Theo named the kitten Star, after the star-shaped white patch on its forehead, and carried his new discovery back to the ship, where he hoped the other gnomes would be waiting. Unfortunately, in his search for the saber-toothed cat’s lair, Theo had missed out on the rare opportunity to be eaten alive by a ferocious manticore. The other gnomes were all dead, and he had no idea how to pilot the corkscrew ship back home.
A gnome is never without a spot of ingenuity even if it falls outside of his field of expertise. Within twenty-four hours, and with Star helpfully fending off any further attacks by manticores (who would have guessed that manticores are terrified of saber-toothed kittens?) he was off again. The ship was incredibly complicated, in the gnome fashion, but Theo was determined. Weeks later, he reached what he hoped was the coast of Sancrist, just in time for the boat’s corkscrew to grind out of its threading.
It wasn’t Sancrist, of course. Theodenes had piloted the ship straight past Sancrist, through the western isles and right into the southeast coast of Southern Ergoth. He and Star escaped the vessel, which was hopelessly beached upon the sand, and subsequently managed to wander into ogre lands. The ogres, residents of the ruined city of Daltigoth, chased Theodenes and Star for days; the hill giant Thunderbane, son of the ogre city’s dictator, Stormogre, made it his mission to destroy the gnome and his cat for any number of imagined crimes that Theo was never certain about.
When Theodenes finally ran into Vanderjack’s Band, he was tired, hungry, exhausted from running, and desperate for help. Vanderjack offered his services, or rather, offered Theo a position in his band. That appealed to Theo, who was, after all, in the martial weapon business, and so began a three-month stint as a mercenary, scout, and freebooter.
It didn’t matter that there didn’t appear to be any Treasure of Huma or that, even if there had been, a band of heroes from the mainland had managed to do all the interesting things at Huma’s Tomb instead. Theo was sure becoming a mercenary was going to lead to bigger and better things.
Theo began to get worried when, fleeing from more ogres and dragons, Vanderjack admitted he didn’t have any money to pay Theo for his services. For added insult, Vanderjack was revealed to be a drunk, his entire band turned out to be shapeshifting sivak draconians, and Star was horribly murdered. Theo returned from a scouting trip to discover all of that. He had never known such bitterness, anger, and frustration in his entire life.
“Theo?” asked Gredchen, interrupting Theo’s reverie.
“Yes?” he responded, blinking a couple of times to remember where he was.
“You’ve been amazingly quiet. What were you thinking about?”
Theodenes looked back at the ugly woman, marveling at how her hair did nothing at all for her. He wondered if she had any idea just how bad Vanderjack was and what he had done; trouble seemed to follow the sellsword everywhere he went.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing whatsoever.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vanderjack was surrounded by corpses.
It had stopped raining. Pentar’s shocked residents stared at the bloody carnage in the street, at the dragonarmy uniforms, and at the sellsword standing in the middle of it all. They didn’t notice the dead cook lying at Vanderjack’s feet, a nondescript and pale-featured, slightly overweight corpse that could have been anybody; they were all staring at the bodies of the officer and his men. Vanderjack, however, was staring at the body of Etharion Cordaric.
His sword had fallen from his hand shortly after he drew it out of Etharion and Captain Annaud. Both men had crumpled to the blood-soaked cobblestones, each with his own look of shock permanently fixed across his face. Without the sword, Vanderjack had no ghosts. He didn’t notice.
The sellsword came to his senses when one of the onlookers came up to him and prodded his arm with a broom, perhaps to determine for himself if the man was actually alive and not a statue or merely an upright corpse. Vanderjack jerked away from the touch of the broom, spun about, and knocked it away with his mailed hand.
“Ackal’s Teeth!” he cursed. “Back off and leave me alone!”
The other man held up his hands, backing slowly away. “Seaguard’s going to be here soon, hombo,” the man said, in the local Nordmaaran patois. “Jamba trouble you start. Nobody they like the Red Scale Men, but this mess …” He gestured around at the panorama of death. “Know what I mean, gabeej?”
Vanderjack rubbed at his bare scalp and recovered his breath. He was astounded that the man was so calm and full of sensible advice. It spoke much of Pentar that its folk were inured to the possibility of such violence and more concerned with keeping disturbances quiet.
“Gabeej,” Vanderjack said, repeating the local word for understanding. “Sorry about this.” He looked down at Etharion’s body. It was a completely unintended development.
Sure that he would regret it, Vanderjack bent down and retrieved Lifecleaver from the ground. The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the Sword Chorus materialized around him, filling his senses.
“You killed an innocent!” said the Apothecary.
“In all the time we have been with you, you’ve never been this reckless,” said the Aristocrat.
“You are losing your edge,” said the Cavalier.
“If he ever had it without us,” said the Conjuror.
“Annaud was too quick. And you weren’t fast enough,” Vanderjack muttered. “Why pick this time to be so slow off the mark?”
“Don’t place the blame on us!” the Cavalier said, angry.
“You were aware of Annaud’s skill,” the Hunter said.
“You knew how well he could fight,” the Aristocrat added.
Vanderjack shoved the sword into its sheath, dismissing the ghosts. He briefly poked at the cook’s body to see if there was anything to be salvaged from it then looked at the dead Captain Annaud.
A dragonarmy officer carries only enough on his person to get by, a testament to Ariakas’s executive talents, but the heyday of the dragon emperor’s influence was long gone. The remaining highmasters, flight marshals, and captains were swiftly becoming independent, following their greed or ambition without guidance. Captain Annaud seemed to be one of those, a self-styled celebrity in his part of the world. He was technically serving under Highmaster Cairn, which meant there was even more direct influence from the late Ariakas, but Rivven had a broad region to command, and Annaud was frequently out of her sight.
Annaud was wearing amazingly well-crafted armor, tooled leather and scale mail with no stains, signs of wear, or degradation. With the skill and speed of a seasoned looter, the sellsword drew Annaud’s knife from the dead man’s belt, cut a number of critical straps, and hauled the bulk of the armor from the body in less than a minute.
The people in the street, who had until that point stayed clear, seemed to be offended at his carefree looting of a dead body. Several of them ran off to call the Seaguard, while others rushed up to interfere with Vanderjack’s actions. The sellsword looked up and brandished the knife threateningly, driving them off; when he was done gathering the armor together, he pushed his way out of the crowd without further trouble.
Vanderjack ducked down a side street and located a large sack on a pile outside the rear entrance to an off-street eating house that smelled strongly of hops and barley. He dumped the armor into the sack, tied the end with a length of cord he kept on his person, and left the alleyway with the sack over his shoulder as if nothing had happened. On the way, he wiped at his own armor and sleeves, cleaning off blood and grime; he doubted he would be stopped on the street, but it didn’t hurt to present an innocent appearance.