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Richard trudged through Warbeak’s Woods, confident enough that he would soon reach the town of Gorver that he risked walking along the main path. He’d seen no other travelers since morning, and since it was now late afternoon, he took the direct path to hopefully reach civilization before the two moons rose amidst the darkness.
Though the wilderness had fewer prying eyes and questioning lips than civilization, Richard couldn’t bring himself to hide out in the wilds. He briefly wondered about that aversion—there seemed to be more than the fact that he couldn’t tell a ripe, juicy strawberry from the poisonous dragonberry that made one vomit flame before perishing.
It probably was the people. Yes, he risked an elf turning a sharp eye to his face and recognizing him, or a halfling hanging up a wanted poster with his face on it as he came into town. But he’d already lost Helen—maybe being around people kept him from truly processing that, even if he cleared his name, he would be alone in the world.
He’d still have his sister, Donna. She believed the truth he told, even if no one else did. She believed that Richard had left his home to go cool down after a tempest of an argument with Helen, only to return to find her dead, murdered by the one-armed man who’d struck a powerful blow with his single arm before escaping into the night. She believed him, even after the sheriff arrested him, the jury convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to hang.
Richard shivered at the memory of that dragonborn judge, baring his rows of shark-like teeth in a grin as he told Richard to die for killing his wife. He had invoked the twin deities of Reliyan, the goddess of justice, and Augkor, the goddess of the law, as he sentenced him to hang. No one in the courtroom had believed Richard, no one had wanted to see him do anything but dance the hempen jig.
But Richard and Donna were brother and sister—they almost had to rely on each other by the virtue of being related by blood. But Helen had chosen to marry Richard, to be with him over anyone else. That was a wonderful miracle now stained by Helen’s blood, all because Richard couldn’t take his deep, calming breaths at home. Richard had failed her.
But he would fail her more if he succumbed to death. Richard wiped at his face—when did he start crying?—and walked out of the woods. The town of Gorver sat less than a mile away; he could even see the blur that was the statue of the local gryphon hero, Warbeak, that stood in front of the town gates.
Richard took a deep breath and continued forward. He had a one-armed man to find, a wife to avenge, and a name to clear. He was close to being out of coin, so he needed to find a place to work, then leave before the law in the form of that balding cleric caught up.
He couldn’t afford to give up now.
…………………………………………………………………
The cleric known as Gerard rode his black mare at a walk towards Warbeak’s Woods. He didn’t need to exhaust Maraith by galloping or cantering. Let Richard exhaust himself by running; it wouldn’t matter in the end. No matter how far or long Richard ran, Gerard would catch him.
After all, that was why he was called Gerard. His patron goddess, Augkor, had given him that name when he swore the oath—it meant “Relentless” in the divine tongue. He was once Philip, but no longer. Now he was the relentless arm of the law, pursuing fugitives and dragging them back to the gallows.
Gerard’s red and blue robes, the red symbolizing his goddess and blue signifying his law enforcement status in the realms under Queen Gaellar, fluttered without any noticeable breeze. Beneath his helm, his eyes focused on the faint trail of red footsteps glowing along the ground, visible only to one blessed by the goddess of the law in the pursuit of one who would violate her domain.
If Gerard had taken perverse pleasure in his work, he would have smiled to himself. But he was a man of the law, and the law ought to be as impartial, so he did not.
At least, that was his rationale as to why he felt no need to smile.
Instead, he followed the magic trail of his quarry into Warbeak’s Woods.
……………………………………………………………..
Richard found a pay-by-the-day job in the smokingweed fields around the town. Since he fled the gallows during a panic caused by two red dragons battling overhead, he’d never felt quite as comfortable as he did in Gorver, and that realization made his blood chill. That sense of comfort always meant he needed to flee before the light broke on the next day.
Richard toiled next to a halfling named Iwi Duskyhair and a dwarf named Menda Pestcleaver. Menda tossed insults as she squashed bugs and poured an anti-pest potion onto the smokingweed. Iwi teased her back with jests of his own while he watered them and bantered about how good they would be to smoke after they were harvested (unlike completely bonkers items that he would list, such as rocking chairs and lima beans). Richard spread a fertilizing potion in relative silence, though he would smile at the two’s antics.
He’d been there a week, and it was time to move on. Richard would miss most of the people in Gorver, from Hirov the scarred elven barkeep at the Sheep & Eagle to Auminia the gorgeously gold dragonborn tanner who always greeted him whenever they passed on the street. But feeling like he fit in meant it was time for him to move along, to stay as many steps ahead of Gerard as he could, lest that cleric tighten a noose around his neck.
“Oi, Haldard!” Menda’s rough-as-uncut-gems voice sliced through his sad musings, though it took a second to register, as it was the name he would soon change. “Why do you look like a fungus-sniffing tosser called you a spider-kissing cultist?”
“How does that fit with Haldard?” asked Iwi. “I think you’d look mad instead of sad if someone called you that.”
“Haldard’s always solemn,” called out Yorkax the copper dragonborn from further down the row. “He’s probably mourning for whatever serves as your intellect gradually diminishing.”
Menda called him a troll-eating snob while Iwi’s laughter erupted, booming as the church bell at Martyr Calvilk’s. Richard cracked a smile, but he hid it as he poured more of that azure fertilizer on a particularly tall smokingweed.
Faint shrieking came from Gorver proper. Richard froze alongside the other workers.
Yorkax moved first. He lifted his partner, the elf Injros, onto his coppery shoulders. “What do you see?” he bellowed as the others crowded around to look towards town. Richard joined, hoping and praying it wasn’t Gerard, though he couldn’t fathom why Gerard would cause any townsfolk to scream.
Injros gasped. “The children!” He leapt down and raced towards Gorver.
Very unhelpful in terms of figuring out what was causing the screams, but it started the mass of workers running towards the town. Richard joined the throng, though his brain screamed at him to flee the town now, to forget the already-packed bag of patched clothes and rations in his room at the inn. He had coins on him; he could flee and get ahead of any looming disaster before it attracted Gerard’s attention. Cataclysms seemed to bring the cleric surer than a horde of anything being bad news.
But Richard could tell, surer as he gained ground faster than the giant dragonborns and fleet-footed elves, that the screams belonged to children.
He didn’t swear a Healer’s Oath for nothing.
Richard outran them all to Gorver. The screams were coming from the side where Warbeak’s Woods met the town’s boundary, so he dodged people coming out of businesses and darted through the labyrinth of carts in the market square, not looking at the town’s aging gallows. He ran out of the town gates and almost crashed into the children running for aid.
“Mister Haldard! Mister Haldard!” sobbed Yorkax’s niece, Boldissa, as she clutched at him.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Richard asked as he surveyed the scene. “Anyone hurt?” He didn’t see anyone with anything but minor scrapes. Maybe it was a big misunderstanding or a minor accident…
“Nhaena and Veris!” wailed a dwarven lad as he stumbled past. “Where’s healer Menris?”
Richard’s blood ran cold as he spotted the two stragglers, trying desperately to stumble to the gates. Nhaena, the daughter of Injros, and Veris, the son of that golden tanner, were bleeding heavily from gashes on their arms, across their chests, wrapping around their legs.
Fear gripped Richard’s heart and squeezed while his mind dug its claws into his rationale. It yelled run, run while you have a chance to escape! Let anyone but you take care of this!
But Menris was no wizard. She was more witch, with herbal poultices to aid in infected cuts and potions to cure dropsy. This would be well beyond her abilities.
Richard pushed Boldissa towards the gates and ran toward Nhaena and Veris. The little elven lass called out in relief, but Veris glanced over his shoulder, screamed, and fell, dragging Nhaena to the ground with him.
Richard skidded to a stop at the crumpled children. He didn’t see any pursuers, but he had children to worry about. He rolled Veris off Nhaena and quickly assessed their injuries.
Both were badly clawed, but he didn’t know of any creature with claws that slashed this long and wide. The running had made the blood pour, and Nhaena was paling rapidly as sweat fell like a waterfall. With Veris, he couldn’t tell because of the scales, but they felt colder than a gold dragonborn’s should.
Injros shrieked and fell beside Richard, reaching for his daughter, while mothers wailed and fathers screamed for their children.
Richard shoved Injros back and bellowed at him to stay back. Without bothering to roll up his sleeves, Richard shouted his words of power.
“KIMBLE-VALK-INVRIST!”
Richard’s hands glowed black, blacker than shadow on a night without any moons, as black as his eyes glowed. He vaguely heard gasps as he raised his hands above his head, chanting a healing spell that formed as two shadowy balls that sparked with black bolts of lightning. He took one in each hand, rolling them about as he said the incantations and his veins turned black.
“What’s he doing?” asked Iwi.
“Are they dead? Is he necromancing?” Menda shouted.
“He’s a healer-wizard!” shouted Menris.
Richard raised them high again, then slammed them into the children’s chests.
Nhaena and Veris gasped, then their wails turned to shrieks as flesh knitted together under the enchantment. Richard’s spell turned to a prayer to the gods and goddesses of medicine, healing, and magic, and to the various protectors of children.
The magic turned green, as did Richard’s glowing eyes and hands. The bolts of lightning gave one last green zap of power, then died away as the glowing faded.
But the children lived. Veris stared up at Richard in fear and disbelief, while Nhaena touched the fading scars across her bare arms.
“Mister Haldard,” Nhaena whispered, mouth gaping.
“You’ll be okay,” Richard wheezed as Injros scooped Nhaena into his arms and Auminia knelt beside Veris. “You both will be okay.” He bowed his head and rested his burning hands on his knees.
It’d been a while since he’d pulled on such magic with such short notice, and he was feeling it in his lungs, in his arms, in his eyes.
Nhaena screamed.
Richard’s head shot up, and he leapt in front of Veris and Auminia as the creature that had harmed the kids appeared.
It was a hag, and a starving one at that. Through holes in her tattered robes, he could see ribs through the mottled purple skin. That had to be why she was making a suicide charge to kill instead of returning to the woods to fester and wait to try to snatch a victim again.
The vile monster gnashed mold-colored fangs together as she shrieked, “You take my prey! I’ll make you my prey!” She leapt at Richard, her claws reaching for his throat and her thumbs angled at his eyes.
But a blast of red lightning sent her tumbling away from Richard and the others. As Richard watched, terror coursing through his still-blackened veins, the hag stumbled to her feet, spitting pus-colored spittle.
But the horse charging forward and the cleric riding atop it gave no quarter; Gerard sent the lance right through the spot where her miserable heart resided. She garbled out a vulgar oath as he pulled out the lance, then exploded into goo that sizzled in the grass.
Maraith gave no heed to the acidic spray, and neither did Gerard. He turned the black mare to face Richard, impassively staring down at him through his impressive helm. His cape flapped menacingly, despite there being no wind.
Richard tried to say something, but his mouth felt drier than all the deserts in all the realms combined. He barely kept himself from falling to his knees.
“Hello, Richard,” came the grave voice of Gerard. “You have a crime to swing for.”
…………………………………………
The inside of the Gorver jail was not the worst jail Richard had ever been in, but certainly not the best. That title, ironically, went the one he stayed at before being sentenced to dance on a rope.
Richard stared at the stone wall, smoking the last pipe he’d ever have before climbing the scaffold in the morning. The two moons let light in through the barred window, but the soft glow did not abate the dread seizing his stomach, churning it so hard that if a ship dared sail inside, it’d be dashed to the Locker of the Drowned Damned in less than a heartbeat.
Gerard paced outside the cell, one hand always on his sword’s hilt. He glanced at Richard each time he passed, and Richard was getting as sick of it as he was of always running, always trying to continue cheating the hangman, always fearing the time when he would do the way of all flesh. Richard could almost feel the hempen collar bristling at his neck.
Gerard paused outside Richard’s cell, staring in with impersonal eyes as cold as a white dragon’s icy breath. Richard looked up, then away, He puffed at his pipe, but when Gerard continued to stare, he set it aside with a sigh. Richard stood and walked over to the bars and stared the only constant in his life the past two years, the man who wanted to and would drag him to the gallows.
Richard raised an eyebrow at Gerard, who stared deep into his eyes and soul, as if looking for the blot that represented what Gerard believed Richard did to Helen.
“You must wonder how I keep finding you.”
Richard snorted. “Magic.”
Gerard frowned. “Besides that.”
Richard thought for a moment. “Goddess gift?”
Gerard nodded. “It’s how I always find you. You cannot run forever. I will always find you, even if you pull off one of your miraculous escapes. There’s no way out, except for you to accept your punishment and hang.”
“A gift from Augkor or Reliyan or both?” Richard asked.
Gerard flinched, then pretended he hadn’t. “Augkor. You violated the law when you killed your wife.”
Richard’s temper flared inside, but it cooled as he thought over the cleric’s words. “Not Reliyan? Where’s the Lady of Justice in this? Who does she see as Helen’s killer?”
Gerard glared at him. “She has her sister speak for her.”
Richard nodded. “Reliyan doesn’t speak to you. No omens, no dreams, nothing.”
Gerard didn’t deny it, but his smoldering glare at something beyond Richard spoke for him. “The law is good enough. I don’t need an omen from Reliyan to find you.”
Richard moved his face so Gerard had to stare the man he would hang right in the eyes. “You know, Gerard, I think there’s a reason Reliyan and you don’t talk. She knows you no longer serve her, and you’re afraid she’ll tell you I’m the reason why.”
Gerard’s face flushed with fury, but there was an element of fear in his eyes that told Richard he’d struck in the right spot. Gerard turned and paced away, but Richard called out, “I know I’m innocent. What about you?”
Gerard did not return to retort, though he had no need to. Someone knocked on the entry door to the jail, and that took both men’s attention away.
Gerard’s hand clenched tighter onto his hilt and called, “Who goes here?”
“We want to say goodbye,” came Injros’s voice, “to our friend, who saved our children.”
“Enter,” growled Gerard, throwing a glare Richard’s way.
Iwi, Menda, Injros, and Auminia came inside. They had nothing with them, no weapons or potions, and Gerard relaxed as much as that man seemed to, which meant his grip on his hilt slackened a hairsbreadth.
Richard had never seen Iwi look so sorrowful, nor Menda look so subdued. Injros couldn’t look him in the eye and Auminia had no smiles to share.
“Hald... Richard,” Auminia said, wincing at her own correction.
Richard nodded, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t sure if he should comfort him, or any goodwill they felt towards him died when Gerard told them he was a fugitive, and what the law said he did to Helen.
Iwi started to lean against the bars, but a stern glare from Gerard made him back away, “So, you’re riding a horse foaled by an acorn in the morn.”
It took Richard a minute to decipher that archaic phrase. “Looks like my number is up.” He offered a shaky half-smile, then lost it as the words sunk into his own soul. This was it. He would die in the morning. The one-armed man would continue to live his life with impunity, and Helen would be unavenged in death. He felt tears prick his eyes as hopelessness pressed against his chest.
“May I sing a song? It’s an old thing that my people would sing before going into battle,” Menda asked. “We did a lot of suicide charges in the day against the elves—no offense, Injros.”
“We have similar songs from yore,” Injros said. “Songs of fighting dwarves, fighting humans, fighting orcs, fighting fate…”
“Sure?” Richard said.
Menda took a deep breath and began to bellow out a tune in the harsh, consonant-filled language of the dwarves. Richard had no idea how this song he couldn’t even understand was supposed to help him.
Until Auminia grabbed both of Gerard’s wrists with one hand and wrapped another around his mouth.
Iwi leapt at Gerard’s feet, holding them down as he tried to kick. Auminia held him steady as he vainly struggled to worm his hands free. A sudden spasm of pain across the visible part of his face suggested he’d tried to bite down on the scaled hand and learned why not to.
“Don’t kill him!” whispered Richard.
“Not that suicidal,” Injros said with a sad smile. He grabbed the necklace around Gerard’s neck and yanked. Gerard let out a muffled curse, but Injros came away with a broken chain and the cell’s key on it.
Menda continued to bellow her war song, now clapping her hands along.
Injros unlocked the cell door. Richard stood there, staring.
“Hurry!” hissed Auminia.
“But—”
“Might as well be hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb,” Iwi said. “Sorry, that was insensitive of me.”
“We’ll get time for this, but when our sentences are over, I can go home to my Nhaena, and Auminia to her Veris,” Injros said. “Head out the back; there’s a good steed waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” Richard said. “Thank you!”
“Thank us by going,” Auminia said, and Menda and Iwi nodded.
Richard turned and ran to the back door. From the direction of the stables, he could hear Maraith neighing in rage. He didn’t have long to escape.
Hirov, the elven barkeep with the badly scarred face, stood in the shadows with a mighty chestnut gelding. “Gods be with you, Richard, wherever you go.”
“Thank you,” Richard said as he swung into the saddle. “I’ll go anywhere to find that one-armed bastard.”
Hirov blinked. “One armed? Was he an elf?”
“Yes, I saw the points on his ears. Why?”
Hirov frowned. “When I adventured with the Grey Geese, I met an elven adventurer called Fred. He lost his arm to an owlbear, and the rights to a better name when he killed an innocent man. I haven’t seen him since he escaped from Harlyburly Prison, in Princess Tykipp’s realm.”
Richard’s heart fluttered, and not just from fear and the chance at escaping for another night. It fluttered from hope, hope that he might one day stop running, that he may one day bring the one-armed man to justice.
“Thank you, Hirov. May the gods bless you.”
“May they bless you, too. Especially Reliyan. Now get out of here!”
Richard spurred the gelding onwards and rode out of Gorver. He didn’t know how long he’d have before Gerard retrieved Maraith and followed, how long he would have to chase this “Fred” down, but hope spurred the fugitive onwards.
It was all he could do.