mist coiled around our legs.
It was one of Vaughn’s cronies who broke that silence. “Looks more like a bear than a jackal, vice-captain. Big fucker.”
“Lot of meat on him,” the other lackey said, eyeing me with an uncomfortably hungry attention.
“Not enough fat,” the first said. “These vagabond types never eat right, makes them too tough. Too thin.” He clicked his teeth together. They were big, yellow teeth, and made an audible snap as they met.
“Now now, boys.” Vaughn had a more reserved expression than the other two, a more relaxed posture, but his gaze held a similar tint of tension, like a starved hound taught at its master’s leash. “Funny, but we were just coming to have a chat with you, stranger. It’s mighty indulgent of you to save us the walk.”
My hand flexed for the axe hidden under my cloak. I kept it hung on a metal ring, easy to get into my hand, but the cloak was in the way and I’d have to be fast. I didn’t draw just yet. Once I did, there would be no going back. “What can I say,” I said, matching the mercenary leader’s lazy Corelander drawl. “I hate it when anyone goes out of their way for me.”
Vaughn snorted. He didn’t do anything so cocky as flourish his sword — a heavy, short blade of simple dark steel with a distinctly archaic design. It was very well used judging by the nicks and scratches along its weathered surface. He held it low in one heavy fist, slightly in front of him and ready to come up into a guard with an easy movement. The other two hadn’t drawn their weapons, but their hands lingered on the swords sheathed at their hips.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” Vaughn said. “We just have some questions about the old man you arrived with. Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll go somewhere warmer to chat? You can be back at the Cymrian with a full tankard of mead within the hour. My word of honor on it.”
“Right,” I said. “Because I’d trust the honor of a ghoul.”
Vaughn went very still. Too still, which made sense — he didn’t need to breathe. How I hadn’t sensed the true nature of the mercenaries earlier, I didn’t know. My powers allowed me to feel the presence of Creatures of Darkness, but it wasn’t a perfect awareness. I hadn’t been looking for them, for one thing, and the stagnant atmosphere of the marshland had dulled my senses, given me a general air of paranoia while also muffling the true natures of those who inhabited it.
I’d been trained to be wary in places like this. Too often in history had Alder Knights, and other champions, ventured into environs more suited to their adversaries and found what blessings they had — be they artifacts or innate abilities — weakened or even nullified. The witch hunter who found his quarry seeming no more threatening than a young woman living in the woods, only to end up in her cauldron. The paladin who didn’t sense the fiendish thing lurking in his own shadow because the twisted labyrinth about him was so full of the echoes of horror.