If there was one upside to meeting the mad Grynkori, it was that I still got to sleep under an actual roof that night. He didn’t, mind. No, for some reason he opted to rent out the cellar of the tavern. Fortunately that was none of my concern, and I spent the night resting upon a mattress with blankets over me.

  Compared to my feather bed at home, they were cheap and hard things. That didn’t matter. Heaven, they felt like, all the same. It was just hard to feel underwhelmed at all when your only competition was a few days spent curled up on hard dirt.

  Morning came to ruin it like always, though, and I hauled myself downstairs, hungry again. My body ached and stung all over from the flight, and more than that it had several parts that were stuck with a harsher pain where I’d taken more serious injury. I still wasn’t sure how I’d even moved, having them looked at by the town barber-surgeon, and neither was he.

  “This right here is a stab going inches deep!” the man exclaimed, seeming almost hesitant to even touch me as if in fear I’d spontaneously drop dead on the spot, “by God man, how did you have it treated before!?”

  “I didn’t,” I told him slowly, “I only just now had the chance to even see you.”

  He shook his head at that, whispering something about the idiocy of youth, but stitched it up at least. Didn’t do anything at all for the pain or mobility, but he told me I’d heal faster for the treatment. At the time I didn’t actually believe him, nothing like a merchant-class upbringing to be randomly sceptical of everything anyone tells you regardless of their wealth of expertise and your lack.

  In any case, I ended up getting myself stitched and it was the mad Grynkori’s coin that saw it happen. He grumbled after, of course, complaining long and loud about ‘fragile human skin’ as we walked. It was only then that a question occurred to me.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him. He spat at his feet.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  That about set the tone of our association. We didn’t leave the town instantly, either, because the mad Grynkori had been there for a reason. I found this out as he started walking around it, questioning people. As it turned out, this questioning consisted of grumpily menacing them and asking extremely pointed and fear-inducing inquiries about something, or someone, living in the nearby woods. Not a one of these got particularly helpful answers, or at least not that I could tell. They were all obvious superstitious crap, and apparently the Grynkori wasn’t happy with them either.

  “I don’t understand why you’re even bothering to ask,” I groaned after something like the tenth.

  “My job is to kill monsters,” the Grynkori growled, “thing with monsters is they’re actually hard to kill. If I run in half-cocked and get into a fight I’m not prepared for, chances are it will kill me, and that helps nobody.”

  Except the poor sod stuck travelling with you, I petulantly thought.

  “What even is a monster? What do you just walk around hacking the heads off bears?”

  The look he gave me was quite deserved, and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  “No,” the Grynkori grunted, “I mean the sorts of monsters you ran into a few days ago, and then spent all the time until now crying about.”

  It was a well-aimed blow that landed exactly where he’d meant it to, my pride.

  “Fuck you,” I growled. The Grynkori met my eye, stared at me.

  “Want to say that again?” He snarled. I took a mad step forwards and let a hand rest on the hilt of my new sword.

  “Fuck. You.”

  For a moment, we were locked in the staring match. I had time to consider the implications of my actions, think about whether or not I really wanted to get into a fight with a man possessing twice my muscle-mass and who apparently beat large animals to death for a living. The tension between us could not have been cut for a knife, because mere steel would have blunted itself in the attempt.

  Finally, the Grynkori grunted and just continued ahead.

  “Not getting paid to kill you,” he mumbled. I, still with no better options, followed after him.

  I’d finally been given chance to really consider what had happened to me at this stage, the constant frenzy of flight and fight and near-death having receded enough to allow room for true thought.

  What exactly did I have to look forward to in the future, from here on out? My whole life I’d lived knowing that one day, I’d have…something. A job probably, doing some dully useless little task for my family, first my father and then, one day, one of my older brothers. I’d be bored out of my mind, but I’d be comfortable and wealthy, and have enough free time to continue drinking and whoring for the rest of my life. Then I’d die, probably a few years younger and a few stone heavier than was strictly necessary, and my troubles would be over. Hopefully I’d have a girl’s mouth around my cock when I finally croaked.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  In one week, I’d lost all of those guarantees. What was there for me now, going on into the future? What did I have to look forwards to?

  Nothing, I decided, until I’d finally tracked down Morlo and asked some of the fucking questions I should have from the beginning. Shock hadn’t done well on me, it’d left me stupid and with thoughts too scattered to learn any of the things I needed to know. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “Where is this monster exactly? The woods, you said, but how far?” I wanted something to focus on, and if that thing was as distracting and priority-snatching as potential danger then so much the better. Suddenly nothing felt quite so scary as my own life, and what it might hold ahead.

  Father kicked me out, sent me off just like that. Why had he done that? It had been so bloody sudden, so unlike him. He—

  —”About five miles from town, I reckon, though it’s hard to tell precisely.” It seemed to actually pain the Grynkori that he couldn’t give more specific information, and I decided not to bring attention to that. Something told me that it would lead to another twist of rage on his part, and I was too tired for that sort of hassle.

  “Five miles,” I echoed, “how does this thing even cause problems? According to the peasants, that is.”

  The Grynkori sniffed at that. “Hunts them, like cattle. At first it started with actual cattle but seems to have a taste for flesh at this stage. Comes by night of course, so far I’ve not gotten a straight description of it so I reckon nobody’s clearly seen it.”

  “Or they’re making it up,” I suggested helpfully. He did not seem to find it very helpful, and I just barely kept from further irritating the angry short man by rolling his eyes where he could see them.

  “It’s not like you have any hard proof to corroborate their words, right?”

  “Rarely do, and sometimes these stories are just stories. But it’s the times they’re not that I keep searching for.”

  Brilliant, so I was going after an imaginary monster alongside a real lunatic. Actually, thinking about it, that seemed a great deal preferable to the alternative. The lunatic appeared at least somewhat less threatening to my life, for the moment.

  We trudged on, past staring townsfolk and scrutinising guards. They had actual guards here, that was interesting. Ringle, I knew, was somewhat bigger than Sheppleberry, but I’d grown used to seeing heavy law enforcement in cities alone. Perhaps these frontier places had stronger demand for such things.

  The speculation kept me occupied at least, right up until we made our way out of the town and headed off down the landscape. The woodlands, as the Grynkori had said, were right ahead of us, and the walk was just as many miles as I’d been warned. My body complained all the while, voicing its unhappiness in a language made of agitated cuts and sprains. I did my best to ignore it all, which apparently wasn’t nearly good enough.

  “Stop whinging,” the Grynkori spat, “you’re making it hard for me to bloody think.”

  “Whinging?!” I hadn’t uttered a single word, the accusation hit me more for its absurdity than any sense of offense.

  “Those..Noises, moaning and grunting like you’re rutting in the bushes.”

  “Wh…Pain? The sounds of moving while I’m in pain?”

  “Whatever, stop it.”

  I stared at the Grynkori, and took quite a bloody while to work out that he was being dead serious.

  “So what, do your kind never cry out in pain?”

  “Not like that,” he spat, “why would we? Waste of oxygen.”

  I thought about that.

  “You…Don’t have an abundance of oxygen down underground, then, I take it?”

  “No, it’s a harder place than this soft little cradle you surface-dwellers call a home.” He had a curious look upon him, for one moment, but it faded fast. “And quieter, because people don’t go around advertising their pain to the whole world!”

  “Okay, fine, I’ll be quiet,” I snapped, then made quite an exerted effort for just that. If nothing else it gave me something to do, burying all the instinctive little spasms of lung and muscle that threatened to break out each time I took a step. Easier than you might think, I would note, though that was me with nothing of particular note to keep myself otherwise occupied with. The Grynkori, I had learned, was not much for conversation. Indeed, he appeared constantly irritated if he were contributing to anything more than a long, sullen silence. That was about fine by me, as several days of near-death had made me somewhat less talkative too. Even if a few of my questions about his kind were practically burning with the lack of an answer.

  The good thing about walking towards the lair of a deadly monster, however, is that it doesn’t leave much room for distraction. By the time I estimated that we were over halfway towards our destination, I find myself focusing very fucking quickly on the path ahead. The woods were thicker here, trees growing denser together as if they feared what awaited us themselves and were sticking close for safety. With such a barricade of branches overhead, it became dark fast. Sun already starting towards one horizon, we were utterly bathed in shadow.

  The ground was wet, that was a good thing. Snapping twigs, I know now, can get you killed just as easily as snapping bones, even moreso. And say what you would about the Grynkori’s hardiness and courage, he was about as stealthy as a rolling boulder. More than once I found myself glaring his way, infuriated that he could be so damned loud only to see him not meeting my eye and matching the fury with his own. Different bodies, I supposed, for different tasks.

  And I could only hope this task didn’t call for his resilience and stamina, because the closer we got to finding out such a thing, the less ready I felt to answer a call like that. Could I still run now? Yes, but…Then what? I needed this nutter to help me get back to Morlo, so I could…

  No, not thinking about that. I readied my sword, not having even noticed when I drew it, and fell into step behind the shorter man as we continued on ahead.

  Then we saw movement, heard the sound of dirt and forest floor being scraped aside, and both spun at once. Just barely in time to keep ourselves from dying on the spot as everything spun out of control.

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